by Renee George
“Oh, but a civilian can discuss her theories with you?”
He held his hands palms up. “That’s the rules. I don’t make ’em. I just live by ’em.”
I rolled my eyes.
Bobby chuckled. “Stay out of trouble, Lily,” he said.
I saluted him with two fingers. “You got it, Sheriff Morris.”
The morning had been productive. Dale Rogers had a motive to the tune of five hundred thousand dollars, and money had a way of making people do things they never thought they would. Although, he’d been surprised when Bobby had confronted him about paying for the insurance. But he’d lied about threatening her. Still, did all that make him a murderer? Maybe. There were still other leads to look at, but right now, Dale was at the top of my list.
Chapter 11
I had an hour and a half to kill before I had to check in at Petry’s Pet Clinic for my afternoon internship. I’d moved my days to Monday and Wednesday afternoons to work best with my class schedule. Ninety minutes wasn’t long, but it would be enough time to stop at Reggie’s surgical practice and see if she’d gotten any of the blood work back.
It was a clinic day, not a surgery day, so almost every slot in the small parking lot was filled. I picked the first spot available and parked the truck. Nancy, the medical secretary, smiled when she saw me walk in.
I approached the desk.
“Hi, Lily.” She looked at her screen for a moment then back to me. “Was Doc expecting you? She has three more consultations before lunch is blocked off for an hour.”
“I’m not here for lunch,” I said. “I was hoping I could just get a quick word with her between patients.”
“I’ll have Roberta ask her.”
Roberta, an LPN, had just recently replaced Reggie’s last nurse who had moved on to a full-time position at the hospital.
I looked around for Margot, the office manager, but she wasn’t visible. “Where’s Margot today?”
Nancy looked over her shoulder. “She’s around here somewhere.”
“Can you ask her if she has a minute to talk?” Reggie had said Margot was well-versed in hospital gossip. I really wanted to know who Abby’s secret married lover was, because even though he didn’t have a name, the guy was at the top of my suspect list along with Dale.
The briefest hint of annoyance flickered in Jan’s expression before she nodded, got up from her seat, and walked into the back.
There were five people in the waiting area. One man had a walker, one guy wore a back brace, there was a middle-aged couple watching a talk show on the television in the waiting area, and a younger woman, maybe in her late twenties, early thirties, sat in the corner with her phone on her lap and earbuds in. Since Reggie only had three consults before lunch, some of these folks were here to see one of the other doctor’s in her practice.
Nancy came back to the desk. “Margot says you can come on back.”
“Thank you, Jan.”
She forced a smile. “You’re welcome, Lily.”
I walked through the clinic door and headed to the end of the first hall. There were two initial rooms, one for vital signs, weight and height, and the next was for lab draw. There was a basket with urine samples and other items that needed to be sent off for analysis. I walked on back to Margot’s office. The door was cracked, but I still knocked.
“Come in,” she said. Margot was in her fifties, but she looked like she was forty, maybe even younger. She had strawberry-blonde hair that looked very natural, but at her age was probably courtesy of a salon. Even so, she, like Reggie, was always well put together.
“Hi, Margot. I hope you don’t mind me dropping in,” I said.
“Of course not,” she told me. She gestured to a cushioned chair across from her desk. “Have a seat and tell me what I can do for you.”
I obliged her. The seat was comfortable. “This is a really great chair,” I said.
“I’m glad you like it,” Margot said.
I wasn’t sure how to bring up Abby’s affair, so I started with the obvious. “Terrible, just terrible what happened with Abby Rogers. She was a good nurse.”
Margot’s expression turned sympathetic. “She was capable.” The way Margot said the word made it sound like high praise.
“Yes,” I agreed solemnly. “I just recently met her, but she seemed like she knew what she was doing.”
“When it came to medicine, she absolutely did. Abby had been at the top of her class.”
“And outside of medicine?”
Margot stared at me for a minute. “What did you want to see me about again?”
I heard a snort from the doorway as Reggie joined us. “She wants to know what you can tell her about Abby Rogers’ personal life because she doesn’t think the girl killed herself.”
“Oh,” Margot said. Her forehead wrinkled when she frowned, adding age to her face. “And what do you think, Dr. Crawford?”
“I don’t,” she said. “I let the medical findings speak for me.”
Margot shook her head. “I hate to speak ill of the dead.”
Didn’t everyone? It’s amazing how wonderful some jerks became in the eyes of the living once they perished from this existence.
“I’m not trying to judge Abby. Whatever you tell me won’t stop me from trying to find the truth about what happened to her. And while it can’t bring her any peace, not anymore, it might offer some to her family and friends.”
“What about you, Dr. Crawford? Are you okay with this?”
Reggie nodded. “I investigate my way. Lily investigates hers. Whatever you tell her won’t change the evidence, but it might give us other places to look.”
“All right, then,” Margot said. “Abby was having an affair with a married doctor.”
I scooted forward in my seat. I was finally going to hear a name. “Which one?”
“Oh.” Margot blinked. “I don’t know. They were very good at hiding the affair.”
It seemed like everyone knew about the affair, but no one knew who the mysterious married doctor was. “Well, shoot. How did you find out about the affair, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I overheard Dr. Rogers talking about his divorce to one of the other doctors at the hospital.” Apparently, I wasn’t the only one in the room who liked to eavesdrop.
“Do you think he knows who Abby was seeing?”
“Absolutely,” Margot said. “The other doctor asked him who it was, and Dr. Rogers said he’d signed some agreement, so he couldn’t say, or he would forfeit everything he got in the divorce settlement.”
Interesting.
“What a piece of trash,” Reggie said. “He blackmailed that poor girl into signing over half of everything she was due.”
Margot nodded. “That’s what I gathered from the conversation. The settlement was contingent on him keeping his trap shut.
“It didn’t stop him from trying to ruin her reputation, though, did it?” Anger for Abby settled in me. She might have been having an affair, and maybe Dale did or didn’t deserve her disloyalty, but he’d gotten what he wanted. A divorce that he didn’t have to pay for. So why take that one step extra to hurt her even more? “What doctor was he talking to?” Maybe Rogers had told him more out of Margot’s earshot.
“Smith,” she said. “Dr. Stewart Smith.”
After I left Reggie’s, I still had over forty minutes before I had to be at Petry’s Pet Clinic, so I decided to stop by Moonrise Manor and check on Opal.
The parking lot, much like the surgical services’ parking lot, was packed. I expected it to be busier on a weekday than a weekend, but I’d been here on Friday as well, and there were less than half the vehicles that were here now. Maybe Monday was a big family visitor day, or maybe I’d picked a time when an event was taking place. Either way, I once again took the first spot available and made the long walk to the front entrance.
In the hall across from the main office, Annie Blankenship was sitting in front of a stack of folders, her face
pinched and red with stress, sweat beading on her upper lip, as she read through the one she had opened. Inside the office, the director of nursing and the administrator huddled with the social worker and a few other people I didn’t recognize. The halls were buzzing with activity, residents were up and outside their rooms, most of them looking confused as to why.
I kept my head down until I got to Opal’s room. She was swatting Mariah, the aide, away from her. “I can get myself dressed,” Opal said. “Stop fussing with me.” She held up the pants. They were pale-blue, thick polyester. “These aren’t even my clothes? Where are my pants?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Dixon. These didn’t have a name in them, so we thought they might be your size.”
“Do they look like something I’d wear? I’m seventy-six, not a hundred and seventy-six.”
“I couldn’t find anything else clean.”
“I’m not wearing some other lady’s pants. I’ll go naked first,” Opal said.
Mariah looked back and saw me standing in the door. She looked almost as stressed as the woman with the files.
“Get in here,” Opal said to me. “And get this girl to leave me alone.”
“What’s happening?” I asked Mariah. “Aside from the clothing debacle. Things are nuts out in the hall.”
“The state has come down to inspect the nursing home,” she said. Her eyes bugged. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s okay. Do you know why?”
Mariah shook her head. “They can pop in randomly for a spot inspection. Sometimes it’s because a complaint has been called in.”
“Do you think this is random or was there a complaint?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.” She took a few steps back from Opal. “I have to get to the next room. Can you please talk her into getting dressed and going down for lunch?”
“I’ll try.” I looked at Opal. I had a feeling she was going to go down for lunch or not as she felt like it. I noticed Jane’s bed was empty and neatly made. “Where’s Mrs. Davidson?”
“She’s in the hospital for a few days. They’re trying to figure out why her diabetes is acting so weird,” Opal said. She glared at Mariah. “You can go.”
Mariah sighed, not nearly as relaxed as she’d been about Opal’s cantankerous ways on Friday, then walked right out without looking back.
“What in the world is going on?” I asked Opal. “It's a madhouse out there.”
“I’m pretty sure this has something to do with Abby. I overheard one of the other nurses say that Abby might have put in a call to state last week.”
“About what? Do you know?”
Opal shook her head. “I think it has something to do with Jane Davidson, though.”
“What gives you that idea?”
“Because a woman came in with a big ol’ clipboard and asked me a half dozen questions about the care I was receiving, and then turned around and asked me a hundred questions about Jane.”
“Wow.” I mulled it over for a moment. “Do you think Abby reported something about Mrs. Davidson then? Something about her care?” What was it she’d been trying to get done on Friday? I snapped my fingers. “She had asked Dr. Smith about getting some tests run on Mrs. Davidson, and he had been snappish, but finally agreed.”
“Female Dr. Smith or male Dr. Smith?”
“Male,” I replied.
“He’s a jackass,” Opal said. “His wife, though, she’s a saint. Have to be to put up with that fool.” She patted her hip. “The woman fixed me right up.”
Right. Reggie had told me the female Dr. Smith was an orthopedic surgeon. But…
“How do you know the male Dr. Smith? Is he your doctor here?”
“Not hardly,” Opal said. Her mouth thinned as she met my gaze. “I'm pretty sure he’s the one Abby had the affair with.”
Chapter 12
The afternoon at the clinic moved at a snail’s pace. Not that it wasn’t busy. Monday was the day all the worried pet parents who hadn’t wanted to face an “emergency visit” fee over the weekend showed up bright and early as drop-ins.
Ryan made a practice of allowing walk-ins on the understanding that true emergencies and booked appointments took priority. The rest might have to wait a while to get worked in. A grumpy-looking, bald-headed man wearing coveralls sat with a large St. Bernard. Kelly, the VAT, told me the dog had eaten a roll of toilet paper Friday night and had stopped eating yesterday, and he hadn’t had a bowel movement to pass the paper yet.
“Toilet paper,” she said, taking her ginger hair out of its ponytail, combing it back with her fingers, and reapplying the hair tie with practiced quickness, “will stop up more than a toilet. In bulk, it can swell when it starts to absorb the water from the stomach and intestines.”
“What can be done for him?”
“We’ve done an ultrasound to determine the blockage exists. Unfortunately, surgical intervention at this point is necessary,” she said. “We’ve cancelled a few routine appointments this afternoon, so it can be performed right away.”
No wonder the bald man looked grumpy. He was probably worried, too. I know I would be. It was just sheer luck that Smooshie hadn’t ended up with the same problem when she ate one of my sanitary pads. Well, a part of one. And no, it wasn’t used. Ugh. I’d talked to Ryan, and he’d said as long as she was eating, staying hydrated, and having regular bowel movements, that she would be fine. Well, Smooshie had pooped confetti for a few days, but other than that, she’d suffered no ill effects. Like I said, luck.
“Mr. Donovan, I can take Bernie back now,” Kelly said to the man. She walked over and took the big dog’s leash. She gave Bernie’s dad a sympathetic look. “Dogs eat stuff they shouldn’t. It’s not your fault.”
“I should have brought him in sooner,” Mr. Donovan said.
Kelly shook her head. “It would have been the same result.” She gave Bernie a neck scratch. “Don’t you worry. Dr. Ryan will take good care of him, okay?”
“You’ll call me as soon as the surgery is over?”
“I will,” Kelly said. “I will call you immediately.”
Kelly had a way with people that helped set them at ease, including this lowly intern. When we escorted Bernie to the back, I told her so. “You’re really good at making people feel better.”
“Why, thanks, Lily. That’s sweet of you to say.”
“It’s just the truth.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I just imagine that everyone who walks through the door is me with my Diva. She’s my labradoodle. I think about how I would feel if she were sick, and how I would want to be treated and talked to. They’re scared. I’d be scared, too, and I work here. If you approach everyone from that perspective, then you find yourself saying things that would make you feel better if you were in that situation.”
“You’re right. Every time Smooshie drinks too fast and chokes on water, I worry she’s going to aspirate into her lungs and get pneumonia.” I spent so much time at the rescue where the pet owners were the bad guys, that sometimes it was hard to switch off that feeling.
My phone, in the front pocket of my lab coat, rang. I gave Kelly an apologetic smile before taking it out. It was a local number, but one I didn’t recognize. I declined the call, forcing it to go to voice mail. If it was one of the gazillion spam calls that I received every week, they wouldn’t leave a message.
The phone rang out with three successive beeps, alerting me that a message had indeed been left. I opened my voice mail and was surprised by the caller.
Hi, Lily. This is Lacy. Lacy Evans, Freda’s daughter. The explanation was longer than it needed to be. She went on. Opal Dixon is leaving Moonrise Manor against medical advice. We can’t stop her, because she’s here voluntarily. She asked me to call you. She says you can either come and get her, or she’s going to start walking.
I wondered how far Opal could get with a broken leg and a walker. Probably not a good idea to find out.
Ryan walked out of one of the e
xam rooms. He gave me a strange look. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head and replayed him the message. He was actually grinning at the end.
“That Opal is a pistol,” he said.
“Opal owns a pistol, and she’s about to shoot her own foot off.”
“Nah,” Ryan said. “She’d probably do fine at her place with some home health care. A nurse can come out once or twice a week to check on the surgical wound, and physical therapy will come out two or three days a week to work at getting her stronger.” He shrugged. “A lift on the toilet, a shower chair. She wouldn’t need much.”
“They already have a shower chair,” I said, flashing back to Pearl straddling Bob. I shook my head. “Do you mind if I cut my hours short today?”
“Nope,” he said. “Go help Opal stage her prison break.”
By the time I’d pulled up to Moonrise, the parking lot was less packed. Opal sat on a bench just outside the entrance with a white trash bag full of what I could only imagine were her personal effects. I swung the truck into the drive-thru in front of the main entrance. An area reserved for convenient drop-offs and pick-ups.
She stared at me then pushed up on her good leg and brought herself to a stand. There was no curb to navigate, so she easily used her walker to make her way to the passenger door then shouted at the window. “It’s about time you showed up,” she groused. “Now, get me out of here.”
I got out and walked around to her side. She was already folding the walker. Before I could take it from her, she flung it into the back of the truck.
My eyes widened.
“My leg is broke, not my arms.” She flexed a small muscle. “Besides, it’s aluminum, so it weighs all of five pounds.”
I laughed. “Okay, then. Tell me how to get you into the seat. I mean, if it was your left leg it would be easier, I think. I don’t know. I don’t have much experience with this kind of thing.”
“Don’t be useless, Lily.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Just lift me in.”
