by Lucy Kerr
TIME OF DEATH
A STILLWATER GENERAL MYSTERY
Lucy Kerr
NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Lucy Kerr.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-62953-990-4
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-62953-991-1
ISBN (ePub): 978-1-62953-992-8
ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-62953-993-5
ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-62953-994-2
Cover design by Melanie Sun.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
Crooked Lane Books
34 West 27th St., 10th Floor
New York, NY 10001
First Edition: December 2016
To Danny and the girls:
You are so nice to come home to . . .
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Acknowledgments
PROLOGUE
Clem Jensen never considered himself a betting man. The riverboat casinos had never held his interest, except for their jumbo shrimp cocktails. Bingo at the senior center was only worth it for the brownies. Seventy-odd years of bad luck left him skeptical that fortune could blow fair.
But he’d held his breath and rolled the dice, just this once. It wasn’t right, what he’d done, but neither was what he’d seen. Now his long shot was paying off.
He might not be a betting man, but he’d gambled, and he’d won.
Still, it gnawed at him. He believed in a day’s pay for a day’s work, more or less. He didn’t trust what came easily, and this had come a hair too easily for comfort’s sake. The gnawing feeling had grown, and his stomach had protested until he’d finally listened to his daughter’s pleas—Laura had always been a worrier—and driven himself over to Stillwater General.
The flu, no doubt. He should have gotten the shot she nagged him about every year, but he’d had other things on his mind. Now he’d have to take his medicine and let Laura fuss and fret. In no time, he and CJ would be back on the river, fishing for trout and largemouth bass. Next year, he’d get his shot without complaint. Next year, everything would be different. CJ would be healthy again; Laura would finally be rid of her slack-jawed weasel of a husband.
Clem tugged at the brim of his cap and said a quick prayer of thanks that his grandson took after Laura, not the weasel. Spotting an ambulance in the rearview mirror, he wrestled the van to the side of the road. Another rig followed close behind, lights and sirens wailing, and he wished, for an instant, he could hitch a ride. Shifting the rusted blue van back into drive took an effort that left his arm trembling, and the gnawing sensation grew stronger.
The deal had been too easy, he thought, wiping away the sweat streaming down his face. Like hustling pool.
Stillwater General Hospital was lit up like a Christmas tree. The parking lot was full, cars painted red and white, as if it was homecoming, and half the damn town had turned out to celebrate. He managed to find a spot in a back corner and heaved himself, groaning, out of the van. Figured he’d end up here, of all places, but where else was there to go? Stillwater Gen was the only hospital for nearly seventy miles. He’d had no choice.
He lumbered toward the emergency entrance, impossibly far away. Maybe it was time to give up his daily sausage biscuit. He’d already quit his traditional fishing boat cigar, after all. CJ didn’t like the smell, and he’d rather have time on the water with his grandson than any stogie. Things were finally looking up for the Jensens—Laura and CJ were Jensens at heart, always had been—and he wanted to enjoy every minute of the good times heading their way.
The gnawing sensation grew sharper, tearing at his chest, and he stumbled.
He thought back to the last meeting. True, his associate had been running late. Late enough that he’d started to wonder if the plan had changed, if he’d missed something. But in the end, it went as smooth as ever: a simple exchange over coffee and a sausage biscuit. Far enough out of town to avoid the gossips, public enough to be safe. In the end, everyone got what they wanted, though he hadn’t expected his partner to be so cheerful about it.
Too cheerful.
Too easy.
He staggered toward the emergency room doors. They slid open with a whoosh, but a wall of people blocked his path. No one heard his croaking pleas over the noise and confusion.
He’d thought he was the hustler, he realized in a moment of knife-edged clarity. Turned out, he was the one who’d been hustled.
Fear reached into his chest and squeezed hard.
He shouldn’t have come. He lurched outside again, gulped down cool night air that didn’t stop his sweating, and fell onto the closest bench. People rushed past, unheeding, and went inside. They’d be crushed, he thought absently, trying to rub away the pain, struggling for air. He’d sit for a moment. Just a moment, to catch his breath, and then he’d go somewhere else. Somewhere safe.
It was darker now. He steeled himself for the long walk back to the van.
Clem Jensen wasn’t a betting man. Flush with confidence and righteousness and foolish, foolish hope, he’d forgotten the most important rule of the game: never bet against the house. Now he remembered, as the darkness crowded in, that the house always won.
And he was at their mercy.
ONE
On a list of the five most depressing places to end an engagement, hospital cafeterias take fourth. In my experience, weddings take the top spot; I’ve been told funerals are a close runner-up, and it seems like a surefire way to spoil a birthday. A lakeside picnic on a beautiful late-summer afternoon squeaks into fifth place, whether you’re the one doing the ending or not.
But slot number four belongs to hospital cafeterias: they’re grim to begin with, and having your wedding called off over bad coffee and a rubbery egg-white omelet tips things right over to despair.
Though to be honest . . . I wasn’t feeling as much despair as I should have.
“I’m sorry, Frankie,” Peter Lee, my unexpectedly ex-fiancé, said in the same voice he used to deliver terminal diagnoses. “I hope we can still be friends. And colleagues,” he added as an afterthought.
I took a sip of my
so-called coffee. “Let me get this straight. You’re breaking up with me because I covered Mindy’s shift last night instead of going to a dinner party?”
He paused a heartbeat too long. “Of course not.”
“Her twins didn’t come down with strep on purpose.” I tugged the elastic out of my chin-length, dark-red hair. The unruly mop of curls sprang free, and I brushed them from my eyes so Peter could better see my glare. “You know the ER is always understaffed on Friday nights. I couldn’t say no. Why didn’t you go without me?”
This seemed an entirely reasonable solution—preferable, in fact, to me attending yet another stuffy dinner with a hospital bigwig. In the six months since Peter had proposed, nearly every weekend had included some sort of charity gala or dinner party or networking opportunity. Good for Peter, a rising star in Chicago Memorial Hospital’s pediatric surgery department. Deadly dull for me, especially compared to the frenetic pace of CM’s emergency room, where I was a nurse. But I hadn’t had the heart to tell Peter so.
“I didn’t want to go without you.” Frustration crept into his voice. “What’s the point of spending the rest of your life with someone if they’re always too busy to spend time with you?”
I winced. It wasn’t flattering, but he had a point. Lately, whenever I thought about our future together, my lungs and shoulders tightened instinctively, the same way they did when I saw a doctor make a bad call. Not exactly a recipe for marital bliss.
“I’m sorry,” I said after a long moment. “You’re right.”
I fished for the necklace I wore beneath my scrubs. The elaborate platinum and sapphire ring was a hair too loose. Rather than risk it falling off midshift, I’d taken to wearing it on a chain, even when I was nowhere near the hospital. Which probably should have been my first clue that Peter, while a talented surgeon and genuinely nice guy, wasn’t The One. “I can’t keep this.”
“I guess I should have asked about a return policy.” He tried to smile but couldn’t quite pull it off.
“They’ll take it back,” I assured him.
“You’re handling this . . . well. Better than I expected,” he said cautiously.
“Did you think I was going to make a scene?” My first, youthful engagement (lakeside picnic) had ended with caustic words and bitter weeping, but no witnesses. The second had ended, loud and furious, in front of a room full of people doing the hokey-pokey. (Wedding. Not mine, thankfully.)
This time, however, I felt fine. The sting came from wounded pride, not a broken heart. My eyes were dry, my smile was genuine, and my hand, when I held out the ring to Peter, was perfectly steady. Which should have been my second clue.
The third clue—the clincher—was the relief that washed over me as Peter nimbly plucked the ring from my outstretched palm. The aching exhaustion of my twelve-hour shift vanished, and my lungs relaxed for the first time in ages.
I’d been an emergency room nurse for twelve years, but I didn’t need medical training to realize the truth: I’d been looking for a way out. Peter, gentleman that he was, had given it to me.
“What are we going to tell people? Our families?” he asked.
I grimaced. Even the idea of breaking the news to my mother sent a chill down my back. Still, telling my family could wait. I could probably put it off until Christmas. If I worked over Christmas, I could put it off even longer. But the news would be all over Chicago Memorial by lunch tomorrow.
Judging from the way the cafeteria staff was gaping, it would be public knowledge by lunch today.
My appetite vanished, and I pushed my omelet away.
“I’m off work for the next few days,” I said, thinking fast. If I wasn’t here, Peter could handle the fallout, spin the story however he wanted. I owed him that much. “Tell them I’m too much of a flake.”
“Nobody who has seen you work is going to believe that,” he said.
No, they wouldn’t. My personal life might be a disaster, but I was good at my job, and everybody who entered the ER knew it. “Tell them you want someone taller.”
He tapped his fingers lightly on the table—long, slender surgeon’s fingers—exasperation clear. “But I don’t.”
“It doesn’t have to be the truth,” I said, and then his true meaning hit me, and I could have bitten my runaway tongue. “Oh. You don’t want someone taller.”
“Or shorter,” he said, holding my gaze.
I looked down at my ringless hands for a moment, acknowledging his words. Then I stood, pulling on my fleece jacket, tucking my curls haphazardly under a knit cap, and swinging my messenger bag over my shoulder. “You’re going to make a very lucky woman very happy someday.”
“But not you?”
I heard the note of hope in his voice but shook my head. I’d given him the wrong answer once; now I was more careful with my words. “Not me.”
* * *
Three broken engagements, I realized on my train ride home. One was understandable. I’d been young and foolish and a little bit scared. Two was slightly harder to explain, but not unheard of, especially after I’d found my fiancé hooking up with a bridesmaid at our friend’s wedding. Three, however, was a pattern. An issue.
I’d hoped that by choosing the right guy, at the right time, I’d fixed the problem. But maybe the problem wasn’t the fiancés. Maybe it was me.
I wasn’t against the idea of marriage, exactly. Plenty of my friends were married, and some of them even seemed happy about it. My parents had been wildly in love until my father’s death; more than twenty years later, my mother still hadn’t remarried. Besides, if I’d hated the idea of marriage, I wouldn’t have gotten engaged. Three times. But settling down felt like settling somehow. I liked change, and a challenge, which is why ER nursing was perfect for me—no two cases, no two shifts, were ever the same. When I got tired of a city, it was easy to relocate, since nurses were always in demand.
Try as I might, I couldn’t envision a decade, much less a lifetime, with Peter—or anyone else.
Peter was a great guy; he’d find someone soon. Smart, funny surgeons had no trouble meeting women. But he hadn’t just been relieved by my breezy acceptance of our breakup. He’d been hurt, and rightly so. I liked to think I was a truthful person, but I’d been dishonest with both of us when I’d accepted his proposal. The realization made me feel small and wormy.
I reached my apartment, a third-floor walk-up in funky-but-gentrifying Wicker Park, grateful I’d turned down Peter’s offer to move into his sleek West Loop condo. I’d lived here for almost three years, the longest I’d stayed anywhere since graduating nursing school more than a decade ago. I’d decorated it piecemeal—a burnt-orange velvet sofa, a scarred kitchen table from the thrift store, artwork from my travels covering the teal-blue walls and tucked amid my textbooks and romance novels.
It struck me that while I liked to read about happy endings—I saw too many of the other kind at work—I had no idea what my own might look like.
Clearly, it was time to shake things up. Despite my postshift fatigue, I felt restless. Three broken engagements in thirty-four years was not a track record to be proud of, and there was no one to blame but myself.
I needed to get out of town. I closed the blackout shades in my bedroom against the late-morning sunlight, changed into yoga pants and an ancient Cubs T-shirt, and settled into bed with my laptop, intent on vacation browsing. My perpetually beleaguered budget wouldn’t stretch as far as an international flight, but I could probably find something in the States. I snuggled under my down comforter and started checking destinations. Peter’s schedule hadn’t allowed for a true vacation, and it had been too long since I’d gone on any kind of solo adventure. Now I browsed the possibilities I’d ignored over the last year and a half. Whitewater rafting in Tennessee, scuba diving in Key West, bouldering in Utah . . .
Surfing in San Diego. Perfect: sun, street tacos, and plenty of waves. I could even double up on my adventures; there were plenty of places to rock-climb in that area, too.
The nonrefundable tickets weren’t cheap, but I’d been saving my vacation time—and my pennies—for the wedding. Peter could field all the questions about our broken engagement and get his side of the story out first. He was too kindhearted to paint me as the villain (though my guilty conscience whispered he should), but he’d definitely earn sympathy points. Fair enough. He deserved them.
My eyelids drooped as I searched for a hotel, my all-night shift finally catching up with me. Pushing the computer aside, I turned off the light and closed my eyes. With any luck, I’d dream of surfing and sunshine, not Peter’s disappointed expression. I let myself tumble into sleep . . .
. . . and woke to the sound of my phone blaring.
I rummaged amid the tangle of blankets, finally spotting the electric-blue case near my feet.
“Yeah?” My voice was thick and raspy with sleep.
“Frankie?”
“Yeah.” I checked my watch—it was almost three in the afternoon. I’d slept a whopping four hours, and the abrupt awakening left me disoriented. Then I placed the voice. “Charlie?”
“It’s me,” my little sister confirmed, her words strangely high-pitched and tremulous.
I stood and stretched, trying to dislodge the tightness that had seized my shoulders again. Charlie didn’t call me, as a rule. And I didn’t call her. “Is Mom okay?”
Her voice cracked. “Mom’s fine. It’s the baby.”
Instantly, I was as awake as if I’d just downed a double espresso. “I thought you were due at Christmas.”
“Thanksgiving,” she said, and I felt a pang of guilt. Worst aunt ever, but that’s what comes of not talking to your family except on major holidays.
I did some fast math in my head. “You should have another six weeks—you’re too early.”
“I know,” she wailed, the words tumbling out in a rush. “Something’s wrong. I’ve been feeling lousy, so I came in for an extra checkup, and the doctor says my blood pressure is too high, and they keep running tests and looking serious, and I keep asking if the baby’s okay, but nobody ever really answers, and what if that means—” She dissolved into giant, hiccupping sobs.
