Nick cleared his throat. “Laurie, how much does your mother know about why you left Timbergate?”
Whispering, she said, “I told her I quit my job and came home because I was being harassed by someone at TMC. I had to tell them something, but I didn’t want to say what’s really going on. They’d be too worried.”
“How long are you planning to stay with them?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I hoped someone would have figured out who killed Cody by now.”
“Wait,” Nick said. “You mean you don’t know who it is?”
“No.” She frowned. “Is that what you thought? That I’d know who killed him?”
Maylene’s soft conversational tones drifted from the kitchen. We didn’t have much time to hear Laurie’s story unless we could get her away from her mother.
“Can we leave here for a while?” I asked.
“Later, maybe, after my father gets home. I don’t want to leave my mother alone. Dad’s a mechanic at a potato processing plant. They called him in this morning to repair one of the machines. He’s been insisting we call him every couple of hours.”
Of course she wouldn’t leave her recuperating mother alone, especially if there was a chance someone might show up looking to silence Laurie. But if Laurie didn’t know what happened to Cody, why was she running?
Nick glanced toward the kitchen. Laurie and I looked at each other. Her mother had finished her phone call and we heard water running in the kitchen sink.
“How do you know Cody’s death wasn’t accidental if you didn’t witness it?” Nick asked.
The water stopped running in the kitchen. Laurie shook her head. “No more now. We can meet somewhere later and talk. I’ll explain everything then.”
Maylene came back to the dining room, her face glistening with sweat. She held a large glass of water. “Daddy’s reassured, honey. I told him your friends were here to help.”
Chapter 19
Laurie walked to the car with us and gave me a hug. When she grasped my hand I felt a scrap of folded paper. “Take it,” she whispered. I glanced back at the porch, where her mother stood waving goodbye. I unfolded her note as soon as we pulled out of the driveway.
Nick glanced over. “What’s that?”
“A note from Laurie. She wants us to meet her at ten o’clock tonight at the Blue Banjo.”
“What’s the Blue Banjo?” Nick said.
“She wrote the address.” I pulled out my phone to do a search. “Looks like it’s a roadhouse. Take a left at the next intersection.”
We found the Blue Banjo on an isolated stretch of road north of town just as a breeze split the oppressive cloud cover. A shaft of sunlight cast a holy radiance on a signboard at the entrance to the parking lot. It boasted STEAK, BBQ, and DANCE FLOOR. A second sign, attached below the larger one, advertised the evening’s entertainment as The Oakley Brothers.
It wasn’t the rundown dive I’d expected. The gray paint and red trim appeared fresh, and there were signs of regular attention to landscaping. Cypress trees lined the asphalt-coated driveway, and a red maple, autumn leaves in full blazing crimson, shaded the entrance door. Nick drove into the parking lot so we could get a closer look.
“Place looks empty.”
A black pickup suddenly sped from behind the building and clipped our right rear fender, spinning the rental in a one-eighty. The driver laid a trail of smoking rubber on the asphalt. In seconds, he reached the highway and disappeared from sight.
“What the devil?” Nick got out, mumbling expletives, and checked the damage to the car. He came back shaking his head. “Taillight’s smashed.”
“Did you pay for rental insurance?”
He slipped back into the driver’s seat. “Didn’t think we’d need it.” He slapped the steering wheel. “Damn fool.”
“You, or the other guy?”
“Both.” Nick tried the ignition. The motor turned over without a hitch. “We can drive it back to the rental place, but we’re going to need another car.”
“You think they’ll let us take another one?”
“If not, we’re on foot.”
“Then drop me off at the hospital first.”
“You want to go back there? Why?”
“I didn’t get anywhere asking Brenda McClurg about DeeDee Dakota. Once she realized the nurse we were trying to find was her niece, the subject of DeeDee was dropped.”
“I don’t blame Laurie for keeping the truth from her family. If her parents are that upset about her being harassed, they’d be horrified to think a murderer was looking for her.”
A hollow place opened in my chest. “You sound pretty sure that’s the case.”
“I’d rather be wrong, but I think it’s likely.”
“Nick, do you think the pickup that slammed into us back there is involved? Maybe it’s the same one we saw in the wilderness.”
“Maybe. When we found Laurie safe, I thought we could rule out the dude with the black pickup. I assume she’ll tell us who he is when we get together tonight.”
I called Brenda’s office and her secretary told me she would be back from her lunch break in half an hour. She wouldn’t guarantee an appointment but said she would let Brenda know I was dropping by.
“What are you going to do while I’m at the hospital?” I asked.
“I’ll try to get another rental car, then I’ll work on the other two names on Gary P’s list. Call my cell when you’re finished, and I’ll get back as soon as I can.”
Nick dropped me at the front entrance and I made my way to Brenda McClurg’s office for the second time. I was fifteen minutes early when I reached her door. It was ajar and I heard a woman’s voice inside, so I waited before entering. It took me a moment to realize the voice was not Brenda’s, but her secretary’s. She was carrying on a phone conversation.
“CJ, you’d better take care of this mess. I’ve kept my mouth shut about Caroline for a hell of a long time. Once we pass the inspection, I mean to have Brenda McClurg’s job. You’d damn well better make it happen.”
I was still early, so I headed for the women’s room at the end of the corridor, where I pondered what I had just heard. The woman had told someone named CJ to clean up a mess. The scandal in the media? But she said she’d kept quiet about someone named Caroline, and that she wanted Brenda McClurg’s job. I considered telling Brenda what I’d heard, but decided it wasn’t my place to intervene.
I stepped into the corridor outside the women’s room and called Brenda’s office on my cellphone. The same woman answered. That didn’t bode well for Brenda. Her secretary plotting to take over her job. I asked if McClurg was in and was told she would be back from lunch in ten minutes. I had passed a small cafeteria just down the hall. I thought I might find her there, but the only occupants were three women in black and white scrubs patterned like the hide of a Holstein cow. They huddled over some papers on the table, carrying on an animated conversation.
I bought a soggy tuna on white bread and fruit juice. Then I sat at a table and unwrapped my sandwich while snatches of conversation from the women drifted my way. I heard “cover-up” and “so what?” and “kids to feed.” The working woman’s dilemma.
The tuna sandwich was disgusting, but I was hungry enough to finish it. I returned to Brenda’s office on time and found her alone. She invited me in.
“So you’re back to finish our conversation,” she said.
“I hope so, Brenda. Earlier I had just mentioned DeeDee Dakota when we got sidetracked about Laurie. It’s important that I learn all I can about the time DeeDee spent here back when she had her accident at the rodeo.”
“That was more than two years ago. Her record should have been copied and transported with her to Timbergate Medical Center.”
“I realize that, but we’ve been unable to locate her chart.
“What name were you looking for?”
“We’ve tried her professional name and her married name, but neither of those pulled up her record.”
<
br /> “I can tell you why. She wasn’t admitted here by either of those names. For legal purposes, she was Deirdre DeGraw. Most likely, that’s how she was admitted at your facility.”
“Why DeGraw?”
“That’s how she was listed on all her ID, so that’s what we used.”
I’d have to call Cleo about the name confusion. No wonder she’d found no record of Deirdre O’Brien in the TMC records database.
“Brenda, is there anyone working here now who might have observed her care? A nurse who was assigned to her, maybe? It would help to know which doctors and nurses took care of her and who her visitors were.”
“You’re looking at her.”
“You? Weren’t you already in your current position?”
“You’ve got to remember what a small place this is. Lots of us did double duty. I have retrieved Ms. DeGraw’s record from the Health Information office.” She pulled a chart from her desk drawer. “Let’s go through it and see if it will refresh my memory.”
Brenda frowned at the page in front of her. “I remember being on duty in our ICU when they brought her in. My notes are here.”
“You have an ICU here?” I tried to keep the disbelief from my voice.
“We have the basics. A mechanical ventilator, cardiac monitors, defibrillator, feeding tubes, suction pumps, drains and catheters. And the usual drugs.”
“Was DeeDee on a ventilator?”
“Let’s see.” She flipped a couple of pages. “Yes. But not right away. She came in around nine o’clock at night, awake and alert. Same the next morning, so she was moved out of the unit to a room on the floor, and she responded well for the rest of the day. She slept normally through that night, but lapsed into a coma the following morning, just as she was about to be discharged. That’s when she was moved back into the ICU and put on a ventilator.
“Then the coma was a result of her injury? Not medically induced?”
Brenda ran her finger down a page in the chart. “Not induced. You work in a hospital. You must know how common it is for a head injury to seem mild at first, then progress downhill rapidly.”
“Yes. There was an actress a few years ago who made the news when she died after a skiing accident.”
“Yes. Tragic, but we did what we could for Ms. DeGraw.”
“What was her ratio of nursing care?”
“Three to one.” She held my gaze with a hint of challenge.
“So you had other patients in ICU?”
“Two others. The unit only holds three beds. A couple of kids were brought in after a head-on. He was drunk and trying to impress his girlfriend by passing a semi on a two-lane road.”
I understood her defensiveness. A ratio of two patients to one nurse is recommended for a medical ICU, unlike the ratio of four or five patients to one nurse on the medical floors. She was only slightly out of compliance caring for three at once.
“We saved both those kids,” Brenda said. “And I am a registered nurse, in case you’re wondering.” If she got any more annoyed I’d be sent packing. I backed off.
“I’m sure you took wonderful care of DeeDee. It sounds as if her injury was so severe she never had a chance.”
“On the contrary, I thought she had a good chance. She seemed to be doing fine until those last few hours. Her husband thought the worst was over by the time his brother got here.”
“Did you meet them? Cody and James O’Brien?”
“Oh, yes. More than ‘met’ them. They never left her side. At least the brother didn’t. The husband left a few times to check on their horses and tend to some rodeo business.”
“But his brother stayed with her?” I recalled James struggling with his feelings about DeeDee’s death—the depth of loss he seemed to feel.
Brenda gazed past me, remembering. “Yes, James. That was the brother’s name. He was with her constantly after she slipped into the coma that last morning. At one point, when the husband happened to be out, the brother-in-law was holding her hand and weeping. He seemed deeply affected, but it was none of my business.”
Chapter 20
Brenda’s account of James’s behavior at DeeDee’s bedside told me his feelings for his brother’s wife went beyond what was expected of a brother-in-law. James seemed certain he’d seen Phyllis Poole in DeeDee’s hospital room. Had Dr. Poole really been there when DeeDee was a patient? If so, why?”
I chose an indirect approach. “Does the chart show every physician who was involved in DeeDee’s care?” I stopped short of mentioning Dr. Poole’s name.
Brenda flipped a page. “Only Dr. Carl Jasper.”
CJ. The woman on the phone had been talking to someone with those initials. “Is he still on staff?”
“Oh, yes.” Brenda rolled her eyes heavenward. “He’s one of the founders of this place. The others are all dead. Now he owns it outright. Been here since the dinosaur age, and he’ll be here until he becomes a fossil himself.” Brenda closed the folder on her desk, sat back, and crossed her arms. “I’m sorry. I told Cleo I’d try to help you out, but I don’t have anything else to tell you.” Brenda’s body language and uncompromising expression sent a clear message. We’re through here.
But I hadn’t asked if Laurie was working at Dunnsville Memorial when DeeDee was a patient there. I could try to exploit Brenda’s concern for her niece—tell her Laurie’s life might depend on what I learned about DeeDee’s stay at DMH—but would she believe me? I decided it was worth a try.
“I understand,” I said, “but there’s something else ….”
The door to Brenda’s office burst open and a woman wearing a nubby pink Chanel suit stormed into the room.
“McClurg, you’d better come ….” She put on the brakes when she saw me. “Oh, I didn’t know you had a visitor.” She stood rooted to the spot and leveled a look at Brenda that said I should be dispatched immediately.
A dark page-boy hairdo framed what had to be a surgically enhanced face. She appeared to be in her fifties and looked as if she’d last read a fashion magazine when Jackie Kennedy was First Lady.
“My executive assistant,” Brenda said. “Jacqueline Poole.”
“Aimee Machado,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”
Now I had a face and a name to go with the voice I’d heard earlier. Her first name explained the fashion choices, but it didn’t explain her surname. Was she related to Phyllis Poole? Or were the names an unbelievable coincidence? I was glad I hadn’t mentioned Dr. Poole’s name to Brenda before this woman arrived.
“What is it, Jackie?” Brenda said.
“I’d rather not say.” She nodded toward me.
I took my cue and announced that I had to be going. I thanked Brenda for her time and left, wishing I could eavesdrop outside her door again. Unfortunately there was too much traffic in the hallway.
A call to Nick’s cellphone went unanswered, so I left a message that I was waiting in the hospital lobby. I picked a chair by a window so I could watch the parking lot. The two other women in the room looked like elderly sisters and sat staring at a soap opera on a television set mounted high on the wall. I assumed they’d given up on real-life romance years ago until a steamy scene on the screen caused them to giggle and jab each other with their elbows.
Ten minutes passed, and no word from Nick. I pondered what I’d learned from Brenda. There was the revelation about James and his feelings for DeeDee, the intrigue at this little hospital involving Jackie Poole’s resentment of Brenda McClurg, and most interesting, the possibility that Jackie Poole and Phyllis Poole were related. That gave some credence to James’s claim that he’d seen Phyllis Poole in DeeDee’s hospital room.
But why? Phyllis was working in New York back then, and Cleo said her CV didn’t show any reference to Dunnsville Memorial Hospital. I desperately wanted to know about everyone who came near DeeDee while she was a patient at Dunnsville Memorial, and that was more than Brenda was willing to tell me. There had to be another way. I called Cleo to tell her that
Dunnsville Memorial Hospital had used DeeDee’s maiden name: Deirdre DeGraw.
“Then TMC must have used the same name to create her chart here,” Cleo said. “That’s why I couldn’t remember her from the death review. I was trying to recall someone named O’Brien.”
“Brenda seemed sure that everything in DeeDee’s chart here in Idaho was copied and sent to TMC when DeeDee was transferred. When can you go down to the archives again?”
“I’m not sure when I’ll have another chance. When will you be home?”
“Probably tomorrow. We’re meeting with Laurie tonight, but after that there’s not much more we can do here.”
I finished the call just as a doctor in scrubs came into the waiting room. He approached the two waiting women, pulling their attention away from their television show. He spoke in low tones and they both broke into broad smiles and hugged him. One wiped a tear from her eye and the other blew her nose into a tissue. The doctor escorted them out into the corridor.
Alone, I glanced out the window and noticed a shiny black F150 pull up and stop. I saw Nick step out, and I raced outside to meet him at the entrance.
“Hi, what’s going on? I left you a message fifteen minutes ago.”
Nick put an arm around my shoulders. “Sorry, I was tied up. I would have called you, but I didn’t want to interrupt anything in case you were sneaking around.”
“Tied up doing what? Did you get this ride from the rental place?”
“No. The rental place didn’t have another car for us. This is one of Gary P’s fleet.” Nick steered me toward the cab and opened the passenger door. “Hop in.”
“So what’s going on? This thing is brand new, isn’t it? Did they let you take it for a test drive?”
“Not exactly.” Nick turned to me with a grin. “I bought it.”
“You what? Are you serious?”
“We needed wheels on the ground, and I couldn’t talk Gary P into letting me take it out alone for an overnight test drive. Seems car dealers are getting skittish these days. So I decided to buy it and have it shipped home.”
“I can’t believe you did this.”
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