Checked Out

by Sharon St. George

  “Sounds like Keely’s developing a backbone.”

  “That’s not all,” James said. “Keely announced to all of us that she’s going to fight for control of the O’Brien estate if Dad dies.”

  “Wow. What do you think about that?”

  “More power to her. I didn’t expect to inherit, and I sure as hell don’t plan to hang around Coyote Creek stuffing dead animals for the rest of my life.” He nodded at the pepperoni pizza on the table in front of us. “I can’t even order white pizza in this godforsaken place.”

  “Again with the white pizza, James?”

  I was sure his attitude had little to do with pizza and a lot to do with the collapse of his family. With his brother dead and his father most likely dying, all that remained would be two spoiled, dysfunctional young women.

  “Do you think Keely can get her act together? She’s going to have to stay sober if she’s serious about taking over the O’Brien dynasty.”

  “She and I had a long talk last night. Turns out she’s already enrolled herself in a rehab program and registered for business courses. Plus, she’d have an army of lawyers and financial consultants and all our father’s employees to keep things running smoothly. It would be the first time in her life that she had a reason to grow up. I think she might surprise us all.”

  “Still, she seems pretty immature. Last I heard she wasn’t too happy with you. She said you’d never offered to give her a part in one of your plays, even though you owed her.”

  James looked away for a moment, seeming to search for someone across the room. “I do owe her. And I’ve been waiting for her to claim her reward, but it’s not a part in a play. Do you remember her dancing when you were kids?”

  “She wasn’t too good at it,” I said. “She didn’t seem to feel the beat.”

  “That hasn’t changed. She has no real talent as an actress or a singer, either.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “What else do you have to offer her?”

  “My support if she takes on Echo in a fight for the family business.”

  “You’d give up your share just to help Keely? Why?”

  “She’s been keeping a confidence for me for a very long time. Even now, when it hardly matters anymore, she’s kept her promise not to tell the rest of our family.”

  That was the last thing I’d expected to hear. “Is it something you can tell me?”

  “I could, but I’d rather not. At least not just yet. Right now I’m more interested in keeping my focus on my father’s health, and if he dies, on how to help Keely keep the bulk of his estate away from Echo.”

  “But how? If Echo is carrying an O’Brien heir, she’s going to have a lot of clout when the estate is settled.” I was torn with indecision. Should I tell him the baby’s father wasn’t Seamus? Not yet. “Have you told Keely you suspect Echo’s pregnant?”

  “No. I’m waiting to see if Dad pulls through. If he survives a little longer, I’d like him to have the dignity of dealing with Echo himself.”

  That comment gave me the opening I’d been hoping for. “James, what do you mean about your father dealing with Echo?”

  “This is tough.” James rubbed the heel of his hand against his chest. “I promised Dad I’d keep his confidence, but I have to talk to someone about it.”

  “Only if you’re sure, James.” Please let him confide in me.

  “Dad unburdened himself the morning he asked me to drive him to the hospital. He was fatalistic about the prospect of dying. Said it was time to let go of his pride.” James cleared his throat and blinked away tears. “He told me Echo was pregnant, but he thought the odds were miniscule that he was the father, so he’d had some lab work done. Cody had helped him with the arrangements. It turned out he couldn’t be the father of Echo’s baby.”

  I didn’t let on that I’d already learned the truth from Laurie Popejoy. “Is that why he wanted to change his will?”

  “Yes, he was going to leave the bulk of his estate to Cody, but he was so weak and so ill that he’d barely begun the process before—”

  “Before Cody died. So where do things stand now?”

  “Echo doesn’t know what Dad told me about the baby’s paternity. She doesn’t even know he knows the truth. I have Dad’s power of attorney, but it dates back to before he married Echo, and she’s already challenging that.”

  “Couldn’t you block that by telling her you know about her baby?”

  “Probably, but she’s still Dad’s wife, and we’d have to put up a hell of a legal battle just to get her to submit to more blood tests.”

  “How long have they been married?”

  “Less than two years. Not nearly long enough for her to take him to the cleaners in a divorce. She’d only get half of whatever was acquired while they were married. She’s probably counting on the little heir giving her the leverage she’d need to fight Keely for the bulk of the estate.”

  James slumped back in his chair and suddenly looked so weary I couldn’t bring myself to put him through any more questions. We walked to our cars agreeing to stay in touch, particularly about his father’s condition.

  When I arrived back at the ranch at eleven thirty, I called Cleo. She said she’d be ready at half past midnight for our attempt to sneak into the Health Information office. After I changed my clothes, I unlocked the file cabinet next to my computer. I stared at the snub-nosed .38 in the drawer, debating whether to take it along. I could almost feel Nick looking over my shoulder.

  It won’t do you any good in that drawer.

  I picked it up.

  Chapter 25

  At one o’clock in the morning the TMC parking garage was deserted except for a few of the spaces reserved for doctors.

  “Let me get this straight,” Cleo said. “We go to Health Information first to look for Cody’s chart. If there’s no photo of his head wound in his chart, we go to the morgue and try to find a photo or a camera there. Then you want to search the archives for DeeDee’s chart.”

  “That’s right.”

  I locked my car and we walked toward the entrance. A few feet from the door, I hesitated. Cleo didn’t realize I’d stopped, and she plowed into my back. The gun I had tucked into my waistband jarred loose and fell at her feet. Its shiny barrel caught the light of the harvest moon.

  I heard Cleo gasp. “Aimee, is that yours?”

  I grabbed the revolver and stuffed it in my purse. “Yes, it’s mine, but we won’t need it.”

  “Then why did you bring it?”

  “Cleo, you don’t have to do this. You can give me your keys and wait in the car.”

  For a moment I thought she’d agree, but she hung her head and mumbled something I couldn’t quite make out.

  “What?” I said.

  “I said it isn’t worth it. We should go home.”

  “You want to know if Sig’s surgeon is mixed up in something devious, don’t you?”

  “I’ll tell him to cancel. I’ll beg. He can go to someone else. Someone in a different town, if necessary.”

  “That won’t protect Poole’s other patients, will it? She’ll still be here performing surgeries.”

  “You said Laurie Popejoy thinks Poole’s an excellent surgeon.”

  “And she’s probably right, but what if she’s wrong?”

  The droop of Cleo’s shoulders told me she’d given up arguing. “Okay, let’s do this. But for God’s sake, don’t shoot anyone.”

  The basement corridor was empty and dimly lit, apparently on an energy-saving setting timed for the wee hours of morning. We made our way to the Health Information office and Cleo quickly unlocked the door. We slipped inside and closed it behind us. I pulled out a small flashlight for myself and handed another to Cleo.

  “Do you need a password to get into the records database?”

  “I have it,” she said. “My security clearance allows me access to chart numbers, but I don’t pull the charts myself during regular business hours. A clerk does that and not
es in a log book the reason I need the chart. Right now, we’re flouting the hell out of HIPAA.”

  She was referring to the federal protections for personal health information passed back in 1996. We’d be in serious trouble if anyone knew what we were doing.

  I took a couple of long, slow breaths to ease the cramping in my neck. “Do you know where they’ve set aside the charts for the urology review?”

  “They have a special nook for that.” She led me to a small recessed area and pointed to a stack of charts. “There they are.” She began sorting through them.

  I looked over her shoulder. “Is Cody’s chart there?”

  “Got it.” She handed it to me.

  I opened the folder and looked through the documentation related to his admission the night before his scheduled surgery. It was limited, since he’d only been in house long enough to be stripped of his clothes and have his scrotum shaved. His blood pressure and pulse were within normal limits, but his dramatically elevated sedimentation rate suggested a dangerous level of inflammation in his injured testicle and adjacent tissue. Nothing in Dr. Poole’s dictated history and physical looked out of the ordinary.

  The Emergency Room doctor’s notes included time of death, and confirmed the patient was alive on arrival but died in the ER. No photo, but there was a sketch of the contusion on Cody’s forehead showing that it resembled the partial shape of a horseshoe.

  Cleo pointed at one of several photocopy machines in the room. “You want me to turn this on so you can make copies?”

  “No. I’ll use my phone. It’s quieter.” I took three shots of each of the few pages in the folder, then watched the door while Cleo put the chart back in its place.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Let’s try the morgue next.”

  We listened for any sound of footfalls before sneaking out of Health Information and down the corridor to the morgue. Cleo’s master key unlocked the door. In the beam of my flashlight I spotted half a dozen drawers in the opposite wall that looked large enough to hold corpses. An involuntary shudder rippled through me. When it passed, I led the way and Cleo closed the door behind us.

  “Do you know where they keep the forensic camera?” Cleo whispered.

  “No idea. I’ll try the desk. Why don’t you check the cupboards?”

  “I can’t. This crappy flashlight just died.”

  “Okay, then you guard the door and I’ll search.”

  The desktop was clear: no file folders, no in or out baskets where I might find hard copies of photos. I pulled the handle of the deepest desk drawer, but it didn’t open. I tried the top drawer with the same result. Just as I reached for another drawer, an urgent page blasted through the speakers in the ceiling of the dark room.

  Code Blue, CCU, Code Blue, CCU.

  Startled, I dropped my flashlight and it went out, pitching us into darkness.

  “Cardiac Care Unit. That’s not good,” Cleo whispered from her post at the door. “You’d better hurry. That patient could die any minute now. The body would be stored here until it’s transferred.”

  The room was cool, but sweat formed on my forehead as I crawled in the dark, groping for the flashlight. “How long before—”

  “Half an hour, maybe less,” Cleo said. “But the patient might pull through. Either way, make it quick. If we’re caught in here, even you couldn’t come up with a good enough excuse.”

  My fingers touched the flashlight, and when I shook it, it flickered. I turned it off and back on, and the beam held steady. But for how long?

  The desk seemed like an obvious place to keep the camera, but none of the drawers would open. I looked around for file cabinets, but there were none, so I crossed to the cupboards attached to one wall. After wasting precious minutes and finding nothing, I was almost ready to give up. Just then the speaker came to life again.

  Cancel Code Blue, CCU, Cancel Code Blue, CCU.

  I whispered to Cleo, “Does that mean they saved the patient?”

  “No way to tell. It could have gone either way. Let’s get out of here.”

  I threaded my way back toward the door, but the thought of leaving without finding the camera galled me. The only places I hadn’t searched were the drawers used for storing bodies. I aimed my flashlight beam toward the nearest one.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Cleo said. “The camera would be ruined by the cold.”

  “No,” I said. “They’re fine in temperatures as low as zero Celsius. That’s thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit and these refrigeration units are set at thirty-nine.”

  “How do you know this stuff?”

  “Research. I’m a librarian.”

  “Still, who would put a camera in one of those drawers?”

  “I wouldn’t, but there’s no place else to look.” I walked over to the first drawer and tugged on the handle with my eyes closed. It slid open and a rush of cold air pimpled my arms. I squinted with my eyes half open, expecting to see a draped body with a toe tag. Instead, I saw what looked like someone’s leftovers from lunch in a plastic container. I closed that drawer and tried the next one. Empty. The third and fourth drawers were empty, too.

  “Aimee,” Cleo hissed. “I hear someone coming.”

  In one of the last two drawers I saw what had to be a corpse. Just to be sure, I asked forgiveness from the deceased and gingerly picked up the shroud covering the face. It was a middle-aged woman. I repeated the process with the last drawer—another corpse. It was an elderly gentleman who seemed to be smiling in his sleep, as if he were communing with angels. I whispered, “God speed,” and replaced his shroud, fighting back tears of apology for invading the privacy of these complete strangers.

  I made my way to where Cleo stood near the door, listening.

  “I think they went on by,” she said. “We’d better get out now.”

  “Give me two more minutes.” The sweat running down my back was making my revolver slip around in the waistband of my slacks, so I took it out and handed it to Cleo.

  “Here, hold this for me, and keep your fingers away from the trigger.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she said, but she took the gun. “Aimee, this is crazy. You’ve already looked everywhere.”

  “Not in the desk. I can’t give up without trying one more thing. Two minutes, I promise.”

  I trained my flashlight beam on the shallow top drawer running across the front of the desk. It was the only drawer with a lock. If I got it open, the rest of the drawers would unlock with it. A plastic container on the desk held paper clips in a variety of sizes. I wasn’t particularly good at picking locks, but Harry had taught me how to do it when we were kids and wanted to snoop for Christmas presents our parents had hidden.

  After a few jiggles and twists with the unbent clip, the top drawer popped open. It was empty except for a few pens and a roll of antacid tablets. The two drawers on the right were filled with the usual office supplies: stapler, sticky notepads, some letterhead, and envelopes.

  I checked the deep bottom drawer next, and there it was. The camera.

  “Cleo, I’ve got it.” I turned it on and checked. There were a few practice shots of the morgue staff taking pictures of each other, and then I saw what I had hoped for. Three shots of Cody’s wound. But how to get prints? Take the camera? How soon would it be discovered missing? Probably right away, since I was the one who encouraged them to practice using the camera as often as possible.

  “Aimee,” Cleo hissed, “your two minutes are up. Let’s go.”

  “Not without the photos. This is what we came for.” I turned on the computer, thinking I could attach the camera and email the photos to myself. But the computer was password protected.

  “Pssst, look, Aimee.”

  I trained my flashlight on Cleo to see what she was trying to tell me, and saw her pointing my pistol toward me.

  “Hey, watch what you’re doing.”

  She looked down at the gun in her hand. “Oh, sorry.” She pointed with
her other hand. “Look at the printer. It should have a port for a memory card. See if you can wake it up and print the photos without the computer.”

  “Genius. I could kiss you.” I printed all the photos then set the zoom to magnify the clearest photo at double its size. “That should do it.”

  “Then let’s get out of here,” Cleo said. “I’m about to vomit.”

  Chapter 26

  With the photos stuffed in my purse, we left the morgue and hurried toward the archive room at the opposite end of the corridor to look for DeeDee Dakota’s chart. We neared the door and saw that it was propped open with a housekeeping cart. Someone working the night shift. Cleo grabbed my arm and gestured back toward the way we’d come. She was right. We had to leave.

  We made a clean getaway, but Cleo’s nerves were so rattled that she held my car’s little plastic trash bucket under her chin during the entire ten minute drive to her condo. She managed to keep her stomach contents down, and when I dropped her off around two thirty in the morning, she assured me we could still figure out a way to look at DeeDee’s chart. I wasn’t convinced but tried to hide my misgivings. Time was running out, and our chances of finding the answers we needed were slipping away.

  I cut my headlights at the main house. No point stirring up the llamas and turkeys, and even more important, no point in waking Nick. He’d want to know where I’d been, and I was in no mood to listen to him rant. His car was in the driveway, so it was obvious his date with Dr. Poole had ended.

  I knew I wouldn’t sleep until I scrutinized the photos of Cody’s wound, but I didn’t want to risk turning on lights at that hour. If Nick happened to be awake, he might notice and show up wanting to know what was going on. I took my flashlight into my bathroom, closed the door, and trained the beam on each photo in turn.

  The first one was out of focus, which I hadn’t counted on. What if they were all blurry? I held my breath while I looked at the next one. Clearer, but part of the wound was out of the frame. I pulled out the magnified version of the clearest photo. It was in focus, and appeared as a purple, slightly crescent-shaped contusion on Cody’s forehead. The skin was not broken, and there was no blood. The photographer had kept at it and finally gotten it right.