by Lynne Hinton
“She wanted to see him,” Daniel replied. “I asked if she could get in, but several of the officers said that only immediate family was being allowed into the area. I think she tried earlier.”
“My guess is that the wife wouldn’t be all that hospitable to her husband’s mistress.”
“From what the officers assigned to the family say, that’s an understatement for sure.”
Eve nodded.
A volunteer came into the waiting room, called out a name, and Eve and Daniel watched as four or five people got up from their seats and followed her.
“Was it foul play?” Eve asked.
Daniel shrugged. “Found at the bottom of a ravine, no signs of struggle, no gunshot wounds, no stabbing. Hard to say. But his car wasn’t there, and he certainly wasn’t dressed to be out on any hike.”
“You think he was dumped?”
“I’d need more information, but I’d say it’s likely that’s the case.”
“Is she a suspect?” Eve asked, referring to Megan.
Daniel understood the reference. “Aren’t all mistresses suspects?”
Eve thought about growing up in the home of a police officer, how she loved to hear the reports of homicides and stories of crime. Her mother and sister hated it when the Captain would start to talk about the events of his day, the details of a local murder, but Eve had always enjoyed hearing the inside information.
“Eight out of ten times, the victim knows the perp,” he used to say. “Be more worried about the folks you have a relationship with than you are about strangers.” And Eve used to wonder if that bit of advice included parents as well.
“What else do you know about the guy? Who did he hang out with?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
She nodded, looking up at the clock to check the time. She had been waiting for over four hours.
“You talk to your boss?” Daniel asked.
“I called the vice superior after I talked to Dorisanne. I can take as long as I need,” she said, then paused. “You know, maybe it’ll actually be good for me to get away for a little while.” She slid her hands down the front of her legs and stretched them out. She felt so much more comfortable dressed in her old clothes.
Daniel studied her and was about to ask another question when the volunteer walked back into the waiting room. They both turned to hear the name.
“Divine,” the older woman wearing a bright pink lab coat called out.
“It’s Diveen,” Eve answered sharply. She stood, blew out a breath, and made the sign of the cross in repentance, immediately regretting the tone of her voice.
SEVEN
“You look like death warmed over,” the voice bellowed. Evangeline was quickly roused from her sleep. “Why aren’t you wearing your nun’s gown? And how’s the dog?”
She shook her head and rubbed her eyes. The clock was mounted on the wall above a whiteboard that listed the names of a nurse and tech and a goal for the day: “no pain and begin physical therapy.” It was six o’clock, but Evangeline couldn’t tell whether it was morning or night. She glanced over at the patient.
She answered when she finally felt clear. “Trooper is at Daniel’s. And it’s called a habit, and I’m not wearing it because I’m not on duty right now, and I look like this because I’ve been sleeping in a chair while you’re in a comfortable bed.”
“What makes you think this bed is comfortable?” Jackson asked, trying to shift his weight and grimacing with the movement. “And I thought nuns were always on duty.”
She watched him, choosing not to respond to the comment about her clothes and her vocation. “You okay?” she asked.
“Do I look okay?” He tried pushing himself up in the bed.
Evangeline got up and moved over to the Captain. “Here, there’s a button for that.” She reached for the side railing and pressed a small image of a bed with arrows facing up. The top of the bed began to rise.
“Not too much, not too much!” he shouted.
Evangeline released the button and sighed. “Better?”
He nodded.
“What day is this?” he asked.
Evangeline went over to the window, opened the blinds, and could see the sun rising in the east. Morning, she thought. “It’s the third day,” she answered.
“The third day after the surgery or the third day being in the hospital?”
She turned to him. “Aren’t they the same?”
“No,” he griped. “If you count the day of surgery and it’s been three days since that day, then it’s the fourth day of being in the hospital. If you aren’t counting the surgery day as a hospital day, which if I recall the operation was in the afternoon, then it’s just the third day of being in the hospital, two days after the surgery.”
There was a pause.
Evangeline stood at the window a bit longer and then returned to her seat and sat down. “It’s Wednesday,” she said. “The surgery was Monday afternoon.” She hesitated briefly. “That makes this two days after the surgery, almost three full days in the hospital. You were in the intensive care unit until Tuesday night because you wouldn’t wake up and were moved to this floor when you did. This is the third day I’ve been here. The nurses let me take a shower yesterday, and I’ve eaten three daily specials in the cafeteria. I slept in the surgical waiting room Monday night and the intensive care unit waiting room most of Tuesday night. There are recliners in the intensive care unit waiting area but not in the surgical one. I had a pillow and a thin blanket that a Navajo woman brought me late on the first night but wanted it back yesterday. I stayed in the waiting rooms and moved in here when you were transferred.” She closed her eyes and shook her head, mad at herself for being so easily provoked. She took a breath to start again.
“It’s three days in the hospital, two days since your surgery.”
Jackson Divine stared at his daughter. He waited. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
She didn’t respond.
“Why are you being so snippy? I thought that was why you wanted to be a nun, to quit being so snippy.”
“I’m not being snippy,” she replied. “I’m just answering your question. And I didn’t become a nun to quit being snippy.”
“Why don’t you go back to Pecos?” he asked. “The surgery’s over. I don’t need you here all the time.”
“Well, thanks for the gratitude,” she said.
“You know what I mean,” he said, trying to make amends. “I’m fine. I’ll call you when I get discharged. You can come to the house and help me get settled.”
Evangeline studied the man. She knew this was only the beginning of an inevitable and interminable battle she was destined to have with the Captain. In the three days she had been with him, she had not told him about the leave of absence she’d been given by the monastery. She had not told him about the long conversation she’d had with the nurses and doctors at the hospital. She had not explained that she was there for more than just the hospital stay. They had not discussed the fact that she was going to be his primary caregiver for the next two months. It wasn’t yet time.
“You’ve missed quite a lot of action while you’ve been dosed up on the morphine.”
He waited.
“I met Megan Flint,” she said.
He seemed surprised at the mention of the young woman’s name but didn’t say a word.
“She came with Daniel to Pecos.”
He made no response.
“And they found her boyfriend.”
He seemed to perk up at that announcement.
“He’s dead,” she added.
The Captain’s head jerked up, and he opened his mouth as if to make a remark, but before either of them could speak, the door swung open and a young nurse walked in.
EIGHT
“Good morning, Mr. Divine, and you are up early today,” the nurse called out cheerfully. Her singsong voice reminded Eve of a kindergarten teacher.
“Diveen,” both Ja
ckson and Evangeline blurted out, correcting her.
“Right, I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat. “Mr. Divine, it’s good to see you this morning, and I’m glad you still have family here with you,” she announced.
Evangeline smiled but didn’t say anything.
Jackson rolled his eyes. He was not happy for the intrusion. His mood shifted. He made a kind of growl.
“So, did we sleep okay?” the nurse asked.
Evangeline braced for the reply. She knew how the Captain hated being spoken to like a child.
“I slept like a man who just had his leg cut off and is confined to a bed that’s wrapped in plastic. I can’t attest for the one down there trying to stretch out in a hardback chair after a couple of nights sleeping in a waiting room or for you.” He looked up at his attendant. “I can only speak for myself in reply to your question that apparently was addressed to all of us gathered in this room. I don’t know how we slept, only how I slept. And that was not all that fabulous.”
The nurse appeared stunned by her patient’s comment and turned to Evangeline.
She just shook her head. “He’s not a morning person,” she explained, settling back in her chair. “And to answer your question, he slept on and off through the night.”
The young woman tried to smile. “Well, okay,” she said, her voice a bit softer. “My name is Tina and I’ll be your nurse today,” she continued as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves. “Raymond is your nurse tech, and he’ll be in shortly to help you with your morning meds and a bath, maybe a shave, if you’d like.”
She squeezed the bottoms of the bags of fluid hanging on the IV pole beside the bed, punched a few numbers into the machine keypad, attended to the IV site on the patient’s left arm, and then walked down to the end of the bed. She pulled back the sheet and checked the bandage around where Mr. Divine’s leg had been amputated. She poked and prodded a bit.
Evangeline noticed how her father turned away when she did.
“Well, there’s no drainage from your site,” the nurse explained. She felt for a pulse in the top of his thigh. “That’s a good thing,” she noted. “That means the wound is healing like we want.” She felt for a pulse in his other leg, down near the ankle. “We have physical therapy coming in this afternoon,” she said, pulling the sheet over his leg. “They’re going to try and help you get some strength back in your upper body, have you do some exercises while you’re in the bed. And we’re going to start working on getting you ready for a prosthetic.” She smiled. “The wound is healing nicely. The swelling in your residual limb is decreasing. Your vitals are good and your blood sugar has been only slightly higher for the last twenty-four hours. So you are well on your way,” she added.
She looked down at her patient. “Is there anything you need this morning? How’s the pain? Do you need more morphine?”
“No,” he answered. “The pain is manageable. I’d just like some coffee,” he said. “And the morning paper.”
Tina was still smiling. She moved over to the whiteboard and erased the name Phyllis before writing in her own. She seemed to be studying the day’s goal, trying to decide whether or not to change it, and then put down the marker.
“Dietary will be delivering the breakfast trays shortly,” she responded. “They usually come around seven o’clock on this floor. Hopefully you asked for coffee when you filled out your menu request yesterday.” She smoothed down the front of her uniform.
“And as for the news,” she said, turning to face her patient, “I can go ahead and tell you this morning’s headlines.” She raised her eyebrows as if she were delivering a great announcement. “It turns out that the Hollywood director was murdered,” she said, recapping the report that had been blaring across television screens all morning. “The one who received an Academy Award and was cheating on his wife.”
She walked over to the trash can by the sink. “Everybody thinks it was Megan Flint who killed him.”
Both Captain Divine and Evangeline snapped to full attention.
The nurse yanked off her gloves, dropped them in the trash, and started to head out the door. Just before leaving, she turned back, apparently enjoying her position as the center of his attention. “She’s here in Santa Fe too.”
There was a nod, accenting her announcement like an exclamation point, and before Captain Divine or his daughter could utter a reply or ask a question, Nurse Tina was gone.
NINE
The Captain had made the therapist stay an extra hour, asking for more exercises, pushing himself as hard as he could until he had finally driven himself to exhaustion. When the therapist left, appearing almost as tired as her patient, he dropped off to sleep. Evangeline quietly slipped from the room and took a much-needed ride on her Harley. After her breather from the hospital, she decided she would go down to the chapel and say her morning prayers.
Glancing at her watch as she got off the bike after her return, though, she realized it was well past noon. Perhaps she should say Sext or None instead. She pushed down the bike stand and kicked the dirt from her boots. She smoothed down her shirt and stuck her hands in the pockets of her jeans, glad to be out of the long dress she had become accustomed to wearing. She was grateful that Daniel had taken her back to Pecos, giving her the opportunity to retrieve the Harley. She knew the bike was the only thing that would keep her sane with her new duty as caregiver. She could pray and read sacred texts and chant like the monks, but riding the Harley remained her favorite religious experience.
Evangeline felt better as she walked back into the hospital. Sliding her fingers through her mussed hair, she hoped Daniel wasn’t around to question her about the helmet. She reached for her rosary in the front pocket of her jacket and held it in her hand. She was thinking about the Captain and the talk she wouldn’t be able to postpone much longer.
She was rehearsing it in her mind—how she’d tell him that she was going home with him. He would claim he didn’t need help, but after talking to the doctor and being with her dad since the operation, she knew differently. Just like Dorisanne had told her on the phone, it was her turn to take care of their parent. She had not been there for her mother; she was going to have to make up for that by being there for him. Besides, the arrangements had already been made. The day after the surgery she had gone back to Pecos, gotten her things, and moved back into her childhood home in Madrid. The Captain was just going to have to deal with the situation.
She was almost at the chapel when she noticed a group of people gathered near a side entrance, four or five adults huddled close together, with a security guard and a couple of other hospital employees standing nearby. A police officer was positioned in front of the group of people who were not wearing uniforms.
Evangeline stopped. The voices were so loud she couldn’t help but overhear the conversation.
“We do not have all the answers at this time.” Apparently the police officer had just arrived at the scene and was only beginning to try to explain the situation. “You’re going to have to wait until there is a final report from the autopsy. All we know is that it is now officially being investigated as a homicide.”
“Now a homicide?” a woman shouted. “We knew when they found his body it was a homicide. Why did it take you so long to figure that out?” She was middle-aged, late forties maybe, auburn hair twisted into a tight knot, petite. Even watching from a distance, it was clear to Evangeline that this was a woman used to having her way.
The officer sighed. “I’m just trying to give you the facts as we know them. When we brought the body here three days ago, we weren’t even sure of an exact time of death, much less the cause.”
“I don’t need an exact time of death, and I don’t need to know details of what killed him. I just need to know when we can probate the will and move forward with this …” She paused. “This mess.” She was wearing sunglasses, a white fur coat, white leggings, and brown boots. A gold purse dangled from her arm.
“Well, I don’t have an
answer to that. Again, all I can give you is the fact that it is now officially a murder investigation,” he explained.
It was easy for Evangeline to see that the police officer was frustrated. He was young, probably a rookie, she thought, sent by his more experienced partner to deal with the dead man’s family. She glanced out the large plate-glass windows and door that opened into a side parking lot and noticed two black-and-white city-police vehicles as well as a few television news vans. It appeared that most of the media had lost interest and gone back to their stations.
“We have not stayed around this cowboy town for three days just to hear something we already knew.” The dark-haired young man who was speaking stepped closer to the officer. “We expect you to have more answers for us about my father. Where’s your supervisor?” He was small, maybe mid-twenties, and dressed in jeans and a leather jacket.
Evangeline moved closer and leaned in. She wanted to hear the officer’s response so that she could report the conversation accurately. She knew the Captain would love hearing about this hospital-lobby event.
The officer placed his hands on the items bulging from his belt, a holster and a radio clip. “He’s back at the station.” He raised his chin but kept his emotions under control. “Did you get the autopsy report?” he asked.
“Of course we got the autopsy report,” the young man answered. He stepped back and reached over to take the hand of the petite woman standing at his side. He took a breath and the woman dropped his hand.
“How soon will his body be released?” This came from an older man standing on the other side of the woman. He also stepped forward, and Evangeline could see that he was wearing a black suit, a black overcoat, and a striped tie. He was tall and was holding a briefcase in one hand. He looked like a lawyer.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been informed of when that will happen,” he said. The police officer glanced over in Evangeline’s direction. Realizing she had been caught eavesdropping, she didn’t move.
