“I wish my news was as good as yours, but unfortunately it isn’t,” Dex said. “There is a situation developing in River City that makes me very concerned about you spending time there. Let’s move over to the sofa, and I will try to explain what has happened.”
Dex’s tone increased the alarm Marie had been experiencing since their phone conversation the previous night. They moved to the sofa, and Dex closed his eyes and held her hand. Her first thought was that he was getting ready to break up with her, but then he took a deep breath and began his story.
“Several weeks ago someone slashed the tires on my car and spray painted a message on it indicating that he planned to also slash me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this when it happened?”
“I didn’t want to worry you, but hold on, there’s more. Someone also recently used an ice pick to stick a dead opossum to a tree in our front yard. It also had a note that indicated that he planned to stick me with an ice pick. My main concern so far was that he might transfer his aggression to Gigi, but if you are there, you may be in danger.”
“Didn’t you call the police?”
“Yes, but they don’t have anything to work with. I have no idea why someone has a grudge against me, but I can take care of myself. My concern is that if he finds out we are involved, he could try to get to me by harming you. The risk will increase significantly when you start spending time in River City.”
The news that someone was threatening Dex made cold chills run up Marie’s back. She sat motionless and quiet for a few minutes while she digested the situation. Dex put his arm around her and asked what she thought, but it was several minutes before she spoke.
“We will have to be careful. However, if we let this person scare us into changing our lives, then he’s already won, even if he never does anything else. I’m not going to let this creep keep me from opening an office in River City. The things he has done so far are pretty cowardly, so he’s probably just trying to scare you. I bet the reason he slips around after dark and writes threatening notes is because he doesn’t have the courage to confront you.”
“You’re probably right, but I had to tell you about it and let you make up your own mind. Let’s not talk about it anymore tonight.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes and then Dex lifted her chin, lightly brushed his lips against hers, and pulled her closer. They stretched out on the sofa face to face and temporarily forgot about the threats in River City.
Marie’s hair smelled like lemon shampoo, and the fragrance of her skin reminded him of the flowers in Gigi’s garden. The fragrance of her hair and skin was a pleasant but unnecessary stimulant. Just holding her was always the only stimulation he needed.
He brushed the raven hair back from her face and her soft moan when he kissed her neck hinted at years of pent-up passion. Her breath became ragged, and she murmured his name. He felt her body suddenly become rigid, and she pushed him away and sat up on the sofa with her head in her hands. He thought for a moment she might be crying, but she finally turned toward him with a slight smile and said, “Wow, where did that come from?” Dex didn’t dare reply. He was still trying to regain his own equilibrium.
Marie wrapped her arms around herself, as if she was trying to contain whatever it was she was feeling. When she regained her composure, she reached for his hand.
“Dex, we’ve had this conversation, so you know how I feel. I was probably more caught up in the moment than you were, and I’m sorry I let it get out of hand and then pushed you away. I know it’s not fair to you. I don’t know…” She seemed to be embarrassed as she momentarily hesitated before starting again. “I don’t know and don’t want to know what experiences you’ve had, but if that’s any indication of what it might be like between us, I’m not sure my heart can withstand it. Can we stay here on the sofa just holding each other for a while and not doing anything else?”
When he nodded, she stood, turned off the lamp, and again stretched out on the sofa facing him. He draped his arm around her shoulder but avoided moving his hands. They never said another word after she turned off the lamp. Her face was partially illuminated by the nightlight in the hall, and long after she fell asleep, Dex lay awake looking at the peaceful expression on the face that he adored.
They awoke the next morning in the same position. Marie made coffee and fixed breakfast while Dex shaved and showered. The conversation over breakfast was again about the precautions she should take when she came to River City. Neither of them mentioned the abruptly interrupted passion of the night before.
Chapter 16
On Sunday afternoon, Dex took the longer, scenic route back to River City. He needed the extra time to think about his weekend with Marie. He sensed that his life was suddenly speeding down a highway where U-turns were not allowed. Intimacy and love had always been the subject of locker-room humor, and that wasn’t what this was about. He hadn’t yet figured out the rules, and he had no idea how he was supposed to manage a relationship that was changing his life.
In his experience, intimacy was always related to something like the infamous “Louise Parties” at Georgia. When he was a freshman, an upper classman warned him not to get caught in the team’s favorite hoax. But all the freshman players were not lucky enough to receive the same warning.
The first and last one he ever participated in involved Bob Seagrove, a three-hundred-pound offensive lineman from Pennsylvania. He was a fun-loving, eighteen-year-old kid whose maturity had not caught up with his girth. He also wasn’t a very good football player. The coaches had taken a chance on him because of his size and speed. With maturity, he might have developed into a better player, but they never had a chance to find out.
Seagrove was sitting in the dorm lobby with Dex and two of their upper-class teammates, Burl Matthews and Lenny Cochran, when Burl said, “I wonder if Louise is home tonight?” This was the tip-off line that let the others know the hoax was on.
Lenny said, “I’ll go call her and see if her husband is out of town.” Rather than make a phone call, he circled through the dorm and told everyone that Bob was going to meet Louise in about thirty minutes. The dorm emptied with everyone going out the back door and scrambling into cars.
While Lenny was alerting the dorm, Burl was busy getting Bob excited about meeting Louise.
“Bob, you won’t believe this girl. She’s a gorgeous twenty-two-year-old country gal with a body like a dream. She’s married to a long-haul truck driver that she can’t stand anymore, and she is hot as a firecracker.”
Lenny soon returned with the news from his phantom phone call. “She said her husband was on a long-haul trip, and she doesn’t expect him back until tomorrow. She needs about thirty minutes to get ready, but she wants to see us tonight. She’ll light a candle in the window if her husband’s not at home. I told her about Bob, and she said, ‘Bring him on, I love big boys.’”
Dex said he had to study, but after leaving the lobby, he joined the rest of the guys that Lenny rounded up to witness the event.
The house where Louise supposedly lived was actually an abandoned farmhouse ten miles out of town. A dirt road from the highway led several hundred yards across an untilled field and then passed through a stand of pine trees before ending at the house. The closest neighbor was a mile away.
Burl, a senior, had participated in numerous hoaxes at the same abandoned farm house and knew the lay of the land. The rural highway was unlit, but he easily found the dirt driveway and turned off the headlights. The light of the moon was all he needed to drive slowly up toward the house. When the car was about one hundred yards from the house, he said, “We better walk the rest of the way. Look for the candle in the window, Bob.”
Burl, Lenny, and Bob all quietly slipped out of the car and started creeping up the driveway. As they went over a slight rise, they could see a vague outline of the house, and the
candle burning in the window signaled that Louise’s husband was not home.
Burl whispered, “There it is, and it looks like the coast is clear. Come on, Bob.”
“I’m ready, let’s go.”
Bob didn’t need any encouragement; Burl had already sucked him into the hoax. The house was a typical Depression-era farmhouse with a tin roof and covered front porch. In daylight it would have been obvious that the house was abandoned, but at night all they could see was the outline of the house and the candle flickering in the window. Bob was anxious and walking too fast.
Burl said, “Slow down, Bob; she’s not going anywhere.”
When they got to within about fifteen yards of the front porch, Bob was surprised by a loud voice from within the house.
“Damn it, Louise, I knewd you been messin’ roun. I jest seen ’em out thar.”
Suddenly, the husband, who was actually junior linebacker Jim Bradshaw, burst through the door. The accent and dialect were fairly easy to mimic for this kid from the swamps around Waycross, Georgia.
“I’s has y’all now. Ain’t never messin roun Louise agin.”
Within a few yards, Bob was at full speed, sprinting faster than he had ever moved on a football field. He hadn’t seen the shotgun, so his first notice of a firearm was when Jim pointed it skyward and pulled the trigger. Thirty boys from the dorm, including Dex, were hiding in the bushes along the side of the driveway. They were armed with handfuls of gravel that they released at the sprinting three-hundred-pound tackle just as the shotgun was fired. Somehow Bob found another gear and wasn’t seen again until he straggled into the dorm during breakfast the next morning. His clothes were torn, and his face and arms were scratched from the briars he plowed through during his ten-mile trek through the Georgia woods.
The team was always unmerciful with their Louise victims. They got a bigger kick out of the victim’s embarrassment than they did pulling off the actual prank. They were unrelenting with their off-color comments, and soon it seemed everyone on campus was laughing about Bob’s big romantic adventure. That weekend he slipped out of the dorm before daylight and caught a Greyhound bus back to Pennsylvania.
Dex participated in the hoax but felt regretful almost immediately afterward. He did not join in any of the heckling. He felt terrible about his role in a prank that may have terminated a teammate’s athletic scholarship and college career. Dex called Bob in Pennsylvania and tried to persuade him to return, but Bob said he was making plans to go to a small in-state school. The coaches never knew why Bob suddenly left school, and since his football skills were problematic at best, they did not pursue him.
Dex now knew, because of the way he felt about Marie, that he had been stupid to confuse love and lust.
Chapter 17
A week after her first meeting with the trust department, Marie delivered her proposal to Harvey Blake. They met in his office, and while he read through her plan, she looked over the three-page contract the bank legal department had prepared for her execution.
Blake finally looked up and said, “Marie, thank you for providing so much detail. This is exactly what we wanted. Is the contract satisfactory?”
“I don’t have a problem with the contract, and I’m ready to sign it.” She placed it on top of her briefcase and signed on the designated line.
After she handed the contract back to him, he said, “Both boards have approved the purchase contract for the River City bank, and a favorable vote by the stockholders is imminent.”
“What does that mean time-wise for us in setting up the office there?”
“It would be very helpful if you could be ready to start assessing the situation there this week. We are going to consolidate the activities of the two trust departments, but before we do that, we need for you to do some preliminary work for us.”
“I can go up there and get started tomorrow, but it will take me a while to hire and train staff for the office.”
Blake nodded and said, “I think the initial work is only going to require one person, and it’s probably something you will want to handle yourself. I’m suspicious about the number of people they have sent to nursing homes and also about the expense they are incurring for those people. I would like for you to start by focusing on that.”
“Do you have a list of the patients and the nursing homes where they have been sent?”
“No, you’ll have to get that from the bank. But I want you to meet with and assess the health status of each of them as soon as possible. We don’t know if they even need to be in nursing homes.”
“My head nurse here can handle the Atlanta office for a few days, so I can be in River City tomorrow morning.”
“Very good, I’ll notify the bank that you will see them tomorrow morning.”
Marie thought a lot about the personal implications of being in the same city with Dex. She knew he would jump at the opportunity to share an apartment, but she wasn’t ready to start playing house with him. She decided to keep her apartment in Atlanta and look for a furnished efficiency apartment in River City. She didn’t intend to use it for much more than a place to sleep and change clothes.
Blake notified the trust officer at the bank how RN4U was being utilized and told him to expect Marie the following morning. When she met the trust officer, John Norton, he was far from cordial. Marie wasn’t sure if her cool reception was just a reflection of his personality, if he was upset about the acquisition, or if he resented what she was going to be doing there.
“Mr. Norton, I don’t know exactly what Harvey Blake told you about what my company is contracted to do here, but I need to see a list of the trust department’s clients who are currently confined to nursing homes. I will also need a list of the bank’s approved nursing homes.”
With a demeanor that clearly demonstrated his contempt, he said, “You’ll have to come back tomorrow. We’re busy today and don’t have the time to gather that information.”
Marie didn’t know what his problem was, but she wasn’t easily intimidated. “Harvey Blake is expecting a preliminary report from me this week, so just give me a few of the names and the names of the nursing homes where they are living. I’ve already told them I would get started today.”
Norton sat across the desk and glared at her for a few moments and then stood up and stomped out of the room without saying a word. She didn’t understand what was happening, but she didn’t have to be very perceptive to know that something beyond the man’s personality was causing his hostility. She also didn’t know whether he was coming back or if his abrupt departure was supposed to signal that the meeting was over. Marie chose to wait, and he walked back in ten minutes later. He threw a manila folder on the desk in front of her and said, “Maybe that’ll keep you busy.”
Marie thought this antagonistic meeting had gone on long enough, so without opening the folder, she mimicked his rude departure by picking it up and walking out of the office without saying a word. She sat in her car and rehashed the conversation for some clue as to his hostility, but she couldn’t come up with anything in the conversation that would have prompted his deplorable attitude.
The file folder contained the names of five individuals who were all at Meadowview Nursing Home. When she arrived at Meadowview, her first thought was, Where in the world do they come up with these names? The nursing home was located in a seedy section of town, and there definitely wasn’t a meadow in view. It appeared to have been converted from an old apartment house, a very old one.
The sign at the entrance listed Brian McPherson as the manager. Marie stopped at the receptionist’s desk in the dimly lit lobby and asked to see McPherson. After calling ahead, the receptionist directed her to McPherson’s office. He was sitting behind his desk, not smiling, and he didn’t get up to greet her. McPherson merely motioned Marie to a chair across from his desk. Since it was obvious that he was exp
ecting her, she could tell Norton had called him.
Marie handed McPherson a business card and said, “Mr. McPherson, I’m Marie Murphy from RN4U, Inc. in Atlanta. My company has been engaged by the parent company of Heritage Bank and Trust to assess the care of the bank’s clients who have been referred to nursing homes.” When he didn’t respond, she continued. “I have been instructed to begin by meeting with the patients here who were referred by the bank, and I will also need to review a copy of your contract with the bank.”
“We don’t have a contract with the bank.”
“Well, on what basis are you paid for your services?”
“Look, lady, I don’t know what you mean. We just send monthly bills to the bank, and they send us a check.”
McPherson was proving to be as cantankerous as Norton, so she said, “I apologize for any disruption, but if you will just clear it with the nurses for me to have access to the patients’ charts, I won’t take up any more of your time.”
McPherson glared at her throughout the brief meeting, and again she had the impression that something strange was going on. These two men obviously didn’t like what she was doing, and she didn’t know why. He finally picked up the phone and told the duty nurse to let her have what she wanted and accompany her to the patients’ rooms.
Marie picked up the charts of the five patients and was led to the room of the first one, Sara Barton. The door was partially open and she saw the elderly woman sitting in a wheelchair facing the window.
“Mrs. Barton, could I talk to you for a minute?” When Marie got no response, she thought the woman was sleeping, so she walked around to where she could see her face. Her eyes were open, but her head was leaning over on her shoulder and there was drool coming from her mouth. Marie instantly recognized the symptoms. She was so heavily sedated there was no way the woman could communicate with her.
Marie moved to the second and then the third patients’ rooms and found each of them in essentially the same condition. All of their charts indicated some variation of mild dementia. She knew there was no reason for patients with only mild dementia to be so heavily sedated.
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