by Lynn Bulock
“About half an hour ago Mrs. Peete—Dennis’s mother, I mean—came to the nurse’s station to tell us that it seemed like he was coming around.”
That made me glance at my watch. An hour had passed since I’d left the unit. With all the walking and venting with Linnette, I’d totally blown off the two o’clock visit. At least we were here now, and thanks to my stop, my hair was combed and I had lipstick on. If Dennis was going to see me for the first time in five months, I didn’t want to look like a total wreck.
Kara was still talking over her shoulder. “I didn’t think that was going to happen, but I went to see anyway. And he was moving and his eyes were fluttering open and closed. I told her she might be right and put one of the aides in the room to watch with her while I called the doctor.”
“And then you called me.”
We were at Dennis’s room now, and she stood aside to let me go in first. There was no aide in there with him, and no doctor. Not even Edna, although her purse was still there, and paper tea cups on the bedside table with a teabag protruding from the rims.
Dennis was still there and sitting up in bed. But instead of the amazing changes we’d been promised, something else had happened. Even to me, with absolutely no medical training, it was pretty obvious that Dennis was dead.
3
The nurse’s quick actions—also the blurted-out exclamation—confirmed what I’d thought to begin with, that Dennis was gone. She whisked us out of the room, and Linnette and I found ourselves sitting in the family lounge staring numbly at each other. I recognized from watching medical shows on TV that they “called a code” in Dennis’s room, but it was over almost as soon as it began. First there were medical personnel racing down the hallway past us, and all too soon they were gathering in a knot outside the door to talk in hushed tones.
In a few minutes Kara came in to speak to us. “Mrs. Peete? I hate to have to tell you this, but…”
I wasn’t even going to bother with reminding her that it was Ms. Harris. We’d been through this a dozen or more times and it just wasn’t worth it right at the moment. “I think you already have,” I told her. “Dennis was dead when we went in there, wasn’t he?”
She nodded. “It looks like it. We’ll have to call the police now. It’s policy when there’s an unexpected death,” she said, pressing her thin lips together into a bloodless line. I felt like she was blaming us for this whole mess.
Linnette looked a little pained. “Do I need to stay for anything?”
“Just for a while. Once the county sends whoever they’re going to send and they ask their questions, I’m sure you can go.”
Kara looked like she was ready to leave, but I had a couple questions before she did. “Excuse me, but when I left here earlier, Dennis’s mother was here. You wouldn’t happen to know where she’s gotten to, would you?”
There had to be a simple reason for her vanishing, like a trip to the bathroom or something, but even Edna didn’t usually stay in there this long. And given the circumstances, I would have thought she’d be front and center.
Kara looked puzzled. “Let me go ask the nursing supervisor. I certainly don’t remember exactly when I last saw Mrs. Peete. That is, the other Mrs. Peete…”
I figured it would be the last we saw of Kara for a while. By the time she explained the situation to the nursing supervisor, the woman would be so confused she wouldn’t know who she’d seen all day. Especially when we added in the whole cast of characters that seemed to be missing, like Heather and Becca.
And while I still hoped there had to be a simple reason that Edna wasn’t at the bedside when we got back, I didn’t hold out great hopes that she’d turn up soon. None of the rest of my life was simple; why should this be?
In an amazingly brief amount of time the medical personnel around Dennis’s doorway gave way to people who obviously belonged to security, waiting for the police department. Now the fun was really going to begin. I tried to think about how we were going to explain everything to a police officer.
And where were Heather and Becca? What was going on here? Nothing made sense at all anymore. Somewhere in some of the recesses of my brain it was beginning to register that Dennis really was gone, but I was too tired and confused to cry yet. That would have to wait a while.
Heather wandered into the lounge looking dazed. “What’s going on? While I was in Jack’s room I started feeling sick. I still do that sometimes even when I’m not upset about anything.”
“So you’ve been in the ladies’ room? How long have you been in there, Heather?” Linnette’s voice was gentle. It was so tempting to let her handle all of the difficult stuff that was going to come next.
“A long time. Why is Jack’s door closed? And where are Becca and Edna?”
“We were hoping you were with them somewhere.” I couldn’t let Linnette do all the dirty work. “And as to why Dennis’s door is shut, if you don’t know already you better come sit down by us.”
If she’d seen anything of what had transpired, Heather was a good actress. Her shock at what we had to tell her seemed very real. “But when I went to the bathroom, they had him propped up. He almost had his eyes open. His lips were moving.”
Linnette looked at her watch. “It’s about two-thirty now. Any idea how long ago this was?”
Heather shrugged. “Half an hour, maybe? I was pretty sick. There’s a couch in the ladies’ lounge, and I kinda lay down on it for a while, just to make sure I was really okay.”
“Mrs. Peete?” A dark-haired man carrying what looked like a steno notebook stood by the doorway scanning the room. I stood up and he came over.
“Detective Ray Fernandez from Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.”
“Gracie Lee Harris.” His handshake was firm. “Until yesterday, I thought I was Dennis’s wife. Now apparently that’s come into question. At least there’s a question as to whether I was the only woman who thought she had claim on him, anyway.”
“Yeah, well.” He looked around. “Can we sit back down and let me ask you three some questions? I’ll let you go first, Mrs. Peete.”
“How about calling me Ms. Harris. Or Gracie Lee. I never did take Dennis’s name formally, Detective. I have a son from my previous marriage and have kept that name far too long to change.”
“Fine. So what can you tell me about what’s going on here?” The detective tilted his head, alert and listening. Not a short black hair fell out of place. He looked like a Hollywood movie cop in plain clothes. The nubby charcoal suit jacket was a nice cut on his broad shoulders, and his white shirt almost sparkled underneath it. The jeans were either very old friends or stylishly worn. Without knowing him it was hard to tell.
“Very little. It appears that my husband is dead. I wasn’t here when it happened, and it seemed to be a surprise to the nursing staff, as far as I can tell.”
“You weren’t here? Where were you?” His forehead creased. He also seemed to be looking at Linnette, wondering who she was.
“I was outside on the patio where I happened to run into my friend Linnette Parks.” That answered both his questions at once and I hoped I’d get some brownie points for it.
“How did you know to come back up here, then?”
“One of the nurses called my cell phone and said Dennis seemed to be coming around. Either she was mistaken or waking up was more of a shock to his system than anybody expected,” I told him.
Even as I said that out loud, a cold trickle of suspicion made me shiver. Why was I assuming that Dennis’s death had been from natural causes? Apparently the staff hadn’t thought so, because here was the detective. Nursing homes didn’t normally call in the police when a critically ill patient dies, even unexpectedly. Did they?
“Have you been here alone most of the time in the waiting room?”
“No, and I’m wondering where the others got to,” I told him. “Earlier this morning there were four of us. Dennis’s mother, Edna Peete, was here and his daughter, Becca, from his f
irst marriage, besides me and Heather.”
“Your husband’s fiancée.” His voice was flat. He and Heather still hadn’t said much to each other, besides introductions. Right now she was across the room, stretched out again, looking pale. I doubted she could hear our conversation from where she was, which might have been a good thing.
“Right.” It still felt pretty strange to agree to that out loud.
“So, the other two. Where are they now?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea. When they paged me I came directly to Dennis’s room, and there was no one else in it. Although I’m pretty sure that his mother is close by somewhere, because her purse was beside the bed.”
“I’ll go check on that.” Detective Fernandez rose from his seat and closed his notebook. As almost an afterthought he looked around the room at the three of us again. “I’d appreciate you staying here until I got back.”
It didn’t take him long, and when he came back he looked puzzled. “You said Mrs. Peete’s purse was by the bed. Could you come and show me where?”
I followed him into the unit, feeling uneasy now about going back to where Dennis’s body still lay. I shouldn’t have worried. Someone had taken pains to compose him, lowering the head of the bed and cleaning up whatever evidence of medical intervention had taken place. But there was no handbag by the bed. “Maybe it got kicked underneath while they were in here trying to revive him.”
“I’ll check to make sure it didn’t get moved then.” The detective looked like he didn’t really believe it had been there to begin with. I was sure that Edna’s large pastel bag had been next to the bed. Bending down I checked underneath the bed without going any closer to it. Nothing except a few bits of clear wrappers from something. Definitely nothing as large as a purse of any kind.
That was odd. I knew that Edna’s bag had been here. Hopefully a member of the nursing staff picked it up to keep it safe. If not, what were the possibilities? Either somebody lifted it during the code or, almost as unrealistically, Edna somehow snuck back in here sometime in the past half hour and grabbed her purse. Neither made much sense.
Those were our choices, though, as I found out soon enough when the detective came back, a frowning Kara in tow. “There is no purse at the nurses’ station. I know the one you’re talking about, but I have no idea where it went.”
“So you’re telling me that some time in the past twenty minutes it just vanished?” I know I sounded sharp, but that was impossible.
Kara shrugged. “It sounds pretty lame once you say it that way. But I’ll agree with you that it was here earlier. Probably. Mrs. Peete was in here, and you just don’t see ladies of a certain age without their handbags.” She was right on that score. Edna would have to be a patient in the care center herself before she’d be without that purse.
Ray Fernandez was frowning now along with Kara. “That doesn’t leave us many options. Either somebody other than Mrs. Peete came in here and took that purse, or she was still here and took it herself. Are you sure you saw it?”
“Yes, I am. There were several things out of place, and that was one of them. The other was a disposable cup that looked a lot like the one I left in the waiting room. And it’s still here.” I pointed to the nightstand where the doubled paper cup still stood, the end of the teabag snagged between the two cups. It was the way most coffee shops made a cup of hot tea these days with their fancy designer teabags. The cardboard jacket around it was gone, but it was otherwise intact.
“Was he drinking liquids like that?” The detective sounded decidedly suspicious.
Kara shook her head. “Not yet. If he was really coming to the way we thought, that would have been the next step. But it would have been water first, and monitored by the nursing staff. Somebody besides staff had to help him to that.”
Great. If I was right, it was my tea, in my cup, with my prints all over it. And somebody had probably fed it to Dennis, illegally, sometime in the half hour before he died. I was thankful Linnette and I had been in a very public place in front of lots of witnesses. At least I wasn’t going to be the one blamed for breaking all the center rules.
The detective was using his cell phone. “I don’t want anything else touched here, including Mr. Peete,” he said to Kara, then whoever was on the other end of the phone answered. “Yeah, this is Ray. I need two techs and the van at Conejo Care Center. Second-floor critical care wing.”
He ended his call and looked at the two of us. “This is officially a crime scene until we know differently. For the sake of the other patients in the unit we’ll forego the yellow tape, but otherwise we’ll be playing by my rules from now on.”
A crime scene? I figured Dennis’s death might be suspicious, but not a crime. A horrible, unexpected accident, or maybe even a bit of negligence somehow. But the look on the detective’s face told me that he considered it a lot more serious than a mistake on the part of the center.
He was looking at Kara now. “Is there a private room nearby we can use for Ms. Harris? And I suppose we’ll need to put your friends in there, as well,” he said, turning his attention toward me.
My friends. Friend was a funny thing to call Heather, but there wasn’t much of an official title for whatever she was. Linnette might not claim being my friend if this mess got too much more complicated. I’d only known her for a couple days and here I was, involving her in the worst mess of my life without ever meaning to. So much for the start of a beautiful friendship. I’d be lucky if she’d speak to me after today.
Kara’s solution to the room problem was to commandeer the family waiting room, posting a sign on the door and closing it off. It was large enough to put all three of us in separate corners where we couldn’t talk to one another. There was also the attached kitchenette. I suspected it was normally where doctors met with family members to hold consultations that weren’t going to go well. As such, it was the perfect place for this detective to take each one of us alone while the other two sat and stewed. Linnette and I sat in our corners while the detective spoke with Heather. Fortunately Linnette was a lot more gracious about waiting with me than she could have been.
She made a quick, muffled call on her cell phone, smiling weakly when she was done. “Well, that’s a first. I had to tell my supervisor that somebody needed to cover for me because I was forbidden to leave by the police. You should have heard his reaction.”
“I’ll bet. If I’ve gotten you in trouble at work, I’m so sorry. When the detective comes back in I’ll try to see if he can’t let you go.”
Linnette waved a turquoise beringed hand at me. “No, don’t worry about it. This is interesting in a weird sort of way. And I’m not leaving you here alone to deal with all this. Besides, the cop’s kind of cute. Did you notice a wedding ring?”
I hadn’t, but it wasn’t exactly high on my list of things to pay attention to. “No, and given my situation, we can say it wouldn’t necessarily make any difference. Now hush. I think he’s coming back.”
He was, and still wore the unhappy expression he’d had earlier. “Nobody answers at your motherin-law’s home. Ms. Miller’s husband tells me she should be at work right now, but doesn’t have the number.”
“Ms. Miller? Oh, I guess that’s Becca.” It was difficult, answering your own questions. I guess I had to, though, because Ray Fernandez didn’t look like he was likely to answer mine any time soon. “And it’s just vaguely possible that Becca could have gone to work before all this heated up. She’d been saying most of the morning that she couldn’t stay much longer because she had to get there.”
Ray shook his head. “Ms. Taylor says they were both definitely in the room the last time she left. Not that anybody can verify her story, either.”
I had another thought. “Do you have Carol’s number? Dennis’s first wife?” At least I thought she was the first Mrs. Peete. She had to be. Becca looked older than twenty, and even Dennis probably wouldn’t have married straight out of high school, would he? I couldn’t say a
nymore.
“No. Do you?”
Maybe this would earn me a point or two with the growling detective. “Yes, and she would have her daughter’s work phone, as well, I imagine.” I dug around in my purse for all the odd little slips of paper I’d scrawled things on, including phone numbers. “She might even have heard something from Edna. It wouldn’t surprise me if they kept in fairly close touch.”
I’d bet that if Edna had called anybody, wherever she was, it was more likely to be Carol than anyone else I could think of at present. There was just something about the way Edna spoke about the mother of her grandchild that told me she was still Dennis’s wife, as far as his mother was concerned.
“While we’re at it, can my friend speak to you and go back to work? I don’t want to inconvenience her when she was kind enough to check on me in the first place.”
Linnette waved me off again. “Hey, no good deed goes unpunished.”
That got a smile, granted a wry one, from the detective. “You’re right, there. If you want, Ms….”
“Parks,” Linnette supplied. She tilted her head in a charming manner, and following the angle of her subtle gesture, I could see that the detective wore no wedding ring, for what it was worth. “And I cleared it with my boss at the College Bookstore, if you need me to stay. He’d probably be happier if I went back to work, but I don’t want to hinder your investigation.”
“Nice to have somebody say that,” he grumbled. The man was really beginning to get under my skin. That was a shame, because it looked like I was going to be seeing more of him than I was anybody I liked better for the next few hours. Or maybe even days. At this point even Edna’s company sounded better, and it would have gotten me off the hook besides.
Of course, that in itself was a reason that I probably wasn’t going to see Edna for quite some time. She’d never accommodated me yet, and I didn’t expect she’d start now.
Linnette went into the kitchenette with Officer Friendly and Heather and I kept to our separate corners as instructed. I don’t know what we might have said to each other if we’d been allowed to talk. Looking around the room there was no evidence that the four of us, or anyone else for that matter, had spent part of the morning here. Either someone from the staff had been in and cleaned, or a patient’s family member had tidied up after everyone.
