Mother's Day: A Professor Molly Mystery (Professor Molly Mysteries Book 6)

by Frankie Bow

  “And she took him in.”

  “Yes.”

  “So why does your sister not want Jeremy to get anything when she dies?”

  If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. I suppose he had too much on his mind to worry about how I knew the terms of Bernardine’s will.

  “Jeremy’s existence is a daily humiliation to my sister,” he said slowly. “A reproach. And I believe…Jeremy was so unloved, he became unlovable.”

  “Is she afraid of him?” I asked.

  “She wishes he were dead.”

  “What?”

  Edward met my gaze.

  “Bernardine is prepared to go. She’s ready. But the one thing she can’t bear is the possibility that he might outlive her. If he does, she wants to make sure his life is unbearable.”

  “Maybe we should call the ICU and alert them.”

  I called the Mahina Medical Center main number and was instantly put on hold by their automated phone service.

  “It’ll be faster if we drive.” I stood up.

  He shook his head slowly.

  “I’m in no condition to get behind the wheel, Professor Barda.”

  “My car’s right out front. I’ll drive.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “I have to see Jeremy Brigham,” I panted to the ICU receptionist. I wasn’t that pregnant yet, but my weight had already redistributed to the point that running made me wobble like a raw egg.

  “And you are?”

  “His uncle,” Edward said.

  She looked at me.

  “And aunt,” I added, improvising.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. What was the problem? The paramedic thought I was Jeremy’s mother. That was unlikely to carry much weight with the ICU receptionist, unfortunately.

  A man in turquoise scrubs came out of the double doors, and I took the opportunity to dash through before they closed behind him.

  “Ma’am? Excuse me, ma’am?” I heard the woman calling after me.

  I hurried to Room Five and peered through the rectangular window, but someone had pulled the privacy curtain across the bed. I shoved the door open and yanked the curtain aside.

  Jeremy lay on his back. A tangle of wires and tubes tethered him to an IV bag and a beeping monitor. He had regained consciousness, but barely. He turned his head toward me and mumbled something I couldn’t understand.

  Bernardine Brigham was seated on the far side of the hospital bed, lips pursed, glaring at me. This, I assumed, was not a facial expression they taught in modeling school.

  Thankfully, Uncle Edward caught up to me at that moment.

  “Don’t worry, Professor Barda,” he said, “I told her you were with the family and convinced her not to call Security.”

  “Edward?” Bernardine exclaimed. “What on earth is going on?”

  “I’m sorry, Bernardine. I was worried you’d come up without your mask and gloves.”

  “Well that’s very thoughtful of you, but I’ll be perfectly fine. And you didn’t need to bring Jeremy’s tutor. As you can see, he’s not in any condition do his lessons.”

  “I offered to drive,” I said, feeling sheepish. What an embarrassing mistake. Jeremy looked dazed and uncomfortable, and probably wanted nothing more than to rest.

  Then Bernardine shifted in her seat, and I caught a glimpse of something white in her lap.

  A pillow.

  Jeremy’s pillow. That’s why he looked uncomfortable. He was lying flat on the bed because Bernardine had taken his pillow.

  “Maybe I can drive everyone back,” I said. “As long as I’m here. Mrs. Brigham, would you like to come back with us?”

  “Forgive me if I don’t get up.” She gave us a tight smile. “I’m very tired. Edward, you go on back home. I’ll take a taxi when I’m finished here.”

  I could see that Edward was about to do what she suggested. Leaving Bernardine to smother her stepson as soon as we were gone.

  And maybe it was none of my business. After all, Jeremy might have been trying to kill Bernardine first. It would be self-defense.

  But then I recalled what Edward had told me about Alexander Brigham’s final moments.

  I darted into the room, leaned over Jeremy’s body (noticing briefly that my belly was in the way) and yanked all of the connectors out of the heart rate monitor as Bernardine screamed and clawed at my arms.

  As the alarm shrieked, I took advantage of the confusion to slip out. I had a tense moment strolling casually past two hospital security guards who were running toward the direction I had just left.

  On my way out of the building, I reached out to the dispenser for a puff of hand-sanitizing foam and smeared it on the scratches on my arms. Then I walked slowly to my car and drove directly home.

  I didn’t notice how much my arms stung until later, when I was on the phone with my mother.

  Yes, I called her back. My mother wasn’t really that bad, I realized. All things considered.

  And no, I didn’t tell her anything about what had happened on Russian Road. I’m not an idiot.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Bernardine Brigham passed away at home two days after the hospital incident. The cause of death was given as pancreatic cancer. I knew the disease moved swiftly, but still; she’d been pretty strong when she’d torn my arm up in the ICU. Possibly with Jeremy under medical care, she realized things weren’t going according to plan, and decided to hasten her exit.

  She did leave a generous bequest to Mahina State University. So generous, in fact, that the psychology building was renamed Brigham Hall, and the next few times I saw Victor Santiago on campus he actually said hello to me.

  Emma’s book continued to sell briskly and ended up on the New York Times bestseller list. One day over lunch, she let it slip that she’d already made ten times over what the protester’s legal fees had cost her.

  “Did you say cost you?” I demanded. “You paid the protestors’ legal costs? The anonymous donor was you!”

  “I had to do something,” she said with not a trace of remorse. “My publisher wasn’t doing bupkis, and you wouldn’t help me either.”

  “You obviously didn’t need my help. No wonder you weren’t stressed out about the protest. You orchestrated the whole thing.”

  “Did I mention my book’s on the New York Times bestseller list?”

  “Several times. Emma, you’re the one who should be teaching in the College of Commerce, not me. You’re like the Lee Atwater of book marketing.”

  Emma swallowed her bite of sandwich.

  “I don’t wanna teach in your college,” she declared, with her usual grace and tact. “Your students are even dumber than mine.”

  Jeremy recovered quickly and was able to petition for late registration only three weeks into the semester. Our tutoring sessions were converted to a standard directed-reading course. This was a great relief to the registrar, who’d had no idea how to deal with Victor’s “Young Leaders” program.

  I nearly didn’t recognize Jeremy when he came into my office. His face had filled out and gained some color, his black eyes were lively, and he moved with energy, not the slothful motions I’d seen earlier.

  I told him how sorry I was about Bernardine’s passing. I added that it was wonderful to see him up and about, and asked him how he was feeling.

  Jeremy was eager to tell me everything. I’d like to think I had won his trust and confidence, but I suspect he simply wanted to run out the clock on his tutoring time. Family drama is far more interesting than T-tables and standard deviations.

  He was building up his strength by taking walks in the morning. Soon, he told me, he’d be lifting weights again.

  “You’re staying in the house on Russian Road?” I asked, knowing Bernardine had left no part of her estate to Jeremy. And why should she, if she was planning for him to die before she did?

  “It’s Uncle Edward’s now. He says I can stay as long as I want. He let me move into Bernardine’s room, too. It’s way bigger than
my old one.”

  “That’s a lovely room, with the herb garden outside.”

  “The garden’s gone, you know.”

  “Gone?”

  “Yeah, while I was at the hospital, Uncle Edward got a contractor to dig it up and pour concrete over it. It was kinda sad to come back and see it tiled over. But someone told him it was the green smoothie that was making me sick. So Uncle Edward decided to get rid of the whole garden, just to be on the safe side.”

  “Did they tell you which one of the herbs was making you ill?”

  “Opioids.”

  “She was growing poppies?” I asked.

  “No. Regular painkillers. They had to fully detox me. Man, I don’t understand how people take those things for fun. I felt like crap all the time. And when they were tapering me off, I thought I was gonna die.”

  “How were you getting the opioids?”

  “From the smoothies. Weird, huh? I guess Bernardine must’ve been mixing her painkillers into her own glass, and then I guess she mixed up the glasses a few times.”

  “I can imagine when you’re that ill, you can get forgetful,” I said.

  “You know, Professor Barda, between you and me? The way Bernardine treated me sometimes, I thought she hated me. Especially after Junior died. I felt like she blamed me. But then at the end…even though she was so sick herself, she tried to take care of me. She made me those smoothies every day and made sure I drank them. I guess she did care after all.”

  “She certainly did,” I agreed.

  “I guess sometimes you don’t even know it when people are looking out for you.”

  “No argument there.” I rubbed the scratches on my forearm, which by now had faded to pink lines. “In fact, I care very much about your passing the stats exam. Did you remember to bring your worksheets this time?”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Like Molly Barda, Frankie Bow teaches at a public university. Unlike her protagonist, she is blessed with delightful students, sane colleagues, a loving family, and a perfectly nice office chair. She believes if life isn’t fair, at least it can be entertaining. Follow Frankie’s blog at frankiebow.com

  More Professor Molly Mysteries by Frankie Bow:

  The Case of the Defunct Adjunct (Book 0)

  The Musubi Murder (Book 1)

  The Cursed Canoe (Book 2)

  The Black Thumb (Book 3)

  The Invasive Species (Book 4)

  The Blessed Event (Book 5)

  Trust Fall (A Professor Molly short story; claim your complimentary copy at http://bit.ly/Trust-Fall)

  TRUST FALL

  A hard nudge in the ribs jolted me awake.

  “Molly,” Emma hissed. “C’mon, stand up.”

  I had dozed off in one of the comfortable new chairs in Administrative Complex Conference Room 5B, my head resting on the shoulder of my best friend and fellow sufferer, Emma Leilani Kano’opomaika’i Nakamura.

  “What?” I rubbed my eyes.

  “Are you sleeping?”

  “Well, I was. Why do we have to stand up?”

  “We’re doing the trust fall thing now. Eh, don’t let Jake see you making that face or he’s gonna give us another lecture about our attitude.”

  “What? I’m not making a face. This is my face.”

  Jake Ahu, Director of Faculty Development, glared around the room and tightened his grip on his clipboard.

  Get your complimentary copy. http://bit.ly/Trust-Fall