Hide & Find (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 3)
Page 18
Does she know the mobster who has her in his sights? How will she compete with a ruthless man whose heavy-handed tactics have garnered power over the farthest stretches of society — from the lowest, back-alley gambling joints to the upper crust of politicians and wealthy philanthropists?
And can Nora protect the growing number of castaway boys sheltered on her remote Mayfield poor farm property?
CHAPTER 1
I realize not everyone keeps a cell phone in their freezer. Sometimes I even forget that I do — until it rings while I’m digging out the rocky road.
I dropped the ice cream tub on my foot then hopped around on the other foot while valiantly refraining from muttering a few things. Mainly because a sweet, six-year-old girl named Emmie with ears like sponges was sitting at the kitchen table awaiting her dessert.
“You going to answer that?” Clarice growled. She’s not sweet or six years old, but she had a point.
I withdrew the frosty phone and gingerly held it to my ear.
“Nora?” The rich, balmy voice of my favorite nurse filled the speaker.
“Give me a minute, Arleta” I blurted. “I’ll call you back. Whatever line rings next, just answer it.” I hung up and tossed the phone back in the freezer. Then I dashed for my tote bag which was hanging over the back of the chair I’d just abandoned.
“Didn’t you give her the number of one of your burner phones?” Clarice asked.
“Forgot,” I mumbled, pulling one of the said phones from my bag. I punched in the number for the Alzheimer’s unit at my dad’s nursing home and listened to it ring.
“Arleta? Sorry about that. I’m working with designated phones now.”
“Is this part of that FBI thing?” Arleta asked, her words barely above a whisper.
“Sort of. They’re still providing security for my dad, aren’t they?”
“Mmmmmm. Special agents all over the place, including one particularly hot number named Antonio Hackett.” I could understand how Arleta’s low laugh would drive a man crazy. I suspected Antonio was enjoying his assignment as much as Arleta was.
“Uh, this call isn’t about personal, strictly after-hours hanky-panky, is it?” I asked, but I couldn’t keep from grinning. Arleta works way too hard. I should know — she cares for my dad. She deserves whatever social life she can get.
“No.” Arleta turned serious. “I left a message for your mother, but she’s still on that Southeast Asian adventure cruise. We’re required to notify family if a patient has a medical incident. Your dad took a tumble today. He absolutely refuses to use his walker, and you know he gets tippy around corners.” Arleta pushed on, correctly anticipating that I was on the verge of interrupting with panicked questions. “We did X-rays to confirm he didn’t break any bones, but he did get a bump on the head. He’s a little — well, he’s actually a little less confused than usual right now.”
“It’s not uncommon,” Arleta continued calmly. “Disruptions in their schedules, medications, any number of things, will often temporarily affect the ability of Alzheimer’s patients to retrieve memories. There’s a lot of fluctuation in their ability to access information. Good days and bad days. It comes with the territory. But he’s asking for you. In fact, he insisted that I call you.” She took a deep breath. “He wants to talk to you. Are you ready for that?”
I was very familiar with my dad’s stubbornness — about not using assistance for walking, about Jell-O brand chocolate pudding, about how his shirts are pressed. So much of his stubbornness from his healthy life had clung with him even through his disease. But for the past year or so he had not been able to consistently remember my name or the fact that I was his only child.
“Okay,” I breathed.
“No expectations, Nora,” Arleta warned. “I don’t know how long this lucidity will last.”
“Okay,” I repeated and sat down hard.
“He’s waiting outside my office,” Arleta said. “I’ll get him.”
It seemed forever, those few minutes of muffled bumps and shuffles in the background. Then the clunk of the receiver and short, raspy breaths and my dad’s voice, weaker than it used to be but unmistakable, “Nora?”
“Daddy.” I squeezed my eyes shut against the tears that immediately sprang up.
“Sweetie, I need to talk to you.”
“I’m right here.” I was clenching the phone so hard my hand hurt.
“They’re listening,” Dad whispered.
“I’m listening,” I replied.
“No, no, sweetie. The feds.”
“Oh.” My eyes flew open. It was a reasonable assumption. I’d made it myself. “I switched phones, Dad,” I whispered. “This one’s untraceable.” It wasn’t worth going into the details with him. I wasn’t even sure he’d understand them since the phones he was most familiar with had cords that attached them to lines strung from telephone poles.
“Find Squeaky,” he said. “There are a few things — you were such a little girl then — you wouldn’t know. But there are a few things. Squeaky will give you the files.”
I moaned. He was already slipping into confusion, his own weirdly fractured reality. “Squeaky?” I murmured.
“Squeaky Simon. The feds won’t get anything from me.” Dad’s voice grew deeper. “I’m sealed up tight. Besides, it was all over a long time ago.”
My dad had been watching too much television. The big screen was always on in the unit’s rec room with several catatonic patients parked in front of it, broadcasting those horrible true crime reenactment shows that are worse than soap operas.
“How’s your mother?” Dad asked.
My breath caught in my throat. “Fine.” How I wished she was in San Francisco so she could rush over to the nursing home and enjoy these few minutes with Dad.
“Off gallivanting?” Dad asked. Forty-seven years of marriage — and still counting — had taught Dad a lot about Mom. They made incompatibility look good.
My chuckle came out like a half sob. “Yes.”
“Give her my love.”
“Okay.” But my answer hit dead air.
My hand was shaking when I set the phone down on the table. I glanced up to find Emmie and Clarice staring at me. Clarice’s face was slack with an astonishment that obliterated all her wrinkles — because she knows all about my dad’s condition.
I slowly shook my head.
“But he knew your name,” she muttered.
And then I slowly nodded with a teary smile.
“This calls for a celebration.” Clarice barged across the room and rummaged through a cupboard until she produced a jar of caramel sauce to top our ice cream.
NOTES & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Woodland and Longview are both real cities along the I-5 corridor in southwest Washington State. However, I have taken tremendous liberties with spacing and locations, and all the retail establishments and institutions, including county government, described in the Mayfield series are entirely fictional and placed for the convenience of storytelling. If you decide to visit the area, though, I can promise you will find just as many trees, mountains, backroads, and neighborly folks — and as much rain — as described.
Profound thanks to the following people who gave their time and expertise to assist in the writing of this book:
Sergeant Fred Neiman, Sr. and all the instructors of the Clark County Sheriff’s Citizens’ Academy. The highlights had to be firing the Thompson submachine gun and stepping into the medical examiner’s walk-in cooler. Oh, and the K-9 demonstration and the officer survival/lethal force decision making test. And the drug task force presentation with identification color spectrum pictures and the — you get the idea.
Beth Anne Steele of the FBI Public Affairs Office, Portland Division, for letting me attend the Community Relations Executive Seminar Training program even though my only (non) qualification is that I make stuff up for a living. And to the special agents and support staff who shared their knowledge and stories.
I claim
all errors, whether accidental or intentional, solely as my own.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I live in a small town in the west end of the Columbia River Gorge. When I grow up, I fully intend to be a feisty old lady. In the meantime, I regularly max out my library's lending limit, have happily declared a truce with the clover in the lawn, but am fanatical about sealing up cracks in my old house, armed with a caulking gun. Due to the number of gaps I have yet to locate, however, I have also perfected my big spider shriek.
I love wool socks, Pink Lady apples with crunchy peanut butter, feather pillows, scenery of breathtaking grandeur, and weather just cool enough to require a sweater, all of which are plentiful in the Pacific Northwest. I am eternally grateful to have escaped the corporate world with its relentless, mind-numbing meetings and now write (or doodle or fantasize or cogitate or stare out the window or whatever you want to call it) full time.
I post updates on my website www.jerushajones.com
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