Board Stiff (Mattie Winston Mysteries)

by Ryan, Annelise

  “Bernie was already dead by then.”

  “Was he? Hmm. I must be losing my touch.” She pauses, looking thoughtful for a moment, and then shakes it off. “Anyway, after dumping the powder down his throat, I hurried back down the hall and cleaned up my coffee cup so it would look like only one person had been there. I was going to empty Bernie’s cup and refill it with fresh coffee, and take the altered sweetener with me, but before I could, I heard voices and the back door opened again. That’s when Irene came in. That was a shocker. I didn’t know she had a key.”

  “She’s had it for years,” I say, fighting the faintness. I’m still trying to stall for time because I know that if Dorothy gave me nitroglycerin only, the effects will be short-lived. If I can wait her out, I might have a chance. “The previous owner gave it to her,” I say. “They used to take the bodies out through the administrative wing.”

  “Whatever,” Dorothy says, dismissing my side story with an irritated wave of her hand. “The point is, she got in. Fortunately, she went past the office straight to the men’s room and didn’t see me. I thought there might be others outside the door so I didn’t want to risk going out that way and being seen, and I couldn’t go out the front way. Not only was it likely Irene would see me, but whoever was at the front desk would, too. Plus I thought Irene would call the police right away, so I couldn’t stay and hide in Bernie’s office.” Dorothy pauses and sighs. “I have to say, that was my lowest moment in this whole thing. But I kept my cool and used my head. That’s when I saw the windows.”

  “Windows?” I say, looking confused.

  “Yes, those windows over there that open onto the side of the building near the end of the parking lot. They’re close enough to the ground that it was easy to unlock one and climb out.”

  My challenges to Dorothy’s ego have bought me precious time. I can feel my strength starting to return, and the dizziness starting to recede, but I sense Dorothy’s growing impatience. I decide to switch it up and stroke her ego a little. To make her think I’m growing weaker, I talk in shorter gasps as if I’m fading. “Taking the coffee . . . that was . . . brilliant.”

  “Yes, it was, and it wasn’t easy,” she says with a smile. “When the cops started talking about poisons and posted a guard back here, I thought my goose was cooked.” She pauses and frowns. “I still don’t understand how you were cued in that there was another cause of death. I figured suffocation from the powder would be obvious enough and would point the finger at Bjorn.”

  “Might have,” I say in a breathless whisper. “But you were . . . too thorough . . . too neat.”

  My cold sweat has dried and I can feel my strength returning bit by bit. I realize this means Dorothy was telling the truth when she said she didn’t give me the entire cocktail she gave the others. I can tell my blood pressure is slowly rising back to normal, but I know that she will soon realize this as well. If luck is with me, I might have one chance to escape from her clutches, but I will have to be careful to time any move I make with Dorothy’s awareness and my body’s recovery. If I get up too fast or too soon, I’ll simply pass out again. I need to keep her distracted a little longer.

  Dorothy gives me an odd little smile and for a moment I fear the jig is up. But then she says, “I was too thorough? What do you mean by that?”

  “Bjorn said he dropped . . . the container of isolyser powder . . . and some of it spilled on Bernie’s face.” I say this in short, halting phrases as if I’m too weak to speak an entire sentence at once. “But when we found Bernie . . . the bottle was empty . . . the powder all poured into his mouth.” I pause and moan for effect before continuing. “That, plus . . . massive pulmonary edema . . . we realized something and . . . someone else . . . was involved with his death.”

  “Yes, I see that now,” Dorothy says. “Very clever.” She is still straddling me, her knees pinning down my arms. She’s not a particularly heavy woman, but she is tall and solid. Getting her off me won’t be easy and my arms are starting to go numb from her weight on them. Hoping for a little more time, I go back to Dorothy’s coffee coup, and toy with her ego a little more.

  “You were lucky . . . a chance . . . to get rid of . . . the coffee.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that one,” she says. “That was a stroke of luck. When I saw you and that detective go running out like the place was on fire, I saw my chance. I knew the guard officer on duty had just gone down the front hallway to use the public bathrooms, and he had a magazine with him so I figured I might have a minute or two to do what I needed. I went outside, climbed back through the same window I’d gone out earlier, dumped the coffee down the sink, rinsed the cup, and put it back on the desk. After the guard yelled out, ‘I’m back,’ there was a silence so loud I could hear my heart pounding. Then he started mumbling something and I could tell he was walking down the hall toward Bernie’s office. I thought for sure he was going to find me, but I heard the door at the end of the hall open again and heard the cop ask, ‘Who are you?’ ”

  “It was Arnie,” I say, recalling Officer Foster’s recounting of the events that night.

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  I don’t answer her. Instead, I let my eyes drift closed, feigning a barely retained consciousness.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Dorothy says. “Anyway, I knew I had to get out of there because this Arnie fellow said he wanted to go into Bernie’s office to dust for prints. That’s when I realized that I hadn’t been wearing gloves when I rinsed out Bernie’s coffee cup. I pulled the sleeve of my sweater down over my hand, picked up the cup, and wiped it off with the front of my sweater. I set it back down and made a mad dash for the window. It was quite a rush!” she says, her voice excited. “Just as I slid that window back into place, the two men walked into the room.”

  “Surprised we didn’t . . . notice window unlocked,” I say weakly, keeping my eyes closed.

  “Remember when I paraded into Bernie’s office with the lawyers that first time?” she says with a smug tone. She doesn’t wait for me to answer or nod. “I locked the window while you and that detective were exchanging barbs with Trisha. It was the perfect distraction. I would have liked to get the sweetener then, too. I was prepared to grab it and hide it under my sweater, but it was already gone.”

  I open my eyes and risk a look. The dizziness is better, but not gone. Dorothy is staring down at me and as soon as she sees me look at her, the smug smile on her face evaporates. I know my time is up unless I can find a way to keep her talking. I switch gears again and try to put her on the defensive.

  “You weren’t . . . clever enough,” I say. “Bernie figured it out . . . didn’t he? That’s why you . . . killed him. He knew . . . what you were doing.”

  “No way,” she says irritably. “Bernie was an idiot. He found those Cialis pills in my desk drawer, but he didn’t know what they were. He thought they were some kind of street drug or narcotic and told me I would have to be drug tested.” She rolls her eyes and scoffs. “Can you imagine someone suspecting me of drug abuse? I’m much too professional to do something like that.”

  Clearly the irony of that statement, given that she has just admitted to committing cold-blooded murder on several people, is lost on her. “I’m confused,” I say, slurring my words on purpose. “Then why . . . kill Bernie?”

  “Because he had no idea how to run a business for profit,” she says with a sneer. “He’d already run several other businesses into the ground and this place would have sunk months after he bought it if I hadn’t managed our patient population the way I did. Bernie didn’t care. He had family money to fall back on. But I put everything I had into this place. I never married and I have no children, so this place is the only mark I can leave behind. It’s my legacy.”

  Probably not the sort of legacy you had in mind.

  “The partnership agreement specifies a buyout option in the event that either partner is incapacitated or dies,” she goes on. “With Bernie out of the way, I can buy his port
ion of the business and become the sole proprietor. I intend to change the name of the place to the Granger Home.”

  “Can you . . . afford that?” I ask, stunned that she is talking like she’s still going to be able to go ahead with her plan.

  “I can now. I’ve saved quite a bit since I became a partner, and my mother died last year, leaving me a moderate inheritance. I’ve been trying to convince Bernie to let me buy him out for the past year, but he kept refusing. When he found those pills and started talking about drug testing, I saw the writing on the wall. He was going to flip things around and try to get rid of me so he could buy out my portion. I couldn’t let that happen, not after everything I’ve put into this place.”

  Dorothy pauses and looks over at the spilled drink. “Enough of this talk. Clearly you don’t have enough of the nitro in you since you’re still conscious. And you got me talking long enough to weaken the effects of what you did get. Since you spilled the little cocktail I made for you, you’ve forced me to come up with a Plan B.” She reaches into her pocket and removes a small brown bottle that I recognize immediately as nitroglycerin pills. “I’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way.” She unscrews the lid from the bottle, grabs my chin in one hand, and squeezes my cheeks together hard, forcing my mouth open.

  I realize she’s about to dump the entire bottle of pills in my mouth, and I know how fast they work. Whether I’m ready or not, it’s now or never.

  My reaction time is a split second too slow. I feel the pills falling into my mouth and I struggle to spit them back out. I manage to rid myself of some of them, but a few are stuck under my tongue, to the sides of my inner cheeks, and to the roof of my mouth. At the same time I’m spitting, I lunge up as hard as I can with my legs and body in an attempt to throw Dorothy off me. I succeed in toppling her, but when I try to get on my hands and knees so I can get up from the floor, I discover my arms are half-asleep and not obeying me. Instead, I start to roll like a log, wanting to get as far away from her as I can. I roll until I hit something while I keep trying to spit out what’s left of the pills. They’re only pieces now, more than half dissolved. The medication is already in my system, absorbed through my oral mucosa. The question is how much.

  I look over and see Dorothy struggling to get to her feet. She’s not a young woman and that’s working in my favor, but at the rate I’m going she’s still going to beat me. My arms are gradually waking up, but my mouth is tingling again and I know it’s the effects of the nitroglycerin pills. I feel something hard and cold at my back and I feel around with one hand trying to discern what it is. When I realize it’s Arnie’s scene-processing kit, I quickly roll back half a turn so I’m facing it, and I fumble with the latch. When I get it open, I try to raise the lid, but the kit is jammed against the wall and there is no room for the lid to swing.

  Dorothy is on me then, and I roll onto my back to fight her off. The cold sweat has returned and I know that my moments of consciousness are numbered. I reach behind me for the evidence box again and manage to slide it away from the wall. As she grabs my chin with her iron grip, I think she must have more of the pills and I try to keep my mouth tightly shut. Instead of squeezing my cheeks together, she thrusts my chin upward, and I feel her hands close around my throat.

  I fumble with the evidence box, getting the lid open. I visualize the layout in my mind as my hand grapples with what I can feel. I have what I need, a scalpel that’s used, among other things, to scrape dried blood samples off surfaces. With the last bit of strength I have left, I take it in my fist and swing it around, jamming it as hard as I can into Dorothy Granger’s neck, right where her jugular and carotid should be.

  Everything goes dark again.

  Chapter 33

  Tuesday, March 4

  Dear Diary,

  I finally came home from the hospital today after nearly dying. I have to say that as far as near-death experiences go, this one was a disappointment. There was no feeling of calm, no disappointment when I realized I was still alive, and no beckoning bright lights. The only bright light I saw was the ophthalmoscope the ER doctor was shining into my eyes. Beyond that it was nothing more than an all-encompassing darkness.

  I wanted to leave the hospital last night, but the doctor insisted I stay overnight to make sure there were no residual effects from the nitroglycerin and the precariously low blood pressure I had when the EMTs finally got to me. Izzy and Dom promised to take care of Hoover and the cats for me, so I agreed to stay and rest. In one way, Dorothy did me a favor. She got me out of my gym appointment and my session with Dr. Naggy. Plus, this crappy hospital food is bound to help me lose a pound or two, though I know that won’t last.

  It’s a good thing that annoying lawyer, Trisha, came by when she did or it’s quite possible Dorothy Granger and I would both be dead. That nursing assistant stationed at the desk ratted on me by calling Trisha, who then hurried over to make sure I wasn’t looking at things she had said were off-limits. As a result, both Dorothy and I survived, though I dare say Dorothy probably wishes she hadn’t. I managed to grab a scalpel from a scene-processing kit that Arnie had left behind, and apparently I nicked her carotid artery. Had I hit the artery square on, she’d be toast now. But I didn’t, and after some quick surgery to fix her up, she is sitting in jail. I was unconscious when Trisha found me and the EMTs were able to figure out what the problem was when they took my blood pressure and saw the empty nitroglycerin bottle on the floor along with the pills and pieces of pills I had spit out. They got two IVs into me and ran fluids wide open to bring my pressure back up, and then they rushed me to the hospital.

  By the time I got to the ER, I was conscious and my pressure was up, but not a lot. And it didn’t want to stay up when they slowed down the IV fluids. I also had a gash in the back of my head where Dorothy had initially hit me with what I later learned was the base of one of her fancy office lamps.

  I’m lucky she didn’t hit me hard enough to kill me. Fortunately, the crack on the head she gave Brenda Joiner wasn’t a fatal one, either, though she did end up with a slight skull fracture that will earn her a month or two off duty. I’ve been told it will be with pay. Heck of a way to get a paid vacation.

  Ironically, David was on duty and in the ER when I arrived because they thought I might be a surgical candidate, and they knew Dorothy would be. Fortunately, I didn’t have to let the bastard touch me and I told the staff on duty that I didn’t want him to have anything to do with my care. That left him free to fix up Dorothy. I figure they deserve one another.

  Arnie called earlier today and told me that after he cued the Madison lab on what to look for they found traces of nitroglycerin and Cialis in Bernie’s stomach contents and in the artificial sweetener. I have to admit, it was a brilliant way to kill someone and we may never know for sure just how many patients Dorothy did in with this little drug cocktail over the years. She was right. No one would have thought to look for those two drugs in the average, bedbound nursing home patient.

  I suppose I should be glad Bernie Chase’s murder has been solved and that my friend, Bjorn, has been absolved of any crime associated with the death. Solving this case meant answering a lot of questions, but it also left a lot of things unresolved. I think the thing that saddens me the most is that the only people who are likely to be hurt by Dorothy Granger’s actions—other than her murder victims, of course—are the patients who live in the Twilight Home.

  Trisha Collins and her band of greedy lawyers will be raking in the dough for years to come, by charging Bernie’s estate for the day-to-day management required to keep the Twilight Home open and functioning, and by defending against all the lawsuits that are bound to come from the family members of the patients Dorothy Granger killed.

  Now that the partnership between Dorothy and Bernard is irrevocably broken, the place will be put up for sale (another revenue stream for Trisha, no doubt). I can’t help but wonder what will happen to the place. Will it continue to function in the capacity it is
now? Or will it be closed down and reopened as a different business altogether, forcing its residents to find new homes? No one knows at this point, but for now the residents will be allowed to remain there. No doubt the uncertainty will have some of them feeling out of sorts, but I imagine they will continue on with what’s left of their lives, finding that little bit of joie de vivre wherever and however they can. I imagine they’ll continue to smoke their fake pot in the garden, have their motorized wheelchair races down the halls, and escape from time to time by going to church, taking a Sunday drive, or simply walking out a door they’re not supposed to. I wish all of them lots of joy, the best of luck, and happiness for whatever is left of their lives.

  I received several shocks during my stay at the hospital. No, not shock therapy, Dr. Maggie. They were shocks to my psyche.

  The first came Monday night when I was lying in my hospital bed and my mother appeared along with William-not-Bill. For the woman to leave the house for any reason was surprising enough, but for her to leave the house and enter a building known to be a source of deadly infections was nothing short of a miracle. Granted, she did wear a mask and gloves the entire time—I suspect she put them on before she ever left her house—and she avoided touching any surfaces or sitting in any of the chairs. She said she came because she was concerned about me and felt like maybe she hadn’t been the best of mothers over the years. She said she wanted to try to make up for it.

  I couldn’t help but suspect an ulterior motive, but I didn’t figure out what it was until she told me I needed to primp a little because, after all, I was in the hospital and there were lots of cute and potentially available doctors running around. Maybe I could find one to replace David. I laughed off her efforts and told her I would never marry another doctor. She ignored me and went digging through my purse looking for makeup. What she found instead was the copy of Emily’s drawing.