by A W Hartoin
Contents
Dedication
Copyright
Also by A.W. Hartoin for Amazon
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
About the Author
Also by A.W. Hartoin
For my Grandpa Ace, who gifted me with the love of travel. I miss his adventurous spirit every day.
Copyright © A.W. Hartoin, 2016
www.awhartoin.com
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Edited by Valerie Clifton
Cover by:Karri Klawiter
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Also By A.W. Hartoin*
Young Adult fantasy
Flare-up (An Away From Whipplethorn Short)
A Fairy's Guide To Disaster (Away From Whipplethorn Book One)
Fierce Creatures (Away From Whipplethorn Book Two)
A Monster’s Paradise (Away From Whipplethorn Book Three)
A Wicked Chill (Away From Whipplethorn Book Four)
Away From Whipplethorn Box Set (Books 1-3, plus bonus short)
Mercy Watts Mysteries
Novels
A Good Man Gone (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book One)
Diver Down (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Two)
Double Black Diamond (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Three)
Drop Dead Red (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Four)
In the Worst Way (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Five)
The Wife of Riley (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Six)
Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Set (Books 1-3, plus bonus short)
Short stories
Coke with a Twist
Touch and Go
Nowhere Fast
Dry Spell
A Sin and a Shame
Paranormal
It Started with a Whisper (Sons of Witches)
Chapter One
I stared at the wide double doors along with everyone else in the clinic. Unlike everyone else, I didn’t know what I was waiting for. From the expression on the practice receptionist’s face, we were waiting for doom.
The Columbia Clinic was usually a friendly place but not that afternoon. I was seven weeks into an eight-week temp job as a nurse for the clinic’s nurse practitioner, Shawna Davis, a tireless woman with four kids and a husband with so much energy she had to walk him every night or he’d take apart the microwave. Even Shawna’s shoulders sagged when she saw the schedule. I’d taken a look but could garner no clues about what was coming. One of the other nurses suddenly discovered that her toddler had a fever and left after she saw the schedule. Nobody would tell me anything and I’m usually good at getting information out of people.
The Columbia Clinic was a normal general practice in a small picturesque town just over the Illinois border and I was lucky to get the gig. I needed a steady paycheck after having to take a couple weeks off for a broken ankle and the clinic was a prime place to work by everyone’s account. I was filling in for the regular nurse, Kellie Greenwald, who was out on maternity leave. Kelly’s newborn had a raging case of colic, but I’d heard several people say they wished they were her for the day.
That wasn’t a good sign. Colic could drive parents to the brink of insanity—just ask my mother. It also wasn’t a good sign when the entire place flinched whenever the doors rattled. Neither was the huge sigh of relief when a harried mother managed to open the doors with a double baby stroller while holding a screaming four-year-old on her hip.
Karen, one of the other nurses, ran over, calling out, “I’ve got her.” Karen helped Mrs. Bellringer with a big smile on her face as the twins in the stroller started screeching and tugging at their ears. I went to help and Karen panicked, holding up her palm. “No, no. I’ve got it. You stay right there.”
“Why do I feel like I’m being set up?” I asked Steve, the receptionist.
He gave me a blank look. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Don’t let this affect your decision.”
“It won’t. Believe me,” I said.
The whole office had been trying to talk me into going back to school to get my masters and become a nurse practitioner. The main argument was that I could give up dangerous detective work and not have things happen like broken ankles and the occasional murder attempt. They made it sound like I had a choice. I did not. I was Tommy Watts’ daughter, and there weren’t a lot of choices left up to me. He was a famous retired police detective who had opened his own shop, and I, as his only child, was expected to support the family business for free. The office thought I was making money chasing down lunatics, but it was costing me in more ways than one. Crimes showed up unannounced and demanding attention whether I wanted to give it or not.
“Mercy,” said Steve. “You really should consider it. You’d be great. The patients love you.”
“Let’s just see how this goes.”
More patients showed up, eliciting the same flinch and sighs of relief, until there was only one left. Stanley Cadell. Stanley was the one, but I had no idea why. He was a sixty-seven-year-old diabetes patient in a wheelchair, but the man could clear a room. There was a thump on the doors, and all the sudden, I was alone behind the desk with Steve, who immediately picked up the phone, saying, “He’s here.” There was a pause. “Mercy.” Another pause. “Right away.”
Steve looked up at me. “Can you get the door?”
“Sure,” I said, not moving.
“What are you waiting for?”
“For you to read me the warning label.”
“It’s better if you don’t know.”
“Nothing good comes after that sentence.”
Steve shook his head. “I know.”
I got the door and found a thin man with the pallor of the recently deceased waiting outside. His comb-over had flipped up and was waving at me in the breeze.
“Mr. Cadell?” I asked.
He brightened up and ran his eyes up and down my scrubs a couple of times, not in a creepy way more like he was sizing up the competition. “So…you’re the one they’ve been talking about.”
“Are you Mr. Cadell?”
“I don’t want one of those others,” he said, shifting in his seat to peer through the open door behind me.
“Others?” I asked.
“I want the girl, the pretty one with the big eyes.”
“Shawna?”
“That’s the one. I don’t want one o
f those useless doctors, and I’m not going over to Dr. Sidaway. You can’t make me. She has a mole. A big one with hairs.”
Definitely the dreaded Stanley Cadell.
“Okay. I don’t think that’ll be a problem, Mr. Cadell. You have an appointment here. Let me help you in,” I said.
“I’m not a cripple. I get around fine on my own.”
I glanced out into the mostly empty patient parking lot. There was no one waiting and no car with a handicap tag. “How did you get here?”
“Taxicab. Uber won’t take me anymore, the commie bastards,” said Mr. Cadell, laying the stink eye on me like I too might be a commie bastard.
“Alright then.” I opened the door wider for him to wheel through. “Come on in.”
“Aren’t you going to help me? I’m missing a foot here or didn’t your fancy medical training teach you to detect that?”
“I thought…oh, never mind.” I wheeled Mr. Cadell in and Steve braced himself on the desk and plastered a patently false smile on his face.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Cadell,” said Steve.
Mr. Cadell grumbled as I wheeled him past the desk and muttered something about faggots under his breath. Steve gave me his chart and whispered, “Check the chair.”
I nodded, but I had no clue what he was talking about. The chair seemed fine to me. It rolled well and had serviceable brakes. I took him into Room Three and took his vitals. They weren’t great, matching how he looked and probably felt. Mr. Cadell had one of his feet amputated since it started to rot as a complication of his diabetes and he was released from rehab the day before. I thought they’d jumped the gun on that. He had pretty much every complication you could get, from diabetes from coronary artery disease to impaired kidney function. The man was a mess and he knew it. He glared at me, questioning my technique for taking his blood pressure and lecturing me on why the new-fangled thermometers weren’t accurate. I never wanted to escape a patient so much and that’s saying something, considering I have a tendency to get vomited on.
“Can you dance?” he asked when I’d finished.
I jerked upright from looking at his stump. “What?”
“You look like Marilyn Monroe. I guess you got the surgery. Did you take the dance lessons?”
“I didn’t get surgery, Mr. Cadell. This is what I look like.”
“You look like a slut. What did your mother say about this?”
I swallowed and took a breath. It seemed pointless to say that my mother and I both were spitting images of Marilyn Monroe through no fault of our own. Mr. Cadell wasn’t interested. “She didn’t say anything. I’ll see what’s keeping Shawna.” I had a pretty good idea what was keeping our big-eyed nurse practitioner—a sense of self-preservation.
“Well, can you dance?” he insisted.
“I never thought of Marilyn as a dancer,” I said, heading for the door.
“Can you sing?”
“Not if I can help it.” I left the room and found Shawna standing in the hall, twisting her white coat in her hands.
“Is he ready for me?”
“It’s more a question of are you ready for him,” I said.
She sighed. “Let’s do it. Come on, Mercy.”
“What? He’s all yours. I’m done, unless you have a procedure.”
Please don’t have a procedure. Please don’t have a procedure.
“I need a witness and it’s your turn,” said Shawna.
“A witness?”
“In case things go bad.”
“How bad can they go? He’s a 130-pound amputee in a wheelchair.”
“He bites. There’s pending litigation.”
“With us?”
“Not so far. He likes me.”
“God help you.”
“He hasn’t so far. Mr. Cadell is still my patient.”
Shawna went in and I reluctantly followed. The checkup went pretty well until Shawna got to Mr. Cadell’s stump. It wasn’t healing as it should. Shawna had me clean and bandage the wound as she started talking about sending him to a dietitian. I got the feeling this wasn’t the first time they’d had this talk.
“I don’t need some woman telling me how to eat,” said Mr. Cadell.
“What have you been eating?” asked Shawna.
“Food.”
“Be more specific. Did you bring your food diary?”
Mr. Cadell started plucking at his American flag lap blanket. “I don’t need to do that. I know what I eat.”
“Fantastic,” she said. “What did you eat for breakfast?”
“Oatmeal,” he said with a triumphant look.
“What was in the oatmeal?”
My alarm bells went off. This was when things were going to go wrong. I finished the bandaging and backed away slowly.
“A little sugar. You have to have sugar in oatmeal,” said Mr. Cadell.
“Did you test your blood before you ate?”
“I forgot.”
Shawna rubbed her forehead. “Mr. Cadell, diet is a major factor in your disease progression.”
“I’m not fat,” he said with a certain amount of pride. In my opinion, he could’ve used some fat.
“We’ve discussed this,” said Shawna. “In your case, weight isn’t a factor. Diet is.”
Mr. Cadell rummaged around under his blanket and I was afraid he’d come out with something I very much didn’t want to see. In a weird way, he did. Mr. Cadell pulled out a Twinkie.
“Mr. Cadell!” exclaimed Shawna.
He ripped open the Twinkie and stuffed half of it in his mouth. Shawna smacked the rest out of his hand. “You can’t eat that.”
“I can eat what I want!” he yelled, pulling out another Twinkie.
I should’ve checked the wheelchair.
Shawna lunged for the Twinkie and I lunged for Shawna. I managed to hold her back from throttling the old loon.
“Do you want to lose another foot?” she yelled.
“It’s your job to make sure I don’t!” he yelled before ripping open another Twinkie.
“You make my job impossible! You must control your diet!”
“I am controlling it!”
She snatched the Twinkie away. “This is the opposite of control!”
“I want some Xanax!”
“Not unless you get therapy,” said Shawna, panting with my arms around her middle.
“I’m depressed!”
“Then get some therapy!”
“No!”
That’s when it broke loose. Twinkies were everywhere. Dingdongs and Hohos, too. Mr. Cadell had a whole Quick Mart under his blanket. It was a real sugar storm.
Chapter Two
I trudged up the stairs to my apartment covered in gooey white filling, knowing without a doubt that I wasn’t cut out to be a nurse practitioner. Heck. I wasn’t sure I was cut out to be a nurse. That had gotten totally out of hand and the worst part was that Mr. Cadell was coming back next week. I wished I could have an infant with a fever on that day. Kellie was so lucky. On the upside, Mr. Cadell was happy. I tipped the cab driver an extra twenty to take the coot off our hands, and Mr. Cadell said he couldn’t wait to see me next Wednesday. Apparently, we were the highlight of his week. He called me “Cutie” before I slammed the door. What the heck? Murderers made more sense and they never shoved yellow sponge cake up my nose. Not going to be furthering my education for more of that. I’d take the criminal lunatics over the hometown loons any day.
I made it to the last step when a bout of cursing burst out of the hall ahead of me. I’d like to say it couldn’t be, but there was no mistaking that voice. I turned the corner to find Uncle Morty kneeling in front of my door with lock picks in hand and a black backpack at his side. Uncle Morty wasn’t my blood uncle. He was my father’s best friend and the ever-present grump in my life.
He kept fiddling with the lock until there was a faint clink. He tried the knob, and cursed again when it failed to open.
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
“Trying to get in your apartment. What’s it look like?”
“May I ask why?” I asked, but I didn’t really care. I was sticky, tired, and, in a week, I had to come up with another job that paid as well as the Columbia Clinic.
Uncle Morty lurched to his feet and put his picks away in their little leather carrying case. “I got a situation.”
“Is that situation called Melvin, by chance?”
His upper lip twitched. “Open the door.”
I crossed my arms and leaned on the wall. “What’s your plan?”
“I’m gonna stay with you until he goes back to Jersey.”
My mouth fell open. Uncle Morty couldn’t stay with me. What a nightmare. A smelly, grumpy, onion pizza-loving nightmare.
I snapped my mouth shut so hard it hurt my teeth and then said, “You can’t stay with me. You’re supposed to be bonding with Melvin.”
“Screw it. I hate that guy,” he growled.
“That guy is your only brother.”
“Not my fault. I didn’t pick him. Let me in. I’m holing up here until he leaves next Saturday.”
That’s over a week. Noooo!
“You have to spend time with Melvin. Minnie said so.”
Minnie was my best hope. She was Morty’s elderly and very beloved mother. She lived with Melvin, at least officially. I think Melvin lived with her. There is a difference. Once a year, Minnie went on a Wild Widows cruise with her friends and Melvin was required to visit his brother, Morty, so they could, in Minnie’s words, reconnect. Personally, I thought it was so Melvin wouldn’t burn the house down.
“I’ll have dinner with the bastard. Once.”
“How long has he been here?” I asked.
“Two days. It’s been freaking hell.”
I put on a cheerful expression. “Two days? That’s hardly enough to say hello. You have to go back to your place.”
