Coughing & Donuts: A Mercy Mares Cozy Mystery

by Ava Mallory

  I felt a mixture of relief and apprehension. I'd spent the last few days going over every possible scenario in my head, wondering if I'd missed something.

  “Hello?” She asked. In my mind, I thought I'd responded to her, but apparently not.

  “Oh, sorry. I was in la-la land.” I said.

  “Girl, that's fine. We've all been a little out of it lately, but now that you-know-who confessed, we can finally start to get back to normal.” She said it so flippantly, as if the two murders were no big deal.

  “I haven't heard anything on the news about Rollie's death. Have you heard anything?” I asked.

  “No, not really. Sad, isn't it? I guess we'll never know why things like that happen.” She said.

  Like what? I still hadn't heard how Rollie had died and trying to visit Karen was the equivalent of getting a seat next to the President at his inauguration. It wasn't happening. I had to resort to having flowers and a card sent to her. That was so impersonal, but I had hoped that I'd get to have a moment with her before his services.

  I almost asked Amy flat-out how Rollie died, but for what could possibly be the first time in my life, I gave it a second before I asked the question and decided to go with another tactic altogether.

  “I know. I can't believe it. Has anything like that ever happened in Pleasant Cove before?” Well played, if I do say so myself.

  She giggled nervously. “Honestly, I don't really know what happened. Do you?”

  Great, it was the blind leading the blind around here.

  “You know what? I haven't slept today. I should try and grab a nap before work. I'll see you later?” The old avoid the question with a question was quickly becoming my new go-to method.

  “Oh, okay. Well, we'll talk later. Make sure you bring your name tag and your ID when you go to work. They won't let you in otherwise and they are checking bags on the way in and out now too.” She informed me before hanging up.

  I looked at the clock. I had approximately ten hours before I had to be at work. If I left now, I'd have plenty of time to pay Brandi a visit to get some more in depth information from her and seek out Alma to ask her some questions before digging into Eli's background. He had to have family nearby. I didn't imagine that this zip code was one a young man could afford without help from someone. I wondered if there was a girlfriend nearby. He had to have someone in his life that cared about him. Ten hours was plenty of time to find something out without getting in trouble. I hoped.

  *

  Brandi had me fooled. The way she spoke, I envisioned that she lived in some rundown place on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. What I wasn't expecting to find were swanky apartments in a gated area that required a phone call from a guard before entering the neighborhood. She played me like a fiddle.

  The female guard said, “Tell me your name again.”

  I stared ahead at the apartment complexes nestled between hills and beautiful lots as if I'd just landed on Earth a few minutes earlier.

  The guard cleared her throat.

  “Mercedes Mares. She knows me by Mercy. I'm a nurse in the...” I smiled nervously. “I work at the hospital.”

  She grunted. “Oh, the psych hospital. Okay. Let me give her a call and tell her you're here.”

  I watched as people strolled through the neighborhood, some in tennis gear, others in designer duds mimicking styles I'd seen on the covers of magazines. My ancient jalopy stuck out like a sore thumb in this neighborhood, not to mention the equally ancient woman with the humidity-controlled hair and nursing scrubs older than my car.

  “She's says to go on over. Follow this path up until you get to the creek, then hang a quick left and go up the hill. You can't miss the buildings. They are white. Pull into the back. There's visitor parking there. Walk around to the front of the building and they'll direct you from there.” I didn't hear a word she'd said. I was still mesmerized by the scenery.

  “Ma'am, go.” The guard said, knocking on my window.

  “Yeah, can I ask you something? Is this place guarded twenty-four hours a day? If someone came here at night, how difficult would it be to get in here?” I asked, not realizing how awful that sounded.

  She looked at me like I'd lost my mind. “You do realize that you sound like someone plotting a burglary, don't you?”

  I did. I was just hoping that she didn't.

  “I'm just curious. I'm new in town and in the market for a new place.” I was getting pretty good at this lying thing.

  She looked from me to my car and back again. I knew what she was thinking, but would she say it out loud?

  Nope.

  “The police patrol this area pretty heavily. The whole town is pretty safe. We tend to take care of our own around here.” She answered.

  “That's great!” I had to keep this rouse going. “So, do the police have access to this area at night or like if a guard is not around.”

  Her eyebrows quirked up. She was curious to see where I was going with this conversation.

  “They have access. Too much, if you ask me, but the residents are safe. Let's just say, our local police captain has a little crush on one of those celebrity types and things get a little sketchy sometimes.” She looked around to see if anyone nearby had heard her.

  “Celebrity? Famous people live in these apartments?” In all the time I'd been here I still hadn't had an official sighting of any Hollywood types, except for the media and, as far as I knew, none of the patients I'd seen were anyone I recognized from television or the movies.

  The guard looked at me wide-eyed. “You're surrounded by them. This isn't Hollywood. This is where they come to get away from that scene. Everyone and I do mean everyone, is somehow connected to Hollywood. The crush I was telling you about isn't really a star yet, but she's trying real hard to be. She's got her claws into some big movie producer and is holding on for dear life. He foots the bill for her and her kids. Word is though, that the kids have money that they inherited from some rich dead relatives and they are trying to create some kind of clothing line that all the kids will want to wear. I don't know the whole story, but just so you know, once you step into Pleasant Cove, you've essentially landed in good old Hollywood, U.S.A.”

  I thanked her for the information and slowly drove in, trying to wrap my mind around what she'd said. Of all the people I'd seen on the street, I would have never guessed that I was in the presence of a star. Everyone looked so normal. I really needed to start paying more attention to people in movies and on television.

  Brandi stood outside her building as I pulled up the hill. She waved frantically. I followed the guard's directions and pulled around to the back of the building and parked. Brandi ran to meet me.

  “Hi, did you have any trouble finding me?” She asked, pulling me in for a hug.

  In the getup she was wearing, I'd be willing to place my bets that NASA satellites could spot her light years away. I'm all for sparkle, but a silver sequenced jumpsuit at this or any hour of the day was a bit much. Where was she going? To perform on stage somewhere?

  “No, no trouble at all,” I answered, leaving the conversation I'd had with the security guard out of the equation.

  “Good. Good. Well, come on in and see my dump.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the front entrance.

  “I'm on the top floor. We'll just hop on the elevator, I guess. I just got back from the gym and my glutes are killing me,” she said.

  Of course they are. They are probably begging for relief from that hideous outfit, I thought.

  When we stepped inside her apartment, my jaw dropped. It was immaculate from top to bottom. Everything was starch white. From the tiled floors to the overstuffed L-shaped sofa that sat in the middle of the expansive room, with a full view of the spectacular scenery out past the terrace.

  “Sorry, I haven't had a chance to clean today.” Brandi said, throwing herself onto a hammock that was suspended from the ceiling. “Sit down. Put your feet up. Tell me what other questions you had.
”

  I chose a seat that pulled up to the most enormous marble dining table I'd ever seen in my life. How many people live here, I wondered.

  “This place is gorgeous. It's like something out of a magazine.” I couldn't find a single thing that I didn't like about it, other than I'd never have enough room or enough money in my life to be even remotely close to being able to afford a knickknack in the room, let alone an actual piece of furniture.

  “It's a step up from my old life. That's for sure.” She said. “So, have you been able to find anything out?”

  You mean like the fact that you have a wealthy boyfriend who pays for an apartment worth more than my entire neighborhood, then, yes, I have found out some interesting facts.

  “I actually had a few more questions for you.” I smiled. “It seems like every time I turn around new information lands in my lap.”

  She pulled a cigarette out from behind her ear and lit it. “Yeah, this place will do that to you.”

  There was no skirting the issue. She'd asked me to help, so she had better have prepared herself for some hard questions from me.

  “Are you and Lou in a relationship?” I asked.

  She flinched, sitting up awkwardly in the hammock. “No. Why would you ask me that?”

  I didn't want to tell her in case I was dead wrong, so I had to come up with something that sounded plausible.

  “I'm just asking because I don't know where an investigation could lead. For all I know I could stumble onto someone close to you being the killer. Aren't you the one that said to look into Lou in the first place?” I reminded her.

  “Yeah, but I didn't say anything about having a relationship with him. Not now. Not ever. I know his ex-wife. I like her. They have their problems. That's for sure, but I'm not one of their problems.” She assured me. I was inclined to believe her.

  One question asked. A million more to go.

  “Does Lou want to have a relationship with you?” I asked, suspecting that I knew the answer already.

  I think I'd touched a nerve. Her eyebrows twitched as she contemplated how to answer my question.

  Finally, she said, “I don't think he really did. I think he was just feeling lonely. His marriage was on the rocks. I'd just asked Mike to leave. It was a crazy time...” Her voice trailed off.

  “Brandi? Is there something else that you want to tell me?” I got the sense that there was so much more that she wasn't telling me.

  “Okay, so he still finds excuses to stop by and he drives by a lot, but that's just because he is being protective of us. It's not like Mike ever really was. He just wanted to make sure that I was miserable for the rest of my life.” She said.

  I glanced out the window at the view, remembering what she'd said about Lou leaving because of her dog. She said he'd gone to sit outside and watched her place. Why? She had security. She lived on the top floor and, as far as I could tell, she didn't have a dog.

  I looked around for a food bowl, a dog bed, any dog toys and there were none in plain sight.

  I asked, “Where's your dog?”

  She opened her mouth, then, shut it again, following my gaze. “What?”

  “Your dog? You said that Lou left because he was allergic to your dog, but I don't see a dog. Where is it?” Why would she lie about her pet? Who lies about the family pet?

  “They are at the groomers. Lou is deadly allergic to dogs and all kinds of other things. He and Mike had that in common too. I think I told you that already. They were allergic to everything under the sun.” She explained.

  I stood up and walked over to the window to look out.

  Interesting.

  “Any other questions? I could show you the dogs' room?” She asked.

  The dogs have their own room? How rich are these people?

  “I do have some actually.” I answered. Time to get it all out in the open. “What is your relationship with Eli Pardo? Even if it doesn't seem like much of a big deal, it could be important. How long have you known Alma? And, tell me about your boyfriend.”

  “Boy, when someone tells you to dig for information, you go for the jugular, don't you?” She laughed nervously. What was it with her? I wanted to believe that she had nothing to do with Mike's murder, but she wasn't making it easy for me.

  “One more – what was your relationship with Rollie?” I didn't think I wanted to hear the answer to this question. I feared she'd make me see Rollie in a different light and I didn't want to do that. It would put me in a really strange predicament and possibly break my heart. Rollie and Karen were good friends. I didn't want to know if he did anything that would jeopardize everything I thought I knew about him.

  She pulled her hair back and tied it up in one fell-swoop. “I've told you this before, everyone knows everyone around here. If you spend any amount of time here, you are bound to run into darn near everyone. To answer your question about Rollie, I met him and his wife at the restaurant. They were regular customers. He had a standing reservation every Sunday morning for brunch.”

  That made sense.

  “Okay, and what about Lou and Eli?” I couldn't let her off the hook just yet.

  She stopped, seeming to become angry. She stood up all of a sudden and walked to the adjoining kitchen and pulled out a bottle of wine.

  I glanced at my watch. “Is it wine o'clock?”

  “It has been lately. I'm barely hanging on by a thread here. Mike's dead. The kids are heartbroken. Lou is more hostile than normal. My boyfriend is mad at me. I'm telling you, my whole life is in shambles. If someone doesn't find out what happened to Mike and Rollie soon, I don't know what I'm going to do.”

  “Why is your boyfriend mad?” I asked, hopeful that she'd fill me in as to who he was when she answered.

  “He's a little older than me and his whole family has been making our lives difficult ever since we got together, but we don't choose who we fall in love with, you know. It just happens.” She paused, taking a drink of her wine. “He's a producer, mostly action movies and stuff like that. His youngest son is adding a lot of stress to his life right now. That's really all I could say about that without it becoming a big thing.”

  “What kind of big thing?” I asked.

  She took another drink. “Murder.”

  “What are you saying? Your boyfriend killed Mike?” I stood up, my heart beginning to race. If that were true, I needed to get out of there and do so quickly.

  Brandi put her hand up. “No, he's not a murderer. Forget what I said. I'm just getting stressed from all sides. His kids hate me. Lou is angry because he thinks I had something to do with Mike's death. My kids blame me for what happened. Of course, Simon doesn't like any of what's going on because of what it could do to his career. Everything is just falling apart.”

  “Is Simon your boyfriend?” I asked, trying to make the connection between his first name and names I'd read in the rags. “Wait a minute! Simon Pardo is your boyfriend? Are you kidding me? So, that means that Simon is Eli's...”

  She finished my sentence for me. “Eli's father.”

  I was flabbergasted. I stopped cold, clutching a chair to steady myself. “Isn't Simon Pardo married to that actress from some soap opera?”

  Her face turned red. “She's not on the soap opera anymore. She's a Hollywood correspondent for some news program now. Her name is Adrienne, but she goes by her stage name – Paula Kay.”

  I put my head in my hands, trying to wrack my brain to remember where I'd seen her last.

  “Wait! She lives here?” I asked, all of this new information sinking in.

  Brandi nodded.

  “She was taking my picture one night when I was at Lou's restaurant and, I might be mistaken, but I think she tried to interview me at the hospital the day Rollie was killed. She's so young. She's Eli's mother?” I couldn't believe it.

  “She's had a lot of work, but yes, if we're talking about the same woman, she's Eli's mother.” Brandi answered. “I think I have a picture of her somewhere.”
/>
  A few minutes later, Brandi pulled a photo out of a frame and put it in my hand. “Is this the woman you saw?”

  I was staring at the face of the reporter who had questioned me at the hospital.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Well, Chevy, if you ask me, I say that you can't trust an ex-wife. Not one single bit, so your problem is solved.” This was the third phone call I'd received from my favorite former patient within a week.

  “I hear what you're saying, but honestly, I don't know what to believe. It seems like everyone had issues with him, but what I don't get is if he didn't have any money or anything of real value, then, why kill him?” At any other given time, I might have tried to avoid having this conversation with an elderly man, but these circumstances were so bewildering, I figured he'd be as good as anyone to speak to about it.