“Pot roast.”
“Ooooh, mah favorite! Let’s eat!”
Okay, in some ways, I am my mother’s daughter.
Chapter Six
“Where do you think you’re going?” Gram demanded, staring at me over the rim of her teacup as I headed for the back door. “Your mother wants to give us facials.”
Not a chance.
“Sorry,” I said, barely breaking stride. “I just remembered; I have a date.”
It was a whopper of a lie, but after two hours with my mother grilling me like a patty melt about my divorce, the only way I was going to make it through the evening twitch-free was to vacate the premises.
Heaving a sigh, Gram leaned back in her easy chair. “Sure, abandon me.”
I kissed her plump cheek and grabbed my car keys. Ten minutes later, I arrived at Eddie’s Place.
Eddie’s featured the best pizza in town, and a couple dozen beers on tap, served up in a renovated red brick warehouse too far off the beaten path to benefit from the tourist trade, making it the local watering hole of choice.
Tonight, Jon Bon Jovi belted out a song about living on a prayer through the speakers bookending the well-polished oak bar, but no one in the room was listening. Everyone, Eddie included, had their attention fixed on the Seattle Mariners game on the fifty-inch flat screen mounted in the far corner—their groans after a strikeout with the bases loaded drowning both Mr. Bon Jovi and the background clatter of bowling balls striking pins in the adjoining Merritt Lanes.
Roxanne Fiske, Eddie’s wife and my best friend since grammar school, grinned at me from behind the bar, looking pretty as always with little more than a coat of mascara on her long dark lashes. “Well, look who’s up late on a school night.”
After years of working as a pastry chef and getting up before the birds, I didn’t have much of a reputation as a night owl.
“My mother’s in town.”
“Say no more,” Rox responded, pouring beer into a frosted glass. “We’ll commiserate over that, but first we need to celebrate your first day at the new job.”
Ordinarily, I’m not a beer drinker, but since she was buying I made an exception.
Tucking back several chin-length caramel strands of hair that had escaped from behind her ear, she raised her glass. “To Char, our new … what the hell is your title?”
“Among others, Deputy Coroner.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Ewwww!”
“It’s not like that. I won’t have to see any dead bodies.” At least I hoped not.
She clinked her glass with mine. “I’ll drink to that.”
The guys behind me groaned in unison, and a human mountain in greasy denim overalls stepped up to the bar and slid an empty plastic pitcher at Rox.
George Bassett, Jr. was a beefy six-foot-six redhead with a scruffy beard and a ruddy complexion. He’d been called Little Dog ever since he had strapped on his first pair of overalls and gone to work lubing engines and rotating tires for his dad, the Big Dog, at Bassett Motor Works.
“Hey ya, Chow Mein,” he said, using the nickname that had come from hanging out with Steve in high school.
I saluted him with my beer glass. “Hey, Georgie.”
He edged closer, and I smelled engine grease mixed with sweat. I also got a whiff of the salami and onions he’d had on his pizza.
“You here alone?” he asked.
I froze. George had never come on to me before. I met Rox’s brown-eyed gaze to see if she could clue me in.
She shrugged.
I inched back, trying to get a read on him. “Yep.”
“Dang! I thought your mom might be with you.”
Like she’d want to spend her evening at the local bowling alley. “She was tired and decided to turn in early.”
“Too bad. Your mom is hot,” he said, blasting me with onion breath.
I smiled at Rox. “That just never gets old.”
She slid the refilled foamy pitcher of beer toward George. “You’re quite the sweet talker, Dog.”
“What?” He looked at Rox and then back to me. “She is hot. And if I said any different, you’d know I was lyin’.”
Mainly because he’d been saying the same thing ever since I first met him back in the eighth grade. “You never disappoint, Georgie.”
He nodded, satisfied. “See?” he said to Rox, as if she needed convincing.
Sipping my beer, I turned to watch him rejoin his baseball buddies and noticed a willowy woman in her mid-forties entering the bar. She had straight reddish-brown hair that brushed the collar of her dusty rose, linen blouse. Designer jeans hugged her slim hips. The man with her wore chinos and a pressed, white cotton shirt. Casual, yet not completely casual.
They were on a date.
“Who’s that?” I asked Rox as the couple sat at a table in the far corner.
She followed my gaze. “You don’t recognize Nell?”
The only Nell I knew had thick glasses and mousy brown hair pulled back in a long braid and spent her evenings at home taking care of her mother, who had become a shut-in after she’d had a series of heart attacks.
Tonight, nothing about this woman seemed mousy. “That’s Nell Neary?”
Rox nodded. “It was a shame about her mom, but maybe that was a blessing in disguise.”
With everything I’d learned today, that blessing was feeling more unholy by the minute.
The crowd gathered around the flat screen roared. Something big had just happened. I came to the same conclusion when I saw Bernadette Neary’s daughter lean into her date’s shoulder, laughing, happy—probably for the first time in years.
Before I’d met Dr. Cardinale, I wouldn’t have given this date a second thought. But now, Jayne Elwood, Ernie Kozarek, and Nell Neary appeared to have something in common besides a dearly departed loved one.
* * *
After four sleepless hours of cursing the invention of the hide-a-bed, I headed for the upstairs bathroom like a punch-drunk boxer staggering to a neutral corner. One steamy shower, two cups of coffee, and three aspirin later, my back still ached like it had been pummeled by the Crippler, but at least I felt capable of stringing together a couple of coherent sentences.
I blasted my hair with my blow dryer, then applied a few swipes of mascara, a dab of concealer to minimize the circles under my eyes, and a swish of my mother’s bronzer to add a little glow to my chipmunk cheeks. Not that I should care that much about how I looked this morning.
Although if Kyle Cardinale were to give me another once-over like yesterday, I might care.
After smoothing on a layer of copper glaze lip gloss and checking my look in the mirror, I shrugged into a black and blue plaid tunic, which matched how I felt. Fortunately, I could still zip my black cotton twill fat pants. Barely. All the more reason for me to change into a pair of sweats and go for a jog instead of heading over to the hospital in the middle of the night. Of course, that meant I’d have to do the hair and makeup thing over again in an hour. Not happening. It was enough effort the first time around. Instead, I opted to burn a few calories by going on the hunt for a hot doctor.
Ten minutes later, I found Kyle Cardinale in the hallway outside the ER. No chocolate pudding stains on his white lab coat this time.
The corners of his mouth curled into a charming smile as he watched me approach. “You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“There’s a lot of that going around.”
I pointed at the deserted ER lobby. “Could we talk for a few minutes?”
“Sure, it’s pretty dead right now.”
Dark humor? Considering Dr. Cardinale had taken it upon himself to report the suspicious nature of Trudy’s death, if he were joking, this whistleblower was one cool cat.
“So to speak,” he added sheepishly.
I took a moss green vinyl chair next to a sparsely stocked magazine rack. He sat to my left, facing the ER desk. His knee grazed mine as he stretched out his legs.
/> He didn’t say anything about the knee contact, and I shifted in my seat to give him a little more room, which drew a little flash of amusement.
Reminding myself I’d just divorced an Italian and had no intention of hooking up with another one, even if he was a charming doctor, I pulled out a pen and my list of potential victims from my tote bag to get down to business. “You mentioned a pattern yesterday. Along with Trudy Bergeson, two patients of Dr. Straitham’s who died suddenly.”
His gaze hardened. “We already talked about this.”
“I know. I wanted to ask you about two other patients who died at the hospital—Rose Kozarek and Jesse Elwood.”
Kyle frowned. “I don’t recognize the names.” He reached for the spiral notebook in my hand. “May I?”
“They died over a year ago,” he said after a quick scan of my victims list, then handed the notebook back to me. “I didn’t start working here until last January, so I never saw them.”
“There’s an indication that they could have died under similar circumstances.” I neglected to mention that the indication had come from Lucille.
“This might be an unusual request,” and I was sure it was, “but could you find out who was on duty that night?”
He shrugged. “I can look it up.”
“And while you’re doing that, see what you could find out about how they died?”
“Anything else you’d like me to do?”
The laugh lines at the corners of his eyes deepened when I took too long to consider my options.
“Not officially,” I said, all too aware of the burn creeping into my cheeks.
I wrote my name and cell number on the back of one of Frankie’s business cards and handed it to him. “I don’t have any business cards yet.” I also didn’t know my phone number at the courthouse, but that was a pesky little detail he didn’t need to hear.
He tucked the card into his breast pocket and started to push away from the chair.
“I do have a couple of questions about the other patients of Dr. Straitham that you mentioned.”
Kyle’s jaw tightened. “Okay,” he said softly, his knuckles white as he settled back in his seat while his gaze played ping pong between a ringing telephone at the ER desk and a sandy blonde nurse zipping down the hallway.
Since this clearly wasn’t a conversation he wanted to continue, I knew I needed to get to the point before my information source decided he’d rather play doctor than detective.
I pulled the four death certificates I’d printed from the inside pocket of my notebook. “Their death certificates don’t appear to suggest anything unusual.”
“I wouldn’t expect them to.”
Oh. “Then, maybe you can fill me in on what I’m missing.”
I flipped the page and started reading. “Bernadette Neary, age seventy-six, died March 4th, three-ten a.m. Cause of death: Pneumonia.”
He glanced in the direction of the unoccupied ER desk where a custodian was mopping the vinyl with a sudsy perfume of disinfectant. “Mrs. Neary’s daughter brought her in to the ER because her mom had fallen and broken her arm. Mrs. Neary seemed disoriented and it turned out she also had pneumonia, so she was admitted and we pumped her with antibiotics and oxygen for three days.”
I scribbled notes as he talked.
“I saw her each night on rounds. By day four, her lungs sounded clearer, her sats looked good enough for her to go home, then around three, she … coded.”
“Sats?”
“Oxygen saturation level. And hers had been improving, then she suddenly stopped breathing.”
“She died?”
He nodded. “Pulmonary failure.”
I sucked in a breath and flipped the pages in my hand to Rose Kozarek’s death certificate. Cause of death: Pulmonary failure.
Just like Rose.
“And this is similar to what happened with Trudy Bergeson?”
Another nod. “Very.”
“What about Howard Jeppesen?” I turned the page. “Age eighty-three. Died May 19th, two-seventeen a.m. Cause of death: Cardiac failure.”
Kyle’s dark eyes tracked the headlights of a car pulling out of the parking lot. “I’d seen him in the ER a couple of times—chronic bronchitis. Freaked out his wife and the paramedics would bring him in. Two months ago, he was back again, coughing up blood. The senior resident admitted him.”
“And he started to get better?”
“Hell, no! He expired early the next morning.”
“Well, where’s the pattern in that?” Other than the fact that they were both patients of Dr. Straitham. And, of course, they were dead.
“It’s how he died.”
“Asphyxiation?” I asked, my voice mainly breath.
Kyle’s lips pressed into a grim line as he watched the custodian push his bucket down the empty hall. I would have bet my first paycheck Kyle had just remembered something he didn’t want to share.
His gaze hardened, his pupils constricted to the size of peppercorns. “Mr. Jeppesen’s wife was sleeping in a chair by his bed. She woke up to the sound of her husband suffocating.”
My hand flew to my mouth. “Oh God!” I didn’t think I was going to spew, but the morning was young and anything was possible.
The pager on his hip buzzed. He read the display and then turned back to me. “God didn’t have anything to do with this.”
* * *
Three hours and a pot of coffee later, I was buzzing with more than anticipation in Frankie’s office while I waited for her to finish reading my notes from my early morning meeting with Kyle Cardinale.
Frankie’s mouth tensed for a split second. “I can see where Dr. Cardinale would have some concerns.”
Some concerns! If he was right, three people had been murdered. Including Rose, four.
“So what should we do next?” I asked. “Get a statement from Mrs. Jeppesen? Find out what else she might have seen?”
Frankie’s lips thinned. “I understand that you flew solo with the Cardinale statement yesterday, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
I felt an invisible leash tighten around my neck.
“We need to find out what Dr. Zuniga has to say before talking to anyone else,” she added, meeting my gaze.
“Dr. Zuniga?”
“Henry Zuniga—a forensic pathologist who works out of Seattle. He’ll be doing the autopsy tomorrow.”
“At the hospital?”
She shook her head. “There’s no morgue here, so we have a contract with Curtis Tolliver to use his facilities at the mortuary.”
Three years ago, I’d seen Tolliver’s Funeral Home up close and personal when I’d helped Gram make the arrangements for my grandfather’s funeral. This included the sight of Curtis’s cousin Eileen, the embalmer, emerging from a back room while I was on my cell phone with my mother and pacing the hallway. Behind Eileen I’d caught a glimpse of a metal operating table.
I shivered. No doubt that same room would be the site of Trudy’s autopsy.
“Then, once we get the report of his findings,” Frankie continued, “we’ll know if we need to launch an official investigation. Until then, we’ll just sit on this.” She closed the manila file folder.
“And wait,” I added without mentioning the four to six weeks. I didn’t want her to know I’d received my information from Steve.
She flashed me a humorless smile. “You’ll find we do a lot of that around here.”
I was more of a stir, bake, and serve kind of girl, who had never been very good at sitting and waiting for six minutes, much less for six weeks.
This job was going to be tougher than I thought.
* * *
I spent most of the following morning with Ben in Judge Witten’s courtroom at the far corner of the third floor, where I’d been introduced as a Special Assistant to the Prosecution. The semi-lofty title meant that I could sit at a long wooden table with Ben and one of the assistant prosecutors, Lisa Arbuckle, during jury selection—my ass
ignment for the next two days.
Earlier in his office Ben had made his expectations for these two days crystal clear: I was to sit quietly and observe the process, and if I had a strong opinion on any prospective juror I should pass Lisa a note. I got the message, the same one Duke had delivered on Monday. Keep your yap shut.
And that’s exactly what I did. That was, when I wasn’t yawning.
Two hours and a twenty-minute recess later, we broke for lunch early because the defense attorney had a meeting. Fine by me. With the mystery of Trudy’s death not far from my thoughts, this gave me a little extra time to grab a quick tuna sandwich at Duke’s, then head south on Main Street and walk the four and a half blocks to Tolliver’s Funeral Home.
With every step something told me that I should do an about-face. The way I saw it, I could heed that advice, hightail it back to the courthouse and continue to play the waiting game, or I could roll the dice and maybe get lucky and catch Dr. Zuniga before he left town.
I spotted an unmarked white pickup with a rounded white canopy parked in the Tolliver’s parking lot. Since the igloo on wheels didn’t look like the typical vehicle belonging to the bereaved, I thought about going inside to see what I could find out, but the mere thought of asking, “How’s the autopsy going?” made the tuna sandwich in my stomach do a belly flop. To avoid a sudden reappearance of my lunch on my slingbacks, I popped a peppermint and sat on a bench under a shade tree in the parking lot.
After about fifteen minutes, a woman in her early fifties carrying a navy duffel bag exited the funeral home. A stout man hauling a matched pair of aluminum cases the size of carry-on bags followed the woman to the truck.
“Dr. Zuniga?” I called after him.
He turned. “Yes?”
With a thick head of salt and pepper hair and a face well worn with lines, Dr. Zuniga appeared to be around sixty. He smelled like antibacterial soap, reminding me that I didn’t want to think about where his hands had just been.
“I’m Deputy Coroner Charmaine Digby.” I showed him my badge.
He squinted at it, then his face crinkled into a smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those around here. You must be new, Charmaine Digby.”
“Very. But I hope you won’t hold it against me.”
Wendy Delaney - Working Stiffs 01 - Trudy, Madly, Deeply Page 5
