“Morning,” I said, suddenly spitless.
He cocked his head. “Do you work here?”
“Uh … I help out some.”
“Lucky me,” he said with a predatory smile.
And unlucky me.
Since Lucille was busy giving the Gray Ladies their checks, I plopped a menu and a white mug in front of Jake and reached for the carafe. “Coffee?”
“Never touch the stuff.”
Steve pushed his mug at me. “I do.”
My hand shook as I filled Steve’s coffee mug.
“Relax,” Steve whispered.
Like that could happen.
Jake’s gaze tracked me as I returned the carafe to the warmer. “Will I see you in class tomorrow?” he asked.
Heck no. “Maybe. If I can get away.”
Jake nodded, assessing, appraising. He raised his water glass to me. “I’ll look forward to tomorrow then.”
Wow, this guy was good. I had a feeling that the petite blonde closing in on us like a buff swat team of one thought so, too.
“Fancy meeting you here.” Suzy possessively placed a hand on Jake’s shoulder and leveled her ice blue gaze at me. She smiled, a thin veil over the stormy flash of anger I’d just witnessed.
She waved a green order ticket at me. “Would you mind ringing me up? I’m in a bit of a hurry.” She turned to Jake. “See you later.”
“Later,” he said, winking at me.
Criminy! Did he have to act so cavalier in front of his girlfriend?
I followed Suzy to the cash register. With a frosty glare, she handed me the order ticket and a crisp ten dollar bill. “What are you doing?”
Huh? “Making change.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Just now, with Jake?”
She squinted at me with the same look of disdain as the master chef who had once referred to my pumpkin banana mousse as “barfait.” He was right, of course. I should have rethought the pumpkin.
I didn’t need to rethink anything having to do with Jake. I needed to get away from him—his crazy girlfriend, too.
“Steve and I were just talking with Jake,” I said.
“Steve and you ….” The tension in Suzy’s thin lips eased into a cool smile. “Good, because Jake isn’t for you.”
It didn’t look like Jake would be the one for her, either, but I couldn’t exactly inform her that it was because her boyfriend was destined for some big, hairy dude in cell block D.
Suzy slipped her change into her wallet and smiled sweet as one of my grandmother’s sugar cookies. “Have a great day.”
The odds of that happening were only slightly better than me being able to fit into my little black dress in the harsh light of day.
As Suzy started for the door, I raced to the kitchen to make a getaway to the courthouse, but before I had a chance to pull off my apron, Lucille rounded the corner.
“Did you hear the news?” she asked, her face flushed.
Duke and Alice turned to face Lucille.
“Peggy was rushed to the hospital this morning. The girls were just telling me that she felt tingling in her left arm, so Carmen took her to the ER. They’re running tests, but it looks like she had a heart attack.”
Alice sucked in a breath. “Oh dear.”
Lucille nodded. “If I were her husband, I’d be standing vigil over my wife the next couple of nights,” she announced, ladling Steve’s oatmeal into a bowl.
I hated agreeing with the resident conspiracy theorist, but since all the murders had taken place after midnight, an all-night vigil seemed like a good precaution.
“Here we go again,” Duke said with a groan as he plated a stack of pancakes.
Not if I could help it.
I glanced through the cutout window in front of Duke and met the inquiring eyes of Jake Divine. He crooked his finger at me.
I swallowed the growing lump in my throat and took the bowl of oatmeal from Lucille. “I’m heading that way.” And I didn’t want her to. The last thing we needed was for Peggy to be offered up as the killer’s next victim because of Lucille’s loose lips.
Steve sipped his coffee as he watched me round the corner.
I set the bowl in front of Steve and turned to Jake. “I’m sure Lucille will be right over with your order. I actually have to go to work, so—”
“Did I just hear her say that Peggy had a heart attack?” Jake asked without an iota of emotion.
Shit. And Steve thought I had a loud inside voice.
“I really don’t know,” I said in little more than a whisper, my chest fluttering with butterflies ready to take flight to the nearest exit. “Lucille doesn’t always get her facts straight, so I wouldn’t make too much out of anything you might have heard.”
“I’ll call the hospital when I get to work. If it was a heart attack, I’m sure Arlene will want to send flowers.” He punctuated the statement with a charmer’s smile, but his dark eyes held as much warmth as my ex-husband’s when he handed me the keys to his Jaguar.
“Flowers are nice.” But a bodyguard would make a more useful gift.
I locked eyes with Steve as Lucille delivered Jake’s breakfast order.
Steve shook his head.
Walk away, Char.
I excused myself, grabbed my tote and sprinted to the parking lot, where I promptly threw up.
Chapter Twenty
Wanda McCormick did a double take when I stood at the police station counter a half hour later. “You look a little green around the gills. Are you okay, hon?”
I was a lot better than Peggy was going to be if Steve didn’t put a 24-hour watch on Jake Divine.
“I’m fine. I just need to speak with Steve for a few minutes.”
A few seconds after Wanda punched four numbers on her telephone, Steve opened the security door. “It didn’t take long for you to get here.”
I stepped past him, inhaling a note of menthol from his aftershave. “What are we going to do about Peggy?” I asked on the way down the hall to the Investigation Division.
Steve closed his office door and took a seat behind his uncluttered metal desk. “We aren’t going to do anything.”
“Fine. Then at least tell me that you’ll put a tail on Jake Divine.”
“You watch too much TV.”
“Okay, then do whatever you need to so that if he makes a move on Peggy, you can arrest him.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about Peggy.”
She was over seventy, had connections to the senior center, and her husband was in the same bowling league as Norm and Ernie. Not that I was all that crazy about Lucille’s bowling league theory, but given everything I’d learned since the morning Trudy had died, I didn’t want to take any chances.
“You were there,” I reminded Steve. “Jake heard everything Lucille said. What if Peggy becomes his next target?”
Steve glanced at his Timex and pushed out of his chair. “I have a meeting in a few minutes, but I can tell you that you’re making too much out of this.”
As usual, he was telling me the truth, just not the whole truth.
“I’m making too much out of the fact that Peggy’s going to be a sitting duck in the hospital?”
He blew out a breath. “Have you seen her recently?”
“She was at Jake’s aerobics class yesterday.”
“An aerobic workout—so, until this morning, she seemed pretty healthy. Could you have said the same for Trudy?”
“No, but—”
“Then don’t worry about Peggy Como. I’m sure she’s in good hands at the hospital.”
That made intellectual sense, but I worked more from gut instinct, and my instincts told me to be wary of anything Jake Divine might say or do. And since he seemed very interested in Peggy’s condition, I couldn’t help but worry about where that interest might lead.
“I have to go,” Steve said, shrugging his shoulders into a midnight blue blazer.
I followed him out of his offic
e.
“Be good,” he said as he held the security door open for me. “And promise me that you’ll stay away from Jake Divine and the senior center.”
I raised my right hand. “I swear I won’t go to the senior center.” Fortunately, he didn’t mention the hospital.
* * *
After spending the rest of the morning sitting in on Lisa’s interviews with two additional less than reliable witnesses to the aggravated assault case, we broke for lunch and I made tracks to Duke’s.
Aunt Alice pulled off her white apron the instant I stepped through the kitchen door. “Good. I want to get to Norm’s before the macaroni and cheese gets cold.”
“You made mac and cheese?” I loved my great-aunt’s mac and cheese. All the carbs and every bit of the fat. Definitely not heart-healthy diet food, and I didn’t care. Especially now that I knew I didn’t have to worry about Warren Straitham administering some vigilante justice on me for not following his dietary advice.
“It’s for Norm,” she admonished, pointing at a blue and white insulated cooler on the table. “You’re on a diet, remember?”
Like my growling stomach needed the reminder.
I set the plastic cooler with the mac and cheese and the apple pie in the back seat of the Jag and held the passenger door open for Alice.
With her eyes squeezed shut, my great-aunt held her breath as she eased herself into the bucket seat.
“Your ‘hitch in your giddy-up’ looks like it’s getting worse,” I said.
Alice glared at me as she reached for the seatbelt. “It’ll go away. I just need to get off my feet for a little while.”
Right. That was wishful thinking at best.
“I know you don’t want to see Dr. Straitham,” I said as I slid into the driver’s seat, “but we could swing by the clinic across the street from the hospital and—”
“No! I’m fine.”
“Uh huh. And people think I’m a bad liar.”
Closing her eyes, Alice leaned back against the headrest. “I’m just fine,” she muttered as I pulled out of the parking lot.
I had the distinct impression that I wasn’t the one in the car she was trying to convince.
After a silent five-minute drive up the hill past the hospital and a right on J Street, I parked in front of the Bergeson’s modest rambler.
Alice frowned at the Buick sedan parked in the driveway.
I didn’t recognize the car. “Belong to someone you know?”
“Bonnie Haney. Damned vulture. Swooping in the second Trudy’s out of the picture.”
“Maybe she’s being neighborly and is checking in on him. Like you are.”
Alice scowled.
Yeah, I didn’t believe it, either.
I pulled the cooler from the back seat and opened the passenger door.
Staring out the windshield, Alice hugged her arms to her chest. “I’ll wait here … and stay off my feet.”
Fine by me. If she was right about Bonnie Haney, it would be easier for me to talk to the woman without my great-aunt wagging her finger at Mrs. Haney and accusing her of staking a claim on Norm.
Seconds after I rang the doorbell, Norm Bergeson swung the front door open.
He stood a little taller than a week ago Saturday, like a weight on his shoulders had been lifted. His light blue eyes, magnified by his trifocals, looked bloodshot—I suspected from a lack of sleep.
“Well, at least my visitors are starting to get a little younger,” he said with a brittle smile.
“Hi, Mr. Bergeson. My Aunt Alice wasn’t quite up to coming in, but she thought you might enjoy the sour cream apple pie and mac and cheese she baked for you.”
He stood on the front step and gave Alice a wave. “Don’t tell her that I’ve already got a refrigerator full of macaroni. I’ll be happy to take the pie off your hands, though.”
After Norm ushered me in, I locked gazes with a less than pleased Virginia Straitham sitting in his living room.
Holy cannoli! I’d just caught the self-appointed matchmaker in the act.
Bonnie Haney waved to me from the loveseat opposite Virginia’s chair. It was a good thing that Aunt Alice was out in the car because she would have combusted at the sight of Trudy’s silver-plated tea service sitting on the coffee table in front of Bonnie.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said, my heart racing as Virginia frowned at me like I was a pesky wasp buzzing her silver-streaked beehive.
Norm led the way to the kitchen. “We were talking about old times.”
On legs rubbery with adrenaline, I carried the cooler to the kitchen counter and sucked in the familiar aroma of vanilla and brown sugar. Someone had been baking—Alice’s apple pie had competition.
“Old times?” I asked. With Bonnie Haney?
Unlike Ernie, Norm didn’t hang out at the senior center, and as far as I knew, Bonnie and Trudy weren’t close friends. Other than being acquainted with Virginia Straitham, I itched to learn what Norm and Bonnie had in common.
I set the pie tin next to a cooling coffee cake on the tile counter, and Norm pulled a fork out of a drawer.
“Ancient times, back in my twenties when I worked in the maintenance department at the hospital in Port Townsend.” He scooped out a forkful of apple pie and shut his eyes as he chewed. “Tell Alice she hasn’t lost her touch,” he said, stabbing another bite.
I was more interested in where he was going with his story about working at the hospital. “So, you knew Mrs. Haney back then?”
He nodded. “Her husband, Buck, was my boss for a couple of years until he went into business for himself. Shortly after that I became head of the department.”
“I didn’t realize you two went back that far.”
“We all did.”
“Who all?”
He smiled, bittersweet. “Buck and Bonnie, Ginny and Warren, me and Trudy. We all met there.”
What? “Virginia Straitham worked at that hospital?”
“Fresh out of nursing school, I think.”
“She’s a nurse?” A nurse—someone who would have lots of experience administering injections.
Norm looked past me. “Isn’t that right, Ginny? Wasn’t PT General your first job out of nursing school?”
I froze, my pulse pounding in my ears, as Virginia sauntered into the kitchen with the silver tea pot. For a big woman, she moved quietly.
“That’s right.” She filled an electric kettle from the tap. “Seems like a million years ago.”
Norm’s eyes misted. “Seems like yesterday.”
I only cared about the here and now, especially since I suddenly had a suspect who probably knew a dozen ways to kill a patient without leaving a trace.
Bonnie entered the kitchen and made a beeline to the apple pie. “Oh, doesn’t that look delicious.” She patted Norm on the hand. “We should probably use a plate, though. Don’t you think?”
With a sigh punctuating his thoughts, Norm walked around to the other side of the counter, hunkered down on one of the barstools, and cupped his chin with his palm.
Oblivious to the annoyance radiating from Norm, Bonnie smiled at me as she reached for the plates. “Will you be joining us for tea?”
I’d seen all I wanted to see, so I took that as my cue to leave. “Alice is outside, waiting in the car.”
Bonnie’s eyes brightened as if a fluorescent bulb had clicked on in her head. “You and Alice wouldn’t be heading to the hospital from here, would you?”
I would be later, but I had no intention of tipping off Virginia Straitham to that fact. “We hadn’t planned to. Why?”
“I have a get well gift for Peggy in the car.” Bonnie’s thin lips flattened. “Of course, you’ve heard about her heart attack.”
Virginia clucked her tongue. “I kept telling Peggy that she needed to pay more attention to her diet. All that cheese. Warren warned her that with her high cholesterol she needed to change her ways, but did she listen?”
I shut the lid of the cooler so
she couldn’t see the macaroni and cheese I planned to scarf down for lunch.
Bonnie pressed her hand on Virginia’s shoulder. “I’m sure she’ll be okay. Maybe this will serve as a warning—something that will encourage her to make a few lifestyle changes.”
“Maybe,” Virginia said, solemnly staring out the kitchen window. “But not all of us listen to warnings.”
My gut told me she wasn’t referring to Peggy’s last checkup.
With Norm sitting at the counter, I couldn’t very well ask Virginia any leading questions about what warning signs Trudy might have received, so I grabbed my lunch box, said my goodbyes, and hightailed it to the front door.
“Thank you so much for coming,” Bonnie said, acting the part of the perfect hostess as she opened the door for me.
I felt like telling her to not get too cozy in that role. Once Norm learned the truth about Trudy’s death, it wouldn’t matter what old times he, Bonnie, and Virginia had shared. That tie would no longer be binding, and he’d be telling them to get the hell out of his kitchen.
Back in the Jag, I tried to convince Aunt Alice to let me take her to the clinic across from Chimacam Memorial. Since she stubbornly insisted that she just needed to stay off her feet for a little while, I drove her home. After fixing her a cup of tea and making her promise to call me if she changed her mind, I went back to Duke’s to fill my stomach with mac and cheese and my head with the latest scuttlebutt from the hospital.
Lucille frowned when she saw me pull the untouched casserole dish from the cooler. “I thought Alice baked that for Norm.”
“She did, but his refrigerator was full so he bequeathed it to me.” I grabbed two white bowls and pulled out a couple of forks from the utensil drawer. “We just won’t tell her.”
Lucille shot me a conspiratorial grin as she joined me at the table.
Duke glanced back over his shoulder. “Did you take Alice home?”
“Yep. She said she was going to rest, but you and I both know that she needs to see a doctor.”
He nodded. “Try telling her that.”
I had. Several times.
“You know why she won’t go,” Lucille said with her mouth full. “She’s still convinced that Doc Straitham killed Rose and Trudy. And that alibi his girlfriend gave him? She doesn’t buy it. I’m not so sure that I do, either.”
Wendy Delaney - Working Stiffs 01 - Trudy, Madly, Deeply Page 19
