Meredith Potts Fourteen Book Cozy Mystery Set

by Meredith Potts

  Steven had been so convinced that he could get some useful information out of her, but he had fared no better than I had. That didn’t sit well with him. He took one last stab at getting some new details from her. “You don’t remember anything else, then?”

  The mystery woman shook her head. “I’m sorry. That’s all.”

  Steven tried not to look so visibly discouraged in front of her. He gave her a sympathetic look to cover up his disappointment, but I could see right through it. “That’s okay. I’m sure it will come back to you eventually. Just let us know when it does.”

  Tony Mancuso, the male paramedic who was treating the woman, encouraged her to relax. “Try not to put too much strain on your mind. You have been through a lot.”

  When Tony finished giving advice to Jane, he pulled Steven and me aside. Once we were out of the Jane’s earshot, Tony spoke up.

  “You really need to let her rest. She has a pretty substantial concussion. We have to get her to the hospital in case her injuries are worse than they appear,” Tony said.

  ***

  Jane certainly wouldn’t be going to the hospital alone. If the person who had caused the gash on her head was still alive, they would most likely be looking for her. The hospital would be the first logical place to check. Wherever Jane went, Steven knew he had to have a police presence there.

  Before Steven drove over to the hospital, he waited for his deputies and the police department’s K9 teams to show up at the forest. There was a large swath of area to cover, and he wanted the search to start immediately.

  Once the K9 teams sprang into action, Steven and I jumped into his squad car and headed off to the hospital. If the police dogs or deputies found anything, Steven would only be a call on the radio away.

  Chapter Three

  I immediately snapped on the heater as I sat in the passenger seat of Steven’s car. It came as no surprise to me that he didn’t have the heater on. Without fail, I always seemed to be colder than him. Many of our dates had ended with me wearing the sweater or jacket that he had brought for himself. He always gave me his jacket without argument. Part of that was because he was chivalrous. The other part was that he liked to pretend that he was never cold, even if I believed he was just saying it for show.

  That morning, thankfully, he didn’t lodge a protest to putting the heat on. There was a distinct nip in the air that had chilled my bones. It was October nineteenth on the calendar, but judging by the weather, it might as well have been December. Winter temperatures had decided to come a little early to central Wisconsin.

  Normally, I hated the cold. In this case, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. While I had a heater, if the mystery woman’s attacker was still roaming the woods, they were left to brave the elements. Perhaps the chill in the air would be so discomforting for them that it would lead to them making a poor decision. My only wish was for a little impromptu rain. One of the few things that people hated more than anything was being both wet and cold at the same time.

  Unfortunately, the skies were blue and clear. As I sat in the passenger seat, the car’s heater brought welcome relief to my bones. I could finally think straight again. There was so much to consider.

  I wasn’t alone. Steven fidgeted in his seat, deep in thought. He had a faraway look in his eyes. I could tell that he had plenty on his mind. He just didn’t vocalize any of it. Then again, I was quiet as well.

  As the seconds ticked by, I began to wonder who would speak first. The longer the silence went on between us, the more awkward things got. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.

  I broke the ice. “Wild morning, huh?”

  My comment elicited a good chuckle from Steven, as my ridiculous understatements were prone to do. That was exactly my intention. When it came to work, Steven had a natural intensity to him. That stood in stark contrast to the laidback Steven he became when he was off the clock. As a matter of fact, I had never seen someone cut loose so quickly after their work shift ended. While his ability to juggle those two distinctly different sides of his personality was an admirable ability, he did have a tendency to dart from one extreme to another.

  I thought it would be nice for him to meet me in the middle, especially given how tightly wound he was right then.

  Steven’s eyes widened. “You aren’t kidding, Mel. I’ll say it has been wild. It’s a good thing I had some coffee in my system, or I would have been woefully unprepared for what happened.”

  “Java or not, how can you really be prepared for finding a woman with no memory frantically running through the woods?”

  “Fair point.”

  “A morning like this makes me wonder what kind of afternoon we’ll have.”

  Steven wasn’t shy about his opinion. “I have a feeling things are about to get a lot wilder.”

  I nodded. “I have that feeling, too. This mystery woman has been through a lot already, but my gut is telling me we’re only just scratching the surface of what’s to come.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. My hunch is that the deeper we start digging, the hairier this situation will get.”

  “Speaking of hairy situations, I can’t believe someone gave her such a severe concussion that it took her memory away.”

  Steven cut my speculation short with a stern warning of his own. “I would not jump to such big conclusions, given the paucity of information we have about what really happened.”

  His response took me by surprise, mostly because he wasn’t normally so dismissive of my theories. I had grown accustomed to us bantering back and forth, throwing out ideas in a freewheeling fashion. To me, it was clear that I had to find out where his resistance was coming from.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Has it occurred to you that Jane Doe might not be the victim here?”

  Actually, that thought had not crossed my mind at all. Now that Steven had planted the seed in my mind, it began to grow. It made for an interesting theory—one that I could neither confirm nor refute.

  “You think she was the perpetrator?” I asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I just know I can’t rule anything out. It’s my job to consider every possibility.”

  I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. Steven’s mouth said one thing, but his body language was telling me another. The words he had used were open ended and noncommittal. As I watched him fidget in the driver’s seat looking generally uncomfortable, I began to think that his feelings about Jane were far less fluid than he let on.

  Since I truly had no idea what to believe right then, I phrased my question as gently as possible. “So you really think she might have done this, then?”

  Steven shrugged his shoulders. “Like I said, I don’t want to jump to conclusions quite yet. Half of the police department is out searching the forest right now. What if they find a dead body?”

  “That would sure turn everything upside down. Then again, that’s a big if,” I replied.

  “True, but it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility, either. According to Jane Doe herself, she can’t even remember her own name. Imagine what else she can’t remember.”

  Once again, Steven had brought up another point that I couldn’t refute. While my brain didn’t know what else to say right then, my body had the perfect response.

  I let out a deep groan then followed that with a short rant. “Great. I find a mysterious woman in the woods with no memory, and I don’t even know if she’s the victim or the perpetrator. This is poised to be an unbelievably frustrating day.”

  Steven turned to me and gave me a sympathetic look. “I wish I had better news for you. Unfortunately, all I have is a whole lot of questions and no answers to speak of.”

  I looked out into the distance and sighed. “I think you were right before. Things could get a whole lot wilder.”

  Chapter Four

  On that ominous note, Steven and I arrived at the hospital. The paramedics rushed Jane Doe in to see a doctor, leaving my boyfriend a
nd me with time to kill. I hated having to try to be patient, mostly because I was so awful at it. I was a naturally antsy person. Sitting still had never suited me. Yet that’s exactly where I found myself.

  While this idle time allowed me to catch my breath, standing by for an update gave my mind fertile ground to wander. In a place like Cedar Falls Hospital, that was not necessarily a good thing.

  Some of my less than savory memories decided to creep back into my mind. One of those haunting moments was the last time I had set foot in this hospital. A few years ago, my father had a heart attack. The paramedics rushed him through these very halls trying to save him. I spent over three hours in the waiting room having to dig as deep as I could for any patience that I could muster, all the while being terrified that I was going to lose my dad.

  Thankfully, Dr. Keith Glass was able to save my father’s life, but I can still remember every nail-biting moment leading up to receiving the news. As I looked around the hospital, not much had changed since then. Certainly not the décor, which was as charmless and sterile as humanly possible. The walls were as blank as the looks on the faces of every friend and family member of a patient who was sitting in that waiting room who tried to fight off the worry that bad news might be nipping at their heels.

  The smell of disinfectants and other pungent cleaning products hung in the air. A woman walked by pushing a cart of food trays stocked with the same rubbery meat and strange jiggling gelatin dessert that had killed patients’ appetites for years. It didn’t look so much of a meal but rather a science experiment gone wrong. I could hardly remember ever seeing something so unappetizing.

  The food here was so off-putting that, even after suffering a heart attack, my father had begged me to sneak him some food from Deluxe Burger. Never mind the fact that eating too many deluxe burgers was what had led to him having a heart attack in the first place. It had been very difficult to ignore my dad’s pleas for burgers that day, but I did.

  After being released from the hospital, my dad was put on a strict diet filled with plenty of salads and a slew of other healthy food options. But as much as my father had a certain contempt for lettuce, chowing down on a salad was still preferable to having to choke down the meals here at the hospital.

  While my mind took the scenic route down memory lane, a battery of tests was run on Jane Doe. To properly diagnose her condition, the doctor gave Jane’s brain both a CT scan and an MRI. A few hours later, after getting a sufficient number of results back on the tests he had run, Dr. Glass emerged with some news.

  Some doctors had better bedside manner than others. I never used to understand why some doctors were warm with patients while others were brusque. Over time, I had learned that their on-the-job demeanor wasn’t always indicative of their overall personality. A subset of doctors preferred to remain as clinical as possible, divorcing themselves from their emotions entirely to avoid becoming attached to patients so it made it easier to deliver bad news.

  Keith’s approach was completely different. The gray-haired fifty-two-year-old had a warm, expressive face that made it difficult for him to hide his emotions. As I looked into his brown eyes, I could tell that he didn’t have good news to share with us. His tall, skinny frame was not giving off good body language.

  Steven didn’t hesitate to ask for an update. “So what’s the verdict?”

  Dr. Glass put his hands on his hips and sighed. “We should probably go talk in private.”

  “Of course,” Steven replied.

  The doctor pulled us aside then dug his hands into the pockets of the lab coat he wore over his scrubs.

  Dr. Glass seemed to be in no hurry to let the words spill out of his mouth.

  Steven tried to help him along. “Please tell me you have some good news for us.”

  The doctor grimaced. “I’m afraid not. As suspected, the blow to the patient’s head gave her a pretty substantial concussion which, in turn, has led to her amnesia.”

  “Is she going to be okay?” I asked.

  “Physically, yes. We have stopped the bleeding, and eventually, the bump on her head will heal. Unfortunately, I cannot speak in such definitive terms about her mind,” Dr. Glass replied.

  I grew increasingly concerned. “What do you mean? She’s going to get her memory back, isn’t she?”

  The expression on Dr. Glass’s face remained as dour as ever. “I wish I could tell you that she will, but I don’t have a conclusive answer for that question. The patient’s memory could return sometime today, tomorrow, or maybe not at all.”

  I could feel my grip on my emotions slipping away as incredulity took hold of me. “Wait a minute. When you say not at all, are you really telling us that she may never get her memory back?”

  Dr. Glass shrugged his shoulders. “It’s too early to tell.”

  Steven tried not to become too discouraged by the news, although, how he managed not to go bananas, I can’t tell you. He clearly had a better grip on his emotions than I did.

  With an even keel to his voice, Steven tackled another subject. “How about her identity? Have you made any progress on that front?”

  Dr. Glass shook his head. “Unfortunately not.”

  “I guess I’ll have to hope that her fingerprints are in the database, then,” Steven said.

  “I’m sorry about that. I wish I had better news for you,” the doctor replied.

  “So do I,” Steven said.

  There was plenty of bad news to go around, but I wasn’t going to give up hope quite yet. I looked for any silver lining I could find, no matter how meager it was. “Is there anything we can do to help get her memory back?”

  Dr. Glass shook his head again. “Not really. The mind is a very fragile thing. It doesn’t heal the same way as the rest of the body. Sometimes, it doesn’t heal at all.”

  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I made one more attempt to scrounge up some good news. “So there’s nothing we can do?”

  “What the patient needs right now is some time to try and recover. Other than that, there isn’t really much you can do except let her relax.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I’m not really a big fan of either of those options.”

  Steven let out a sigh. “Well, thanks for your help anyway.”

  While Steven seemed to have already given up on this conversation and looked ready to try to explore other investigative avenues to find out who Jane Doe really was, the doctor appeared to have more insights to share.

  “Detective, we’re not quite done yet,” Dr. Glass said.

  Steven furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s one more thing.”

  “What is it?”

  As the doctor hemmed and hawed, taking his time to reply, I could tell more bad news was coming.

  Finally, the words spilled out of him. “While examining the patient, I discovered bruises on her back.”

  “What kind of bruises?”

  “The black-and-blue variety.”

  “From her struggle in the forest?”

  Dr. Glass shook his head. “I don’t think so. These bruises look a few days old.”

  Steven’s eyes widened. “That opens up a whole new can of worms.”

  Dr. Glass nodded. “It sure does.”

  Chapter Five

  After finishing up with the doctor, Steven had some other matters to attend to. Having been at the hospital with me for the last few hours, my boyfriend was hoping his deputies might have discovered something in the forest that could help in moving this case along.

  He radioed one of his deputies for an update while I processed all the news that the doctor had shared with us. When Steven returned from finishing his call with Deputy Wilson, I turned to him for answers. Unfortunately, he had very little to give me.

  “What’s with the hangdog expression?” I asked.

  Steven groaned. “We just can’t seem to catch a break today.”

  “Would you mind clueing me in?”

  Normal
ly, getting my boyfriend to talk wasn’t so much like pulling teeth, but he was frustrated beyond belief.

  “That’s the thing. There’s nothing to clue you in about,” he replied.

  I wanted to cut through the negativity and get a straightforward answer. “What do you mean? Didn’t the K9 teams find anything in the forest?”

  Steven shook his head in disbelief. “Not one thing.”

  My jaw dropped as I was in complete shock. “Nothing? How is that possible?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Your guess is as good as mine. After all that searching, not only were they not able to find this John Doe who gave Jane that gash on her head, but they also haven’t been able to turn up any identification or evidence of any sort.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “You’re telling me. I mean, they are still searching, but things aren’t looking good right now.”

  I joined Steven in expressing my frustration.

  “The person who did this is out there somewhere. They have to be. That blood on her sweater had to come from somewhere.”

  “What if that blood is hers?”

  “Maybe so, but like I said, it had to come from somewhere. It’s not like she gave herself a concussion.”

  Steven grew desperate and threw a wild theory out there. “What if it was an animal who attacked her?”

  I looked at him like he had two heads. “What?”

  “Say an animal attacked her and she was barely able to fight it off. Maybe she got that concussion from the skirmish,” Steven speculated.

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “Do you really believe that?”

  There was a distinct lack of conviction on Steven’s face. “I don’t know what to believe right now. I’ve never seen anything like this.”