I wonder if Connor thinks she's pretty? "You can check with the center's director, Jane Clarkson. She approved the plan."
"Oh, I've spoken with Ms. Clarkson. She made it clear that she never expected your little project to take this long."
Arie flushed again. "I wouldn't know. However, this afternoon she was asking whether Grandfather"—Arie refused to call him "Grumpa" in front of that woman—"is interested in applying for their residential wing. So I guess she isn't too upset about the little project." Arie's fingers ached to twitch finger quotes over the last two words, but she restrained herself.
Barbie abruptly sat forward, leaning in, elbows on the table before her. "Oh, I wouldn't be too sure of that. Tell me: how long have you known Cindy Sawyer?"
Arie's head turtled back. "Who?"
"Cindy Sawyer. You know her. One of the nurses from over there."
"Oh, that Cindy. I don't... I don't really know her. I mean, we're acquainted. Uh, we became acquainted when she was working at the nursing home. That's all I know about her."
"Uh-huh. My understanding is you and she spent a lot of time together. She was recently fired, wasn't she?"
"Yes, she... We didn't really spend a lot of time together, but yes, she was fired. From what I understand."
"Oh, from what you understand."
Arie's lips pinched shut. She knew she was looking as guilty as sin but couldn't stop reacting to the detective's jabs. She took a deep breath, ignoring Barbie's next question. When she felt calm enough, she said, "I was asking the nurse about the facility. And we also talked a little about school in case I decided to go for an LPN degree."
"I see. You're interested in the nursing field, huh?"
Arie shrugged.
"Right. Well, you still didn't answer my question. You were seen talking to her while she was distributing medications and while she was documenting the med counts."
"What's the question?" Arie asked.
The detective scowled. "The question is why? Why did you time your conversation with your friend Cindy for those times?"
"I didn't time anything. I spoke with a staff member about the facility and the program that my grandfather is participating in."
Barbie sighed and tipped her head back as if contemplating the ceiling. "You do realize Sawyer was fired for tampering with the medication counts, right?" She snapped her eyes back to Arie's to catch her reaction. "There's been a lot of—"
"No, she wasn't," Arie said.
Barbie sighed again.
"She wasn't," Arie insisted. "I was there. She was fired for not coming in for her shift. She'd asked Karen to cover for her, but Karen denied it. Jane fired her right in front of everyone. You can ask the residents. We all saw it."
The detective's eye twitched. For the first time in the interview, a smidgen of doubt flickered across her perfectly symmetrical features.
There's no way Connor could be attracted to this... this blond cliché.
Arie banished the thought and continued. "Look, I don't know what's going on at River Rest, but something is. Two of their residents have died under suspicious circumstances, and now you're telling me there's something off about the prescriptions. Maybe that's connected, huh?"
Again... that flicker of doubt. Then, however, the detective smirked and reached into her pants pocket, pulled out the baggie of pills, and tossed them onto the table between her and Arie.
"Maybe so. But that just makes me wonder even more about why we found these in your belongings. You do recognize them, don't you?"
Arie hesitated, looking at the baggie. Actually... they did look kind of familiar. Not those particular pills, of course. She never carried around any medication like that, but the tiny white pills looked an awful lot like... She grabbed the baggie and pulled it toward her. A smile grew from deep inside her belly.
Arie met Barbie's eyes. "Sure I do. They're oxycodone, right?"
The detective's eyes narrowed, and she shifted in her chair. "Right. So you don't deny these are yours?"
Again, Arie hesitated. Then, making a decision, she dropped the baggie back on the table. "I have a prescription for oxycodone. You can call my doctor." She rattled off the doctor's name and the clinic she'd visited. "I've been on these since my car accident." Arie reached up and rubbed her shoulder. "Still hurts."
Barbie sat silently for several long moments. Then she pushed the notepad over to Arie and said, "Write down his name and number. I need to verify your story."
"Of course you do," Arie said. "I wouldn't expect any less." She scribbled the info and slid the pad across the table. "I hope this doesn't take too long. I have things to do."
Barbie stood. She didn't deign to answer, but the smirk was back. The door of the interview room snapped shut behind her.
Only slightly regretting her flippancy, Arie settled in for a long wait.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
At nearly five thirty, Arie was finally cleared to leave. As expected, Barbie had taken a ridiculous amount of time to verify Arie's prescription. In fact, Arie suspected the blond detective had kept her stuck in the tiny room far longer than necessary and had enjoyed every second she did so. The two were not destined for a deep, abiding friendship.
The whole time Arie had waited, she wondered whether Connor was aware of her situation. Since she was equal parts wanting his support and embarrassed, she didn't ask for him. Besides, their last conversation hadn't gone well. If he knew she'd been brought in for questioning about prescription drug theft at River Rest...
Not until she reached the parking lot did Arie remember the Caddy was still at the senior center.
Juuust great.
She couldn't call Chandra, who was in San Diego by then. If she called her dad, he would tell her mother, and Arie would rather stab herself in both eyes with a broken needle than listen to that lecture.
Maybe Connor? She turned to look at the entrance to the police station. If he'd known she was being interrogated, he sure hadn't bothered to show himself. If he hadn't... Well, she'd already decided she didn't want to go there.
That left only one person. Arie sighed and pulled her cell phone out.
"Dude."
The time had come to put Grady on speed dial.
By the time Grady dropped Arie back off at River Rest, she was starving. She hadn't been able to call Grumpa from the back of the motorcycle—she'd been clutching Grady's chest as he weaved his cycle through rush-hour traffic. As soon as he'd deposited her next to the Caddy, she tried calling her grandfather. Arie couldn't decide between KFC or Subway, but she knew she wouldn't be making supper that night, no matter how pissed off her mother would be if she found out. Grumpa didn't answer.
Well, the cranky old coot would just have to take whatever Arie brought home. After the day she'd had, she certainly wasn't going to take any guff from him—beggars and choosers and all that.
The smell of freshly baked bread filling the car was so delicious Arie almost drowned in her drool before she finally pulled into the driveway.
She dropped the subs on the kitchen table and hurried to the fridge to get a can of pop. "Grumpa! I've got food. Come and get it!"
Arie sat down and unwrapped her steak and cheese. Man, it smelled so good. Maybe she should have gotten a footlong? She eyed Grumpa's turkey on wheat. He still hadn't answered. Probably pouting because she'd been gone all day. Like I had a choice.
"Grumpa, you better come eat this, or I won't be responsible for the consequences!"
Nothing.
"Grumpa?"
The silence stretched out. Arie's heart started beating out a message of fear. Dropping her sandwich, she got up and hurried down the hall. Giving a perfunctory knock on his bedroom door, she pushed it open and peeked in. The room was dark and empty. It smelled like denture cream and Aqua Velva with an overlay of lavender and was very, very empty. Arie flipped on the overhead light and walked to the end of the bed.
Where can he be?
As she turned to le
ave, she paused. Something wasn't right. She scanned the room again. An opened bar of Ivory soap sat atop Grumpa's otherwise tidy dresser, and two of the drawers weren't completely closed. In Arie's room, that would only have meant that a piece of clothing she'd tried stuffing in had wedged between the wood, and she hadn't bothered to poke it back down, but Grumpa had been a former IRS tax auditor for decades precisely because the career suited his obsession with order—also, his urge to suck the joy from the hearts of any who drew near, but the OCD tendencies were what mattered.
His drawers would never be askew.
Arie pulled one open. Except for one neatly folded pair of socks and some weird elastic bands, it was nearly empty. Arie picked up the bands—sock garters circa the 1950s. She dropped them back into the drawer, where they curled like snakes.
Arie yanked open several other drawers. Most had been emptied in a similar slapdash method. She hurried to the closet. Skeletonized metal hangers rattled against each other in the breeze caused by the door flinging open.
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
And that bar of soap...?
She picked it up and headed to the bathroom. Grumpa's toothbrush was missing, but the real eye-catcher was the two-foot-high message he'd scrawled across the mirror in Ivory soap: YOU COME GET ME MISSY with three not-fooling-around exclamation points.
Arie raced to the kitchen and burrowed into her purse for her cell phone. Not finding it, she shoved the sandwiches aside and dumped the contents of her bag onto the table—no phone. She ran out to the Caddy, but she hadn't left it there either.
Back to the pile on the kitchen table. Giving an exasperated squeal, Arie pawed through the junk pile she typically carried in her purse. Why? Why do I carry all this junk? Nobody needed six lip glosses, two of them the same color and one without its cap. She must have had a dozen Pizza Shack coupons—all expired, of course—and two handfuls of wadded-up gas station receipts. A snarl of cords—two phone chargers, which she never used because they were tangled into a Gordian knot. Of course, neither was connected to the dang phone. Her e-reader. A makeup bag, which for some reason she never used for storing her multiple lip glosses. Seventeen hair bands, half of which were sticky with Yum! Bubblegum–flavored lip gloss.
Arie forced herself to stop and take a deep breath. Then another. And anoth—
Oh, for crying out loud! Arie spun on her heel and raced to the wall phone that Grumpa insisted on maintaining, next to the fridge. When she picked up the receiver, the dial tone sounded like Heaven's own choir—and Arie had heard them, after all. She stabbed in the area code and the first three numbers for her parents' home phone, but then her finger stuttered to a stop. What’s the rest of the number? She clicked the receiver button down, got the dial tone again, and jabbed the numbers again, only to stop after the first six.
Seriously? Her parents had lived in the same house since before Arie was born. How could she not remember their phone number? She slammed the phone down and rested her head against it. Her heart was slamming against her rib cage like a wild bird trying to escape its cage, and she'd sweated through her blouse. She had to pull herself together, and she had to do it right now.
Okay. She'd just have to drive to her parents' house, that was all. They were only across town, fifteen minutes at the most. She could just drive over there and find out if they knew what the heck was going on. Arie hurried to the table and started shoving everything back into her purse—
Son-of-a… She was holding her cell phone in her hand. With a sound halfway between a groan and a scream, she dialed her parents' number.
"Hello?" The sound of her mother's voice made Arie's stomach clench, mostly out of habit.
"Mom? Do you know where Grumpa is?"
"Oh for heaven's sake, Arie. What on earth were you doing at the police station? I cannot believe you—"
"Mom. Do you know where Grumpa is?"
"Do you have any idea how this will look to your father's congregation? I am simply appalled at your lack of responsibility. Not surprised, mind you. But we had hoped—"
"Mom! Where—"
"Stop interrupting me, young lady. You know better than that. Of course I know where my own father is. He's being cared for properly. You should have told me how serious the situation has gotten. My goodness! It's obvious I can't trust you, but the real question is why I ever thought I could. I should never have let your father talk me into this crazy idea."
Despite the pounding in her ears, Arie could hear her father remonstrating in the background.
"Not now, Ed," Evelyn said.
Arie used her mother's distraction to break in. "What are you talking about? What situation? How am I not taking care of Grumpa? We're doing great."
"Your grandfather is obviously far more disturbed than you have been letting on. I still can't believe you would—"
"Disturbed? That's ridiculous. He's doing great, and so am I."
"Great? You call attacking two people, one of them a woman, great?"
"Who's been telling you this? Jane? Did Jane call you? Because—"
"Of course the nursing-home lady called me. She told me everything, which is exactly what I trusted you to do. I shouldn't have to hear about my eighty-two-year-old father savagely attacking one—no, two!—of the residents there. Did you know one of his victims is considering pressing charges?"
Viv. Has to be. "He didn't attack anyone," Arie said. "Alan grabbed his gear shift and—"
"And what about the paranoia?"
"What are you talking about? Grumpa isn't the least bit paranoid. I mean, he doesn't really trust anyone, but then he never did."
"All this nonsense about people being murdered at that nice place? It's just too ridiculous for words. Except that it's libelous and a very serious accusation. Your grandfather could get in—"
Arie couldn't resist. "Slanderous."
"What?"
"Libel is when you write something bad about someone. Slander is when you say it. And he can't get in trouble if it's true."
"If what's true? That people are getting murdered? Oh for heaven's sake, Arie. I've heard enough. The decision has been made, and frankly I'm relieved. I'm not sure what we'll do with the house yet, but you can—"
"What decision? Did you...? Where is Grumpa?"
"I've already told you. Your grandfather was admitted to the residential unit at River Rest. And I don't know what we would have done without their help. She was very gracious. The transition should be fairly smooth once he calms down."
Arie jabbed the disconnect button on her phone so hard she was surprised the glass didn't break. Relieved? Her mother was relieved that Grumpa was accepted into that place. How could she?
Arie reined herself in. She had to be calm, and she had to think the situation through. She would have plenty of time to despise her mother later. Grumpa couldn't spend one more minute in that place, and Jane...
Of course Jane had been helpful and gracious. She had them right where she wanted. Everything fell together. Jane was stealing the medications. She'd framed Arie in order to... what? Scare her off? Get her out of the way?
Also, she had Grumpa under her care...
Arie shuddered. Anything could happen. And the longer Grumpa stayed in there, the more likely something would, something bad. Jane had already laid the groundwork for discrediting the old man, but he was sharp, and she wouldn't be able to keep him quiet for long. Unless... unless she gave him something to "calm him down" during the transition.
Arie snatched up the car keys.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Two beefy male attendants met Arie just before she stepped into the waiting room of the residential side of River Rest.
"Hold up, miss," said Beefy One.
The other just grunted and crossed his arms over his beefy chest.
"Hi," Arie chirped. "I'm just here to visit my—"
"Your name, please?" asked Beefy One again.
"Uh, I'm just... My grandfather is
..."
"Name?"
Arie sighed as they'd obviously been warned about her. "Look," she said, "there's been a mistake. A misunderstanding. I just need to talk to—"
"I'm sorry, miss, but you need to leave."
Arie crossed her arms over her own sizable, though far less intimidating, chest. "Look, guys, I'm not leaving. I have a right to see my grandfather."
Neither Beefy appeared moved by her insistence. They didn't appear movable in any other way either, as far as that went. When they threatened to call the cops, Arie finally gave in. Besides, she had a cop of her own she could call.
Connor's voice sounded stilted and a little wary. That fell away as soon as she told him Grumpa had been kidnapped.
"Wait. What?"
"They took Grumpa away and put him in that... that snake pit. He left me a soap note, and you have to help me get him out."
"A what? Arie, what are you talking about? You're not making any sense."
"I am too! You have to help me get Grumpa back. He can't stay there. It's too dangerous."
"Can't stay where?"
"At River Rest. Jane Clarkson convinced my mom to stick him in there. He's being held prisoner."
"Arie, if your mom has the authority to—"
"She doesn't. I don't know how they managed it, but I know that he doesn't want to be there."
"Maybe he agreed—"
"Connor, what's the matter with you? Of course he didn't agree. Can you imagine Grumpa agreeing to move to any nursing home, much less one where we all know people are getting bumped off left and right?"
"We don't know that. We're investigating the two deaths, sure, but we don't know anything for certain. And maybe Grumpa wanted to... I don't know... downsize? Maybe he just wasn't comfortable telling you."
"Then why did he leave me a note on the mirror, telling me to come get him? He doesn't want to be there, Connor. This isn't something he wants to do. And I need your help because if I go back over there, they're going to call the cops."
Connor sighed. "You're right. They will. And considering the circumstances, I can't say that I blame them."
Scry Me A River: Suspense with a Dash of Humor (Blood Visions Paranormal Mysteries Book 2) Page 16
