Escapes Can Be Murder

by Connie Shelton

  Later, I should go over and be sure everything was all right inside. I could tidy the kitchen, put fresh linens on her bed, make sure nothing in the fridge was too far gone. The idea that she might not ever come back here was unfathomable. I tamped down that thought as I tossed her mail and paper on the passenger seat beside me. I would hold tightly to the idea that she would be sitting up in bed, ready for the morning news and a coffee together, when I arrived at the hospital.

  Toward that end, I pulled through the drive-thru at McDonald’s and got myself a muffin sandwich, orange juice, and two coffees to go. I wolfed down the food, realizing I couldn’t remember my last meal—it had been somewhere in Maine, more than a day ago. A parking spot at the Heart Hospital was relatively easy to find this early in the morning. I carried my cardboard tray of coffees and rode the elevator, following Ron’s directions to Elsa’s room.

  A nurse wearing a bright, flowered scrub top, vivid green pants, and a name tag—Corrine— caught me at the doorway.

  “If that second coffee is supposed to be for our patient, I’m gonna have to put a veto on it. No caffeine for our Miss Elsa yet.”

  “Can I drink my own in there?”

  She nodded and I picked up one of the cups, handing over the tray and the other cup.

  “Darn it,” came Elsa’s voice from the single bed in the room. “I’ll bet you had doctored it just the way I like—two sugars and one creamer.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. She might look tiny and frail in that industrial-looking bed with all the monitors and wires around her, but her spunky attitude was alive and well. I set my cup on the bedside stand and gave her a fierce hug.

  “You’re home,” she said. The few words and little movement seemed to have taken all her energy. Her arms dropped back to her sides and her head sank against the pillow. Her color didn’t look great, only a pale shadow of her real self.

  “I came right back when Ron called. So, what’s all this about? What do the doctors say?” I settled into the chair at her bedside and took a sip of my coffee.

  She sighed. “Well, they think I had a heart attack. Silly. I just didn’t feel too great last night and Ron called 9-1-1. I would have been fine.”

  Except it was obvious she wouldn’t have, and she’d lost track of a whole day; she’d been out of it for a while.

  “I brought your mail and the paper,” I said, reaching into my bag and setting everything on her nightstand. “Since that nurse isn’t going to let you go hiking or anything right away, you might have time for some reading.”

  She barely acknowledged the items. Her eyelids seemed heavy. About the time I thought she would drift off to sleep, Corrine bustled in.

  “Time for vitals,” she said cheerily, boosted by the coffee I’d given her.

  “Can we talk a minute when you’re done?” I tilted my head toward the doorway. She nodded.

  “Gram, I’ll be around, and Ron will come by in a while too. You let me know if you need anything, okay?” She nodded, but her eyes were on the nurse as she whipped out a digital thermometer.

  I picked up my purse and walked out to the hall to finish my coffee and toss the cup in a receptacle near the nurses’ station. When Corrine appeared, I approached her and asked for the truth about Elsa’s condition.

  “Are you a relative?”

  “She’s my grandmother.” It was only a tiny shade away from the truth. “She raised me.”

  She glanced through the pages of the written chart. “I don’t see a next-of-kin here … but the man who came last night …”

  “That’s my brother, Ron Parker. I’m Charlie—Charlotte. He would have given all that information. He’s got her healthcare power of attorney. We have her insurance paperwork, we can get whatever—”

  “Fine. I do see his name here.”

  “Is Elsa going to be okay?”

  “At her age, nothing is certain. By ‘okay’ if you mean will she leave the hospital, most likely. The doctor will probably order her to a cardiac rehab center to get her strength back. Is she normally fairly active?”

  I thought of the garden in Elsa’s back yard and the size of the house and property she maintains nearly on her own. “For her age, very active.”

  “That works in her favor. We’ll try to get her back to her normal activity level so she can return home. Of course, until she passes certain tests for her daily needs, she may need care in a nursing home.”

  I felt mildly reassured, but not entirely. The bit about the nursing home would not go over well with our patient. I was standing outside Elsa’s door, watching her sleep, when Ron walked up. I filled him in on what I’d just learned.

  “Let’s grab some breakfast downstairs,” he suggested.

  I didn’t admit I’d already eaten. My coffee was gone and I could at least get a refill. Avoiding the heavy subject of Elsa’s future and how that might impact us, I asked about Victoria and the boys. All fine. He asked about Drake and our trip.

  “Fine there, too. Everything was going well. Did I tell you we met a chile farmer from Hatch who lives here now? His name is Fergus McNab.” We were in line at the cafeteria now. “His son is living in some remote cabin up there and the old man had us fly him up to it.”

  Ron had loaded a plate with bacon and eggs; I refrained from remarking that he could end up in the room next to Elsa’s if he wasn’t careful. I could hardly throw stones in this situation, since I’d done pretty much the same thing earlier.

  “So, the father has something terminal,” I continued as we took our seats, “and he was up there to inform his son. Guess it’s been the week for bad news.”

  Ron had taken a sip of his coffee, his gaze faraway and thoughtful. “Did you say Fergus McNab?”

  “Um, yeah.” I had succumbed to the lure of raspberry Danish near the cash register.

  “He came to me once with a case.”

  “Really? I don’t remember that.”

  He forked up a mass of scrambled egg. “It was a long time ago, right after we opened RJP. We were still fixing up the office and you might have gone out for more paint, for all I know.”

  “What kind of case?”

  “Whew, let me think … His son had done something wrong and his trial didn’t go the way they’d hoped. The father wanted me to help get him off. I said private investigators couldn’t get around the court system. If he thought there was new evidence, we might work on that aspect.”

  “But we didn’t. I don’t recall any of this.”

  “No, the case had already been decided. The boy was guilty.”

  “Fergus McNab.” I mulled over this news. “Was the son’s name Rory?”

  Ron shrugged and picked up his coffee cup. “I don’t remember. Honestly, I’m surprised I recalled this much. The man’s name is a little unusual, and when you said he was a chile farmer … that’s what triggered the memory at all.”

  I thought of Fergus and his quiet, sincere manner. He didn’t seem the type to be manipulating the court system. I wondered if there was more, if he was now manipulating Drake and me.

  Chapter 6

  I couldn’t let go of the McNab story, even while I sat at Elsa’s bedside. She roused briefly and recognized me. We talked for about two minutes before she became drowsy again. The doctor came around and I got very much the same story from him that the nurse had given. If Elsa didn’t have another incident in the next few days, and if her strength warranted, she would be able to go to rehab, then decisions would be made about where she would live. He refused to commit to any particular outcome.

  “She’s an elderly woman living alone. You might want to consider the practicalities of her being back in her own home,” he said, glancing through the window at her sleeping form in the bed.

  I left the hospital in a dreary mood. Ron and I would need to have a serious talk soon, but he’d already told me he was on a case with a deadline and needed most of the day to finish the work. Running my Jeep through a carwash brightened the outlook a bit, lite
rally, but I knew I wouldn’t manage to concentrate if I tried to settle into my normal accounting routine at the office. Fergus McNab’s story kept coming back to me. I was only a few blocks from the main library, so I headed in that direction.

  The newspaper archives were a place I wasn’t unfamiliar with, and once I got the reference librarian to set me up with a viewing machine, I was a happy little clam. Ron had said Fergus came to him about ten years ago. I went back in time to the month we were setting up our offices, then began scrolling backward from there. It didn’t take long to spot the story.

  The first major headline “Prominent Attorney Accused of Jury Tampering” had appeared about six months prior to his visit. It was a front-page, below-the-fold story describing a case in which Albuquerque attorney Rory McNab was being investigated by the State Attorney General’s office after allegations of jury tampering. McNab had been senior partner in his own law firm and was representing a long-time Albuquerque family whose number one son had gotten in trouble when he dabbled a bit with controlled substances. Allegedly.

  The article was long on background about the well-known family and their history in the city, with a fair number of column inches devoted to Rory McNab’s previous high-profile cases. Short on details about the actual jury tampering charges.

  The second piece I found covered Rory’s own trial; again the media had skimmed over the actual wrongdoing in favor of hyping the burgeoning career of lead prosecutor Herman Quinto and his announcement that he would run for the state legislature in order to pass laws preventing this sort of ‘terrible malfeasance of the law.’ I’d heard Quinto’s name for years now. He seemed the sort of politician who took every opportunity to step in front of a camera.

  My neck and shoulders were getting sore from sitting in one place and scrolling through pages, but I didn’t want to make another trip back to the library. I kept going until I spotted one more thing. Three days after his trial began Rory McNab was found guilty on all ten counts of jury tampering. Each carried a maximum prison term of nine years.

  Whoa. I backed up and read it again. If that was so, why wasn’t Rory behind bars right now? There was a lot more to this story, and I suspected it might account for his clandestine lifestyle and the secretive way he’d greeted his own father at the cabin. A niggling uneasiness began in my spine. I knew the whereabouts of a felon. Shouldn’t I be reporting this to someone?

  I stood up and stretched to work the tension out of my shoulders. After briefly pacing back and forth in the archive room, I sat again. I needed to know more before barreling out to wreak havoc on Fergus McNab’s life. The man had obviously been through a lot more than he’d told us.

  A glance at the time told me I should be getting back to the hospital. Ron hadn’t been able to stay with Elsa this morning, and I felt as though one of us ought to be there. I printed the three articles on Rory McNab, then gathered my purse and left the library.

  Elsa was propped up in bed when I walked into her room, a bit more awake than she’d been this morning but far from her lively self. When I asked how she was feeling, she raised a veined hand dismissively. “I want to go home.”

  I put a smile in place and ignored the huge question we would all be facing soon. I am terrible at bedside manner. No caregiver role should ever be entrusted to me because I’m always at a loss for what to do. “How about some water?” I held up the plastic cup with a bent straw in it.

  She turned away from it. A tap came at the door. I looked up to see a bouquet of flowers atop a narrow body and legs. The arrangement was so big it concealed the young orderly’s face completely.

  “Mrs. Higgins, look what you’ve got!” The perky voice and masses of color instantly brightened the room. Why hadn’t I thought of bringing flowers? See what I mean about being inept at these things?

  Elsa smiled for the first time since I’d been here. “Well, look at this. Who sent them?”

  I picked the tiny envelope from its plastic prong holder amidst the blossoms. “Let’s see.”

  “I don’t have my glasses. Read it for me,” Elsa said.

  “Thinking of you and hoping you are 100% well very soon,” I read. “It’s from Ron and Victoria.”

  “Ah, so sweet of them.”

  Of her. Thank goodness for Victoria. She made at least one contingent of the Parker family look good.

  “I’m bored with this—lying around in bed isn’t my style,” Elsa said, once the newness of the flowers had worn off. I didn’t point out that she didn’t look strong enough to put her feet on the floor, much less head for home. “Tell me about your latest case,” she said in a thin voice.

  I went through Drake’s and my recent trip across country, embellishing a few things for entertainment value, such as the small town in Iowa where we’d landed behind a small rural café just because it had the appeal of a ’50s-style diner. I hadn’t yet got to the part about the lobster dinner at the McAllister’s house before she nodded off to sleep again.

  Elsa—so many special times together, so many times she’d been there for me when I didn’t deserve it. A pink carnation in the bouquet on the table reminded me of being fifteen, sullen and rude because I didn’t get a date for a school dance, fiercely jealous when my friend Stacy had stopped by to show me her corsage. Elsa smoothed over the moment by pulling a sheet of chocolate chip cookies from the oven and serving them to us girls with tea instead of milk. There had to be a thousand of those instances during my teens and twenties, my oblivious years.

  A stargazer lily took me back to my wedding day; Elsa barely knew Drake, yet accepted him completely into the family. There was the time of the house fire, when we’d moved in with her for a few weeks. Never a complaint or tense moment from her—those were all mine. How could I have been such a little shit at times, when all she ever did was love me unconditionally?

  I reached for the tissue box on the nightstand, helping myself to a wad of them. “You’d just better get well,” I whispered softly. “Please.”

  I watched her sleep for a while, until a nurse peeked in at the door. “Sleep is the best thing for her right now. She’s gaining her strength back.”

  “Thanks.” I began to feel a little antsy to be doing something. I walked down the hall and stopped near the waiting area. Checking the time difference, I figured I should be able to catch Drake between flights right now, so I called him.

  “Hey, how’s she doing?” he asked.

  I gave an update on Elsa and then on what I’d learned about the McNabs. “I feel strange about this, knowing where Rory is, not reporting it.”

  “Well, you don’t know the whole story,” he said. “If my experience with reporters is any indicator, you don’t know a fraction of the story.”

  He was right. I’d been abducted once and what came out in the news was a far cry from what had happened.

  “Charlie, think about it. Maybe the sentence was far less than the maximum, maybe it was overturned on appeal, maybe he served time and got out on good behavior.”

  I stared at a piece of art on the wall, a smear of pastel colors that didn’t resemble any actual thing. “You’re right—any of the above could be true.”

  “A felony conviction would have killed his legal career, so maybe the guy just opted for a quiet life away from society.”

  Maybe. His words made a lot of sense.

  “Sweetie, you love to find a mystery under every rock. Of course you would want to decipher this one too.” He paused. “I miss you.”

  I felt myself getting emotional again so I walked to a door marked Stairs. In the quiet of the stairwell, I told him I missed him, too, and choked back tears as we said goodbye. Deep exhale. It had been a way-emotional day. Maybe if I went to the office for a while.

  I left the hospital parking lot and made my way west on Lomas, then wound through the side streets until I came to our renovated Victorian. Its gray and white façade calmed me and I pulled down the long drive to my customary parking spot at the back. I’d no soon
er opened the back door than I heard the skitter of toenails on hardwood. Freckles, our brown and white spaniel, came racing into the kitchen and skidded the final ten feet, sliding into my legs. I knelt and hugged her tightly.

  “I figured you’d be in sometime today,” Ron said from the doorway.

  “Thanks for bringing her. Can’t believe how much I’ve missed this little mutt.”

  “I can. She missed you guys, too, although I have to say the boys did a good job of winning her over with treats. And now Victoria’s dropping hints about us visiting the shelter … All your fault.”

  He talks gruff, but he’s really a softie about animals and kids.

  “Sally made fresh coffee right before she left for the day,” he said, pulling his favorite mug from the sink. “Want some?”

  “I think I’m coffee’d out at the moment. Just thought I’d check in, but I want to get back to Gram after a while. Be sure to thank Victoria for the flowers she sent. They are beautiful and she loved them.”

  “What makes you think I didn’t order them?”

  I shot him a look.

  “Okay, you’re right. Oh, hey—you got my curiosity up about the man you met in Maine, that McNab guy, so I looked up his son’s case online. Interesting twist.” He’d turned back toward the hall, and I traipsed along as he headed up the stairs toward his office.

  “What twist?”

  He tilted his head toward his doorway in a come-check-it-out gesture. I diverted across the hall long enough to drop my purse on my desk and take a look at the staggering pile of junk mail that had accumulated during my two-week absence. I ignored it and stepped into Ron’s office. His desk was covered with an equally impressive mass of paperwork, but his was all there by his own hand.

  “What twist?” I repeated. I was feeling like an oldster for not having gone to the internet first.