As the clock reached six-fifteen, she realized she didn’t have a cash register drawer. She dashed into the back and unlocked the cabinet where Fannah kept the first drawer of the day on Wednesdays, since no one but her had access to the safe.
She had to turn on the coffee bar lights in order to see well enough to open the cash register and slide in the drawer. Anxious now that no one else had shown up for work, she decided to keep her phone in her slacks, even though it was against the rules.
Moving fast, even with just one cup of coffee and two broken cookies in her belly, she loaded the dark roast urn, then filled the hot water urn. ‘Only two left to go.’ She glanced out at the floor. A lone man walked from the elevator bay through the front entrance. Surgical patients had probably come and gone for morning surgeries while she’d been baking in the back.
She had just finished pouring light roast into the coffee urn when the coffee bar lights flickered and went out. Mandy turned around. The coffee bar was in shadow but the rest of the hospital still had light. She locked down the urn lid and set the empty carafe next to the brewing station before going to the light switches.
When she jiggled them up and down, nothing happened. This wasn’t good. All her fumbling efforts to prep and now she couldn’t open. She went to the cash register. If people used their phone flashlight apps, she could see well enough to ring them up for cookies and coffee. When she looked at the register, however, she could see it wasn’t working either. She turned back to the brewing station and it had lost power too.
Muttering, she ran into the back room and called Scott. He didn’t work until seven, but he must have a minion on duty at all times. She knew little about the workings of the hospital outside of her shift hours.
She left a message on his office phone, an extension she knew by heart, and his cell phone, then fumbled through Fannah’s desk and looked up the general number for maintenance in Fannah’s hospital reference. She was just dialing it when the back door opened and Scott appeared in the doorway, holding his toolbox.
‘You’re here,’ she greeted him, surprised. ‘I didn’t think you came in this early.’
‘You’re never here now.’ He rubbed his unshaven upper lip.
‘I had to come in unusually early. We’re still catching up from last week’s shutdown.’ She set down the phone receiver. ‘I was about to call the main number for your department.’
‘It’s not the average day,’ he said, holding his toolbox in front of him.
‘No kidding. I need to open up the coffee bar, but the lights are out.’
Scott stepped through the doorway into the coffee bar, glanced out, then turned and shut the door behind him. ‘So they are.’
Mandy felt a prickle of unease. ‘Can you fix the problem? It’s just the coffee bar, but all the power is off out there. No coffee, no cash register. Fannah is going to kill me.’
‘Fannah’s no killer.’
‘You know what I mean, Scott,’ she said, exasperated. ‘I don’t want to be blamed for not opening on time.’
‘You look like you’re having an anxiety attack.’ He said it flatly.
‘Exhaustion attack, more like. I just wanted to do a good job, you know? But I was hoping someone else would turn up to work with me. It’s far too much for one person, even starting early.’ She stopped when he didn’t banter back. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked uncertainly.
‘It’s been hard for you, all this getting-in-other-people’s-business drama,’ he said. ‘It’s got to stop, Mandy.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Kit’s arrest? All your fault.’ He took a step toward her. ‘My business turmoil? All your fault.’
‘What? I didn’t want her to be arrested. But I couldn’t lie to the police.’
‘Did you really have to turn Ryan into a goody two-shoes? All that harassing him to lead a different life?’ He moved again.
‘I didn’t know he did drugs, Scott,’ Mandy said. ‘I didn’t harass him.’ She put her hands behind her, hoping to find the desk and the phone. If she hit the ‘0’ hopefully someone would hear and help her.
‘That’s not what he told me, when he said he was getting clean and going straight. This is your fault.’
‘I had no idea what he was up to,’ Mandy cried.
‘He said you were back on your feet and didn’t need the extra cash anymore.’
‘What extra cash? He only paid me rent.’
‘Are you that stupid? Really?’ He lifted his toolbox.
‘He didn’t give me money. This has nothing to do with me. I think he was subsidizing Kit’s habit.’ And from what Kit said, his entire department was involved. Had moving into Mandy’s house changed Ryan’s perspective? Shown him another way to live?
‘He never should have found you a job here. Everything was fine until you started creating problems!’ He threw his toolbox at her.
She hopped to the side, easily avoiding the heavy box despite her shock. Her hands shook as adrenaline took over her body. Scott lifted his arm, clad in a black long-sleeved shirt instead of the usual maintenance jumpsuit. Time seemed to slow as she saw long white cat hairs clustered along his sleeve.
Scott owned a cat. A cat owner had visited Ryan right before he died.
‘You killed him!’ she yelled as his arm flashed through the air.
She cowered back, knocking the phone off the hook. Before she could reach for it, Scott grabbed her by the arm and hauled her through the doorway into the prep room, then pushed her hard.
‘Hell, yes I did. He threatened to tell the police about my operation!’ Scott shouted.
She skidded on the floor and collapsed in a heap on the pantry floor, hitting her head on a metal rack. It rocked, sending sacks cascading to the floor. One thumped her on the head. She hit the rack again and blinked, dazed by the sudden pain of ten pounds of baking mix knocking on her skull. Scott slammed the door, leaving her in darkness.
TWENTY-ONE
Mandy heard the snick of the pantry door locking through her haze of pain. Alone in the dark, she had a moment of panic, then reason surged through the battering and fall she’d endured. Instinctively, her hands pushed ten-pound sacks out of her way. A cloud of flour floated into the air, making her cough as she tried to find a safe path to the door.
How had he locked the door? Then she remembered. The hospital’s maintenance supervisor would of course have the master key. Her chest contracted painfully.
‘What are you planning to do to me?’ she called out. ‘This is ridiculous, Scott!’
She heard footsteps move away. He’d actually left the prep room. What was he doing? She forced herself to focus on immediate concerns. Carefully, she crawled toward the door then stood, putting her palms against it for support.
It went without saying that Scott had killed her cousin. Tender pain flashed through her as she went through what Scott had said. Ryan had been trying to quit dealing, because of her. He was going to go to the police. And he’d died. Kit had tried to quit. She’d wanted to leave the hospital for her other job. She’d been beaten up.
And herself? Mandy was worth exactly nothing to Scott, just like Ryan had been once he’d quit. Scott wasn’t going to try to bring her into his dealer club. He was just going to kill her.
Her mind went blank. In times of crisis, she always turned to her journal for clues, but it was in her purse. Mentally, she scanned the pages. Finally, she hit the spread with that Charles Dickens quote she’d found during a previous crisis.
‘The most important thing in life is to stop saying “I wish” and start saying “I will”.’
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘No more wishes for me. I will get out of here.’
She tightened her hands into fists, then raised them into the air, opening them as if she was doing a Sun Salutation in yoga class. She had to calm down, had to focus. Confidence, Mandy. You have to think! He’s wrong about you having anxiety attacks.
With a blaze of clarity, she realized what a fool he’d b
een. She still had her cell phone.
She lifted her apron and fumbled in her pockets. Scott would have assumed she’d left it in her cubby, but she hadn’t today.
The door rattled. She froze for a millisecond, phone in hand, then fumbled to call nine-one-one. At least they’d hear what was going on even if she couldn’t talk. She shoved the phone back into her slacks. Then, she bent down and came up with a twenty-pound sack of flour that hadn’t exploded. As she staggered back, she promised herself that if she survived this, she would start lifting weights. Or doing yoga handstands. Anything to make this easier.
The door opened and light filled the pantry. Her pupils fought to make sense of the dark shape surrounded by the fluorescent glow. She rushed forward, using her flour sack as a battering ram. Scott’s arm went up. What was in it? A long tube? A syringe?
Oh, no. He was trying to inject her with something. But he wouldn’t win.
She shoved the flour sack up, desperate to keep the syringe away from her skin. The shape grunted. The arm came down in her direction. She tilted the sack and pushed it away, grimacing with effort.
He turned and hit a metal rack. Cans rattled and fell around them. Mandy stumbled and hefted the sack again as the syringe came at her. The thick brown paper bag ripped on the needle.
They danced in a half circle. Mandy’s hip banged against a cooling rack and cookies slid onto the floor. When she shoved her torn sack, Scott fell through the door. His legs tangled in hers as he fell into the back room.
She slipped and collapsed over him, the scent of ginger and chocolate filling the space. The ripped bag poured flour over everything, misting into the air. She saw Scott’s intent face through the white haze, still trying to get to her with the syringe.
‘No,’ she said in a gargled kind of exhalation, and wrapped the half empty sack around his arm, trying to get leverage.
‘Die, damn it!’ he screamed. His hair moved through the flour, sending more into the air. She sneezed. He grabbed her hair with his free hand, legs bucking, trying to throw her off. His floury fingers slid through the strands, catching on her curls, as she snapped her head back.
She scrambled up his protuberant belly, eyes watering from the pain of pulled hair, fighting to wrap the sack around the syringe. Running feet outside pounded on the tiles.
‘Stop, Police! Drop the syringe!’ a commanding voice ordered.
Before Mandy could react, she saw a hard-soled shoe slam down on Scott’s wrist. His arm clunked against the tile. The syringe went flying. She scrambled off Scott, various squishy body parts squelching underneath her as her legs kicked into him. He squealed.
Detective Ahola stood over them. He flipped Scott over and pulled his arms behind his back. Mandy pulled herself into a fetal position, then stood, noting where the syringe was. She backed against the cubbies, as far away from it as she could get in the crowded room. The beached whale shape of Scott’s body took up most of the floor space. Detective Ahola secured Scott’s arms with handcuffs, then read him his rights.
Mandy heard squawking from her phone. ‘Oh, right.’ She pulled it from her slacks and started explaining what was going on.
The homicide detective pulled Scott to his feet as two hospital security guards came in through the door from the coffee bar.
‘We’ve had reports of a disturbance?’ one of them said, his hand on his radio.
‘Just attempted murder,’ Mandy said. ‘Scott Nelson is the Maintenance Department drug kingpin.’
Scott spat on the floor. ‘Hospital work is hard on the body. Normal people can’t stay alert for twelve hours without a break. You think this place can run without Adderall? I’m just the smart guy who decided to profit from the misery of this place. My department roams the complex freely. We were perfect for the job.’
‘You killed my cousin!’ Mandy yelled. ‘You beat up Kit!’
Scott curled his upper lip. ‘That’s how it works. There’s no backing out once you start. You think my suppliers would let me? Once in, always in.’
Detective Ahola told the security guards to hold onto Scott while he called for backup. But Mandy could already hear police cars coming up the hospital drive, sirens blaring, from her nine-one-one call.
‘Why did Ryan have a journal under him?’ Mandy asked. ‘Why did you have to make me feel responsible for killing him?’
Scott snorted. ‘I used those freebie journals to keep track of orders. But you have that journaling business. I thought it might throw the police off the scent.’
Mandy gasped. ‘You were trying to pin the murder on me?’
‘No one was around. I walked right out your back door and down the street to my car.’ He shrugged. ‘It could have been anyone. It will be anyone next time. Drugs and hospitals go together.’
Before he could say more, they were overrun by police securing the scene and taking statements. Mandy felt dazed. Flour hung heavy in the air. Eventually the hospital administrators came and put up a closed sign at the coffee bar, then told Mandy she could take the rest of the week off with pay after the police were done with her. They’d need the time to have the coffee bar suite cleaned and sterilized again.
After she left the hospital, Mandy didn’t go home. Adrenaline still coursed through her. Shaking, she went to her car, flour drifting off her legs the entire walk to the garage.
Too upset over her brush with death to cope with real life, she decided she needed to spend some time in nature. She drove to the Arboretum and, without thinking, grabbed the watercolor sketchbook she always kept in her glove compartment. Along with it she had a small pocket sketch box and a water brush, filled with water.
While part of the extensive botanic garden was still closed in February, it did feature a winter garden, a stream that flowed all year, and plenty of interesting trees. Even better, no one was around. Solitude was exactly what she needed.
She wandered around, looking for peace and inspiration, until she found a stunning example of a paperbark maple, with shards of terra cotta bark peeling and catching the winter sun. When she found a semi-dry spot in the warm light, she sat down and sketched the tree, forcing herself to empty her thoughts. She could always come back to art to soothe herself, and she needed to let it work its magic on her.
Only when she’d finished sketching the tree and surrounding plantings did she allow herself to process what she’d been through.
How had she missed the flaws in Scott’s character so completely? She’d known Kit had odd interactions with him, while Fannah had none at all. When she’d seen him with Alexis, that should have been some kind of giveaway. Who better to distribute Adderall through the hospital than the anonymous maintenance workers, who could go anywhere and talk to anyone?
While she might never know the full story of Ryan’s involvement, at least he hadn’t been a mastermind. Most importantly, he’d tried to quit. She bet all that stuff about him being about to be fired had nothing to do with his performance, or even alcohol abuse, and everything to do with him wanting to do the right thing. Hopefully the police could figure out how the drugs were leaving the pharmacy and shut the entire operation down.
She stared at her painting, warm in the light, and felt at peace, as if the universe was trying to hug her. But she didn’t want a hug from the universe, she wanted one from Vellum. She needed to apologize and make things right.
She went back to her car and drove to the University Village. After she bought coffee and a box of cheese and fruit, she perched on a stool in the chain café and chose a color scheme for her tulip stickers. Using the water pen that Reese would revile due to its cheapness, she started sketching pages of tulips, so that she could do another monthly sticker kit to make Reese happy. It was the least she could do given that she’d suspected her friend of murder.
When school was out, Mandy drove to Laurelhurst, the quiet, upscale neighborhood nestled along Lake Washington, a trip that had become unfamiliar since her divorce. Some of her paintings, still drying, slid off
the seat onto the floor of her car as she made the winding turns.
The Moffats’ house, on a hill, had a gorgeous water view on one side and looked over a three-acre park on the other. The beach club was less than a mile away. Mandy liked her house, off a busy, mixed-use street and far from downscale, but she’d always felt she could breathe more deeply in this neighborhood, just off the beaten path. It smelled better.
She drove into the alley behind the Moffats’ house and parked outside the garage. Light rain fell on her shoulders as she trudged past the garbage cans to the gate separating the backyard from the alley. Glad that it had held off until now, she reached over the gate and fought with the damp lever until it released and let her inside.
Elaine Moffat wasn’t a back-door-visit person, even when Mandy was her daughter-in-law, so she walked alongside the house and up the steps to the front door. She rang the bell and waited.
When the door was opened, she didn’t recognize the woman who stood there.
Mandy smiled. ‘Hello. I’m Mandy, Vellum’s mother. Is my daughter available, please?’
The woman looked at her, confusion registering, then said in a broken accent, ‘I get Miz Moffat for you, OK?’ She shut the door in Mandy’s face.
Mandy jumped back, even though the closing door couldn’t possibly have hit her. It felt like rejection. She turned and looked down to the street. Except for the evergreen bushes protecting various properties, the trees were still bare. But she knew spring was coming. Some trees would even be in full bloom in a couple of weeks, the cherry blossoms that flowered in mid-March. But today had descended into winter while she’d perched on her café stool. The air bit at her now and she huddled into her coat.
At least the weather matched her life. The peace she’d found in the Arboretum flowed away with her entrance onto the Moffat property. Words she’d likely hear from them spit invective into her thoughts. Her cousin had been exactly the kind of guy she would have wanted to keep her daughter away from, and she’d missed the signs, her vision obscured by old loyalties. Her trust in him had cost her in many small ways – now even the sight of her beautiful daughter on a daily basis.
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