“Come on, my car’s just outside,” Mac said, rushing past Mrs. Werner and pulling the door open. Cassie needed no further invitation. Not bothering to grab her hand bag, she ran out of the shop.
Everything seems so normal, Cassie thought as she glanced around the crowded parking lot and at the small park-like area just outside the hospital’s main entrance. Birds sang, and a gentle breeze carried the sweet scent of flowers and the spicy scent of the sequoias. How could nature be so peaceful when her own world was in such a mess?
But as they entered the hospital the sense of peace slipped away. An unusual tension filled the halls. People scurried about, distracted expressions on their faces.
Ignoring them all, Cassie and Mac walked down the hall to the wing the volunteer at the reception desk had directed them to. Neither commented on it, but they both noticed that the nearer they got to Myra’s room, the more harried everyone appeared, and the more uniformed officers they saw.
A glance of apprehension passed between them as they neared the room and saw that a group of men dressed in suits was gathered before the door, deep in a very animated conversation. No one had to tell them that the men were from the Sheriff’s office.
Cassie had expected to see one, maybe even two, guards at her mother’s door, but certainly not half a dozen plain clothes officers, all giving their full attention to a very angry Sheriff Whitaker. Intimidated by their number, she took a small step backwards before she found the nerve to approach them.
“Excuse me,” she said in a surprisingly strong voice considering how she was shaking inside, “but I was wondering if I might be allowed to go in to see my mother, Myra Adams?”
Mac was impressed with Cassie’s ability to gaze with those gorgeous eyes directly at Sheriff Whitaker without so much as a glimmer of the tension he knew she was experiencing. If he hadn’t known better, he would never have guessed Cassie’s involvement with the drama that was taking place at this very moment.
“I’d be only too happy to let you see your mother, Miss, but there seems to be one little problem keeping me from doing it.”
“A problem? Mom’s all right, isn’t she? She hasn’t had another seizure?”
“Your guess is as good as mine at this point,” the Sheriff said, his voice revealing an edge of anger. “I can’t tell you how your mother’s doing, because we seem to have lost the lady.”
“Lost? What do you mean ‘lost’? She hasn’t ...?” The word ‘died’ stuck in Cassie’s throat. The very thought that the worst might have actually happened was more than Cassie could face.
“I mean that at this moment no one seems to know where Myra Adams is.” Sheriff Whitaker turned glowering eyes at the men he had been conferring with, as if he blamed each and every one of them for the disappearance of the prisoner. “I don’t know how she did it, but your mother appears to have escaped.”
Chapter 11
“Like hell, you say!” Mac stepped between Cassie and the sheriff. “This woman has every right to visit her mother. Now, either you let her in or we’ll go to the judge and get an order to make you do it.”
“Either you don’t listen well or you’re too stupid to understand what I said. Maybe both. Now listen up. Like I told Cassie here, her mother is gone, as in not here. Now, how the hell am I supposed to let her visit Myra Adams when that she-devil has disappeared?”
“What? Disappeared? But where ...?” Cassie stammered, her astonished expression totally convincing.
“Disappeared - as in vanished. Your mother has escaped, Miss Adams.”
“But ...”
He turned to one of the uniformed men who stood nearby. “And until I have proof otherwise, I am going to assume that you might have had a part in her breakout. Officer, take this woman down to the jail and put her away for safe keeping.”
“Hey, wait just a damned minute!” Mac interjected. “You have no cause to lock this woman up simply because your men were so incompetent they allowed their prisoner to slip through their fingers. For all we know, she may have been kidnapped.”
“Maybe you’d like to keep Miss Adams company in an adjoining cell.” The sheriff’s scowl was meant to cower his opponent but it had little effect on Mac.
“Oh, I don’t think so, Sheriff. I don’t believe you have any desire to read in a national publication that you subjected two innocent people to false imprisonment.” Mac’s mind was working at break-neck speed. If Father Mike’s plan stood a chance of succeeding, it was imperative that all three of them be free to play out their parts. He recognized Sheriff Whitaker’s threat as nothing more than intimidation, but Cassie was a different matter. The sheriff might very well suspect Myra’s daughter of some involvement in her mother’s escape.
Mac fought off the urge to punch the big man a good one, right on his bull dog chin, and turned instead to the use of diplomacy.
“Come on, Sheriff, you know you don’t have legal cause to put this young woman under arrest. She’s been nothing but truthful with you from the start of this sorry mess. I can’t believe that you actually believe she could have been involved in Myra Adam’s escape. Why don’t you just put her under house arrest? Let her go back to her shop and post one of your men to keep an eye on her in case her mother should show up there.”
Sheriff Whitaker had been a lawman long enough to know how to keep his thoughts and emotions from showing, but Mac suspected that the man was relieved at his solution. The sheriff had backed himself into a corner threatening to lock Cassie up when he knew he didn’t have the law to back him up. Placing Cassie under a loose sort of house arrest was the perfect solution to his dilemma.
“Who the hell are you, anyway?” the sheriff questioned Mac, buying time while he figured out a way to make it appear as if Mac’s suggestion had been his own idea.
“Mac McCormick, reporter for The Inquisitor,” Mac answered as he presented his ID for the sheriff’s inspection. He judiciously refrained from mentioning that the sheriff damn well knew who he was. He felt like reminding him that the sheriff had questioned him himself after the second murder, but he remained silent, allowing the man to work his way out of the hole he had dug himself into. For now it appeared that Walt Whittaker would rather forget that the two had ever met.
“So what makes you so interested in what happens to this girl?” the sheriff asked.
“Just looking for a story. I figured if I hung around Myra Adam’s daughter long enough, I’d hit pay dirt. Looks like it paid off,” Mac answered with a smirk.
The look of obvious disgust on the sheriff’s face reflected the man’s opinion of someone who would trade on the young woman’s sensitive emotions at a time like this, ignoring the fact that he would have done exactly the same thing if he felt it would have helped him solve his case.
“Miss Adams,” Sheriff Whitaker turned to Cassie, “you can go on back to that shop of yours. But don’t even think of leaving town without talking to me first, hear? And just to keep everything square, I’ll be having my men check in with you from time to time.”
“Thank you, Sheriff,” Cassie replied, holding back a huge sigh of relief. For a while there she had been afraid that Father Mike’s elaborate plan for catching the murderer would have to proceed without her, and now that she had agreed to help, she would hate to be left out. She wasn’t even sure the priest would be able to pull it off without her help.
“And you,” the Sheriff pinned Mac with an angry glare, “can just take your story somewhere else. You leave this young lady alone, hear? She’s had more than enough trouble without being set on by your kind.”
“Whatever you say,” Mac stepped back, raising both hands as a sign of surrender. “I figure I can find a story around here somewhere. Hell, if I can’t find one, I can always make one up.”
Just as they were turning to leave, Cassie noticed a commotion at the end of the hallway. Surrounded by several plainclothes policemen was an extremely flustered Father Sullivan. Several of the men were speaking at once, which ap
peared to confuse the old man even more.
“What’s he doing here?” Cassie asked. “Surely he doesn’t have anything to do with my mother’s disappearance.”
“That’s what we intend to find out,” the Sheriff answered dryly.
“But he’s a Catholic priest. What would he have to do with my mother? Obviously, neither one of us is Catholic.”
“Please, Miss Adams, will you go home now and let us do our jobs here? We’ve got a lot of work to do and standing around talking to you isn’t helping the investigation one bit. Now, please leave. I promise to get in touch with you as soon as your mother is located.”
“But why a priest?” Cassie insisted. “Just tell me that and I promise to be on my way. For all the mystery surrounding him, I’d think she’d called him to extend the Church’s last rites or something.” She said the last words in a decidedly sarcastic tone.
“You shouldn’t joke about a thing like that, Miss Adams. A lot of people take their religion real serious around here, and apparently your mother was beginning to see the light too, at least that’s what we all thought when she sent her nurse out to get the Father. She said she wanted to confess her sins, thought she was going to die and didn’t want to go to her grave a sinner. She even begged the woman not to come back until after she had spoken with Father Sullivan. Said she needed to say her prayers.”
Cassie’s eyes widened in shock. “My mother ...? I can’t believe it!”
“Neither did I. But the nurse insists it was true. Myra told her the priest had converted her and that she didn’t want to die without the last rites. So the nurse scooted on out of there and went down to the nurse’s station to call the priest. That’s when we figure Myra made her escape. By the time the priest got here, her room was empty.”
“But surely you’d placed a guard at her door …”
The Sheriff’s face clouded with anger. “Oh, we had a guard there all right, for all the good it did us. Said he didn’t see a thing except the nurse coming out.”
Sheriff Whitaker didn’t say it but he suspected the officer stationed at the prisoner’s door had been more interested in the nurse than in doing his job. He’d be lucky if he still had a job when this was all over, the Sheriff silently vowed.
Cassie walked hesitantly down the hall toward the priest. She hoped it would appear that talking to a Catholic priest was a totally alien experience for her.
As she drew nearer to him she noted his disheveled appearance. Consummate actor that he was, everything about Father Sullivan spoke of a man who was completely bewildered by the curious circumstances he found himself in.
“I believed in her,” he said, his eyes wide, searching from one man to another as if one of them had an answer to his unasked question. “I offered her salvation and this is how she repaid me.”
“Yeah, well what did you expect from a witch?” Cassie was surprised to hear Walt Whitaker’s voice so near her. Apparently he had come up behind her silently and had been listening to every word.
She glanced at Father Sullivan, noting the wary expression in his eyes. It was easy enough to tell that nothing had happened to change his opinion of the town’s sheriff. As far as the good priest was concerned, the sheriff was high on his list of suspects.
“People change, Sheriff Whitaker. That is, with God’s help they can. All thing’s are possible with the help of God.”
“Sure, and pigs can fly,” the sheriff replied sarcastically.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Sheriff. It’s sad I am for any man who tries to live this life without the promise of God in his heart.”
“Save your pity for yourself and Samuel Hicks. It’s you two who have something to worry about now that Myra Adams is on the loose again. It’s you religious nuts she’s been targeting, not lawmen, if you remember. If I were you I’d be keeping out of sight until my men catch up with her.”
“Thank you for your advice, Sheriff Whitaker, but I’ll not be hiding out. I’ll be spending the rest of this night on my knees before the blessed sacrament on the altar of my church, praying for Myra Adams’ eternal soul. I’ll be mentioning you in my prayers too, Sheriff Whitaker. I’m thinking you’ll be needing all the help you can get.”
The sheriff’s face turned such a deep shade of red Cassie feared he might explode right there in front of them.
“Keep your prayers to yourself, Padre. I want no part of them.”
Something about Mac suddenly caught Cassie’s attention. Positioned next to the priest, he faced Cassie, looking down the hall in the direction of the room Myra had so recently occupied. Though he stood in a nonchalant pose, there was something in his stance that alerted Cassie’s senses. Reaching out to him with her mind, she felt a quickening of excitement race through him. There was but a slight communicating flicker in his eyes, but she was certain she had seen it.
“Sir, don’t you think we should set up a watch on the church tonight? After all, the Father here and Reverend Hicks are the only two clergymen in town still alive. Don’t you figure Mrs. Adams might go after one of them now that she’s on the loose?” one of the plainclothes officers suggested.
The Sheriff turned angry eyes on the young officer. “Why don’t you set that up, Officer Gordon? That is, if the good Father is afraid his faith isn’t strong enough to protect him from Myra Adams’ tender mercies.”
For one split second Mac was in danger of giving it all away. Thankfully everyone’s attention was riveted on the quarreling priest and sheriff and not on him, or they would surely have turned to see what it was that had caught his attention. Thank God, he had caught himself in time and managed to slip back into his casual pose before anyone had noticed his response to the cleaning woman who had just exited the room next to Myra’s. He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw that only Cassie had noticed his brief lapse.
He returned his full attention to Father Mike, dragging his eyes away from the woman as she opened the door to the storage room and entered it, closing the door behind her. The last thing he noted before bringing his gaze back to the priest was the key that stayed poised in the lock.
“I’d rather take my chances with Myra than with one of your men,” the priest stated angrily. “Who’s to say the guard would be safer than the witch?”
“You go too far, old man,” the Sheriff replied in a low, barely-controlled voice. “If you want to take your chances on your own, so be it. I wash my hands of you. I only hope that Samuel Hicks has better sense than you. Now, get the heck out of here. My men have too much to do to stand around talking to you.”
With that, the Sheriff turned on his heel and strode purposefully down the hall, entering the room that had recently been occupied by Myra Adams. One by one the officers who had been questioning the priest turned to follow their leader, a couple of them sending reluctant glances in the priest’s direction. Clearly they were not happy with the Sheriff’s orders but none of them were in a position to disobey.
“They can search the room ‘till they’re blue in the face, but they’ll not be finding your mother,” Father Mike spoke softly to Cassie as soon as the officers were out of earshot.
“Not now, Father Mike. Can you meet us at Cassie’s later?”
“Be there in one hour,” was the priest’s cryptic reply.
For a moment Mac’s confidence in the priest’s ability to maintain the secrecy that was so urgent to the success of their plan was shaken, but he was quickly reassured as he noted how easily the old man managed to turn the key to the closet door that Myra had just entered, slip it out of the lock and drop it in the pocket of his jacket. The sly old fox managed the maneuver so smoothly no one but Mac even noticed that he had paused at the door as the three of them walked down the hall toward the hospital’s exit.
“Okay, what have you done with my mother?” Cassie asked before Father Sullivan had had a chance to take two steps through the door.
“Not to worry, not to worry. There’s not a safer place on earth than where she is this
very minute.”
“Safe? What do you mean safe? Safe from discovery or safe from being able to do any harm to others? You know how the people in this town are about her. If she’s not in a place where she’s securely locked up they might try to hang us all before this is over.”
“Well,” Mac turned to the priest, a slightly crooked smile touching his lips, “how safe is that closet anyway?”
“You saw?”
Mac silently nodded his response.
The priest reached into his pocket and extracted a large old-fashioned key. Bouncing it confidently in the palm of his hand, he answered, “There’s no way she can get out of that closet and, without this key, no one can get in.”
“What are you two talking about? What closet?”
“Your mother, Cassie m’dear, is safely locked away in a linen closet directly across the hall from her hospital room, and that’s where she’ll be staying until after all this mess is taken care of. I can assure you of that because I happen to know for a fact that this is the only key to that door.” He dangled the key directly in front of Cassie’s face, obviously extremely proud of his treasure.
“But how ...?”
“How did she get there or how do I happen to know so much about the hospital’s keys?” The old man’s eyes twinkled with amusement. No one loved being the center of attention more than he. “Actually, the answer to the one question is much the same as the answer to the other. You see, I probably know more about that old hospital than anyone else in Port Bellmont. I was very much involved in the reconstruction of the old building when the diocese bought it some forty years ago. At that time it was to be run by the good Sisters of Mercy and I was to be the hospital’s chaplain. I was a young man then, with probably way too much energy, so I made it my business to know every square inch of the place. And one of the things I learned was that the old building had consisted mostly of long wards which were no longer popular with either the patients or their doctors. So, as a way of remedying that situation, each ward was cut up into two or three separate rooms. Money was tight, naturally, so the contractor cut corners wherever he could. One of the ways he did it was to make one closet between two rooms, putting in a thin partition to separate them. One day I was puttering around, checking up on the progress of the reconstruction, and found that a slim person could slip behind the partitions and come out in the room on the other side of the closet. So, you see, all I had to do was to sneak a wig and a maid’s uniform into Myra, wait a couple of minutes while she slipped into the closet in the room next to hers, then go set off the alarm that she was not in her room. Which, as I might add, was the God’s own truth. She wasn’t there at all, don’t you know.”
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