“I don’t mean to overstep, Stella,” Dolly said, as though reading her mind. “I just want to help if I can.”
Stella studied Alma for several moments. The child looked as though she was about to drift off to sleep. “Would that be okay with you, darlin’, if Miss Dolly here checked you over a little bit?”
Alma gave a faint nod, so Stella said, “Go ahead, Miss Dolly. If you think you can . . .”
But Dolly Browning had already raised the hem of the girl’s pajama top and lowered the elastic of the bottoms a couple of inches, exposing her belly.
Bending down, Dolly placed her ear on the child’s abdomen and listened intently for what seemed like a terribly long time to Stella.
What on earth is she trying to hear? Stella wondered. Seems like a strange thing—listening to somebody’s tummy—to be doin’ at a time like this. But she appears to know what she’s doing, so . . .
Finally, Dolly lifted her head and murmured, “Hm-m. Bowel sounds . . . absent.” To Alma she said, “Stick out your tongue for me, honey. Let me have a look at it.”
Alma did so and Stella noticed it was white, rather than a normal pink.
“Okay, coated tongue,” Dolly muttered under her breath. Placing her fingertips on Alma’s neck, she said, “Fast pulse.”
She placed her index finger of her right hand on Alma’s navel and her left in the area of her pelvis on the right side.
It seemed to Stella that Dolly was measuring the distance. Stella watched carefully as Dolly pressed down gently on a spot between the two points that was about two-thirds of the way down.
Alma let out a terrible yelp, and Dolly instantly released the pressure.
Dolly turned and looked at Stella, and the expression on her face made Stella feel suddenly very cold inside.
“We need to call the ambulance,” Dolly said, her voice calm and measured. “Hopefully, it will be available. If it’s not, we’ll drive. Fast.”
“Why?” Stella said, afraid of the answer she would receive.
“What’s wrong?” she heard Savannah ask, even as the girl hurried to the telephone.
“We have to get Alma to a hospital. I believe she’s experiencing the late stages of appendicitis.”
Chapter 22
As both Stella and Dolly feared, the town’s only ambulance was unavailable when Savannah called for it. But Dolly was kind enough to not only drive Stella and Alma to the hospital, but to remain with Stella as she waited for news of her granddaughter’s condition.
They sat in a tiny, claustrophobic waiting room, on a couch that had once been quite fashionable in the seventies with its velvet, floral design and diamond-tucked back. But now, ten years later, the piece of furniture looked as tired and depressed as most of the people who sat on it, waiting for word about their loved ones’ conditions.
Stella was no exception.
Just when she thought she had this child-raising duty all figured out, something would come along and show her how little she knew about anything.
If it hadn’t been for Dolly Browning, she would still be sitting in the living room with Alma on the sofa, having no idea that the child was seriously ill.
Stella reached over to Dolly, who was sitting next to her, and grasped her hand. “If I live to be a hundred years old, Miss Dolly, I’ll never be able to repay you for what you did today.”
Though she tried to fight them back, Stella couldn’t keep the tears from filling her eyes and running down her cheeks.
One of her grand angels in the hospital.
It was almost more than she could bear.
Dolly chuckled, and the sound of simple laughter gave Stella more comfort than she would’ve thought possible.
“By the time you’re one hundred years old, Stella Reid, I’ll be long gone. So you’re going to have to repay me with one of those amazing apple pies you make. But I’m old, so don’t wait around too long.”
“Oh, I won’t, believe me. As soon as my little grandgirl and me are outta this place and back home again, you’ll be gettin’ that pie. Maybe a cake and some brownies, too.”
“The pie will be enough, that and seeing your little one running around, full of vim and vigor again.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears.”
They both jumped when the waiting room door opened and the emergency room doctor who had first examined Alma upon their arrival walked in.
He was young. Far younger than Stella would have liked. But then, long ago she had noticed that they were making doctors, lawyers, and policemen far younger than they used to. At least in the eyes of a person who had passed the age of fifty and was old enough to be those professionals’ parent.
Both Stella and Dolly jumped up from the old sofa and rushed over to him.
Anticipating their question, he immediately said, “She’s fine. As fine as a kid can be whose appendix has to come out. Right away.”
“I was afraid of that,” Dolly said. “Her white blood cell count is elevated?”
“Very,” the doctor replied. “You brought her in just in time.”
“Can I see her?” Stella asked. “They grabbed her away from me almost as soon as we brought her in the door. The nurses shooed me right out and told us to wait up here.”
The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Reid. But she’s already been taken to surgery. We couldn’t wait. But as soon as she’s stable and awake, we’ll be sure to let you know. Try not to worry. It’s a fairly common surgery, and the surgeon who’s working on her has done hundreds of them.”
“Hundreds?” Dolly asked.
The doctor smiled. “He did fifty before breakfast this morning.” He pointed to the old couch and said, “I’ll have somebody come tell you when it’s over, but it’s going to take a while. So you might as well have a seat over there and try to relax.”
“You ever had a baby that you loved going under the knife, Doctor?” Stella asked, trying not to sound bitter or angry. After all, it wasn’t this young man’s fault that Alma was in surgery.
“No, ma’am, I haven’t,” he said. “But I can imagine how awful it must be.”
No you can’t, Stella thought, as she walked back to the couch and collapsed onto it. Unless you’ve actually been through it yourself, unless it’s your little one, your own flesh and blood, who’s in danger, you can’t possibly imagine what it’s like.
* * *
Three hours later, Stella was in the hospital chapel on her knees, leaning her elbows on a pew seat, and praying, when she heard the door in the back open and close.
Looking up, she saw Manny hurrying toward her.
She jumped to her feet and met him halfway, where he gave her a long, tight hug.
“I came as soon as I heard,” he said. “I stopped in the ER, and they told me little Alma’s surgery was over. They said everything went well, so I figured you’d be here in the chapel saying, ‘Thank you! ’ ”
“Of course I was,” she said. “After begging for a good outcome all that time, I figured I’d better come here and give thanks for answered prayers. It’s not nice to bend somebody’s ear for hours, beggin’ and beggin’ them for somethin’ and then not even say, ‘Thank you,’ when they deliver the goods. Not even when it’s God above.”
Stella looked around. There were several other people, who were praying or simply sitting and soaking in the sacred peace and comfort of the place. Some of them looked worried, as though they hadn’t received their good news yet.
“Let’s go outside,” she whispered, taking him by the arm and heading toward the door.
Once they were out in the hallway, he said, “I called your house to see how Alma was feeling. I was surprised when it was Elsie who answered the phone.”
“Oh, good. She’s over there already. I called Savannah when we got here and told her to get hold of Elsie and ask her if she could come over there tonight to watch them. Savannah’s fine watching them for a while in the daytime, but come nightfall, I want an adult there.”
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“That’s what Elsie said. She told me she’d be spending the night. She figured you’d stay here at the hospital with Alma.”
“I sure will. They told me I’d have to go home as soon as visitin’ hours are up, and I told them they’d better have a whole herd of burly security guards standin’ by to throw me out, ’cause that’ll be the only way I’ll go.”
Manny laughed. “At least those guards will be near an emergency room. They can get their wounds tended to right away, once you’ve finished with them. I don’t envy those guys their task, tossing you out on your ear.”
“Ain’t gonna happen. I won’t press my luck by trying to sit there in her room all night. But I promised my sweet girl that anytime she wakes up tonight, she can rest assured that I’ll be in the chapel or that waiting room, stretched out on their beat-up old couch, and if she needs me, all she has to do is tell a nurse to come get me.”
“Good for you. How did she look, your Alma, when you saw her after the surgery?”
“She was still pretty groggy, but I managed to get a giggle outta her when I told her she could bring that ol’ appendix home, put a leash around its neck, and keep it for a pet. She says she’s gonna name it, “A. P. N. Dicks.”
He reached out and ran his fingers through her curls. “You’re a wonderful grandma, Stella. I’m so sorry I dropped you off like I did there at the station. I should have taken you to the school, grabbed her, and got you both to the hospital.”
“There was no reason to think she was so awful sick at that point. I had no idea it was serious. Not until Dolly Browning dropped by our house to give us some tomatoes. She looked her over good and figured out it was appendicitis in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. I’m tellin’ you, you shoulda seen the way she checked that child out. Like she knew exactly what she was doin’. I was mighty impressed, I tell you.”
“She’s a strange one, that Miss Dolly. Sometimes she’s crazy as a bedbug, thinking somebody snuck into her house at night and hid her glasses just to torment her.”
Stella chuckled. “Then they creeped back in the next night and left them in her freezer.”
“I guess it’s easier to blame missing objects on some imaginary enemy than admit you’re slipping some mentally and leaving your stuff in weird places.”
“Then she goes and does somethin’ like she did today, savin’ my baby’s life with knowledge that I didn’t have, and most people wouldn’t. She’s an odd one, that Dolly. You never know what to expect outta her.”
He glanced up and down the empty hall. “Where is she now?”
“I sent her home. She didn’t wanna go. Put up quite a fuss about it. She even offered to stay the night with me. But I told her to go take care of her animals, they’d all need feedin’ and the dog would need walkin’. I told her I was fine, since I knew my Alma was gonna be okay.”
“You must have been so worried. Surgery. On a child so young.”
“Oh, I was beside myself, Manny. Turns out it was just as serious as Dolly feared, too. They said that appendix was so swollen up and infected and fragile that when the surgeon took it out, it fell apart right there in his hand. I tell you, if it hadn’t been for Miss Dolly Browning, I don’t think I’d have my baby girl no more.”
“That’s wonderful, honey. Thank goodness for Dolly. I’ll be sure to thank her next time I see her. In fact, I believe I’ll ask the mayor to give her some sort of medal or prize. Name her McGill’s Citizen of the Year or whatever.”
Stella couldn’t tell if Manny was joking or serious, but something told her that Dolly wasn’t the sort to want a medal or anything else as a reward—other than a home-baked apple pie.
She glanced down and realized that Manny was holding a brown paper grocery sack in his hand. It appeared to be full of something and its top was folded closed.
“You didn’t need to bring me food,” she said. “They’ve got a good cafeteria here, and I’m on friendly terms with the gal who runs it. I ain’t likely to starve.”
“It’s not food,” he said, handing it to her. “Savannah asked me to swing by your place on my way here, pick this up, and bring it to you. She said it had ‘girl necessities’ in it. I figured I’d better not ask for particulars, but just do as I was told.”
Stella unfolded the top and peeked inside. On top of what appeared to be a stack of clothes and toiletries, she saw her purse, some panties, and a stick of deodorant.
“God bless that child,” she said. “I was wondering how I was going to brush my teeth tonight or comb my hair tomorrow morning. I ran out of the house with nothin’ but my ailin’ granddaughter in my arms. Thank you, Manny. I sure appreciate this.”
“No problem. Did they say when they might release her? I know you’ll be anxious to get her home.”
“Oh, I sure am, and they said, if all goes well, she can leave day after tomorrow.”
“That’s great. You just let me know when you think you and she will be ready to travel, and I’ll be here. I can get you home in record time.”
“Lights and sirens?”
“For our little Alma, you betcha. She gets the works.”
Suddenly, their cozy conversation was interrupted by an angry voice shouting, “Sheriff Gilford! What the hell are you doing here? You’ve got a lotta gall showing your face here, now of all times!”
They turned toward a door at the end of the hall where several people had just entered. The one who had yelled was Donald Barton, Daisy Tucker’s fiancé. He was accompanied by Gertrude Tucker and Daisy.
All three seemed highly upset about something and the target of their wrath appeared to be Manny.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked in a tone that was as calm and smooth as Donald’s was loud and abrasive.
“You just can’t leave him alone, can you?” Daisy shouted as the irate trio rushed down the hall toward Manny and Stella.
“I hope you’re satisfied now, Sheriff.” Gertrude stopped only a few feet from him and said with tears in her eyes, “You just kept at him and kept on until you finally—”
“Mrs. Tucker, Daisy, Donald, what’s wrong?” Stella asked them. “What’s happened and why are you tearin’ into Sheriff Gilford like this? I saw the talk he had with y’all there in the station. He was most respectful to each and ever’ one of you. Why’re you givin’ him such a rough time?”
“He wasn’t all that respectful when he went by the bank today and accused my husband of murdering that terrible Billy Ray Sonner boy,” Mrs. Tucker said.
“Actually, I think I was respectful,” Manny said. “I didn’t accuse your husband of anything. I only asked him a couple of questions, quietly, privately, there in his office.”
“Well, I don’t know what you said, but it really upset him,” Daisy said, also starting to cry, “and now he’s here in the hospital.”
“He’s had a heart attack,” Donald added. “A bad one. They don’t know if he’ll make it or not.”
Stella gasped. “Oh, no!”
Manny said, “I’m sorry to hear that. Very sorry. I think a lot of Mr. Tucker. I assure you I never meant to do him any harm at all. I thought we parted on good terms. We shook hands and—”
“His secretary said that less than fifteen minutes after you left his office, he collapsed. He would’ve died if the bank manager hadn’t given him CPR.”
Oh, Stella thought. I’ll bet that’s why the ambulance wasn’t available for Alma.
“I’ve just got one thing to say to you, Sheriff Manny Gilford,” Mrs. Tucker said, poking her finger at Manny’s chest. “Don’t you come anywhere near my husband again. I mean it! If I hear you’ve approached him for any reason whatsoever, I will sue you for endangering his life or something like that. Or better still, I’ll just beat the tar out of you all by myself.”
She glared up at him, her dark eyes glittering with undiluted hate and fury. “You’d better believe me, I can do it!”
Apparently satisfied with having said her piece, Gertrude Tucker spun around and
headed back down the hall with her daughter and future son-in-law behind her. They left through the door they had entered by.
Stella and Manny stood in stunned silence in their wake.
Finally, Stella said, “What in tarnation was that all about?”
Manny stared at the closed door at the end of the hall, looking confused and troubled. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I dropped by the bank earlier as they said. After I got those samples off to Atlanta, I got to thinking about that blue fuzz on the tape and the sweater Franklin was wearing when we saw him. So I did a bit more research on him.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Yes. He wasn’t always a mild-mannered banker.”
“Really? Do tell.”
“He served in the Vietnam War. More than that, he was a Green Beret. Decorated several times for acts of bravery that saved his fellow soldiers.” Manny paused, then added, “Most of those acts of bravery included killing the enemy in one-on-one, hand-to-hand combat.”
Stella digested that information, trying to square it in her mind with the gentleman she knew who ran their local bank. Calm, kind, easygoing Mr. Tucker. A trained killer?
“Reckon you don’t have to ask yourself now if he was capable of killing somebody? Apparently, he could’ve if he’d wanted to bad enough.”
“But a former Green Beret could have taken Billy Ray out with a single jab to the heart, bullet to the head, or even a twist of his neck. Why the whole bathroom–taped door routine?”
“I don’t know,” Stella said, her own mental wheels racing. “But if Mr. Franklin Tucker, former tough guy, special ops soldier, was so upset by your questions that he had a heart attack after you asked them, you gotta ask yourself why.”
Chapter 23
That night, after Manny had left and Stella had said good night to Alma and tucked her in with a kiss, a bedtime prayer, and a wish for sweet dreams, Stella made her way to the reception area at the entrance to the hospital. She used the ladies’ room there to brush her teeth and wash her face.
Since Savannah had been kind enough to include her jar of cold cream, she applied a bit of that, too.
Murder at Mabel's Motel Page 18