by Gin Jones
"What about Melissa's family?" Helen said. "Are any of them here?"
"She only has one distant relative. A nephew, I think, in California," he said. "Nobody who lives around here. I felt I owed it to her to make the burial arrangements since she died on the job."
That was interesting, Helen thought. For liability reasons, she'd have expected a boss to try to establish that an employee's death had occurred at a time when she was not working, rather than on the job. Especially since it seemed highly unlikely that Melissa had been working at the time of her death. She'd died sometime between 6 p.m. and the following 10 a.m. Most of that time wasn't even close to her contracted late-morning/mid-day visitation hour at the cottage, and Helen certainly hadn't asked her to come out for an extra visit.
Helen pulled her hand from Pierce's grip. "I really should be going. Lots to do."
"I can save you one errand," he said. "I've found the perfect new nurse for you. Her name's Rebecca, and she has a background in physical therapy. I'm sure she'll be perfect for you."
Pierce had thought Melissa was perfect for her too, so she didn't have a great deal of confidence in his matchmaking skills. "I don't need a nurse any longer."
"I know we got off on the wrong foot with the first placement," he said, "but you'll like Rebecca much better."
"That's not saying much. Anyone would be less irritating than Melissa." Helen's voice must have grown sharp with her annoyance, because the three rent-a-mourners were turning to stare at her. She mollified them with a murmured, "God rest her soul."
Pierce turned so that he was between Helen and their audience, his body serving as a bit of a barrier against eavesdropping. He lowered his voice. "Melissa could be a bit strong-willed and abrasive sometimes, but she got the job done. No one died on her watch."
Except Melissa herself.
Actually, Helen thought, Pierce's claim didn't make sense. "Didn't she specialize in geriatrics? She must have lost a few patients."
"Well, sure," Pierce said. "But no more than would be expected in the circumstances. And not for any reasons she could have done anything about. That's what I meant. You can't blame her for the death of patients who were old and terminal before she was hired. It was just a coincidence that she was working with them when they died."
"Are you sure?" Helen said. "I've read about nurses giving their elderly patients lethal doses of drugs to put them out of their misery, whether they wanted it or not."
"Melissa was abrasive sometimes," he said, "but she wasn't insane, and she wasn't some sort of serial euthanizer. Ever since I took over the nursing agency, I've been doing psychological testing of prospective employees to make sure no one has that sort of inclination. We have a rigorous hiring process, and I'm sure Melissa's previous employer tested her too. She'd been at the Wharton Nursing Home for years, and it has a solid reputation."
"If it's so great, why'd she leave there?"
"Natural transition to retirement," Pierce said. "With our agency, she could work part-time, which left her free to finally have some fun. She'd always wanted to be in radio, and she was volunteering at the local station whenever she wasn't with her patients."
So that was why Melissa had been so determined to have the radio on. Helen felt a little guilty for having insisted on turning it off all the time. And a little jealous that Melissa had known exactly what she wanted to do with her retirement years; unlike Helen, Melissa had found something she really loved doing. "It's too bad she didn't have more time to enjoy the radio work."
Pierce nodded, but he was looking at the latest mourner to arrive. A real one, apparently, in a fairly new black suit. "Excuse me. That's the daughter of one of Melissa's long-term patients. She must be devastated. I'll send Rebecca out to see you tomorrow morning. You're going to love her."
"That's not necessary," Helen started to say, but he was gone, just one more person ignoring her wishes.
Helen headed for the exit. Her curiosity about Melissa's killer gave way to true empathy for the dead woman. There was a lot that Helen hadn't liked about the woman, but she had to admire the woman's sense of purpose. All Melissa had wanted was to do her job as a nurse, and to indulge her passion for radio. She could have continued to do both for at least another decade if it hadn't been for the killer. It just seemed so unfair.
Helen was silent on the ride home, and Jack, always sensitive to his passengers' preferences, didn't try to engage her in any conversation.
Helen was uncomfortably aware that if she had been the killer's victim, no one would have had the same sense of a life being cut short. Everyone had already dismissed her, because of the lupus, and she hadn't thrown herself into any new interests, the way Melissa had done with her passion for radio.
It dawned on her that she had written herself off, just like everyone else did. She'd seen her life as over, rather than starting over.
No more. Even if everyone else wrote her off, Helen knew that she was still capable of great things. All she had to do was find something she was as passionate about as she'd once been about supporting her husband's political career, or as Melissa had been about her nursing career. And even if Helen never did find an activity she cared about for her retirement, whatever she did was going to be better than getting a tree branch to the skull, followed by an employer-organized wake populated by faux mourners.
* * *
When Jack delivered Helen to her home, Lily's car was parked in front of the cottage.
Helen braced herself for Lily's sharp inquisition, but it was the softer sister, Laura, who opened the front door and greeted Helen with a hug. "We'd have been here before today, but you know how Howie is about me being away all by myself overnight, and Lily was on a business trip and didn't get home until today."
"I'm fine."
"I couldn't have done what you did," Laura said, "staying here all by yourself since the murder."
"It was no big deal." Although, really, it hadn't been easy falling asleep the first night, thinking about how Melissa had been killed right outside her bedroom, without anyone noticing until too late.
"We're here now, and that's what matters," Lily said from her spot at the kitchen island, with her laptop open in front of her. "Are you sure you want to cancel the nursing agency's contract?"
"I'm sure," Helen said as she made her way inside. "I don't need a visiting nurse, and I particularly don't need one from that agency. They're more likely to kill me than to help me."
"It's not their fault that one of their nurses was killed here."
"We don't know that." Helen propped her cane next to the door and then settled into her recliner.
"Wait," Laura said. "You think someone killed her on purpose? I thought it was a burglary gone bad."
"That's what the police say, but I'm not sure I believe it."
"You just don't want to believe it," Lily said. "It would confirm how vulnerable you are out here, all alone."
"I just want to know what happened," Helen said. "If it was a burglary gone bad, and Melissa was protecting me, I should know that for sure. I don't want to live with that kind of guilt and anxiety if it's not true, and the police can't be bothered to do their job and find the real killer."
"But if the police are right, will you finally get a security system or a medical monitor? "
"I'll consider it," Helen said. "For now, I've instructed my attorney to terminate the contract with the nursing agency. If there's evidence—persuasive evidence, I mean, not just the detective's lazy assumptions—that there's a violent burglar in the area, we can talk about my options."
"You really have an attorney?" Lily said. "When you didn't give me his name, I thought you were bluffing."
"He's real."
Lily still looked skeptical, and Helen realized it might be a little awkward explaining why she didn't have her attorney's business card, especially since if Lily called his office, she'd be told that Tate had retired. She had his number on her cell phone, at least. She scrolled through the
memory until she found it, and then wrote it down for Lily. She'd talk to Adam and give him a heads-up that Lily might be calling. "Wait until tomorrow before you call. I need to let his office know that you might be calling, and that it's okay to confirm that I'm a client."
Lily took the piece of paper. "This had better not be another bluff."
"We're just concerned about you," said Laura. "Family members are supposed to care about each other."
"I appreciate that," Helen said. "I'm just tired of being treated like I'm incompetent. I understand that you do it out of love, but that doesn't explain why the cops are just as bad. They should be grilling me, not providing me with a presumed defense."
"Why would you need a defense?" Laura said.
Lily answered her sister. "Because Aunt Helen should be the prime suspect in Melissa's murder."
Laura gasped. "Aunt Helen didn't kill Melissa. She wouldn't kill anyone."
"You and I know that," Lily said, "but the police don't. They should suspect her."
"That's it, exactly," Helen said. "They crossed me off the list without even questioning me, as if I didn't exist."
"But why would they think you killed her?" Laura said.
"It just makes sense," Helen said. "She died on my property, which is fairly isolated. I'm the one who found her. I made it pretty clear that I disliked her. Why wouldn't I be a suspect?"
"You didn't have any reason to kill her," Laura said. "She was helping you. She was your nurse."
Lily was nodding thoughtfully. "A nurse that you didn't want. But if there was a really good reason to get rid of her, you would have told us, and we'd have cancelled the contract ourselves."
"You were out of town when things got bad," Helen said. "Canceling the contract wouldn't have stopped her, so I did what I had to do. I filed for a restraining order against her the day before she died."
"A restraining order?" Laura said. "How bad was she?"
Helen wasn't willing to admit Melissa had practically locked her in her room and Helen had been unable to stop her. It sounded so pathetic. And the smaller incidents just made her sound paranoid. She'd told the girls about them before, but even she hadn't considered them all that serious at the time. Annoying, but not enough to justify breaching a contract, let alone get a restraining order.
Helen settled for saying, "She bugged me."
"Everyone bugs you," said Lily.
"So why does everyone keep on bugging me, after I ask them to stop?" Helen said. "I obviously make it clear enough that I want to be left alone. Judge Nolan even took judicial notice of the fact that I hate everyone, for goodness sake."
"You've never gotten a restraining order in the past," Lily said. "There must have been more to the situation with Melissa than you're telling us."
Helen shrugged. "I asked her to leave, and she wouldn't, so I filed for a restraining order."
"Then you had no reason to kill Melissa," Lily said. "You had a restraining order against her, and you could have had her arrested for trespassing or breach of the court order. You didn't need to kill her."
"It wasn't that simple," Helen said. "The judge refused to issue the restraining order."
"So you decided to kill her instead," Lily said with obvious sarcasm. "I don't believe it. I don't think you even dislike people as much as you claim, and you certainly wouldn't kill someone just because she came to visit you. Otherwise, Laura and I would have been murdered in our sleep a long time ago."
"You and Laura don't play the radio at top volume when you visit," Helen said. "And when I insist, you leave."
"Is that a hint?" Lily said.
"No," Helen said. "I'm glad you're both here. I wanted to ask you about Melissa's background. I assume you checked her references."
"Of course," Lily said.
"Do you still have copies?"
"You didn't care enough to read them when she was alive. Why do you want them now?"
"I'm curious," Helen said. "I'd like to talk to some of her other patients."
"Somehow, I don't think you're feeling nostalgic," Lily said. "Talk to them about what?"
"About their motives to kill her," Helen said. "Or who else might want her dead."
"Shouldn't you leave that to the police?" Laura said. "Howie told me not to worry too much about you, that they'd take care of everything."
"The police are never going to find Melissa's killer. They're limiting their search to one specific person, and he didn't do it."
"I'm sure they'll figure it out eventually," Laura said.
Perhaps, but then Helen would never have the satisfaction of making Detective Peterson acknowledge that she was a competent human being, capable of every bit as much violence as the next person. Of course, Laura and Lily weren't likely to be sympathetic to that argument. Instead, Helen said, "The sooner we can convince them it's not the burglar, the sooner they'll find the real culprit. I won't feel safe until then."
"You could move back to Boston," Lily said.
"Or come visit Howie and me for a while," Laura said.
"That's not necessary." If Melissa hadn't driven Helen into the arms of her nieces while she was alive, then some two-bit criminal certainly wouldn't do it. "I'd just like to take a look at Melissa's references. If there's anything in there that will help the police, then I'll pass it along to them."
"You promise?" Lily said. "You won't interfere?"
Helen raised her eyebrows. "Do I ever interfere with anything?"
Lily laughed. "You've done nothing but interfere for the past twenty years. It was practically your job description in the governor's mansion."
"You're the only one who ever noticed, though," Helen said. "I promise no one will notice anything I do now, either."
Lily opened her laptop. "I'm emailing you the reference letters now. But don't think I've forgotten about checking up on your lawyer. I'll be calling him first thing tomorrow."
Lily would vet him far better than Helen herself had done. Fortunately, Helen was confident his credentials would hold up to scrutiny. "Just don't talk to him for too long. He's charging me by the hour, and he's not cheap."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jack had the luxury car idling in Helen's driveway the next morning, as requested, a few minutes before the replacement nurse was scheduled to arrive. The doorbell rang, reminding Helen that she wanted to ask Jack if he knew any electricians who could disconnect the doorbell. Maybe create a switch so she could turn it back on if she was expecting company she actually wanted to see.
Helen peered through the windows to check on her visitor. A short, redheaded woman stood on the porch, clutching an oversized leather purse to her chest. It was big enough to hold a couple six-packs of soda, but the woman didn't look super-caffeinated, just anxious. Barely old enough to have graduated from nursing school, permanent worry lines were already forming across her forehead.
Today's anxiety was probably just because a murder had happened a few feet from where she was standing, rather than because she considered her patient a force to be reckoned with. She was about to find out how wrong she was.
Helen limped back to her desk to grab Melissa's reference letters she wanted to discuss with Tate. Returning to the front door, she glanced at the cane hanging from the front doorknob. It was the ugly back-up one, since she still hadn't found the one she'd lost. It was probably at the law office, since there weren't any other places she could recall visiting right before it disappeared. With a little luck, she'd be able to retrieve it today, and she wouldn't need to use the back-up one any longer. In fact, she could manage without any cane at all until she got to Tate's office today.
She stepped outside and quickly closed the door behind herself. On her way past the nurse, she said, "You must be Rebecca. The agency said you'd be here this morning."
"Where are you going?" Rebecca said.
"I'll be back after your shift is over," Helen said from the bottom of the stairs. "You might as well go home now, but if you want to spend your tim
e here, you can make yourself comfortable on the back deck. It's a beautiful day, and I even left some snacks and bottles of water on the table out there for you. Just watch out for the police tape."
Helen didn't wait for an answer, but headed off to the waiting Town Car, where Jack was emerging with his usual perfect timing to open the back door for her. Once she was inside and he was behind the wheel again, Helen allowed herself to look through the back window at Rebecca. The woman was still standing on the front porch, one arm half-raised, as if uncertain whether to try to call her patient back or politely wave farewell. Rebecca needed some lessons in assertiveness, or she'd have all her patients running roughshod over her.
Not my problem, Helen thought. Trying to be nice is what got me stuck with Melissa and if I'd gotten rid of her right away, I wouldn't have ended up with a dead body in my yard. Helen resolutely turned away from the confused young woman on her porch and told Jack, "The print shop, please. And then the lawyer's office."
"You want me to get rid of the new nurse for you while you're meeting with Tate?" he said. "I could take care of her and be back in time to pick you up."
"No, thank you." Jack could talk like a tough guy, but as far as she could tell, he was far more likely to vanquish the virtual enemies in his smartphone's video games than any real, live unwanted people. He complained about his ungrateful passengers, but he couldn't do anything about them, any more than he could get rid of Helen's nurse. Besides, even if he could do something about Rebecca, it wasn't necessary. The nursing agency would stop sending their employees as soon as Tate convinced them there wasn't going to be any payment for their services. "I've got it under control."
"If the situation changes, you've got my number."
She patted her cell phone. "It's right here."
After a quick stop at the print shop to pick up the crime scene photographs she'd uploaded yesterday for printing in better resolution than her home printer could manage, Jack parked in front of the law firm. She declined Jack's offer of an escort into the building, and left him to his video games.