by Julie Hyzy
“For the fortune my dad had to cough up every month”—Dan rubbed his thumb against his fingers—“he’d better. They should have served him prime rib every night. But yeah, he seemed to like it fine.”
Before I could ask anything else, Dan continued, “I’ve worked my whole adult life and my best salary hasn’t been half of the annual fee at this place. You ask me, it’s ridiculous what they charge for a bed and three squares.”
“And expert medical care,” I reminded him.
He half grinned at that. “Yeah, that, too.”
I heard the whir of Percy’s wheelchair. “I see you two are getting acquainted,” he said. “Sorry. Had to use the necessary.”
Dan kept talking. “What I want to know,” he said, “is why that idiot Santiago called the police. Don’t people die here every day?”
“You agree, then, that Frances couldn’t have had anything to do with your father’s death?” I asked.
“She’s a tough bird, that one. No offense,” he said to Percy then returned his attention to me. “Nah. Why would she? Because she and my dad mixed it up sometimes? Yeah, I heard about that, but I don’t buy it. This whole investigation is stupid.”
His easy dismissal gave me hope. “I hope you’re right and we find out that your dad died peacefully in his sleep.”
“That’s what I’m counting on.”
“So you don’t think there’s anyone here who might dislike your father enough to kill him?” I remembered Anton and his contraband alcohol. “Or any regular visitors who might want to do him ill?”
Dan gave the question a moment of scrunched-face thought. “When people die, everybody is in a rush to talk about how great they were. That’s nuts. If you listen to all the amazing stories, or believe all the obituaries you read, every person who ever died in the history of the world has been some kind of saint. What’s up with that?”
The door to the apartment opened and Santiago walked in, carrying a small paper cup. As he joined our little group, I watched him assess the dynamic.
“Good morning,” he said with a bigger grin than necessary. I blinked back my revulsion. “What a nice, cozy group we have here. Are we discussing the murder?”
“Dan and I were talking about how unlikely it is that Frances had anything to do with Gus’s death,” I said.
Dan regarded the younger man with unconcealed distaste. “What do you want? Back to cause more trouble?”
Santiago reacted with a look of amused surprise. “I simply pointed out a few clues, Dan,” he said. “I’d expect a little gratitude.”
“Gratitude?” Dan advanced toward him. Dan wasn’t a large man by any standard but he had at least thirty pounds on Santiago. “Instead of my dad being buried in peace, his body’s been sent out to be sliced open and taken apart. Do you have any idea what goes on in those autopsies?”
I didn’t think Santiago’s obnoxious grin could get worse. I was wrong.
He scoffed. “You think I’ve never seen an autopsy? How do you think I got my nursing degree? Mail order?”
The two men had inched closer to each other. From the look of pure loathing in Dan’s eyes, I worried we’d soon have another murder investigation on our hands.
“My dad was a sick guy. We brought him here so he could live out the rest of his days in comfort. He died, just like people do every day. But, now, because of your screwup, his body is sitting on a slab in a morgue instead of being cared for properly at a funeral home.”
I stepped between them to prevent further escalation. “What worries me most right now is that an innocent woman is being interrogated by police because of your accusations.”
“I’m sure you believe everything Frances tells you,” Santiago said with a glint in his eyes. “But I can’t think of anyone else who had the means, motive, and opportunity.”
Percy cut me off before I could retort. “You’re looking for Kyle, I assume?”
Santiago held up the paper cup. “Time for one of his meds.”
Percy tilted his head. “He took off about an hour ago.”
Santiago’s über upbeat demeanor took a swift nosedive. “His locator says he’s here.” Santiago didn’t wait for a response. He stormed down the hallway toward Gus’s and Kyle’s rooms, muttering to himself.
“Locator?” I asked.
Percy tapped a gray bracelet-like device on his wrist. “We’re supposed to keep these on all the time. There’s an emergency button to press if we need to call for help. It’s got some fancy GPS technology that allows the staff to find us. Indwell is a big complex and it’s easy to get lost.”
“And the nurses use it when they need to administer medication?” I asked.
“That, too.”
“I thought that in this section, residents handled their own meds.”
“Depends on what it is,” Percy said. “Kyle gets a couple of narcotics. The nurses keep tight tabs on those.”
“Makes sense, I guess.”
Santiago returned, holding the gray locator bracelet aloft. “Found it.” No more scary smile and for that, at least, I was grateful. “These things don’t do any good if they get left behind.”
“Does Kyle usually forget it?”
“Only when he doesn’t want to be found.” Santiago tucked it into the pocket of his scrubs. “Where did he go?” he asked.
“Beats me,” Percy said. I didn’t believe him.
“Wonderful.” Santiago rolled his eyes. “This is exactly what I needed today—another game of hide-and-seek with Kyle.”
I stopped him as he turned to leave. “Those locators,” I said. “Do you keep a history on them? That is, can you track back to see if one of the residents was in the room with Gus Sunday morning? Anyone who shouldn’t have been here?”
Santiago smiled again. I wished he hadn’t. “No, sorry,” he said, though it was clear he certainly wasn’t sorry at all. “Instead of a Find My iPhone app, it’s like a Find the Patient app. A snapshot thing. It doesn’t track unless the app’s engaged, and it doesn’t keep a history for each person.”
“Worth asking,” I said.
Santiago laughed. “Yeah.”
“Enough fun for today,” Dan said. He headed back to his father’s room. “I may as well get started sorting through Dad’s belongings.”
My phone rang and I reached for my purse to retrieve it. “It’s Frances,” I told Percy as my heart sank. How could I tell her that I was coming up empty on my investigation?
Chapter 18
As it turned out, Frances did all the talking. “My lawyer thinks they’re going to keep me a while longer.”
“They’re not arresting you, are they?” I asked.
She hesitated so long I thought I’d pass out from lack of breath.
“Autopsy results aren’t in. Not the ones, at least, that could exonerate me.” She spoke briefly to someone else—from the sound of it, Lily—before returning to our conversation. “She thinks I’ll be here another hour at least. Wanted to let you know.”
Before I could summarize my morning, she cut me off. “They’re calling me back. Gotta go,” she said. Then, “Idiots.”
“Watch yourself,” I said. “Don’t answer more than you need to. And don’t antagonize them.”
She muttered something I couldn’t make out and hung up.
“Well?” Santiago asked. “Are they arresting her?”
With polite derision, I said, “Of course not.”
“Only a matter of time.”
I wanted to smack the smug off of his face.
“Don’t you need to find Kyle?” Percy asked with a glance at the little white paper cup. “Now that I think about it, he mentioned getting a haircut.”
Santiago frowned. “I’ll call downstairs to see if he’s there.”
“Good luck finding him,” Percy said. The mom
ent the nurse exited the room, he turned to me. “I can’t stand that guy.”
I glanced at my watch. “Is there anyone else here you think I should talk to?”
“I’m glad you met Dan instead of his brother, Harland,” he whispered. “The older brother is a loose cannon.”
“I would like to talk with him,” I said. “Dan mentioned that he and his wife would be stopping by later.”
“I’ll go out with you,” Percy said. “We may run into them on their way in.”
As we made our way to the door, I remembered something Cathy had said. “I understand you’re quite a cardplayer.”
His mouth twisted into a half grin. “If we were allowed to wager with cash in this place, I’d make a killing.”
Interesting choice of words. I wondered: If the man was capable of playing cards and—as Frances asserted—capable of injecting himself, could Percy have injected Gus with his insulin?
He interrupted my thoughts. “When you see Frances, tell her I say hello, would you? She puts on that cranky exterior, but she’s really a softie underneath. I bet she misses me.”
“Sure, no problem.” I stopped walking. “Hey, I almost forgot. Would you mind if I took a quick look at where you keep your insulin?”
He frowned up at me. “What do you think you’ll find there?”
“No idea,” I said with a smile to ease his obvious concern. “But Frances and I like to be thorough, remember? We prefer to see things for ourselves.”
“Frances knows where I keep everything. You can ask her.”
“But I know how worried you are for her and I really think I need to see the storage for myself. You don’t mind, do you?” I sidestepped around him, pointing toward his bedroom. “I won’t be a minute.”
“You’re as stubborn as she is.” He worked his jaw. “Fine. But I’m coming with you.”
Percy’s room was, indeed, much smaller than Gus’s. And where Gus had lived a cool, austere existence, Percy clearly preferred one of comfortable clutter. The floor was unobstructed enough to allow his chair wide berth, but the room’s perimeter was lined with an assortment of stuff—no better word for it—all placed at a level convenient for his reach. DVDs and books were grouped in messy piles. A mini refrigerator sat in one corner near the windows. In the corner opposite, a ten-bottle wine rack. Mostly whites.
Far out of Percy’s reach, the tops of his bookcases were decorated with such a variety of knickknacks, I couldn’t take everything in at once. An old-fashioned metal toy fire truck. An orange lava lamp, currently cold and unlit. An arrangement of stuffed animals. Collector plates featuring characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Model starships from that, and other space-travel series, hung from the ceiling.
Next to me sat a large square laminated cabinet. Two overstuffed easy chairs flanked the cube-shaped structure. One chair was plaid, the other solid. Two motorcycle-themed blankets lay draped across the plaid one and two featuring wildlife were strewn across the other.
Percy caught me looking. “Frances likes to relax there. It’s easier for me to stay in the wheelchair,” he said. “But one chair by itself looked lonely. So we ordered a second.”
I wondered, again, what drove Frances to spend weekends here with him. Given the little bit of history she’d shared with me, and her surly attitude toward him, I didn’t understand. But perhaps I didn’t need to.
I moved to the washroom. “Do you keep your insulin in here?”
“Frances says that all medications should be kept out of heat and humidity, so we store most of my regular stuff right there.” He gestured with his chin.
In all the clutter, I hadn’t noticed the small set of drawers tucked into the cube storage unit. Made of plastic—the kind I used in my bathroom at home to store cosmetics—the drawers were set at a perfect height for Percy’s easy reach.
“May I?”
He grunted. “Not going to stop you now.”
The top drawer, the smallest of the three, held over-the-counter items.
The second drawer held more of the same.
The third, and largest of the drawers, was empty. “Is this where the insulin was kept?” I asked.
“No.”
Why was he being so uncooperative? “Where was it kept?”
He spun his chair around and gestured toward the windows with his left elbow. I followed his gaze until I understood.
“Insulin needs to be refrigerated?” I asked as I crossed the room to the small appliance. “I guess I didn’t know that.”
“The kind I use can be kept at room temperature for a couple of weeks with no problem. I keep one on me at all times, but we’re supposed to keep the rest in there.”
The fridge had been arranged so that it sat slightly off the floor. I started toward it.
“There’s nothing in there anymore,” Percy said. “It’s empty.”
I ignored his attempt to divert me. When I peered inside the cool compartment, I found a whisky bottle lying on its side, three cans of beer, a slab of Gruyère, and a squeeze bottle of ketchup.
I lifted the bottle. “Scotch?”
“Yeah. So?”
“This is the bottle Anton brought Sunday, isn’t it? The one you claimed you were going to show to the police.”
He shrugged. “What good would it do to give it to them? The bottle was factory sealed. I didn’t want it to go to waste.”
“It’s not factory sealed now.”
“So Kyle and I shared some. You going to rat me out?”
“What else are you hiding?” I asked.
“Nothing, I swear.”
“I don’t see any medication in here.”
“The police took all of it. Left me nothing but this one.” He snaked his fingers along the side of his leg to produce an insulin syringe.
“What happens if you need more than that?” I asked. “What if you have an emergency?”
Percy adopted a rote-verbatim tone: “Until Indwell completes its own independent investigation into the missing insulin, all patients will be required to call for help if they require emergency assistance.”
“That doesn’t seem like a good idea,” I said.
“They tell us it’s temporary. For our own good. I had to practically beg them to let me keep this one with me.” After tucking his syringe back into its hiding spot, he held up the wrist bearing his locator bracelet. “You can bet I won’t take this baby off until things get back to normal.”
I stepped back to allow him access to the fridge. “You don’t have any problem getting what you need out of there?” I asked. “I mean, if you need an item in a hurry.”
With exaggerated weariness, he rolled up to the small refrigerator and reached in to demonstrate his prowess before closing the door and wheeling around to face me. “Yes, little Miss Detective,” he said, “I could have removed the insulin and replaced the empties just as easily as Frances could have.”
“Why are you telling me this? Did you kill Gus?”
He scoffed. “Of course not. The idea is ludicrous.”
“What about Kyle?”
“He didn’t do it, either.”
“How can you be so sure?” I was thinking: How do I know it wasn’t you?
“Call it gut-level certainty. Call it whatever you want. I know what I know.” He did a brisk three-point turn and wheeled out of the room. “Time for you to go now.”
Though unsatisfied, I followed him back into the fancy man-cave. “You know I’ll have to tell Frances what you said.”
“Frances knows everything I just told you. If she needed to, she’d share it with the police. Trust me.”
Percy’s mood had shifted and I knew our visit was at an end. He accompanied me to the door where Dan had left a couple of boxes right smack in the middle of Percy’s path out.
“Nobody unde
rstands,” Percy said as I pushed the first one out of his way.
I’d just bent to pick up the second box when Dan returned to the room. “What are you doing with my dad’s stuff now?” he asked.
Before I had a chance to answer, the apartment door opened and a couple walked in. The man was blond and beefy. The woman short and dark, but of similar heft.
“Who are you?” the guy asked. A second later, he addressed Dan. “Geez, man. When are you going to find someone your own age?”
Chapter 19
It took a little effort, but Dan got us all sorted out. Harland and his wife, Joslyn—once they understood I was not Dan’s girlfriend—were clearly perplexed by my presence. “You let her into Dad’s room?” Harland asked his brother. “What were you thinking?”
“She was already in there when I arrived. Snooping.” Dan pointed to Percy. “Not my fault. He let her in.”
Harland wore the braggadocio of a young Biff from Back to the Future, but physically more resembled the character’s older self. In his mid- to late fifties, Harland bested me by about six inches and had to be at least double my weight. Taking a threatening step forward, he asked, “What were you looking for?” To Dan: “How do you know she didn’t steal anything?”
“Yeah.” Joslyn kept her thick arms folded across her bosom. “How do we know?”
Though she was probably Harland’s age, Joslyn’s deep-set eyes, overdue-for-a-dye black hair, and pronounced lip lines, gave her the appearance of someone much older. Her puffy cheeks glowed with high emotion.
My job here was to find something, anything, that might absolve Frances. I couldn’t be intimidated by Gus’s less-than-bereft family members. I took a resolute step forward, putting myself within easy reach of Harland’s clenching fists.
“You don’t,” I said simply. “I didn’t take anything, but there’s really no way for you to know for sure, is there?”
My audaciousness bought me what I needed: I’d knocked them off their bullying course long enough to push back a little.
“But you also asked what I was looking for,” I continued in the seconds it took him to recover. “That’s a fair question. I was hoping to find something the police may have missed. They’re investigating my friend Frances. I intend to prove she didn’t have anything to do with your father’s death.”