by Julie Hyzy
I thought about the most recent skirmish with my sister and decided that didn’t count.
“But I’m sure your experiences with Frances have taught you a lot. I’m the newbie here. Show me the ropes.”
“Don’t patronize me.” I knew he was trying to make me feel better, but there was no way I’d allow such an exaggeration to slide. “You’re telling me that you—a coroner—have never been involved in a homicide before?”
“I’m not patronizing. I’m telling the truth. Of course I’ve been involved in homicides as a forensic expert. But as an investigator?” He shook his head slowly. “They really don’t let us out of the lab, you know. It’s not like on TV.”
Despite myself, I smiled. “Not at all like on TV.”
“Come on. Show me how it’s done.”
While we’d been talking near the door, another aide—clipboard in hand—had approached Cathy with a question. With a vehement shake of her blond head, Cathy had shushed her colleague, making no effort to disguise the fact that she was straining to listen in on my conversation with Joe.
Now, as we resumed our trek to the reception desk, Cathy leaned forward, eyes bright, gesturing again for us to hurry. Her colleague, obviously weary of being ignored, walked away.
“I didn’t think I’d see you here again, Grace,” Cathy said. “Not after they arrested Frances and all, I mean. I wonder what took them so long.” Her dismissive tsking reminded me, briefly, of Frances. But there was too much eager-terrier frenzy in Cathy’s delivery to compare it with that of my acerbic assistant. Eyebrows arched, she gave Joe a curious once-over. “Who are you?” She cocked her head toward me. “Boyfriend?”
Joe shot me an amused glance.
“No,” I said.
I signed us both in on the visitor’s sheet, purposely scribbling so that Cathy wouldn’t be able to make out Joe’s last name. There were probably several hundred Joe Bradleys in the United States, but only one who served as coroner in Emberstowne. The less this zealous assistant knew about him, the better.
“Do you know if Percy is in his apartment?” I asked. “We’d like to talk with him.”
Clearly disappointed by our unwillingness to chat, she frowned. “Don’t they say that once you get past the forty-eight-hour mark after a murder, the police never find the killer?”
“Plenty of cases have been solved long after the crime was committed.”
“That’s not what they say on TV.”
Shooting an exasperated glance to Joe, I stopped myself from explaining further. From the first time I’d met her, I’d suspected Cathy was a sound-bite person. Feed her a tidbit of information she could sink her teeth into and—true or not—she’d gleefully bark it to the world.
“Percy,” I repeated. “Do you happen to know where he is?”
Cathy studied my companion again and I got the fleeting impression she intended to barter: Percy’s whereabouts for Joe’s identity. But a moment later, she relented. “Gus’s family is taking forever to clean out his room,” she said as though that were an answer. “Percy’s sticking around while they’re there. He’s afraid they might steal some of his stuff.”
“He actually said that?” I asked.
Cathy rolled her eyes. “No. But I can tell.”
I pointed. “We’ll head down there now.”
“You might want to suggest to Frances that she plead guilty. I heard that judges are way more lenient if you show remorse.” Though delivered with a guileless smile, her comment took me aback. “I’ll bet she could even get a minimum sentence if she tells them it was a crime of passion. I’d hate to see her spend the next twenty years in jail. She’s so old she’d probably die in there, wouldn’t she?”
My hands fisted and twitched as I resisted the terrific temptation to reach across the desk and strangle Cathy into silence. Instead, I said, “Frances is innocent and the sooner everyone here realizes that, the sooner we’ll find out what really happened to Gus.”
“Good luck with that.”
I bit the insides of my cheeks.
Cathy twisted the visitor sign-in sheet to read it. “Nice to meet you, Mr. . . . um . . . Braddock.”
I turned to Joe. “Let’s go.”
Two nurses I didn’t recognize sat behind the small desk down the left corridor of the East Wing. Our presence didn’t seem to concern them so I didn’t bother trekking over to introduce myself. The door to Percy’s apartment was wide open. I peered inside, saw no one, and knocked on the jamb. “Hello?”
When no one answered my hail, I shrugged. “Let’s hope they don’t mind us barging in.”
We’d gotten about four steps into the apartment when Harland emerged from Gus’s room. He had his left arm wrapped around a lidded banker’s box and his right around the base of a table lamp whose shade smashed against the side of his face.
“Hey,” he said when he spotted me. “I heard they arrested your friend.”
“Bad news travels fast around here,” I said.
“To my mind, it’s good news. The best.” Harland flicked a dismissive glance at Joe before addressing me again. “The detective told us they got her cold.” With a contemptuous glare, he added, “You can’t just go around murdering people and expect to get away with it.”
A shrill voice came from the depths of the corridor. “Who are you talking to? They better have sent somebody to help us carry all this.”
One second later, Joslyn rounded the corner to stand behind her husband. “Oh,” she said, clearly disappointed. She had her hair pulled tightly off her face, which was shiny with exertion. “It’s only you.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Joe taking it all in.
“I realize this is a difficult time for your family,” I said to them. “But if someone did kill your dad, Harland, the police are wasting their time interrogating Frances. She didn’t do it.”
Joslyn rolled her eyes. “Yeah, then who did?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Maybe no one did. And we have to consider the possibility that Gus may have taken his own life.”
“Nope. No way,” Harland tried to punctuate his words with a hand gesture, but the box and lamp in his arms prevented more than a vague body swing. “Dad took out a big insurance policy some years back. There’s a suicide rider. He told us about it. If he’d have killed himself, that big premium payment he made would be lost. He’d never let that happen.”
“Then maybe,” I began, rattled by this new information, “he really did die of natural causes, after all.”
“Or maybe somebody—like your friend Frances—killed him because he was a cranky old man who made her life miserable,” Harland said.
“What do you want here, anyway?” Joslyn asked.
“I have a few more questions for Percy.”
“Why? You think maybe he did it?” Harland asked.
The last thing I wanted to do was set the hounds on yet another innocent suspect, but the truth was I didn’t know Percy. “I’m exploring every option.” I decided to take a chance—to appeal to their sense of fair play. “Even though I’ve known the two of you only a short time, I know you’re not looking to convict an innocent person. I know that what you really want is for the guilty party to be brought to justice. Right?”
“Yeah,” Harland said halfheartedly. “Sure.”
Joslyn made a face. “You’re trying to make us feel bad for Frances. But the cops think she killed my father-in-law, and I don’t know of anybody else who could’ve done him in like that.”
Joe cleared his throat. “You wouldn’t happen to have received your father’s autopsy report, have you?”
Still gripping both cumbersome items, Harland shifted his weight. A fine line of sweat had begun to form along his hairline. “Not yet. Why do you ask?”
“I’d love to have a look at the findings.” J
oe gave a disarming smile. “Call it professional curiosity. I’m a family physician by day but I like to dabble in the world of forensic pathology.”
“You’re a doctor?” Joslyn perked up. “There’s a million of them roaming around this place and I can’t get a straight answer from any of them.” She turned around and twisted her arm to indicate an area just above the small of her back. Talking over her left shoulder, she said, “I’ve had a pain, right there, for about three months. Hurts every time I take out the garbage. And now moving all this junk is making it worse. I want more painkillers but my goofy doctor is making me go for physical therapy before he’ll prescribe more. That’s crazy. What do you think?”
Joe scratched the side of his face. “I’d never second-guess a colleague without doing a full exam on a patient.” Cutting off Joslyn before she could offer to submit to one on the spot, he added, “I think what you’re really asking is if you ought to get a second opinion. That, I can support.”
Turning back to face the group, she nodded with gusto. “All right.” She elbowed her husband. “Hear that? I should find a different doctor who’ll prescribe me some powerful pills.”
That wasn’t at all what Joe had suggested, but there was no point in correcting her.
Changing subjects, I said, “It looks like you have a big project ahead of you, so we’ll leave you to it.”
“Do you know they expect us to clean this place after we clear everything out?” Joslyn asked. “If it isn’t sparkling and pristine, they said they’ll add another fee to the final charges.”
Harland again shifted his unwieldy bundles. “My brother’s coming to help out later, but at the rate we’re going, it’ll be two months before we have Dad’s room cleared out.”
Eager to be away from the sweaty, unpleasant people, I smiled. “Thanks for the update. If you see Percy, please let him know we’re looking for him.”
“Yeah, sure,” Harland said.
As we made our way to the door, Joslyn called to our backs. “Tell them I want to talk to somebody in charge. We shouldn’t have to cart all this junk out of here by ourselves. It’s inhumane.”
The moment we left the apartment, I blew out a breath.
“Wow.” Joe hiked a thumb toward the closed door behind us. “So that’s the grieving family? Any chance either of those two killed Gus?”
“Don’t I wish,” I said. Then, a split second later: “Wait, that didn’t come out right.”
Joe chuckled. “No worries. I get it.”
“I’ve been trying to get a straight answer about who was here to visit Gus the morning of his death. Harland and Joslyn hadn’t visited that day, or even the night before. So, no. They aren’t likely suspects at this point.”
“Is there any chance they may have made it in without being seen?”
“Anything is possible, I suppose. Hang on—there’s Percy.” I spotted him talking with Santiago down by the nurses’ station. The two men were in such deep discussion they didn’t notice our approach until we were right on top of them.
“Percy,” I said, “we were looking for you.”
“And I’ve been trying to get in touch with Frances. What’s going on?” Percy’s voice growled an octave lower than usual. “Santiago said that the police arrested her. They didn’t, did they?”
Before I could answer, Santiago chimed in. “I’ve got a friend who works at the PD. Told me the cops drove all the way out to Emberstowne this morning to pick her up.” The young man eased backward to lean against the desk and favored me with a grin that I wanted to punch off his face. “I understand you were there for the fireworks. Am I right?”
Flexing my hands, I battled a desperate urge to deck this guy right here, right now, in front of everyone. I’d bet they’d applaud. “Hardly fireworks.” I worked so hard to maintain an impassive expression, my cheeks hurt. “Frances has nothing to hide. She’s happy to cooperate with the authorities.”
Santiago lifted his chin. “Hey, look who’s here.”
Hands in his pockets, Dan loitered outside his father’s apartment door, stopping to view the framed artwork on display in the hallway as though seeing the pieces for the first time. He radiated the air of a man en route to a commitment who wanted to be anywhere but where he was.
Flashing us a quick grin, Santiago boosted himself from his perch. “I wonder if he’s heard about the arrest yet,” he said.
What was wrong with this guy? How could someone so cheered by others’ misfortunes have settled on a career in nursing? It was mind-numbing. Speechless, I turned to Joe, who shot me a commiserating “I can’t believe this” look.
I leaned close and pointed to the new arrival. “Dan. The missing brother.”
“He isn’t dressed for hard labor,” Joe whispered back.
He wasn’t. Where Harland and Joslyn had been blue-jeaned and T-shirted, Dan wore dark slacks, a long-sleeved dress shirt, and a conservative tie. He held a jacket thrown over his shoulder.
Raising his hand, Santiago signaled Dan to join us.
Dan acknowledged Santiago’s greeting but didn’t look particularly pleased at the prospect of swinging by to chat. As luck would have it, however, Debbie emerged from another patient room just then, nearly bumping into him.
They were too far away for us to overhear their conversation, but their brief interaction threw Santiago into a tizzy. “Why should she get to share all the good gossip?”
“Gossip?” Percy twisted his chair to confront Santiago head-on. “That’s my wife you’re talking about.”
“Uh-huh,” Santiago said. “And she’d be the first one to appreciate how juicy all this is. Don’t tell me she wouldn’t.”
Percy sucked in his cheeks. His upper body rose and his eyes glittered. “If I could get out of this chair, you low-life scum, the police would have another murder to investigate—but this time there would be zero doubt who did it.”
Unfazed, Santiago glanced over to Joe and then to me and found no sympathy. “If we’re done here, I suppose I ought to check on a few residents.” His smile was as cold as his tone.
Before leaving, he tapped his chin, then brought his face low, close to Percy’s. “I’m betting you haven’t taken your anxiety medicine today, have you?” Without waiting for an answer, he said, “I think we may need to discuss upping your dosage. All this misplaced anger isn’t healthy.” Straightening himself, he pivoted and walked away.
Percy wheeled to position himself closer to me. “Imbecile,” he said loud enough for Santiago to hear. “I don’t know how that guy keeps his job. We all complain about him. Nobody listens.”
Picking up on that, I asked, “Did Gus complain about Santiago?”
“Sure, yeah.” Percy didn’t seem to catch the reason for my interest. “Like I said, we all did.”
“And you told me Gus was wealthy.” I glanced over to make sure Dan and Debbie weren’t close enough to overhear. “Rich enough for Indwell’s administration to pay attention to his concerns?”
Percy’s eyes lit up. “Are you suggesting that Santiago may have had a motive? To shut Gus up so that Santiago didn’t lose his job?”
“It’s a stretch,” I admitted. “That’s a pretty drastic measure. Way out of proportion. What do you know about Santiago? Is there anything in his personal life that suggests violent tendencies?”
Joe leaned in. “If you know where he worked before coming to Indwell, I could make discreet inquiries. I have a network of colleagues scattered all over the country. You never know.”
“I don’t.” Percy’s mouth set in a line. “I’ve always tried to avoid him myself. But I can find out.” He gave a brisk nod and said, “I’ll do my best,” before wheeling away.
“You’d do that?” I asked Joe. “That’s incredibly generous of you.”
“Not so generous. Curiosity is getting the better of me.” He gave a sheepi
sh grin. “Something isn’t right here. Now I’m intrigued and I want answers.” He lowered his voice as Debbie and Dan made their way toward us. “Is this what it’s like all the time?” he asked, “I mean, is this how you’ve gotten involved in so many investigations before?”
“Yep,” I said. “This is exactly what it’s like.”
Chapter 25
After calling Dan and Debbie over and making quick introductions, I learned that Dan had heard about Frances’s arrest before he’d left home this morning. All of Santiago’s aggravation was for naught.
“Harland and Joslyn will be glad to see you,” I said with a vague gesture toward the apartment.
“They’re here cleaning again?” Dan ran a hand through his hair. “What is up with those two?”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “If you didn’t come to help, then why are you here?”
Dan cough-laughed. “I don’t know. I felt compelled to stop by. Does that make me a weirdo?” He turned to Debbie. “Is that normal? People coming back even after their parents are gone?”
“Perfectly understandable,” Debbie said solemnly. “Everybody grieves in their own way.”
“I thought I’d take a look around my dad’s room again before you guys rent it out to someone else.” He shrugged. “But if Harland and Joslyn are here, it might be smarter to sneak out before they see me.”
“Then you’d better get going.” Debbie tapped her watch. “They’re bound to catch you.”
“Ever since Dad died, they’ve been fanatical about his possessions,” he said. “They think he hid money in there. No way.” Again, he turned to Debbie. “You guys made it clear that we weren’t supposed to let him keep valuables in his room.”
“Very true,” she said. “Indwell can’t be responsible for lost items. Your dad signed a contract to that effect before he moved in.”
“Exactly. So there’s nothing in there for me to worry about, right?”