by Lucy Kerr
As soon as she’d rounded the corner, we dashed toward Charlie’s room. Her purse was tucked away in her nightstand, and I rifled through it while Noah searched the pockets of her coat, hanging in the closet.
“Nothing,” he said grimly.
“They’re not in her purse, either.” I sank to the floor, fear sapping my strength. “That’s how they got in. They’ve got keys to the house, too.”
“I have an officer there now,” he reminded me, and pulled me to my feet. “He’ll stay until you can change the locks. Good thing you know how, huh?”
“Fabulous,” I said. “Total silver lining.”
“Come on,” he said. “You talk to Charlie, I’ll go alert security.”
“What if the killer is one of the security guards?” I asked as Garima returned. My control, already tenuous, was slipping. “How do we know who to trust?”
“You trust me,” he said, and it was more order than question.
I nodded, my panic easing slightly.
“I know some of these guys pretty well. I’ll mention it to them, and they’ll make sure Charlie’s covered. We’ll keep her safe, and Rowan, too.”
“Hospital administration will need to be notified,” Garima warned. “There are protocols to follow.”
Noah dipped his chin in acknowledgment and left. I turned to Garima. “Charlie knows about the store?”
“Matt called her as soon as he picked up Riley. She would have called you, but she won’t leave Rowan, and we don’t allow calls in the NICU.” She held up her keycard. “I will let you inside, but if either of you makes a scene, I’ll order security to remove you both. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Charlie’s head snapped up as I entered. Before either of us could speak, Garima repeated her warning, then settled herself nearby like a referee.
“Why was there a dead body in my store?” Charlie asked through gritted teeth.
“I don’t know yet. I’m working on it.”
“A dead body,” she repeated. “What did you do?”
“Nothing! It wasn’t me.”
“It has something to do with you. It’s that patient, isn’t it? The one who died? Matt said the hospital is blaming you. They’re trying to take your license.”
“Clem Jensen,” I said. Suddenly, saving my license was the least of my concerns. “You knew him, right?”
“I did. But . . .”
“He was murdered. The body in the store was his son-in-law, and I think they’re connected.”
“So naturally, you got involved. Why couldn’t the police handle it? Why did it have to be you, Frankie? You’re supposed to be here helping me, remember? Your sister? You are supposed to be taking care of my daughter, not showing her dead bodies!”
From the nurse’s desk, Garima coughed.
“Riley didn’t see anything,” I said. “I got her out.”
“What a relief,” Charlie hissed. “God, Frankie, can’t you give it a rest? Can’t you leave the drama alone, at least while you’re here?”
“I didn’t plan this!”
“You didn’t avoid it. You’re like an addict, the way you chase thrills.”
“This is not a thrill.” I bit off the words.
“Oh, please,” Charlie retorted. “This is like everything else in your life—the job, the weird sports, the revolving door of boyfriends. You like the rush, but you can’t handle the reality. You bailed on the store—on us—because it was more reality than you could handle.”
“This has nothing to do with the store. And I didn’t bail.”
“This has everything to do with the store. There was a dead body in aisle four!”
Garima hummed a warning, and Charlie paused for breath, glaring. “You totally bailed, by the way. I’m not sure if you noticed, but it’s Stapleton and Sons. Plural.”
“I’m not sure you noticed, but we aren’t boys. It is great that you’re carrying on the family tradition, Charlie. Really. But not everyone wants the same things! You’re good at running the show, keeping everyone in line. You do it all the time, and you make it look easy. Hell, you were running things from your hospital bed. But that’s not me. I don’t want to stand behind a counter and help people decide between eggshell and semigloss, or figure out which sort of pavers to use for the back patio. I need something different.”
“Well, this qualifies, doesn’t it?” She rested a hand on Rowan’s isolette. “Do what you want, Frankie. Just keep it away from my family.”
“They’re my family, too.”
Her gaze was as flat as her tone. “Then start acting like it.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Noah hadn’t returned, and it was clear Charlie didn’t want me around anymore. With nothing else to do, I headed back to the pharmacy.
It wasn’t fair to say I’d hit a dead end. I had plenty of clues—from Clem’s chart to Jimmy’s body—but they were so tangled together, I couldn’t put them in any sort of order. I needed to untangle them, and the only way I knew how to do that was to wiggle a single thread free, in the hopes it would lead me to the truth.
The pharmacy was closed up tight, but I knew someone had to be inside. Hospitals need medicine all the time, not just during business hours. I knocked on the window, waited a few moments, and knocked again. And again. And then I knocked until my knuckles were sore.
Finally, the side door opened, and Nestor the pharmacist appeared again, mouth pursed with annoyance. “Another question about your father’s medication?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you’re closed.”
“Indeed.”
“I’ll be quick, I swear.”
He sighed deeply.
“You told me Apracetim is only available through special order, correct? So you probably don’t fill a whole lot of scripts for it.”
“Very few,” he admitted. “We haven’t placed an order in months.”
“That’s not possible. My friend’s son is taking it.”
“I’m sure he is, but we’re not dispensing it.”
“This is his hospital,” I said. “I’m sure he’s having it filled here. Could you check? Please? CJ Madigan.”
He drew back, offended. “I’m not at liberty to discuss patient records with you.”
I gripped the edges of the counter. “How about this? You tell me if you’ve filled a prescription for Apracetim in the last year. You don’t say who it’s for. Just whether or not you’ve supplied to anyone. That would be okay, wouldn’t it?”
Grudgingly, he nodded. “I suppose so.”
I fidgeted while he looked up the information, fighting the urge to lean over and check the monitor.
His frown deepened. “According to my records, the last time that prescription was filled was five months ago.”
“So where was Clem getting it?” I said, thinking out loud.
“Perhaps your friend got a sample from the manufacturer? Though . . . it’s far too expensive to be giving it away for free.”
I didn’t think that medication was free. I was pretty sure that somehow, it had cost Clem his life.
“Miss Stapleton,” said a voice from behind me. “Cease badgering my staff.”
I turned. Walter Strack stood only a few feet away, and if anyone looked capable of murder, it was him.
The pharmacist glanced between us. “I believe I’ll get back to making up those IV bags,” he said, and vanished.
“The pharmacy is closed,” Strack said, jowls flushing. “I have had enough of you waltzing around this hospital as if you owned it. Effective immediately, you are banned from Stillwater General. I’ve given your description to our security staff, and if you’re spotted inside this building again, I will have you arrested for trespassing.”
“You can’t do that! My sister is a patient here.”
“Your sister is welcome to stay for as long as her physicians deem necessary. You, however, are not receiving treatment, and your visiting privileges have most assuredly been revoked. Now get o
ut, or I will call the sheriff’s department. In fact, I believe there’s a deputy in the building as we speak. Shall I have him paged?”
He looked triumphant, eyes gleaming nastily, and my shoulders slumped, then straightened. I wasn’t beaten. Not yet, no matter what he thought.
“Nice chatting with you, Strack,” I said, keeping my voice pleasant. “Let’s do it again once the autopsy comes back.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
The police cruiser Noah had posted outside our house was still there the next morning, to Riley’s delight. She lobbied hard for a ride to school, but Matt took her instead, and the squad car followed my mom and me over to the store. I’d replaced all the locks last night—at home and at the store—but it didn’t keep me from inspecting every aisle before I waved my mother inside.
Business was still good, but Mom seemed more tired than the day before.
“I’m not used to being on my feet all day,” she finally admitted late in the afternoon. “It’s been a while since I spent so much time here.”
“Charlie should be home soon,” I said. “She’ll take over again.”
“I suppose you’ll leave the moment she does,” she said sourly, then turned to take care of another customer. My phone rang, the sound piercingly loud.
I snatched it up, noting the unfamiliar number. “Stapleton.”
“Frankie? It’s Laura Madigan.”
“Laura! Hold on,” I said, and made my way up to the office so we could talk without my mother listening in. “How are you doing?”
“As well as can be expected,” she said. “What are the police saying?”
“They know you didn’t do it.” I filled her in on everything else that had happened.
“Maybe we should come home,” she said uneasily. “I can’t abandon my job.”
“Give me a few more days,” I said. “We should have the results of the autopsy soon.”
“That’s why I’m calling,” she said. “The medical examiner e-mailed me the autopsy findings this morning.”
“Did you read it?”
“No,” she admitted. “I couldn’t bring myself do it. I was hoping you could look at it first. Could I e-mail it to you?”
“Of course,” I said and rattled off my e-mail address. Autopsies could be graphic; Laura didn’t need to read detailed descriptions of her dad’s internal organs. “Hold on while I go downstairs.”
I used the store’s computer, fidgeting while the molasses-slow connection downloaded the file, printing a copy and taking it back to the office. “Got it. Are you ready?”
“I think so,” she said softly.
I struggled for a moment with how much I should tell her. Because Clem had been murdered—cruelly. I could soften the impact, but I couldn’t stop the blow entirely.
I took a deep breath. “Your dad went into heart failure because of the respiratory arrest. His cardiac muscle had been damaged, but the stent had restored blood flow. With the proper medication and careful follow-up, he would have been fine. But when his lungs stopped working, his heart couldn’t get the oxygen it needed.”
“That’s what the medical examiner told us before,” she said. “Does that mean he died of natural causes?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “The ME wasn’t wrong the first time, but your dad’s lungs didn’t stop working on their own. The respiratory arrest was chemically induced. Someone gave your father a drug that the hospital would never administer to a patient recovering from a heart attack.”
“He was poisoned?”
“Basically. The drug is called vecuronium. It’s a paralytic agent used in certain surgeries to make sure the patient’s lungs don’t interfere with whatever they’re doing.”
“It paralyzes the lungs?”
I didn’t reply. Laura was smart; she’d understand the implication, she’d realize just how excruciating her father’s last minutes had been.
“He couldn’t breathe,” she said, pitch rising. “How long?”
“Laura . . .”
“How long, Frankie? How long does it take someone to suffocate to death?”
“It depends. Seven, eight minutes,” I said after a long pause. “He probably lost consciousness much earlier, Laura. A minute and a half, at most.”
“Ninety seconds,” she said. “For ninety whole seconds, he would have known he was dying. He would have suffered. Alone.”
I bent my head, and the tears I never allowed myself couldn’t be denied.
“How did it happen?” she demanded.
“I’m guessing it was in the IV—either mixed into the bag or injected directly into the line.”
“Could it have been a mistake? I’ve heard about that happening.”
“Not likely,” I said, remembering how Charlie’s nurse had replaced her IV bags. “All the IVs have a barcode on them. The nurse scans the barcode and checks it against the doctor’s orders to cut down on those kinds of errors. And Marcus—your dad’s nurse that night—he’s good at his job. I can tell when nurses cut corners, and Marcus isn’t the type.”
“Maybe the doctor prescribed the wrong thing, or the person who filled the bag made a mistake. Maybe they couldn’t read the prescription—you know how bad doctors’ handwriting is.”
“Anything’s possible,” I said slowly. “But I’ve met the pharmacist. He runs a pretty tight ship; he wouldn’t let an order go out if he had a question about it. Laura, I know you want this to be an accident, but I am virtually certain it was intentional.”
She took that in, and when she spoke again her voice was razor-edged.
“What about the doctors? Didn’t they try to save him?”
“By the time they realized his numbers were dropping, they couldn’t have reversed it, even if they’d put him on a ventilator.”
The sheer cruelty of it—the coldness—was mind-boggling. Laura must have thought so, too, because we sat in sorrowful silence for long minutes. Finally, she asked, “Who would hate him that much? He was a good man, Frankie. He loved us. He sacrificed so much for us.”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I keep coming back to CJ’s medicine. You were filling it at Stillwater General, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“There’s no record of your father filling a prescription for Apracetim at the hospital pharmacy. There’s no record of him buying it anywhere else, either—no cancelled checks or charges on his credit card.”
“Maybe he paid cash,” she said. “His business was booming.”
“Not according to the records in his cabin,” I reminded her. “I’ve talked to his clients—he wasn’t taking on more jobs. If anything, he was cutting back so he could spend more time with CJ. If we can figure out how he was getting the medicine, we’ll figure out who killed him.”
“What about Jimmy’s partner?” Laura asked. “If he works at the hospital, maybe he’s the one who was giving Dad the Apracetim.”
I mulled over the idea as I paced the room. What if I’d had it backward? What if Jimmy’s killer had been the one to initiate their partnership, not the other way around? If that was the case, then maybe it wasn’t about Clem’s estate after all? Maybe it was about the Apracetim. But why kill someone who was paying you for expensive drugs?
Unless Clem wasn’t paying for them.
That didn’t fit, though. Apracetim was expensive, as Nestor had pointed out. Nobody would give it away for free.
“There’s got to be a connection between your dad and Jimmy,” I said. “Something more than you, I mean. Something the killer was trying to keep quiet.”
“Duct tape wouldn’t keep Jimmy quiet,” Laura said. “There’s no connection, believe me. They weren’t even on speaking terms.”
“Not according to Jimmy. He’s staying at the Piney Woods Motel, and your dad did a lot of odd jobs for them. They’ve run into each other plenty.”
“Dad never mentioned it,” she said.
I thought back to my run-in with Jimmy at the motel. I’d been so certai
n he was guilty, and so irked by his needling comments, that I hadn’t listened closely. Now I tried to recall every word.
I see all sorts of interesting things. You wouldn’t believe the people who sneak off here for an afternoon.
Was it possible Clem and Jimmy had seen the same thing? Someone having an affair, and they’d thought to profit? I could believe it of Jimmy, but . . . Clem?
“Laura, this is going to sound crazy. Is it possible your dad was blackmailing someone?”
“What? My dad?”
“Hear me out. He had a big job at Piney Woods over the summer. He was there painting every day. What if he saw someone doing something . . . incriminating, or having an affair, or whatever . . . and realized he could use it as leverage? Stillwater runs on gossip. If someone had managed to keep a secret—a true secret—they might be willing to pay to keep it that way. They paid for the first few months, then decided they’d had enough.”
“No,” she said. “My father was a good man.”
I believed her. Everyone I’d talked to had said the same thing: a good man, loved his family. He’d do anything for them.
Anything.
“Your dad wanted CJ to be well, and he wanted you to get away from Jimmy, and this was his way of taking care of you. As far as he was concerned, the ends justified the means.”
“No,” she said again. “That’s not who he was. You’re wrong, Frankie, just like you were wrong about Jimmy.”
I wondered if Jimmy had figured it out, too, if that’s what killed him.
Laura spoke, her voice so low and hoarse it was barely recognizable. “It was easier when I thought it was a heart attack. You never should have looked into this.”
“I wish I was wrong. But I don’t think I am.”
It happened that way sometimes, in medicine. Minor symptoms revealed a terrible disease. I’d once had a patient come in with what they thought was pinkeye. By sunrise he was dead from a brain infection. A woman with hiccups needed a lung transplant. And a grandfather’s act of devotion revealed a motive for murder.
“Do you? Really? Because if someone murdered my father, you get off clean, don’t you? It all works out fine for you.”