My Bad Grandad

by A W Hartoin

  Chapter Eighteen

  WHEN AARON AND I got back to The Ornery Elk, nobody was up. Big Mike’s bike was there, but nobody else’s. His engine was stone cold so that was a good sign, but hardly an alibi for the Millford murders. I didn’t get the sense that Big Mike was a murderer, but experience had taught me that you never knew what people had on the inside. Maybe Wayne Millford was responsible for Big Mike’s capture. There was something wonky about such an incomplete record. Actually, there was something wonky about the whole war thing. Grandad and his buddies were bonded, but I didn’t really get why. Pilots, non-pilots. Officers, enlisted. Different units, different experiences.

  I trudged up the stairs to my room with my mind full of the sludge of death and connections I couldn’t make. I put Wallace on the little dog bed and tried valiantly to get out of my own pants. I failed. After ten minutes, I trudged back downstairs with Wallace, because she barked if I left her alone, to find scissors. I found them and Aaron in the kitchen. He was making a midnight snack of sausage, bacon, and ham. The coronary trifecta. He fed Wallace way too much bacon and I went back upstairs to cut off my pants. I couldn’t do it. They were too tight for me to hold the scissors and wear the pants.

  Aaron had to cut off my pants. I’m not happy about it, but I don’t think he noticed that I was wearing a leopard print leather thong or that my feet were light purple. He just cut off my pants while eating a sausage and left. Wallace noticed. She wouldn’t stop barking at the thong. I agreed it was an insult to lingerie, but hardly worth a bark.

  To get her to shut up, I had to put on comfy granny panties and throw the leather one away. In the bathroom. Wallace wouldn’t allow it in the room, like it offended her or something. Maybe it did. Her owner was Pete’s mom and she could not be a leather thong girl. No way.

  I finally got to sleep at about three and Aaron came knocking at six. Grandad was on the phone and wanted to know when he was being sprung from the joint, as he put it. I thought the hospital was the safest place for him. He didn’t agree and demanded I come right over and talk the hospitalist into letting him go.

  I was strong for fifteen minutes or until he started calling Virginia to get her to get me up. She had the mom guilt thing down pat and I reluctantly got up. I didn’t look at myself in the mirror. That was the first mistake of the day. There were others. Many others.

  Wallace scampered down the stairs ahead of me and I slugged along after her, hoping for an Act of God to help me out. God let me down. Big Mike and Aaron were dressed and ready in the reception room.

  Big Mike gave me my helmet, looking anxious and not a bit tired. “Ready?”

  “If I must.”

  He got stiff. “You don’t want to go see Ace?”

  “I do. I do. I’m just dog tired.”

  “Where’d you go last night?” he asked. “You were supposed to come back here to shower.”

  “I forgot I was meeting the guy that helped me catch that clerk, that one that made off with the guestbook. I owed him.”

  That seemed to satisfy Big Mike for the most part. “Virginia said there was a double murder in town last night. You weren’t anywhere near that, were you?”

  Define near.

  “I heard the sirens.” I plastered an innocent look on my face. “Who got killed? Did they say?”

  “No. Just that it was a shooting. Sturgis hasn’t had a murder in over ten years.”

  “Yeah, I heard that somewhere.” I almost hit him with the Millfords to elicit a reaction but decided that I’d rather do it when they were all together.

  “Are we taking Wallace?” asked Big Mike.

  Bark.

  “No, she’s a pain,” I said.

  Bark. Bark. Bark.

  “I was kidding, but you can’t come in the hospital.”

  Grrr.

  I held up my hands. “Not my rules.”

  The pug wasn’t buying it and it took all three of us to keep her out of the hospital. In the end, Aaron had to tie her to a post and wait with her. To occupy him, I asked for a chocolate cake recipe. I claimed I was going to make it when we got back home, but we both knew he would make it and it would be amazing.

  I left him sitting cross-legged in a flower bed, muttering and scribbling in the little notebook he carried for recipe ideas or Dungeons and Dragons character moves whenever the mood struck. Wallace climbed onto his lap and began turning. That would occupy her for at least a half hour, so I hustled in to Grandad’s ward and found him in the hall, yelling for his pants.

  “This is America! I have a right to my pants!” He clutched his thin robe around his bony shoulders and his super pale feet were in green hospital slippers. “Pants!”

  A harried nurse rushed down the hall. “Mr. Watts, what are you doing out of bed?”

  “Leaving. What’s it look like?”

  “We decided to wait and see what Dr. Gail says. He has to be the one to release you.”

  “When will he be here?” he asked.

  I watched the poor nurse count to ten as I walked up. “I’m here. I’m here.”

  “Thank god,” said the nurse under her breath. Then she pointed at her head when Grandad wasn’t looking and mouthed, “Check your hair.”

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “Yeah. It’s not good.”

  Grandad glanced back and forth between us. “What are you two going on about?”

  “Just talking about getting you out of here,” I said.

  “About time,” said Grandad. “We have things to do.”

  I took his arm and eased him back into the room with a wink at the nurse. It said Tammy on her tag. “I’ve got it, Tammy.”

  “I hope you have the keys,” said Grandad.

  “Keys to what?” I sat him on the bed and got his IV stand situated.

  “The bike. Is the bike okay?”

  I rolled my eyes. “The bike is fine. I’m more concerned with you and Robert right now.”

  “I’d be a lot better if I had some pants!” he yelled.

  This was not happening. Grandad was the nice one in the family.

  “Why do you need pants?” I asked, picking up his chart. “You haven’t had breakfast.”

  “Shopping,” he said with bright eyes. If he had a tail, it would’ve been bushy.

  Shopping? What the what?

  “Since when do you shop? Grandma J buys all your clothes,” I said. “Let me see your stitches.” I scrubbed my hands, took off his robe, and went around the other side of the bed to untie the ties.

  “If I let you look, can I leave?” he asked in a wheedling tone that I’d heard him use with Grandma when he wanted a new woodworking tool that he might need someday.

  “We’ll see,” I said, channeling my grandmother. She was the master of the noncommittal answer.

  I finished untying and bit my lip. He’d had substantial bleed-through. “I’m going to have to change these bandages. Have you been up and running around?”

  “I may have looked for what is mine.”

  “Like?”

  “My clothes. That nurse, Tammy, a nice name for a sneaky girl, hid them.”

  I wonder why.

  “I’ll find out where your clothes are, but I have to change this and see how your kidneys are doing this morning,” I said, gently laying him down.

  “Alright then.” Grandad folded his hands over his jutting hip bones. “And I’m not eating any lime Jell-O.”

  “Did they try to feed you lime Jell-O?”

  “No, I’m just telling you how it is. The army made me eat buckets of the stuff after the crash and I’m never eating it again.”

  I scrubbed my hands and asked, “Why’d you eat it then?”

  “They said they wouldn’t let me back in-country if I didn’t.”

  “You wanted to go back to Vietnam that bad? I don’t get it.”

  His tone softened. “You wouldn’t. My troops were still there. I had to get back.”

  “But you were a helicopter pilot. Did you re
ally have troops?”

  “They were all my troops,” he said with a sad smile.

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I tucked him in and went into the bathroom. I should never go to bed with a wet head. My hair was flat on one side and bushy on the other. I wet it down and slicked it back before leaving to get a bandage pack. I found the long-suffering Tammy at the desk and wished I had some of Aaron’s hot chocolate to make up for her night. “I have to ask. Did you hide my grandad’s clothes?”

  “Sorry. He kept trying to escape. He had this idea that you were up to something and needed watching.”

  Grandad has instincts.

  “Thanks for holding him. When will we be seeing the next kidney panel?”

  “Any minute. They poked him at five,” said Tammy. “I’m off in fifteen. His new nurse is Mallory. She’s around here somewhere.”

  “Can I get a bandage pack? He’s bled through.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I checked him at three and he was good.”

  “No worries.”

  “He wants out now.”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  Tammy went to get the supplies and I remembered that I hadn’t told Uncle Morty my new information. I yawned and texted him the names. Tammy came back with the supplies. I thanked her and Aaron’s phone rang with the Game of Thrones ringtone for Uncle Morty. He couldn’t know that was his ringtone. George R.R. Martin was his mortal enemy, being a rival fantasy author and mega-bestseller to Uncle Morty’s normal bestseller status.

  “What the hell are you doing up there, sniffing horse turds?” he shouted into the phone and Tammy grimaced at me.

  I held up the phone. “It’s my uncle. He drinks.”

  She nodded and Uncle Morty shouted, “Who are you talking to? Do I have to come up there?”

  Like that was a real threat. Uncle Morty was against moving in general. Plus, he didn’t consider South Dakota a real part of the country since his sales sucked in the Mount Rushmore state. I rolled my eyes at Tammy and took the supplies. “Yeah, yeah. I’m real worried.”

  “What have you been doing?” he asked, still yelling. “Getting your feet buffed?”

  “I really have. It’s been the most relaxing trip. Please stop yelling. I got three hours of sleep last night.”

  He did stop yelling, which was almost as shocking as the murders. “Those names you sent. They’re dead.”

  “All of them?” I asked, picturing Steve and Jeanette trying to make pot oil and blowing up the motel.

  “Not all of them. Wayne and Travis Millford.” He paused. “Did you know?”

  “I was at the scene minutes after it happened. Got it on video and everything. Proud of me?”

  “You’re alright,” he said grudgingly. “Send me that video.”

  I sent it and listened to him typing at such speed that it seemed like one long click. “I also found out that Steve and Jeanette are drug dealers.” Beat that, you old crabapple.

  “Not surprising. Steve got kicked out of the army for dealing in Vietnam.”

  Dammit.

  “I thought drug use was pretty normal then,” I said.

  “It was, but Steve was a real turd. He was using Army transport, smuggling in other soldiers’ bags without their knowledge, but he wouldn’t have been caught if he hadn’t been cutting his product with everything from talc to ground glass. A couple of his customers had serious complications.”

  “Maybe that’s why Grandad isn’t crazy about him. I overheard Steve and Jeanette talking. They’re not crazy about him either.”

  Uncle Morty stopped typing. “You didn’t think Ace was the target.”

  I told him about Steve and Jeanette’s room the night before. Maybe if you’ve been frying your brain for fifty years, your aim isn’t so hot.

  “Could be they got a reason to hate Ace. Somebody ratted Steve out, an anonymous source.”

  “No clue who it was?” I asked.

  “No. What about your idea?”

  “Huh?”

  “You had an idea. You got a source?” asked Uncle Morty.

  I slapped my forehead. “I totally forgot.”

  “Amateur.”

  “That’s right. I’m an amateur. You wanna hear the amateur’s idea?”

  He harrumphed.

  “Dr. Watts,” I said in triumph.

  “That old biddy?”

  “That’s Dr. Old Biddy to you. She was in Vietnam when Grandad and the rest of them were there. She likes me.”

  He snorted.

  “She does. And I like her.” Truthfully, I liked her a whole lot better than Uncle Morty. He brought unlikability to an art form. “Plus, she’s my ex-grandmother. That counts for something.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “In her world it does. Did you get a chance to check the Gold Star Brigade and our guys?”

  More typing. Then he said, “I got one hit. Cheryl Morris, wife of Lieutenant Walter Morris.”

  Lt. Morris was the officer in charge when Big Mike’s platoon was out on patrol and was ambushed. Big Mike and four others were captured. Ten were killed. Two weeks after Big Mike escaped, Lt. Morris got killed on another patrol. His body had been recovered and he was buried in Arlington. Mrs. Morris had sued the army, claiming that she hadn’t received the complete record of her husband’s death. The case was thrown out. The army said they gave her everything they had. He didn’t have a full autopsy since the cause of death was apparent. Grenade. She also lodged several complaints, saying that her husband’s effects were stolen. She was understandably enraged, but nothing came of it, except a weak apology. Recently, she’d reached out to other brigade members, trying to find surviving members of the platoon. Someone had given her Steve Dudgeon’s number.

  “Did she call him?” I asked.

  “She did and it wasn’t good.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  It really wasn’t good. Uncle Morty didn’t know what went on between Cheryl Morris and Steve Dudgeon, but he asked her for money in an email a couple of months ago. She refused and demanded to know what he knew about her husband’s death. Steve claimed that he knew something devastating, but never revealed it. At least, not in the email exchange.

  “Did you get the sense that there was really something there?” I asked.

  Uncle Morty stopped typing and said, “I got the sense that he resents his old comrades and isn’t above extorting a widow.”

  “No wonder she didn’t look pleased to see him.”

  “After that email exchange, someone hacked into Hal’s email,” said Uncle Morty.

  “What’d they get?”

  There was a hard tapping on the other side of the phone. Uncle Morty was angry. I could feel it through the phone. “They got his Sturgis travel plans.”

  “Who was it?”

  “All Revealed Communication Services. It’s a half-assed information gathering firm based in Ohio.”

  “Steve’s from Ohio.”

  “He is, but they have clients from all over the country,” he said.

  “Can you find out who paid them for the emails?”

  “Working on it. Their security’s pretty tight, but they ain’t better than me.”

  “Can you see if anyone got into Robert’s email or my grandad’s?

  He started typing again. “Done. No one accessed them or Raptor’s or Carolina’s.”

  “Barney?”

  “Nope. Just Hal, and he’s the one that got dead.”

  “It could’ve gone the other way with Robert.”

  A candy striper went into Grandad’s room with his breakfast tray. I crossed my fingers on the lime Jell-O question. “I have to interview Steve and Jeanette. You have their numbers?”

  Uncle Morty said he’d text them to me and hung up without a goodbye. I walked slowly to Grandad’s room, ready for a food fight, but was pleasantly surprised. He was eating. Voluntarily.

  “What?” he said as he smeared butter on a piece of wheat toast.

  “Nothing. E
verything’s good. You eat. Then I’ll change your bandage.” I went to sit down, but he said, “Go check on Robert and Raquel. I want to know how they’re doing and when he can ride.”

  “Riding isn’t happening any time soon,” I said.

  “That’s what you think. Robert’s tough.”

  There was no arguing about toughness with a Vietnam vet. They’d always win, given that they had a better grasp of the subject than I ever would. I set the bandage pack on his side table and headed over to the ICU.

  Robert was sitting up and, to my dismay, Raptor was at his bedside. I looked through the nurse’s viewing window and considered not going in. Robert looked good and Raptor looked angry. That was as much as I needed to know. But Robert glanced over and saw me. He waved me in and I had to go.

  “Why is your hair wet?” asked Raptor.

  Good morning to you, too.

  “I had a wicked combo of bedhead and helmet hair.”

  Robert gave me a weak smile. “You are the only woman I know who looks good with wet hair.”

  “Thanks,” I said and Raptor gritted her teeth. It was a wonder she hadn’t worn them down to nubs.

  “So how are you feeling this morning?” I asked Robert, ignoring Raptor’s brittle stare.

  “Like I’ve been stabbed in the back. People say that a lot. I don’t think they know what they’re talking about,” he said with a weak grin.

  “Not like you do.” I checked out his chart. He’d improved on all counts. “You’re doing well. Has the doctor been in?”

  “He just left,” said Raptor, her voice softer than I expected. “He said another day of ICU and then he’ll move to the regular floor.”

  “Good plan. How’s the pain?” I asked.

  “I get another shot in…”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Raptor finished for him.

  Robert smiled again. “Then I’ll be asleep. I like the sleep.”

  “I don’t blame you. Sleep while you can. My crazy grandfather thinks that once they spring you from this joint you’re going to climb Mount Everest or something.”

  “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “Grandpa!” exclaimed Raptor.

  He patted her hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll start with K2.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “It should be.”