Death At The Diner (A Moose River Mystery Book 7)

by Jeff Shelby

  “He just fell out of his chair?” Jake asked.

  Emily shook her head and took another deep breath. “I brought them their food. The girl he was with had the grilled chicken salad and Officer Ted had the Big Mama Special. Three ground beef tacos with sour cream and guacamole. Hard shell, not soft.” She paused. “It's like our biggest seller.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to stay patient over the fact that she was describing what they ordered and not what had happened. “And then?”

  “Well, I had a little bit of guacamole on my hand and that totally grossed me out,” she said, shivering at the memory. “So I went back to the kitchen and scrubbed it off. I mean, I don't want to serve tables with stuff on my hands, you know? That's gross, and I know I wouldn't want to tip a gross server. Because this one time—”

  “I meant what happened next with Officer Ted,” I said.

  She blinked. “Oh, right. Okay, so I was in the kitchen washing my hands and I heard a plate hit the floor. But it wasn't in the kitchen. I knew it was in the dining room. So I went back out to see what it was. And Officer Ted was just lying on the ground, next to his chair, the tacos all around his head.”

  Poor Officer Ted. I instantly wondered if he’d started choking or had a heart attack. “What was the girl doing?” I asked. “Did anyone help him??”

  “She was just sort of sitting there,” Emily said. Her breathing had slowed and her color was returning to normal. “Like she was shocked. Then she finally got up and started yelling for help. Someone called 9-1-1 and then the police showed up, and then the ambulance.”

  “Well, was he okay?” I asked. I was beginning to panic. Officer Ted was someone I considered a friend, and the last thing I wanted was to hear from my almost hysterical daughter that a friend of mine had died. Eating tacos.

  “I don't know,” she said, shaking her head. Her eyes were filled with tears. “They took him out on a stretcher. He was clutching his stomach. But I'm totally worried.”

  “I understand,” I said, nodding. I was worried, too.

  “I could lose my job,” she said.

  “Oh my god,” Will muttered. “This'll be good.”

  Jake froze him with a stare.

  I looked at her, confused. “What?”

  “What if the police think it's my fault?” she said, her voice edging toward hysteria again. Her eyes were the size of dinner plates. “I served him his food. I was the last one to talk to him.”

  “Other than the lady eating with him,” Will pointed out.

  That gave her pause for a moment. “Maybe. But still. I'm the most likely suspect, right? I've seen a lot of TV shows. I know how it works. They're going to want to question me. What if I have to go to jail?”

  Will started laughing. “You don’t ‘have to go’ to jail. It’s not like school. They physically lock you up. Handcuff and shackle you.”

  Jake pointed toward the kitchen and the basement door not visible from where we were sitting on the couch. “Go. Downstairs. Now.”

  Will rolled his eyes, but stood up. “Fine. But, seriously, Officer Ted is apparently dead or something and she's worried about herself?”

  “If I don't worry about me, who will?” she cried. “And he’s not dead! I mean, at least I don’t think he is. He was alive on the stretcher. But who knows what happened when they got to the hospital? Or if they got to the hospital in time.” The tears spilled down her cheeks.

  “Great question,” Will muttered over his shoulder as he disappeared into the kitchen and down to the basement.

  Emily sat down on the coffee table and buried her face in her hands. “What am I gonna do?”

  I turned to Jake.

  He raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders.

  I turned back to my daughter. “Emily?”

  “What?” she mumbled, her voice garbled by her hands.

  “Look at me.”

  She pulled her hands away from her face. Her mascara had mixed with her tears and tiny black trails ran down her cheeks.

  “Now might not be the best time for you to worry about your job,” I said slowly. “I don't think you'll be going to jail. At least for this. And maybe we should think about Officer Ted's well-being for a minute.”

  She stared at me. “You don't care if I go to jail? Or lose my job?”

  My fingers dug into my thighs. Like a lot of teenagers, Emily had trouble seeing past the tip of her own nose. Combined with her already anxious personality, she sometimes failed to realize that other people happened to live on the planet.

  “No, I do care about those things,” I said. Her eyes narrowed and I knew she’d picked up on my tone. It was my you-are-acting-insane tone, and one typically reserved for her. However, we still had two daughters to go through puberty, so I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be the only recipient for long.

  I took a deep breath and continued. “But I think those things aren't nearly as important as a friend's health right now.”

  She frowned. “I barely know him.”

  “I meant my friend,” I said, feeling the patience seep out of my ears.

  The dawn of recognition hit. “Oh,” she said, nodding. She paused. “But what am I gonna do?”

  “Don't kill her,” Jake whispered. If Emily heard him, she didn’t indicate it. She was staring at her hands, apparently defeated over the fact that her life was now effectively over.

  “What you're going to do is stand up and go to your room,” I told her. “Right now.”

  “Why?” she cried, throwing up her hands. “How is that going to help? Because it won’t! At all!”

  “It's going to save your life,” I explained.

  She frowned and opened her mouth to speak but I cut her off.

  “Because if you continue to sit in front of me and I am forced to listen to your own self-pity while someone else is in the hospital—someone I know and who I call my friend—then I will probably do something that ends up putting you in a bed next to him.”

  She gave me a horrified look. “That's child abuse!” she cried, standing up. “You can't do that.”

  “I won't report anything,” Jake said. He’d found a baseball game and his eyes were glued to the television. “I'll just say I didn't see anything.”

  “Mom!”

  “Go,” I ordered. “Now. Before Jake has to call an ambulance. For you.”

  She stomped her feet against the wood floor, and I had a vivid recollection of the tantrums she’d thrown as a toddler. “You just don't get it! You’re so mean!”

  She continued stomping into her room, slamming the door behind her. The walls rattled in response.

  “Well, that was fun,” Jake remarked.

  “Yeah, real fun.” My heart was racing and I had to take a few deep breaths to try to bring down what I was sure was skyrocketing blood pressure.

  Once my heart rate returned to normal and I didn’t feel like I was going to need my own trip to the hospital, I turned to Jake. “What do you think happened?”

  He shrugged. “No idea. Heart attack? Something like that?”

  I nodded. “Sort of sounds like that, I guess.”

  I thought for a moment, wrestling with my feelings. I wanted to check on him, to do something, but I didn’t know what. I wasn’t a comrade in the true sense. I mean, I worked at the department but it wasn’t like I was one of the officers. I worked part-time. I answered phones and helped out with filing and occasionally worked on official paperwork.

  “That's terrible,” I said. “He's such a nice guy.”

  “He is,” Jake said. “So you better get going.”

  “Get going?”

  “To the hospital?” he said. His legs were outstretched, his feet propped on the coffee table. “I can tell you're already thinking about going to check on him and make sure he's okay. So go now.”

  I stared at him. “I'm not sure I like how easily you find your way into my brain sometimes.”

  He smiled. “It's a gift.”

  “Yo
u should return it.”

  “Best gift I've ever gotten.”

  “No one gave it to you.”

  “Self-gifted.”

  “That isn't even a thing.”

  “I'm making it a thing,” he said. “But you should go. Before it gets late.”

  “You don't know for sure that I'm going,” I said, folding my arms.

  He raised an eyebrow and waited.

  He didn’t have to wait long.

  I stood. “Fine. I'm going.”

  “I know.”

  I didn’t know whether to whack him in the arm or kiss him.

  So I did both.

  FOUR

  The Moose River Hospital was at the northern end of town, the tallest building in a maze of other buildings that housed the city government and medical offices. We visited the government buildings regularly for 4-H meetings, but I was fairly certain that I'd never set foot inside the hospital. I didn’t consider this a bad thing.

  A pleasant woman with red hair and redder lips directed me up to the fourth floor. The hospital was a mixture of cheerful sterility. Plain white walls lit by soft lighting. Colorful artwork behind glass, making them easy to wipe down. Laminate flooring that resembled rich hardwood. They’d tried hard to make it feel welcoming, and I was sure patients appreciated the effort.

  I checked in at the main desk and a less pleasant woman told me to have a seat while she checked to see if Ted was having visitors. I sat down in one of the green vinyl chairs in the waiting room and thumbed through a magazine, trying to keep myself busy. The suspense was killing me—I hated waiting for anything—but the fact that he’d been put in a recovery room at least told me that he was still alive.

  Thirty minutes later, the nurse reappeared and pointed a stubby finger at me.

  “Room 417,” she barked. “Don’t go into any other rooms. Don’t look in them, either.”

  I wasn’t sure if she didn’t want me seeing what staff were doing or if she meant to protect the privacy of patients who hadn’t closed their doors. I just nodded and she jerked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating which direction I should head.

  I walked down the hall, keeping my eyes cast downward, only glancing up to keep track of room numbers. I didn’t want anyone reprimanding me for an accidental gaze into an open room.

  I found my way to the room at the end of the hall and knocked once before tentatively pushed it open.

  Detective Priscilla Hanborn glared at me from across the room. “Why am I not surprised to see you here?”

  She was technically my boss, but most definitely not my friend. We'd been trying to figure out a way to coexist together and Officer Ted had been serving as the mediator. I wasn't sure it was a job I wished on anyone.

  “I came to see how he's doing,” I explained. “My daughter told me what happened.”

  Her perpetual frown grew deeper. “Of course she did.”

  Ted rolled his head over on the thick pillow. “Hello, Daisy.” He was pale, a weak smile on his face as he greeted me.

  “I can leave if you're not up to having visitors,” I told him. “Emily just told me what happened after we left, so I thought I'd come over to check on you. I…I was worried.”

  Priscilla's eyes narrowed to slits beneath her buzz cut of white-blonde hair. I was pretty sure she had it cut weekly. “You were there? At the restaurant?”

  “Before. I was having dinner with my family.”

  She grunted and stood from the stool she'd parked herself on. “Interesting. Alright.”

  From anyone else, I would have ignored or paid little attention to her comment. But this was Priscilla Hanborn, and her raspy voice held a note of suspicion that raised my hackles.

  She looked at Ted and her expression softened just a bit. “I'll get a more formal statement from you in the morning. That okay?”

  “That's fine,” Ted croaked.

  She hitched up her khaki pants and gave me the evil eye. “Don't stay too long. He needs rest. And be on time tomorrow.”

  “You mean like every other day?” I said. “Sure. I'll be on time.”

  She grumbled something to herself as she pushed her way out of the room.

  I took a seat on the stool Priscilla had just vacated. The wheels began to roll and I planted my feet on the ground to steady myself. “How are you?”

  Ted cleared his throat and managed another weak smile. “Well, I've had better days, I suppose.”

  His face was drawn, dark circles under his eyes, and he looked like he hadn't slept in days. Blankets were pulled up to his chin and a monitor to the side of the bed beeped intermittently. An IV tube was taped to the back of his hand.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  He shifted beneath the blankets and cleared his throat again. “I'm not really sure. Elsa and I were having dinner. I had a couple of bites, but I was taking my time. We were talking, you know? Then my stomach started hurting a little bit. No big deal, I thought. Spicy food sometimes gives me indigestion and we’d already had some chips and salsa. Anyway, next thing I knew I was waking up in an ambulance and on my way here.” He shook his head. “So I really don't know what happened.”

  “So it wasn't a heart attack or anything like that?”

  He shook his head. “No, nothing like that. I didn't feel anything like that, and they cleared me of all those things. So I'm really not sure what it was.”

  I ran through my memory of every search I’d done over the years as I played Doctor Google and tried to diagnose various illnesses the kids and I had suffered. “Have you been sick?”

  “Nope. Not in the least. Haven't even had a cold in four years.” He frowned. “I'm just sorry to cause everyone such a fuss.”

  This was typical Officer Ted. There was no way to prove it, but I was fairly certain he was the kindest person in Moose River. His temperament served him well as a police officer in town. Situations rarely escalated when he was around because he calmed everyone down. He just had that way about him.

  “People are worried about you,” I told him. I had no idea who he thought he was bothering by being in the hospital: Elsa would of course be worried about him, as would Hanborn. And me? Well, I worried about everyone. “That's a nice thing.”

  He blushed. “I suppose. But I'm more embarrassed than anything.”

  And that sounded just like him, too.

  I smiled at him. “You feel okay now then?”

  “I'm tired,” he admitted. “And my stomach hurts a little, like I ate a bad hamburger or something. But I'm okay. I guess there are a few more tests they’re waiting on. But they’ve ruled out all the serious stuff.”

  The door to the room opened and a woman sporting a gray bun and wearing a white lab coat hustled in. Her eyes were glued to the chart in her hand, her other hand twirling the end of a purple stethoscope. She stopped at the edge of his bed and looked up.

  She gave me a quick smile, acknowledging my presence, and then looked at Ted. “How are we feeling?”

  “I'm good,” he said, pushing himself up even more, so that he was almost in a sitting position. “Can I leave now?”

  “In a little bit,” she said. “No pain, no nothing?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing I can't handle.”

  She looked at me. “Are you family?”

  “Friend.”

  The doctor hesitated.

  “You can speak in front of Daisy,” Ted said quickly. “She's a friend and a co-worker.”

  The doctor pursed her lips, thinking. “As long as I have your consent,” she finally said. “Those HIPPA laws are a real pain in my derriere, and the last thing I need is someone coming after me for violating their so-called privacy. We can put pictures of our underwear on Facebook but heaven forbid we tell someone they have the flu in front of someone they don't think should hear. Shenanigans, I tell you.”

  I rubbed my chin, my feeble attempt at hiding the smile tugging at my lips. Neither of them noticed.

  “So is that it?” Ted asked h
opefully. “Do I have the flu?”

  “Oh goodness no,” the doctor said, shaking her head. Her bun bobbled and I watched with fascination, waiting for a waterfall of gray hair to cascade down her back. “What you have is the poison.”

  He stared at her. “The poison?”

  “Well, not the poison,” she clarified. “Don’t know what that would be, if there was just one poison that we suddenly referred to as the poison. As if it were the end-all to all poisons. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?”

  We both stared at her, and she at least had the decency to look a little sheepish.

  She coughed. “Well, now, what you have is some poison in your system. Your bloodwork came back and while it may take a couple of days to completely pinpoint what got into you, there's definitely something toxic that found its way into you.”

  “Toxic?” Ted squeaked.

  “So it's something other than, say, food poisoning?” I asked.

  She glanced down at the chart. “I would say so. Can't confirm that for sure, but given the toxicity levels in his bloodstream, he didn't simply eat bad sour cream.”

  “Toxicity?” If possible, Ted was even paler now.

  She looked at Ted. “More on par with you having stuck a straw in a lawn mower and sucked really hard.”

  “Well, I certainly didn't do that,” he said. He slumped low in the hospital bed, and I didn’t know if it was from the news or if he was simply exhausted by the effort of sitting up for an extended period of time.

  “Of course you didn't,” the doctor said, shaking her head. The bun wobbled again. “I'm just giving you an idea of what your chart looks like. There was most definitely something in you that shouldn't have been.”

  Ted's expression was puzzled. “That's…very strange.”

  “You're telling me,” the doctor said. “So, anyway, we’re gonna keep you here for a little bit longer so we can get more fluids in you. Then we’ll run a few more blood tests to make sure you’re good to go.”

  “It is definitely out of him?” I asked. “The…the poison?”

  “Oh, goodness yes,” the doctor answered. “He was puking like Old Faithful when he came in to the E.R. So we pumped his stomach and yanked out everything left in him.” She held up the chart. “I’d just feel more comfortable waiting. We can check his numbers in a couple of hours just to be safe.” She looked at Ted. “You alright with that?”