by Freya Barker
My parents dragged me out of the house for breakfast at CJ’s Diner, which was nice. We chitchatted about my sisters, their kids—well at least Chrissy and Gaby’s, since Fran, like me, is still childless to my mother’s great disappointment—and their plans for the summer. The previous days have been so focused on me and my issues, it was almost a relief to have someone else as the subject of conversation for a change.
Ma made sure there was plenty of food in the house before they left—seriously, I could be stranded in my house for a month, and I’d still be laughing—and Papa took my little red Fiat to the gas station to make sure all the fluids were topped up and there was enough air in my tires. It’s actually been nice, letting myself be looked after for a while. For me, but I think also for them. I don’t often let them.
Still, I’m glad to have my house back to myself.
I’m stuffing my sheets into the washer when my phone rings. I don’t recognize the number.
“Hey, Bella? It’s Joanne. I hope you don’t mind, I finagled your number from Ryan.”
“Hi—no, not at all.”
“I hear you’re feeling better and coming in for your shift tonight?”
“Much better, thanks.” I feel a little awkward and a lot awful for lying. “And yes, I start at seven.”
“Ryan told me. I’m on at seven as well and was wondering if you wanted to grab a bite before?”
The question throws me a little and the silence on my part becomes uncomfortable. That’s how socially inept I’ve become. Poor Joanne starts scrambling.
“You probably have stuff to do. I shouldn’t have dropped this last minute, but it’s just that my mom is keeping the baby until tomorrow so I can sleep a little when I get home. Except the house is so quiet now, and—”
“I’d love to,” I interrupt her ramble, coming to a firm decision. I could do with a few friends.
“You sure?”
“Absolutely. Where do you want to go?”
We end up agreeing on Digs, near the hospital. A casual place, with decent food, and they have a flourless chocolate torte that is to die for, which was the clincher for me.
By the time it’s ready for me to head out, I have the washed sheets in the dryer and clean sheets on the bed, and all the food Ma left me packed away and stored. The ping of a message stops me on the way out the door, and I quickly check, chuckling as I read.
Jasper: FYI, I just sent an email to Hershey with some new marketing ideas.
Me: And I’m going out with a friend for another chocolate induced orgasm.
I grab my keys, stuff my flip-flops in my bag with comfy clothes for after my shift, and lock the door behind me. The smell of new car hits me when I climb behind the wheel for the first time in over a week. I have to smile when I spot the new air freshener clipped to the vent—typical Papa. One last check of my messages shows two consecutive ones.
Jasper: What???
Jasper: Bella????
Me: LOL. Dinner (mostly chocolate torte) with friend Joanne at Digs. Gotta run.
Immediately a message pings back. He must’ve been waiting.
Jasper: Cruel. Someone needs a spanking.
Me: Promises. Promises.
I don’t see his final message until I park the car at the restaurant.
Jasper: Pure evil.
I’m still chuckling when I walk into Digs and see Joanne waving me over to a table by the far wall.
“What’s funny?” Joanne asks, when I slide into the seat across from her.
“This guy I’m seeing.”
“Tell me more,” she prompts, signaling the waitress. “I’ve been married for eight years, and with Mark for six more than that. I’ve forgotten about the excitement of dating. I’ll have to live vicariously through you.” When the girl comes up to the table, Joanne orders for both of us. “Two coffees and two large servings of your chocolate torte.”
A girl after my own heart.
That’s how within seconds of sitting down, I’m spilling as if we’ve been friends our whole lives. The things chocolate can make me do.
“YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO get dressed up for me.”
We’ve barely cleared the hospital lobby when I hear the voice behind us, and a shiver runs down my spine.
“If it isn’t Dr. Lipczyk,” Joanne sneers beside me as she swings around. “Still stalking the hallways I see? Not much has changed since high school.”
“Ah, look, it’s the lovely Joanne, I’ve caught a twofer tonight. Like old times.”
I’m stunned this man has the gall to even talk to us, although I’m sure he thinks he’s untouchable. I’d never taken the time to check the board of directors, as he’d suggested the last time I saw him in the parking lot, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out he probably has a family member in one of those chairs. I wouldn’t doubt it.
Truth is, I haven’t given him much thought at all. I never even mentioned the incident in the parking lot to Jasper. Maybe that was a mistake.
I grab Joanne by the arm and start walking toward the locker room, but she pulls back and turns to poke a finger in the smirking man’s chest. “You were a bully then and you’re a bully now, Scott. I may have been too timid at sixteen to stand up to you, but I’ll be damned if I let you harass me or my friends now, and I don’t care who your daddy is.”
Whoa.
From the reference to high school earlier, I figured she knew him. This outburst suggests it might have been a little less innocent than I thought.
Joanne’s blowup is drawing a bit of an audience in the lobby, when I see Ryan come stalking through the small crowd gathered right inside the front doors. He walks up, just in time to hear the good doctor’s softly spoken response to Joanne’s outrage.
“Say bye to your job, little girl.”
“Try,” Joanne taunts, getting ready to poke him again, but this time Ryan pulls her back.
“Hold up, Tiger,” he mumbles when she struggles against his hold. “There are better ways.”
By the time Ryan herds us down the hallway to the locker rooms, Joanne is shaking and looks near tears. I’m not sure what to expect when I lead her over to the sink so she can splash some cold water on her face.
“Why do I let him do this to me? He gets me spitting mad and then uses it to threaten me. Same damn game, just with bigger stakes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ugh. I hate to even admit it,” she says, plopping down on a bench. “I may have had a few run-ins with him over the years, starting in high school. He was interested, I was not, but to this day Scott does not take rejection well and is used to getting what he wants. Let’s just say he found ways to make my life miserable after that. It didn’t help my dad worked for his father, at the time, something he would lord over me to keep me quiet. Nothing’s changed; the man is still a bully.”
There’s a knock on the door and then Ryan’s voice calling out, “We’ve gotta roll, Gomez.
I rush to strip out of my summer dress and get into my uniform.
“Will you be okay?” I ask Joanne, who is getting changed as well.
“I’ll be fine. I generally avoid being around him, and he should know by now I can’t be pushed around anymore. He’s a coward, who still hides behind his daddy at his age. He doesn’t scare me.”
I hope she’s right.
Ryan is waiting in the hallway, impatiently jiggling the keys.
“We have a pick up from the seniors’ home. Advanced heart failure. Let’s go.”
It’s a steady night. In addition to that first call, we bring another three patients into Mercy during the course of our shift.
The last one is a young woman in labor, who ends up having her baby in the back of the rig. In all my years as EMT, this is my first birth, and I carry that baby into the hospital as proudly as if I’d given birth to it myself. I’m still on a high when I walk out of the hospital at the end of our shift.
“Wait up!” I swing around to see Ryan jogging to catch up with me. “I wish you
’d fucking wait for me so I can walk you to your car,” he grumbles, looking at me sideways. “Head still in the clouds I see?”
I grin widely. “That was the best. Wasn’t that the best?”
“Good you think so, because after being verbally and very publicly eviscerated by my normally sweet wife in the throes of labor—not once, but twice—I think I’ll take a pass.”
“Come on,” I nudge him as we get to my car. “It’s a beautiful thing, new life.”
“I’m sure it is, but I’d still rather have a vasectomy with a spoon than go through one more childbirth with Beth.” He opens my door, waits until I’m behind the wheel, and then leans down. “But you did well out there tonight, Gomez. Glad your first shift back ended on a high note.”
CHAPTER 15
JASPER
“Thanks.”
I take the tray with coffee and the brown bag with food, and pass them through to Luna. We’re on our way to Farmington at the butt crack of dawn, having breakfast on the fly. We’re hoping to catch one Hiram Miller, before he goes down for his morning nap.
The last few days have been spent fruitlessly looking for James Davis, other than forensic evidence, the only real lead we have. We found three by that exact name in Durango, but only one of them was the right age, and that James Davis spends his days in a wheelchair and lives with his mother.
Looking up his grandfather is the only avenue left open. We chased down the nursing home in Farmington and I called yesterday afternoon, hoping to speak to him. I didn’t get much further than the nurse assigned to his care, and was told Hiram sleeps most of the time, and is rarely lucid anymore. She was able to inform us that he doesn’t really get visitors, only the occasional church volunteer who’ll come and sit with him for a while. She indicated the best time to come would be during or right after breakfast, it’s apparently his clearest time of day.
Luna had offered to go, but I figured two were better. One of us could see what information to get from the old man, and the other could talk to some of the other residents and staff. Hiram had been in the nursing home a little over two years, surely he’d mentioned his grandson at some point in time.
“What time is the funeral?” Luna asks, her mouth full of hash brown.
“Service at one, interment immediately following. I’m guessing around two, two-thirty?”
Bert Cummings will be buried with full honors, which means there will be officers from all over flocking to Durango to see him off. For someone with a hard-on for cops, it makes for a tempting scenario. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
While everyone is focused on the funeral, we’ll be focused on the crowd.
Bella will be there too. She’s planning to go with Ryan, which I was happy to hear, since I won’t be able to sit with her.
I saw her briefly yesterday, and again this morning, when she came home from work around three thirty. She doesn’t think it’s necessary that I come check her house every day, but I need to make sure she’s safe. I don’t mind, I just start my day a little earlier. Getting in my Bella fix to start the day doesn’t hurt either.
“Wow, nice place,” Luna comments when we pull into the parking lot of the nursing home. It looks more like a luxury hotel, a newer structure with beautiful landscaping—which costs a sweet penny in the New Mexico drought—and a driveway that curves under a large portico over the front doors.
I park the car and lean over the steering wheel, staring at the building.
“Tell, me. How does a retired welder, living off a senior’s pension, end up in a place like this?”
“That’s a very good question,” Luna agrees, pushing open her door.
She ends up seeking out Hiram, who is still eating his breakfast when we get there, while I chase down the administrator.
“How can I help you?” the man asks, when introductions are exchanged and we sit down in his office.
“I’m hoping to get a few questions answered that might help our investigation. Am I correct in assuming this is a private facility?”
“You are.”
He goes into a sales pitch about the luxury accommodations and the high quality care provided to the residents. It takes a while for me to get to the answers I’m looking for.
“So it would be safe to say, your average resident is at the very least well-to-do, to afford living here.”
“I guess that would be fair to say,” he says with a shrug.
“Then how is it possible that a retired welder—who draws Social Security—and whose last residence was a trailer park in Shiprock, can afford this place?”
It takes a little arm wrestling, but I finally walk out of there with the name of the obscure trust fund financing Hiram Miller’s monthly bill. I have a lot of digging to do, but this is the kind of stuff I’m really good at.
“I need you to drive back,” I announce to Luna when I meet her in the lobby. “I have to look into something.” She takes the keys from my hand without question. “How did you make out with the old man?”
“I got most from his neighbor, who was here when Hiram moved in. He’s clear of mind and remembers Hiram talking about his grandson, he was worried about him. Apparently the kid never came to visit, not even once. When he’d asked Hiram about it, he mentioned he hoped his grandson was living it up in Mexico by now.”
“What about the old man himself?” I ask when we get to the car. “He just seemed confused when I asked about James Davis. Swore he knew no one by that name. When I said grandson, he mentioned the name Connor.”
“Why does that name sound familiar?”
“Because it’s the kid’s middle name; James Connor Davis.”
We’ve been looking for the wrong name.
By the time we get back to Durango, I’ve made some headway on unraveling the mystery trust fund benefiting Hiram Miller. I was able to lead it back to a consortium of pharmaceutical and other medical supply companies.
One partner name stands out; Eugene Lipczyk, owner of ELS—a company manufacturing surgical supplies. I’m not sure why the name is familiar, but when I look closer at the man’s resume, Mercy Regional Medical Center catches my eye immediately.
Eugene Lipczyk is on the board of directors, and the circle gets smaller. A quick scan through the hospital website, and suddenly I realize where I’ve seen that name before. On the name tag of the asshole who was bothering Bella in the ER back in May. Doctor Scott Lipczyk.
Father and son.
Small world.
Bella
I’m glad Ryan is meeting me at the church. To be honest, I’m not sure how well my emotions will hold up at this funeral.
These past few days, I’ve done mostly okay on my own, although I have to admit, it’s been nice to have Jasper pop over in the middle of the night. It’s usually during those hours of darkness that the weight of everything seems to grow. Having him show up, to get me inside my dark lonely house, has helped me get to sleep, but I feel guilty about the disruption to his schedule. The only time I am truly alone are the hours before I go back in for my next shift, which is when I struggle most with the thoughts threatening to pull me down.
This morning I set my alarm for ten thirty. Jas left here at about four thirty, so I’ve had six hours at best. I’m still a little groggy as I dig through my closet trying to find something appropriate to wear. All those little slinky dresses I usually wear are inappropriate. Besides, they’re part of the role I’ve played to the outside world, and hiding behind them seems to have become a moot point. It’s only a matter of time before everyone knows I’m not as okay as I pretend to be.
I’m actually surprised my sisters haven’t showed up at my door by now. Tomorrow Damian and Kerry get back, and I have no doubt before the day is out, my mother will be on the phone with him, if she hasn’t interrupted their vacation already.
This reminds me, I should get up to Hermosa this afternoon to air their place out and turn on the AC, it’s bound to be stuffy.
Sick of
my indecision, I snatch a pair of black crop pants off a hanger and pair it with a floral tank and my little three-quarter sleeve bolero jacket. I almost don’t recognize myself: my hair back in a low ponytail, a minimum of makeup, and dressed in the modest outfit.
Yet, oddly, I feel more exposed wearing it.
“SORRY I’M LATE,” RYAN huffs when he makes his way to the steps outside the church. “I had to park way the hell over at the high school. This place is gonna be packed.”
“It is already. I doubt we can find a spot in the pews. Looks like all of Durango has turned out for this one. It’ll be standing room only.”
I take the arm he offers and walk inside the blessedly cool church. It’s already getting pretty hot out there and we’re not even into summer yet.
As suspected, even half an hour before the service is scheduled to start, the pews are packed, but Ryan spots a couple of seats on the far aisle in the back.
I scan the church, to see if I can spot Jasper, who is supposed to be here in an official capacity, but don’t see him. I do see a host of other familiar faces, and I’m struck by how many people I’ve come to know in the year I’ve been in Durango. I may not get out much, but my work certainly connects me with people.
Almost all first responders, but there are a few faces I recognize from the hospital as well. Bert clearly was well-loved.
“You okay?” Ryan asks beside me, when I dab at a leaking eye with my tissue.
“I’m fine.”
I send him a reassuring smile when two rows down a head turns, eyes zooming right in on me.
“Are you shitting me?” Ryan hisses beside me when he spots Scott Lipczyk throwing me a wink.
“Tell me if he needs another attitude adjustment, Squirt,” I hear behind me, just as Jasper leans in between Ryan and me.
“Hey, I didn’t see you when I came in.”
“That’s ‘cause we’re paid to look, not to be seen.”
“Whatever.” I roll my eyes, but the effect is nonexistent because I’m doing it with a smile on my face.
Jasper drops a quick kiss to my lips, which I suspect is more for Scott’s benefit, since he straightens up, staring down Scott, who quickly swings back to face the front. At least the man seems to have a healthy respect for law enforcement.