Murder, She Wrote--Murder in Red

by Jessica Fletcher

  I thought of George Sutherland finally checking in and rousing me early for a breakfast downstairs. “How about lunch?”

  “I have patients to see, remember?”

  “I know. I’m one of them, remember?”

  * * *

  • • •

  I slept fitfully, my slumber marred by unsettling dreams better described as nightmares. Everyone has that one recurring nightmare that remains terrifying no matter how much you experience it. For me, that’s being up in the air piloting a plane. First, my husband, Frank, is manning the controls; then it’s me and I’m alone in the cockpit. I look at the fuel gauge and it’s reading empty, lights flashing and warning buzzers sounding even though the engine’s still cranking. Then, in the next beat, the plane is going down, screaming through the air, me frozen behind the controls.

  I always wake up with a jolt, left to wonder what it would feel like in the dream if I did crash. I’ve heard it said that never happens, but have no idea where such folklore originated. On this night, I woke up with something still plaguing me from yesterday about Mimi Van Dorn. So much had happened with regard to her in the past twenty-four hours: from meeting her outside the church and yanking her from the path of an onrushing Jeep Cherokee, to the heated phone call that had distracted her, to . . . what?

  That was the missing piece, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But in those early postdawn hours, I remembered something else that I couldn’t make sense of:

  The old Cherokee that had nearly run Mimi down had no front license plate.

  I knew some Massachusetts drivers, as many as a million, had older plates that required only a rear one to be displayed. The odds here certainly didn’t suggest that, given that the other states most likely to send visitors to Cabot Cove all required both plates. It probably meant nothing, but now I couldn’t chase the sudden realization from my mind, especially when coupled with the argument Mimi was clearly having with whoever was on the other end of the phone line. Not to mention that third observation I couldn’t pin down yet.

  I was still trying when the phone rang with an early morning call from Seth, perhaps giving me another choice to meet him for breakfast.

  “What time?” I greeted.

  “Now, but not at Mara’s—the hospital. Mimi Van Dorn died an hour ago.”

  “Oh no . . . How?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I need you and Mort down here, Jess. I think she may have been—”

  “Don’t say it, Seth.”

  “Do I really have to?”

  Chapter Five

  Mort had just arrived at the hospital by the time I got there, both of us approaching Seth, who was waiting for us in the lobby.

  “Why doesn’t anybody in this town ever seem to die of natural causes?” Mort asked, as we walked through the glass doors together.

  “Seth may have been exaggerating.”

  “Seth never exaggerates.”

  “Good point.”

  Seth stood in the center of the lobby, looking harried and flustered. It was hardly like Seth to look ruffled, but this morning his white hair was uncombed and he’d either thrown on or never taken off yesterday’s dark suit.

  “Nurses found her unresponsive after her room alarm button sounded. She died of respiratory arrest.”

  “But you said—”

  “I know what I said,” Seth interrupted, “because the ventilator machine was partially unplugged.”

  “Partially?” Mort asked, before I could.

  “It’s possible Mimi caused it herself with another spasm. That’s been known to happen.”

  “How often?” I asked.

  “Not very, ayuh.”

  Mort loosened his tie a bit. “How good are the hospital’s security cameras?”

  “Also not very.”

  “I’ll want to have a look at their footage anyway. Right now, we don’t know what we don’t know, and there just might be something there that can help us.”

  “Wouldn’t the alarm have been triggered by the machine switching off?” I asked Seth.

  “It should’ve been.”

  “Meaning,” Mort picked up, “it wasn’t.”

  “The hospital’s investigating.”

  “Not anymore,” Mort said. “I want to see the room.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Cabot Cove was one of those hospitals with a dedicated floor of single rooms for intensive care unit patients, a practice that became common once it produced a significantly smaller rate of infection. The rooms were small, some without windows or even individual bathrooms. Mimi Van Dorn’s boasted both, something I’m sure she would have appreciated had she been in any condition to notice.

  She was still lying in bed, covered up to the head and looking serene. Other than the doctors and nurses who’d rushed in to try to revive her once the Code Blue had been called, no one had disturbed the room. If I didn’t know better, I would think Mimi was sleeping peacefully in the early-morning light.

  I’d seen dead bodies before, of course, more than I wish to count. You never get used to it, and there’s something about seeing the body of a person you know that feels almost surreal. It felt almost as though I were trapped in the clutches of the kind of nightmare that had rattled my sleep the night before.

  “Is that the way they found the cord to the ventilator?” Mort asked Seth, pointing toward the plug that looked about two-thirds detached from the wall socket into which it had been inserted.

  “I told them to make sure of that much when they paged me.”

  I looked at Seth closer, understanding why he looked so rumpled. “You were here at the time?”

  “I went home for a time and then came back when I couldn’t sleep. I was in the lobby when the page came over the PA.”

  Maybe it was something in the cookies Cabot Cove Catering had served for Jean O’Neil’s funeral reception. I hated considering the fact there’d soon be one for yet another Cabot Cove resident I was close to.

  I studied the position of the ventilator machine near the bed, picturing the tube running from it attached to the intubating device wedged down Mimi’s throat.

  “Was the tube in place when you got here, Seth?” I asked, drawing a frown from Mort, since I’d posed the very question he’d been about to.

  He shook his head. “Removed to allow for CPR to be properly administered.”

  “What about when the crash team entered the room?”

  This time, Seth nodded. “In place. I made sure to ask.”

  Again, I considered the logistics. “So, given the distance of the machine from the bed, how could another of Mimi’s spasms have yanked the plug from the wall socket? Maybe jostled or loosened it if the spasm produced a firm enough tug on the tube. I guess it’s possible, but not very likely.” I glanced toward Mort. “We need to have a look at that security camera footage.”

  “We?” he asked.

  * * *

  • • •

  The camera offered a pretty decent view of the hallway beyond Mimi’s room, decent enough to see no one about who didn’t belong and no one entering the room, besides the duty nurse on her routine pass. According to the time stamp, that visit had occurred just short of an hour before Mimi died. And since checks were every hour, that meant if someone had murdered her, he or she had the timing down to a T.

  Another angle from the same time period featured the nurses’ station. Even in the quiet of the predawn, the desk was manned by two nurses at any time, no surprise given this was the intensive care unit. Mort fast-forwarded the recording through the period where someone may have entered Mimi’s room, to find nothing amiss until the moment the alarm must’ve begun to screech, drawing both nurses away from the desk. We glimpsed doctors rushing onto the scene just behind a crash cart, the image including a wall-mounted digita
l LED clock; the red numbers mirrored the time stamp exactly.

  “Well,” Mort said, rubbing his eyes as he turned away from the screen, “ICU’s on the first floor, which means somebody could have gotten in through the window.”

  “I thought of that. But the ICU hall is perched on the hospital’s higher side, meaning you’d still need a ladder, at least a stepladder, or a hearty boost to reach the sill.”

  “I need to check to see if the window’s locked.”

  His eyes followed me to the door of the security monitoring center, where the video feeds were directed.

  “Where you going?”

  “Outside. Care to join me?”

  * * *

  • • •

  Once we were outside, it took us several minutes to pinpoint Mimi’s room in relation to the building. I remembered it was the third door of eight or nine on the south-facing side of the hall, but it could really have been any of them, since the dry grass, kept alive through the parched summer only thanks to sprinklers, yielded no footprints or impressions anywhere. Mimi’s room featured no smudge marks on the window glass or any other evidence indicating some form of entry and exit had been made through the single window taking up half the wall in her tiny intensive care room.

  “Notice any security cameras about?” Mort asked me.

  “Nope.”

  “Me either. Not that they’d have anything to show us, given there’s no evidence to suggest Mimi’s window was used as an entry point.”

  “What about the windows on either side of her room?”

  “What’s it matter?”

  “I was thinking the killer, if there really is one, could have used an adjoining room’s window to gain entry to disguise any evidence. Maybe even a room on the other side of the hall.”

  “You forgetting that the security camera showed nobody coming or going from any direction around the time the cord must’ve been tampered with and the machine’s alarm mechanism deactivated, Mrs. Fletcher?”

  “No, just trying to keep each piece of potential evidence an island unto itself.”

  “Sounds like something Sherlock Holmes might say.”

  I forced a smile. “And I’m sure Holmes would’ve felt right at home here in Cabot Cove.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Back inside, we heard arguing as soon as we rounded the corner of the ICU, spotting Seth Hazlitt engaged in a heated discussion with none other than Charles Clifton.

  “The hell you will!” I heard Seth say, just short of a yell.

  “Mr. Hazlitt—”

  “It’s Dr. Hazlitt, you dunderpuss!”

  When was the last time I’d ever heard anyone use the term “dunderpuss”? I couldn’t even tell you the word’s meaning.

  “Ah, Sheriff,” Seth said in a softer voice upon recognizing Mort’s return, “I was just explaining to Dr. Chilton here that he requires law enforcement permission to examine the body.”

  “It’s Clifton, and you’re forgetting the woman was my patient.”

  “No, I’m forgetting you’re a doctor, since you don’t seem to act like one.”

  Clifton decided to try ignoring Seth and turned to Mort instead. “Sheriff, I’m only trying to be of help here.”

  “Ayuh,” Seth snapped. “As in help yourself avoid a malpractice suit. Jean O’Neil and now Mimi Van Dorn. Suppose it’s not a good week to be a patient in that clinic of yours.”

  “Seth,” Mort said, his gaze remaining fixed on Clifton, “I see no harm in Dr. Clifton here taking a look at the body—under your supervision, of course, and with both myself and Mrs. Fletcher present to keep the peace.”

  Clifton shot me a condescending glance. “I’m not sure I understand a mystery writer’s place in an actual investigation.”

  “Oh,” I started, “I assure you, Dr. Clifton, I’ve assisted or consulted on any number of actual investigations, both in Cabot Cove and elsewhere.”

  He knew that, of course, given George Sutherland was his patient.

  George . . .

  I hadn’t thought of him since leaving Hill House, and the fresh thought of George stirred renewed concern over the fact that he’d never checked in the night before or even this morning. Mort had tugged Seth Hazlitt aside, either calming him down or filling him in on what we’d been up to—maybe both—leaving me alone with Clifton.

  I noticed both sides of his pants were torn slightly at the knees, as if his tussle with Seth had turned physical, before addressing him. “You knew I was acquainted with George Sutherland, of course.”

  “It came up in our preliminary discussions about his coming to the clinic,” Clifton said, without nodding. “You understand why I couldn’t bring it up with you, including Mr. Sutherland’s pending arrival in Cabot Cove.”

  “It’s Chief Inspector Sutherland, and yes, I understand doctor-patient confidentiality.”

  “Then you’re also aware I can’t answer any of your questions regarding his condition.”

  “It’s why I haven’t posed any, Doctor, and I’d be disappointed if you did.”

  “Including about why he hasn’t made it over to the local hotel yet, Mrs. Fletcher?”

  Clifton’s tone was more baiting than biting. A man who liked not just holding the upper hand but also waving it.

  In my experience, many accomplished people hide their egos behind a facade of charm and charisma that makes them palatable, even pleasant, to be around. A snake in the grass, yes, but a friendly one. There was no such pretense with Charles Clifton, no effort made to appear to be anything but a snarky egoist who thrived on control and manipulation. I imagine that’s what made him both a master salesman and spokesman for the clinic that claimed a Cabot Cove mailing address and was envisioned to be the first in a chain of for-profit private hospitals under the auspices of Clifton Care Partners. Concierge medicine taken to the next level.

  “I am curious about one thing, though, Doctor,” I heard myself say, my words stretching ahead of my thoughts.

  “I told you I can’t speak about—”

  “This has nothing to do with George Sutherland. I’m curious as to how a small private hospital like yours has managed to participate in clinical trials normally reserved for much larger and established institutions.”

  “The key word is participate, Mrs. Fletcher. Clinical trials come with a considerable cost associated with them, derived from a combination of patient care and research. Smaller facilities like my clinic are able to handle all the heavy lifting at significantly less expense due to the streamlined costs only the private sector can provide.”

  “Clinics plural before much longer, from what I’ve heard.”

  “That’s the hope,” he said with a smile as sharp as his words. “All of them private and, thus, not bearing the same excessive costs springing from the burden of bureaucracy.”

  “Isn’t it just that bureaucracy that’s supposed to oversee the safety of patients enrolled in clinical trials, Dr. Clifton?”

  His response was to glare at me, suddenly seeming even taller. At five feet eight, I’m used to looking most men in the eye. I had to look up, though, to meet Clifton’s, and he seemed to relish that fact, as if he was transposing his looking down on me onto other facets of superiority. His gaze felt vaguely like an unspoken threat, given that he had the air of a man not prone to bothering anymore with the pretense of insincere charm he’d been fast to display when I’d met him for the first time yesterday, after Mimi had introduced us.

  Mimi . . .

  That memory flashed through my mind, along with something else—that out-of-place image I’d been missing from the funeral reception at the library, which had tried to break through from my subconscious to conscious mind only after Mimi lapsed into the coma from which she’d never awakened.

  “Mimi was quite proud of the progress you encour
aged her to make with her diet, Doctor. Giving up sugar and gluten.”

  “A key to her avoiding developing type one diabetes and becoming insulin dependent.”

  “And yet, after she suffered that seizure, her blood levels were found to be consistent with that of a full diabetic.”

  Clifton’s gaze turned disparaging. “Dr. Hazlitt tell you that?”

  “I’m curious about something,” I said, instead of answering him. “You’re confident in Mimi Van Dorn’s strict adherence to the diet you placed her on.”

  “I would consider her dedicated to that diet, yes.”

  “Strange,” I said, getting to the point, “because when I first saw her at the reception, I brushed some crumbs and white flakes off her dress. Cabot Cove Catering is well-known for the cookies they bake in-house, including the sugar cookies Mimi must’ve eaten several of when no one was watching.”

  “Stressful occasions, like funerals, can lead to cheating. Surely you aren’t blaming me for your friend’s indiscretions.”

  “No, I’m blaming you for your patient’s indiscretions. Because if she were truly following your protocols, how is it her diabetes got worse?”

  Clifton made himself chuckle and flash a smile that vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “I don’t need to explain myself or my methods to a mystery writer who fancies herself a detective.”

  “No, but you may need to explain them to Sheriff Metzger. Cabot Cove Catering’s sugar cookies may be as good as it gets, but they shouldn’t be to die for, Dr. Clifton.”

  He turned in a huff and strode off, leaving me thinking about George Sutherland again. But those thoughts quickly turned to another memory of the phone call Mimi Van Dorn had made or received while crossing the road in front of the church yesterday, the call that had nearly ended her life when she never saw the old Jeep Cherokee barreling down on her. Not something I had been likely to pay further attention to, even with Mimi’s passing. The disconnected cord to her ventilator and the lack of an alarm being triggered at the nurses’ station had changed all that, suggesting at least the possibility of murder and opening up fresh consideration of everything that might’ve appeared otherwise mundane.