Fit To Be Dead (An Aggie Mundeen Mystery Book 1)

by Nancy G. West

  In the midst of vigorous chewing, Sheldon issued an invitation. “I’m having a little get-together at my house Thursday night. Light refreshments...you know, healthy gourmet fare. If you’re not busy, I’d love for you all to come.”

  We were noncommittal. Sheldon seemed awfully eager. Sam scratched his cheek and scrutinized him as if he’d recently beamed down from a distant planet. When Sarah and Holly pulled up chairs, Sam gave them his detective’s perusal, then kicked back, stretched his legs and eyed Sarah’s thick hair and great figure. I almost blurted out that Holly was the one who deserved his attention, having nearly drowned.

  Ned Barclay entered the grill, and I waved him over. He produced his beautiful shy smile, saw me flanked by Sam and Sheldon, turned beet red and carried his food to the other side of the room.

  When I glanced over later, he snapped his gaze away, stone-faced. I supposed I embarrassed him by calling to him while I sat between two men. Ned Barclay seemed easily hurt.

  Sheldon and Sarah did most of the talking. She was into health and nutrition, which sent Sheldon into an orbit of statistical revelations. When they progressed to exotic cuisine, I felt queasy.

  I had little to say about anything outside of institutional settings like banks and colleges. Socializing for its own sake was a new experience for me, but I enjoyed listening and felt cozy and warm sitting with Sam and Meredith. We had each suffered loss and survived.

  “Meredith, how are your courses going?” Sam asked. Having watched her lose her husband, he appeared to be measuring her psychological condition.

  “They’re good. I’m taking Twentieth Century American Lit, beginning with Hemingway and Fitzgerald.”

  “I’ll bet they’re a relief after the flowery prose of earlier writers.” Sam had majored in English before he went to law school. When he and Katy married, he joined the FBI. After his family died in the automobile accident, he switched to police work. He said he preferred catching criminals to yapping about them in court. I surmised that, somehow, he found police work less stressful than work for the FBI.

  “In British Lit, we’re reading Shakespeare’s plays,” Meredith said.

  The three of us loved Shakespeare’s work. Apparently satisfied that Meredith was recovering, Sam leaned companionably toward me. “What are you taking, Agatha?”

  Holly and Sarah jerked their heads up. Sheldon looked puzzled. To them, I was “Aggie,” which sounded like a person closer to their age.

  “Aspects of Aging.”

  The corner of Sam’s mouth turned up as though he found my choice amusing.

  “My first class met yesterday, but I missed it. Some sort of stomach bug.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, sure. I’m fine.” Actually, my stomach felt unsettled, but I was glad to see Sam and ignored my discomfort. Since Meredith had enticed him to the club, I considered getting him another guest pass to take advantage of his investigative knowledge. Katy used to brag about cases he’d solved in Chicago. He could determine whether I’d witnessed an accident or an attempted murder.

  I concluded it was better to keep things casual. “How’s your work going?” I asked him.

  “Everything’s pretty quiet right now, which is good since several guys are on vacation.”

  I felt my face relax. “I’m glad to hear it.” With Sam’s division understaffed, the department would dispatch officers from another team if word about the pool incident leaked out. Nestled in my brain was the notion that if I managed to successfully solve a crime, Sam would be impressed.

  After lunch, Sam returned to headquarters. Meredith left to disperse medical records from Conrad’s empty office. Sarah, who taught land and water aerobics, needed to tape music for her classes.

  Sheldon, having wound down from discussing the content of our food, went to his office to lay out feature articles for Food, Fitness, and Euphoria, the magazine he edited. I didn’t ask if I could subscribe. Holly and I were the only two left.

  As the others filed out, Pete Reeves strolled in for a late lunch and dazzled us with a smile before turning sea blue eyes toward the oversized menu behind the counter. I tried not to gawk. Holly lingered at our table, apparently wanting to talk. I wasn’t sure I could stand up anyway. My legs had turned to stone. I hope they’d revive in time to carry me to my afternoon class.

  “My stomach’s a little queasy.” My revelation didn’t seem to faze Holly.

  “Yesterday at the pool, I felt like you understood. About the baby, I mean.” She planted her elbows on the table. “Can we talk about it?”

  Sometimes, one had to listen. I ignored my stomach.

  “The baby’s father denied paternity. With him totally disinterested in being a father, DNA testing seemed useless.” She clouded up. “I chose to give up the baby without ever knowing where the infant went or who would raise the child. I made a terrible mistake.” Her tears spilled over. “He gave me...I took lots of Valium before I got in the pool.”

  Despite increasing nausea, I managed to pat her hand. I checked the foyer to estimate how fast I could jet to the locker room on fossilized legs. The housekeeper was pushing a double-decker tray of toiletries and cleaning supplies from the men’s locker room to ours. I didn’t want to charge into the bathroom, sick, with her there.

  I forced my attention on Holly and tried to comfort her. “Try not to blame yourself. You did what you thought was best at the time.” I stretched my back against the chair to give my stomach room to expand.

  My heart ached for Holly, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to delve into events the day of the accident. “What happened before you came to the pool?”

  “I tried Sarah’s aerobics class. By the time class ended, I was pretty despondent, having just signed final adoption papers. With Valium slowing me down, aerobics was just too hard. Sarah was sympathetic, but I didn’t want to give up exercise completely, so I went to the pool.” Her eyes were moist.

  “Water aerobics was over,” she said. “Nobody was swimming laps. The pool was deserted, and I got in. You know the rest.”

  Holly looked emotionally whipped, but I didn’t think she’d attempted suicide.

  “I’m ready to go home,” she said. “My car’s parked in the garage. Are you leaving? Walk over with me.”

  Sheldon was right about the hazards of greasy food. Either that or Tofu Temptations’ food was contaminated. I felt terrible.

  Having stashed my curling iron in a locker—a better curler than the club provided—I wanted to retrieve it before somebody else did. “You go ahead. I need to stop by the locker room. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I barely reached the bathroom. The janitor had abandoned her cart and left. After losing my breakfast and lunch, I debated whether I was too shaky to drive home. I should have heeded Sheldon’s advice and gone for the (gag) tofu eggless sandwich.

  At 2:00 p.m., Fit and Firm was deserted. Contrasted with the feverish bustle of the morning, the facility was ominously still. The cleaning lady had supplied new spray bottles for primping stations and had tossed empties to the bottom of her cart. I wanted to leave before she returned.

  I retrieved my curling iron and was splashing my face with cold water when I heard screams.

  Forgetting my stiffness, I charged out of the locker room past the entrance desk and followed the cries outside. Members and staff had poured onto the sidewalk and were racing to the farthest exit of the parking garage. When I caught up to them and pushed my way through the crowd, I saw a girl lying across the concrete exit, closer to the street than the garage. A car must have hit her.

  Her head swiveled away from me. Blood seeped from it. Her legs were bent unnaturally. I saw black smudges on her thigh. Her left shin appeared to be broken. The contents of her gym bag, including a pair of red socks, were scattered from the force of impact. I was afraid she was dead.

  Her blue warm-up looked sickeningly familiar. I strained forward. My hands flew to my face when I recognized the sad little face
of Holly Holmgreen.

  Eight

  People murmured to each other, trying to make sense of what they saw.

  “I heard a scream, tires screeching and a thud.”

  “Somebody called nine-one-one.”

  I whirled away with my hand covering my mouth and acid rising from my stomach and leaned against a concrete pillar. If only I’d walked out with Holly. Whenever I walked past garage entrances, I scanned both directions, leery of cars zooming in and out. Drivers raced in, eager to begin workouts, or they’d finished exercising and were dashing out to start their day. Holly, in her depressed state, must have been oblivious to the danger. I might have seen the car coming and saved her from being hit.

  Because I worried about a lousy curling iron and begrudged ten minutes of my valuable time, this girl could be horribly injured. Or dead. Even though I felt sick, I should have walked her to her car or asked her to wait until I felt better. How deeply had I buried everything Aunt Novena had taught me?

  I tried to remember where I’d parked my Wagoneer. With tears streaming down my face, I trudged into the parking garage, away from the voices. I knew I should stay. I longed to help Holly, but I panicked. I could still hear voices of people around her.

  “Who hit her?”

  “Did you see a car leave?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.”

  Just as I reached Albatross, I heard the wail of a police siren. I cringed inside my car. As soon as somebody called 911, SAPD would have dispatched a patrol officer to the scene to secure the area. Nobody would be leaving until he interviewed potential witnesses. I backed Albatross out of its parking space and rolled quietly toward the garage’s second exit. I might have been the last person to see Holly except for her assailant and the girl at the entrance desk. The police would want to ask me a lot of questions. I didn’t have the courage to stay.

  As I cleared the exit, I saw a police car swing in and an EMS ambulance screech to a stop near Holly. EMS technicians flew from the van and flocked around her, checking vital signs. Squinting in my rearview mirror, I thought they’d found a pulse because they whisked her into the ambulance and squealed away. They’d make heroic attempts to save her as they raced to the nearest hospital’s emergency room. I prayed for their success.

  Driving at a crawl, I saw a second police car and van arrive. An officer, probably from Traffic Investigation Detail, sprang from the car. A team of officers burst from the van carrying cameras, measuring tapes and collection bags. The first patrol officer must have seen the black tire marks on Holly’s thigh and radioed for the evidence team.

  With my heart racing, I turned Albatross away from the garage and forced myself to drive slowly so I wouldn’t attract attention. Noises and smells from countless hours I’d spent years before at Chicago’s police station assaulted my memory.

  I remembered wild utterances from people whose brains were scrambled from drugs; the rank odor of unwashed bodies; and officers shouting and cajoling over the din, trying to interject calm into chaos.

  When Katy and Lee Vanderhoven died, the only thing that kept me from drowning in grief was hanging around Chicago PD and learning about traffic investigations. Since I’d been a friend of Detective Sam Vanderhoven’s family and Aunt Aggie to his daughter, Lee, the officers put up with me when I loitered at the station asking questions I couldn’t ask Sam. They told me the brakes in Sam’s old Mustang hadn’t held on Chicago’s icy roads. Katy and Lee slid into a tree and died instantly.

  I couldn’t face another tragedy.

  At home, I pulled into my driveway and sequestered myself in the garage. When I pictured Holly on the pavement, a shiver rose up my neck. Once the medical team put her in the ambulance, technicians would swarm the area where she’d lain. I envisioned them shooting photos, gathering fibers, glass, metal and other bits of evidence. Detectives from Traffic Investigation would measure the distance from where she landed to stationary landmarks like the curb to determine the force of impact and probable damage to the hit-and-run car. They’d look for skid marks: Did the driver swerve, brake or accelerate? Did Holly’s shoes mark the concrete at the place where she left the ground? The car that hit her was probably gone, but officers would search the garage for cars with signs of damage.

  I got out of my car and forced my legs to carry me into the kitchen. How would the police know whether a careless driver had screeched from the garage, hit Holly, panicked and driven off? Or whether someone had heard Holly say she was leaving, waited until she stepped across the exit and raced toward her at full speed before she could reach the other side? Was this another accident? The day after Holly was nearly electrocuted? I didn’t think so.

  Throwing my workout bag onto the dining table, I sank into a chair. If EMS couldn’t save Holly, the emergency room physician would pronounce her dead. The hospital would notify the Bexar County Medical Examiner. Because of Holly’s age and the circumstances, he’d order an autopsy to verify the cause and manner of her death. Everything was so clinical. So tragic. So final. In minutes, a girl full of life would be reduced to an object of study.

  Stumbling to the sofa, I collapsed. I’d lost so many people I loved: Lester. Aunt Novena and Uncle Fred. My baby girl. Then Katy and Lee. When Sam fled Chicago to escape the pain of their death, I lost him, too.

  I’d grieved silently with Holly over the loss of her child. And the loss of my child. No wonder protecting Holly meant so much; I was also protecting myself. Now, Holly might be gone. She wouldn’t even have the opportunity to grow old.

  My sculpture of bronze runners stood poised on the coffee table. They were strong, free and leaping forward, the way I wanted to live. Instead, I felt like Grace’s shattered tiles, immobilized by grief, waiting for passersby to step on me and crush me into smaller bits.

  Pushing myself off the couch, I wandered aimlessly and gazed at my paintings, the impressionistic watercolors I loved. Now they looked amorphous—littered with broken bonds like the formless path of my life. I felt such sadness for Holly, for Sam’s misery, for aborted relationships, for my own weaknesses. I peered through the window at cars cruising up and down Burr Road. Golfers played on Ft. Sam Houston’s course, even in January. How odd. Life continued unaware.

  Thankfully, SAPD wouldn’t send Sam to investigate this crime. Sam’s Murder Squad in Homicide didn’t handle traffic investigations. When someone discovered a body other than a traffic fatality, SAPD assigned Sam’s unit to investigate. Murder was so alien to Sam’s nature, I supposed he could deal with it objectively. But it would be agonizing for him to deal with this young girl’s death. Fortunately, a detective from Traffic Investigation would work the case. I peered through the window and gazed down the street, amazed at how normal everything looked.

  Although officers had questioned people at the scene, tomorrow they would interrogate the club’s staff and members, trying to determine what time Holly exercised and who her friends were. I dreaded the interview. It was bad enough to have helped save Holly from drowning only to see her lying still on the concrete. The police would require me to relive every detail.

  I raced to my bathroom and lost the last of my lunch. I’d eaten very little breakfast. After Sheldon’s dissertation, I’d only picked at my sandwich. After I brushed my teeth, I trudged to the front door, made myself scrape the mail off the floor and opened a letter.

  Dear Aggie,

  My adorable baby is a year old. I, however, am not adorable, having gained thirty pounds since he was born. The fatter I get, the more depressed I become. The more depressed I become, the more I eat. Can you help me?

  Fat in Pflugerville

  It was hard to think, but I started writing.

  Dearest Mom in Pflugerville,

  You’re not alone. One study showed 14-25% of women are at least eleven pounds heavier one year after delivery. Postpartum depression is common (10-15%) and this can act as a barrier to weight loss...

  I put the letter aside. Stats wouldn’t help. P
flugerville Mom knew she was depressed and overweight. I was in no condition to give advice.

  I staggered to bed for a nap. My last thought before falling asleep was that, having missed Dr. Carmody’s second class, I’d probably fail Aspects of Aging and chalk up an F.

  Nine

  When I woke an hour later, I lay on my leopard bedspread and gazed at streaks the afternoon sun cast on my ceiling. The fading light made me think of Chicago’s winters.

  After Aunt Novena and Uncle Fred died, I was on my own. Lester and I had planned to marry, but when I got pregnant, he skipped out. I was eighteen, penniless and alone. The one flimsy barrier between me and starvation was the bank job I’d recently secured. How could I care for a baby? My bank didn’t provide childcare at work. I managed to transfer to a branch bank in the suburbs where I worked until my daughter was born. Then I placed her for adoption.

  I rose and paced the room, my heart aching again from giving her up. When she was fifteen, I learned she’d died in a freak accident. Clutching the windowsill, I blinked wet eyes at the disappearing sun. I’d done my best for my baby girl, giving her life and sacrificing my heart to place her in a loving environment. But I’d never see her again. I banged my fist against the sill.

  Holly had suffered a senseless catastrophe. I couldn’t blame myself for her or my daughter’s tragedies, but what happened to them made me look hard at my life. I tried to help Dear Aggie’s readers stay healthy and young, but was that enough? I criticized egocentric club members, but hadn’t I been totally consumed with improving my own body? My motivation to help others grew largely out of my fear of growing old.