Necessary Detour

by Hornsby, Kim

  When an orderly walked through the double doors with an armload of what looked like sheets, Pete had an idea. The scrawny new guard didn’t know him. Pete looked around, wondering where to get some sheets. And scrubs.

  ****

  The older guard arrived with the Thai food and when he set the bag on her hospital tray, Nikki had a feeling that she knew him from somewhere. The look in his eyes and the way his chin stuck out reminded her of someone. She asked Merilee when he left the room. “Who was that guy, Mer? Does he look familiar to you?”

  “He was on tour this year. Matt or something. From the security team.” Merilee didn’t look up from her desk.

  “I mean before the tour.”

  “Dunno.”

  “I think I recognize him from somewhere else.”

  With Quinn’s help, Nikki opened her take-out box of curry chicken and dug in. Quinn had insisted on staying for the excitement of sneaking out of the hospital, despite what Merilee said.

  Nikki felt badly for Merilee. She was unusually jumpy and annoyed, probably from the house sale. She’d turned down food and was riddled with nerves about escaping the hospital. “It’s okay, Mer. Even if someone sees us leave, they’ll never follow us all the way to the house. Have Dwayne drive fast and in circles. He’s good at that.”

  Merilee forced a smile and checked her watch.

  Quinn put down her fork and settled back in the big chair. “Wake me when you leave.”

  The new plan involved Quinn and Elvis driving in her car.

  “Close your eyes, sweetie.” Elvis had fallen asleep at the foot of the bed on Nikki’s legs. “Merilee, can you move Elvis for me. My feet are going to sleep.”

  Merilee approached the bed but instead of moving the dog, she stood staring at Nikki. “How was your chicken, Nikki?” Merilee never called her boss by that name. Always Goldy.

  Nikki surveyed her assistant’s expression. “You just called me Nikki.” As she set the empty container on her swivel tray, Nikki felt fuzzy. She tried to remember if she’d been given a sleeping pill. The chopsticks clattered to the floor. “I feel funny, Mer. Can you ask the nurse if she gave me something?”

  Merilee stared at her. “Sure.” She stayed rooted, watching Nikki.

  “I don’t feel right.”

  “How unfortunate.”

  The last thing Nikki remembered was a strange smile on Merilee’s face.

  ****

  Dressed in green scrubs, Pete would try to get in Nikki’s room, even if it was late and she was probably asleep by now. He’d bring in fresh towels. As long as Dwayne didn’t recognize Pete’s face from Louisa Lake, he just might make it through the door. He’d found one of those beanies from surgery and hoped it hid his look. He’d been staring at the VIP wing for hours, rehearsing what he would say to make Nikki believe he was sorry for what had happened.

  When Pete opened the doors, the old guard was nowhere in sight, there was no one at the nurse’s station, and Dwayne had disappeared into Nikki’s room, pushing a wheelchair. This might be much easier than he thought if Dwayne wasn’t at his post and Nikki was coming out in a wheelchair. She must be going somewhere tonight.

  Pete’s intention had been to walk straight to the room but, on closer inspection he noticed that the only nurse at the desk was unconscious. He changed his plan. Shaking her arm didn’t wake her. He felt a strong pulse.

  Hearing Nikki’s door open, Pete careened over the counter and hid. Angry whispers came from beyond the doorway to Nikki’s room. Then the chair wheeled out. The occupant was dressed in a long black coat with a hood over her head. Sunglasses covered her face and her chin bobbed on her chest. She was either asleep or pretending.

  Dwayne maneuvered the chair through the doorway with the old guard. A middle-aged brunette stood behind Dwayne, saying something Pete couldn’t make out. The door shut behind them, leaving the woman inside Nikki’s hospital room and the gigolo guard with Dwayne outside the door.

  Was Nikki in the chair or was it a double? Pete wasn’t sure until they got closer and he saw Nikki’s beautiful, long fingered hands. He’d know them anywhere. A foot fell off the footrest, and the old guard scooted around to reposition it. Nikki was not conscious.

  Pete hadn’t worn a gun and regretted that decision as Dwayne pushed the wheelchair through the double doors. The elevator would take a long time to respond. He had time to check inside the room.

  The first thing he saw was Elvis asleep on an empty hospital bed. Quinn was unconscious in a chair beside the bed. He stepped forward, knowing someone else was in the room. Sensing movement to his left, he quickly spun around but something jabbed him in the neck.

  “Hey!” He pulled a hypodermic out of his neck and threw the body to the floor. “What the hell?” It was a small woman, middle-aged, mousy looking. She backed up to scoot under a desk. The needle was mostly empty. He had to work fast. Before he bolted out the door he took a chance she might be on Goldy’s side. “I’m a U.S. Marshal. Call the police to the main floor of the hospital.”

  No one remained at the elevator. Fuck! He had to get to the lobby before they got Nikki in a car. There was no way she was awake or in on this plan.

  His extremities tingled as he flew down the stairs. Could he descend six flights before he passed out? Stumbling at the second floor, he grabbed his cell phone and called the last number he’d dialed. Officer Hitchens.

  “It’s Daniels. Dwayne Capleoni is abducting Goldy from the hospital. Get over here.” He didn’t wait for a reply.

  Just as he crashed through to the lobby, Pete fell to the floor. His legs had lost their muscular function. His fingers too. The phone dropped on the linoleum and slid across the floor. Pete had to fight this thing. He was a big guy. He had to keep running and find Nikki before she got in a car.

  They wouldn’t take her out the front door. Where’d they go?

  Grabbing the first person he saw, Pete tried to speak but his mouth wouldn’t work. He leaned against the older woman and together they stumbled against the wall. Still upright, blackness swept in front of his eyes. “Get security. Goldy is being abducted by Dwayne,” he tried to say, but his words were unrecognizable and his voice was barely audible with the damned vocal nodes blocking his volume. “Get security. Goldy.”

  “Help.” The woman’s feeble voice called as she shrugged Pete off to the floor.

  ****

  When Pete regained consciousness, he was lying on a gurney in a busy corridor of the hospital. His vision was blurred and his head felt like it had cracked wide open to expose brain matter. Even thinking hurt. How long had he been out?

  Nikki!

  “Goldy was abducted!” he whispered to the next person who walked by.

  The nurse turned around, startled. “It’s okay. Lie down. The police are here.”

  He tried to sit up, but his head felt stabbed with knives. “Goldy?”

  The nurse tried to reassure him. “I’ll get someone to talk to you.”

  “Did they find Goldy?”

  “I’m not sure.” The woman looked down the hall to the next set of doors.

  He sat up. The pain split his head. “I gotta go.”

  Just then, another young nurse came through the doors and ran toward them. “You’ll never believe what’s going on out there.” She nodded down the hall. “Someone kidnapped Goldy, and the police took off after them.”

  The first one glanced at Pete and back. “Shhhh. He was part of it,” she whispered.

  “I’m a US Marshal and I’m ordering you to get the police for me,” Pete said, in spite of excruciating pain.

  Hitchens walked through the doors and a look of concern crossed his face when he saw Pete. “There you are.”

  “Goldy okay?”

  “She is. It was a chase but they got her. She was drugged, like you. She’s on her way back in an ambulance.” Someone spoke from beyond the door. “ETA, two minutes. Vitals are normal.”

  “You can’t stay out of trouble, can you, Dan
iels?” Hitchens said.

  Pete tried to ease his body off the gurney. “Listen to me. I think someone else was in on it. A woman, in Goldy’s hospital room. She stuck me with a needle.”

  Hitchens’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “I don’t think she left with them. Caucasian, middle-aged with brown hair, glasses, dressed in black. She was in the room.”

  Hitchens radioed the information. “Any sign of her?”

  “Negative. Besides Goldy, only two males were in the van. Both Caucasian.”

  Pete launched himself off the gurney and stumbled to the elevator. “602,” Pete managed to whisper as the blackness overtook him again.

  ****

  Nikki woke with a colossal headache with Elvis asleep beside her legs. She looked around the room. Papers littered the floor and the computer keyboard hung off the desk by a cord. Where was Merilee? Last thing she remembered, they were waiting to make their escape to the house. A nurse now occupied the chair where Quinn had slept. Two police officers entered the room and crossed to Merilee’s desk, rifling through the papers.

  “Hey.” Nikki knew Merilee was very private about her stuff.

  The nurse jumped up and glanced at the monitors beside the bed. “You’ve had quite a night,” she smiled.

  “Big headache.” Nikki’s mouth was like the Atacama Desert. “What happened?” The escape to her new house must have been postponed. But why didn’t she remember?

  A policewoman standing at Merilee’s desk spoke into a radio. “Goldy is awake. Roger that.” She crossed the room to stand at the end of the bed. Elvis didn’t stir. “Good morning, ma’am,” she said. “Do you remember being drugged?”

  Nikki refrained from shaking her throbbing head. “No.”

  “You were given a non-prescribed sedative last night, loaded in a van, and taken from this hospital. We believe it was against your will.”

  “Merilee and I were going to the new house.” Nikki tried to remember.

  “Quinn was drugged as well. She’s fine and on her way to see you.”

  “Oh, my God.” Nikki leaned forward to feel the warmth of her dog’s body.

  “Drugged and still sleeping it off. If you feel up to it, we’d like to ask you some questions about Dwayne Capleoni and the woman you called Merilee.”

  ****

  Nikki’s assistant had double-crossed her in the worst way imaginable. Merilee was behind the Shakespeare conspiracy and orchestrated the abduction attempt with Dwayne Capleoni and a guy named Mike. And now she was on the loose. This shocking revelation left Nikki confused about why Merilee would betray her this way. And if it was true. For what reason? She hadn’t been safe on tour or any time she’d been with Merilee or Dwayne. And how safe had Quinn been around Dwayne?

  According to Gateman, the night before, a police officer noticed something suspicious, came in the hospital room, saw everyone asleep and got stuck with a needle. Merilee probably intended the drug for herself, to hide her involvement while a ransom was decided. Instead, she’d been seen and had to escape.

  So far, the FBI team was still searching for Merilee. Her apartment in L.A. had been ransacked with no evidence of intention, but at Dwayne’s place they found enough to prove that both he and Merilee conspired to abduct their boss. And that Merilee was Shakespeare.

  Last night, Ted Gateman had conducted the interrogation of the two men, Dwayne and the older one, Mike, who refused to talk, so far. Luckily Mike’s cell phone had enough information on it for the FBI to piece together the plan.

  An apartment had been rented an hour away. There, Goldy would wait out the time it took for ten million to clear a bank in the Cayman Islands. Merilee was to remain behind on the Goldy side, innocently aiding the negotiation. Nothing suggested that any form of torture would be connected to the abduction and when Mike was finally convinced to talk, he assured them that the Shakespeare letters were only to break down Nikki’s confidence. “We never woulda done anything said in those letters. Never. She just wanted to make Goldy miserable.”

  Gateman looked sympathetic to Nikki’s shock.

  “This is like a bad dream.” Nikki felt nauseous. “I trusted Merilee with my life for over a year. The letters were so venomous, so sick.” It was incomprehensible how Merilee could write those things. She’d lived alongside Nikki’s fear on tour. “And for what? Money? No one writes that they’re going to inject cleaning fluid into the veins of their victim and stand by to watch them squirm, if they don’t have a more serious motive than money.” Gateman agreed and assured her they were working on it.

  Dwayne claimed he was innocent, despite the evidence against him. Gateman was confident that they’d catch Merilee. And when they did, the motive would surface.

  For health and safety reasons, Nikki was kept at the hospital for a few more days. Quinn recovered quickly and was more horrified that her clean record of drug use was now blemished. Thank God Merilee had chosen a sedative that hadn’t hurt the baby. Nikki still wanted to believe that had been intentional.

  On the morning of the third day, Nikki got the call she’d been expecting from Gateman.

  “We have the suspect in custody.”

  “Where was she?” It was hard for Nikki to think of Mer as a criminal. That fact had not sunk in.

  “SeaTac Airport. Wearing a disguise,” Gateman said. “On her way to Anchorage, Alaska. Her biggest mistake was trying to leave town so soon.”

  “Is she remorseful?” Nikki’s voice cracked.

  “Only that she got caught.”

  Chapter 26

  Nikki requested a private conversation with Merilee before the suspect was taken back to Los Angeles. While waiting for the FBI’s prisoner to arrive, she reread the letters from Shakespeare and reassured herself that Merilee was some kind of a monster to torment her like this. And with two accomplices. “Why can’t I place this Mike guy? I know I’ve seen him before.

  “Mom, they’re crazy. Stop trying to have it make sense.” Quinn had barely left her mother’s side in days.

  Dressed and ready to be discharged, she sat in her hospital room waiting for Gateman to arrive with Merilee. When the door finally opened and two guards escorted the handcuffed woman into the hospital room, Nikki motioned for her to sit down across from her.

  The two women stared hard at each other, the FBI agents on either side of the prisoner. Quinn and Gateman waited in the hall, undoubtedly wringing their hands.

  “Merilee…” Nikki’s voice was heavy with sorrow.

  The woman looked down, into her wrinkly T-shirt.

  “I don’t know why,” Nikki whispered.

  Empty silence. A gull flew by the window. A siren increased in volume and stopped somewhere below the window. Finally the prisoner spoke. “You know why.” The sound coming from the woman fifteen feet away was devoid of any remorse. This voice was new for Merilee and Nikki reminded herself there was no such person as Merilee.

  “Do I?” Nikki leaned forward to try to make eye contact. “We were more than boss and assistant, Mer. We were friends.” She paused, but the woman across from her didn’t move. “Was it money? Did you need money? I would’ve helped.”

  Merilee’s head snapped up, and the sparks in her eyes made Nikki lean back.

  The FBI agents glanced down at their prisoner.

  “I don’t care about the money,” she spat.

  “What then? What do you care about?”

  The woman hung her head, her lips tight, her face pained.

  “Tell me what I ever did to you, Mer.” Nikki would wait as long as she needed.

  Finally Merilee took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “You killed my daughter.” Her voice was a low growl.

  Nikki’s breath caught in her throat. “Who was your daughter?”

  “You ignored her.”

  Then she knew. Yellow. The runaway who’d killed herself.

  “She idolized you.” The woman’s squinty stare was frightening.

  “You were her mother?”
What was Yellow’s real name? Nikki searched for the name. “Kenzie.” Nikki covered her mouth with her hand, holding in a sob.

  Merilee’s head jerked up at the sound of the name.

  “Oh, my God. You are that poor girl’s...” Years ago, Nikki had written the parents a letter to tell them how sorry she was for their loss. “I felt terrible about what happened.”

  “You didn’t help her. You made a fool out of her. She loved you.” A noise escaped the woman’s mouth, like a cough mixed with a sob.

  “She didn’t come to me for help.”

  “She was screaming for help in everything she did.” The woman’s yell brought the agents closer, at the ready.

  Nikki motioned for them to wait. “Merilee, you have spent a year on the road with me. You know what it’s like. Fans come in all degrees. I honestly did not know how serious it was with Kenzie. I had no idea she would try to kill herself.”

  “She loved you. My daughter left home to be a rock star, to follow you. And you ignored her.” Her eyes flashed with hatred. “And you treated her like dirt.”

  “I didn’t know her to treat her like anything.” What more could Nikki say? She’d been afraid of the girl. Searching the mother’s anguished face, Nikki saw no similarities to the hard features of the fan who’d chosen to die at the Goldy concert. “Is your name Sharon?”

  Merilee’s weeping turned to sobs. “You wrote that terrible song about her. Like she was some evil person.”

  “I didn’t realize she was so young, so needy. Your daughter’s state of mind scared me. I asked to help her one night, but she ran away. When she put the pipe bomb under the bus, I worried she’d hurt me or any one of us. She threatened to kill Quinn.” Nikki waited, took a breath and sat forward. “Your daughter was dangerous.” She couldn’t reason with this woman. She was a grieving mother. A grieving, crazy mother. “What you’ve done is wrong. Making my life miserable over these Shakespeare letters was not fair. And carrying on for so long…” She searched the woman’s face for remorse.

  She whispered. “Yeah, well, I forced you to retire, didn’t I? And now you can never do this to another girl.” Merilee looked smug. “Forcing you out was my goal. The money was just a bonus.”