Interior Motives

by Ginny Aiken

  And like all good goldens, Rookie nearly took her hand along with the small treat. I laughed. “Oh yeah. He’s Midas’s brother, all right. Has the appetite to go with the family good looks.”

  Lila scooped him into her arms, buried her face in his neck, opened her car door, and tucked him inside. Rookie didn’t appreciate that kind of treatment. He whimpered again.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you,” Lila said. “You were right when you said I needed a dog to keep me sane.”

  “And this”—I gestured toward Cissy’s forlorn house— “was sane?”

  She shrugged. “I take my job—”

  “Seriously. I know. You’ve told me that more times than I want to bother to count.”

  “I do things right, or I don’t do them at all.”

  “I can relate. I don’t do things halfway either.”

  “And that’s why you butt heads each time you meet,” Tyler Colby said.

  We both turned, and for the first time, I noticed the vintage red T-bird parked just beyond our cars. “What are you doing out here?”

  As far as I know, Tyler’s the only thing Lila and I have in common: our martial arts instructor.

  “I’m working with a bunch of guys from my church on a house down here. It’s the third one we’ve renovated for residents who can’t afford the work themselves.”

  Lila tipped her head. “Another of your missionary endeavors, right?”

  “I do what I can to follow my Boss.” Then he waved his upturned hand back and forth a couple of times. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you two were having a normal, friendly conversation. But I know better, don’t I?”

  I shrugged. “I can be civil.”

  “I’m always polite,” Lila said.

  “But did you notice you two agreed to at least one thing you have in common—that you don’t do things halfway? Plus, you’re both as pigheaded as they come. Never met anyone more so.” He shook his shaved head. “And you say you have nothing in common.”

  “What movie do you think you’re watching?”

  “That’s so ridiculous, Tyler.”

  “Give it up, sisters. You could be twins, you’re so alike.” I glared.

  Lila pursed her lips and narrowed her gaze.

  Before either one of us could tell him what we thought of his last statement, he added, “One of these days you’re going to be the best of friends. I’d suggest you get used to each other. I doubt it’s going to take the Lord much longer to bring that miracle about.”

  Then he drove off.

  The coward.

  He couldn’t be right . . .

  Could he?

  12

  The next few days were among the most awkward I ever lived through. I focused on work, but that meant I had to spend hours at Tedd’s office. While there, I did a great dodge-’em-car impersonation. Every time I bumped into Tedd, I bounced away as far as I could go.

  I didn’t know what to think of my shrink’s date with Dr. Dope, and I suspected the Mexican doc had told her about my bungled attempt to break into his room.

  A heart-to-heart with Tedd? Nuh-uh. No way.

  But that wasn’t my only cause for awkwardness. I still had to work with Dutch. I don’t know what troubled me most, the “I get it” moment when I realized it’s Dutch who really attracts me, or the sting of his recent spew of nasty comments. Maybe it was a combo of both.

  How un-me to let that kind of deal get to me.

  Yeah right. After all that’s happened to me, I’m a feelings-phobe. And the rumble of emotional crud inside me had me freaking out from one minute to the next, depending on what I saw, heard, or was told.

  Not that Tedd or Dutch wanted to have much to do with me.

  Even that gave me grief.

  Only not so much grief as what headed my way on Thursday afternoon. I’d been at Tedd’s office since nine in the morning, marking the hems of the custom-made window treatments. At two fifteen, my cell phone rang.

  “Oh, Haley girl,” Bella sobbed. “It’s so bad . . .”

  One thing about Bella: she never cries over nothing. My heart kicked its beat up a notch, and my palms grew sweaty. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Is it Dad? What do you need me to do?”

  She snuffled. “Just hurry. Get to the ER at the Wilmont General Clinic—fast.”

  Father God, give me strength! “Is that where you are? What happened? How’d you get hurt?”

  “No, no, no. I’m here, but I’m fine—” Another convulsive sob cut off her words.

  Panic shot through me. “What happened to Dad? When did it happen? Where was he?”

  “Oh,” she wailed. “I’m not doing so good on this. Hale’s fine, honey. I’m fine. It’s Cissy who isn’t.”

  “Cissy? What’s wrong with her?”

  “She didn’t look so hot when she first came to work, and then a little while ago, she got all sweaty, couldn’t breathe worth a dime, and said she felt a cramp all the way down her arm. I figured I’d better call the ambulance, what with her stump and all.”

  “She had a heart attack.” It wasn’t a question.

  “She sure did. And the doctors are still working on her, so get your fanny over here quick.”

  I’d already started toward the back door. “Give me five minutes, okay? And don’t go freaking out on me. I was doing enough of that for the two of us before you called, so let’s not waste twice the energy. Just pray.”

  “Just hurry.”

  I snapped my clamshell phone shut, then rapped on Tedd’s private office door. When she answered, I turned the knob and stuck my head inside. “I’ve got an emergency. Don’t know if I’ll be back today. See ya!”

  Even though it was rude, I took off and left Tedd’s questions unanswered. There’d be time for answers once I knew Cissy’s condition. I hoped and prayed she would survive. I agreed with Bella on this one; Cissy hadn’t killed Darlene. I just didn’t know who had.

  But I was going to find out. For sure.

  In my hurry to reach the ER, I sped through a couple of questionable amber lights. I call those hot tangerine. When I pulled into the clinic’s parking lot without a cop car’s strobe light in my rearview mirror, I allowed myself a sigh of relief.

  Bella rushed me, her Brillo Pad hair all aquiver, when I ran inside. “Took you long enough to get here.”

  “Yeah. All of six minutes, forty-seven seconds. Anything yet?”

  “Not a peep, and that scares me. They’re still working on her. She must be real bad.”

  “Not necessarily.” I know nothing about emergency cardiac care, but I couldn’t let Bella stress out any more. “They may be running tests on her, and you know that can take beaucoup time.”

  “Don’t know about none of those tests, but you’re right on the buckets of time.”

  I had to turn her mind toward something other than what might or might not be happening behind closed doors. “Did anything happen today after Cissy came in to work?”

  “Well, she looked super tired, and then she got a call from one of the Brothers Chromosov. She didn’t say much, but her face went tomato red. After she hung up, her hands shook like California on a real bad day.”

  I’d give my Honda to know what Brother Brat had said. “That’s the only thing that happened?”

  She snorted. “Not hardly. Your detective pal stopped by about forty-five minutes later. I couldn’t think of how to hang around and listen in, so it beats me what went on.”

  “That stress would’ve done me in. And I don’t have Cissy’s heart condition.”

  I heard the click-click of high heels. The stride was way too familiar. “Hi, Lila.”

  “I figured you’d be here,” she answered, a wry twist to her mouth. “One of my guys called when he ID’d the patient in the ambulance. Any word on her condition?”

  I waved toward Bella. “She knows more than I do.”

  Lila’s smile made me blush. “So you finally admit to someone’s superior knowledge. I’m
impressed.”

  “Hey! That’s so not fair. I’ve never said I know more than you or anyone else. But when I’m sure I know something someone else has missed, what do you want from me? To lie about it? To say I don’t know when I do?”

  She chuckled. “I knew you’d find your way around that.” She faced Bella. “Because she’s at least a witness in Darlene Weikert’s future murder trial, I’m concerned about Mrs. Grover’s trip to the ER. Did anything unusual happen after I spoke with her?”

  Bella shook her head, excitement in her eyes. She loves anything that puts her close to the action. “Nothing after you came by, but before’s another kettle of clams.”

  My elderly neighbor has a fine-honed sense of drama. Lila took the bait. “What happened earlier in the day?”

  Bella preened. “I got a call, and I recognized the man’s voice. It was that sleazy foreign-car-pusher son of Darlene’s. He wanted to talk to Cissy.”

  Lila’s notepad and pen put in an appearance. “Did she say anything about the conversation?”

  “Nope. Nil. And I tried to ask, all smooth and sneaky-like, you know. But she didn’t want to talk about it.” She shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to talk about that kind of creepy-crawler crud either, so I can’t blame her.”

  “Gee, Bella.” I shook my head. “You really dig Tommy Weikert, don’t you?”

  “I’d like to dig him, all right. Right into solitary coffin-ment.” She glanced at Lila. “Do you have any of those dirt pits for his kind here in Wilmont?”

  I swallowed a laugh. Lila looked like I feel around Bella: flustered, flummoxed, flabbergasted. Does Bella have a talent, or what?

  “Uh . . . no,” the elegant cop said. “We don’t advocate extreme and cruel measures. We keep solitary confinement prisoners in cell blocks with solid walls and doors, but not in Wilmont. Ours is not that kind of facility.”

  Bella hmphed. “Too bad. Bet that’s who whacked the mother.”

  “Bella, I warned you about that kind of talk.”

  She tipped up her nose. “They talk like that all the time on that Real, Regular Cop Arrests show. If it’s good enough for them, then it’s good enough for me.”

  Lila’s horror might have been funny if the situation weren’t so serious and grim.

  In the interest of Bella’s preservation, I said, “She’s harmless. She just has a thing about bad cop shows, Court TV, and late-night cable news. She needs viewing rehab.”

  Before Lila could speak, a man in green scrubs pushed through the swinging steel doors to the inner sanctum. “Anyone here for Cecelia Sparks Grover?”

  For once Bella, Lila, and I agreed.

  “Yes!” we all cried out.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  Lila held out a card case. “I’m with the Wilmont PD. How soon can I speak with her?”

  “I’m her boss and friend.” Bella’s not the kind to be left out in the cold. “I called the ambulance too.”

  The confused doctor looked from one of us to the next. He threw up his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. “The patient’s in CICU. She’s awake, lucid, and asking for Haley and Bella. If you ladies know who they are—”

  “Me!” Bella squealed. “Me, me, me! I’m Bella.”

  The doctor took a long step back.

  A tad less wired, I stepped up. “I’m Haley Farrell, sir. Is it possible to see her?”

  The leery doctor nodded. “Because she’s in intensive care, she’s allowed one visitor at a time, and for only ten minutes. I have to ask you ladies for patience. She can see one of you now and another in about an hour.”

  Lila cleared her throat. “I’m on official business—”

  “I didn’t think you’d come to play paintball with the patient,” the doctor said. “Mrs. Grover is not ready to be questioned.”

  Lila wasn’t happy. I stopped myself from “nana, nana, nana-ing,” but only just.

  She didn’t give up. “How soon can I have about twenty minutes with your patient?”

  “Not for a couple of days, and then only if she remains stable, improves even.”

  I watched Lila from the corner of my eye. She didn’t like that answer any better. For a moment she looked ready to argue some more, but then she seemed to reconsider.

  She’s a smart cookie, all right. That doctor wasn’t budging.

  Lila was, backpedaling even. “Here’s my card. Please call as soon as you’re ready to let me do my job.”

  The guy in green didn’t give the card more than a glance. “Inside these walls, Detective Tsu, you only do your job after I’ve done mine.”

  He spun and marched back to the swinging doors. Before he shoved his way through, he stopped. “Haley can see Mrs. Grover first, then next hour Bella gets a chance. The detective can wait for my call.”

  I chuckled. “Don’t hold your breath, Lila. He’s not smitten with you. Let’s see if you take it as well as you dish it out.”

  Lila shrugged. “I’ll see Mrs. Grover, just not today.”

  “Can I buy a seat for the battle royal?”

  “There won’t be a battle, Haley. I’m a professional.”

  “And if you go into your ‘I’m so serious about my job I do so well’ bit, I’ll scream.”

  Now she smiled. “Please do. I’d love to see security drag you away.”

  I licked my index finger and chalked one up for me. “You won’t see that, but you will see me tread where cop woman has yet to go. One small step for Haley, one giant step for . . . for . . . Oh, I don’t know. You get my drift.”

  She shook her head on her way out of the waiting lounge. Hey, I felt pretty good. This was the first time I’d gotten the better end of the stick around her.

  “You’re staying here?” I asked Bella.

  “What d’you think, girlfriend? I’m going nowhere until I see Cissy. So get a move on already. The sooner you see her, the sooner I get to go in.”

  Even though I wanted to see Cissy, when I walked through the swinging doors, bad memories did a number on me. Not only had I spent two hideous days in ICU after I was raped, beaten, and left for dead, but I also put in hours there during my mother’s last days.

  I wanted out as much as I wanted in.

  With every step my gut twisted tighter. The mediciney stink did weird things to my brain, and that wacky brain of mine in turn detonated my “Go. Split. Run, outta here, fly!” alarm. But I wanted—no, needed—to see Cissy. She’d asked for me. I had to know what she wanted.

  At the nurses’ station, I got directions to Cissy’s room. Although the curtains around the bed had been swapped from green to blue-gray, the room looked just like the ones my mother and I had stayed in. It had the same glass walls so staff could keep the patient in sight at all times, and once I stepped inside, the same eye-popping spread of electronic monitors, gauges, tubes, valves, and who knows what else made my stomach flip. Queasy pangs hit when I rounded the column of privacy curtain at the foot of Cissy’s bed.

  Cissy was small, and the bed with its steel bars, the IV stand at her left, the oxygen tube at her nose, and the monitors behind her dwarfed her slight form beneath the white sheets.

  “Hey,” I said in a loud whisper. “I hear you asked for trouble. They sent me.”

  A weak smile did little to brighten her face. “You’re not half bad.”

  “How are you?”

  The smile gave a wobble before it drooped. “I’d like to get my hands on the elephant who thought my chest made a comfy seat.”

  “Do you still have a lot of pain?”

  “Not really. They pumped me full of all kinds of meds, and I’m more comfortable now. But that’s not why I asked for you.”

  As she spoke she tensed up. The wiggles on one of the monitors staggered out of their regular pattern.

  “Stop that!” I tried to sound stern. “Don’t stress out. It won’t help you get well. Besides, I’m on the job now. I’ll do all the stressing for both of us.”

  Her smile returned, and
even though I almost needed a microscope to see her shoulders ease a tiny bit, I did see it happen.

  “You’re about as bossy as Bella,” she said. “But give you forty-some more years, and you’ll be just like her.”

  “I don’t think I like that prognosis. I’ll have to give it some thought—later. Now why don’t you tell me why you wanted to see me?”

  She sighed. “You know how things look for me in Darlene’s death. But I also think you realize that I couldn’t have done such a thing. I’m afraid Detective Tsu doesn’t agree. She’s ready to arrest me. But, Haley”—she grabbed my wrist—“I didn’t do it. And I’m so scared I’ll die in jail.”

  Her cold fingers shook in spite of her tight grip. I had to reassure her.

  “Now listen to me. I’m going out on a limb here, but I promise you won’t die in a jail. You won’t even spend a minute in a cell—not if I can help it. And I’m sure I can.”

  The fear in her eyes reached out and struck me.

  I barreled on. “But there’s one thing you have to do. And that’s ditch the fear. It’s more toxic than the arsenic that got Darlene.”

  She refused to look me in the eye. “It’s easy to say but much harder to do.”

  “It is when you go it alone.”

  “I’m not alone anymore,” she said. “I now have you and Bella.”

  “But we’re not the ones who can help you, not with this. There’s only one person who can do that, and that’s God through his Son. God stretches his hand out to you, Cissy. All you have to do is take it and believe.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “It’s the easiest thing you’ll do in life. What can be better than to lean on the King of Kings, the Maker of everything? They don’t say he has the whole world in his hand for nothing.”

  Her fear made me want to cry.

  “I don’t think I could stand it if I put my trust in God and then he just wasn’t there after all.”

  “Won’t happen. Give him a chance. He’ll draw you closer all the time. Come on. Just say, ‘Yes, Lord. I’ve been a mess on my own, but I’m yours now.’”

  “That sounds simpler than what I’ve heard.”