“Stop calling me that. I’m twenty-three years old.”
“Sorry. I’ve got a bit of a hangover, if you must know, and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t yell.”
“The cops are going to find out that Dorothy had all the money.”
“That they are, little—sorry—Ellie. And they’re going to look at us very closely. And they aren’t stupid.”
No, Ellen thought. The idea of that lieutenant, Parkhurst, looking at them closely made her hair stand on end. Even Chief Wren with her soft voice. She could have walked right out of an ad for some classy couture place: dark hair, high cheekbones, blue eyes. One look at those eyes and you knew the soft voice was a sham. “What will happen about the money?”
“Unless Dorothy did something tricky, and I don’t see how she could have, we’ll all get our share.”
“And Daddy’s paintings?”
“Now, there I don’t know. We’ll have to talk to old what’s his name. The attorney. Hawkins. Maybe we divide them, maybe they all have to be sold and then we divide the proceeds.”
“Who needs money that bad?”
“All of us, every damn one. And I think you should drop this whole thing.”
“Don’t you want to know who killed her?”
He thought. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“Who did it. And whether he—or she—will get caught.”
Caught. Oh, my God. A trial. Maybe a conviction. Did Kansas have the death penalty? She didn’t even know. She didn’t think so. She hadn’t thought beyond who, never considered that was only the beginning.
“If it has to be one of us,” Carl said, “I vote for Taylor.”
Ellen gave that some thought and decided she’d vote that way too. “Why?”
“Because he’s an ass. He married her for the money. Didn’t find out until too late it’s all tied up. At least I hope it is. Wouldn’t that be a pisser? Somebody killed her for the money, and it turned out Taylor got everything.” He laughed, a short, bitter sound. “No, little Ellie, I believe it might be better all around if we never know.”
“You act like you’re glad she’s dead.”
Carl shook his head. “No, I’m not. Then again, I am. We all are.” He drained his mug and got up to refill it. “However, I doubt it’s going to be all we expect. It was easy to blame Dorothy for everything. There she was, standing in the way of important goals, self-fulfillment, ultimate happiness, all that crap.” He laughed again, the same short, bitter sound. “Somewhere along the way we’re going to figure out she wasn’t the cause of everything wrong in our lives.”
Ellen shifted in her chair. He was right. Even she blamed Dorothy for everything. Absolutely, she did. Not having enough money, not getting help when she started the gourd business. Even what happened with Adam. And probably lots of other things she didn’t want to think about right now.
“We’re all going to have to take responsibility for our own lives. That’s going to be a shock. And we’re going to turn out just as miserable. That’s going to be a severe shock.” Tilting the chair back on two legs, he gazed at the ceiling. “Maybe I’ll cash it all in and buy a farm.”
Ellen looked at him in surprise. “Farm?”
“Lifelong dream,” he said wryly. “Don’t look so startled. That’s what you’re doing.”
“No. Not like that. Banks are built on the bones of farmers who couldn’t make it.”
“Maybe it’s in the genes. Daddy’s family were farmers. None of us wanted to go into medicine, you know. Except maybe Willis. He had this desire to please Mother. Never could, of course, but he didn’t know that. She never cared what we did, as long as we did what we were told. Dorothy wanted to be a pianist.”
Dorothy? Wanted to play the piano? Ellen couldn’t grasp the idea that Dorothy ever wanted to do anything except just what she did.
“That’s why we’ve all been jealous of you, little Ellie.”
She felt her mouth hanging open and closed it with a snap. “Nobody’s ever paid any attention to me. Half the time, I think you forget I exist.”
“You were the only one, the only one, who dug in her little heels and refused to fall in line.”
More credit than she was due. She’d wanted somebody to look at her, tell her she was just as smart, she would go to medical school. By then Daddy was dead and Mother was dead. And maybe Dorothy was tired of making siblings do what they were told.
“What about the gun? Should I tell the cops?”
Carl rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Now, there’s a hard one. You can be sure Vicky will tell. She’ll have a few drinks and blab whatever’s in her tiny mind.”
He looked at her with an expression she couldn’t read. “And I do mean everything. It’s going to get real sticky. She’ll pass on the juicy bit about your argument, threatening Dorothy about Daddy’s painting.
“It was mine.”
“Just prepare yourself for a lot of nastiness. And stop this sitting around wondering who did it. That can be dangerous.”
The tears she’d been holding back ever since Dorothy’s death suddenly overflowed and spilled down her cheeks. Everything just felt so sad.
9
MAKING MORNING ROUNDS, Adam Sheffield steeled himself for what he might find in ICU. Sawed-open and stitched-up organic matter that used to be a little girl? He hesitated at the nurses’ station.
“Doctor?” A nurse looked at him as though expecting him to ask for something. Being a doctor was great: people standing by to scurry around at the snap of a finger. The downside was the tendency to play God. Especially in ER.
Death was the enemy, and it seldom happened in ER. A DOA was different. The enemy got there first. But if there was even a spark of life, the team went into battle with frenzied determination. Most often they won the skirmish, fanned the spark, and kept it burning long enough to get the patient into surgery. Surgery was where the patient died, or later in ICU.
Miracles were performed in ER. A death made it hard for the team to continue belief in miracles. The doctors, nurses, and technicians weren’t used to defeat, and they didn’t accept it philosophically. Depending on individual character, they got mad or snappish, or grew very quiet, or took themselves off somewhere to sulk. Nobody, least of all the team physician, ever gave less then a heroic performance. Life was what they were fighting for. They couldn’t pause over musings about a life that was no life.
That the Bryant girl had survived the night was a good sign. Still running a fever. Not so good.
He nodded at the uniformed officer by the cubicle; unless the cop knew by sight every member of the hospital personnel, his vigil was close to useless. Keep out unauthorized people, sure; but what if the guy with the six-shooter worked at the hospital? A physician, for instance.
Monitors blipped and flickered, respirator hissed and pumped. He looked at the little girl.
“She’s been moving her arms a little,” the nurse said proudly, as though a child of her own had done something brilliant. “And once, just five minutes ago, she moved her right leg.”
Another good sign. It meant the girl might be regaining consciousness. He didn’t like that spiked temp. He wrote orders for more blood work and a throat culture.
“Let me know immediately if there’s any change,” he told the nurse, and on his way out nodded again at the police officer. He wondered what little Jenifer could tell them. If she was ever able to talk.
The news of Dorothy Barrington’s murder had spread rapidly through the hospital, leading to unfunny jokes and wagers thrown around about who might have shot her.
Adam pushed through the door to the stairway and trotted down steps to the next floor. In the doctors’ lounge, he pulled the stethoscope from around his neck, stuck it in the pocket of his lab coat, and hung the coat in a locker. He was checking for car keys when Dr. Bates breezed in. Mid-forties, round face, ever-present smile.
“Well, well,” Bates boomed, “if it isn’t the miracle worker.”<
br />
Adam’s smile felt a little strained. “We aim to please.” Bates was a pain in the butt, and besides that he was an ass.
Bates opened a locker, shrugged off his suit coat, and reached for a hanger. “Taking it on the lam while the going’s good?”
“Even a poor schnook like me—translate dedicated physician—gets a day off now and then.”
“Sure.” Bates winked. “A talent like you wouldn’t sneak out just before the cops nabbed you.”
“You know something I don’t?”
Bates waved a pudgy hand. “Inside information, my boy, inside information. I happen to be in a position to know that our good Dr. Dorothy didn’t approve of your working here. And when she didn’t approve of what went on in this hospital, she got changes. Sounds like a motive to me.”
He slipped on a white coat. “But then you probably have to wait your turn. Ha, ha.”
Adam bared his teeth in a tight smile. “What is this, Bates? You suggesting I killed her? If you are, I might have to do something.” He loomed menacingly.
Bates banged the locker shut. “A brilliant doctor like you? Naw. You’d have found a better way.”
His smile made him look like a round happy-face drawing. Then the corners of his mouth turned down, somberness set oddly on his jovial face. “She might have had her flaws, but—” He shook his head. “It’s probably the sister. The youngest one. Ellen. Always been strange. Probably did it for the money.”
Bates bounced out while Adam was still wondering whether to slam him against the wall and squeeze his fat neck.
Better do something, Adam thought, and wished he knew just what the hell to do.
* * *
In the basement of the hospital, Susan watched Dr. Owen Fisher’s deft, long-fingered hands delicately slice up Dorothy Barrington’s body. Death due to a severed aorta. Nothing unexpected about that.
Upstairs, Jen was holding her own. She didn’t look any better, but each hour she lived made her odds better.
When he finished, he leaned against a stainless-steel cabinet and peeled off the latex gloves. “Everything else seems normal for a woman of her age. I’ll have preliminary results ready probably by this afternoon.”
Susan thanked him, headed for the elevator, and left the hospital through the emergency entrance. Church bells rang in the distance. As she headed for the department, she saw Adam Sheffield take off in a battered Toyota with a determined set to his pugnacious jaw.
Detective Osey Pickett was ambling toward the door when she walked into the police department.
“Where you off to?” she asked.
“Thought I might mosey over to Haskel’s Electric.”
“Why?”
“Well, I got this nephew. Jimmy?”
She nodded. Osey had four older brothers who owned and operated Pickett’s Garage—they all looked alike—and a slew of nieces and nephews.
“Jimmy’s in the Boy Scouts. Hank just called—”
Hank was one of the brothers, the eldest, she thought, but wasn’t certain. After more than a year in Hampstead, she still couldn’t tell them apart.
“—and he said the troop was at Broken Arrow Park on Saturday.”
“And?”
“Well, that’s the park right near the Barrington clinic. Where the receptionist told us Dorothy sometimes ate lunch. It occurred to me she might have gone there yesterday, and I had Hank ask Jimmy about it. Hank just called to say Jimmy said she was.”
“And Haskel’s Electric?”
Osey smiled his slow smile. “Bob Haskel’s the troop leader.”
“Where is this place?” She made a note of the address. “Open on Sunday?”
“Should be.”
“I’ll check it out. You keep hitting the neighbors. See if you can find anybody who saw her come or go yesterday around noon. Try to pin down times. That goes for the husband too.”
“I’ll do it.” Osey ambled on his way, the most amiable individual she’d ever known.
Haskel’s Electric was on Fourteenth Street between a beauty-supply shop and a record store. The sign on the door read, “Wiring, Air Conditioning, Heating Repairs. Twenty-four-hour Service. No Job Too Small.”
A bell jangled when she pushed open the door. It was dim inside, a long, narrow place, floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with supplies and equipment. A large young man, brown hair, no neck, and massive shoulders bulging beneath a blue T-shirt with the snarling Emerson wildcat, came into the shop from a back room.
“Hi.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and propped a haunch against the counter.
“Bob Haskel?”
“That’s me.”
“Chief Wren.” She held out her ID. “I’d like to ask you some questions.”
“Me? How come?”
“It’s about Dorothy Barrington. Did you know her?”
“Sure. Nadine works for Ellen. Anybody who works for Ellen hears about Dorothy.” He grinned and then, apparently remembering the circumstances, wiped off the grin.
“Nadine?”
“My wife.”
“Did you take a group of Boy Scouts to a park yesterday?”
“Oh. No. You want my dad.” He turned his head and bellowed, “Dad! Somebody here for you.”
She was relieved everything wasn’t shaken off the shelves.
An older, slightly smaller version—gray hair, weathered face, work pants, deliberate tread to his walk—came from the rear carrying a coil of wire. He set the wire on the counter. “What can I do for you?”
“It’s about the Boy Scouts,” Bob Jr. said, and looked at his watch. “I gotta go. Catch you later.” With a jangle of the bell, he was gone.
“That one.” Bob Sr. shook his head. “Always in a hurry.”
Not so much hurry as implacable force. “I understand you took a troop of Boy Scouts to Broken Arrow Park,” she said.
“Right. Adopt-a-park program. You know about that? Well, acourse you do.”
She nodded. All kinds of community groups would choose a site and several times a year pick up trash, take care of needed maintenance, and generally keep the place spruced up. “Did you notice Dorothy Barrington when you were there?”
“Well, I did. Now, wasn’t that an awful thing. Nice place like this, something like that happens.” He shook his head again. “I just don’t know.”
“Did you speak to her?”
“No more than to say hello like. Being neighborly. I was keeping an eye on the boys. Good boys, all of them. Need a little directing now and then. My own boy— well, you met Bob—little past the Boy Scout age. Found out I missed it. Had to do something.”
“Yes. Did Dorothy say anything?”
“Don’t recall she did. Spoke, of course. Pleasant. Real pleasant lady.”
“Yes. Did anyone else talk to her? Did she meet anyone?”
“No. No. I don’t believe—”
“What did she do?”
He thought a moment. “Just came into the park. Said hello to me and the boys around, what a good job we were doing. Then she just sat on the bench by the duck pond. It’s real nice there. Shady, like. Still pretty hot, though. Unusual to be so hot this early. And looking to build up to rain.”
“Yes. Dorothy just sat on the bench awhile?”
“She did. Had a sandwich with her and a newspaper. Read the paper, you know, while she ate.”
Dorothy went to the park and ate lunch. Getting even that much information had been hard slogging.
She had opened her mouth to thank him and leave, when he said, “Seems like something upset her somehow.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just sort of going through the paper like you do. Then all of a sudden she jerked up real straight, looked at something real hard on the page. Then folded up that sucker and left in a hurry.”
Susan asked if Dorothy had been on foot or whether she’d driven. He wasn’t real certain but thought she must have walked.
Back at the departmen
t, Susan tracked down the newspaper that had been in Dorothy’s office—the Kansas City Star—in the evidence room, cleared a space on her desk, and sat down to read about the latest political scandals, unrest in the Mideast, people starving in Africa, traffic fatalities on the interstate, sports events. There didn’t have to be anything in it that upset Dorothy. She’d probably had a thought, realized she’d forgotten to unplug the coffeepot or something equally unrelated.
The second time through, Susan noticed the filler on page twenty-seven: “First in Thirteen Years.” A painting by August Barrington purchased for a hundred thousand dollars. No names mentioned, either buyer or seller.
August Barrington?
* * *
Hampstead’s new library, on the corner of Sixth and Maple, was all brick and spacious in comparison to the old one, with wide windows that actually let in light and a community room bigger than the entire square footage of the old library. It also had added attractions like a juvenile section, magazine racks, and tables and chairs scattered about for leisurely reading. And bathrooms, something the old one didn’t have.
The money had come from Fancy French, a longtime resident, who bequeathed several hundred thousand dollars for a new library. The move had taken place over a Saturday, Sunday, and Monday and was all done by volunteers who formed a human chain. The grand opening came complete with flag-raising ceremony and bugler.
The inside smelled of fresh paint and floor polish. Beth Nooley, middle-aged, with frizzy brown hair, looked up with a proud smile. “Isn’t this just the greatest place?” She swiveled around to encompass it all. “Wouldn’t Helen just love it? What do you hear from her?”
“A card a couple weeks ago.” Helen, Daniel’s sister, had presided for years over the old library. After selling the family farm, she’d embarked on a round of travel, and sent the odd postcard every now and then. Even that much surprised Susan. Helen had been sorely displeased when she met the wife Daniel had brought home. The last card came from Mira Vista, California, north of San Francisco, and made Susan think longingly of fog and cool ocean breezes.
She told Beth she wanted to find out about August Barrington.
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