Off the Record

by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

  “Hello, Margo.”

  The thin woman turned toward her voice, hazel eyes magnified behind thick lenses. “Oh, hi, Kate. I suspected I might see you here today.”

  “How is your mother settling in at Orchard Hill?”

  “Pretty well, thank you. I think she’s enjoying socializing with people her own age rather than hanging out with youngsters like my husband and me.” The woman smirked.

  Kate laughed. Margo certainly had a good sense of humor. “That’s one of the advantages of these assisted-living facilities. The residents have a wide range of social opportunities and can find friends from their own generation. Nehemiah loves it there.”

  Margo cocked her head. “I’m curious to meet him now that we’ve spoken about him a couple of times. Maybe I’ll introduce Mother to him.”

  “He’d take her right under his wing.” Kate nodded. “So what is it that you do here?” Maybe getting Margo to explain her duties at the drive would yield some clues. When Kate spoke to her in person, it was hard to see her as insincere, but when she was away from the woman, it was easy to suspect her.

  “Have a seat.” Margo patted the chair next to her, and Kate took it.

  The woman tapped her PC screen. “This is the central computer. It verifies that the data collected in the privacy booths is complete, though I’m not allowed to view the confidential information. Then I compile the files and send them to the mainframe in Chattanooga. I could go on about the minutiae of the operation, but I’d bore you silly.”

  “You haven’t bored me yet.” Maybe Margo couldn’t see the information in the files she worked with, but perhaps she could send it to another computer, as well as the Red Cross mainframe.

  “Good.” Straight white teeth showed again in a smile that was her most attractive feature. “As you can imagine, it’s vital that the donor information in the system match what’s recorded on the bags. Actually, we generate bar-code labels right here on the spot that are put on each pint of blood and scanned into the system to make sure there are no mistakes. We’re dealing with people’s lives here.”

  “And you love it, I can tell.”

  Margo seemed so genuinely enthusiastic about her contribution to the lifesaving service that Kate hated to think of her as a thief.

  “Guilty.” The woman laughed, a lyrical trill that was pleasing to the ear.

  What was going on with such personable suspects? Kate knew from experience that criminals didn’t wear their dark intentions stamped on their foreheads, but usually she was a good judge of character, and she was starting to like Margo Meyers.

  “Can I ask you something that’s been puzzling me since the day one of your residents, Mrs. Kraemer, had an anaphylactic reaction to medication?”

  “Were you there when it happened?” Margo lifted her hands. “What a kerfuffle! The poor woman is still not back from the hospital.”

  “I was standing in the doorway between the sunroom and the nurses’ station.” Kate offered a lopsided smile. “You didn’t notice me.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Margo’s face colored. “My social graces weren’t working too well at that moment. I had come down to take care of an overdue update in a paper file and walked into the middle of a crisis. Made me nervous, let me tell you.”

  “Overdue update?” Kate sat forward with an elbow on the table.

  “Certain pieces of a record need to be kept current with set deadlines, or we can get dinged by the state at our next inspection.” Margo smoothed one side of her already sleek hair. “We never quite know when the inspectors could walk in. One of my staff had missed a step in the process, and I was correcting the matter myself.”

  “On Mrs. Kraemer’s record?”

  Margo’s penciled brows went up. “Heavens, no! Is that what you thought?”

  Kate shrugged. “I didn’t know what to think. Just that I was left puzzled about what was going on.”

  A teasing glint entered the other woman’s eyes. “And I suppose my acting like a demented woman didn’t help forge a good impression.”

  A reluctant grin formed on Kate’s lips, then faded. “But now I’m more baffled than ever why Nurse Pritchard ran off with the chart in the middle of the mess with Mrs. Kraemer.”

  “She did what?”

  “After you left, I approached the station. Nurse Pritchard must have thought I was snooping because she snatched up the chart like a treasure. She tried to put it back in the filing cabinet, but that key gave her trouble, so she hustled away with the chart.”

  Margo chuckled. “Sounds just like Carolyn. She’s more of a fanatic about HIPAA than I am.”

  “HIPAA? Isn’t that some kind of privacy legislation?”

  “You’re sharp. Yes, it is. The acronym stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. And if Carolyn thought someone was trying to see something they shouldn’t, running off with the chart is the least she’d do.”

  “Then why would she deny it later? On my next visit to Orchard Hill, I asked her point-blank why she did that.”

  Margo’s eyes widened, then she tilted her head back and laughed. “You must have gotten on her last nerve, asking her something like that. She’d never admit in a million years that she took a patient chart away from the nurses’ station. That’s against policy, and Carolyn’s other phobia is policies and procedures. But at the time, she must have thought escaping with it was the lesser of the two evils.”

  “Poor woman.” Kate chuckled. “I really put her in a dilemma, didn’t I? Take the chart and go against protocol, or leave it and risk a snoopy guest looking at something she shouldn’t.” Well, that was another mystery solved. And the explanation had turned out to be reasonable after all, assuming that Margo was telling the truth, and Kate thought that she was. But that still left the big mystery of who deleted the medication order from Shirley’s file.

  Margo patted Kate’s knee and laughed. Then her head swiveled toward one of the outer doors. “Oh, there’s Bill Shakey. I didn’t know he was going to be here today.”

  Kate followed the other woman’s line of sight. Sure enough, the short, stocky TCPA representative was standing inside the door, arms laden with a box and several bags. “You know him?”

  “We’ve met at confidentiality training seminars for years. He’s a nice fellow and very knowledgeable. I wonder what he’s doing here.”

  “I invited him to come and share information with the public on the electronic medical record and safeguarding against identity theft.”

  “Terrific idea!” Margo grinned.

  “Thank you.” Kate rose. “I’d better go show him where to set up shop.”

  “See you later.” Margo’s gaze returned to her computer screen, and her fingers got busy tapping the keyboard.

  Kate waved toward Bill and walked in his direction. He spotted her and smiled. Was she approaching a man dedicated to protecting people’s private data, or someone eager to steal it? The medical-records-savvy Margo Meyers admitted to knowing him. What if they weren’t merely acquaintances, but accomplices?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Kate and Bill had barely laid out the last of the material on the display table when the doors opened to the public for the blood drive. Loretta grabbed her to help transfer cookies and sandwiches and dessert bars from commercial platters to smaller plates that could be set out on the tables. Before long, Renee’s little café began to populate with people wearing crisscrossed pressure bandages on their arms and red and white stickers on their shirts that said, “Be nice to me. I gave at the blood drive.”

  Arletta Walner, the school principal, was one of the first. Kate set a glass of apple juice in front of her. The woman received it with a smile and a thank you.

  “I’m excited the gym could be used so well today,” she said. “We’re very cautious about lending out our space for nonschool events.”

  “I heard that you promoted the event to the school board, and permission sailed right through.” Kate held out the plate
of bars and handed the woman a napkin.

  Cheeks pink, Arletta accepted the napkin and chose a lemon bar. “I suspect the board needed little persuading for such a good cause. But I do plan to keep myself available all day. I’ll be in my office in case I’m needed for something.”

  “That’s good to know,” Kate said, and then the demands of other donors took her attention.

  As the morning wore on, she had no trouble staying busy congratulating the donors, showing them to seats, and refilling beverage glasses and snack plates. The gym filled with the sound of pleasant voices and laughter. Deputy Spencer strolled through a couple of times, thumbs hooked into his belt, gaze casually sharp. Kate noticed with a smile that he never left the building without a cookie or bar.

  Jennifer McCarthy came by to interview volunteers and donors. She asked Kate a few questions about serving in the café area, then moved on to another station. Joe hovered mostly near the main entrance at the other end of the gym, where the state VFW president greeted donors. Renee fluttered frequently through the snack area, handing out her store-coupon booklets, but conversations carried no overtones of competition.

  “Isn’t it delicious?” Renee spoke at Kate’s elbow as Kate set another plate laden with food on a table.

  Kate turned toward the older woman. “Yes, Loretta’s food is always good.”

  Renee made a dismissive gesture. “I wasn’t talking about the lunch. It’s the turnout! The participation is beyond anything Joe or I ever expected. At this rate, by the end of the afternoon, nearly all of Copper Mill will have bled for the cause.” She giggled.

  “It’s a good feeling, isn’t it”—Kate smiled—“when it all comes together, and it turns out better than you hoped?”

  “Do you ever feel that way about your stained-glass projects?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  Renee actually noticed someone else’s creative efforts? This was shaping up to be quite a day. If only Kate could hear some good news about Carla soon and maybe catch a break at figuring out how people’s medical identities were being stolen.

  “Or like when an investigation finally yields that clue that puts it all together?” The older woman nudged Kate with her elbow. “Any progress finding out who slipped a Mickey into Shirley Kraemer’s medical chart?” She spoke out of the side of her mouth, then winked and nodded. “Oh yes, Lucy Mae told me all about it. Once this blood drive is over, I wouldn’t mind lending you my sleuthing expertise.”

  Kate suppressed a moan. That’s all the situation needed. Renee’s investigative tactics had proven worse than wacky in the past, and Kate didn’t expect any future involvements to change all that much. Renee was, after all, Renee.

  “I think I’ll take a break now,” Kate said. “You know, air out the old brain cells.”

  “Toodles, then. Too bad that Shaker fellow isn’t getting better business at his table.” Renee sent a sidelong look to the TCPA display, where a single donor loitered, idly leafing through a pamphlet.

  “You mean Bill Shakey? I wish he was busier too. Maybe it would encourage him if one of the blood-drive organizers told him how much you appreciate his presence?”

  Renee’s chest expanded. “I might just toddle over there and mention it.”

  The woman wafted away on a breeze of Estée Lauder, and Kate inhaled a full breath. One nice thing about Renee: she was easily distracted. One challenging thing about Renee: like a busy bee on a mission, she generally returned to whatever she was distracted from. It was time to make herself scarce for a while.

  Kate slipped out the nearest door. She stepped off the sidewalk into the corner of the L made by the two wings of the building so that people exiting the gym and heading for the parking lot wouldn’t need to walk around her. As she stood on the green grass, the sun kissed her face, and a warm breeze played with her hair. She gazed up at a cotton-tufted, azure sky. Where was Carla Trexler? Was she able to enjoy this perfect spring day?

  And what was it that Renee had said? Lucy Mae had filled her in about medical-record identity theft? Oh, brother! Maybe Kate had received the threatening letter in the mail because Loretta or Lucy Mae was blabbing about their situations around town.

  Loretta letting the cat out of the bag didn’t add up. The diner owner was still keeping her problem private. But an upset Lucy Mae talking to all and sundry made good sense. First of all, knowing Lucy Mae, anyone within earshot in the Health Information Management department of the Chattanooga hospital, where she went to get her mother’s record, would have gotten the full scoop. And maybe even Kate’s name as the person who had sent Lucy Mae over there.

  Could the culprit work at the hospital, not Orchard Hill? Except, Kate mulled as she wandered up the side of the red-brick building, someone at the assisted-living center had to be involved for the Vicodin prescription to have disappeared from the Orchard Hill computer system before Mrs. Kraemer was admitted to the hospital.

  Kate joined the stream of people heading into the blood drive and soon was engulfed in conversation with acquaintances. She welcomed the distraction from her mental tail chasing. At last, she reached the intake table and smiled down at her husband.

  “I’m here to donate blood, sir. Can you help me?”

  Paul grinned. “How civic-minded of you, ma’am. You take this clipboard and go sit in one of those chairs to fill out the form.” He pointed a thumb toward the rows of seats. “When you’re finished, bring it back here.”

  “I think I can handle that.” She accepted the clipboard and headed for a seat. Her toe hit a taped-down clump of cords, and she gazed around the floor at a maze of them. A blood drive sure took a lot of power.

  Kate settled in the farthest corner of the waiting area to look over the form and the material she’d been given. A flier explained blood-drive collection procedure and the uses her contribution might have. She filled out the form, then set the clipboard on her lap. Her gaze strayed to a single power cord running past her chair.

  She turned and looked. In a nearby corner sat a bunch of athletic equipment—a rack of basketballs, mesh bags of dodgeballs and kick balls, a nest of jump ropes, stacked agility cones, and other odds and ends. The stray cord didn’t extend quite that far. It turned a corner into an alcove. What would be plugged in that far from the main action?

  Kate got up and set her clipboard on her chair. She followed the cord around the corner into a short hallway. A bathroom was situated to one side, but the cord didn’t head that direction. It continued to the end of the hall and disappeared under a door labeled Storage. A nervous prickle spread across Kate’s skin.

  If all of the athletic equipment that should be in the storage room was out in the gymnasium, then what was in the storage room? On cat feet, she crept forward and ever so slowly turned the knob. It didn’t budge. The room was locked. Well, Arletta Walner had said she’d be available in her office, and she’d have the key. While she was at it, she should round up Paul, and even Skip—if he was around. Something about this didn’t feel right.

  Kate backed away from the door and hit a brick wall. At least that’s what it felt like. Only the wall breathed. A scream welled up in Kate’s throat, but a palm like a slab of beef clamped across her mouth.

  Chapter Thirty

  Heart pounding, Kate’s hand frantically sought for the black box in her pants pocket. But the arm that clamped her against a big, solid body didn’t allow her enough flexibility to stick her hand into the pocket. Instead, she mashed the heel of her palm repeatedly against the box, hoping to connect with the red button.

  The person who held her tapped the door with a boot-clad toe. “Open up.” Even at a gruff whisper, she knew that voice...and the strong cologne smell that radiated from him—Stephen Hancock. Stealing records to finance his drug habit would be right up his alley. Had he also sent her the threatening letter?

  The door cracked open, spilling pale light into the dim hallway. Half of a shadowed profile filled part of the space. Whoever was in there gru
nted and opened the portal. Stephen dragged Kate into the room, and the other person closed the door. The snick of the lock sent a shiver through Kate.

  They stood facing the source of the light—a computer monitor. Personal facts and figures from blood donors scrolled steadily across the screen.

  “Not another snooper!” a female voice growled. “What are you thinking?”

  Kate recognized this voice too. The woman stepped into the glow of the monitor, and Kate stared into an angry face.

  Rita.

  She never would have guessed. A pair of nursing assistants, supposedly without access to patient records at Orchard Hill, were behind the thefts. But then Rita could have stolen a nurse’s pass code, or Stephen might have hacked into the computer to make off with any record they liked—or to delete that Vicodin prescription. This pair had been standing near the nurses’ station when she came out of Edith Naples’ apartment. And they could have been behind the desk before she saw them, and no one there would have thought anything of it.

  “What are we going to do with her?” Rita stuck her fists against her hips.

  Kate continued to press against the box.

  “We tie her up and skedaddle, that’s what,” Hancock said. “This gig is over. I told you we were pushing our luck.”

  Rita snorted. “If you hadn’t gotten greedy with records from Orchard Hill in order to supply your habit, we’d still be flying under the radar. We were supposed to stick with the blood drives only.”

  “And you’re the genius who thought sending her a note would scare her off,” her accomplice hissed.

  “So what are we going to tie her with?” Rita flapped her arms against her sides.

  “Think, woman! I’ve got a belt, and there are computer cords we’re not going to be using anymore. We leave her in here, and nobody’s going to find her until we’re long gone.”

  Hancock forced Kate toward the chair. She let out a muffled cry and kicked backward, connecting with a shin. Muttering a curse, Hancock’s palm mashed painfully against Kate’s lips and partially blocked her nose. Her rib cage creaked within a tightened hold.