Egrets, I've Had a Few (Deluded Detective Book 2)

by Michelle Knowlden

  As suddenly as elevations had obsessed me this past week, the need for them disappeared as the tiger scratches had done a few months ago. Had I had a death wish? Or was my damaged brain driving me back to the fifth deck of that parking garage, helping me find answers to my past?

  I couldn’t think about that now. A subject for a session with my psychiatrist perhaps. I leaned against the wall and faced Charlie. Now I needed answers.

  “What’s going on? Did you put Rick Jarrell on me? How come Tyler Hinshaw seems to know me? He disappeared near where I had my accident. Did he have something to do with it? Tell me about that crook Pellery. How come he knows me?” I slammed him with questions hoping that he’d twitch or blink again, but he didn’t.

  He tapped the table with his phone and eyed the artwork of pastel swirls on the wall. “Pellery is a con with a growing client list. We’ve been watching him for awhile.” Then he added, “Since your ‘accident.’”

  I heard those quote marks and everything seemed to shift sideways. The sparkles brightened. They were starting to annoy me.

  “My accident was not an accident.” I made it a statement.

  Charlie nodded. At least, I think he did. He was starting to glitter like my hallucination of Tyler’s littlest sister. Not a good sign.

  What had Tyler said earlier? “I was beaten?” This time I couldn’t stop the question in my voice. I didn’t want it to be true.

  “Yes.”

  I gritted my teeth. In the glass of the picture, I saw the reflection of egrets. But reflected from where? Wrong angle for it to be from the window. I saw no egrets in the room.

  I licked my lips. “Egrets,” I said hoarsely. When his gaze sharpened on me, I amended it to, “The infant abduction from the East Placentia Egrets game. Gunnison had something to do with that, right? Or was it Pellery all along?”

  “Are you okay?” Charlie asked abruptly. “You sound funny. And you don’t look so hot.”

  “I’ve had a full day.” I heard something funny in my voice, too. Something high-pitched and raspy, like my dead Aunt Hillary’s voice.

  Oh no. Not again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  After the blackout

  When I wakened, I lay on a hospital bed, and Aunt Ivy sat on a chair next to me.

  “Déjà vu.” Another blackout like I’d had three months ago. At least I didn’t sound like Aunt Hill now which has happened during every blackout since the brain damage. And I usually said odd things that sounded of prophecies, but weren’t.

  Ivy pressed the call button. “How do you feel, dear?”

  I grimaced. “Sorry that I have to wait another ninety days till I can drive again. Really sorry that it happened in front of Charlie. And glad that I didn’t fall off my roof.”

  “Your roof?”

  “Never mind. How long was I out? How’s Dante?”

  She rested her hand on mine and squeezed gently. “You were restive after the blackout, so the doctor gave you something that made you sleep. That was almost two hours ago. Dante survived surgery, sweetie, but the doctors aren’t hopeful. That doesn’t mean that we should give up, right?”

  My aunt believed in hope. Me, not so much. “Okay. Uh, did Charlie say what happened to me?”

  The nurse appeared, smiling and bustling. “Good. You’re awake. How do you feel?”

  “Fine.” I scratched behind my neck where the ties of my hospital gown tickled. “Awake, alert, and no sparkles.” No egrets either, but I wasn’t looking too closely at the reflections in the window or the glass of another pastel wall painting.

  I wiggled under the sheets. “May I leave?”

  “The doctor will need to see you first. He may want to keep you overnight for observation. We’ll call him. In the meantime …” She efficiently took my vitals, made notations on her tablet, and left the room.

  I glared at the departing nurse and waited till she couldn’t hear me before saying, “It’s not that I haven’t had dozens of blackouts. What’s the big deal? I could get the tests and stuff done as an outpatient …” I dried up seeing my aunt’s face. For her, the blackouts and other symptoms of my brain damage would always be a big deal.

  I fumbled for the control and raised the bed so I could sit. I wished I could do something about my cold feet, but that would have to wait.

  I tried to modulate my voice for comfort and upbeat encouragement. “It’s okay, Auntie. It’s the new norm, right? No biggie.”

  She smiled valiantly. “No biggie.”

  “So what did Charlie say happened to me? In the conference room, I mean.”

  She gave me an austere look. “He said you blacked out. Clever of you to do so in the hospital.”

  “Uh huh. So I was beaten nearly two years ago?”

  Charlie was easier to break under interrogation than our Aunt Ivy. She tilted her head thoughtfully. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I’d like to know why I wasn’t told. And don’t start with ‘Dr. Jo thinks it best for me to remember on my own.’ Didn’t it occur it anyone that I needed to be on guard?”

  “It occurred to everyone, Pam.” Ivy’s gaze shifted from me squirming self-righteously under my hospital sheet to the window on my left which featured the cement architecture of the medical center’s parking garage. We were blocks from the courthouse parking garage, but still I shivered. This encounter I remembered. The hollow sound of flash bangs and gunshots echoed in my head.

  “It was reported that the woman found in the parking garage died of her injuries,” Ivy said. “Charlie told the EMTs that you were a victim of domestic violence. Heaven knows they are all too common, and no one questioned it. The FBI thought that the reported death of the woman in the parking garage would protect you.”

  Wow. There were so many holes in that theory … “That might work if it’d been a random act of a stranger. If my attacker knew me or my name, then he’d know I wasn’t dead.”

  “We had no reason to believe you knew him, Pam. Did you?”

  I had no idea. I hadn’t been a private investigator before the brain trauma. Teachers didn’t hold conferences in parking garages. I wasn’t a frequent visitor to the courthouse either. Except for jury duty, which always had to be deferred till summer when school was out, I was never there.

  I didn’t want to think about the beating anymore. I wanted to see Dante. I didn’t want to wait for a doctor’s release. A big believer in rules, my aunt wouldn’t likely abet my escape.

  “Did Charlie say anything else about my blackout in the conference room? You know, like did I say anything?”

  “Why do you think you said anything?” Yeah, that’s where Charlie got that annoying answering-a-question-with-a-question thing too.

  “Because it felt like the blackout I had three months ago. You know, when I was channeling Hillary.”

  Hillary had been Ivy’s twin sister, but unlike her in every way. “You know we don’t believe in channeling, dear.” Hill had. In fact, it’d been her livelihood.

  I sighed. I really didn’t want to get into a discussion about the occult. Though I had my side gig performing psychic readings as Madame Pythagoras, it was a complete sham. As a scientist, I had no reason to believe otherwise about all psychics, including Hillary.

  “Before I blacked out, I heard my voice go all high like hers.” When Ivy flinched, I ducked my head. “Did I say anything?”

  Thankfully, Ivy’s face smoothed from her measuring look—assessing how much truth I could handle—to something more candid. Finally.

  “Charlie didn’t go into details, but he said you provided him enough information to solve his case.”

  “I … did he say anything else?”

  She shook her head.

  “Where’s my phone?”

  “You shouldn’t …”

  I swung my legs over the side of my bed. Ivy stood, her hand on my shoulder, and stopped me. “Pam, please. I’ll call Charlie and ask him whatever you like, but you need to stay in bed.”


  “I need …” I swallowed hard. I could wait to find out what I’d said during the blackout. I couldn’t wait for something else.

  “I need to see Dante.”

  She patted her perfectly coiffed hair as she considered the door of my room. “Let me find a wheelchair and where he is.” She produced a mirror and her cosmetic bag.

  “Perhaps you can tame your hair while I’m gone?” She was out the door before I could reply. I picked up the mirror.

  I was a mess. My hair stood on end and Ivy had been too kind to remark on the condition of my face. I’d worn makeup to my meeting with no-show Gunnison and most of that was either gone or smeared. Although Ivy had a different color palette than mine and a brush when I could have used a comb, I managed to make myself somewhat presentable before she returned with a wheelchair.

  She lowered her voice. “I didn’t think the nurse would allow an excursion, so I appropriated the chair without permission.”

  “I’m a bad influence.” I tried not to grin.

  “Needs must,” she said crisply. “Let me help you into this contraption.”

  Dante was on the third floor. Of course, we were stopped by the ICU nurse. She didn’t believe I was family and repeatedly ordered me to the waiting room or, glancing at my gown, to my bed. Using her years as a hospital chaplain, Ivy intervened with authority and grace. That didn’t work either.

  A doctor and Dante’s family stepped from the double ICU doors, the doctor touched Dr. Ruiz’s arm and nodded at Robert and Aidan before heading down the hall.

  “Is Dante ..?” Dr. Ruiz looked so grief-stricken that I couldn’t continue.

  Aidan shook his head. “He’s still hanging in there. Some of his numbers aren’t what the doctor prefers, but Dante likes a challenge.” His words had a rallying tone, but the expression on his face looked defeated.

  “May I see him?” I ignored the nurse standing between me and the door.

  Her chin lifted. “Family only.”

  Dr. Ruiz didn’t seem to hear her and Aidan’s attention was on his father. Robert—dear, reserved Robert, turned to the nurse.

  “Pam Graff is family.”

  Then pointedly to me, he added, “Dad needs to eat, so we’ll be in the cafeteria. Call us if there’s, you know …”

  “Any changes,” I said hurriedly. “Of course.”

  Stifling any triumph I felt, I leaned forward as Ivy pushed the wheelchair through the double doors, hunting through the curtained rooms for a sign of Dante.

  Near the back wall, the nurse held up the corner of the curtain so Ivy could maneuver me to the head of Dante’s bed.

  “You have fifteen minutes,” she said. And left.

  He looked marginally better than when I’d seen him earlier. I straightened my spine and reminded myself that an early death had always been his fate.

  I felt rather than saw Ivy sit on the chair at the other side of the bed. I wondered why they hadn’t brought in two more chairs for his brothers, though there was little room for more furniture with everything Dante was hooked to that kept him alive or measured how alive he remained.

  “You can leave,” I told Ivy without taking my focus off Dante. “I can have the nurse take me back to the room. Maybe you want to get coffee or something to eat.”

  “I’m good.” From the corner of my eye, I saw her reassuring smile.

  “It’s just I should be here, because I was his teacher and his friend. He should know that me, Ang, and Harm are close, that he’s not alone. But you didn’t know him, so you don’t have to stay.” I hated how my words sounded defensive and halting and strained.

  She reached across Dante’s body and touched my cheek. As she withdrew her hand, she said, “I’m here for you, sweetie.”

  For the rest of the fifteen minutes, I told Dante what I knew about the case, the FBI, and Tyler. I told him that Harm and Ang were in the waiting room downstairs, though I hadn’t seen them since my blackout. I’d sensed their loyalty to Dante and felt sure they’d still be there. When I ran out of words, I covered his hand with mine as if my life force could flow into his fading one and somehow strengthen it. I tried some positive thinking, not that I believe in it. I was desperate enough to do anything.

  I didn’t pray. I’m sure Ivy had that covered.

  When the nurse returned, I talked Ivy into shifting me to the ICU waiting room and made sure the nurse would tell us when I could see Dante again. She said nothing, but I heard her contact the nursing station on my floor to tell them where I was. I wondered if they would send an orderly to retrieve me. I figured if the doctor wanted me at the hospital for observation, they could all come look at me in the waiting room.

  After twenty minutes, I sent Ivy to ask if it was time for me to see Dante again. A few seconds after she left, Tyler slipped into the room as if he’d been waiting for the opportunity, and sat on the chair she’d vacated.

  “Rick said you fainted,” he said with no preamble. “Is that because of your brain damage or because your friend got shot?”

  Normally I encourage curiosity in the young, but he’d trod into the personal. But I didn’t want him to think I was a pansy. “Because of the brain damage. And I didn’t faint. I blacked out.”

  An eyebrow arched. I think I impressed him with the blackout.

  “How do you know me?” I asked baldly. Then because I should have ascertained this first, I asked, “Is it okay that you’re here? Shouldn’t there be someone watching you, protecting you?”

  He shrugged. “Your brother’s on his way back and Rick’s around somewhere. I gave him the slip so I could see you.”

  I know I shouldn’t approve of him escaping his protection detail, but since I wanted to talk to him too, I let it go.

  “You saw me beaten twenty months ago.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Tyler nodded. “That’s not how it started, but it’s why I had to fake my running away. I knew that my coach, Mr. Weller, had been working with the FBI on a case about some kids that’d gone missing. And illegal adoption rings. I heard something in the office, but he wouldn’t talk to me about it. When Lucas’s baby sister got taken at the lacrosse meet, I decided to look into it myself.”

  Any other kid would have said that with arrogance, but Tyler said it with a quiet authority that impressed me. I understood what his friend Chris meant by Tyler’s red cape. I couldn’t see it, but he carried himself as if something rippled from his shoulders.

  Still he wasn’t Spiderman or even Green Lantern. Just a kid with overactive bodyguard DNA, destined to become a soldier or a teacher.

  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that Mitch Weller was an FBI consultant. Hello? Ivy had dated him and trusted him to arrange my adoption. I was a little hurt that he hadn’t mentioned it at lunch. If he wanted my blessing on dating Ivy again, he’d best not be so secretive next time.

  “Looking into the abduction led you to Gunnison?” I asked.

  “Sort of. I heard somewhere that most kidnappings are family-related, like in a divorce where the parent who doesn’t get custody of the kids takes off with them. Lucas’s mom had divorced his step-dad, so I looked into him first. That didn’t pan out. That guy had moved in with a bunch of indie film makers. They hadn’t the space or time or interest for a baby. Then Lucas told me that his mom said something about a baby selling ring in Orange County and that’s what the police were investigating. Since that kind of went along with what I’d heard in Mr. Weller’s office, I started looking at adoption scams.”

  He cleared his throat and an expression, something very old and tired, crossed his face. Tyler Hinshaw was just a kid, but experience had deepened his outlook and broadened his character. Treating him as if he were a licensed detective, I prompted him. “You looked into other kids on your team and found out one was related to Gunnison?”

  “Nah. I asked the other kids on the team and friends who watch the games to send me their videos. Someone always records the game so we can analyze it afterwards, but lots of
times our friends and family will sweep the stands too.” He gave me a whimsical grin. “They get bored, you know.”

  I nodded, briefly regretting never having had Tyler as a student. I might have made a scientist of him.

  “The useful vids had timestamps, so I took note who had disappeared at the same time as the baby. Gunnison was one of the four who had. An employee of the guy who beat you was another.”

  So my intel was wrong and Gunnison was at the game. Then I registered what else Tyler had said. “Pellery?”

  He shrugged. “I never knew him till today. I’d been following Oliver Benson and knew he worked for Pellery and Stokes, a law firm that does adoptions like Mr. Weller. It’s a big firm. They also do patents, copyrights, and represent celebrities like athletes, actors, and politicians like Gunnison.”

  Tyler’s expression didn’t change but his voice did when he said Gunnison’s name. Disgust? Definitely disdain.

  “You didn’t like him?”

  Again, he shrugged. “I guess he’s okay. Not the worst state representative we got.”

  I suppressed a smile. Kid wasn’t old enough to vote but already had world-weary notions about politicians.

  “I looked into him. He’s hardly done anything for the state or the people who voted for him, but he’s sure done a lot for his friends.”

  “That’s the way it’s done, kid.”

  “I know, but Gunnison doesn’t even pretend. He’s in it for himself.”

  I heard the strain of injured righteousness in his voice. If he’d been my student, I would have had to give him a large dose of reality, but look who was talking?

  “So you spoke to him?”

  Not losing the outrage, Tyler said, “Never could get an appointment. I had loads of trouble getting much out of that law firm too. Since it was just me looking into it …” Just like that, he dismissed the FBI.

  “I couldn’t follow everybody. When I could, I tailed Benson. I was there when that baby got taken at the baseball game. I didn’t see what happened and I lost sight of Benson for just a second. I don’t think he took the kid. I know Gunnison didn’t. I never saw Benson talking to anyone, but I knew he had something to do with it.”