by J. A. Jance
Having just heard about Sister Anselm’s troubled early life, Ali couldn’t help comparing Athena’s situation with that. When Athena’s first husband divorced her, her parents—for reasons known only to themselves—had stuck with their former son-in-law, his new wife, and their new baby. It had saddened Ali to realize that Athena’s folks had turned away from their own daughter. Only one member of Athena’s family had deigned to attend her wedding to Chris. Ali had been glad to hear they planned to make a brief visit to Minnesota prior to the start of summer school. She was hoping that breach, like the one that had long existed between Ali and Chris’s paternal grandparents, could also be repaired.
“We’re not going,” Athena said. “I changed my mind.”
Ali was smart enough not to ask why. “I’m sure you had your reasons,” she said.
“Yes,” Athena said. “I do, and I’d like to talk to you about it.”
Heading into the waiting room as a supposedly undercover operative, Ali was in no position to play hostess to Athena, but she didn’t want to turn her down, either.
“I’m working right now,” she said. “Could I meet up with you later this evening? Are you staying over in Tempe tonight, or going back to Sedona?”
“I’m staying,” Athena said. “Give me a call when you’re available.”
Closing her phone and exiting the elevator, Ali saw that the waiting room was even more crowded than it had been earlier. As far as Ali could tell, all the visitors in attendance were there for James rather than for the woman in room 814.
In Ali’s absence, James’s two sets of still-feuding relatives seemed to have taken possession of most of the furniture in the room, leaving a chair-free no-man’s-land between them. A group of teenagers, presumably James’s friends, had invaded that space. Using a collection of backpacks to mark their territory and to provide backrests, they sat on the highly polished tile floor and talked quietly among themselves.
Ali pulled one of the few unoccupied chairs into what appeared to be neutral territory. Settling into it, she opened her computer. While she waited for her AirCard to connect, she listened to the talk buzzing around her. Sister Anselm was right. It was as though the presence of the computer rendered her invisible.
The kids may have been there because of James, but they weren’t talking about him. They were more concerned with other issues—who had flunked which class and was having to go to summer school; who had dropped out and was going to get a GED; who had gotten tossed out of a local movie theater for fighting; and whose parents had kicked someone out of the house when they had figured out at the last minute that he wasn’t going to graduate.
Listening to that, Ali reminded herself to be grateful that Chris had been such an easy kid to raise. She was also thankful that Chris and Athena were the ones dealing with teaching high school–aged kids like these on a daily basis. After enduring a solid nine months of doing that, a vacation should have been in order. Ali couldn’t help wondering why Athena and Chris had abruptly canceled their plans to visit Athena’s family.
Settling into a chair, Ali tuned in to what James’s relatives were saying. It was more of the same. When they had first trooped into the waiting room, Ali had marveled at their apparent solidarity, their show of support and love for James, but they had also brought along a history of petty grievances.
It was shocking to see how completely what she had thought of as a united front had shattered in a few hours’ time. A woman Ali had determined to be James’s grandmother on his mother’s side was still mad that his daddy had gotten drunk and disrupted Thanksgiving dinner—two years earlier. James’s older sister, the one with the two now hungry and cranky kids in tow, was firmly aligned on her mother’s side of the grievance list, while the younger sister stuck with her dad’s group. The father’s relatives had their own list of complaints. At some point in the past, one of the father’s former brothers-in-law had borrowed a truck and wrecked it. That incident was still up for discussion, as were noisy arguments about child support and visitation.
Ali was more than a little taken aback by the casual way in which these folks dragged their private battles into the public arena, and she knew that Sister Anselm was right to place someone in the waiting room. If family members showed up to keep a vigil for the patient in 814, any fractures in their relationships were bound to show up as well.
To say nothing of ours, Ali thought ruefully.
Whatever was going on between Chris and Athena didn’t sound good.
CHAPTER 10
Upon opening her computer, Ali’s first instinct was to log on and track down the Mimi Cooper missing persons information on her own, but knowing she also needed to put the Holly Mesina issue to rest, she decided to deal with that.
First things first, Ali thought.
She walked down the hall, far enough to be out of earshot, and called Holly’s extension, leaving a cheery message. “Sheriff Maxwell just called and told me there’s a missing persons report from Fountain Hills that could be relevant. I need the details. Please give me a call when you can.”
She left her number. That was enough. The message served notice to Holly that Ali was aware that she was withholding information. By invoking Sheriff Maxwell’s name, Ali was also letting Holly know that she would be called to account for not doing what she had been told to do.
Ali had closed her phone and was returning to the waiting room when the elevator door opened and a distraught man in a rumpled airline uniform rushed off and headed for the nurses’ station.
Is this the woman’s husband, Ali wondered, or is it her son? He looked to be a good twenty years younger than Ali would have expected.
“I’m here about my wife,” he said urgently to the woman behind the counter. “Her name is Mimi Cooper. I need to see her.”
“I’m afraid we have no one here by that name—” the attendant began.
“Don’t you understand?” he demanded. “That’s what I’m here for—to give you her name. It’s that woman from the fire in Camp Verde last night. She may be my wife. I came home from a trip and found out Mimi is missing. When I called the marshal’s office in Fountain Hills, the person I spoke to there suggested that I check here.”
“One moment,” the attendant said calmly. “Let me see if her attendant is available.”
“I don’t want to see her attendant,” the man insisted. “I want to see my wife, and I want to see her now.”
It was almost the same thing Agent Robson had said, but with far better reason.
Within moments, Sister Anselm emerged from room 814. When she stripped off her paper gown Ali saw that the green scrubs had been replaced by a set of floral-patterned ones.
“May I help you?” Sister Anselm asked calmly, addressing the agitated man who was pacing back and forth in front of the counter. He stopped in midstride.
“Are you Mimi’s doctor?” he demanded. “Is she going to be all right?”
“I’m Sister Anselm,” the nun responded, “and no, I’m not a physician. I’m what’s called a patient advocate. I’m assigned to care for the patient in room eight fourteen. I don’t believe I caught your name. What was it again?”
“Cooper,” he said. “Hal Cooper. My wife’s name is Mimi. Mimi is short for Madeline—Mimi Cooper.”
“What makes you think she’s here?”
“My wife is missing,” he declared. “When I talked to the cops over in Fountain Hills, one of them suggested that I come here. She had seen something on the news this morning about an unidentified victim of a fire. She wondered if the two incidents might be connected.”
“Tell me about your wife,” Sister Anselm said solicitously. She collected a pair of chairs, set them fairly close to Ali, and then guided Hal Cooper into one of them. “How long has she been gone?”
Before taking a seat next to him, Sister Anselm nodded slightly in Ali’s direction. Taking the hint, Ali understood what was expected. This was turning into an interrogation of sorts, and Ali would
be transcribing it. Opening her computer screen to a new document, she began to type.
“That’s the thing,” Hal said quickly. “I don’t really know how long ago she left. I came home from a trip this afternoon and she was gone.”
“She didn’t give you any idea about where she was going, or why?”
“No,” he said with a sigh. “We had a big argument before I left. A serious argument. I thought she’d get over it, but the whole time I was out of town, she wouldn’t take my calls. I left one message after another. She never picked up, and she never called me back, either.”
“How long were you gone?” Sister Anselm asked.
“A week,” he said. “I’m a pilot for Northwest,” he added unnecessarily; his rumpled uniform made that obvious. “When I’m scheduled to do international flights I’m usually gone for about five days at a time. This time I was away for two extra days. I stopped off in Michigan to see my mother. When I came home this morning, Mimi’s car wasn’t in the garage, and she was gone. I found both her cell phone and her purse in the bedroom. That really worried me—Mimi doesn’t go anywhere without those. But other than that, there was nothing out of place, and no sign of a struggle. The painting was gone, but I didn’t notice that until later.”
“What painting?” Sister Anselm asked.
Hal shook his head. “This incredibly ugly thing that looks like somebody’s bad idea of a patchwork quilt. I never liked it. Mimi’s first husband gave it to her as an anniversary present. She’s always said it was worth a ton of money, but you couldn’t prove it by me. She’d been talking about selling it for the past year or so. I thought maybe she’d gone ahead with that, or maybe she had sent it to the gallery on consignment.”
“Does Mimi have a vehicle of her own?” Sister Anselm asked.
“She certainly does,” Hal answered. “An Infiniti G37. Like I said, it should have been parked in the garage, but it wasn’t. That’s what our fight was about. I gave her strict orders that she wasn’t allowed to drive it while I was gone.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s due to have cataract surgery ten days from now. I told her it was too dangerous for her to be out driving on her own, especially at night, when she can’t see worth a damn.
“Once I left town I even called her daughter—well, I tried calling her daughter. Serenity wasn’t in but I left a message with Donna—that’s Donna Carson, Serenity’s personal assistant. She said that Serenity would be out of town part of the week as well, but Donna assured me that between the two of them, they’d look in on Mimi and make sure she was okay.
“So the next day when I arrived in Frankfurt I called Serenity’s office. She wasn’t in—she was doing a spa week down in Tucson somewhere—but Donna said they’d both been stopping by to see Mimi. Donna said that when she was there yesterday morning, everything was fine and it didn’t look like the car had been moved. She’s the one who suggested I call the cops.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, of course I did, but the guy I talked to wasn’t very sympathetic. He kept hinting around that maybe Mimi had left on her own because I was some kind of heavy-handed bozo. Stuff like, was it possible that Mimi had taken off because I was giving her too hard a time? He made it sound like maybe she was the victim of domestic violence or something. That made me mad as hell. I finally hung up on the guy. After I got off the phone with him, I started calling hospitals—every single hospital here in the Valley, including this one, but they all told me the same thing. None of them had a patient named Mimi Cooper.
“Making those calls took the better part of an hour. About the time I finished was when I finally noticed that the painting was gone. I doubt it was stolen because, as far as I can tell, nothing else is missing. Still, I thought I should call the cops back and let them know about it, just in case it had been stolen.”
“Did you?” Sister Anselm asked.
“Yes, but that time the jerk detective I had spoken to earlier was busy or on a break or something. I ended up talking to someone else, a woman. She took down the information about the painting. She also seemed to really listen to everything I said. She’s the one who mentioned the incident in Camp Verde last night. Once I heard that an unidentified, critically injured woman had been brought here from the fire, it was like an alarm went off in my heart. I’m sure it’s Mimi. It has to be.”
“Does your wife have any connection to Camp Verde?” Sister Anselm asked.
“None at all,” Hal answered decisively. “As far as I know she’s never set foot in the place, and why on earth would she go there at night? She hates going out at night, even when I’m driving, because the glare from the headlights bothers her eyes. Even so, I have a feeling this has to be her. Now please let me see her.”
Sister Anselm leaned over and placed a quieting hand on his shoulder. “I know you’re anxious and upset right now, and I don’t blame you. This woman may well turn out to be your wife, but she’s asleep right now. You can’t see her.”
“Couldn’t I look in on her even if she’s asleep?” Hal argued. “I promise I won’t be a bother. If it’s not Mimi, I’ll just walk away, and if it is . . .”
His voice faded into silence. He sat there shaking his head as he contemplated two appalling alternatives.
Patiently Sister Anselm explained the realities of the HIPAA regulations, including the fact that only visitors expressly authorized by the patient would be allowed access. These rules were clearly news to Hal Cooper, and, just as clearly, Sister Anselm had no intention of bending them.
“What can you tell me about your wife?” Sister Anselm’s question gently but firmly changed the subject. “How old is she?”
“Seventy-one, but she doesn’t look a day over sixty,” Hal declared. “Some people might say she’s frail, but she’s not. She’s tiny. Size six.”
“Does she have any distinguishing features?”
“When cops ask that question, they’re usually asking about scars or tattoos—that kind of thing,” Hal said. “Believe me, Mimi wouldn’t have a tattoo if her life depended on it, but she does have a mole on her left shoulder—on the back of her left shoulder.”
Ali noted the small frown that flitted briefly across Sister Anselm’s face, as though the presence of the mole said something to her—something important. While the nun said nothing, Hal rushed on.
“Dental records?” Sister Anselm asked.
“I can get those for you with no problem. Her dentist is in Scottsdale. Mimi’s had a couple of implants, but they’re mostly her own teeth.”
“Could you tell what clothing she might have been wearing?”
“No. She has three closets full of clothing. No way for me to tell that. But I do know about her jewelry. She had two diamond rings, one on each hand. The big one she called her no-divorce ring, or else her no-promises-kept ring. That’s Mimi’s sense of humor, by the way. That one is a two-carat rock. She was thinking about divorcing her first husband. Before she had a chance to call it quits, he died on her. She told me she made out far better as a widow than she would have as a divorcée. The other one, the smaller one, is the one I gave her a year ago when we got married.”
Hal broke off. His lips trembled. He cleared his throat and pawed at his eyes with the back of his hand. “A year next Tuesday,” he added. “We got married in San Francisco at a park overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. With the surgery coming up, I figured we’d take an anniversary trip back there after she’d had a chance to recover.”
Ali had noticed that in the beginning James’s family members had tuned in and listened avidly to what Hal Cooper had to say. Now, though, losing interest in someone else’s drama, they were back to focusing on their own issues and squabbling among themselves. As Hal paused momentarily to regain control, Ali’s fingers sped over the keyboard, catching up with the last of both Sister Anselm’s questions and Hal’s answers.
Thank you, Miss Willis, she thought.
Miss Augusta Willis had been Ali�
��s typing teacher at Cottonwood’s Mingus Union High, where, during her junior year, Ali had been one of only two students to achieve the coveted seventy-five words per minute that made for an A in Typing II.
“Where did you say you live?” Sister Anselm asked.
“Fountain Hills. Northeast of Scottsdale. It’s a very safe neighborhood. At least it’s supposed to be safe. That’s what the Realtor told us when we bought the place.”
“There was no sign of a break-in?”
“No,” Hal said. “No forced entry. Nothing like that.”
“Do you have an alarm?”
“We have one, but Mimi doesn’t like turning it on. A couple of times the alarm got tripped by accident. That turned into a big hassle.”
“But if the painting was valuable—” Sister Anselm began.
“I’m really not worried about the painting,” he interrupted. “It’s a watercolor, but it’s ugly as all get-out. It looks like one of my grandmother’s old patchwork quilts. Donna didn’t know if Mimi had decided to sell it. Or if she knows, she wouldn’t say. For all I know, Serenity may have already located a buyer, not that she’d tell me about it. As far as she’s concerned, her mother’s art collection is none of my business.”
“I take it you and Mimi’s daughter don’t get along very well,” Sister Anselm concluded.
“With Serenity? Are you kidding? Except for Donna, her P.A., no one gets along with Serenity. She doesn’t get along with me, not with her brother, and not with her mother, either. Especially not her mother. Her dearly departed daddy could do no wrong, but everyone else comes up short in her book. At the time we got married, Mimi worried that the kids might be a problem. I thought, How bad could it be? Turns out Mimi was right. Serenity has been badmouthing me to anyone who will listen. Despite her name, she specializes in creating discord.”
So Mimi Cooper’s relatives aren’t that much different from James’s, Ali thought.
“The name on Serenity’s birth certificate is listed as Sandra Jean,” Hal continued. “With her father’s approval and help, she went to court and changed it on the day she turned eighteen. Why wouldn’t she? Anything that came from her mother, including her name, is automatically suspect. I’ve mostly tried to stay out of her way and not rock the boat. I thought long and hard before I called her to lend a hand while I was gone this last time, but with the surgery coming up and since Mimi’s her mother . . .” He shrugged and sighed. “That’s what I did—I called.”