The Cure May Kill You: A Cassidy Hudson Mystery

by Carlie Lemont

  “What was that?” Janet said.

  “Nothing. I’ll drop it all off after dinner tonight.”

  “Good. Oh, and Cassidy?”

  Cassidy stopped her march toward the exit, her back still to her boss.

  “Thanks for being such a team player. That Employee of the Month award is coming up next week, you know, and I’ve heard your name being thrown around lately.”

  Cassidy pivoted, smiling with as much sincerity as she could dredge up. “Oh, thank you, Janet. That’s just what I’ve always wanted. You’re such an inspiration.” Then, she spun back around to take long, bold strides away from the lies she’d just told.

  “Wow!” JJ said, rushing to catch up to Cassidy. “Slow down.”

  Cassidy halted just outside the door to wait for her friend, but this little slice of kindness proved to be the wrong decision. Not three seconds later, she heard Willow shout from down the hallway.

  “Cassidy!” The crazy woman sprinted toward them.

  “Run,” Cassidy said.

  “We can’t! She’s already made eye contact!”

  “Precisely my point. Move it—now!”

  “Stop her!” Willow bellowed, rapidly approaching, looking ridiculous in her hot pink base-jumpers outfit. She spread her arms wide, and Cassidy shuffled back just in case Willow became airborne. Oh my God. Does she actually have wings? Maybe she was paying homage to one of her ancestors, the flying squirrel?

  Nevertheless, Cassidy stopped short of the building’s exit, knowing she’d never make it out unscathed, so she might just as well have the annoying conversation inside where it was air-conditioned. As much as she hated to talk to Willow, Cassidy hated frizzy fly-aways even more.

  “I don’t have much time before my first appointment,” Cassidy said. “Is this really important?”

  “I just wanted to ask you something.” Willow shot JJ a glance with an awkward smile. “Privately.”

  “It’s okay, JJ. It won’t take long.”

  JJ walked away.

  “Willow, please, make this quick.”

  Willow leaned close and, in barely audible words, asked, “Are you okay?”

  “What?” Cassidy strained to hear her, but even more, fought to ascertain the importance of her words.

  “I saw your car door the other day with that nasty little word scratched into it.”

  Cassidy flinched, mostly from Willow’s halitosis, but also from the bizarre woman knowing something Cassidy had been trying to keep quiet. Nosy little troll! “How do you know about that?”

  Willow shrugged. “I saw it. You drove by me in the parking lot—well, no, actually you tried to run me down in the parking lot. But when I looked up after rolling off to the side, I saw... the word.” And she did her best impression of Macaulay Culkin from the 1990’s movie, Home Alone.

  “It was probably just some stupid kids in the neighborhood who marked the wrong car, because no one in their right mind would think that about me. Plus, I already got the car fixed. And I assure you I did not see you in the parking lot the other day. I would never, ever purposely damage my car.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’m sure you didn’t see me. You wouldn’t actually run me down in cold blood.” Willow reached for Cassidy and tried to pull her into an unwanted embrace.

  Cassidy stepped back. “Please don't touch me. I'm not in the mood.” She looked over at JJ. “Come on, I’m ready, let’s go.”

  “Goodbye!” Willow waved frantically with both hands. “Have a blessed day full of rainbows and—”

  The office door slammed shut.

  “What did she want?” JJ said.

  “Oh, nothing important. You know how she is. She indirectly accused me of trying to run her over in the parking lot the other day. Can you imagine? Seriously, JJ, when would I ever do that? Anyway, I told her she was wrong, and she agreed with me, so we’re all good.” Cassidy rummaged through her purse for the car keys. “Now, what I really want is to get this day over with as quickly and as painlessly as possible. Any objections?”

  “I think that’s always our goal.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” Cassidy smiled and got into her car. “Let’s get to our patients first, then try and do Randi’s last, in case that visit turns out to be emotionally or physically draining. We wouldn’t want to start out our day that way. Sound okay with you?”

  JJ agreed, so Cassidy turned left out of the parking lot in a rush to get their day started. But as she drove, her uneasy feeling grew, and she caught herself checking the rearview mirror over and over again after passing a major intersection in which she could have sworn she saw the dark-colored car merge into traffic behind her. Her heart sped up, and she readjusted the mirror for the fourth time to get a better look behind her.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “I’m not sure,’” Cassidy said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I keep thinking I see the same car following us all the time. Is that crazy of me to think?”

  “When did you first see it?”

  “After Marge’s murder, when we were at that restaurant. And then I saw it again, while I was getting my car door re-painted. I don’t know. I think I’m just losing my mind.”

  “Why would someone be following us?”

  “I’d hate to even guess. Just do me a favor, though, and keep your eyes peeled for a dark-colored car.”

  “That’s the best description you have? Dark-colored?”

  “Hey, gimme a break, I don’t know cars. But I’m sure whoever was driving it was hell-bent on killing me.”

  An unsettled silence fell between them, with Cassidy no longer the only one checking and re-checking the mirrors.

  “Cassidy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think we’re in serious danger?”

  “Not sure,” she said, “but I’ll think twice before I take Max outside in the dark.” She turned right, two streets before she normally would have, then checked her mirrors again only to find an empty street behind her. Cassidy let out a sigh and relaxed her death grip on the steering wheel.

  CHAPTER 22

  A

  re you ready for this?” Cassidy said to JJ.

  Their next patient, Edith, was a handful. After their last encounter with the woman, Cassidy had to call in Adult Protective Services when Edith decided to use raw chicken skin as a face mask, then wash her hair in the toilet. APS ignored all of their concerns and declared Edith fit to live alone, and ever since, Cassidy had feared the worst every time she saw the woman on her therapy schedule.

  “I guess I’m ready,” JJ said. “I just feel like we aren’t doing her any good. She needs to be in a long-term care facility where people are with her twenty-four hours a day to make sure she isn’t going to hurt herself.”

  “I agree, but since APS isn’t going to do anything, at least we’re around a couple of times a week to monitor her physical and mental decline. If we keep reporting it, they might step in... eventually. Well, I guess we should get started.”

  Cassidy hesitated at the front door. Ever since the first murder, she hadn’t been able to shake her nerves every time she thought about reaching for a doorbell.

  “Ugh. This is ridiculous.” And she clenched her fist, lifting it to ring Edith’s doorbell.

  “I’ll get that.”

  Cassidy smiled. “Thank you.”

  At first, neither of them heard any signs of occupancy, so JJ rang the doorbell again and they waited for a few more minutes. Just when Cassidy was about to call the main office to let them know they might need to get ahold of Edith’s family or to call the authorities, they heard the telltale sound of a deadbolt unlocking.

  “At least she’s alive,” JJ said.

  Cassidy scowled. “All that means is there’s someone inside. Let’s take a step back.”

  At once, the door swung open, but neither Cassidy nor JJ could see through the dark mesh of the screen door.

  “Come in,”
said a whispery-soft voice from within.

  Cassidy and JJ glanced at each other, then tentatively opened the screen door and walked inside. There, standing before them, was Edith.

  “Oh my,” Cassidy said. “Well, this is definitely a job for the OT.”

  “Great, thanks a lot.”

  Edith stood in the center of the room, hands on her hips and hair pulled back into at least twenty pigtails. Makeup had been smeared across her face as if she’d started over multiple times without washing it off first. Yet this paled in comparison to what she wore: a lovely bright yellow Victoria’s Secret bra with the cups against her back and the back strap smashing her breasts flat against her body. The ensemble wouldn’t have been complete, though, without the pair of men’s boxer briefs Edith had attempted to use as shorts. Cassidy smiled, shook her head, and thanked God it wasn’t her own mother.

  “I love your shoes.” Cassidy pointed to Edith’s high-heeled Crocs. “The bright blue really brings out your eyes.”

  “Thank you, dear. I wasn’t sure they went with the rest of the outfit.”

  JJ took her by the arm. “I think we need to straighten out your clothing. Some of it looks a bit crooked.”

  “I guess I could use a little help,” Edith said. “I have to say, though, I’m really excited I was able to put on all of my clothes by myself today.”

  “Really?” Cassidy said. “I thought you’d hired a caregiver to assist you with silly little things like that.”

  “Oh, that tramp? She never shows up when I tell her to, and she steals from me. The other day, she took an entire garbage bag full of stuff out of the kitchen. Next thing I know, the whole damn bag disappears. It doesn’t matter, anyway. I don’t need her. I can do it all by myself. See?” She spread her arms out almost as wide as her smile.

  “Well, let JJ help you, okay? He’s an expert in women’s fashions.”

  “Oh, very funny,” JJ said, ushering Edith toward a safe place to sit.

  There. Finally, a few minutes of freedom. Now she could search through JJ’s phone to try to find out who’d sent him the disturbing text messages the other day at their self-defense class. Cassidy grabbed his backpack and rummaged through it, but the phone was nowhere to be found.

  “Hey, JJ!” she called into the other room. “I want to call Edith’s caregiver and find out why she’s not here, but I need to borrow your phone. Mine’s not working.”

  JJ hurried in and handed her his phone.

  She turned on the screen, but it was locked. “JJ! Password?”

  “Mr. Pickles,” he yelled back.

  Oh, right. His fish’s name. Or was it his turtle?

  Didn’t matter. She typed in the password and found his text messages, scrolled through the list and discovered some were from an unidentified number. She tapped the number and—

  “What are you looking at?” JJ said, walking up to her.

  “Um... I’m just looking for a number.”

  “In my text messages?” He tried to grab the phone from her, but she moved her arm and he missed.

  “Hold it right there, mister. You said I could use your phone.”

  “Oh! It’s so cute!” Edith said. “I want to see it! I wonder if it bounces or floats.” She snatched it out of Cassidy’s hand.

  “Yeah, thanks, Cassidy,” JJ said as Edith fumbled around with his phone. He grabbed it back. “Oh, great. The icons are all rearranged again. This is all your fault.” He glared at Cassidy.

  “Wasn’t me.” Cassidy held her hands up in mock surrender. “Edith must have moved some things around when she grabbed the phone. Don’t worry about it. I’ll help you fix it if you want.”

  “Why did you really need my phone anyway?”

  “I told you. Mine’s not working. My signal sucks here, and I couldn’t access the internet. I was trying to look up a number.”

  “You’re such a liar. Your phone worked just fine here last week. Remember when you called APS? It was with your phone, and you’d looked up the number.” He shoved the phone into his front pocket, away from both Cassidy and Edith.

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” Edith sang while waving her arms and prancing around on the couch as JJ chased her down, trying to herd her back to safety. He kept glancing at Cassidy, mouthing the words, Help me.

  “I think you’ve got this all under control.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Whatever, whatever, whatever,” Edith repeated in her sing-song voice, eluding JJ’s grasp. “Oh, look at the pretty, white bird.” She rushed over to the window. “Aren’t clouds pretty?”

  “Maybe we should call her caregiver,” JJ said.

  “You go right ahead and call. I’ll spend my time treating her. We have a lot to get done if we’re going to bill for the visit.”

  Cassidy spent the next ten minutes following Edith around the house, while the old woman transported items from one room to the next. Even though the home looked the same when they were done—still a cluttered mess—they’d nevertheless accomplished something, and it was these little things that made Cassidy happy she was a physical therapist. Edith had managed to walk for ten straight minutes without losing balance or needing verbal cues for safety. And while it might not seem like much to someone else, it meant a lot to Edith to be able to walk from room to room, transporting piles of junk, and it meant a lot to Cassidy to see her happy and mobile. Medicare would accept this as decent progress toward Edith’s goals, which added up to Sunshine Home Health getting reimbursed, paying the therapists, and keeping the patient on their caseload. A win-win, no matter how you looked at it.

  “You’re doing such a great job, Edith,” Cassidy said.

  “What do you mean? There’s so much to get done around here.” She picked up a large seashell from the table and absently scanned the room for a place to put it.

  “I know”—Cassidy gently took the shell from her—“but how about we leave it for next time. How do you feel?”

  “Fine, I guess.”

  “Good. Why don’t you have a seat, and we can check your vitals.”

  “But I’m not cooking anything, dear.” And Edith looked at her with such a strange expression, Cassidy giggled.

  “Vitals,” Cassidy said, “not vittles. You’re a funny lady. How about this, then: Can I check your blood pressure?”

  At this, JJ took the BP cuff from Cassidy and adjusted it to Edith’s left arm. “I’ll take care of it. You should get everything together that needs to be sanitized before we go.”

  Cassidy smiled. “Good call, Jamal.”

  Together, they completed Edith’s treatment session and made sure her caregiver arrived before they left. Thankfully, the caregiver was already en route when they called her, and she arrived in ten minutes, after which they briefed her on Edith’s attempt at getting dressed without assistance, providing a very detailed, light-humored description, of course.

  Once back at the car, Cassidy and JJ both took a few minutes to fill out paperwork. Usually, Cassidy waited until she got home, but she wanted to confront JJ about the text messages he was hiding. Being locked in a car together gave her the perfect opportunity. “People can be made to talk,” one of Cassidy’s favorite college professors had once told her, in a thick German accent. Fortunately, JJ wasn’t a CIA agent trained to keep his mouth shut so it wouldn't be that hard to make him talk.

  But JJ beat her to the punch.

  “Okay,” he said, “what gives?”

  “What, ever do you mean?”

  “Why were you going through my phone?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “I caught you fiddling with it. I’m not Edith; I can remember things that happened an hour ago.”

  Cassidy smiled. “I told you. I just wanted to look up something.”

  JJ shook his head. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why were you looking through my text messages? I saw you.”

  Cassidy raised her hands in surrender. “Fine. I was trying to see the texts you’d receive
d while we were at the self-defense class.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I wasn’t snooping through your stuff for no reason. I’m concerned, JJ. I want to know about the texts, and I want to know now.”

  JJ lifted his index finger. “Those texts are none of your business.”

  “Take your finger out of my face, before I poke your eyes out with it.”

  JJ lowered his hand to his lap.

  “Those texts are none of my business? Really, JJ? That’s mean. I saw your face. You were upset—very upset. As your best friend, I would have thought you’d have shared this with me. It wasn’t that long ago when our friendship was so awesome, you’d willingly tell me everything. No secrets between us.” Guilt oozed out with each word—her mother would be proud.

  JJ slumped. “It’s kind of a long story. Are you sure you want to invest that much time and energy into it, or into me? Remember when I tried to tell you about my car accident? Halfway through the story, somewhere between where my seatbelt failed to engage and my body had been thrown from the car, you asked me for the Cliffs Notes version.”

  “Our friendship has grown exponentially since then. We’d barely known each other a month at that point.”

  JJ stared with big puppy-dog eyes and raised eyebrows.

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “But in my defense, we were sitting on a cement bench and I felt like I was getting a pressure sore on my butt.”

  “All right, fine. For the past few days, I’ve been getting some anonymous text messages that have gotten progressively rude and more disturbing.” He took his phone from his pocket and searched through his messages to show her. “The ones I got while in the class were the worst yet.”

  “What did they say?”

  “At first they were just insults. Called me names, told me I was stupid. Annoying, but not frightening. I replied to the first couple, asked whoever was sending them to stop texting me, that they had the wrong person or the wrong number.” JJ scrolled through more messages to find the ones he was referring to. “Here,” he said, “read the last two. I got both while we were in the class.”

  Cassidy pulled on a pair of gloves and took the phone. The first one read: You’re a pig. You’ll get stuck like one if you aren’t careful. The second one read: I’ll slit your throat and poke out your eyes. You’ll never see it coming.