Last Licks

by Donally, Claire

  “Helena, come on,” Sunny burst out. “The best he could do was pull the nice old man act. I’ve got to be—what? Half his age?” She stopped for a second, thinking, And I didn’t have to depend on him for a job, like Elsa Hogue. Maybe I was lucky.

  “That hasn’t stopped him in the past.” Helena looked deeply into her coffee cup. “Most anyone who encounters Gardner hears something about his travels, and I expect you can guess why he had to leave Piney Brook sometimes. But he came back about ten years ago when Alfred was planning to get married. The only problem is, during the engagement party, Alfred stumbled over his fiancée and his uncle—literally.” She pursed her lips. “Let’s just say that Gardner got a lot farther with that girl than he ever did with me.”

  “Yikes!” Sunny stared. “What happened?”

  “Gardner got out of town, and Alfred got his ring back,” Helena responded. “I’m told that they didn’t speak for years.”

  “And yet, when Gardner got sick, Alfred was over at Bridgewater Hall all the time.” Sunny spoke slowly. “I thought he was just keeping tabs on his uncle. But maybe he was watching him more like a vulture. No wonder Gardner kept giving him crap about being the all-purpose heir.”

  “As the only close relative, Alfred was certainly in an interesting position.”

  “Yeah, really interesting.” Sunny scowled. “Alfred had to toe the line pretty carefully if he wanted to be close enough to enjoy watching his uncle going downhill, but not annoy the old man enough to get disinherited.”

  That could explain why Alfred turned a blind eye to Gardner’s harassment of Elsa, Sunny thought. He had bigger fish to fry.

  “Will always says the two strongest motives for murder and mayhem are love and money,” she said almost to herself. “Alfred has both—disappointed love and the Scatterwell inheritance.”

  Sunny bit her lip as counterarguments zinged around her brain. But if Alfred had been waiting on his revenge for almost a decade, why would he suddenly push it? I only knew Gardner for a little while, but it certainly didn’t look as though he was improving. Why would Alfred suddenly lose patience? Why couldn’t he just wait a little longer?

  Aloud, she said, “Thanks for digging up this dirt, Helena. Knowing Gardner as you did, it must have been distasteful.”

  “It was interesting,” Mrs. M. replied, “if somewhat seedy.” She might have been about to say more, but a crash came from the living room. “Toby!” she called, then shot an embarrassed smile at Sunny. “Looks like the start of another adventure in dog owning.”

  Sunny followed her host into the living room, where Toby lay whining under the coffee table, peering out at the pieces of a broken vase on the floor. Sunny decided it would probably be best for her to wait for Will outside, so she made a quick good-bye and left Helena to deal with the latest disaster.

  When Will arrived, Sunny whistled at his outfit. He was all in black—Henley shirt, jeans, and a jean jacket.

  “You look as though you should be riding a motorcycle,” she told him.

  “Good,” he replied, “then I should fit in over at O’Dowd’s later.” Raising his sunglasses, he took in her outfit. “Which is more than I can say for you, missy.”

  She made a face. “I’m going to change later. We can’t both go to Dr. Gavrik looking like we intend to beat the truth out of her.”

  “So while I menace the good doctor, I suppose you can appeal to her softer side.”

  “That’ll be like appealing to the softer side of a rock,” Sunny muttered as she climbed aboard.

  As they started off to the north, Will asked, “So what did you learn about our new best friend Alfred? What are his vices? Women? Money? Sheep?”

  “Well, it looks as though he had an experience that put him off women.” Sunny passed along the story that Mrs. Martinson told her.

  “His uncle and his fiancée? Ouch. That makes for one tangled motive. Or two, if you count the money.” He frowned. “This is the problem with going solely on motive. You can pile it up until, on paper, you’ve got a prime suspect.”

  “I detect a ‘but’ in the underbrush,” Sunny said.

  Will nodded. “But your case doesn’t hold together when you apply real-world considerations.”

  “Like why would he wait ten years and then suddenly rush his uncle off the mortal coil?”

  “Or if he had those ten years to plan a murder, he wouldn’t at least give himself an ironclad alibi.”

  “For that matter, why would a guy as—well, ‘controlling’ is as good a word that comes to my mind—put himself in somebody else’s power by hiring them to kill Gardner?”

  “I can see you’ve been thinking about this for a bit,” Will said.

  “Guilty,” she admitted. “And there are always answers you can come up with. He’s arrogant, he’s conceited, he figures that whoever actually committed the murder for him is in too deep to talk about it . . .”

  “You left out a favorite from TV detective shows,” Will put in. “Maybe he’s just crazy.” He sighed. “You can explain and explain until you build a Frankenstein’s monster of a theory like the one that Ollie Barnstable came up with against Stan Orton. But you’re supposed to apply Occam’s Razor.”

  Sunny grinned. “Also known as KISS—‘Keep it simple, stupid!’ Start from the simplest causes, and keep to the least complex results.”

  “Can we do that?” Will asked. “We have a nephew who stands to inherit and who hates his uncle for bad behavior. We also have an occupational therapist who hates the old geezer because he’s making her life a living hell. So they join forces . . .”

  “Except that doesn’t jibe with Elsa’s take on Alfred,” Sunny objected. “She didn’t make a big deal out of it, but I’d say she really resented the fact that he didn’t try to help her. Somehow, I can’t see him coming to her and saying, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t rat out my uncle for abusing you, but here’s a better way. Let’s kill him.’”

  “Based on opportunity, Elsa Hogue was working late at the facility and could have been the one giving something to Gardner—again assuming Ollie didn’t dream it,” Will offered. “Lord knows, she had motive.”

  “She called Gardner a vile sort of person,” Sunny agreed. “And yet . . . here comes the real world again. Gardner had to know how she felt about him. Why would he accept anything from her in the middle of the night?”

  “Maybe the great lover thought she’d finally come around.”

  “With the accent on final?” Sunny shook her head. “I thought you didn’t like what-ifs and maybes.”

  “I’m trying to float some theory of the crime.” Will drove in silence for a moment. “All right, based on opportunity, we do have one other outsider near Room 114 that night.”

  “Luke Daconto.” For Sunny, this was a nonstarter. “You’ve got opportunity all right, but in terms of motive, there’s nothing. He was actually friendly with Gardner, and Gardner was a fan of his.”

  “I could throw Alfred into the mix, offering money for Daconto to do the deed,” Will said quickly. “The guy must be having money problems. He’s playing at O’Dowd’s, for crying out loud.”

  Sunny told Will about Luke’s commune upbringing. “He still makes his mom’s skin cream,” she finished. “With a hippy-dippy background like that, do you think he’d really be interested in Alfred’s money?”

  “They say that whatever one generation wants, the next generation wants nothing to do with,” Will said. “The hippies rebelled against the suburban American dream. Maybe Daconto is rebelling against his mom and really wants lots of money. Maybe he only makes her lotion or whatever because he’s hoping he can sell the formula for a million dollars.”

  “Brilliant theory, Ollie,” she told him.

  Will subsided again as he drove along the country roads around Levett. “There’s one theory I’m really not happy to bring up. But now
that we’re out of the folks who’d not normally be around the ward, we’ve got to look at the regular staff—and that jump in the death statistics at Bridgewater Hall. What if Gardner Scatterwell was just the latest in a series?”

  Sunny stared. “You mean a serial killer?”

  “An angel of death—that’s what the newspeople like to call killers who turn up in health care.”

  “I think Frank Nesbit is going to love that theory,” Sunny told him. “An angel of death, operating right under his nose?”

  “It might be a little . . . politically opportune,” Will admitted after a brief pause. “But I’m beginning to think it’s either that, or Gardner Scatterwell simply died of a stroke.”

  “How do you figure to prove this?” Sunny wanted to know.

  “We’ll have to ask Dr. Reese for patient records—and staff attendance for months, maybe years. Then we’ll have to see if the same names crop up around the patients who died.”

  “That’s going to be a lot of paperwork,” Sunny had to point out. “And we’re coming up on our deadline.”

  “Yeah,” Will replied. “Too bad we’ve got a date tonight.” The route they were traveling became a bit more complicated, and conversation halted as Will went into a series of turns, taking them through more built-up areas, then on a more countrified road again, and after about a quarter of a mile, he turned into what looked like a break in a wall of bushes, and they wound up in a parking lot.

  ”I didn’t think that places like this existed anymore,” Sunny said, taking in the building sprawling in front of them. It had probably started out as a lodge or log cabin but had grown, throwing out extensions. In his youth, Sunny’s dad would have called it a roadhouse. But there was no honky-tonk atmosphere inside. The lighting was subdued, the lunch crowd quiet, and the smell of food delicious.

  “A couple of deputies from Levett took me here a few times,” Will whispered as they walked up to the hostess. “But I never felt comfortable here. Nesbit turned up too often.”

  They mentioned Dr. Gavrik’s name and were quickly led to a booth in a quiet corner where the doctor was already sitting, her back to the wall, tight-lipped as ever, those piercing dark eyes glancing to her watch and then giving them a “time is money” look.

  She had a cup of coffee in front of her. “The fried food is very good—to the taste, if not for the health.”

  Sunny was surprised. That statement was the most human thing she’d heard from the doctor since they’d met her. Will ordered a burger and cola, Sunny a grilled chicken sandwich with lemonade, and the doctor told the waitress, “The usual.”

  Will looked at her for a long moment after the waitress left, and then casually asked, “What was so important in Atlanta, Doctor?”

  Gavrik’s gaze went from piercing to glaring for a moment, “Nothing was interesting there. A storm delayed me.” She took a sip of her coffee, her hand moving smoothly. “You think you have found something, but you know nothing. However, I will tell you, to keep you from prying into my personal life. I transferred at Hartsfield Airport, from a flight from Greensboro.”

  “Okay,” Will said. “What was so important in Greensboro?”

  “A job interview,” Gavrik replied. “Something perhaps I should have done long ago. There is a large Serbian population in that area, so perhaps my language—my accent—will be useful instead of a hindrance.”

  “You want to leave Bridgewater Hall?” Sunny asked, thinking, Another defector!

  “You ask why I should leave such a wonderful place?” For the briefest of moments, the woman smiled, and she was striking. Then her lips clamped tightly together again. “I came to this country with excellent medical training, but little English. Working at Bridgewater Hall—that was the best I could get. I was at the top of my class in medical school, and I end up catering to a collection of wealthy invalids? It is enough to make the saints laugh.”

  “Then why did you come to the U.S.?” Will asked.

  “My country . . . is no more. In the town where I grew up, my relatives were trying to kill the neighbors, and they were trying to do the same for us. I worked in a glorified butcher shop, patching holes in people so they could go out and fight again. I dreamed of working in a place where explosions would not bring the walls down on me. And so I came to America, the land of shining hospitals and the finest technology . . . and I worked on people who have shortness of breath or pains in the chest.” She grimaced. “Or who need enemas.”

  Their food arrived. Dr. Gavrik’s “usual” was apparently a piece of meat in a pale sauce on noodles, but she didn’t touch it. “Do you know how it is to be looked down on, the foreign doctor who does the work no one else wants to do, who does it cheap? And all the while, you also see money wasted. Keeping animals for old fools to pet, or paying a person to sing with them . . . these are not necessary things. Yet the new administrator tells me how all departments must suffer if the facility is to go on. To me, that seems . . . ungenerous. So I think it is time to go.”

  “It seems a long trip,” Sunny said.

  “They told me six hours to return,” the doctor said. “I took the late flight in case my meeting ran long. It did.”

  “You must have been pretty tired,” Will said.

  Her black eyes snapped, boring into him. “Not really. The delays allowed me to sleep for a while, and I slept on the ride from Boston. Do not suggest that I made some sort of mistake because of fatigue. I followed all the protocols with Mr. Scatterwell. You can confirm that through the nurses who worked with me.”

  She braced both hands flat on the table, leaning toward them. “Gardner Scatterwell died of a massive stroke. We did our best for him, but sometimes patients die.”

  “How about the other patients who’ve died in the facility?” Will wanted to know. “The ones that have thrown your statistics out of whack?”

  “I do not have time for this nonsense.” One second, the doctor was sitting across from them. The next, she was rapidly moving in the direction of the exit.

  “Well,” Will said, watching the disappearing doctor. “I have time for this burger.”

  “Are you sure?” Sunny said dubiously. “She looks ready to raise hell.”

  Will only shrugged. “Either we’ll get what we want, or we won’t. There’s only one thing that annoys me.”

  “What?” Sunny asked.

  “The doctor stuck us with the bill for her meal.”

  There was no use wasting their food, too, so Will and Sunny did their best to enjoy their meals. Lunch didn’t sit so happily when they arrived at Bridgewater Hall, however. Dr. Reese only confirmed Sunny’s apprehensions.

  “I just had a meeting with Dr. Gavrik,” the administrator said. “She told me that, apparently having failed to find any convincing evidence about Mr. Scatterwell’s death, you want to try a desperate fishing expedition through our mortality records.” Reese leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “I can’t allow that. Our initial agreement stipulated that we would offer as much assistance as possible, but we would not jeopardize patient confidentiality. We are legally obligated to keep patient records private, and this request goes beyond that.”

  “Does that include patient names?” Will inquired.

  “Federal regulations prohibit it,” Reese said. “But even if it were solely within my discretion, I still wouldn’t give you those records.”

  “Fine,” Will said. “I’ll explain that to Mr. Barnstable. And then you’ll probably get to explain it to him again.”

  They went straight from the administration offices down to Room 114. Ollie’s roommate was out, which was just as well. Ollie wasn’t happy to hear about Dr. Reese’s attitude. But he was even more upset when he heard why Will wanted the records.

  “You think one of the doctors or nurses is euthanizing patients?” Ollie looked as if more than his leg was paining him.

/>   “It’s just a theory,” Will admitted. “We’ve taken a pretty good look at the suspects who shouldn’t have been in the ward on the night Scatterwell died. They have alibis, but they’re not airtight. But what about the people who were supposed to be there—the staff? We can’t ‘follow the money’ to see if someone received some unusual amount without searching through all their bank records—that’s a police investigation. And we don’t have the leverage to circumvent patient privacy laws to look into medical records and see if there might be something behind those high mortality rates we heard about. Again, it would have to be an official police request.”

  “And we all know that Sheriff Nesbit isn’t about to do that,” Sunny said.

  “So, unless something amazing happens, you’re telling me your investigation is dead in the water.”

  Ollie’s shoulders seemed to shrink.

  “Listen, Barnstable, we were supposed to see if there were any circumstances that suggested anything other than a stroke.” Will spread his hands. “Natural causes still seem to be the strongest possibility.”

  After saying good-bye to a subdued Ollie, Sunny and Will headed for the door in silence. Rafe Warner was working the front desk, but must have caught their mood, because he didn’t chat either, merely nodding as they signed out.

  Conversation continued to languish in Will’s truck all the way home. As they turned onto Wild Goose Drive, he asked, “Should I come and pick you up later?”

  Sunny gave him a listless shrug. “If you don’t mind taking Dad, too.”

  “Heck of a date,” Will muttered. “Will he be riding shotgun or sitting between us?”

  Mike surprised Sunny with a roasted chicken, roasted potatoes, and two kinds of hot vegetables waiting on the table. “Picked it up all ready-made at Judson’s Market,” he admitted. “Kinda pricey, but I was in the mood to splurge. Besides,” he added, patting his stomach, “we’re going to need some fortification before we deal with O’Dowd’s beer.”

  Sunny got some cat food for Shadow, and then all three of them started on dinner.

  When they’d finished, Sunny went upstairs to dig out her old pair of Doc Martens and her least disgusting housecleaning jeans. A navy blue T-shirt with a couple of paint splatters and a gray hoodie completed the ensemble. Hardly the way I’d usually dress for a date, she thought wryly.