Chasing Their Losses

by Lucia Sinn

  And yet, even as Cara considered these possibilities, a plan of action was forming in her mind.

  After talking with Nancy in Oakland, Cara went to the front office where latex gloves were kept for safe food handling. She pulled a pair from the shelf and stuck them in her pocket.

  “What’s up with the gloves? “ Casey asked. “You fixing to do some cleaning out in the kitchen?”

  How could she tell Casey that she needed a way to break into a house without leaving fingerprints?

  Fortunately, she didn’t have to explain. At that moment, a call came over the intercom in the telephone operator’s subdued, controlled voice. “Code Blue, Room 2017.” It was the hospital’s call for an advanced cardiac life support team, and meant a patient was in serious trouble.

  Cara and Casey locked eyes. “Cabella” they both said together.

  Cara knew the team would now be rushing to 2017. She would be in the way if she went upstairs to see what was going on. But within the hour, the message came back downstairs over the computer print out. “Patient expired.”

  Louise Cabella was dead.

  Anxiety pulsed through Cara’s veins. Her first thought was of Jeff King. Mrs. Cabella had despised him, and Agnes Sullivan adored him. And yet, both women had died abruptly while he was on the unit.

  “I’ll be out of the hospital for a few minutes,” she said to Casey. “Call on my cell if you need me.” She dashed across the street to John’s office. He was careful about scheduling appointments and seldom had a crowded waiting room.

  Cara approached his receptionist, Delores, a small gray haired woman who’d worked for him as long as he’d been in practice. “I have to talk to John immediately,” she said.

  Delores glanced out toward the patients, then back to Cara. A deep groove formed between her sparse eyebrows. “Come on back,” she said, her voice tense.

  Delores pulled Cara into an empty exam room. “You’ll have to wait until he’s finished with his patient. What’s wrong? Your face is the color of your lab coat.”

  “Angie Cabella’s grandmother just died.”

  “Oh, no. That poor family. How much worse can things get for them? But why is it important that John know right away? Mrs. Cabella wasn’t his patient.”

  “I know, but it’s like what happened with Agnes Sullivan. Very sudden and unexpected.”

  Angie took Cara’s hand and pulled her close. “You need to sit down. You’re all stressed out.”

  “I’m not cracking up, Delores. Please, tell John I must see him as soon as he steps out of the examination room.”

  “All right, you just wait here.” Delores held a cool palm against Cara’s forehead. “I’ll get you a glass of ice water. And just to be safe, maybe I should take your blood pressure.”

  “No, I’m fine, thank you.”

  Cara watched the clock for ten long minutes until John entered the room. As usual, he wore a short sleeved sport shirt and blue jeans under his lab coat. “What’s going on?” he said.

  Cara stood up. “I’m sorry to interrupt like this, John, but Tony’s mother just died.”

  John looked at her with unfocused eyes. “This is tough for Tony, I know, with everything else that’s going on. But what’s so urgent about telling me right away?”

  “It’s not about Tony; it’s about your patient, Agnes Sullivan. She died in the same room as Mrs. Cabella. I think Jeff King had a hand in their deaths.”

  “Whoa.” John’s eyes widened. “That’s a bit of a stretch. It would be fairly difficult to murder a patient in front of an entire staff of health care professionals.”

  “Would it? Think of Orville Lynn Majors up in Vermillion County, the so called Angel of Death. He was convicted of killing six elderly patients with lethal injections of percodan.”

  John eyes went from Cara’s head to her feet. “You should have taken a few days off.” he said. When she didn’t respond he put his arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Why don’t you come up and spend the night at the farm? We’ll take a walk down to the creek, listen to the crickets, and things will begin to seem normal again.”

  Cara pushed him away. “I know you think I’m overwrought, but please, just hear me out.”

  “I’m listening”

  “Do you remember that Agnes Sullivan died right after I told Dr. Rozgonyi you were going to report Jeff to administration? He told me you would be sorry. And he’s right. You lost a patient and the family is threatening to sue you. Now, let me tell you what Mrs. Cabella told me about Jeff just a few minutes before she died.”

  John fingered his jaw after hearing what Tony’s mother had told Cara. “I’ll admit, I’m beginning to get some bad vibes,” he said. “But Jeff wouldn’t have access to prescription drugs. They’re under lock and key. And their use is carefully tracked.”

  “Jeff is resourceful.” Cara was thinking about the disappearance of the article about Rozgonyi. The rat in the dish room. The mouse on her desk. His possession of a master key.

  “I don’t know what to suggest, short of an autopsy for both patients, which would be difficult to justify.”

  “But supposing the Sullivans follow through on their threat to sue?”

  “I don’t think they will. It would be hard to prove their elderly mother died because she ate a slice of bacon. No lawyer would take a case like that.”

  “But supposing they came up with other complaints? And you needed to prove she didn’t die of natural causes?”

  John gave her a tight little smile. “I guess we could exhume the body. But there would have to be a strong reason. Why would Jeff want Tony’s mother dead?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but it probably has to do with money. By the way, how well do you know Mrs. Cabella’s doctor, Tom Johnson?”

  “I know him fairly well, but no doctor in his right mind would ask for an autopsy on an elderly patient unless her family demanded it. He’d just be stirring up trouble for himself.”

  And that’s what you’re thinking about Agnes Sullivan, isn’t it? That she was just old, going to die anyway, so why worry about it? That’s how over one hundred elderly patients died sudden deaths up in Vermillion County Hospital before anyone decided to question what had happened.”

  “You really think Jeff could be a serial killer?”

  “No, I think he just kills when it suits his purposes. Sullivan was gone within half an hour after I left Rozgonyi’s office. I’m sure Rozgonyi had just paged him and told him you might file a complaint. He wanted to get even, make you look bad. It’s that simple.”

  John leaned against the wall and looked at Cara. “I guess it’s possible, but who would believe such a story?”

  “What if Tony or Janie were to demand an autopsy? And it turned out Mrs. Cabella had been given an overdose of morphine or percodon or some other drug. Would you consider requesting one for Agnes?”

  “In that case, yes. But there isn’t much time to act.”

  “I know,” Cara said. “I have to convince the Cabellas their mother may have been murdered.”

  * * *

  Cara still remembered the entire layout of the Cabella basement, especially the extra large, custom built pet window above a shelf in the furnace room.

  It was made so the family cats could come and go as they pleased, but the flap was large enough for a teenaged Cara to wriggle through. She recalled the excitement of Tony holding her ankles, helping her squeeze through until finally, she was in his arms, all sweaty and dusty; tingling with a surge of adolescent hormones rushing through her body.

  Tonight, Cara wore a pair of black stretch pants, a long sleeved black T-shirt and knee length black cotton socks. A biting wind was in the air, but she couldn’t afford any more bulk--not even her cell phone, which she left in her car. She parked a block away and jogged down the back alley, darting into the back yard of the Cabella’s next door neighbor, where her high school girlfriend had lived.

  From the upstairs master bedroom, a single light shone o
ut across the treetops. Since it was a school night, Cara figured Ana would already be in bed in her own room. Janie and Jeff were probably seated on the small flowered couch at the far end of the master bedroom, away from the window. Cara hoped they were watching television, so that any small sounds she might make would be muffled. She was taking a huge risk by breaking into the house tonight, but she had a strong sense that whatever she was looking for couldn’t wait until morning.

  Cara pushed on the wooden flap and found it still operable, although it creaked on rusty hinges. She sat on the cold damp earth, rested her feet against the window, and scooted forward.

  She had been a size one the last time she’d squeezed through this window. Since then, she had graduated to a six. It was going to be tight, but it looked like she could still manage to get inside. She smiled to herself, thankful that the Cabella’s cats had been huge oversized males who devoured mountains of cat food. As she slithered into the basement, she held her breath against the ambush of smells that had always made her gag: dirty litter, cat piss, wet fishy cat food. But when her feet hit the ground, she realized the odors were gone and the cats had probably died. And yet, there was still a musty odor that triggered memories of something in her past.

  She stood still for a moment to calm her breathing and wait for the sharp pains in her shoulders and hips to subside. She flicked on her flashlight and inched her way past the furnace toward the familiar recreation room with its wet bar and plaid furniture. The old red carpeting had been replaced with a sturdy beige, but otherwise, it was still exactly the same.

  The dank odor grew stronger. Cara knew there were two small storage rooms beyond the recreation room, where Mrs. Cabella had kept a large cache of canned goods and a well stocked upright freezer. The door was shut, but not locked. Upon entering the storeroom, Cara saw the old freezer in a corner, but on the opposite wall, she saw a warren of animal cages. Several pairs of beady eyes appeared in the beam of her flashlight.

  Mice.

  Now, Cara recognized that smell as one she remembered from the biochemistry lab at Indiana State. She and her fellow students had conducted experiments to demonstrate how the lack of various nutrients adversely affected animal growth and mortality. She had wept uncontrollably when her own mouse had died because its cornmeal diet had deprived it of the amino acid, lysine.

  Damn it, this all made perfect sense. Jeff was conducting experiments on mice for a nutrition research project. Naturally, Mrs. Cabella would be horrified at such activity, but it was perfectly legitimate. Cara couldn’t argue with what he was doing. Disappointment made her stomach churn. John was right. She should have gone to the farm tonight and listened to the crickets. She had to get out, fast. She turned toward the cat window and stumbled as the stepladder she and John had always used for her getaways crashed to the floor.

  A door slammed upstairs. Panic fizzed through Cara’s blood as heavy footfalls sounded overhead. She hid between the couch and the wall in the rec room and told herself not to be alarmed. Janie had probably come downstairs for a glass of milk. But just as she had calmed her racing heart, the basement door swung open. The flick of a switch flooded the basement with light as Cara heard footsteps on the stairs.

  “Hey, what’s going on down here?” Janie called out.

  Cara held her breath, and hoped her dark clothing would look like a shadow.

  “One of those damn rats got out, I’ll bet.” Janie said, talking to herself.

  Cara edged toward the steps as Janie disappeared into the storeroom. If Janie was searching for a stray mouse or rat, she would surely look behind the couch. Cara ran blindly up the stairs. Only six steps, but it seemed to take forever to get to the top. And yet, she made it to the hallway behind the darkened kitchen, dashed to the thickly carpeted dining room, and hid behind a long damask drapery. Realizing she had scraped her arm on a drapery hook, she put her wrist to her mouth, and backed away from the moonlight into the windowless den.

  Janie stayed in the basement for several minutes. Cara heard her moving chairs and scooting the furniture aside until she came back upstairs, turned off the light, and slammed the door shut before continuing on up to the second floor.

  Cara could hear the muted sound of television, but no voices indicating Jeff was present. She felt around in the dark, remembering there had been a large desk. Just to make sure she didn’t bump it, she flicked on her flashlight and saw Mrs. Cabella’s will carelessly tossed on the desktop.

  Cara couldn’t resist looking it over. Her eyes slid past the legal mumbo jumbo to the place where Mrs. Cabella had named Janie and an officer at the bank as co- executors. She had left a bequest of five million dollars to Sycamore Hospital to establish the Cabella Foundation, with Janie and the bank officer to determine its allocation and administer its distribution. The rest of her estate, an unnamed amount, was left to her two grandchildren, Ana and Angie. Janie would inherit the family home and receive the income from her daughter’s share until Ana reached the age of thirty. Tony had been left a token $1,000, with an explanation that she had given him money several times through the years, and had purposely excluded him from the will.

  Had Janie known about the new will all along? Somehow, Cara was sure she did. Mrs. Cabella had hated Jeff King. It would have been very much in her character to show the will to Janie as a form of punishment and a way of expressing her disapproval. But had Tony been told he was disinherited? If so, it would not have provided a motive for murder. A copy of the will would have been at her attorney’s office, and Mrs. Cabella’s death would only speed up the execution of her wishes. If Tony and Janie were upset, they would have probably tried to talk her into changing her mind. There would be no reason for either of them to want their mother to die until she made a new will more to their liking.

  Once again, Cara felt a pang of disappointment and embarrassment that she had accused Jeff of murder.

  Cara had to get out of this house immediately. And she would tell no one that she had done this foolish thing. She inched her way slowly back down the basement stairs and climbed back up the stepladder, but met resistance when she pushed on the cat window. It wouldn’t budge. Had she broken the spring? It was entirely possible, since it was so old.

  Cara worked at it for several minutes, sweat dripping from her armpits. Her stomach cramped with anxiety. She stopped what she was doing and took a few cleansing breaths, knowing she had to get control of herself if she expected to get out of this place undetected. She jumped back down and went into the storeroom, remembering that there had been a peg board next to the freezer with different tools. She flashed the light, hoping to find a crowbar, when she felt something crawl over her foot.

  She put a fist to her mouth to stifle the scream in her throat as she spotted a large black rat scurrying away from the flashlights beam. Then she saw it: one small pink shoe.

  It looked new, as if it had only been worn a time or two. One of the girls must have come down to see the mice and lost it.

  At that moment, she heard a small sound, like a kitten mewing. She stood stock still, heart thudding in her chest. The noise came from behind a closet door partially hidden by the cages. She moved a cage and rattled the door knob. It didn’t budge. Cara flashed her light up and down the doors edge and saw a large shiny dead bolt that looked new. It slid open easily and the door swung open.

  Cara flashed her light to the ground and felt her knees go weak.

  Angie lay curled up in a fetal position with her face in a pool of vomit. Her eyes were closed. She wore a bright pink T-shirt, Capri pants, and one pink shoe.

  Cara stood for a moment, trying to assimilate the scene before her. She could feel a cold sweat, from her head to her feet. Then adrenalin kicked in, and her instincts took over.

  When she leaned down to pick Angie up, a dark gray rat scurried out from a corner. Cara’s first thought was that Angie must have stumbled into the closet and accidentally gotten locked in. But the shiny new deadbolt told the true story.
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br />   By now, Cara’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she found her way into to the recreation room. She lay Angie on the couch and put her ear to the small narrow chest, listening to her rapid heartbeat as she smelled vomit mixed with the dreaded fruity odor of a diabetic in the state of ketoacidosis. Angie’s face felt dry, and her hands were icy.

  Cara went to the refrigerator under the bar and found a bottle of water. Angie’s eyes remained closed, but Cara forced open her mouth and allowed a few sips to trickle down her throat. She needed to be hospitalized immediately or she would die. But how could Cara call for help when the only reason she knew what had happened was that she’d been sneaking around in the Cabella basement? Breaking and entering, it was called. And it was a crime. It didn’t matter; she could make up some excuse later. She would have to take a chance, sneak upstairs, and dash out the front door to reach her cell phone before any security system kicked in.

  She had her foot on the bottom stair when she heard the overhead floorboards creak and the rattle of a key in a lock. The door swung open wide, and the basement was awash with light. Jeff King rushed down the stairs, holding a small pistol.

  “Raise your hands,” he commanded.

  Cara did as she was told.

  “Dear, nosy, smart efficient Cara.” Jeff’s voice was sharp with sarcasm. “How unfortunate, you couldn’t stay out of my business.”

  “Your business?”

  Jeff’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Pick up Angie and put her back in the closet. Make a sound, you’re dead.”

  Cara stooped down and took Angie in her arms, feeling the sharp end of a gun boring into her back as he told her to lay the child on the closet floor, and go back upstairs.

  When they reached the kitchen, he opened the back door and pushed Cara out into the yard.