Deadly Summer (Darling Investigations Book 1)

by Denise Grover Swank

  “Oh, she’s been by a few times,” the nurse said, checking my IV line. “But we were given strict orders not to let Ms. Chapman in.”

  “By the doctor?”

  She laughed. “Oh, no. By Luke.”

  “The police chief? Why?”

  She shrugged. “Beats me, but honey, when Luke tells you to do something, you don’t argue.” A naughty grin lit up her face. Great, another Luke lover. She picked up a single red rose I hadn’t noticed before from the bedside table. She sniffed it and grinned as she set it back down.

  Where had that come from? Luke?

  Then another thought floated to the surface of my jumbled mind: I’ve got plenty of competition.

  I was tempted to physically shake the notion away, but I’d probably only puke on her shoes. There was no Luke and Summer. Not anymore. We’d been kids, and now we were adults. We were different people. There was no picking up where we’d left off—not that I would want to because the end had been ugly. But I was a fool if I thought I could pretend I wasn’t still attracted to him. I just needed to remember I was leaving when this was over.

  I just needed to remember why I was leaving.

  “When can I get out of here?”

  “Unless you have some major setback, tomorrow morning. You probably could have gone home tonight, but the doctor wanted to make sure you didn’t fall into a coma.”

  My eyes flew wide. “What?”

  She waved a hand dismissively. “Nothin’ to worry about. Just a precaution.”

  “And if I want to go back to work?”

  She turned to look at me. “You’ll have to ask Dr. Livingston about that tomorrow.”

  “But what’s your best guess?”

  “I guess it depends on how bad you want to do it.” She grinned. “You know us Sweet Briar folk don’t let much hold us back.”

  I knew it all too well. “Thanks.”

  She started to leave, then turned around to face me. “But if it were me and I decided to start filmin’ a show again, I’d probably take it easy for a couple of days. No crazy stunts. Lots of sittin’ around.”

  I gave her a smile. “Thanks.”

  “Honestly, I’m surprised Luke’s not here with you.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Everyone knows he rushed to the hospital as soon as he heard you were here.”

  “That was an official visit.”

  She snickered. “You keep tellin’ people that, but we know all about it from the town Facebook page.”

  It was time to see that Facebook page for myself. “Do you know where my phone is? It was with my clothes.”

  She waved a hand. “You let me get it. You shouldn’t be gettin’ out of bed unless you have someone helpin’ you. In fact, while I’m in here, do you need to pee? You’ve had a lot of fluids goin’ through you with the IV.”

  “No. Just my phone, please.”

  She opened a cabinet and found my phone, then handed it to me with a wink. “Look up Sweet Briar News.”

  I cracked a grin as I took my phone from her. “How much is actual news?”

  She chuckled and gave me a lazy shrug. “I guess it depends on what you call news.”

  I opened my Facebook app and quickly found the page. There had been lots of posts today, but there had also been lots of actual news. The post at the top was about how the Bixley County sheriff’s department had moved Otto’s body to the Sweet Briar Hospital for an autopsy.

  Otto’s body was in the same building I was in. I shuddered. Maybe I should go home and risk the coma.

  Below that was a post about my Exorcist reenactment, and from the glee over Luke getting plastered, it was obvious the person who’d written the post (presumably Maybelline) had already filled in Amber’s protest form at the police station. But there were lots of comments about how worried Luke had been and how he’d stayed by my side until I came to.

  Did that mean he really did care about me?

  The post below that was about Otto’s death. Maybelline was setting up a fund in the café to help pay for the funeral.

  Below that was a post about the sheriff’s office being dispatched to Lake Edna, and a note that, rumor had it, Dixie and I had gone out there. People were instructed to watch for more information.

  Did Maybelline have a police scanner, or had someone else told her?

  Before that, there was a post about Dixie and me chatting up Fred and Al, who were back to their usual appearance by the Dollar General.

  There were plenty of posts about other things we’d done around town, but I was more interested in the one post about the murder. The only new information was that Ruby Garwood had heard a scuffle out back before calling the police. Cale had thought he was about to tuck in for the night, but he’d found a body instead. The alley was completely blocked off, and no one other than the cops knew who had been killed.

  My gaze jerked up when I heard a soft rapping on the door. Dixie walked in holding a pie covered in whipped cream.

  “I came bearing gifts,” she said with a soft smile.

  “I owe you a huge apology, Dixie. I totally overreacted earlier.”

  “Hush now. I don’t blame you one bit, Summer, so don’t you go worryin’ about anything.”

  “I wasn’t very nice.”

  “Bull hockey. And you’d just had your head bashed in.”

  I cringed. “I wouldn’t say it was bashed in . . .”

  “True. Your brains weren’t leakin’ out . . .” Then a huge grin broke out on her face. “Ready for some strawberry pie? Looks a little like brains, right?”

  “Oh, my word. That’s so tacky.” I shook my head and started laughing, immediately regretting both. I squinted while I waited for the pain to subside. “I hope you brought forks.”

  Dixie beamed while she set the pie on the bedside tray and then fished two metal forks out of her purse.

  “Where’d you get those? Meemaw’s silverware drawer? She’s going to kill you,” I said as I took one.

  “What Meemaw doesn’t know doesn’t hurt her.” She dug a fork into the pie. “Just like she can’t know we ate like this. She’d call us heathens.”

  I dug my fork into the middle. “She already thinks the worst of me, so why not.” The words were pathetic, so I tried for a light tone.

  “She loves you, Summer. I suggested moving to your old bedroom, but she wouldn’t consider it. She’s been waitin’ for you to come back even if she won’t admit it.”

  “Does she know I’m here?”

  Dixie made a face that suggested she did.

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothin’.”

  What did I expect? In the grand scheme of things, I wasn’t dying . . . unless I fell into a coma. I was still counting on the nurse’s assurance it was unlikely. But Meemaw’s silence still hurt.

  I took a bite, embarrassed when I released an involuntary moan. “Who made this?” I asked through a mouthful of pie.

  She grinned and wiggled her shoulders back and forth. “I did.”

  I scooped out another bite and released another moan. “This is orgasmic, Dixie.”

  She chuckled and pointed a pie-filled fork at me. “You must be havin’ some pretty bad sex if you believe that.”

  “It’s been three years, but my last boyfriend wasn’t too bad in bed,” I said with a wicked grin.

  Dixie squealed. “Oh, my word. Which movie star was it?”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “No one you’d know.”

  “Try me.”

  “Aiden Clay.”

  She scrunched her nose. “Who’s that?”

  “Exactly.” I scooped a smaller bite. “And it was short-lived.” I grimaced. “Let’s just say I could have used your bullshit detector.”

  “Aww . . . Summer.”

  “I’m over it.” I set the fork on the bedside tray. “This pie is delicious, but I can’t eat anymore.”

  Dixie took another bite. “Are you really quittin’ the show?”

 
“I don’t know. I hate being a quitter. But I really do hate what we’re doing.”

  She gave me a sly look. “What if we found Otto’s killer?”

  “What?”

  “Bill and I talked it over, and we both support you in this.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Bill already tried to convince Lauren to investigate Otto’s death. She said it was a dead end with little possible payoff. She’s already got a new big case lined up but won’t tell anyone other than Karen what it is.”

  “More lies,” I said in defeat.

  Dixie was silent for a moment. “Someone killed Otto. I believe it with all my heart,” she said quietly. “He blamed himself for the fire that killed his family, and it drove him to drink, but he wouldn’t have killed himself out of the blue. He would have done it a long time ago.”

  “Dixie . . .”

  She turned quiet. “There’s something else, Summer. Something you need to know.”

  The seriousness in her eyes scared me. “What?”

  She pulled up a screen on her phone. On a national gossip site, there was a post titled “America’s Darling Not So Darling?” There were several photos of me looking like I was yelling and chewing people out—Lauren, Officer Hawkins, Becky in her front yard. Somehow someone had gotten a photo of me talking to Luke last night, and they’d caught me poking his chest.

  “How . . . ?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but Lauren’s ecstatic, so she probably had something to do with it. And I bet you she’s putting some of this in the show.”

  Crap. Dixie was right.

  “All the more reason to quit, Dixie. She’s gonna ruin me.”

  She shook her head. “No. If you quit now, you know you’ll look like you’re guilty of bein’ a diva.”

  “So I’m supposed to go along with it?”

  “No!” She sat on the side of my bed and grabbed my hand. “Bill has a plan to find Otto’s killer and restore your reputation, but you have to be all in.” She paused and searched my face. “Come on, Summer. Let’s bring Lauren to her knees.”

  Part of me was tired. Someone had attacked me for trying to find out the truth about Otto, and now I was catching hell for trying to do my job. Did I really want to risk my life? But there was no denying it felt good to feel like I was doing something real. Only the job had been left half-finished. I’d promised to find Otto for Gretchen, and while I had fulfilled that promise, I was certain she’d never be at peace until she knew what happened to him. We had the chance to give her closure.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Now what exactly are we going to do?” I asked.

  Dixie grinned. “When we’re not shooting with Lauren, Bill’s gonna sneak his camera out of the supply room at the office and follow us while we go around askin’ questions about Otto’s death.”

  “Everyone knows everyone else’s business in this town. How are we going to keep it a secret from Lauren?”

  “Nobody likes that Yankee,” she said with a snort. “They won’t tell her out of spite.”

  “If Lauren finds out . . .”

  “She won’t. And just think how satisfying it would be to find out who killed Otto and shove it in that deputy’s face.”

  “True . . .”

  “But to find out who killed Otto, we need to find out how he died, and I know his body is in the morgue.”

  I sucked in a breath. “You better not be thinkin’ what I think you’re thinkin’.”

  “I’m not suggestin’ we go do the autopsy ourselves.”

  “Then what are you suggesting?”

  “We should go down there and see if we can find the report.”

  “I don’t do dead people, Dixie.”

  “No crap. You passed out when you found Otto.”

  “I passed out because someone whacked me in the head.” I rubbed my scalp for emphasis.

  “Look, I’m not asking you to start readin’ toe tags,” she said. “But if we go down to the morgue, we might stumble upon the report.”

  “Because you think it will just be lyin’ around?” I asked in disbelief.

  She shrugged. “You never know. This is Sweet Briar.”

  Unfortunately, she had a point.

  “You don’t even have to go in,” she said with a cajoling look on her face. “But if I push you in a wheelchair, we can say we were wanderin’ around because you were feelin’ cooped up in your room. Easy enough to pretend we got lost.”

  “Dammit,” I grumbled. She was right. It was the perfect excuse. “I really hate dead people, Dixie.”

  “You already said that, and you already met your dead-person quota for the day. You just sit in the chair and film me while I’m snoopin’.”

  “Film you?”

  “Yeah.” She reached into her oversize purse and pulled out a small video camera. “Bill gave me this to use when he’s not with us.”

  I gave her a stare of disbelief, which strained my eyes and made my head hurt worse. “I’m gonna film us in the morgue? Breakin’ the rules?”

  “See, that’s your problem,” Dixie said, touching the tip of my nose with the end of her index finger. “You’re too much of a stickler for the rules. Sometimes you’ve gotta break ’em.”

  “I guess you would know,” I said, then instantly regretted it. “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged, trying to look like it didn’t bother her, but her smile slightly fell.

  Part of me wondered if she had a point. Scott Schapiro had called me boring and vanilla. Dixie was right—I did follow the rules. I’d already started shaking things up. Maybe it was time to ratchet it up to an earthquake.

  “Okay.”

  Her mouth formed an O. “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll get a wheelchair.” Then she ran out the door.

  She was back within a few minutes, pushing the chair into the room. “I told the nurses I was takin’ you for a spin.” She helped me get situated in the chair with the stupid hospital gown I was wearing. I was still hooked up to the IV, so she unhooked the bag and attached it to the pole on the chair. After she grabbed a blanket from the cabinet and spread it over my lap and legs, she handed me the video camera.

  “You can hide it under the blanket.”

  “Good idea.”

  She walked over to the bed tray and scooped another huge bite of pie, popped it in her mouth, then said with a full mouth, “Let’s go.”

  She pushed me past the two nurses who were waving at us from the nurses’ station.

  “If she starts to feel nauseated, bring her right back,” said the nurse who’d checked on me earlier.

  “No worries there,” Dixie laughed. “I heard all about what happened earlier, and I want no part of that.”

  I scowled. “Hey. I couldn’t help it.”

  I’d been in the Sweet Briar Hospital a few times when I was younger, but I wasn’t familiar with the layout. Dixie, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly where she was going. She headed straight for the elevator and pushed the button marked “B.”

  The hospital was two stories, with the patient beds on the second floor and the ER and a bunch of doctors’ offices on the first floor. I had no idea what was in the basement, but I imagined it was a good place for a morgue.

  Once we were enclosed in the elevator, I said, “How do you know the autopsy will be done? Or that there will be a report? On TV, those things take weeks.”

  “I suspect it won’t be totally done, but rumor has it that Doc Bailey likes to get the jump on things, and he does everything the old-fashioned way—by hand. He refuses to use computers. He’s probably jotted down notes somewhere.”

  “Wouldn’t those be in his office?” I asked in a worried tone.

  “It’s next to the morgue.”

  The elevator dinged, and the doors opened to a dim hallway. We faced a dingy gray wall and a linoleum floor that looked like it was white under a
decade’s worth of grime.

  “I’m having second thoughts,” I said. “This place is giving me the creeps.”

  “Don’t be such a baby.” She pushed me out of the elevator into the hall, which got even darker.

  “Dixie . . .”

  “Got it covered. Hold this.” A beam of light shone over my shoulder, and she handed me a flashlight.

  “Why not just turn on the lights?”

  “Rumor has it they don’t work.” She found a switch on the wall, and nothing happened. “See? Aren’t you happy I came prepared? Besides, we don’t want anyone seein’ us.”

  There was little worry of that from what I was seeing. The hall was a graveyard of hospital beds and wheelchairs, which somehow didn’t make me feel better about this whole enterprise.

  “Shine the light down the hall,” she said. “The morgue’s at the end.”

  “Do I want to know how you know that?” I asked, but I did as she said, and the flashlight beam illuminated the curve of the shadowy hallway.

  She was quiet for a moment. “It’s where I saw Momma and Daddy.”

  I gasped in horror. “They made you identify their bodies?” I couldn’t imagine any fifteen-year-old kid mature enough to handle such a thing.

  “No,” she answered in a raspy voice. “I snuck in to see them.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t believe it was true . . . that they were really dead, but no one would let me see them. They said I just had to trust that they were gone. I couldn’t do that. I had to see for myself.”

  “Why wouldn’t they let you see them?”

  She paused. “Because they were unrecognizable. From the fire.”

  I jerked around to look up at her, an action that the pain shooting through my head made me instantly regret. “Oh, Dixie.” Pain for my cousin filled my voice.

  “It’s okay. But I know where it is, and I know how to get in.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked softly.

  “Yes.” Her voice was hard, and it brooked no argument.

  I considered arguing with her anyway, but from the determination on her face, I wondered if maybe she needed to do this for her own reasons. “Okay.”