Jonelle sighed and shook her head. “I still don’t have any file cabinets. I’m a creature of habit. I don’t see the point of moving everybody from one floor to another, into identical space. But I guess Gordon had his reasons.”
“Nobody on the staff seems too broken up about their boss being murdered.”
Jonelle picked up her glasses, folded and unfolded the earpieces, then laid them down again. “I’m sure you heard plenty about Gordon from your mother when she had this job.”
“Yeah, I did. He was an s.o.b. to work for, wasn’t he?”
Sighing, Jonelle sat back in her chair. “I have to be discreet, Tom. I can’t afford to lose my job.”
“I understand that, and whatever you say is confidential.” If she knew anything that could make her a valuable witness, his promise of confidentiality was meaningless, but Tom’s immediate concern was getting information from her. “You work all over the hospital. You probably hear everything that goes on. If somebody had a grievance against Hall, I need to look into it.”
She folded her arms in a self-protective gesture and hesitated before answering. “Gordon wasn’t always…polite when he delivered criticism and suggestions.”
Tom didn’t respond. He waited, knowing his patience would be rewarded if she felt compelled to fill the expanding silence with words.
“Gordon was—” She broke off, sat forward and clasped her hands on the desktop. She seemed to be debating with herself, and Tom gave her the time she needed. When she spoke again, both her words and tone had a new harshness. “He could be absolutely brutal sometimes. And he had a habit of firing people on the spot if he didn’t like something they did. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to talk him into reinstating nurses and aides. I didn’t always succeed. Your mother handled him better than I did.”
“What kind of things did he fire people for?”
“Well, with support staff it could be something like an aide not collecting the meal trays as promptly as Gordon liked. He hated walking past rooms and seeing the remains of meals waiting to be picked up.”
“Was anybody fired recently?” Tom pulled his notebook and pen from his shirt pocket.
Jonelle eyed the pad and pen warily before continuing. “He fired an aide about two weeks ago. That was over a closed door. Gordon had an obsession about leaving doors to the patient rooms open at all times. I don’t know why, but that was his rule.”
“Mom thought he was afraid of lawsuits,” Tom said. “Something happening to a patient behind a closed door and the staff not realizing it in time.”
“Well, in this case a staff member was with the patient, so it made no sense at all. Christie was giving a woman a sponge bath, and she drew the curtain around the bed, but the patient wanted the door closed too. Gordon fired Christie for respecting the patient’s desire for privacy instead of following his rules.”
“How did she take it?”
“Oh, she was furious at first, but she’s about to get married to a boy who works in Blacksburg and she was planning to quit and start a family right away. I told her I’d give her a good reference anytime she wanted one, so in the end being let go didn’t matter to her.”
Tom tapped his pen on the pad. “Do you remember any incident in the last year that was more serious than that? Any conflict between Hall and the staff that caused a lot of bad feeling?”
“Well, there was the business about Mrs. Green. I’m sure you know about that. Her husband’s been telling everybody who’ll listen that this hospital tortured her. But the nursing staff did the best we could to ease her suffering. It was Gordon who wanted to withhold the drugs, and one of my best nurses lost her job for going against his orders. I couldn’t get her reinstated, either.”
“Who was this?”
“Phoebe James. I’m sure you know her. She was a friend of your mother’s.”
Tom nodded and wrote down the name. “I’ve lost touch with her, I’m afraid,” he said. “Where’s she working now?”
“Nowhere. Not as a nurse, I mean. Gordon blacklisted her. He made sure no other hospital in the state would hire her. She’s clerking at the supermarket. Just an incredible waste, in my opinion.”
Tom jotted notes, then looked up at Jonelle. “Maybe now that Hall’s out of the way, things will change.”
“Out of the way? My goodness, Tom, what a way to put it. But I wouldn’t mind some changes around here.”
“You think Brian Stevens has a lock on the top job?”
“He’s in charge for the time being. But who knows what’s going to happen? Vicky Hall owns the hospital now, I guess, but she’s so sick I can’t see her coming in here and trying to run it. I doubt she has the business savvy, in any case.”
“If Stevens gets the job, maybe you’ll get your filing cabinets.”
She smiled, a flash of beautiful teeth that erased years from her face. “Actually, Brian’s promised to get them in here next week.”
“There’s something else I wanted to ask you about,” Tom said. “Do you remember when the Halls adopted their two youngest kids, David and Marcy?”
Jonelle’s smile vanished and a flush spread over her cheeks. “I can’t tell you anything about Gordon and Vicky’s private lives. I don’t know a thing about any of their children.”
Intrigued by her reaction, Tom studied her for a moment before asking, “David and Marcy’s real mother was a patient here several times, wasn’t she? Isn’t that how the Halls first met her—and the kids?”
Jonelle shook her head. “I really can’t tell you anything about that, Tommy.”
Tom tried to meet her eyes, but she avoided the contact. “What’s wrong? Why is that such a prickly subject?”
“It isn’t. It’s just—I don’t know anything about their family life, their children. I don’t want to know, and I don’t feel comfortable talking about it.”
“Jonelle—”
“Tom, please. I have to get back to work.”
“All right. Okay.” Tom got to his feet. “Thank you for talking to me.”
She wouldn’t look at him now, but lowered her head and concentrated on shuffling through papers in the file on her desk.
At the door Tom paused and looked back at her. Of all the people he knew, she was the last he would have expected to hide anything from him, but that was exactly what she was doing.
***
Brian Stevens, acting director of the hospital, hustled toward his office as Tom turned a corner and fell in after him. A thin, gangly man with brown hair and dark-rimmed glasses, Stevens looked from behind like a boy dressed in somebody else’s too-big suit.
When Stevens stopped at his office door, Tom said, “Mr. Stevens? Can I talk to you?”
Stevens gave a strangled gasp of surprise and spun around. “Good lord, you startled me.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
Stevens touched a hand to his head in the sort of gesture Tom associated with women concerned that their hair was mussed. “I wondered if you’d be back to see me.”
They had spoken briefly when Tom came to the hospital to secure Dr. Hall’s office before it was searched. “Can we talk in your office?”
Stevens looked as if he’d rather take a flying leap into a vat of boiling oil. “Yes, of course.”
Seated in yet another chair facing another standard-issue metal desk, Tom said, “Do you think you’ll be taking over as director permanently?”
“You’ll have to ask Mrs. Hall about that. It’s her decision.”
“She’s in pretty bad health,” Tom said. “Is she capable of stepping in and running this place? And what happens when she dies?”
Stevens spread his hands on the desktop and stared at them. After a moment he said, “It’s not something I enjoy thinking about, but of course I’ve wondered about it. Somebody has to look to the future of the hospital. The facility needs a permanent director.”
“If not you, then maybe the Halls’ son?” Tom suggested. �
��Ethan?”
Stevens flinched as if he’d been slapped.
Tom waited, but Stevens didn’t explain his reaction. Tom asked, “Do you think Ethan is capable of running the hospital?”
Stevens twisted his lips in an odd grimace and took a long time to answer. “Let’s say I would have some reservations if that happened. He’s very young, for one thing.”
“Dr. Hall was disappointed in Ethan, wasn’t he? Because he dropped out of med school? Do you know if they’d patched things up, or was their relationship still pretty rocky?”
“Do I have to answer these questions?”
“Yes, if you want to help me solve Gordon Hall’s murder.”
“Are you implying that Ethan is a suspect in his father’s death?”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m gathering information.”
Stevens rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I’m not comfortable gossiping about the family.”
“I’m not interested in broadcasting what you tell me,” Tom said. “But I need as much information about Hall as I can get. The more personal the information is, the more it will help me.”
Stevens still looked dubious. He slumped back in his chair, fingers laced over his belt buckle, and swiveled left and right. “All right.” He sighed. “Gordon never got over his disappointment in Ethan. He told me the boy was rebellious in his teens. It didn’t sound like anything unusual to me, but Gordon was a real control fr—” He broke off before he got the whole phrase out.
“A control freak?’ Tom offered.
“Well, yes.”
“He must have hit the roof when Ethan flunked out of medical school.”
“Oh, he didn’t flunk out. In fact, Ethan did well enough that he could have completed medical school and gone on to become a doctor.”
“Really? Most people think Ethan spent his time partying and couldn’t keep up his grades.”
“Not true. That was what made it so hard for Gordon to accept.” Stevens spoke eagerly now, clearly pleased to be correcting Tom’s misconceptions. “Abandoning his studies was Ethan’s choice.”
“If he realized medicine wasn’t for him,” Tom said, “and he wanted to get out before he wasted any more time and money, was that such a bad thing?”
“But he made a big speech about deciding he didn’t want to be a Gordon Hall clone. Gordon was convinced Ethan planned it from the start, got into medical school and attended for a year to prove he could do it, and do it well, but with no intention of following his father’s career path. Gordon was crushed, not to mention furious. He wanted the boy to be his heir, to work here and take over the hospital when he retired.”
Tom could barely imagine the depth of anger and contempt necessary to dream up and carry out such a plan. Not many people had the patience to give up a year of their lives just to hurt a controlling parent. “Dr. Hall must have been happy about his oldest daughter deciding to study medicine.”
“The Korean girl they adopted? Yes, she’s smart and Gordon thinks—thought—she’ll make a good doctor, but it’s not the same. Gordon was proud of her as if she were an investment that did well. But she’s not his blood kin. She’s not his son.”
“So were Gordon and Ethan still on the outs lately?”
Stevens took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. They were bloodshot, Tom noticed, as if he hadn’t slept the night before. “I didn’t say that. In fact, I think they were on better terms than they had been in a long time. I guess Gordon was making peace with his disappointment.”
“I see.” That matched the story Tom had heard from Soo Jin.
“Is there anything else, Captain?” Stevens asked. “I’ve got a million things to catch up on.”
“Just one thing. Were you working here when the Halls adopted their two youngest children?”
“No, that was before my time.” Stevens didn’t seem troubled by the subject the way Jonelle had been. “I came on board a while after that. All I know about the adoption is what I’ve heard.”
“And what have you heard?”
“Well, nothing, except that they adopted two children whose mother died. It seemed a decent thing to do.”
Yeah, Tom thought. So why was Jonelle Cruise so rattled by the mention of it?
Chapter Sixteen
As Rachel emerged from her Range Rover, Tom’s eight-year-old nephew Simon hurtled down the steps of his grandparents’ house and across the yard toward her with the kind of energy generated only by kids and rockets. She braced for the hit, but he nearly knocked her off-balance when he flung himself into her arms.
“Hey, whoa, take it easy,” she pleaded, laughing. She returned his ferocious hug and kissed the top of his head. Being a boy, he might not let her do that much longer, and she intended to take advantage of the privilege while it was still allowed. When she ruffled his thick black hair, exactly like Tom’s, she felt the surprising sting of tears. She loved this little boy so much. If she ever had a child—
“Billy Bob!” Simon pulled out of Rachel’s embrace and stretched upward for the handle of the Range Rover’s rear door. The bulldog stood up in the back seat, raking a paw against the glass, demanding release.
Rachel opened the door and the dog tumbled out. After a hug from Simon and a few licks on the face from Billy Bob, the two took off, streaking toward a big pile of red and yellow leaves.
Rachel walked across the grass to join Darla Duncan, Simon’s grandmother, on the front porch. A tall, thin woman in her fifties who usually dressed in shirts and jeans, Darla had the same plain vanilla looks as her husband, Deputy Grady Duncan, and a stranger would never have guessed either was related to the little boy with the striking appearance. Simon, with his olive skin and thick black hair, looked like his Melungeon relatives in the Bridger family.
“Hey, hon,” Darla said, raising a coffee mug in greeting. The mug probably contained green tea. Darla had been on an antioxidant kick recently and drank the stuff all day.
“Thanks for keeping Billy Bob this weekend,” Rachel said as she mounted the steps. “We’re both going to be so busy he wouldn’t get much play time with us.”
“He’s a treat. We love having—Oh, no!” Darla burst out laughing when the two little dervishes in the yard plopped into the pile of leaves together and scattered them everywhere. “Well, there goes a whole afternoon of raking.”
The bulldog rolled ecstatically on his back while Simon showered him with leaves. Smiling at the two of them, Rachel said, “Sometimes I think Tom should just let Billy Bob live here. Even with Simon in school during the day, he’d probably enjoy being with you more than being stuck at the Sheriff’s Department.”
“Oh, that dog just worships Tom. He wouldn’t want to be separated from him for long. Besides, Simon wears him out. He’ll be happy to go back to a quieter life when the weekend’s over. Want some green tea?”
“No, thanks. I can’t stay.” Rachel detested the vile stuff and had to restrain herself from scolding Darla about the amount of caffeine she was ingesting.
“Anyway,” Darla went on, “with everything that’s going on now, all those pet dogs disappearing right out of their yards, and that wild dog pack roaming loose, maybe he’s safer surrounded by cops all day.”
“Are you worried about having him here?” Rachel asked.
“No, I’ll watch out for him. I won’t put him outdoors alone, day or night. Lord, if anything happened to Billy Bob, Tom would kill me.”
And it would break Simon’s heart, Rachel thought. She watched the boy and the dog playing in the late afternoon sunlight. It was hard to believe this happy child had endured so much loss in his short life, but Rachel had seen how quickly his buoyant mood could turn to despair when any part of his carefully constructed little world was threatened. Simon had lost both his parents and both his Bridger grandparents in the same road accident. Only Tom and Simon had survived. Although he’d been so young that he didn’t remember the crash, he was aware of how much was missing from his life. Rachel d
oubted that Tom, who had been driving when the accident occurred, would ever stop blaming himself.
Darla broke into Rachel’s thoughts. “The county fair starts next weekend. Let’s all go together if the guys wrap up the Hall case by then.”
“You and I can take Simon if Tom and Grady have to work.”
“Yeah, that’ll be fun.” A second later Darla frowned and shook her head. “Lord, it’s awful what happened to Dr. Hall. I didn’t know him, and I hear he was a real s.o.b., but just thinking about the way he died—” She shuddered. “I sure hope it doesn’t turn out somebody in the family was behind it. I’ve been married to a cop so long that’s the first thing that comes to mind when anybody’s murdered, that it was the husband or wife or one of their kids.”
“The Halls are a strange bunch of people,” Rachel murmured. Pity pierced her heart when she thought of Marcy, a scared little girl who seemed utterly alone in an alien place. Like Simon, she had already endured more loss than any child should experience, and she didn’t have the kind of loving home and family Simon had to protect and nurture her. What would happen to Marcy if Dr. Hall’s death ended up ripping that family apart?
***
Tom flipped through Field & Stream at the end of the grocery aisle, keeping an eye on Phoebe James while she rang up a big grocery order for a chattering dark-haired woman. Her face blank, Phoebe grabbed and scanned automatically, shoving items down to the elderly man working as a bagger. Tom counted four frozen pizzas, six loaves of white bread, ten pounds of baking potatoes, four gallons of milk, big bags of apples and oranges. “Teenage boys are bottomless pits,” the customer said. She added with a laugh, “We could have a swimming pool and a new car every year if we didn’t have boys to feed.”
Phoebe didn’t respond, but Tom chuckled, remembering his own mother’s astonishment at how fast he and his older brother Chris could empty the refrigerator.
Phoebe read out the customer’s total in a voice flat with weariness. Tom hadn’t seen her in a while, and he didn’t remember her as this slump-shouldered, sad-eyed woman with gray showing at the roots of her dark hair and deep lines framing her mouth. Against the purple of her store smock, her face looked colorless.
Under the Dog Star: A Rachel Goddard Mystery #4 (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Page 11