Gin Jones - Helen Binney 01 - A Dose of Death (22 page)

“Come in, come in,” Helen said.

Tate
‘s eyebrows rose. “What’s wrong?”

“
Nothing’s wrong,” Helen said. “Why would you think something was wrong?”

“
You answered the door the first time I knocked,” he said. “You hate unannounced visitors.”

“
Ignoring people isn’t working.” Helen stealthily peeked outside, reassuring herself that wherever Jack had gone, he wasn’t easily spotted from the cottage. She closed the door behind Tate. “I figured I’d try a new strategy. Maybe if I’m nice to visitors, they won’t feel the urge to pester me so often.”

“
Are you going to offer me a drink next?” he asked, with obvious suspicion. “Like the little old ladies in
Arsenic and Old Lace
?”

“
I’m not old,” Helen reminded him. “I don’t need to poison anyone. I’m still strong enough to thwap my victims on the head with my cane. Which I’m going to do to you if you don’t tell me what you’re doing here and then go away so I can figure out who killed Melissa.”

“
I knew the ‘nice’ wouldn’t last.” Tate held up the piece of wood. “I’m making you a new walking cane to replace the missing one. I just need to get a rough idea of how long it should be.”

“
You don’t need to do that,” Helen said. She was indebted to him enough already. “I’ve got another cane.”

“
I’m not really doing it for you.” He held the wood against her side and made a pencil mark at a point even with her waist. “I needed a new challenge.”

“
You could help me solve Melissa’s murder.”

He shook his head.
“Not that kind of challenge. That’s too much like work.”

Fat lot of good it did her, having him around. He wouldn
‘t help her investigate, and he wasn’t much of a security guard, especially when he was running the lathe with his ear protection on. If Jack were really a killer she’d be dead by now.

“
You’ve got the measurement you needed,” Helen said, “so don’t let me keep you from your workshop.”

“
There’s no rush,” he said. “I’ve got time to hear about what Jack was doing here and how he got out of jail.

“
You saw him?”

Tate shook his head and then pointed the soon-to-be-cane toward a jacket on the kitchen chair Jack had just vacated.
“He left his coat behind.”

Tate accepted her explanation for Jack’s visit without either calling the cops or having a change of heart with respect to helping her find additional suspects for Melissa’s murder. After he left, she checked with the nursing home only to find that Betty and Josie were still confined to their rooms. For their own good, was the implicit explanation, but Helen had the distinct feeling that Betty and Josie wouldn’t have agreed.

First thing the next morning, though, she got an email from Betty that they
‘d been released to join the other ambulatory patients in the activity room for the morning, and they were looking forward to a visit.

When Helen arrived Betty and Josie were seated in their usual spot
in front of the unlit fireplace, working on their knitting and crochet. They weren’t entirely free of restrictions, though. A petite young woman in pastel scrubs and a suspicious expression was leaning against Josie’s chair, apparently charged with making sure the women didn’t exhaust themselves again. Her nametag identified her as a CNA, but she was acting more like a bodyguard, vetting anyone who came too near her clients. Why wouldn’t the woman be happy that Betty and Josie had a visitor? Unless she had something to hide from those visitors. Could she have been involved with the big story Geoff Loring had been pursuing? Or was it something about Helen’s investigation into Melissa’s death that made the CNA anxious? Had she ever worked with Melissa?

Betty and Josie would know, but she didn
‘t want to get them into trouble. She’d have to wait to do her questioning until they were alone. It shouldn’t be too difficult to convince the CNA that Helen offered no risk to her patients, since most people started out with the assumption that Helen was powerless, but she resented having to encourage an impression she usually worked so hard to dispel. Still, she owed it to Jack to do whatever it took to keep him from going to prison for a murder he hadn’t done.

“
Thanks for making time to help me,” she told Betty and Josie. “I’m ready to learn how to crochet now.” 

Josie looked surprised and said,
“But didn’t you—”

Betty interrupted, saying
“We never turn away new volunteers,” and tossing a skein of yarn that landed with a surprisingly solid thump in Josie’s lap.

The two women exchanged a look, with Betty flicking a glance at the hovering CNA, and then Josie said,
“Right. We can use this yarn that Betty so kindly gave me to start your lessons. Pull up a chair.”

The hovering CNA said,
“I’ll get it.”

While she was gone Betty leaned forward and whispered,
“Don’t trust anyone. Wait until she’s gone.”

Helen nodded, and Josie began digging through her Hello Kitty bag for a spare crochet hook.

The CNA returned with a chair for Helen just as Josie raised a triumphant fist holding a crochet hook. “I knew there was one in here. We’ll have you making hats in no time at all. I used to be a teacher, you know. High school science. Lots more complicated than crochet, but my students all did great.”

Helen accepted the crochet hook and watched Josie
‘s demonstrations as if she hadn’t seen them before. Helen could tell the woman had been a good teacher, but unfortunately that didn’t mean she herself was a good student. She didn’t have to pretend to act like she’d never seen the demonstrations before. The movements that seemed so obvious in Josie’s hands remained awkward for Helen, bordering on painful. At least her incompetence was useful for convincing the suspicious CNA that Helen truly was a rank beginner at crochet, and nothing more stressful than a few dropped stitches was likely to be discussed.

After about ten minutes of Josie
‘s instructions and Helen’s incompetent but determined attempts to follow them, the CNA finally grew bored enough to wander away and find a new person to impose her supervision on.

Josie immediately asked,
“So, have you figured out who killed Melissa yet?”

“
Not quite,” Helen said, dropping her yarn and needle into her lap. “I’ve run out of suspects. I was hoping you two might have some leads for me. Tell me everything you know about Melissa.”

“
That would take for
ever
,” Josie said. “We might not live long enough to tell you everything we know about her.”

“
Speak for yourself. I plan to live until I’ve knit a cap in every imaginable color and pattern, and that could take fifty years.” Betty turned to Helen. “Josie is right, though, that it would take a while to go over everything we’ve ever heard about Melissa. We know everything that goes on here. The staff assumes that everyone here has short-term memory issues, so they don’t watch what they say in front of us.”

“
Let’s start with what the staff are saying about Melissa.”

After a brief silence Betty said,
“They thought it was odd that Pierce offered her a job.”

“
I always figured she had some leverage she could use against him,” Josie said. “Something she’d learned from a patient. But we couldn’t figure out what it could have been. He’s practically the only person in town who hasn’t had a relative staying here at some point during Melissa’s tenure here.”

“
Maybe he made a blanket job offer to all the nurses here, and Melissa was the only one interested in it.”

“
None of the other nurses were offered jobs, though,” Betty said. “Just Melissa. I doubt any of them would have accepted, but they were all a little irritated that they hadn’t at least been asked.”

That was odd, Helen thought.
“Why would Pierce have singled her out? Was she that much better than all the other nurses?”

“
We couldn’t ever figure that out. He couldn’t have wanted her for her medical knowledge,” Josie said. “And she wasn’t any good at all with the geriatric patients here. Mostly, we just want someone to listen to us, and she wouldn’t. She was like an old-fashioned schoolmarm, like you used to read about, with rulers to rap your knuckles. Except she didn’t do anything physical to her patients, because that would have left evidence and gotten her fired. Instead, she used to play mind games, terrifying the patients into obeying her.”

Betty nodded.
“One of her favorite tricks was to steal the patient’s walker if they didn’t do what she told them to. Without it, they couldn’t leave the room, and she wouldn’t give it back until they promised to obey her. One time, she had a particularly stubborn patient, and somehow she convinced the management that the patient had thrown it out his window, where it was run over by an arriving ambulance. It turned out the walker had some sort of special customization, so the patient was bedridden for over a week until a replacement could be obtained.”

Helen wondered how many of the recommendations in Melissa
‘s files had been written under threat of the patient’s walker being confiscated. Still, none of the recommendations had been anything more than adequate, not the sort of thing that would have prospective employers chasing after Melissa. “If Pierce didn’t want her for her knowledge or her bedside manner, then what did he want her for?”

Betty glanced around the room until she found the CNA trying to coax a scruffy old man out of the far corner of the room. Even with the CNA occupied and a good distance away, Betty leaned forward and whispered,
“Insider information.”

Josie copied Betty
‘s actions, checking on the location of the CNA before adding, “Pierce has contracts with the nursing home to provide some of the services here, and he does a crummy job of it. We think he used Melissa’s knowledge of the nursing home to get really favorable terms in his contracts. He knew all the right buttons to push when he was pitching to the board of directors, so they didn’t look at the contracts all that carefully.”

“
Some people think he’s been using her inside knowledge to run an insurance scam,” Betty said. “You hear about that sort of thing in the news all the time. Billing for services never provided. There have been a lot of complaints about cancelled physical therapy sessions lately, ever since that work was subcontracted to his agency. It would be easier to do that sort of thing if you had an employee who could identify good targets, the ones who don’t pay any attention to their medical records and who don’t have family members keeping an eye on them.”

“
Someone from the nursing home’s administration must be keeping an eye on him,” Helen said.

“
Not really,” Betty said. “The administrative staff here has enough to do with all the paperwork and all the rules and regulations they need to follow, and they don’t get involved in individual patients’ issues unless someone complains repeatedly, and most of us don’t have enough energy to do that.”

“
What about their board of directors?”

“
Everyone on the board is a volunteer,” Betty said. “Most of them have a relative living here, and that’s why they’re on the board, to make sure that family member is taken care of. As long as their family members are happy, the board members aren’t interested in hearing about anyone else’s complaints.”

“
Someone had to have noticed if there was widespread fraud,” Helen said. “Detective Peterson spends time here, and his job is investigating crimes. And I know Geoff Loring spends a lot of time here. If there’s widespread fraud, wouldn’t he have heard about it?”

“
He’s as bad as the board of directors,” Josie said. “He’s got a cousin living here, so as long as the cousin seems reasonably happy, Geoff doesn’t want to notice the little, annoying problems., “

“
What about his big story? The one he kept talking about? “That was just Geoff, always trying to sound important. He didn’t have anything,” Betty said. “Ironic really, since someone apparently thought he was onto something and assaulted him for it.”

“
Maybe there really is a big story, even if he didn’t actually know it.” Helen had a sudden thought. “Do you know if he did a story on Melissa leaving the nursing home for her new job?” 

“
I can’t remember,” Josie said, looking at Betty, who shook her head.

“
What if he interviewed her, and someone thought she had told him something controversial about one of her patients, something that person didn’t want investigated. Then Geoff starts talking about his big story, and the person thinks that killing Melissa will stop the investigation, but it doesn’t, so then the person goes after Geoff too.”

“
It’s possible,” Betty said. “But Melissa’s seen an awful lot of patients over the years, and there’s far too much gossip flying around here to even begin to figure out who might have been desperate enough to commit murder to keep something quiet. Everyone’s got something to be embarrassed about.”

Still, Helen thought, at least now she had a lead of sorts. She just had to narrow down the possibilities a bit.
“How many people are there in the nursing home?”

“
Including just the patients and staff? Without their visitors?” Betty said. “A couple hundred. Double that, if you include the family members who visit regularly.

“
That makes four hundred people who might have wanted Melissa dead.” So much for thinking she was making progress. It would have been a stretch for the local police department to interview and background-check that many people; it was completely impossible for Helen to do it alone, even armed with a spreadsheet and search engines. “That’s almost as big a list as the people who’ve threatened my ex-husband.”

“
I wish we could be more help. With both the investigation and your crochet skills.” Josie pointed to the mess in Helen’s lap. “You’ve missed a few stitches in that last row.”

Helen pulled out the row she
‘d just completed. “I’m as bad at this as I am at helping Jack prove he didn’t kill Melissa.”

“
Jack Clary can take care of himself,” Betty said. “He’s been in all sorts of scrapes over the years from what I’ve heard, and he never ended up in jail.”

“
Until now,” Josie said.

“
At least he’s out on bail,” Helen said.

“
Probably not for long, though,” Josie said. “Detective Peterson was here visiting his father earlier today, and we heard him talking about the case. He said Jack had called them with some wild story about being afraid for his life because someone had mugged him on his way home last night and told him to leave town. Everyone at the police station thought it was funny, that he was making it up as some sort of publicity stunt to convince them he was innocent.”

“
He
is
innocent, and Jack wasn’t making it up,” Helen said, stuffing her yarn and needle into her too-small purse. Two muggings in this little town, both with ties to Melissa, and the police couldn’t see that something was seriously wrong. Maybe Tate could do something about getting Jack some police protection. “I’ve got to go. Call me if you think of anything that might help narrow down the suspects.”

*  *  *