Last Licks (14 page)

“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.

She came down to discover that Mike had changed into some old clothes, too. Shadow circled around them, looking a little skittish. Mike began to laugh. “The last time we looked like this was during spring cleaning. He’s probably expecting us to start taking the house apart again!”

Dropping to her knees, Sunny coaxed Shadow over and gently stroked him. “No excitement here,” she told him. “We’re going away for a while.” At last, his tail stopped twitching. Will arrived in his pickup, and Sunny and her dad went outside. Mike told Sunny, “You go up first, honey.”

She grinned, climbed aboard, and settled next to Will. Then Mike hauled himself aboard, slammed the door shut, and off they went.

O’Dowd’s sat in the middle of a little patch of urban blight at the edge of downtown. Some people called it the source of the blight. It was a long, low, wooden building that had begun life as something other than a bar, but not even Mike remembered what it had originally been. The only hint as to its present business was a beer sign in one of the tiny windows. Mike used to joke that people didn’t find O’Dowd’s, they just sank to its level. As underage college kids, Sunny and her friends had snuck in there for an illicit beer. But Sunny had still been shocked to see how far the bar’s never-high standards had fallen when she and Will visited the place to talk with a suspect.

Warmer weather hadn’t improved the ambiance. Will drove into a weed-trimmed parking lot. Sunny saw a few pickups, some vans, a couple of cars that could only be called beaters, and of course, motorcycles. Rolling his truck to a stop, Will got out and opened the door for Mike and Sunny. They reached the plywood slab that served as the bar’s front door and heaved at it—last night’s rain had swollen the wood in place. With a good yank, Will got it open, and they went in.

A yellowish-gray cloud hung in the air. The state of Maine might have banned barroom smoking, but O’Dowd’s didn’t follow no stinkin’ ordinances. Patrons in here continued to blithely light up. The jukebox with its overamped bass still thumped away, while folks at the bar and at the tables did their best to scream over the noise.

Scanning the room, Sunny spotted a few Bridgewater Hall staff members—they must have all owed Luke favors or something, she figured. They sat in little islands, distinct among the regulars. Sunny spotted Elsa Hogue and Jack the physical therapist sitting at one table, Elsa looking very uncomfortable.

“Let’s see if we can join them,” Sunny yelled to her dad and Will.

“Do you want something to drink?” Will bellowed.

“Beer—in a bottle,” Sunny screeched.

“Me, too,” Mike bawled out.

Sunny led the way over to the therapists while Will headed for the bar. Elsa and Jack were happy for company. Mike tried to carry on a conversation while Sunny watched Will’s progress at the bar. It was like watching a silent movie—if silent movies were scored by Steppenwolf.

As Will got closer and closer to the bar, Jasmine the barmaid showed more and more interest. Jasmine had been the local sex symbol during Sunny’s college days. Now she had too much skin pushed into too little clothing, a bad dye job, and a missing tooth. Still, she did a good come-hither routine until Will was close enough for her to recognize him as a cop. Then her face shut down to a sullen mask as she sold him three bottles of beer.

He returned to the table with a wad of napkins, using them to twist the tops off and wipe the mouths of the bottles. Sunny shouted her thanks, accepted one of the bottles, and took a sip. It had been a while, but apparently some things never change. Cold beer after a warm day remained a good combination.

She saw Luke Daconto come around from the back of the bar carrying a microphone stand and a small amplifier, which he set up on the raised dais that housed the jukebox. Then he vanished, only to return again with his guitar case. Most of the bar denizens didn’t even pay attention as he tuned up. Luke looked at Jasmine and nodded. She came from behind the bar, reaching around the back of the jukebox to pull the plug. There were some raucous moans and groans while she vainly signaled for silence. Sunny could barely hear her shouting, “Live music tonight!”

After her third fruitless attempt, Jasmine shrugged, causing a ponderous jiggle to run through her extra flesh, and returned behind the bar. Luke finished arranging the mic, slung his guitar strap over one shoulder, and stood with his hands on his hips, just staring at the seething barroom. It took a few minutes, but people began to glance over in his direction . . . and shut up.

Finally, there were just a couple of drunken boobs laughing at one another’s jokes. Luke dropped the microphone down to guitar level and struck a jangling discord that boomed out through the amplifier.

“Sorry,” he said, readjusting the mic back in line with his lips. “My guitar farted.”

And with that, he launched into a jagged version of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”

Will leaned toward Sunny. “Got to give him one thing,” he whispered with beer-laced breath. “He’s got stones.”