Last Licks (3 page)

Stupid screen,
he thought, investigating the eating room. The windows here were small and hard to reach, and besides, they were rarely open. Shadow needed the combination of an open window and a loose screen. Whenever he came to live in new places, he always made sure he had a way to leave if he had to. Shadow couldn’t imagine leaving Sunny, but he still managed to find an exit. He’d learned to jump up and bang the handle on the screen door until it finally opened enough that he could squeeze out. That was fine—he’d used it to get out of the house that day he’d stalked that stupid bird. Bad enough the bird got away, but then Shadow had found himself stuck outdoors.

Now he had a new hunt—to find a way
in.
Most two-leggity types he’d lived with hadn’t paid much attention to screens. They let corners get loose or left spaces where a careful cat could lever up the frame on the screen . . . In one place, if he’d hit the right place when he jumped, the whole screen fell right out of the window. Of course, the human he’d stayed with hadn’t liked that. But it seemed as though Sunny and the Old One who lived here took care of things too well. Wherever windows were left open, the screens were sturdily in place.

He moved on to the kitchen, jumping onto the table. The window there was barely open at the bottom, just about the width of his paw. Shadow crouched down, poking his paw out. The screen was solid, and he couldn’t catch hold of the frame. With a hiss of annoyance, he dropped down to the floor and then leaped up onto the counter and the place where Sunny washed dishes. He had to stretch to reach the window there, and he didn’t have any luck anyway.

Even more maddening, as he fruitlessly poked around, a bird came fluttering by.

Shadow looked over to the door.
Maybe I’ll go outside and give that flapper a surprise,
he thought. But then he realized that not only was the screen door closed, but the glass one was closed, too. He couldn’t find a way in
or
out . . . at least not on this floor.

He started for the stairway.
Stupid house.

*

Sunny finally managed
to disentangle herself from Portia the cat and continued down the corridor, passing several closed doors and a connecting hallway until she came to a broad open space with a desklike island in the middle, where several white-clad figures were working. This must be the nurses’ station.

“Hello,” Sunny said to the nearest nurse. “I’m looking for Mr. Barnstable in Room 114—”

The woman immediately rose and pointed down the leftmost of the three corridors that radiated from in front of her desk. “That’s down in the rehab wing. He’s with Mr. Scatterwell.” She gave Sunny a smile as she said it.

Hope that means this Scatterwell is a nice guy, not the joke of the floor,
Sunny’s annoying internal voice piped up. Sunny thanked the nurse and set off down the hallway, checking room numbers—although she could just as easily have followed the sound of her dad’s laughter.
He’s still here?

She entered a space larger than the living room in her house, with an Impressionist-style landscape on the wall between two wardrobes. A pair of wheelchairs sat in front of a closet door, along with a pair of walkers—the kind with wheels on front, the frames all folded up. And, of course, there was the pair of hospital beds, with fancy coverlets that matched the drapes on the windows and the curtains hanging from tracks in the ceiling, everything neatly arranged to camouflage the institutional nature of the room.

Sunny’s dad sat on a large, comfortable armchair under the painting, talking with the occupants of the beds. The man in the bed by the window was a stranger to Sunny, but he spoke to Mike as if they were old friends. Ollie lay on the other bed, still in pajamas, looking a lot less comfortable.

“Sunny!” Mike rose from his chair, turning to the stranger. “Gardner, this is my daughter, Sunny. Sunny, Gardner Scatterwell.”

The man fumbled for a device like a TV remote, and the bed moved him to a more upright position. He wore a track suit and had a pear-shaped, jowly face with just a fringe of white hair over the ears. His eyes were so pale blue they seemed almost colorless, and his nose was a sizable beak knocked a little off center. The creases around his mouth extended down toward his chin. Between the fixed gaze of those odd eyes and the slight bobbing to his head, he gave Sunny the impression of a life-sized marionette—with a less-than-experienced operator at the strings.

But Gardner Scatterwell gave her a wide smile and clasped her hand in both of his. “So you’re this old reprobate’s daughter? I knew your dad when we were in high school, back in the New Stone Age.”

“How do you do, Mr. Scatterwell?” Sunny said politely. She had a moment’s struggle extricating her hand from his double clutch. “Excuse me, I have to deliver something to Mr. Barnstable.”

Ollie wasn’t looking his best—not surprising when turning in his sleep or even sitting up to eat could trigger a stab of pain if he wasn’t careful. His skin looked a half-size too large on him, he had bags under his eyes, and he’d apparently collected a new crop of wrinkles. Sunny thought she’d seen her boss in a bad way those times he’d come in seriously hungover, but that Ollie had looked positively chipper compared to the way he looked now.

And the situation hadn’t improved his notoriously uncertain temper. “What is it?” he snapped. “Can’t a guy get any rest around here?”

Sunny held out her thick envelope. “Mr. Orton rushed this over.”

Ollie pushed the package away. “You think I’m going to worry about that, the way I feel?”

“The man said it was urgent.”

“Urgent for him maybe.” Ollie grabbed the envelope and glared at her over the big, dark, pouchy bags beneath his eyes. “He may lose a few bucks if the deal drags on, but it’s not costing
me
money. This can wait.”

Ollie contemptuously tossed the overstuffed envelope into his lap—then let out a stifled howl of pain as it landed on his bad leg. Sunny quickly collected the papers and deposited them on the hospital table at the foot of his bed.

“Oliver, you need something to take your mind off things.” Gardner looked at the gold watch on his wrist. “There’s some music over in the other wing right now.”

“I don’t feel—” Ollie began.

But Gardner just kept smiling. “Think you’ll feel better just lying here?” He hit a button on his souped-up remote, and a second later, a voice came out of a speaker. “Yes, Mr. Scatterwell?”

“Can we get an aide in here?” he asked. “My roomie and I want to get into our wheelchairs.”

While they waited, Gardner turned to Mike. “Go on, tell Sunny about our band.”

Mike laughed again. “We were the Cosmic Blade. I played bass, and Gardner here had a wall of drums. Remember how we used to start ‘Gimme Some Lovin’?” He began fingering chords on an air guitar.
“Ba-da-da-da-dooomph, ba-da-da-da-dooomph . . .”
Gardner immediately started wailing away on an imaginary drum set. Sunny couldn’t help noticing that he was seriously out of time with Mike—and that he quickly tired.

“Spencer Davis,” Gardner wheezed.

“A long time ago,” Mike said.

A young woman in a blue uniform came in, and began the process of transferring the patients from bed to wheelchair. Gardner Scatterwell was slow and awkward. “Damn stroke has really fouled me up.” His tone fell somewhere between explaining and complaining as he struggled into the chair.

Ollie was even worse. Pain not only made him clumsy, but also made him afraid to shift his weight at all. But at last both were in their chairs. Gardner looked up at Mike. “Would you mind wheeling Oliver?”

He grinned at Sunny. “At my age, and in my condition, I’ve got to grab any chance I can get to be with a lovely woman.”

Shaking her head but smiling, Sunny took the handgrips on the wheelchair. “Where to?” she asked.

He directed them around the nurses’ station and down one of the other hallways. Although it had the same floor and paint job, this corridor seemed a little narrower—older.

This must be the wing I saw coming up the walk,
Sunny thought. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Mike looking around with interest as he followed along with Ollie’s wheelchair. Ollie sat in a dejected huddle, ignoring it all.

“Just keep going, right to the end, and then you make a left,” Gardner said.

Sunny followed his directions past a series of semiprivate rooms, finally coming into a combination sunroom and cafeteria, where a small collection of older folks—mainly women—clustered in wheelchairs and walkers around a younger man playing guitar. They were all singing “Pennies from Heaven.” Sunny, Mike, Gardner, and Ollie all waited in the doorway until they finished and rewarded themselves with a little applause.

“Got room for a couple of late kids, Luke?” Gardner called as the clapping died away.

“Always,” the guitarist replied with a smile. He was a guy about Sunny’s age, with a big mass of shaggy, curly brown hair that spilled down into a big, shaggy beard. A proud nose poked out of all that hair, and a pair of warm brown eyes beamed at them.

Like melted chocolate,
Sunny couldn’t help thinking.

The man shifted his shoulder under the colorful strap on his acoustic guitar as he beckoned them into the circle around him. “Luke Daconto,” he identified himself. “Musical therapist. Tunes and therapy, at your service. So, Gardner, you brought me a couple of new recruits?”

“Yeah, it’s a little too quiet for us down in the rehab wing,” the older man replied, introducing Ollie, Mike, and Sunny.

“Well, let’s see if we can come up with a cheerful song.” Luke’s fingers seemed to dance along the guitar’s fretboard as if they had a mind of their own.

Ollie suddenly perked up. “That’s ‘Smoke on the Water.’”

“Guilty,” Luke admitted. “You can’t always be playing ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ How about this?”

He launched into a spirited version of “When I’m Sixty-Four.” Some of the older audience members didn’t know the words, but Gardner Scatterwell joined in. So did Mike, and then Ollie. Finally Sunny picked up the chorus. She noticed one woman who wasn’t singing, but still tapped out the rhythm on the armrest of her wheelchair. Luke played a selection of tunes from several generations, from hits to standards to children’s songs. It was kind of silly, but Sunny found herself chiming in with as much gusto as the older members of the audience. The grand finale was “On Top of Spaghetti,” where Luke did a sort of call and response routine. It was obviously a favorite of the regulars in the group, drawing hearty applause.

“I’m afraid that’s it for today,” the guitarist eventually said. “Thanks to all of you for coming. I’ll be back here in a couple of days. And especially thanks to Oliver, Mike, and Sunny. I hope I’ll see you again.”

“Count on it,” Mike said heartily, and then looked embarrassed. After all, he was only a guest.

Gardner Scatterwell laughed. “Well, I need someone to wheel me in here. You volunteering, Mike?”

As they rolled back to Room 114, Sunny was glad to see that Ollie looked a little more animated. “He seems like a nice guy.”

“Hell of a guitarist,” Gardner said. “Did you listen to those little snatches of song he plays between the sing-alongs? Folk, jazz, rock, classical . . . this kid would have been a big help on the Cosmic Blade, right, Mike? Why’d the band ever break up anyway?”

He continued with funny anecdotes about the high school band’s musical career until they reached the room—and a mean-looking heavyset man leaped up from the visitor’s chair to loom over Ollie.

“Where the hell have you been, Barnstable?” the man demanded in a gravelly voice that was all too familiar. This could only be Mr. Orton. “What are you trying to pull?”

The one certainty
that Sunny had found in her work relationship with Oliver Barnstable was his uncertain temper—or rather, the certainty that sooner or later he would erupt over something. An unworthy part of her was just glad that this time around, she wasn’t the one he was unloading on, but the unpleasant Mr. Orton.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Ollie the Barnacle demanded. “Dancing
Gangnam Style
?” His normal red color came flooding back to his face as he pointed at his injured leg. “I busted this, and they doped me up to keep me out of it while they screwed with my leg—screwed in it, actually. So I haven’t paid much attention to our deal, Orton. I’ll get to it when I get to it.”

“Then you should have read this more carefully.” Orton jerked a thumb at the overstuffed envelope still sitting on Ollie’s hospital table. “If you had, you’d know that the option for that parcel of land you want has a time limit on it. Go over the time limit, and you’ll have to renegotiate the whole agreement. And I promise you, the longer you jerk me around on this deal, the more you’re going to end up paying.”

With that, Orton stomped out of the room, leaving Ollie to chew his lips in silence for a moment. Then he turned to Sunny. “Have you got the number for my lawyer?”

Luckily, Sunny had that one memorized. She recited it to Ollie, who punched it into his bedside phone. The conversation was brief and definitely unpleasant, with Ollie demanding his counsel get up to Bridgewater Hall as soon as possible. He hung up still angry. “We’ll have to go over this damned contract,” Ollie said as if it were all Sunny’s fault. “I’ll want you here in the morning to pick it up.”

Before he could complain any more, a woman in a white lab coat entered the room. From the way she walked, Sunny suspected this was a woman who didn’t put up with much. She didn’t look more than ten years older than Sunny, though a few gray strands were beginning to appear in the brown hair she wore pulled back. Her skin was pale, her cheekbones high, and her lips were full—or would be if she relaxed them from that tightly pursed expression—and her eyes were a stony gray, set on either side of a proud beak of a nose.

“Evening, Doctor,” Gardner Scatterwell said, his voice sounding like a fawning grade school student.

The doctor paid no attention to him, nor to Sunny and her dad. “I am Dr. Gavrik,” she announced to Ollie in a slightly accented voice. “I have read your charts from the hospital and will perform an examination now.”

With a few brusque movements, she got Ollie back into bed and then pulled the curtains around them. “Your blood pressure is much higher than it has been at your other readings,” they heard her comment from behind the gaily patterned fabric.

“He just had a rather tense business discussion,” Mike called in explanation.

For just a second, Dr. Gavrik’s face appeared from behind the curtain, her expression withering. “Did I ask you for a diagnosis?” she all but hissed at him.

Mike glanced at Sunny and his own face reddened.

I suspect the blood pressure reading just went up on this side of the room, too,
Sunny thought, but she said nothing and neither did her father.

The doctor vanished behind the curtains again for several minutes. When she reappeared, briskly moving the privacy curtain back to the wall with a rattle of hooks against the ceiling track, she seemed the model of serene professionalism.

“Except for the blood pressure, all the other exam results are normal. I’ll have the nurse check your pressure twice more this evening. I expect it will be acceptable. Then, tomorrow, you will be evaluated by our therapy department, and they will prepare a treatment plan for you. Good evening, Mr. Barnstable.”

With a nod, Dr. Gavrik headed for the door, leaving the room in silence.

Despite a wince of pain from the exertion, Ollie pulled himself up to make sure that the doctor was well and truly gone. Even then, he kept his voice low as he turned to Mike. “What kind of joint have you gotten me into?” he demanded. “Doctors like that—they bury their mistakes.”

“Doctors like who?” Sunny asked.

“You know—foreign ones.” Ollie kept his voice low and his eyes on the doorway. “Anything goes wrong, they can always go back to wherever they came from.”

“I can’t believe—” Sunny began, but Gardner Scatterwell suddenly spoke up.

“She’ll never win any bedside manner awards, but I can assure you, Dr. Gavrik is an excellent physician,” he said. “Most of the people in this ward are basically trying to get themselves better, so health is less of an issue. But in the time I’ve been here, I’ve seen Dr. Gavrik save the lives of several permanent residents.”

Now I see why they call Gardner the mayor of the rehab ward,
Sunny thought.
He even talks like a politician.

Gardner waggled his eyebrows. “Besides, when you get to know her, you’ll find she’s a very attractive woman.”

Sunny rolled her eyes.
Maybe too much like a politician.

“I guess Dad and I ought to be heading home,” she said.

“Yeah,” Ollie the Barnacle said. “Check in at the office tomorrow morning, then come here and collect these papers.”

Sunny and her dad said good-bye to Ollie and Gardner, then headed down the hallway. Mike was silent as they walked past the nurses’ station and then toward the front door.

“You okay, Dad?” Sunny asked. “That doctor didn’t upset you, did she?”

“I was thinking of something else.” But Mike didn’t elaborate as they got to Rafe the guard’s desk. While her father paged back through the sign-in book, Rafe smiled at Sunny. “Well, it looks as if you survived the Curse of Portia,” he said.

Mike looked up. “Is that Dr. Gavrik’s first name?”

That took the wind out of Rafe’s sails, reducing him to “Er, ah . . .”

“This is my dad, Mike Coolidge,” Sunny introduced them. Then she went on to explain the rumors about Portia acting as the fickle finger of death.

Mike snorted and shook his head. “I’m getting gladder and gladder I didn’t come to this place when I was sick. It’s beginning to sound like a home for the feeble-minded.”

“Just a place where a lot of lonely folks have no place to go and nothing much to talk about,” Rafe said. “It’s like little kids telling ghost stories.”

“Yup—definitely happy that I can get out,” Mike mumbled, scrawling his name in the appropriate spot. Sunny signed out, too, then said good-bye to Rafe.

“Have a good evening,” Rafe replied.

As they stepped out the door, Mike said, “That’s a nice boy.”

“Dad.” Sunny gave him an exasperated look. “You don’t have to worry about setting me up.”

“I was just thinking that maybe Will Price could use a little competition,” Mike turned an innocent blue gaze on her. “They’re even in a similar field. Will’s a cop, and this fellow is in security.”

“Rafe’s also a lot younger than I am,” Sunny pointed out.

“Oh, that all evens out in, say, twenty years.”

Wonderful,
Sunny silently groused.
He’s already got me married and sitting beside the fire for twenty years.
“What’s got you thinking like this?” she asked.

“I’ve just been mulling over something Gardner mentioned,” Mike confessed. “He asked why the band broke up. You know, I met your mother through that stupid band. She used to stand right up front when we played.” He smiled at the memory. “There were usually three kinds of people you’d find up front. The ones who couldn’t dance, the ones who wanted to look cool, and the ones who really enjoyed the music. Your mother loved music—not that I need to remind you of that, with your name.”

Sunny nodded. With a name like Sonata, it hadn’t always been easy when she was younger. Kids are the ultimate conformists, and anything even a little bit different tended to get picked on. But she’d come through reasonably all right.
It’s too bad I lost Mom just when I was finally getting comfortable with the name,
she thought. She’d thank her for it now.

“So she knew your friend Gardner, too, huh?” Sunny said. “You know, there’s a fourth reason for people to hang around in front of a band—groupies.”

“I think that’s why Gardner got into music,” Mike told her. “I had to give him a poke in the snoot when he started sniffing around your mother while she was going out with me. It’s definitely what broke up the band.”

“Dad!” Sunny couldn’t believe what he was saying.

But Mike merely nodded and gave her a shamefaced grin. “I’d forgotten about all that when I saw him today. It was almost fifty years ago, for the love of mud. I’d just hear about him in passing. Seemed as if he was always going off places, sometimes for years at a time. Mexico, Nepal . . . I suppose he could tell you some stories.”

“Well, at least you seemed friendly enough now,” Sunny said. “I guess the two of you have gotten older and wiser.”

Mike just shrugged. “Older, at least.”

He got in his truck, she got in her SUV, and they both headed home.

*

Shadow had checked
all the rooms in the house—all except one, where the door was closed. So he’d given up for the time being and come back downstairs. He woke from a nap at the rattle of keys in the lock and strolled over to investigate the newcomers. Would it be Sunny—which would be cause for a warm welcome—or the Old One, her father, who would just get a cursory sniff?

It turned out to be both of them. He twined around Sunny’s legs as they headed for the room where the two-legs kept the food.

Shadow’s nose told him that Sunny and the Old One had been in the same place. Some of the smells clinging to them were familiar—they reminded him of scents he’d encountered when he’d been taken to be treated for sickness or hurts. But he also got a whiff of many Old Ones, smells of sickness.

When Sunny knelt to pet him, Shadow detected another scent on her hands. He smelled cat!

For a second, he was disconcerted and nearly pulled away. Instead, he found himself avidly sniffing her fingers as she gently stroked through his fur. Sunny made happy sounds and spoke to the Old One, who grumbled in reply. His rumbling only got louder when Shadow approached to sniff at him, too, though he quickly returned to Sunny when he didn’t find the interesting cat scent on the other human.

Even when Sunny stopped playing with him and began preparing a meal, Shadow stayed close, breathing in the dissipating scent. Definitely a She. Strange. He’d smelled plenty of cats in his wanderings. What made the scent of this female so interesting?

*

Shadow acted a
bit oddly during supper, climbing several times into Sunny’s lap to sniff at her hands.

“You did wash ’em before you touched the food, right?” Mike asked.

“Dad!” Sunny gave him a look.

“Well, the furball keeps checking them out. And you said it was a female cat you were petting.” Mike’s bright blue eyes fixed Shadow with a dubious stare. “Are you sure he’s been, like, fixed?”

“It was one of the first things Jane Rigsdale checked when she became his vet,” Sunny assured her dad. “I don’t exactly think Shadow could fake that.”

“All right, all right, just asking.” Mike switched the topic. “I’m glad we invited Helena over. Be nice to see her.”

Sunny knew her dad had been missing his lady friend, who’d been out of town over the weekend visiting her daughter in Boston. And, of course, Sunny knew Mike had an ulterior motive. Helena Martinson was sure to bring her award-winning coffee cake. “You’re just glad to have some dessert tonight,” she scolded. “Don’t go crazy on the cake.”

Mike raised his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay. The food police have spoken.”

“Speaking of police, I invited Will over, too,” Sunny tried to sound casual. That date for pancakes had never materialized over the weekend. Will had been preempted for something on Saturday morning, and he stayed out of touch on Sunday. Since he’d switched to the day shift this week, she’d invited him over tonight. “Don’t worry,” Sunny assured Mike. “If there’s not enough coffee cake to go around, he can share my piece.”

That sort of mirrored her problem with Will. Just like the coffee cake, there weren’t enough available males to be found in a small town like Kittery Harbor. Sunny should be glad to be seeing a guy like Will. But she wondered if it wasn’t getting a bit . . . well, dull. Pancake breakfasts, coffee cake. It didn’t sound like a healthy diet, for the body or for the soul.

Mike didn’t seem to have that problem with Mrs. M. His face was eager as they cleared the dinner plates and cleaned them. Then he set a pot of coffee brewing and got out the good china cups and cake plates. The coffee was just about done when the doorbell rang.

Mike moved with an extra spring in his step to answer it—although he almost sprang back when he opened the door to be greeted with a joyful “woof!” A biscuit-colored dog had his paws halfway up Mike’s thigh as he stretched to try and lick at his hands.

That pup just keeps growing,
Sunny thought as Helena Martinson struggled with the golden Lab’s leash.

“Toby, get down! Where are your manners?” the petite woman scolded. She had a figure women decades younger would envy, and even her hair had merely gone from blond to something more like platinum. Mike had to bend down to receive her kiss, but he obviously thought it worthwhile. He didn’t even notice the dog romping around his legs. Mrs. Martinson gave Mike Toby’s leash and walked down the hall with a rueful smile. “Toby is still a bit of a handful,” she said, handing Sunny a small box that held her famous coffee cake.

“If he keeps growing, you’ll be able to ride him over,” Sunny replied.

Mike released Toby from his leash, and the dog headed immediately into the living room, sniffing the air and whining because he couldn’t find his friend Shadow. Sunny glanced back toward the kitchen, but the cat had definitely made himself scarce. He’d probably put in an appearance when the guests were leaving—Sunny was never sure whether it was an attempt to be sociable or if Shadow wanted to make sure the dog was definitely gone.

The bell rang again, and Sunny went this time to find Will Price at the door. He wore a pair of khakis and a natural cotton short-sleeved shirt, which should have gone over well on his rangy form with its summer tan. But the light colors only brought out a bright redness under his tan, a redness that only increased on his nose and cheeks, although the area around his eyes was noticeably paler. Wherever he’d spent the weekend, he’d been wearing sunglasses.