Looming Murder (21 page)

“I have a really bad feeling about this,” she said, getting out of the car. This time, I tended to agree with her. I slid out and onto my crutches, and scrambled to keep up with her. By the time I reached the front door, she was pushing the buzzer repeatedly.

“There’s no answer.” She stared at me, her eyes wide with worry. “Do you suppose she went out?”

“She was here five minutes ago.” I tried the doorknob and the door swung open. We stood frozen for a moment and then stepped in.

The inside of Susan’s house was as neat and tidy as Marnie’s was messy. A gorgeous half-moon table, covered with a handwoven cloth, decorated the entrance. On it was a brown leather bag.

“Her purse is here, so she can’t be far.” I wandered a few steps farther, stopping at the entrance to the living room and looking around. The walls were taupe, the furniture beige slipcovered cottage-style. My eyes traveled, taking in the blond wood desk in the corner. Susan had good taste. Suddenly the blood drained from my face as I noticed a pair of legs sticking out from behind the coffee table.

I staggered, almost dropping my crutches but regained my balance at the last second. “There she is!” I hobbled over. There was Susan, unconscious.

Jenny rushed past and dropped to her knees beside Susan. “Call an ambulance!”

T
h
e paramedics appeared minutes later and soon were using words like “skull fracture,” “intracranial hemorrhage,” and “traumatic brain injury.” By the time they sped away with Susan, siren blaring, Jenny was beside herself with guilt.

“All of this is my fault. I should have
made
her believe me,” she said miserably. “If I’d insisted she take me seriously, none of this would have happened.”

“You’ve got it all wrong.” I patted her back. “What you did probably saved her life. Susan was going to do this whether you read her fortune or not. But the fact that you did is why we got here in time to call the ambulance.”

She nodded hesitantly, but judging by the torrent of tears rolling down her cheeks during the drive to the hospital, she didn’t believe a word I said.

•   •   •

The emergency room was swarming with doctors and nurses. A burly security guard stood blocking the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly, “but you can’t go in there.”

“But that’s our friend who was just brought in,” argued Jenny. “We just want to see her.”

“I’ll ask her doctor to come talk to you as soon as he can.” He pushed her gently but firmly away from the doorway.

I put an arm around her. “Come on, Jenny. The best thing we can do for her right now is let the doctors do their job.”

She didn’t look reassured, but she followed me to a corner of the waiting area and dropped into a chair, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands.

Feeling compelled to comfort her, I said, “She’ll be all right. Don’t worry.” My reassurance sounded false even to me.

We waited, watching the door to the ER almost as obsessively as we kept glancing at our watches. Every time it opened, we jumped to our feet, only to sit back down when it turned out to be a nurse or attendant. At last a doctor appeared. It was Dr. Green. We rose and he hurried over.

“How is she, Doctor?” Jenny wrung her hands with worry.

“Your friend hit her head pretty hard.” He gestured for us all to sit. We did, and he leaned forward, looking somber. “She was brought in unconscious. She woke up for a little while, but seemed drowsy and confused. The good news is that, according to the MRI, she has no intracranial bleeding and no skull fracture. But we’ll be keeping her overnight to continue monitoring her vital signs and the Glasgow Coma Scale.”

I frowned. “What’s that?”

“It’s how we check for brain injury.” He looked from me to Jenny. “I’m sorry there isn’t anything I can add at this point. We should know more by morning.”

“Can we see her?” I asked.

“She’ll be kept in the ER for most of the night. I suggest you go home, try to get some sleep and come back in the morning.” He glanced down at my foot. “How’s your ankle? Are you still feeling a lot of pain?”

“No. I’ve been obeying your instructions to the letter.”

“I’m happy to hear that. I think you can take off the bandages if all the swelling is gone. But don’t try walking on it for another few days.” With that, he nodded and hurried back to the ER.

“No bleeding, no skull fracture. That’s good news, don’t you think?” I said, scooping my crutches under my arms and heading for the door.

Jenny held the door open for me, still looking worried out of her mind.

And so was I.

I
finally fell asleep just as the sun began to filter through the window, only to wake up forty-five minutes before Jenny was due to pick me up. I swung my legs off the bed, testing my ankle gently. It still hurt, but the pain was hardly more than a dull ache. I raised my foot and examined it. It was now four days since I’d twisted it. The swelling was completely gone. Yay! I gave a silent thank-you to Dr. Green for allowing me to take off the bandages. If I’d had to wear a ballet slipper on one foot and a sock on the other for one more day, I would have screamed. As long as I kept using my crutches and didn’t so much as set my left foot down, I could wear whatever I wanted, even heels, right?

I looked through the closet for my favorite midheight sandals, a pretty little pair of pink Manolos that had cost me a week’s pay. After ten minutes on my hands and knees, I still couldn’t find them. Had I left them behind when I’d moved all my stuff from Matthew’s room to this one?

I hurried down the hall and, hesitating only slightly, entered Matthew’s room. I gasped. This room was a mess: unmade bed with sheets and blankets bundled in a mass at the foot of it; an assortment of papers littering the bedside tables; jeans, sweaters and shirts piled on the corner chair; and loafers, running shoes and boat shoes littering the floor. I stood in shock, taking it all in. Good grief, Jenny was right. The man was organizationally challenged—if not a slob. But in all honesty, discovering this flaw of his only made him more endearing. What can I say? I covered the short distance between the doorway and the closet, got down on my hands and knees and rummaged around until I felt something hard and metallic. I froze.

It couldn’t be. But even as I wanted to be wrong, I knew I wasn’t. I held my breath and pulled it out. I was looking at a small gun!

I fumbled and dropped it. And in the split second before it hit the floor, I imagined it firing and saw my life flash before my eyes.

But the gun did
not
discharge, and I was
not
killed by a ricocheting bullet.

I stared at it for an eternity of seconds—unable to move, almost unable to breathe, my heart going like a jackhammer. A dozen thoughts raced through my mind at once, my mind locking on one. If he was David’s attacker, it stood to reason that one of his garments would match the yarn I’d found. All at once I went into high gear. I wiped the weapon clean—I wasn’t stupid enough to leave my prints on it—and pushed it deep in the back of the closet. I struggled to my feet and tore through the hangers, riffling through the few hanging sweaters and shirts at the speed of a cardsharp.

Nothing.

I crossed the room and went through a large pile of clothes on the chair.

Nothing.

The drawers
, I thought.

In two swift crutch strides I tore them open, rummaging through underwear, socks and T-shirts.

Still
nothing.

I paused, my eyes darting around. Where could he have hidden it? And then it hit me: Matthew knew about the yarn I’d recovered. If he was guilty, he was smart enough to have gotten rid of whatever garment matched that yarn. No wonder he’d been furious at me for investigating. He was afraid of what I would find out.

I returned to my room, shut the door and sat on the edge of the bed, my head spinning. Finding the gun in his closet did prove he was the killer, didn’t it? I was in shock—sick to my stomach.

I thought back to the night of the murder, putting the events into sequence. Matthew had gone out to pick up dinner around nine, which was about the time Jeremy got that call. He could have made that call himself. He’d also gone out under the pretext of looking for Winston that night. My head spun as I added up all the evidence. I took a deep breath, trying to still my racing heart.

I shook my head again. There had to be a logical explanation.

I forced myself to think calmly. If Matthew had not put the gun in his closet, then the only explanation was that somebody else had. All at once I remembered David asking to use the washroom the night of the weaving class.

And then I remembered somebody else who had asked to use the washroom that night.

Mercedes Hanson.

B
y
the time Jenny pulled up in front of my house, I had made two decisions. First, I would keep quiet about finding the gun, at least until I talked to Matthew about it. And second, I would find out the truth about whether Mercedes had stolen it from Marnie. If I was correct, that put the gun in close proximity to Dolores—and made her my number one suspect. If she was guilty, that also meant that Mercedes was an accessory. What kind of a mother would involve her daughter in murder?

I locked the front door and hobbled over to the car.

“Nice shoes,” said Jenny, as I slid into the passenger seat. I slipped my crutches between the seats, and raising a foot I wiggled it to show off my sandals. “Thanks. How’d you sleep?”

“Not a wink all night,” she said, putting the car into gear.

“Me either.” Ever so casually I asked, “So, did you find out where Matthew disappeared to yesterday?”

“He said he took Winston for a walk and ran into Mike.” She sighed. “He made the mistake of telling him that he’d moved into my spare bedroom. It seems Mike didn’t take it very well.”

That was one heck of a long walk
, I thought, remembering the call I’d made to her yesterday. By that time it had already been late afternoon and she’d told me Matthew had been gone for hours. I wondered what else he had done during all that time.

We sped along in silence until ten minutes later when Jenny tore into one of the hospital parking spots and came to a screeching stop.

“Oh, God, I hope she’s all right.” She hopped out, slammed the door shut and jogged toward the hospital entrance.

“Hey, what about the parking meter? You’ll get a ticket.” I fed the meter and hurried into the building as fast as I could. I caught up with Jenny at the reception desk, where the same chubby blonde was looking through admissions sheets.

She ran her finger down a list. “Susan Wood. Susan Wood. Ah, here she is—room 114.”

Jenny took off again, with me in lobbing pursuit—one turn and she was gone. “Hey, wait for me!”

I hurried down a corridor, took a left, and realized I was lost. What was it about hospitals? They were all built like mazes. They should do something about that, like maybe paint their corridors different colors so they wouldn’t all look the same. I stopped and looked around, trying to remember the directions the receptionist had rattled off. Suddenly I smelled the same odd odor I’d noticed on Mike Davis and on Joan Douglas a few days ago. That’s when I noticed the sign above the door in front of me.
ONCOLOGY DEPARTMENT
, it read, and below in smaller letters,
CHEMOTHERAPY
. It hit me like a ton of bricks. The smell I’d noticed the last time I’d been here had come not from Joan Douglas but from this room. I’d been standing in exactly this spot when I noticed it.

I paused as a new thought began to form. Susan Wood had said something about knowing everybody’s secrets. One of them had been about someone receiving chemo. And if Mike Davis was exuding that strange odor, it could mean he had cancer. Something niggled in the back of my mind. What had Matthew told me about Mike’s parents? Mike’s father had died from prostate cancer, and his wife had left him soon after he was diagnosed.

An orderly was walking by. “Excuse me. Could you tell me where I can find room 114?” I asked him. He pointed the way, and off I went, putting more of the puzzle pieces into place as I hurried along.

When I got to the room, Jenny was standing by Susan’s bed, holding her hand.

She turned to me as I walked in. “She’s still unconscious.” And then she smiled. “But, I don’t know, I have the feeling that she’ll be fine.”

I came closer and looked down at Susan. There were no bandages, no bruising. Her eyes were closed, her dark hair fanning over the pillow. But her color was good, her breathing regular.

“Are you sure she’s unconscious? She looks like she’s just sleeping.”

From behind me a voice said, “That’s because she
is
sleeping.”

I swung around. “Dr. Green!”

He stood in the doorway, wearing a lopsided grin. “I see you’re back to wearing high heels.”

“I wouldn’t call these high. They’re only small heels.”

He shook his head. “It’s your neck,” he said teasingly. He approached his patient and picked up the chart at the foot of the bed.

Jenny stepped back to give him room. “How is she, Doctor?”

“Pretty good. She was awake and alert for a few hours earlier. All her vitals are fine. As a matter of fact, if everything is still all right, she can probably go home when she wakes up.”

As if on cue, Susan stirred. Her lashes fluttered and she opened her eyes. She glanced around, looking confused.

Jenny leaned over her. “It’s okay, Susan. You’re in the hospital.”

“I am?” And then the cloud cleared from her eyes. “Oh, right. I remember.”

Dr. Green stepped forward and said, “Let me take a good look at this patient.” He did his flashlight-in-the-eyes thing. He listened to her heart and took her blood pressure. At last he smiled. “I think you’ll live.”

“She’s all right?” I asked.

“Good as new.” He smiled at Susan. “You can go home. Just make sure you stop by the nurses’ station and sign the release forms.” I couldn’t help but notice that his eyes kept drifting over to Jenny. He liked her.

When he spoke, it was to me, but he was grinning at Jenny. “It seems to me that you and your friends are a bit accident prone. Are you involved in some kind of extreme sport?”

I chuckled. “This is my friend Jenny Davis.” I watched as they locked eyes again, smiled and shook hands. She was looking rather intensely at the good doctor—probably reading his aura. And then it struck me. No. She wasn’t aura reading. Jenny liked Dr. Green. That raised the question of whether I should tell her my theory about Mike having cancer.

“I remember you. You used to work at that store,” he said.

“I still do.”

He stood smiling at her, and then he looked at his watch. “I was just about to have a coffee break. Would you care to join me?” As an afterthought, he turned to me. “You too, of course.”

Jenny looked uncertainly from him to me.

“Good idea,” I said quickly. “Jenny, you go ahead. It’ll take at least half an hour for Susan to get dressed and sign the discharge papers. We’ll join you when she’s done.”

Dr. Green smiled and nodded. “Shall we?”

Jenny hesitated.

“Go, go.” I shooed her away and watched them leave the room, both smiling awkwardly.

“You have no intention of us joining them, do you?” asked Susan, pushing off the blankets and swinging her legs over the edge of the bed.

“You must have read my mind.”

She nodded. “I think we may have just witnessed the beginning of a romance.” She stood, and holding on to the back of her hospital gown, she looked around. “Any clue where my clothes might be?”

I spotted a locker against the far wall. “Probably in there.” I went over and opened it, retrieving a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. “Are these your clothes?”

“Yes.”

I carried them to her. “Now that we’re alone”—I glanced toward the door to make sure it was closed—“can you tell me what happened? Did someone attack you?”

“Attack me?” She looked shocked at the suggestion. “Eh, do you mind?” She signaled for me to turn around—modesty. I did. “Of course not. I tripped. Silly me, I was on the phone talking to you and tripped on the telephone cord.”

“So you didn’t confront anyone about being the murderer?”

She paused. I could almost hear the wheels grinding as she tried to remember. “I was going to. I called Dolores, but before I could get to it, she went into a screaming fit, accusing me of spreading rumors about her having an affair with Jeremy Fox.”

I swung around, just as she was pulling on her jeans. “Oh, sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m finished.” She tucked her shirt into her jeans. “You know the old saying, ‘The best defense is a good offense’?”

I nodded. “You think she already knew you were going to confront her?”

“If she thinks I’m just going to forget about that, she’s dead wrong.”

“You’re convinced it was her?” Now, more than ever, I wanted her to be right about this. I wanted anybody to be guilty, anybody but Matthew.

She nodded. “I know she had a gun. I saw it in her purse a few months ago. She stopped by the office to see Jeremy one day and left her bag on my desk while I went to the washroom. When I came back, I didn’t know whose bag it was, so I peeked inside. That’s when I saw the gun. I was so startled I closed the bag and didn’t tell a soul.”

So my theory that Mercedes could have stashed the gun in Matthew’s closet was plausible. A wave of relief washed over me. This theory could also explain the argument Dolores and her daughter had outside my front door. No matter how much mother and daughter argued, Mercedes was still Dolores’s daughter, which could explain why she decided to hide the gun in Matthew’s closet. She wanted to protect her mother.

“What should I do?” asked Susan. “I still don’t have any proof.”

Suddenly another piece of the puzzle fell into place. “I don’t know why this slipped my mind,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Did you know that Dolores is a dot-com millionaire?”

Susan nodded. “Yes, she invented some kind of software.”

“And the only thing that was missing from Jeremy’s house was his laptop.” I looked at Susan and saw the spark of understanding. “What if she wanted to break into his computer for some reason? If anyone would know how to do it, it would be Dolores.”