Organized to Death (33 page)

Leading the way to the living room, she said, “I hope you’re here to tell me more about Dr. Stevenson and where you’ve taken him.” She flicked on the light switch and several lamps came on at once. She didn’t ask him to sit down, hoped he’d leave soon.

He stood by the fireplace that she hadn’t lit in years and ran his hand through his wet hair. It glistened and even at her age, she couldn’t help noticing how ruggedly handsome he was.

“I’m sorry,” Hank said, “I didn’t find out which facility they decided to take Dr. Stevenson to. I’ll get that information for you as soon as I can.”

“Then why are you here?”

He studied her a moment. “I know you’re really close to the doctor. You worked for him for a long time. And I suspect you even had his child. Ted.”

Betsy could feel all the blood drain from her face. She fumbled behind her until she touched the arms of a chair and sat down hard. “What?”

Hank looked pained. “You didn’t know Ted was Dr. Stevenson’s son?”

Betsy shook her head. “How did you find out?”

“He told Tina.”

“And he told her I was the mother?”

Hank didn’t answer.

“You’re only guessing. Anyone could be the mother.” Her voice sounded bitter to her own ears. She’d given herself away by becoming weak, sitting in the chair. But she couldn’t give up. “Doctor was quite the man in his day.”

“Do you know of any other woman who gave up a child in Ohio who could have been Ted’s mother?”

“No.” She longed for the brandy bottle sitting on the kitchen counter. Along with everything else, had she become an alcoholic? What did it matter? She was done.

You’re no good, and now it’s all come back at you.

Furious, she jumped up and scowled at Hank. “What do you want?”

“I want to know if you became so angry with Crystal about what she’d found out that you killed her.”

Betsy gasped. “Because she found out I’d had Doctor’s child? Of course not.”

“Then how about because she found out Dr. Stevenson kept giving women a drug that could cause cancer in their daughters? Kept giving it long after he should have known the danger? Or how about because Crystal knew it all?”

Betsy forced herself not to collapse, her anger making her strong. As it had when she’d confronted Crystal. “She wouldn’t give up. She insisted he go public, go to the newspaper and tell the world. Said other women could be out there, at risk, and it was the right thing for him to do. He told me all about it. How she threatened him. He was scared. And confused. He barely remembered what he did. He tried to make it right back when it happened. He notified all the women he’d given the drug to, and some formed that group they call the Lunch Bunch. It was the mothers’ responsibility to tell their daughters.”

Hank scowled. “So, he ducked it and put it on the mothers?”

Betsy’s shoulders slumped. “He was a weak man. He was a good doctor, though,” she said defiantly, her fists clenched at her sides. “Overworked. He tried hard to help everyone. He didn’t have time to keep up with everything. No doctor does. It became my job to protect him, even back then. And now.”

She took the gun out of her pocket and aimed it at Hank’s chest.

He stiffened. “Don’t.”

Why was Tina not surprised to see Hank’s Jaguar parked in front of Betsy’s house? She fumbled for her purse. It was too large—might get in her way. She removed the gun and put it in her jacket pocket, leaving her pocketbook on the passenger seat.

She hurried up the walkway, her hair immediately plastered to her skull as the rain came down in torrents. The drapes were drawn across the front window, but a slight gap let her look into the living room.

She gasped when she saw Hank standing by the fireplace, Betsy a few steps away, pointing a gun at him. She almost cried out but put her hand over her mouth. And she hadn’t brought her cell phone. Should she go back, call the police?

Even through the glass she heard the pop from the gun, saw a flash. Her eyes closed automatically, but she forced them open in time to see Hank crumpling to the floor.

“No!” she screamed.

She pulled out her gun, aimed at Betsy as she’d been taught, feet apart, left hand supporting her right wrist, and fired through the glass. Again, her eyes closed. A few pieces of glass hit her face but most fell inside.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Betsy, mouth open wide, screaming, falling backward. Her elbows hit the floor and the gun went off again. Tina stood as if paralyzed, wondering if she should fire at Betsy one more time. Somehow she just couldn’t do it.

She rushed to the front door, found it unlocked, and ran into the living room. Betsy lay on her back, eyes wide and glassy, a gaping wound in her neck. Tina had aimed for her chest, but the gun must have recoiled and the shot gone high. Tina grabbed Betsy’s weapon, even though she knew Betsy was dead, then turned to Hank.

“Red,” he said so low she almost didn’t hear him. “You gonna shoot me, too?”

She looked down, saw both guns in her hands, and sank to the floor next to him. Carefully, she set the guns aside and looked for the bullet wound. Found it in his chest and tried to hide her alarm. Not much blood. “Hang on,” she said. “Gotta find a phone.”

“My pocket,” Hank managed to say, then he passed out.

She swore and fumbled for his cell.

Two days later, Tina entered Hank’s hospital room clutching a bouquet of yellow mums and wearing a forced smile.

She was glad to find him alone. She hadn’t seen him since watching them put him in the ambulance at Betsy’s house. Because she wasn’t family, they wouldn’t let her into ICU, so she’d had to wait until they transferred him to a private room. The gunshot had nicked a lung but otherwise hadn’t done any life-threatening damage. They’d patched him up, stuck him in ICU for almost two whole days, and told him he could go home soon if he behaved himself.

He watched her come toward him, a slight smile on his lips. He looked pale, and a huge bandage covered most of his otherwise bare chest.

Her legs wobbled, and she clung to the bedrail for a moment before bending over and kissing him on a scratchy cheek. Then she sat down in the visitor’s chair, still holding the flowers, their scent barely competing with the hospital odor.

“You missed Crystal’s funeral,” she said. “Cheap way to get out of going.”

He smiled. Her heart seemed to sink to her stomach. She took a huge breath, let it out, and forced herself to relax into the chair. Two days of tense, taut nerves took its toll.

“Thank you,” he said.

She looked at the flowers. “It’s nothing.” She was embarrassed. Why was she embarrassed? She didn’t know. So she avoided the issue. “I’ll get a vase.”

“I meant for saving my life.”

“Oh, that. Any time.”

“You’re cute.”

She stiffened. “You have to stop calling me that if we’re going to continue to be friends.”

“Well, you are. And I hope we’re going to be more than friends.”

She stood up, looked around the room for a container for the flowers. “I guess I’ll have to ring for the nurse for these.”

“Not yet. I imagine you want to know what happened.”

He’d seen through her act. She placed the flowers on his bedside tray and sat down again. “Yes.”

Hank shifted on the bed. “The more I thought about it after we hung up, the more I figured it was probably Betsy who murdered Crystal. Just seemed to fit. But we still had the same problem—no hard evidence. So I decided to pay the lady a call.”

Tina fingered the worry stone in her pocket. “I thought you would.”

“I told her I was helping with the investigation and she let me in. I said we’d come to the conclusion that the murder had something to do with a secret Dr. Stevenson had. I meant about Ted. But she thought I meant about the doctor giving that drug after the bulletin came out.” Hank reached for his water glass and took a couple of sips.

“She was protecting his reputation?”

“Yes. She was still in love with him after all these years. She told me he’d broken up with her before they knew she was pregnant. When he found out, he paid for her to go to Ohio and give the baby up for adoption. She still seemed heartbroken about that.”

“And Crystal found out about the drug, but how did Betsy know that?”

“Crystal visited Dr. Stevenson. And in one of his ramblings, he told Betsy. She always checked on him a couple of times a week.”

“What did Crystal want from Dr. Stevenson? She wasn’t blackmailing him, was she?”

“No. She wanted an apology. She wanted him to give a public statement in case some women were out there whose mothers had taken the drug and didn’t know the possible consequences and the need for those important yearly checkups. She said she was giving him a chance to take it to the media, or she would. But before she could do anything else, Betsy paid her a visit. Apparently Crystal took her to the back sunroom to talk, and when Betsy pulled the gun, Crystal ran to Rachel’s house. And got as far as the nursery.”

Tina shuddered. “Certifiable,” she whispered.

“Yes. But it’s over now.”

“How’s Mitzi?”

Hank smiled. “As usual, you’re always concerned about everyone else. She’ll be fine. It’s pretty amazing. She seems to have simply made the decision to pull herself out of that long blue funk and get on with her life. What she and I have been wondering is how are you?”

“Well,” Tina said, letting go of the worry stone and taking her hand out of her pocket, resting it in her lap, “I’m not happy I shot and killed someone. But I’m positive Betsy would have shot you again and again like she did Crystal until she killed you, so I can live with it.”

“Then it wasn’t because you killed someone that you gave up your practice.”

“No, but someone died. Committed suicide.”

“Ah. And you’ve blamed yourself ever since. I think you can consider the books balanced since you saved my life. How can I ever repay you?”

She grinned. “I’ll think of something.”

Hank laughed. “I was afraid of that. And by the way, I’m not really an undercover cop.”

She was surprised, but then not surprised. “Then what are you?”

“It’s a secret.”

BIO: I grew up in New Jersey and now live in Texas. I’ve had over fifty short stories published in various places over the last dozen years, two of which were nominated for a Derringer Award. Two others won a Fire to Fly award and the Mysterical-e 2000 Award for Best Story Previous to 2001. I write a regular column for Mysterical-e about reading and can be found on Facebook, location Corpus Christi and Twitter as janschristensen. Learn more at my website:
www.janchristensen.com
And on my blog:
www.janchristensen.com/blog

Please look for my other novels:

Sara’s Search
is available for the Kindle. Contact me if you want a new autographed hardcover copy. I still have some of the original editions available.

Revelations
is also available for Kindle and in print at Amazon.com.

My new short story collections are all titled
Warning Signs
. Check out the mile marker on each cover for the number of the collection. These are collections of, usually, three previously published stories, all in Kindle format.

There is another series of single short stories published by Untreed Reads—The Artie Crimes. If you search for “Artie Crimes Christensen,” you should be able to find them anywhere ebooks are sold. Or simply go to my website, find the covers and click on any of them to learn more.