The Case of the Sin City Sister (27 page)

Eve thought there were three men standing somewhere very close to her. She didn’t know what the coolers were, but she assumed that’s what the small doors on the side and back walls must lead to. She hadn’t gotten a very good look at the room because the light was very dim when she entered and because she had been concentrating on her phone calls. At just that moment, she felt her cell phone vibrate and she was glad she had muted it. She knew it was the Captain calling back, and she only hoped the men at the door couldn’t hear the buzzing sound beneath her.

“You sure you want to do that?”

“Why?”

“Aren’t you a little scared of dead people?” There was a tiny bit of nervous laughter.

Eve realized that the men were very likely hospital employees and that she should make herself known, but somehow she just couldn’t move from her hiding place.

“Nah, there’s nobody in here. I think Anne was right and the guy left through the emergency department. Let’s get downstairs before the police arrive and make everybody nervous. Mr. Jansen is not going to be happy about this chain of events. I guess the manager on duty already called him?”

“Yep. He’s on his way. Him and that PR woman he’s always with.”

“Debbie.”

“As in
Debbie Does Dallas
?”

“As in Debbie Does a Full Nelson.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying Debbie from PR is actually Debbie Double D from WOW.”

“Debbie D from Women of Wrestling is our PR person?”

“The very one.”

“Dawg, I knew she was hiding some guns under those two-piece suits.”

“Guns you better not mess with.”

“She’s hot.”

“She can also take you down.”

“Not that I would mind that count.”

“Could you two shut up for a minute?” It was the first man’s voice, obviously the boss.

“Sorry.”

“Does Patsy seem okay now?”

“Yeah, it was just chloroform. She was fine as soon as the guy ran and the handkerchief fell off of her face. Lucky she called before he did any more damage.”

“So this guy showed up before you did?”

“Right,” came the answer.

“She get a good look at him?”

“Patsy?”

“Yes, Patsy.”

“Doesn’t she get a good look at everybody? She can tell me the height and weight of every person she meets.”

“Just tell me what she said.”

“Caucasian, six foot two, about 180, dark hair, mustache, black leather jacket, hazel eyes.”

There was a pause. “She says she remembers the color of his eyes because they were the last thing she saw before she fainted.”

“Patsy’s tough.”

“What about the woman?”

“She thinks they’re together. And somebody got to the patient before they did—what’s her name?”

There was a pause.

“Pauline Evans.”

“Right, she thinks somebody got the patient out of the bed and off the floor before these two showed up.”

“So we got a man . . .”

“With hazel eyes.”

“Right, a man with hazel eyes and a woman . . .”

There was another pause.

“Five foot five inches, weight around 145 . . .”

Eve almost sat up. She wasn’t 145 pounds, couldn’t be. She wanted to tell them Patsy wasn’t as good as they thought she was. She bit her tongue.

“Short dark hair, dark clothes, a black jacket, biker boots, about forty or so.”

“A man and a woman trying to get to a patient who was beat up earlier today, who has now left the hospital AMA.”

“AMA?”

“Against medical advice,” came the reply. “Didn’t you study your manual?”

“I studied the parts I needed to know to pass the test. I can tell you about a Code Blue, a Code Pink, and a Code Red. I didn’t learn about AMAs.”

“Well, you need to. We get a lot of them.”

“Right.”

“Do you want to take a look around this area, or have we been down here long enough?”

Eve lay very still, eyes closed, holding her breath. She knew she hadn’t really done anything wrong, but she also knew she didn’t want to spend a couple of hours trying to explain to these security guards, and the police who were on their way, why she was at the hospital at three o’clock in the morning, lying on a table in the morgue. She didn’t want to have to give some detailed report of what she saw and who she thought was chasing her. She just needed to get out of that hospital and find Daniel. He could help her make sense of all of this.

“Let’s go. And Peter, check the other suites on this floor. Make sure all the doors are locked and the codes are set. There shouldn’t be anybody down here.”

Eve heard the door close and footsteps moving away from the morgue. She waited a few minutes and sat up. Her phone was still ringing.

FORTY-FIVE

“EVANGELINE LOUISE DIVINE, WHERE ARE YOU AND WHAT IS GOING ON?” It was Daniel. She had to hold the phone away from her ear because he was screaming so loudly.

“I’m fine,” she whispered, hoping the security guards had left the area. She was sure anybody within fifty feet of her could hear him yelling.

“I’m on my way to the hospital. How on earth did you get there? Why didn’t you tell me you were going over there? And why is the Captain calling me all the way from New Mexico and yelling at me for not knowing where you were?”

“I tried to call you before I called him,” she said, still whispering and quietly sliding off the table.

“I never got a . . . hold on a minute . . .”

She pulled the sheets away and placed them back where they had been.

“Oh, okay, I see you called. Well, why didn’t you leave a message?”

“I left a message. I told you where I was and to come and find me.”

“Oh.” She heard some things being said under his breath. She guessed that the language was probably more than just a little blue.

“This phone is so lame.”

“It’s okay,” she said, trying to reassure him.

“It’s not okay,” he responded.

“Where did you go, anyway? I tried to find you before I left the hotel. You weren’t in your room because I checked.”

“I left not long after we got back. I sat down for a few minutes, thought through some things, made a few calls, and finally figured out who the two men were. They’re with the—”

“FBI,” she interrupted him.

“Right . . . Wait . . . How did you know that?”

“From Dorisanne’s address book. I found a code. I couldn’t sleep either, so I started going through the book, page by page—” She stopped, thinking she heard a voice down the hall.

When she was sure it was nothing, she continued. “That was why I came looking for you. I wanted to tell you.”

“You found out after we got back to our rooms too?”

“Uh-huh.” Eve walked over to the door and listened. She couldn’t hear anything. She thought it was probably a good time to try to get out of there.

“A code? You found a code in the address book?”

“I’ll tell you about it later.” She slowly opened the door and peeked out. “Hold on just a second.”

She looked left and then right; there was nothing. She closed the door again, thinking she would finish the phone call and then make her exit.

“You really need to let this nun thing go and use your gifts, girl.”

“So why is the FBI following us?” She wasn’t going to take that bait. She knew she didn’t need to talk about her vocational decision at that particular moment.

“Why are you whispering?”

“I’ll tell you about that too.”

“Dorisanne made a deal. She’s been feeding them information on members of the ring. They found her and pulled her into the sting.”

“That’s why she went into hiding?”

“Seems so. They lost contact with her a couple of weeks ago. They figured either the bad guys got wind of her association with them or Robbie got scared and yanked her out of town. They don’t know.”

“Are they worried about her? Do they know about Pauline?”

“They think she’s okay. And yes, they know about Pauline.”

“So why were they following us?”

“Because when we showed up, they thought they’d see what we found out.”

“We’ve been doing their dirty work for them.”

“Something like that.”

There was a pause.

“I’m almost there,” he said. “Just a couple of miles away. Where do I meet you?”

Eve thought about the best place to exit the hospital without
being seen. She knew the woman at the emergency entrance desk, apparently named Anne, and Patsy from the fifth floor, and probably the security guards would stop her if she got anywhere near them. “Just get to the hospital. I’ll figure that out in a minute.”

“Is Pauline okay?”

“Pauline is with Dorisanne.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I saw Dorisanne. She was here. I guess she must have found out about what happened to Pauline, and she came to get her out of the hospital. It was just in the nick of time too.”

“How’s that?”

“The motorcycle guy. He was here. That’s who I’m hiding from. He got here right after I did. In fact, he may have come to the hotel. I’m not sure, but I had a funny feeling about somebody on the other elevator when I was leaving. Anyway, I didn’t see him there, but he must have known where Pauline was, and he almost got to her.”

She heard Daniel blow out a breath.

“You talked to the Captain,” she said, stating the obvious.

“Yeah, he’s more than a little worried.”

“You should call him and let him know you’re coming for me,” she told Daniel.

“Holy cow, there must be ten or fifteen units out here.”

“Are you out front?”

“At the emergency entrance.”

“Don’t stop there.”

“Where else can I go?”

Eve thought for a second and remembered the stairwell she had just been in, the one she had seen Dorisanne and Pauline exit into.
She opened the door once again and stepped out of the morgue into the hallway. No one appeared to be around.

She moved back in the direction she had first come from, saw the stairwell door. She walked quickly and carefully. There was a window by the door, and she could see that she was on the back side of the hospital. The sun was rising and she got her bearings.

“Drive to the east end,” she instructed Daniel. “The one on the opposite side from the emergency department.”

“Okay,” came the response.

“There should be an exit there. I’ll be coming out that door in about one minute.”

“Right, I see it.”

Eve walked into the stairwell and down two flights of stairs. “Daniel?” she called out.

“Daniel?” She glanced down at her phone and could see that she had lost her signal. She stood at the door leading outside, closed her eyes, hoping he had arrived, and pulled on the handle. The beams of light from the waiting car blinded her for only a second.

FORTY-SIX

“Hurry up and get in.”

Eve jumped into the passenger’s side and Daniel took off. They headed in the direction of the rear of the hospital. She pulled on her safety belt and dropped her head back against the seat. “What a night!”

“There’s a security guard waiting at the end of the parking lot,” he informed Eve.

She looked up and saw a man standing a few hundred yards ahead of them. He appeared to be checking everyone exiting the lot. “They have a description of me,” she told Daniel, sliding down in her seat.

Daniel slowed the car. He reached behind him and pulled a blanket from the backseat. “Here, put this over you.”

Eve took it, wondered how many more times she was going to have to hide, and pulled the blanket around her shoulders and back, forming a sort of concealing hood out of the loose edge, and
slumped over in the seat. She felt the car come to a stop and could suddenly feel a blast of cold air rush in and assumed Daniel had rolled down the window.

“Hello, Officer,” Daniel said, his voice polite and cheerful.

“Hello,” the man called out.

Eve recognized the voice as one of those she had heard inside the morgue. She knew that those men had not seen her, but she also remembered that they did have a description of her from the nurse on the fifth floor. Although once she thought about that again, she remembered being labeled as 145 pounds, and she almost sat up just to prove she was right and Patsy was wrong.