Wendy Delaney - Working Stiffs 01 - Trudy, Madly, Deeply Read online

  I heard him string together a few choice expletives.

  Okay, I’d be the first to admit that matchmaking didn’t sound much better. “Just hear me out.”

  “I can hardly wait,” he said, wearing a smirk that I didn’t much care for.

  I leaned closer so that I didn’t have to shout over Billy Squier belting out Everybody Wants You. “All four of these deaths have resulted in matches … you know, couples.”

  The corners of his lips tightened. “I know what a match means.”

  There was no evidence of that fact from the assortment of women he’d dated over the years, but I had no desire to debate the merits of his sex life.

  “Nell hooks up with a guy and has a relationship for probably the first time in her life. Jayne and Ernie become suddenly single within eight months of one another, and now they’re inseparable. And lately, Sylvia Jeppesen and Wally Deford seem to have become an item. It’s like Lucille said—”

  “Figures that she’d be mixed up in this somewhere,” Steve muttered, shaking his head.

  “—this just seems too convenient.”

  “The only thing convenient about this is Lucille jumping to some very big conclusions.”

  “There’s something going on, and you know it.”

  Steve’s eyes tracked Rox delivering another pizza. I had a feeling it was to avoid my gaze.

  “What I know,” he said, “is that we need to wait for the lab results to come back.”

  “Right. What about how Dr. Straitham reacted when Alice told him that she was on to him?”

  Steve leaned so close I could smell the beer on his breath. “You can’t really think the doc is killing his patients to play matchmaker.”

  I knew Kyle Cardinale suspected something, and I knew what I’d seen at Trudy’s memorial service, so I was convinced to a level of a definite maybe. “It’s a possibility, isn’t it?”

  “Only if you can give me a good reason why.”

  I couldn’t even think of a bad reason.

  “That’s what I thought.” Steve uncurled his legs from under the bar and tossed several dollar bills on the counter. “But I’ll make a note of your theory in the file.”

  I didn’t believe that for a minute. “And what file is that?”

  He grinned. “It’s where I keep all of Lucille’s Elvis sightings.”

  Bastard.

  Chapter Nine

  I was sound asleep Monday morning when my cell phone rang. I squinted at my alarm clock as I grabbed my phone—six-twenty-seven. “No one I know would call this early,” I croaked.

  “Sorry. I’d assumed you were an early morning person.”

  I recognized Kyle Cardinale’s voice and cringed. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. The last thing I wanted to do was to give the guy an excuse never to call me again.

  “Did I wake you?” he asked.

  “No, I just … haven’t had my coffee.”

  “If you make that two coffees, I might have that information you asked me to look up for you.”

  I sat up straight, the Crippler poking me in the butt with a bed spring. “When can we meet?”

  “How soon can you get to the hospital?”

  “I’m in the middle of something.” He didn’t need to know it was my grandmother’s hide-a-bed. “Maybe in about an hour.”

  After I set a land speed record in the bathroom, I threw on a denim shirtdress, strapped on a pair of navy wedge heel sandals, then hightailed it to Duke’s for two coffees to go.

  Ten minutes later, I stood in front of a coffee machine, sputtering to finish its brew cycle. “Come on,” I said, urging it to completion as I stifled a yawn.

  Lucille squeaked behind me. “Late night or hung over?”

  That got me a parental glare from Duke, tending the grill.

  “I’m not hung over,” I assured him as I filled two tall paper cups. And I didn’t want any lectures about getting to bed earlier. I would if I could. Unfortunately, my mother had staked a claim on my bedroom. “I’m meeting someone for coffee.”

  Duke pointed his spatula at me. “Why the hell can’t you meet him here? Then one of you might actually pay for the coffee.”

  I shrugged. “He’s shy. Not ready to meet the family yet.”

  Duke cursed under his breath while Lucille followed me to the bakery shelf behind the cash register. “Is he your date from Saturday?” she asked, handing me a white bakery bag.

  “He’s somebody else.” Okay, that didn’t do much to unravel the tangled web Donna had helped me weave in the fake date department, but at least it wasn’t a total lie. I dropped two lemon poppy seed muffins, some creamers, and a couple of napkins into the bag, and hoped Lucille got the hint that I had nothing else I wanted to say on this subject.

  Lucille nodded her approval. “Good for you. There’s no reason to put all your eggs in one basket.”

  “That’s my motto,” Stanley added from his usual perch at the counter.

  My motto this morning was get in and get out, especially since I didn’t want to be late for my non-date with a hot doctor who had some information for me. I said my goodbyes and sprinted for the door with the coffees in a paper takeout carrier in one hand and the bakery bag in the other.

  The door opened just as I was about to reach for the knob.

  Standing in the doorway, Steve glanced down at the white bag.

  So much for making a clean getaway.

  He cracked a smile. “Don’t suppose you were bringing that over to the station for me.”

  “Sorry, no bribes today.”

  “Too bad. And they were usually so effective, too.”

  “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”

  “She has a breakfast date,” Lucille chimed in.

  I sucked in a shallow breath. The get in and get out motto didn’t include providing too much information to any of my friends, especially this one.

  Steve and I locked gazes.

  “Another date?” he asked, holding the door open for me.

  “Sort of.” I knew he’d see it as a lie, but at least I had the two cups to back me up.

  “You’re a busy girl.”

  You don’t know the half of it.

  “And I’m late,” I said, making a dash for the car to avoid any more unsolicited opinions about my nonexistent love life.

  Ten minutes later, after applying a fresh coat of lip gloss and a blast of breath freshener, I followed Kyle Cardinale into the doctor’s lounge and sank my butt into the same aqua blue vinyl seat that I’d sat in a week ago. I handed him a to-go cup. “Here you are, as promised.”

  He popped the top. “Thank God. The coffee here is like diesel oil.”

  He’d soon find out that Duke’s coffee wasn’t much of an improvement—just fresher crude. I opened the bakery bag and passed him a couple of creamers. He was going to need them. I also offered him a muffin.

  He reached in the bag, lifted one to his nose and inhaled. “Lemon?”

  I nodded.

  “Did you bake this?”

  If I had, unlike the baker who worked the Saturday through Monday morning shift, I would have used fresh lemon juice, and they would have been golden brown, not eggy-yellow. “No, but they’re compliments of Duke’s.”

  “Ah.” He smiled. “I only asked because Laurel told me that you bake.”

  Kyle Cardinale had talked to Laurel about me? Not that it was of any consequence, but my heart skipped a hopeful beat anyway.

  He pulled off a chunk of muffin and popped it into his mouth. “Mmmmm ….” He washed it down with a gulp of coffee. A dribble escaped down his chin and he swiped at it with the back of his hand.

  I passed him one of the napkins from the bakery bag.

  His lips curled into a sheepish smile. “You must think I was raised by wolves.”

  I thought he was dangerously charming, much like the Italian I’d been married to for seven years. “You’re a guy. I’m sure it’s in the guy manual that the hand can be substituted for a napkin.”
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  “Knew I picked that up somewhere,” he said, his whiskey gaze fixed on me, lingering on my mouth.

  To save time this morning, I’d pulled my hair back in my tortoiseshell clip. The longing I felt stirring in the pit of my stomach echoed my regret that I hadn’t hit the flat iron before I’d run out the door.

  Since I’d left the other muffin in the bag, at least I knew I didn’t have any poppy seeds hanging from my lips.

  What? I mentally slammed on the brakes. I shouldn’t care how I looked to this guy.

  Dammit! What was it with me and Italian men?

  I popped the plastic top and took a sip of coffee to kill the longing with an acid bath. “So …” I smiled deferentially. All business, no pleasure, no how. “You have some information for me.”

  Kyle’s jaw tightened. He wasn’t happy about the change of subject.

  Join the club, pal.

  He reached into the lower pocket of his white coat and handed me two folded sheets of paper.

  Rose Kozarek and Jesse Elwood’s names were listed at the top of each page.

  “It’s a hard copy of the last entries in their charts,” Kyle said. “The vitals, drugs administered … it’s all there.”

  I scanned the pages. What was also there was the same doctor’s name on both sheets of paper—R. Forsythe. I didn’t recognize the name, but I intended to make this doctor’s acquaintance.

  One set of initials accompanied most of the drug entries in the early morning hours. “C.T.”

  “Cindy Tobias,” Kyle said. “Worked graveyard for a couple more months after I started, then she switched to days.”

  I wasn’t overly concerned about Cindy, but I knew I’d better chat with her to see if she shared any of Kyle’s suspicions.

  The recurring initials of T.N. indicated that another nurse had been working similar hours to Cindy’s. “T.N. is …”

  “Tina Norton. Still works that shift. Mostly weekdays, I think.”

  I handed Kyle the computer printouts. “Do you see anything unusual here? Anything that doesn’t look right?”

  His gaze traveled the length of both pages. “They both came in with pneumonia. Everything looks like I’d expect other than the fact that her sats were improving.”

  “So, Rose was getting better.”

  He nodded.

  “Then what? She just dies?”

  Another nod.

  “Asphyxiated?”

  “Looks that way.”

  I turned to the other page. “What about Mr. Elwood?”

  Kyle shook his head. “He had a pulmonary embolism shortly after admission. No matter what anybody did, he wasn’t going home.” He folded the paper and handed it back to me. “At least he didn’t suffer long.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing. It was just quick.”

  “Unusually quick?”

  His gaze tightened. “Are you asking if I think that someone hurried the process along?”

  He was the one who’d called Frankie with his suspicions about Trudy’s death. So, yes. That was exactly what I was asking.

  I nodded.

  “There isn’t anything there,” he said, pointing at the paper in my hands, “to suggest anything that I’d call unusual.”

  That didn’t answer the question. “If you were going to kill one of your patients, wouldn’t you make sure that nothing unusual was recorded in his chart?”

  “I’d be stupid not to.”

  Warren Straitham’s name was conspicuously absent from these pages. If nothing else, it confirmed what I already knew. He was guilty of something, but it wasn’t stupidity.

  “Thanks for this,” I said, tucking the printouts he’d given me into my tote bag.

  “What are you going to do with the information?”

  Other than talk to Cindy and Tina, I didn’t have a clue.

  * * *

  It was a few minutes after eight when I huffed and puffed my way up the steps of the courthouse. Patsy arched an eyebrow at me as I passed her desk, my to-go cup in hand.

  “Late night?” she asked.

  I ignored the Chimacam County Courthouse Hall Monitor’s insinuation. “Early morning.”

  She glanced at the glass domed gold anniversary clock ticking next to her computer monitor and her mouth formed a lemon-worthy pucker. “Uh huh.”

  For being on the receiving end of this much disapproval I should have been having a lot more fun.

  I noticed that the overhead light in Frankie’s office was off. “Is she in?”

  “She’s in a meeting with Ben. She told me to give you this.”

  Patsy handed me a white envelope addressed to a Dr. Roland. From the Seattle street address, I ventured a guess that Dr. Roland’s office was in one of the Pill Hill area medical buildings near Swedish Hospital.

  “It needs to be delivered today.”

  “What is it?”

  “A subpoena. He’s going to be called as a witness next week.”

  If I had been told about this yesterday, I would have cut my visit short at the hospital and driven straight to the ferry terminal to catch the eight o’clock sailing. Given the lines during the busy summer tourist season, I’d be lucky to get out of Seattle before one.

  Patsy’s telephone rang. “Everything you need to know is in the envelope,” she said, reaching for her telephone receiver.

  En route to the break room to refill my cup, I opened the unsealed envelope and pulled out a list of instructions. Identify myself, confirm the recipient’s identity, serve the subpoena. Sounded easy enough. As a process server, I’d delivered dozens of notices to appear; I could certainly serve one measly subpoena. At least it would give me a reprieve from making coffee for the next few hours.

  Eighteen minutes later at the ferry terminal, I forked over the last twenty in my wallet for a round trip ticket and pulled behind a black Suburban idling in the second row of a long line of cars waiting for the 9:10 sailing to Seattle. Since I had a fifteen-minute wait until the ferry arrived and had just drained my to-go cup, I figured I’d better make a fast pit stop at the picnic area restroom before boarding.

  Killing the engine, I climbed out of the Jag and was promptly greeted by gusts of briny wind blowing in from Puget Sound. With the hem of my shirtdress whipping around my knees as I approached the pier, I noticed a mother with a pair of towheaded toddlers feeding the ducks on a patch of grass across from the restroom, much to the chagrin of the squawking gulls circling overhead.

  It seemed like a typical summer scene at the ferry dock until I spotted Heather Beckett sitting alone at one of the picnic tables as she stared out at the waves glistening like sugar crystals under the morning sun.

  The last thing I needed this morning was some stink eye from Heather so I did an about face and scurried back to my car. “No problem,” I said to myself as I unlocked the car door. Nature might be calling soon, but there were restroom facilities on the ferry. This time I had no problem with waiting.

  By nine-thirty I had a little problem. Not only was Heather on the ferry, her blue Prius was parked next to the stairway leading up to the passenger deck where most all the other ferry riders were enjoying the view, and more importantly, had access to a bathroom. Most everyone but Heather and me.

  Now, I’m all for avoiding confrontation with certain females from my past whenever possible, but I needed to pee and that trumped any amount of stink eye Heather could hurl my way.

  Just as I reached for my door handle, I saw Heather climb out of her car. From the swipe she’d just made at her cheek, it looked like she had been crying. Because of Steve? I didn’t want to know.

  Okay, I was dying to know, but after twenty years of being snubbed by Heather Beckett, I knew I was the last person on Earth that she’d pour her heart out to.

  I watched her head up the stairs, no doubt to repair her perennially flawless face in the ladies room, exactly where I should have gone the second I drove onto the ferry and switched off my car’s igniti
on. I certainly couldn’t go now, not with Heather in there. Damn.

  Ten minutes later, she returned to her car grasping her cell phone. Whoever she was speaking to was getting an earful.

  I rolled down my driver’s side window. Not that I make a habit of eavesdropping on private conversations, but since it was Heather, good manners seemed optional.

  “I don’t care!” she yelled, gripping the phone as if it were a hand grenade she wanted to launch at someone. “You have to do this.”

  Do what?

  I held my breath waiting for an answer, but the only response I heard was the slam of her car door.

  I’d wager that Heather had just been told no. Obviously wasn’t happy about it, either, which didn’t break my heart one little bit, especially if that no had come from Steve. Really, did she expect him to drop everything—including the murder investigation that he should be working on—and join her in Seattle for some sort of rendezvous?

  Even Heather’s allure couldn’t be that irresistible. Could it?

  I was asking myself the same thing twelve minutes later, while I watched Heather drive down the ferry ramp. Not that I cared what she and Steve did.

  Once she was out of my sight, I turned the key and the Jag rumbled to life. “I don’t care.” Because it didn’t affect me in the slightest.

  Liar.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, easing down the ramp. No more than it had mattered seventeen years ago.

  The SUV in front of me slowed to a stop behind a string of cars at a red light to turn left onto 1st Avenue South. I merged into the right lane after I made the turn and saw a blue Prius five cars ahead of me.

  According to the driving directions to Dr. Roland’s office that I’d printed, I was supposed to turn right on South Jackson. The Prius went straight through that intersection toward the heart of the city, where my grandmother used to take me shopping each August before school started. And beyond Nordstrom and the upscale shops of Westlake Park stood countless hotels that rented by the hour.

  My grip tightened on the steering wheel. Should I turn or go straight?

  Turn and act like a mature adult who had a job to do or run the light that had just turned yellow and find out what Heather was doing in Seattle?