Board Stiff (Mattie Winston Mysteries) (18 page)

“What rumor is that?”

“Some of them seem to think that certain patient deaths have been suspicious.”

“I’m sorry,” Trisha jumps in, “but I’m not comfortable with that line of questioning.”

Hurley gives her a ticked-off look and then says to Regan, “Without stating what the rumor is, tell me if you think there is any credence to it.”

Trisha objects again with a frantic, “Detective!” but she’s a hair too late. Even though Regan doesn’t say anything, she shakes her head almost immediately.

Not one to be deterred, Hurley asks Regan, “Are you aware of any patients who believe this rumor strongly enough to want to exact revenge on Mr. Chase?”

Surprisingly, Trisha doesn’t object this time.

“Not really,” Regan says. “I mean, I’ve heard lots of them discuss it, but only in a speculative manner. I don’t think anyone seriously believes it, at least not enough to act on it in a manner such as this.”

“Okay,” Hurley says. “I think that’s all I need to ask for now. Is there anything you want to add?”

Regan shakes her head quickly and starts to rise from her chair, but I have a question that stops her cold.

“Is it okay if we fingerprint you and get a sample of your DNA?”

Hurley gives me a puzzled look. I’m guessing because of the DNA question.

Regan gives me a panicked look. “Why do you need those things?”

“Well, we’re dusting Mr. Chase’s office for fingerprints and if you rarely saw him and had little to no contact with him, we wouldn’t expect to find your fingerprints in there.”

Regan looks to the side for a heartbeat and I can tell her wheels are spinning. “I’ve been in his office,” she says. “As the shift supervisor, I have keys to the administrative offices when I work. Our admission files on all the patients are in those offices, as are certain other papers we need to access from time to time.”

“What papers would those be?” I ask.

“Um . . . you know . . . licenses and stuff like that.”

“Those are kept in Mr. Chase’s office, not in Dorothy Granger’s office?”

“The facility licenses are in Mr. Chase’s office,” Regan says quickly. “Nursing licenses are kept in Ms. Granger’s office.”

“When is the last time you had to access the facility licenses?” I ask her.

“I don’t know. It was some time ago. I’d have to look at the records. But the point is, you might find my fingerprints in that office.” She flashes a nervous little smile, apparently relieved that she has dodged my bullet.

But she hasn’t. I’m far from done.

“T
ell me, Regan,” I say, “would we find your fingerprints on the couch in Bernie’s office? Oh, heck, forget about the fingerprints, what about your DNA? Would we find that on the couch? Because somebody’s DNA was all over that thing and we’ve got samples of it.”

Hurley shoots me a surprised but admiring look.

Regan shoots me one that is lethal. “What are you implying?” she says, all indignant.

“Come on, Regan. I know you and Bernie Chase were having an affair.”

“I’m a married woman and I love my husband.”

“Maybe it was your husband who killed Bernie,” I suggest.

“No,” Regan shoots back in a tone that suggests I’m being ridiculous.

“He seems like a good suspect to me,” I say, prodding her a little harder. “Does he know about the affair?”

“Of course not,” Regan snaps. Then, realizing what she’s just said, she tries to fix it. “What I mean is there is nothing for him to know about.”

Hurley and I stare at Regan, waiting patiently. We have her and she knows it. It’s just a matter of how long it’s going to take her to cave.

Regan glances at Trisha, who doesn’t say a word. “I have nothing to admit to,” Regan maintains. “And if you insist on perpetuating this misinformation about an affair, I will have no choice but to sue you for libel.”

She’s good; her vehement denial is quite convincing.

I decide to prod a little harder. “Technically you would have to sue us for slander.”

“What?” Regan snaps, looking at me like I’m a tick on her dog’s ass.

“Mattie is correct,” Trisha says. “If someone says something that damages your reputation, it’s considered slander not libel, assuming you can prove actual damages. Libel has to be in writing. In either case, it’s only a problem if what is said or written can’t be backed up by the truth.”

Regan glares at us, her eyes moving from me to Trisha to Hurley and back to me again. Her lips are tight with anger and she’s twisting her wedding ring so hard I wouldn’t be surprised to see her finger come off. Her next words come out clear and taut. “I will not discuss or tolerate any suggestion that Bernie and I had a romantic relationship. If you would like to discuss other matters, that’s fine. Otherwise I need to get back to work.” Her complexion is flushed and I can tell we have her rattled. That and the fact that she slipped by using the more familiar name for Chase.

“Think very carefully, Regan,” I say. “This is a small town. People see things, people talk. So if you and
Bernie
were having an affair, people will know. Odds are we will be able to prove it, if through no other means than through that DNA sampling I mentioned. Believe me, I know. I’ve been there.”

“Mattie is absolutely right,” Hurley says, leaning forward and closing the gap between him and Regan. “Let me ask you one more time, and please think very carefully before you answer. Were you and Bernard Chase having an affair?”

Regan’s eyes dart back and forth and tears are starting to well in them. I can tell she’s hesitant to admit the truth. She’s gauging the veracity of what we just said, weighing her options.

“Yes,” she says finally with a little sigh of resignation. Her entire body sags. “Bernie and I were having an affair.”

Everyone sits back in their seats and now that the truth is out, it’s as if someone opened a window and let all the tension rush out of the room.

“How long has it been going on?” Hurley asks.

Regan drops her gaze to her lap, and I sense she’s no longer willing to look us straight in the eye now that we’ve caught her in a lie. “Six, maybe seven months. Dorothy hired me a little over a year ago. I met Bernard during the interview process and the attraction has been there from the beginning, but it took a while before we acted on it. Both of our marriages were falling apart, and we commiserated about it over lunch a few times. Then we went to a conference together and met up in the bar after the sessions were over. One thing led to another and here we are.”

“Did you kill Bernard?” Hurley asks her.

“Of course not,” she says in a tone of disbelief. She shakes her head in misery and the tears are free-falling now. “I genuinely cared for Bernie. I had no reason to kill him.”

“Do you think your husband might have?” Hurley asks.

“N-no, of course not,” she stammers. “I’m sure he doesn’t know.” But there is a fearful look on her face, a hint of doubt that tells me she believes it’s a possibility. The revelation about Regan and Bernie’s little affair has widened our suspect list considerably. We now have Regan herself if Bernie decided to break things off and Regan didn’t like it, and Regan’s husband if he knew about the affair and flew into a jealous rage. This also adds motive for Bernie’s wife Vonda, though I somehow think she wouldn’t have cared that he was having an affair.

“Who do you think killed him?” Hurley asks Regan.

“How would I know? Maybe it was his wife, or a patient. Some of them can get pretty crazy, particularly the ones with the mental disorders.”

“I thought you said none of the patients really believed that rumor,” Hurley says.

“Well, how can I know for sure? No one jumps out to me as a suspect, but who knows what secrets these patients may be hiding?” No one says anything so Regan jumps in to fill the void. “How did he die? Was he beaten? Stabbed? Maybe I could give you a more educated guess if I knew.”

Hurley and I look at each other and smile. Regan Simmons is no dummy and I don’t believe for one minute that she hasn’t heard all the gossip going around about where and how Bernie was found. Too many people knew about it, including Irene and whoever else might have peeked in that men’s room before I got there. And I know everyone in the building has been talking all day long.

“Let’s switch from who and how to why,” Hurley says, avoiding Regan’s question. “What do
you
think about this rumor that Bernard was killing off his more expensive patients?”

“Detective!” Trisha interrupts.

“It’s absurd,” Regan says at the same time. Then, ignoring Trisha’s objection, she turns to me and says, “Mattie, you just met two of our most disabled patients. Both of them have been here for several years, so if Bernie was trying to get rid of the patients who were costing him money, those two should have been at the top of the list.”

“I respectfully ask that you change the subject,” Trisha says.

Hurley ignores her. “So you don’t believe the rumors?” he asks Regan.

“Of course not,” Regan snaps. “It’s an utterly ridiculous idea. But that doesn’t mean some of those patients out there don’t believe it. And if they do, who’s to say one or more of them didn’t decide to kill Bernard?”

Regan’s tune is changing pretty quickly now that she’s trying to shift our focus away from her lies, as well as her own and her husband’s motives.

“When is the last time you saw Bernie?” I ask her.

“Last night after my shift finished. Bernie often came by here at night and he and I would meet up in his office at the end of my shift. He’d let himself in through the back door to the administration wing and wait for me. I’d call him when I was done and he would let me in through the same door.”

“Were you supposed to meet with him tonight?”

She shakes her head. “This afternoon. Before my shift started. Obviously that didn’t happen.”

Hurley switches gears and asks about some of the day-to-day operations of the facility. “When does the administration wing get locked up?”

“Between five and six PM on most weekdays,” Regan says. “On the weekends it’s locked all the time. We open it up again at seven on Monday morning.”

“Whose responsibility is it to make sure it’s locked?”

“The on-duty nurse supervisor is responsible for making sure the inside entrance is locked. The rear exit door is locked at all times. Anyone can go out, but no one is supposed to be able to get in without a key.”

“Who has keys to these doors?”

“Each of the board members has a set of keys that opens pretty much every door here. I believe the medical director, Dr. Zimmerman, has a key to the front and back doors since he sometimes has to come here during off hours, but I don’t know that he has keys to anywhere else. There is a master key set that we on-duty nurse supervisors hand off at shift change.”

“There are two parking lots here?”

“Yes,” Regan says, and now that the questions have veered away from her personally, she has relaxed considerably. “The side parking lot is for all employees and board members except for the night shift. They can park out front. Other than that, the lot out front is reserved for visitors and vendors.”

“Vendors?”

“Salesmen and such.”

“Do you get a lot of those?”

“Not on my shift, but I’ve heard the day nurses say they see some occasionally.”

“Is the front desk with the sign-in book manned twenty-four-seven?”

“No, we have someone there during our open hours, which are from six in the morning until ten at night. Between ten
PM
and six
AM
the entire facility is locked. The evening nurse supervisor on duty has to man the front door to let the night shift staff in between eleven-thirty and midnight.” Regan makes a pointed look at her watch. “In fact, I need to be heading that way soon.”

“Okay. I have just one more question for you,” Hurley says, and she smiles with relief. “How free are the patients here to come and go?”

“Well, with the exception of the ones who wear ankle monitors, they are all basically free to come and go as they please during the open hours. It’s expected that everyone will be here by the time we lock up at night, although some of our patients have had overnight furloughs, especially around the holidays. Those have to be arranged ahead of time, though. It’s rare for anyone to leave during the day for anything other than church, or a doctor’s appointment, or an occasional family event because most of them don’t have the means to go anywhere. They’re dependent upon a friend or family member to come and take them somewhere.”

“Okay, Regan, I think that wraps it up for now, but I would like you to go to the dayroom and get fingerprinted before you leave for the night. I would also like to search your employee locker.”

I expect Regan to object, but she doesn’t. She nods and then asks, “Are you going to talk to my husband?”

“More than likely,” Hurley says. “At this point, he’s a suspect with motive.”

“He doesn’t know about Bernie and me. I’m sure of it.”

“Then you might want to tell him,” I say to her. “He’d probably prefer finding out from you rather than us.”

Hurley calls Bob Richmond on his cell phone and arranges for him to print Regan and search her locker. “And see what other employees you can get to agree to prints and a locker search.”

Over the next hour we talk to five more staff members, all of them nursing assistants, and all of them with Trisha present. Two of them—one of which is Anne—are brave enough to mention the relationship between Regan and Bernard. The other three don’t, but judging from their body language and their evasive answers, I’m pretty sure they all know. It’s moot at this point since Regan confessed, but it’s still disheartening to see how many people aren’t telling us the whole truth.

Just before midnight, the night shift staff starts coming in, and we talk to and fingerprint an LPN named Lucinda and three more nursing assistants. Other than Lucinda telling us about Regan and Bernard’s affair, we don’t get any useful information from anyone. Nor do the locker searches turn up anything of interest.

It’s nearly one
AM
when Hurley closes his notebook and stuffs it into his pocket. “Let’s call it a night. I would like to talk with your administrative group in the morning,” he says to Trisha. “What time works best for you?”

“Give me a few minutes to check with my associates and I’ll let you know,” Trisha says, taking out her cell phone. “I’ll find you in the dayroom.”

Hurley and I head to the dayroom where we find Emily curled up on a couch sound asleep. Once again, Hoover is stretched out nearby, and I marvel at how quickly he has taken to her. He appears to be sleeping, too, but when we enter the room he lifts his head and looks at us, before dropping it again and closing his eyes.

On the table beside Emily is the drawing she did of the face she saw in the window earlier. I pick it up and study it, thinking it looks vaguely familiar somehow. But I can’t come up with any definitive identification and after a minute or so I hand it to Hurley.

Bob Richmond is sitting at a table on the other side of the room writing on a tablet. Dozens of pages that have been torn from that tablet are scattered about the tabletop, each of them covered with writing. Hurley walks over and sifts through the pages, scanning what’s written there.

“Come up with anything?” he asks Richmond.

Richmond shakes his head. “Larry said that aside from that Dudley guy you talked to, the room searches didn’t reveal anything of interest other than a hunting knife they found under one man’s mattress and some cigarette papers and baggies filled with dried plants in the bedside stands of several people. They opened and smelled each one and said it wasn’t pot. Larry said he thought he smelled oregano and maybe some mint.”

“Told ya,” I say.

“Are Larry and his guys done with the search?” Hurley asks.

“Yeah, they finished up about an hour ago and I sent them home. As soon as I finish these notes I’m heading that way myself. There are about a dozen employees who aren’t here who we still need to print and whose lockers need to be searched. I also have eight of the forty patients to talk to yet, but they’re all in bed now. I was hoping to get through this whole list for the A, B, and C wing patients, but these people tend to ramble on and on and half the time you have to say everything two or three times before they hear you right. And that’s assuming they actually remember your question two seconds after you’ve asked it. Plus that dog of yours didn’t help. They all wanted to pet him. He was a huge distraction.”