Board Stiff (Mattie Winston Mysteries) (5 page)

It’s Junior’s voice and Hurley and I spring apart like a fake-snake-in-a-can gag. I wince and freeze for a second as my body recovers from the sudden movement.

“Are you okay?” Hurley whispers.

I nod, and wince again as a lightning bolt of pain races down the back of my neck. “Gym workout last night,” I whisper. “I’m a little sore.”

The two of us take a few seconds to smooth our clothing and hair, and Hurley swipes a hand across his mouth and whispers, “Any lipstick?”

I whisper back. “I’m not wearing any. Does my hair look okay?”

His eyes rove over my head in a way that makes me weak in the knees. “It’s beautiful.”

This, to me, is proof that Hurley must be blinded by love, though I suppose lust can alter one’s vision, as well. But to call my hair beautiful when it has an inch of dark roots showing and enough static frizz to attract every stray sock within a ten-mile radius, shows just how clueless Hurley is to the realities of the moment. I couldn’t be happier.

With a deep, slow sigh and a quick glance at the front of his pants, Hurley turns and opens the office door. “In here, Junior. Mattie and I were just checking out Bernard’s office.”

I take a good look at the office for the first time. It’s very spacious with an average size desk positioned in front of the back wall where a large bookcase is sandwiched between two big windows. On the right side of the room is an oblong table with eight chairs around it that I assume is used for meetings; on the other side there is a leather sofa and chair, a Tiffany floor lamp, and a coffee station. The walls are adorned with modernistic art, and large potted ficus trees are growing in front of each of the two windows. The top of Bernard’s desk is organized clutter, with several distinct piles of papers, magazines, notebooks, and books. There is evidence of Bernard’s recent presence: his desk chair is pushed back and turned sideways as if he just got out of it; a set of keys, including one for his car, is on one corner of the desk; and a jacket and hat are on the leather chair. On the left side of the desk is a landline phone—one of those multi-button things—and the handset is lying on the desktop on its side rather than in the cradle where it belongs. Beside it is a cell phone. I pick up the phone and try to turn it on, but the battery is dead.

On the right side of his desk is a half-filled coffee mug, and several papers are spread out over the desk blotter. I walk over to take a look at the papers, wondering what was important enough to drag Bernie in here on a Saturday, and see that they are tax forms for the Twilight Home. I snap dozens of pictures of the room, the desktop, the phones, the coffee mug, the position of the chair, even the tax records, then I pull open the desk drawers and take pictures of the contents without moving anything.

When I’m done I head back out into the hallway intending to check back in with Izzy. I see Hurley standing outside the bathroom door with Irene and Lucien, and as I approach, Hurley says, “This case just got a lot more interesting.”

“Why is that?” I ask.

Hurley cocks his head and smiles at me. “Somehow I think you know already. Or are you going to tell me that Irene didn’t mention to you that everyone here at the Twilight Home thinks Bernard Chase was a serial killer?”

I
decide to take a page from Dr. Naggy’s playbook and avoid answering Hurley’s question by tossing out one of my own. “Do you believe her?”

“It doesn’t matter if I believe her. What matters is whether or not the other patients here believe it, because if they do, we have a very long list of suspects.”

“So no quick and easy resolution for this one,” I say. “Though I’m guessing most of the folks who are residents here wouldn’t have the physical wherewithal to overpower Bernie.”

“Not alone,” Hurley says.

“Ah, interesting idea,” I say.

Irene and Lucien are a few feet away, whispering back and forth. Hurley turns to them and says, “When are you going to tell me the full story, Irene? Why would anyone here think Bernard Chase is a serial killer?”

Irene looks at Lucien, who nods. “You’re going to think I’m crazy or senile, but I’m not,” she says.

“Just tell me,” Hurley says with amazing patience.

“Promise me you’ll keep an open mind.”

Hurley nods and makes a circular motion with his hand, a signal for Irene to get on with it, so she does.

“While we don’t have any real proof, we’re all pretty sure that Bernard has been bumping off some of the patients here, the ones who become bedridden and require more expensive care. It seems like every time someone around here takes a turn for the worse, they end up dead.”

“First of all, why does that seem unusual?” Hurley asks. “I mean some of the folks here aren’t in the best of health anyway or they wouldn’t be here, right?”

“Not necessarily,” Irene says. “Some of them are physically healthy, but they have mental issues that make it unsafe for them to live alone, and either they have no family or their families can’t be bothered taking them in. There are plenty of folks living here who don’t have any life-threatening problems, but they either don’t have a place to stay because they can’t afford a home, or they’re disabled enough that they can’t live alone. Some folks are lucky enough to have families who care and take them in. But let’s face it; a lot of us old folks are considered little more than a pain in the ass to our children.”

There is a tone of bitterness in Irene’s voice that makes me wonder if her own family has had similar issues with her recently. Overall, she seems to be doing well for her age, but she looks like one of those dried apple dolls and my nursing gut tells me she is one good sneeze away from a rapid response team.

Hurley says, “I get that, Irene, but I don’t think old people dying when their health worsens is so unusual. Nor does it mean Bernard Chase was killing them off. That takes me to my second question. Who is this
we
you’re referring to? Who besides you thinks this?”

Irene scoffs. “Pretty near everyone in this place. They’ve all been on edge lately, afraid of that one fall that causes a broken hip, or that little cough that leads to pneumonia, because around here, that’s a guaranteed death sentence.”

“Irene, Hurley’s right,” I say. “Those things happen everywhere, not just here. It’s part of aging. It’s how we die. It isn’t pretty and it isn’t nice, but it is what it is.”

“Humph! Easy for you to say,” Irene snaps. “You’re still young yet. Just wait. One day, you’ll have more pills than the neighborhood pharmacy, and your mind will start to slip so that the only thing you can retain with any regularity is water. Get back to me when you start gauging your attraction to the opposite sex on whether or not they can still drive. Then tell me how it is what it is.”

I don’t respond, mainly because I know Irene well enough to know it’d be a waste of time and breath, and also because I sense her fear and feel sorry for her. It can’t be easy knowing death is lurking around the next corner.

Lucien, who has been uncharacteristically quiet through all of this, a fact that makes my inner alarms clang even louder, finally speaks up. “Is anyone under arrest?”

“Not yet,” Hurley says. “It seems I have an entire facility of people to talk to.”

Lucien looks at Irene. “If everyone here thinks Bernard Chase was a killer, why are you the only one who called a lawyer?”

“It wasn’t for me,” Irene says.

Before she can explain herself, Connie Lane bursts through the front entrance to the wing. “I need all of you to stop what you’re doing.” She might as well have told us to dance a jig. “The board is on the way.”

“The board?” Lucien says. “What are you going to do, paddle us?”

“I’m referring to the board of directors,” Connie says with a reverent tone. “I called to let them know what’s going on. With Mr. Chase’s death, our vice president is now in charge and she said no one is to do anything until she gets here.”

Hurley shakes his head and sighs. “No, this is a crime scene and as such, I am the one in charge.”

“Dorothy isn’t going to like that,” Connie says.

“Dorothy Granger?” I ask, and Connie nods. I let out a low whistle and tell Hurley, “You might have met your match. Dorothy was one of the hospital supervisors back when I first started working the ER. She pretty much ran things her way, something the existing director of nursing was happy to allow. No one complained because it turned out that Dorothy’s way worked well and the DON at the time was an idiot. Unfortunately, the hospital CEO figured out that the existing DON was an idiot and fired her, hiring Nancy Molinaro to take her place. Both management and the hospital’s general culture underwent a drastic overhaul, and when Dorothy and Nancy came together, it was like trying to bring together like poles on two different magnets. The resulting repellent force became part of hospital lore mainly because Dorothy is one of the few people Molinaro ever fired who didn’t disappear altogether. We all figured it was because Molinaro was new to the area and hadn’t had time yet to set up her body disposal process.

“Anyway, Dorothy got snatched up by Twilight Home’s previous owner and hired on as the director of nursing. If rumor has it right, over the past decade she helped turn this place into a decent, clean, and profitable venture. Plus she got to run things her way again. It was a win-win for all. But I have to tell you, Dorothy is a force to be reckoned with.”

Hurley doesn’t look the least bit intimidated. He looks at Connie and says, “Do you know who Bernard’s next of kin is?”

“His wife Vonda.”

“I’ll need an address. Can you tell me why Bernard was here on a Saturday?”

“I have no idea,” Connie says. “I didn’t even know he was in the building. He parks out back in the side employee lot and comes in through the rear entrance on his workdays, so I assume he does the same if he comes in on an off day. He can be back here without anyone knowing.”

“Does he typically come in on the weekends? Or other off hours?”

Connie closes her mouth, and swallows hard. After the slightest hesitation—enough to let me think that she’s hiding something—she shakes her head. “Not that I’m aware of.” She quickly adds, “But I always work the day shift. I don’t know what happens at night.” She shoots me a worried look and I’m guessing that even if Hurley wasn’t intimidated by my description of Dorothy Granger, Connie is. “Is the place going to have to close down? Am I going to lose my job?”

I shrug, unsure why she directed her question to me. “I don’t think the place will shut down. It’s home to a lot of people. As to whether or not you’ll lose your job . . .” I shrug again.

Connie rears back as if I slapped her in the face. Her expression shifts from fearful, to stunned, to angry in a matter of seconds, and she directs her menacing gaze at Irene. “This is all your fault. You’re always sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong. And now look what you’ve done!”

“Be quiet!” Hurley says to Connie, who looks put out but says nothing more. “Go get me Bernard Chase’s address.” Connie scurries off and Hurley shifts his attention back to Irene. “Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me everything?”

Irene looks at me, then at Lucien.

Lucien says, “It seems Bjorn might have been the last person to see Bernard Chase alive.”

“Really?” Hurley says. “And when were you going to tell me this?”

“We just did,” Lucien says with dead calm.

“Where is Bjorn now?”

“In the dayroom,” Irene says.

“Fine. Go get him and bring him here, please.”

Lucien nods and starts to steer Irene toward the front entrance to the hallway, but Connie has just returned with a slip of paper in hand—Bernard Chase’s address I presume—so Irene does a quick about-face and heads for the outside exit, instead.

Hurley takes the paper from Connie and watches Irene and Lucien leave. As soon as they are out the door he turns to me with a puzzled expression. “What’s wrong with Lucien? He looks like hell and he’s behaving like a normal person, all polite and crap. Is he okay?”

“I don’t know. I just found out he and Desi are separated, so maybe that’s playing into things.”

“Ouch. That’s rough,” Hurley says in a low voice. “It’s no fun when you can’t be with the one you love.” An awkward silence fills the space between us until Hurley says, “We really need to talk later.”

I nod, but don’t say anything. Instead, I open the door to the men’s room and ask Izzy if he needs my help.

“I’m ready to bag Bernard,” he says, and I go in to help him while Hurley gets out his cell phone and starts making calls.

Junior stands by the door, propping it open, while Izzy and I tuck Bernard away inside the body bag. We are zipping it up when Lucien and Irene return with Bjorn in tow. They walk up to Hurley and Lucien says, “We need to show you something.”

“Go ahead,” Irene says to Bjorn.

Bjorn bends over and rolls up first one pant leg, then the other. On both of his lower legs are lines of fresh, red scratches. Next, he undoes his pants at the waist and pulls them down over his right hip, revealing more scratches.

Hurley looks at the marks. “Did you scratch yourself, Bjorn?”

Irene answers for him. “Bjorn didn’t make those scratches, Bernie Chase did. He did it to him here in the men’s room.”

“Is that true, Bjorn?” Hurley asks.

He nods, looking frightened.

I start to get up from my kneeling position on the floor with the intent of walking over to Bjorn to offer him a friendly touch, but my muscles have other ideas. When I try to stand, my leg starts trembling and a stabbing pain shoots up my back. It’s severe enough to make me suck in a breath and cuss to myself, and I even experience a brief wave of nausea. I clamp a hand over my mouth to keep my bile and my profane utterances where they belong. Izzy has picked up on my distress and I sense his eyes on me. Eager to appear shipshape for the job, I swallow down my pain and talk to Bjorn from where I am on the floor. “Bjorn, can you remember what happened? Irene said you have trouble remembering things sometimes.”

“I do. I couldn’t remember what happened before when she asked me, but I think I can now,” he says.

“He does this,” Irene explains. “His mind wanders a lot and sometimes it comes back and sometimes it doesn’t. Stress makes it worse. The other day he was supposed to pick me up at one o’clock and he forgot. He took himself out for lunch to Dairy Airs instead. When I finally caught up to him and reminded him that he was supposed to pick me up, he had no recollection of us ever discussing the matter. But the next day he not only remembered the entire conversation, he remembered that he had forgotten to come and that he had gone to Dairy Airs instead.”

“Tell us what you remember,” Hurley says.

Bjorn wrings his hands and shifts nervously from one foot to the other. “I-I remember being in the bathroom to empty my bag and—”

“Empty your bag?” Hurley interrupts. “You mean a garbage bag or something?”

“No, he means his urinary catheter,” I say.

“Oh.”

Bjorn continues. “I was trying to get the lid off that powder stuff because I always seem to spill some urine on the floor no matter how careful I am. The lid was really tight and my arthritis was flaring up, so it was a struggle to unscrew that top. But I finally got it and that’s when Bernard came into the bathroom. He was behind me and he banged the door really loud when he came in. It startled me because of the noise . . . and because he was acting funny, like he was drunk or something.”

“Drunk?” Hurley echoes to no one in particular.

“Yeah,” Bjorn says. “It was like he was drunk, but I don’t think he was. At least, I couldn’t smell it on him. He stumbled over to me, and he was trying to talk, but he wasn’t making any sense. And then he just sank to the floor. He looked terrible, all sweaty and pale, and as he was going down he started grabbing at me. One of his hands got caught in the waist of my pants and the weight of him going down pulled them half off. That’s how I got the scratches on my hip. He started grabbing at my lower legs and it almost made me fall. I still had the open bottle of powder in my hand and when I tried to catch myself it spilled all over Bernard’s face. He started to gag and choke and it scared me. I dropped the bottle and I ran.”

“When you say Bernard wasn’t making any sense, what do you mean? What was he saying?”

“It wasn’t words,” Bjorn says. “He just kept making this weird gurgling sound.”

“Did you try to help him at all?”

Bjorn hangs his head, looking miserable. “I didn’t know how. He was acting so strange, I got scared and ran out of here to find Irene.”

It hits me then, the question that should have come up earlier, but I hadn’t thought of it. “Why were you in this particular bathroom? How did you get to it? Isn’t this administrative wing locked on the weekends when there’s no one here?”

“The back door is locked all the time,” says Connie. “You can go out, but you can’t get in without a key. The front door to this wing is locked in the evening and night hours during the week, and all day on the weekends. Plus there’s someone at the front sign-in desk most of the time to make sure no one comes back here who shouldn’t.”