Grave Doubts (A Paranormal Mystery Novel) (14 page)

Lee rotated her
head to glance into the living room to where Maddox and his date were sitting
on an elegant sofa.

“Who is she,
Andrew?” Lee inquired, scrutinizing the woman through the crowded room. “It’s
the same woman he was with at the funeral. I’ve seen her before, but I can’t
place her.”

“That’s Dr.
Pendleton. She’s a new Emergency Room doc. And the chair of the Ethics
Committee.”

“I wondered how
he could score an invitation to this gig.” Lee felt something connect, like the
coupling of two railroad cars, but then they slipped apart. She turned back to
Andrew. “I guess he’s moved up in the world.” Tears welled in the corner of her
eyes and she looked up to the ceiling in an effort to control them.

Andrew put a
hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Lee. This has got to be tough on you. Maybe
you really ought to take a vacation. It couldn’t hurt.”

Lee smiled
weakly. Just then, a small severe-looking woman wearing a beaded jacket
appeared out of nowhere and removed Andrew’s hand from Lee’s shoulder.

“How are you,
Lee?” she said, her features pinched into a scowl.

Andrew
stiffened as the little woman laced her hand through his elbow. Her short, dark
hair was cut like a boy’s, and she wore no makeup.

Lee quickly
dabbed at her eyes. “I’m fine, Miriam. Isn’t the house lovely?”

“It’s nice,”
Miriam replied with a dim expression. “If you like such an eclectic style.”

Miriam carried
an air of forced elegance and had never made a positive remark in Lee’s
presence that she could remember. Andrew had begun to fidget now that his wife
was there. Watching the two, Lee wondered what life was like for Andrew. Between
Martha Jackson and Miriam, it couldn’t be easy.

“Well, remember
what I said,” Andrew said with a curt nod, and the two walked away.

She stared
after them, deciding this party had to be one of the worst parties she’d ever
attended. It was time to find her brother and leave. She slipped into the
dining room and found Patrick leaning against the food table talking to an
orthopedic surgeon and the President of the University. What they all had in
common she couldn’t imagine. No matter. She would let Patrick know in no
uncertain terms that it was time to go.

She’d almost
made it safely to Patrick’s side when she was intercepted by the wife of a
prominent attorney who had made one too many trips to the bar. The woman had
attended their annual auction six months earlier and purchased a package trip to
Hawaii that had been fraught with problems.

“Lee,” she
wailed a bit too loudly. Her hand reached for Lee's arm but missed, and she
nearly toppled over. Lee grabbed for her elbow.

“Mrs. Bernstein.
How are you?”

“I'm fine,” she
slurred. “I wanted to thank you for taking care of that little matter.” She winked
at Lee and started to sway.

Lee helped her
steady herself. “I was happy to help.”

“If you ask me,”
Mrs. Bernstein whispered, breathing heavily into Lee's face, “Joseph Putnam is
a cheap bastard!”

“Well, Mr.
Putnam is out of town a lot, Mrs. Bernstein. I think he left most of the
arrangements up to his assistant. I’m just glad we got it all worked out.”

Lee felt guilty
having just blamed the problem on Putnam’s assistant, a woman she didn't even
know, but decided it was worth it when she noticed Mrs. Bernstein listing to
one side. Lee let go of her elbow and stepped away, hoping the woman could
stand on her own.

“Let me know if
there are any more problems.”

“Oh, I will,”
the other woman gushed. “Thank you, Lee.” With that, she stumbled away.

Someone touched
Lee’s elbow and she shrank from what she thought would be another hideous
encounter. When she turned, it was Patrick's boyish grin that greeted her.

“Having fun?”

“Let's get out
of here,” she said, moving through the living room toward the staircase.

“Whoa,” he
called, following her. “We just got here.”

“Too bad.”

Lee left her
brother in the foyer and went to the guestroom where she found her coat in the
closet, but had to search for her purse. She found it on the floor right beneath
her coat. Suspicious, she opened it to search for her wallet, but it was there,
along with the small leather wallet she used for credit cards. Nothing seemed to
be missing. Perhaps someone just moved it to make more room in the closet. She
grabbed it and met Patrick in the hallway.

Outside, Lee
waited until they had reached the bottom steps before letting out a sigh. As
she swung her coat around her shoulders, she said, “I don't ever want to go
into that house again.”

Patrick gave
her a curious look. “Well, I have to admit that it lived up to its reputation
as being a boring party, but it wasn't that bad. Besides, we were there less
than forty-five minutes.”

“You have no
idea,” she countered as they approached the car. “Bud Maddox was there.”

“Well, that
must have been awkward.”

“To say the least.
I also met their daughter.”

That statement
stopped Patrick in his tracks.

“You're kidding?”

“I'm not
kidding, and I'll never kid about her again. She is one strange cookie.”

They reached
the car and Patrick unlocked the doors. As they slid in on opposite sides, he
stopped to look at Lee with anticipation.

“Well, c'mon. Out
with it. What happened?”

Lee started
slowly. “I went upstairs to look around.”

“You were spying.”

“No,” she said,
in her own defense. “I was merely taking a tour of the house. I stepped into
what I thought was the master bedroom.”

“So, you were
spying.” he said again.

“No,” she
replied in exasperation. “But Pauline Bates was there. And that is one weird
room.”

“Do tell.”

“The entire room
is a shrine to the feline species.”

“Cats?” he
asked incredulously.

“Yes, of course
cats. Hundreds of them. They're everywhere. The walls. The floor. The bed. Every
surface.” She looked through the windshield toward the east side of the house. “But
not a live one in the place.”

“So, she likes
cats. That's not that strange.”

“You wouldn't
say that if you'd seen that room. It felt like a museum. She ordered me to get
out.”

“Not very hospitable,
I’m sure.”

“Not friendly
at all, but it was the way she said it. And that's not the worst of it.”

“Oh good, I
thought I was going to have to fake a horrified reaction because so far, this
isn’t that weird.”

She turned and
leveled a stare at him. “She was at the graveyard.”

Patrick looked
confused. “Who?  Pauline Bates?”

“Yes. There was
a woman up on the hill overlooking Diane’s grave. I saw her just before I left.
She was standing alone between two trees. I couldn't see her face, but I'd
swear it was Pauline Bates.”

Patrick merely
looked at her with a blank expression. “I'm not sure why that's significant.”

Lee leaned
towards her brother. “Patrick,” she said quietly, “Pauline Bates has never met
Diane. So, why would she be at her burial?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The next
morning, Lee put Soldier on the porch and headed for Medford, a two and a half
hour drive south of Eugene. Lee had called ahead to make an appointment with
her friend, Alvin McCauley, a professional colleague who ran the Foundation at
Aurora Medical Center where Bud Maddox had worked before coming to Twin Rivers.
They’d settled on eleven-thirty, and she hit the road feeling as if she was
doing something useful for the first time in several days. Bud’s personnel file
had indicated that his wife, Emily Maddox, was a nurse in Medford, but hadn’t
disclosed whether she worked at the same hospital. Lee hoped to find out, along
with some information about why Bud had left the medical center in the first
place.

It was almost
exactly eleven-thirty when she arrived in Alvin McCauley’s outer office on the
second floor. As she waited for the receptionist to announce her arrival, her
eyes scanned the swanky color-coordinated interior and found a copy of the
hospital's newsletter,
The RX,
sitting on the side table. She picked it
up and flipped through it, looking for the section she knew the Foundation
would use to list donor names. As Lee skimmed the page, the receptionist
returned to say Alvin would see her. Lee tucked the newsletter under her arm
and entered the office.

Alvin McCauley
drew his tall frame out of a rolling executive chair and came around the large
wooden desk to greet her with a warm smile.

“Well, I can't
believe you're finally here,” he said with a slight Southern twang. “It's about
time.”

They shook
hands and Lee gave him a friendly smile. “If I'd known how elegantly you lived,
I'd have been here sooner.”

He offered her
a plush beige chair while he draped himself into a matching loveseat. “I'm
lucky,” he agreed. “We moved into these offices two years ago when the new wing
was built; now I'm afraid they'll have to blast me out of them. So, what brings
you down here?”

Lee swallowed as
the lies began.

“My brother is
a theater professor at the University of Oregon, and I offered to pick up something
in Ashland for him. To be honest, I just needed a day off.”

“How
are
things at Twin Rivers?  Is it everything you hoped for?”  He used his hand to
flatten some wispy strands of hair pulled across a wide forehead.

“It’s never
everything we hope for, is it?  But I can’t complain.”

He crossed his
long legs at the knees, exposing Argyle socks. “Well, I just remember how
miserable you were in San Francisco. I guess anything would be better than
that.”

“Amen,” she
confirmed.

They continued
to chat for over a half hour. Lee had known Alvin for more than ten years, but
they only saw each other at conferences and rarely spent real time together. Lee
became so involved in the conversation that she almost forgot why she was there.
Finally, they came around to the topic of annual employee campaigns, and she
thought this might be the lead-in she needed.

“We do a large
annual employee campaign,” Alvin was explaining. “And we’ve raised almost $150,000
from gift annuities and one charitable remainder trust.”

“We’re not having
much luck with the employees,” Lee admitted. “Two unions got a foothold three
years ago and people are confused about their loyalties.” The conversation was
going exactly in the direction she’d hoped. She phrased her next question as a
statement. “You must have a strong employee committee.”

“We have about
twenty people on a steering committee. They represent most departments in the
hospital. One of the vice presidents also participates, and frankly, that has
made a tremendous difference.”

Lee rested her
elbow on the arm of her chair. It was an unseasonably warm day for October,
even in Medford, where the temperature could get over a hundred degrees during
the summer. Overhead, the fan hummed as it circulated cool air from a vent in
the ceiling.

“Say,” she said
with a twist of her head, “did you know Bud Maddox when he worked here?”  Her
face grew warm as if Alvin would recognize the ruse.

“Oh, sure. Bud
chaired one of our sub-committees a few years ago. He and his wife were very
active. I'd forgotten he'd moved to your area.”

Lee’s heart
raced. “So, he likes fundraising. I'll have to get him involved.” She sat back
to ask her next question, acting as nonchalant as possible. “Does his wife
still work here?  I heard she didn't move to Eugene with him.”

The corners of
Alvin’s mouth turned down. “I think so. I don't see her anymore. I think after
Bud left, she switched to the graveyard shift in the ICU. Guess it's easier
than sleeping alone,” he said with a smile. He got up and wandered over to his
computer terminal and hit some keys. “She was pretty active in our employee
grants program. I assume she’s on the committee if she still works here. I
don’t staff that committee though, so…let’s see.” He studied the screen for a
brief moment and then said, “Well, she just made a payment last week on her
annual pledge, so I guess she’s still here.”

“Well, it's really
not important.” Lee tried to sound uninterested. “Bud is kind of an enigma
around the hospital. I mean…everyone knows he's married, but he seems to play
around a lot. Do you have any idea why she didn’t move with him?”

“I'm not really
up on hospital gossip, but I heard that Bud was involved in some trouble up in
the lab, an indiscretion of some kind. He left Medford when he got the job at
Twin Rivers. Emily stayed here. I don’t know why.” He glanced at his watch. “Say,
I have an appointment a one-thirty, but would you like a quick tour of the
hospital and then some lunch?”

He stood up.
Lee was disappointed. She had been enjoying her role as Sherlock Holmes. As she
stood, she made a mental note that Bud’s wife worked the graveyard shift.

“We can get a
bite to eat in the cafeteria. We just had it remodeled.”

They left the
office and spent the next forty minutes wandering the halls of the large
complex. Lee complimented Alvin on a donor wall in the pediatrics department. It
was a wooden sculpture of a toy train painted in primary colors and filled with
giraffes, bears, and cuddly-looking tigers. As they took the elevator to the
basement for lunch, Lee made another mental note of the arrow pointing to the
lab on the first floor. Over salads and vegetarian chili, they chatted about
the conference they'd both attended in Dallas in September. At one-twenty,
Alvin walked her to the front entrance to say good-bye.

“Thanks for
coming, Lee. Don’t make it so long before the next time.”

“I won’t,” she
replied as they shook hands. “It’s been great. You’ll have to come to
Springfield.”

“I’d like that.”

“Can you direct
me to the ladies’ room before I get out of here?”

“Sure,” he
said, turning around to point behind him. “It’s right down that hallway.” He
indicated a short hallway that ran past the gift shop.

“Thanks. And
thanks again for your time,” Lee smiled.

“No trouble. I’ll
get up your way one of these days.”

He turned and
headed back towards the hospital’s entrance. Lee held her breath for a minute,
waiting until she was sure he was gone. Then she headed in the opposite
direction. The lab was tucked into the corner of the first floor with a small
waiting room and no windows. A large black woman wearing wire-rimmed glasses
and a white lab coat sat behind a counter window. She concentrated on a stack
of papers. Behind her, Lee could see the blood draw stations. A tall, slender
man in dirty overalls sat wedged in a chair with a wraparound armrest. A small
woman hovered efficiently over his arm with a long needle in her hands. As she
jabbed for the vein, he looked away, and Lee found herself holding her breath.

“May I help
you?” a husky voice asked. It was the woman behind the counter.

Lee flinched. “Sorry,
I don't know how you guys ever get used to doing that,” she said, indicating
the draw stations.

The small woman
in the back now held a vial filled with dark red fluid and was attaching a
label to it. The woman behind the desk glanced in their direction and back.

“Yeah, well, I
think every lab technician enjoys sticking it to them, if you know what I mean.”
The woman chuckled mean-spiritedly. “So, what can I do for you?”  Her voice
purred in an insincere sort of way.

“I'm just passing
through and have a friend who works here in the lab. I thought I'd stop and say
hello.”

“Who's the
friend?”  The smile faded.

Lee tried to
look completely honest. “Bud Maddox. Is he working today?”

The woman’s
face froze for a moment, and then she laughed so abruptly she took Lee by
surprise.

“No, I’m afraid
not,” she sneered. “No, I'm afraid you won't be seeing your friend Bud Maddox
today.”

She laughed
some more, taking her glasses off to rub her eyes, unaware that people in the
waiting room were now staring at them. Lee wasn’t quite sure what to do.

“I'm sorry, I
don't understand.”

As the woman’s
chuckles diminished, she looked at Lee, her small, dark eyes taking on a beady
stare. When she put her glasses back on, she picked up her pencil, tapping it
on the counter as she talked.

“I’m afraid
your friend don't work here no more. He left more than six months ago, rather
quickly, if you know what I mean.”

Lee tried to
appear suitably stunned. “Fired?  You’re kidding?”

The unappealing
grin reappeared, exposing a set of crooked, yellow teeth. “Well, they didn’t
actually fire him now, did they?  But your little friend got caught doing
something he oughtn't have.”

“Well, do you
know where he's working now?”

“Hah!” the
woman exclaimed, making several people look around. “Hopefully nowhere, if you
know what I mean. That man is trouble. Sorry, I can't help you.” With a nod,
she dismissed Lee and resumed her work.

Lee took a few
steps away. Unwilling to give up, she turned back and approached the counter. Leaning
toward the woman in a confidential manner, she eyed the woman's nametag.

“Mavis,” she
said, forcing the woman to look up.

Lee looked
around the room as if she didn't want anyone to hear. Mavis took the bait and
leaned forward.

“Bud wasn't
caught…for the same thing again, was he?” Lee whispered, giving Mavis a
confidential look that included only the two of them.

Mavis squinted,
her expression betraying her suspicion. The two women remained locked in
eye-to-eye combat for several seconds until Lee began to sweat. Finally, the
corners of Mavis’ mouth turned into a smile.

“My advice to
you, honey, is that I wouldn't give my friend, Bud, any personal information
you don’t want others to know. And, I'd be careful how many people you tell
about your friendship with him. Know what I mean?” The eyebrows lifted one last
time, and then she turned and climbed off her stool, disappearing with her
papers into a small office.

Lee sighed with
disappointment and turned to leave just as a toddler behind her squealed in delight.
He was standing with his face pressed against a picture window, staring at a
large group of birds on the lawn outside. Lee stopped and stared with him.
There had to be about a hundred birds, all shapes and sizes. They milled about
on a small patch of grass outside, all facing the window. It was eerie. The boy
laughed and pounded on the window, but the birds ignored him. They just stood
there, as if lost. Finally, the boy’s mother pulled the little boy away. A half
second later, the birds took to the air en masse − as if they’d received
a message of some sort that it was time to disperse. Lee left the lab feeling a
familiar buzz.

As she turned a
corner near the main entrance, she almost bumped into Alvin McCauley, who stood
talking to an elderly woman dressed in a lab coat. Perhaps he never made it
back to his office.

“What are you
still doing here?” he asked in surprise.

Lee gave a
nervous laugh. “I…uh…decided to get my camera and take a picture of that donor
wall in the pediatrics department.” She tapped her purse as if the camera were
inside. “I think my CEO would love it.” She touched Alvin on the shoulder as
she moved past him. “Thanks again, Alvin. I've got to run. I'll be in touch.”

Lee made it to
the car without further mishap and climbed in, her heart racing. If anyone had
said a year ago that she would be masquerading as a detective, she would have
laughed. Patrick had inherited all the imagination in the family. She only had a
good head for numbers and the ability to multi-task. The art of lying just
wasn’t in her repertoire of skills. Yet, here she was stepping in and out of
character with apparent ease. Maybe she shared more with her brother than she
thought.