Grave Doubts (A Paranormal Mystery Novel) (15 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Lee sat back against
the car seat and began to sort through information gleaned at the hospital. Bud
had been asked to leave Aurora Medical Center because of an indiscretion, but
he hadn’t been fired. That would explain why Robin’s personnel search had
turned up empty. Mavis had also clearly implied that Bud couldn’t keep a secret.
Hospital personnel were required to abide by a strict code of patient
confidentiality, but the tone of her voice indicated something more egregious
than that. Perhaps there was more to learn from Bud’s wife.

Emily Maddox
worked the graveyard shift, which meant she slept during the day. Since it was
only one forty-five, Lee decided to waste an hour browsing through stores in the
historic town of Jacksonville while she practiced her approach to Bud’s wife. Besides,
she needed time to unwind. The flock of birds outside of the lab had reignited
her anxiety.

Lee spent the
next hour and a half wandering in and out of quaint shops. At three o’clock,
she called the Maddox home and asked Mrs. Maddox for an audience. It was almost
three-thirty when she pulled onto Remington Street, past a row of upper-middle
class homes painted in a multiplicity of Victorian colors. The Maddox home sat
in a cul de sac with a short white fence encircling the front yard and a dry
creek-bed running along the east side. A dark green Explorer peeked out from
the garage.

Lee had called with
the excuse that she was writing an article for the hospital newsletter on
employee campaigns. Mrs. Maddox had reluctantly agreed. Lee hoped the questions
she’d practiced in the car would lead to a conversation about Bud, but the acid
in her stomach told her she lacked real confidence.

She parked the
car, slipped the copy of
The RX
she snatched from Alvin’s office into
her satchel, and made her way up the path to ring the doorbell. A stocky woman
with dark shoulder-length hair that was overdue for a dye job answered the door.
She was dressed in a purple nylon running suit and clutched a wooden spoon in
her hand, tipped with some kind of red sauce. Her only notable features were a
large, unattractive mole in the center of her left cheek and dark eyebrows that
had probably been a uni-brow in her youth.

“Mrs. Maddox?” 
Lee spoke in a clipped, professional manner, adding a short, but warm smile.

“Yes,” the
woman hesitated, eyeing her carefully.

“I'm Rebecca
Moore.” Lee had picked the name of a college friend hoping it would roll off
her tongue more easily. “I called earlier. I’m from the hospital.”

“You’re doing a
story?”

“That’s right. Alvin
told me you’ve been involved with the hospital's employee campaign. He suggested
I talk with you about an article I'm working on.” She lifted up the copy of the
newsletter to illustrate her point. “I’m sorry for the short notice, but as I
said on the phone, my deadline is tomorrow.”

The woman was
slow to react, and Lee felt the pulse in her neck throb as she struggled to
maintain eye contact.

“I had
originally interviewed Mavis in the lab,” she added quickly, “but when I wrote
it up, she really hadn't given me much.”

The woman's
face relaxed as a small smile crept up the corners of the rigid mouth.

“I'm not
surprised by that little bit of information. Why don't you come in?  I'm just
in the middle of making spaghetti sauce before I have to leave for work.”

She turned and
headed for the kitchen, leaving Lee to step inside and close the door on her
own. Lee followed her through a very beige living room and into an airy kitchen
with a greenhouse window over the sink. Two large ceiling fans circulated the
tantalizing smell of spaghetti sauce. Mrs. Maddox stood at a center island
stirring the contents of a large green pot, the steam turning her face pink.
She barely looked up when Lee entered.

“So, what do
you want to know?” she asked without the customary invitation to sit down.

“I want to
highlight the employee campaign,” Lee said, still standing in the doorway. “I'd
like to know what made you to volunteer, for instance. Why you think it's
important to give back to the hospital? How you feel about some of the projects
they've funded? Things like that.”

Lee felt on
firmer ground discussing fundraising. But a cardinal rule was to ask for the
gift and then shut up until the prospect spoke. Lee forced herself to wait.

Emily Maddox
eyed her as if deciding what to do. Under the scrutiny, Lee imagined she had
the word FRAUD printed in block letters across her forehead and held her breath.
Finally, Emily Maddox turned off the gas flame.

“Give me a
minute and I'll talk with you.”

She lifted the
kettle off the stove and placed it on a brass trivet next to the sink. Lee
glanced around at the white cupboards, countertops, and cold linoleum floor. There
were no homey knick-knacks or pottery jars filled with antique utensils. Only
framed floral prints that were probably purchased at Walmart and a kitchen
table that looked like it came from IKEA.

“That’s a lot
of spaghetti sauce,” Lee finally said to fill the silence. “You must have a
large family.” As soon as she said it, she regretted it.

Mrs. Maddox
turned and leveled a blank look in her direction. “No, it’s only me.”

She turned back
to place her spoon in the sink when something outside caught her attention. Her
head came up and her body jerked, spraying spaghetti sauce across her white
cupboards like streaks of blood. Without warning, she turned and burst through
the kitchen door into the side yard with a strangled cry, waving the wooden
spoon above her head. Lee hurried to the window just as a small Sheltie dog
darted into the trees on the other side of the wire fence. Emily Maddox lunged
at it, screaming as if she wanted to reach through the fence holes to snare the
dog and kill it. The sheer intensity of her anger made Lee shudder. It wasn’t
until she became aware of her fingers resting in some of the red spaghetti
sauce on the counter that Lee quickly rinsed her hand and tried to look halfway
calm when Mrs. Maddox returned.

When Emily came
through the door again, her face was red and twisted, her breathing labored.
Lee moved out of the way and allowed her to take her position again at the kitchen
window, the wooden spoon clutched tightly in her hand. Lee waited. When the
woman didn’t say anything, Lee tried to bring her back to reality.

“Are you okay? 
You scared the hell out of me.” Lee tried to chuckle.

Mrs. Maddox
finally looked around as if realizing for the first time Lee was still there. “Did
I?   I'm sorry.”

She stole one
more glance out the window and then she pulled herself away to sit at the kitchen
table. She placed the spoon in front of her as if it were some sort of weapon
she might need again. Her eyes remained focused on the spoon.

“I don't like
dogs.”

Lee controlled
the urge to laugh. The woman took several deep breaths before looking up at
Lee.

“I won't have
them on my property.”

If Lee was
expected to respond, she didn’t know what to say. The woman had obviously
overreacted. The dog was on the other side of the fence. Even if it had come
onto her yard, what harm could the Sheltie do?  The dog probably didn’t weigh
more than twenty-five pounds. Lee waited. After a minute, the woman’s breathing
slowed and her muscles seemed to relax.

“Do you own a
dog, Ms. Moore?” She spoke softly, staring at the spoon again.

“I haven't
owned a dog for almost ten years.” Lee didn't actually own Soldier. Amy did.

Emily Maddox
rose and gestured for Lee to sit down. “Please, I've been very rude. Would you
like some lemonade?”

“I’d love some.
Thank you.”

Lee sat at the
table while Mrs. Maddox filled two crystal glasses with pink lemonade. As she
handed a glass to Lee, she said, “I suppose I should explain.”

Lee merely
sipped her lemonade in silence. Mrs. Maddox sat down again and wrapped both
hands around the crystal glass, forgetting the spoon for the moment.

“I was attacked
by a large dog when I was seven. I was playing in the backyard with my brother,
and a neighbor came over with a dog that was part wolf, part something else. My
brother and I were fighting. You know how kids can be. We were screaming and
yelling, making a lot of noise. I guess we scared the dog. Suddenly, it snapped
at me, taking off the tip of my ear.” She paused as her hand fluttered to the left
side of her face. With some hesitation, she pulled back her hair to reveal the
ragged appendage.

Lee grimaced. “How
awful.”

“I was deathly
afraid of dogs after that. A year later, I found a little white kitten in the
church parking lot. It was injured and starving, so I talked my mother into
letting me nurse it back to health. I was very proud of that.” She looked at
Lee with deep sadness in her eyes. “I think it’s what made me want to become a
nurse. Anyway, the kitten followed me everywhere. It even slept on my bed.”

Her lips curved
into a pale smile. Then she looked down at the table and took a deep breath.

“One day, I was
playing with the kitten in our front yard. It was so small,” she remembered, rubbing
her thumb across the outside of the glass. “Suddenly, a large dog came out of
nowhere and killed it. Right in front of me.” Her hands began to tremble and
she put the glass down. “It grabbed the kitten right out of my hand, shook it
violently once, and snapped its neck.”

She paused, her
breathing labored.

“The dog was so
close that I could smell its breath and feel its fur against my face,” she
said, her eyes staring into the abyss of bad memories. Finally, she looked up
at Lee, a tear in the corner of her eye. “I haven't been able to see a dog
since without wanting to kill it!”

“I’m sorry,”
Lee whispered. “But there are dogs everywhere. How do you cope?”

“Mostly, I try
to ignore them,” she said breathlessly. “If I see one on the street, I’ll cross
to the other side. If I’m in the car, I’ll just look the other way and drive
past as quickly as I can. But if they come onto my property, I have to do
something. I just have to.”

Lee felt sorry
for her. The hard exterior had vanished and the woman’s outlandish display
somehow didn't seem quite so out-of-place anymore. Lee felt herself wanting to
reach out and share her own story.

“I had a
completely different experience with a dog,” she suddenly heard herself saying.
“I always loved them. I grew up with dogs. Mostly large dogs.” She felt the
warmth rising in her cheeks again. “My husband and I owned a Labrador Retriever,
named Perry.” She smiled as she remembered the big black dog with its soft
brown eyes and silky fur. “Brad used to fish a lot and Perry always went with
him in the boat. Labradors love to swim, and Perry would often jump from the
boat and swim ashore. Brad absolutely adored that dog. They went everywhere
together. One day, they went fishing and didn't return before dark. I didn't
worry too much because we'd fished that lake a hundred times, and Brad was good
with the boat.” She looked at Emily Maddox with a little smile. “And, besides,
Perry was with him.”

“But they
didn't come back,” Mrs. Maddox said, finishing her thoughts.

“No.” Lee
looked at her hands now encircling her own glass of lemonade. “In fact, they
never came back. Brad was never found. The police found the boat hidden up a
side creek about two days later. There was blood in the bottom.”

“And the dog?”
the woman encouraged.

Lee wiped a
tear from the corner of her eye. “He was found floating in the shallows about a
hundred yards from where they found the boat. He had a bullet in his head. I
haven't been able to have a dog in the house since. In fact, I haven't had any
pets. I never liked cats much. My daughter begged me to get one, but I never
did. I guess, I felt as if I’d lost two of the things I loved most in the same
day. I still have a hard time looking at a dog without thinking of Perry.” An
image of Soldier appeared in her mind and she realized how much she was
beginning to depend on the dog.

“Did you ever
find out what happened to your husband?”

“No. The police
investigated but didn’t find anything.” She looked up at Maddox. “I've played
different scenarios out in my head for almost a decade, but the dog always
saves the day in my mind…and Brad comes home.”

There was a
long silence between them, each woman nursing memories. Finally, Mrs. Maddox
spoke.

“It seems like
we’ve both experienced some loss on that front. Why don’t we go into the living
room and talk about your article? Give me a minute to wipe up the mess.”

Lee nodded and
went into the other room, dabbing at the corner of her eyes. She hadn’t meant
to tell that story, but somehow the timing had felt right. And it seemed to
have helped break the ice with Bud’s wife.

She placed her
glass on a coaster and dropped her purse onto a chair next to a wall-to-wall bookcase.
The living room was as spotless as the kitchen and just as boring. Lee wandered
around until she ended up back at the bookcase. A fat tabby cat sat on the
piano bench nearby, waiting for attention. Lee ignored the cat while she
admired an expensive ceramic figurine of a woman draped over a bench, holding a
parasol. On the shelf above it was a group of photos. In one, a young Emily sat
in the middle of the floor, holding a small white kitten. In another, she was
in her cap and gown getting her diploma.

Bud was
pictured in several photos. In one, he was clearly a teenager, with his arm
around a pretty girl with long, dark hair. In another, he was probably in his
twenties, and again, he was in an intimate pose with a woman. Lee quickly
glanced at the other photos. In two more, Bud was with other women. She didn’t
find any photos of Bud and Emily, although one picture looked like it could
have been taken at their wedding. In it, Bud was standing in front of a black
limousine dressed in a tuxedo with a blonde man, also dressed in a tux.