Grave Doubts (A Paranormal Mystery Novel) (8 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Lee tossed and turned throughout
the night, finally getting up at one point to drink some warm milk. The next
morning she indulged in three cups of coffee to give her enough energy to make
it to work. Not a great idea, since she’d begun to notice a constant ringing in
her ears.

She arrived in her office ten
minutes before the administrative team meeting scheduled for nine o’clock. It
gave her just enough time to check her emails before she had to go talk about
budgets and cost overruns. She turned on her computer and scrolled through
about thirty emails. She saw the usual array of messages from staff, board
members, and outside contacts. But one email caught her attention, and she sat
down to read it.

The message had been sent from
someone outside the hospital and was identified as having come from “A Friend.”
It read very simply:

Double, double, toil and trouble

Fire burn and cauldron bubble

By the pricking of my thumbs

Something wicked this way comes

Beware!

There was nothing more.

Lee inhaled and held her breath
before exhaling slowly. Wasn't that how the odd condolence card had been
signed? A friend? The ringing in her ears had now been joined by a racing heart
rate. Who would send her that card and then this weird email? It must be
connected to Diane’s death. But how?

Lee reread the poem. Parts of it
sounded familiar, but she struggled to place the entire piece. She hit the
print button and put the copy on her desk just as Andrew appeared at her door.

“You coming?” he inquired.

Lee looked up. “Yeah, I just wanted
to check emails.”

She grabbed a notepad and pencil,
and then paused. Andrew held a degree in Philosophy along with his MBA. He
might recognize the poem’s origin.

“Andrew, do you have any idea what
this is?” she asked, handing it to him.

Andrew took it and read the lines. “Well,
even though I skipped most of my English Lit classes in college, I’m sure it’s
from Shakespeare, although I don’t know which play.”

“That’s what I thought,” Lee
agreed.

“Better ask your brother,” Andrew
handed back the piece of paper. “Where did you get it?”

“Uh…someone gave it to me.”

She stuffed the note into her
purse, when something sharp pierced her finger. She yanked her hand back,
surprised to find a small droplet of blood at the tip of her second digit.

“Wow,” Andrew exclaimed, looking at
her injury. “What do you carry in there?” He attempted a laugh. “Get a Band Aid
and I’ll meet you in the conference room.”

Lee watched him disappear and then
pulled her purse open, looking for the sharp instrument that had just impaled
her. She shifted her wallet and car keys to one side, and felt the blood drain
from her face. The onyx bird peeked out from behind her wallet.

A few minutes later, she joined her
colleagues looking and feeling very much like she’d just stuck her finger in a
light socket. As the meeting began, she attempted to quiet the thoughts buzzing
in her head by purposely looking around the room and focusing on the team
members.

The group was an odd mixture of
intellect, impressive credentials, and less than dazzling personalities. Martha
Jackson, the new CEO, ran the meetings like a military boot camp, and the room
often felt as if the oxygen had been sucked out through the air vents. Andrew
sat to Martha’s left. Next to him was Fran Van Sickle, the VP of Patient
Services. Next to her was Robin. Lee sat across the table from Robin. To Lee’s
right was the head of Information Technology, and then the Chief Financial
Officer.

The meeting started with an
announcement from Martha that she had a conference call at ten o’clock. Lee
silently thanked God for small favors. Fran Van Sickle ran through some capital
equipment requests, and then it was Andrew’s turn as VP of Operations to come
out from under Martha’s thumb and report on the construction of the new
radiology unit. His muscles tightened, making his body so rigid he could have
been injected with starch. He’d just begun his report when Martha raised a
stubby hand to stop him.

“What happened with Dr. Roberts
last week?” she barked.

Andrew’s speech faltered. Everyone
could feel the reprimand coming.

“I believe Dr. Roberts had a few
words with the project manager,” he almost whispered.

“A few words?” Martha prodded.

“I think Dr. Roberts was unhappy
about something,” Andrew replied vaguely. “But I believe it’s all worked out
now.”

“It’s not worked out!” Martha slammed
her pencil on the table. “He was in my office yesterday complaining that no one
had consulted him about selecting the new CAT scanner. I thought you said you’d
discussed it with the radiologists.”

“I did. Well, I mean, I discussed
it with Dr. Sinner and Dr. Boswell.”

Andrew’s speech disintegrated into
a stutter. As Lee glanced around the table, she saw that everyone had become
very interested in their notepads.

“You have to talk to Roberts, not
just Sinner and Boswell. And, this time, fix it.”

Andrew pretended to write himself a
note. “I’ll take care of it right away.”

“See that you do. Let’s move on,” Martha
commanded.

Andrew opened his mouth to say
something, but thought better of it and just sat back in his seat. Lee felt
sorry for him, but wondered for the umpteenth time why he didn’t just leave. He’d
been at the hospital as VP of Operations for over six years, but hadn’t even
been considered for the top spot when it became available. As someone who had
always played at the top of her game, Lee didn’t know what it would feel like
to be so undervalued.

As VP of Human Resources, Robin
chaired the Safety Committee, and it was her turn to make a safety report. Lee
took the opportunity to draw circles on her notepad, glancing up once or twice
just to give her friend confidence that she wasn’t being ignored. The doodling
helped to calm her nerves and even contemplate how the bird had found its way
into her purse again. In the background, Robin began.

“The Safety Committee met
yesterday,” Robin referred to two typed sheets of paper in her hands. “There
were two security incidents reported last month. It seems the hood ornament
from Dr. Olson’s Mercedes was stolen again.”

This brought chuckles from around
the table. Dr. Olson's hood ornament had been stolen some twelve times over the
past four years. A few times it was discovered in the bushes. Once it was
mailed back to him, and once it had shown up lodged in the plumbing of the men's
bathroom. The entire surgical floor hated Dr. Olson, and everyone suspected someone
on staff was to blame.

“The second incident happened two
weeks ago. It appears that someone may have broken into the lab's GCMS room.”

Robert Bask was the Chief Financial
Officer and the kind of guy who didn’t have the personality for much more than
the numbers he spent his life with. He was tall and thin and wore wire-rimmed
glasses that made him look like a character from Charles Dickens. He looked up
when Robin mentioned the GCMS room.

“What’s the GCMS room?” he asked, as
he toyed with his glasses.

Robin referred to her notes. “It
holds two pieces of equipment. The gas chromatograph and the mass spectro-phometer,”
she stumbled over the words.

“It’s where all the positive drug
screens are confirmed,” Fran interjected.

Robin continued. “Some of the lab
techs work around the clock, but the GCMS room is closed and locked at six
o'clock. Only five people are supposed to have access to it.”

Lee was thinking about the bird
when she heard this, and continued doodling.

“Apparently, nothing was taken,”
Robin said. “However, the computer was still up and running at five o’clock the
next morning when security checked, and the door was unlocked.”

Lee finished coloring in a circle
and looked up with interest.

“What about the technicians?  Did
they see anyone?” Andrew inquired.

Lee thought Andrew was making a
valiant effort to appear credible again in Martha’s eyes. Unfortunately, Martha
continued to act as if he wasn’t in the room.

“No one saw anything,” Robin
answered. “There is a side door to the hallway, and they think whoever it was
may have come into the department the back way.”

“So,” Robert began, adjusting his
glasses again, “we really don't know what happened. Maybe someone just left the
computer on when they went home.”

“And left the door unlocked?” Fran
scoffed. “I don’t think so.”

As the executive in charge of
patient care, you’d expect Fran to have the bedside manner of Florence
Nightingale. Unfortunately, she was as soft and cuddly as a drill bit.

“Well, the five people who have
access to it were all interviewed the next day and denied any knowledge,” Robin
said. “But the key to the room
is
left in a central location.”

“You think one of our technicians
is fooling around with the computer for personal use?” Fran jumped to the
negative.

“I’m only reporting the facts,”
Robin replied a bit defensively.

“The trouble wouldn't be in leaving
the computer on. It would only be a problem if someone were entering the lab
files,” Andrew offered authoritatively, sneaking a glance at Martha.

“I understand that, Andrew,” Fran
snapped. “Was a file left opened?” she asked Robin.

Robin checked her notes again. “I’m
not sure.”

Lee glanced over to see if Scott Summers
was awake. He was the Chief Information Officer and in charge of all technology
and phone operations. Though more content to interact with computers than
people, he was a borderline genius as far as Lee was concerned, and she often
wondered why he had chosen a small hospital in Oregon on which to waste his
talents. This should be his area, but he was browsing through some other paperwork.

“Scott, could you find out if
anything had been tampered with?” Martha inquired.

“Possibly,” he said without looking
up. “I can take a look. Who has access to that computer?” he asked, finally
lifting his chin.

“The Lab Manager. Three lab techs
and the pathologist,” Robin replied.

“Which lab techs?”

“John Swain and Bud Maddox. I don’t
know who the third was.”

Lee stopped doodling and looked up.

“Did Maddox work that day?” she
asked, suddenly engaged in the conversation.

Robin shrugged, giving Lee a
guarded look. “I have no idea.”

“Scott,” Martha Jackson
interrupted, “have one of your guys check it. I doubt it’s anything to worry
about, but we have the Joint Commission survey this spring, and I don’t want
any deficiencies.”

Lee sat back, staring at the
outdoor print of a riverboat on the wall across the table. She had no idea if
this was important information. If Bud had killed Diane, there had to be a motive.
Lee had racked her brain trying to generate a plausible reason why he might
have wanted Diane dead. The computer incident provided something interesting. If
he was doing something illegal and Diane had found out about it…well, then.

“I understand it was a nice
funeral, Lee,” Martha Jackson said in the background.

Lee heard the comment a split
second after Martha made it and snapped to attention with a nervous jump. Everyone
was looking at her, waiting for a response.

“Yes, it was,” she said, hoping she
hadn’t missed enough of the comment to make her response sound stupid.

“Perhaps you and your staff can put
this tragedy behind you now.” Jackson gazed at her with a blank expression. “You
can get on with your work.”

Lee clenched her fingers into fists
under the table. “We've never stopped working, Martha.”

“I’m sure that’s true. I just meant
that it must be difficult.” She smiled, but there was no animation in her face.
“I was wondering, in fact, if there was still time to get an article on the new
Cath Lab in the next newsletter.”

Lee struggled to get back on track.
All Jackson cared about was the stupid Cath Lab.

“Actually, Sally’s already written
the article. I believe the copy is on your desk.”

Jackson looked at her assistant, Miranda,
who sat taking minutes. “Is that true, Miranda?”

Miranda looked up. “I have a stack
of things that just arrived from Marketing. I’m not sure what’s in the pile.”

Miranda Gonzalez was Jackson’s
assistant and saw herself as the right hand to God. She took immense pleasure
in the power she had over everyone else as a result. With this remark, she
looked across the table at Lee knowing full well that Lee’s marketing staff had
delivered the materials nearly two days earlier.

Martha Jackson glanced back at Lee.
“Well, now that I have the article, I’ll take a look at it. You look tired, Lee.
A close friend’s death is difficult for anyone, but when it’s suicide, it’s
doubly hard to accept.”

Lee felt the heat rise to her
cheeks at this poorly disguised attempt at compassion.

“God, I can’t imagine killing
myself,” Fran cut in rudely. “How could life be that bad?”

“Life wasn’t that bad, as you put
it, Fran,” Lee snarled, looking at Fran as if she were an alien life form. “And
Diane didn’t kill herself!”

Seven sets of eyes stared back at Lee
as the room fell silent. A pin dropped squarely in the middle of the table
would have sounded like an iron pipe hitting pavement. Jackson fixed a steady
gaze in her direction. Finally, she spoke with measured control.

“I understood the police had ruled
it a suicide.”

Lee stared into those steely gray
eyes knowing what she should say. Instead she replied, “She was murdered.”

There, Martha’s icy eyes flinched.

Martha sat back in her chair,
pulling her pencil into her lap. “Did the police discover something new?”