Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy (30 page)

Homicide detectives nosing around a hospital
?
Murder in the OR? Maybe even a cover-up that went from President Chalmers’ office on down?

Now I really have seen everything,
Shirley mused as she waited for the elevator.

Ha. Not by a long shot.

Twelve

Shirley headed upstairs to her own department, dragging her feet all the way. She wasn’t in any hurry to face The Dragon Lady’s wrath again, no siree. Not only would Beth Peking be seething with jealousy over Dr. Hamm’s attentions (such as they were, anyway) Shirley figured it was highly likely that her busybody boss would already be well aware of the arrival of a murder investigation centering on an operation Shirley had worked on.

If The Dragon Lady hadn’t found adequate reason to fire her thus far, chances were good that she would now.

But when Shirley approached her boss’ office, she found it empty. The whole department was deserted, in fact. She went into the employee lounge to check the white markerboard that displayed the day’s OR schedule, and found it had recently been wiped clean.

She was about to check her locker when she heard heavy footsteps behind her.

“You won’t be having anything to do around here for a long time,” a familiar male voice said behind her.

She spun around, and stared straight into Dr. Randall Hamm’s deep-set eyes. They’d gone from their usual blue to almost black—from desire, maybe?

Ha. With her luck, probably not.

“The North Carolina State Police have shut down all surgical operations at this hospital until further notice,” he went on. “So it goes without saying that people like you and I aren’t going to have a lot of work to do.”

“Why?” Although given what Marla had just told her, she could pretty well guess the reason.

“Kind of a long story.” He ran a hand through his already tousled locks, shifted from foot to foot. Shirley noticed a light coating of perspiration on his brow, saw that his chest heaved up and down rapidly. The man was agitated, that was for sure.

My, but the man was hot when he was agitated. (Well, in truth he was hot all the time, but that was another matter.)

Shirley folded her arms across her chest, gazed at him expectantly. “Well? Are you going to tell me what’s going on around here or not?”

He sighed, ran a hand through his hair again, which Shirley noticed for the first time was damp with sweat. The musky scent of overheated, agitated maleness began to fill her nostrils.

Mmmm. Yummy.

Shirley felt her crotch heat up. The man better hurry up and give her the scoop, or she was going to cream her pants again. And that would just be downright embarrassing.

“A murder investigation has been opened into the death of Enola Higginbottom,” Randall said. “The police say they have several suspects, but they aren’t saying who they are right now. At this point, I think we can assume that any one of us who were in the OR with her is on the suspect list. That would include you and me.” There was a hard edge to Randall’s voice Shirley hadn’t heard before—was it fear?

Shirley felt the bottom fall out of her stomach. “But that’s absurd. I never met Enola Higginbottom before she got wheeled into that OR. I didn’t even know her name until I read the patient file.”

“That won’t hold much sway with the police,” he replied. “They aren’t ruling anyone out at this point. Enola Higginbottom had a lot of enemies. Anyone she encountered at any point in her life is a potential suspect.” His lips pressed into a tight line, and he gazed at Shirley with a hard expression. “The people who were with her in her last moments of life most of all.”

A sinister possibility crossed Shirley’s mind. “What about you?” she asked.

He shifted uneasily on his feet again. “I’ve been cooperative with the police thus far, but they don’t seem very satisfied with my answers. I’m afraid I may be a prime suspect at this point.”

Shirley gasped. “Why?” Though she could already well imagine. Randall mysteriously bolting out of the OR in the middle of the procedure couldn’t possibly look good to the police. Assuming they knew about it, of course—which Shirley figured at this point, they probably did.

Randall pulled a chair out from the table and straddled it. “I’ve been a thorn in Enola Higginbottom’s side for a long time. In my own small way, I’ve spent most of my free time demonstrating against her racist activities in town, via my membership in several nonprofit human rights organizations. I’ve done it mostly anonymously, since I don’t like drawing attention to myself.”

“Hmm. Imagine that.”

“Don’t kid around, Shirley. This is serious.”

“Sorry.”

Randall took a deep breath, blew it out, drummed his long blunt fingers on the tabletop. “As much as I tried to keep a low profile regarding my extracurricular activities, Enola Higginbottom found out that I was behind the organized effort to start boycotts against all the businesses she owned. Once upon a time, she owned a grocery store, a funeral home, and a car dealership. No more. They all went out of business, thanks in part to the economy, but mostly due to the boycotts. Needless to say, I was not her favorite person.”

Shirley joined him at the table. “Did she ever threaten you?” she asked.

“Yes, many times. Or rather, her hired goons did. Enola Higginbottom associated with some very undesirable people. White supremacist survivalist types, mainly. With lots of guns.”

Shirley was stunned. “Did-did they threaten to
kill
you?”

He nodded. “Many times. I filed several police reports about the threats I received over the years. So of course the police are looking closely at those reports now, and thinking they add up to a pretty good motive for murder.”

Shirley was finally beginning to understand why Dr. Randall Hamm kept so much of his private self under wraps. He did it for his own protection. Even with as far as society had come since the Civil War, North Carolina was still the old South. Shirley was a born and raised rural Southerner, and she knew better than anyone that there were still plenty of people—like Enola Higginbottom—who would like things to go back the way they were before the Civil War. And who weren’t afraid to use violence to make it happen.

She decided to try lightening the mood. “So I was right all along,” she said. “You
do
have a hobby.”

Randall laughed despite himself. “Of sorts. And a potentially dangerous one at that.”

Shirley stared down at her hands. “So what do we do now?”

“We wait. And I don’t know if you’re religious at all, Shirley, but you might want to start praying, too.”

She flinched. “I’m a committed atheist. But now seems like a good time for me to reconsider that line of thinking.” She glanced around the lounge, then peeked up and down the hallway, searching for any sign of life. “So where is everybody? It’s like a ghost town around here.”

“At home contemplating their doom, no doubt,” Randall said. “With a moratorium on all surgeries, it’s not like there’s anything for those of us in the anesthesia business to do. They’re sending all the emergency cases across town to St. Matthews for now. And your beloved boss Beth Peking has been placed on administrative leave, by the way.”
“Ah. I’m sure she’s thrilled,” Shirley said with a nervous giggle. “But why her? She didn’t have anything to do with what happened in the OR.”

Randall stood up and crossed over to the window. “She had it coming, as I understand it. Beth Peking has a lot of enemies here too, as you might imagine. People don’t get nicknames like The Dragon Lady by accident, you know. The administration probably just used today’s events as an excuse.”

Shirley waved her hand. “Oh, she’s harmless—once you know how to push her buttons, anyway. You said so yourself.”

“Don’t be so sure. I might have thought that once, but now I don’t know what to think—about anything.”

Shirley joined him at the window, and they both stared out onto the flower-covered hospital grounds that lay just beyond the parking garage. She mentally retraced their footsteps along the brick-paved path, wondering if perhaps it wasn’t too late to nurture the tiny romantic seeds they’d sown there just this morning. “There’s still one thing I don’t understand.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you leave the OR in the middle of the operation? You never said.”

He sighed. “The answer to that is very complicated.”

“Try me.”

He backed away from her. She noticed his breathing picked up, too—and not from desire, either. “I—I really can’t go into it right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t trust you.”

“Seems to me you don’t trust anybody.”

Randall flinched. Her words stung, and she knew it. But it was true. “You’re a very good judge of character,” he said.

She scoffed. “Actually, no, I’m not. If I were, I wouldn’t be living and working here in Raleigh in the first place.”

His left eyebrow raised, and his shoulders relaxed a little. “Oh? Something tells me there’s a story behind that statement.”

“That’s because there is.” Shirley looked into Randall’s suddenly twinkling blue-gray eyes and saw a window of opportunity. And if she didn’t grab for it while she still could, she might lose her chance to be with him forever.

“What do you say we go and grab lunch?” she said. “For real this time. And I’ll tell you all about why I’m actually a crummy judge of character.”

He cracked a smile, and the twinkle in his eyes brightened even further. “Well, if you’re such a crummy judge of character, why do you want to go to lunch with a likely murder suspect?”

Shirley pondered this for a moment. The man had a point. Still, it was a risk Shirley was willing to take. “You let me worry about that,” she said, and grabbed her purse. “I’m new in town, so I’ll let you pick the restaurant.”

Thirteen

A half-hour later, Randall and Shirley were sitting on red velvet floor cushions at Golden Bombay Palace, the only authentic Indian restaurant in the Raleigh-Durham metro area. The pungent aroma of curry and cardamom attacked Shirley’s nostrils as she picked at a flaky wafer called a
papadum.
“What exactly is this supposed to be?” she asked. “It’s too thin to be a cracker, and too hard to be bread. And why does it have all these little seeds mixed in?”

“Those are anise seeds. They help give the
papadum
its flavor. Here, try dipping it in the mango chutney.” He handed her a steel tripod containing various spicy sauces. “The mango is the orange sauce on the left. It’s sweet. The other two are a little on the spicy side, so you might want to steer clear of them since this is your first time.”

Her first time?
He made it sound like they were discussing sex, not food.

Well, at least they were on the right track.

She spooned some of the mango onto her crumbly
papadum
wafer, then just for fun, she added a smidgen of the red-hot coriander sauce.

“Are you sure you wanna do that?” Randall asked, eyeing her warily. “That coriander sauce has a kick. Might not agree with you if you’re not used to anything spicy.”

“Oh, I’m
never
afraid of a little spice,” she purred, fluttering her eyelashes at him. The double entendre floated between them, but it didn’t have the instant, dramatic effect she was hoping for. Still, Shirley thought she might have seen the tiniest flicker of amusement in Randall’s poker face. Or was it attraction? Impossible to tell at this early juncture—but there were still plenty of hours left in the day.

Shirley bit into the
papadum
, chewed, swallowed—and shrieked as a blazing inferno took over her mouth.

“Aggh! It’s s-so hot! I didn’t even take that much!” She drained her water glass and frantically waved at the Nehru-jacketed waiter for a refill.

The waiter refilled her glass, took one look at her watery eyes, and left the water pitcher on the table with a muffled snicker. Shirley downed three more glasses of ice water, but it did nothing to cool the inferno.

Randall grinned. “I warned you.”

“Mrrrrrrrgh. Mrrrph!”

The waiter returned with a basket of steaming flat bread and their
samosa
appetizers. “Try some
naan
,” he said. “The bread will absorb some of the heat.”

Shirley grabbed a piece of
naan
and shoved it into her mouth whole. It did help a little—with the heat burning in her mouth, at least. The heat burning in her crotch, not so much.

Shirley gobbled another piece of
naan
, chased it with more water. She was still on fire, though—and in more ways than one. She silently wondered if this lunch date had been such a good idea. At the rate she was going, there would be nothing left of her body but a sooty pile of ashes if things went on like this much longer.

“So, Shirley, once you’ve recovered, I hope you’ll enlighten me on this whole judge-of-character problem you claim to have.”

“Kind of a long story,” she replied around a mouthful of
naan.

“We’ve got plenty of time. We don’t need to go back to the hospital today, remember?”

She sighed. “All right, fine. Though once you hear my story, you might not like me very much.”

Randall chuckled. “Give me a little more credit. I’m a prime murder suspect. I don’t have much room to be judgmental at this point.”

“Okay, here goes then. I moved to Raleigh from a small mountain town about two hours from here. Statesville. I worked at the community hospital there.”

“Covington Community Hospital? I’ve heard of it.”

Shirley felt her cheeks burn. “Yeah, I’m sure you read about it in the newspapers. There was a little bit of a scandal up there recently.”

Randall tore off a bit of
naan
, dunked it in red-hot coriander sauce, and popped the spicy thing into his mouth without flinching. “Uh huh. I vaguely recall reading something about the former hospital president over there cooking up some cockamamie scheme to rip off his new chief surgeon’s patent royalties. Is that what you’re referring to?”

Shirley blushed even deeper, and stared down into her empty water glass. This was going to be a lot harder than she thought. “Yes,” she said in a small voice. “And, well, umm, the thing is, well, umm—“

“Let me guess. You were mixed up in that whole mess somehow.”

“Exactamundo.” She poured more water from the pitcher, drank two sips, fiddled with her napkin. “Very bad judgment on my part, I know.”

Randall just shrugged and made no comment. He drenched his
samosa
in the red-hot coriander sauce instead, then followed it with the scorching hot pepper sauce. Then he started eating the spicy concoction with gusto without so much as breaking a sweat, or even picking up his water glass.

Damn.

Dr. Randall Hamm might be a little hard to read sometimes, but there was no mistaking it—he liked to keep things hot and spicy.
Very
hot and spicy.

Shirley’s lower belly melted. If he was that way at the dinner table, what would he be like in the bedroom?

Randall paused between bites and looked up. “So—you were involved in the federal racketeering case, then? That’s what it ended up as, right? It’s all starting to come back to me now. I followed the articles in the Raleigh
News-Observer
. Quite the soap opera, as I recall.”

Now Shirley was thoroughly mortified. He knew all about it. Which meant he knew all about what a scummy, bottom-feeding shrew she’d been, too. She half-expected him to flag the waiter down for a takeout box so he could hightail it out of the restaurant and leave her with the bill.

Randall poured more hot sauce on the remains of his
samosa
and forked the last few bites into his mouth. A light coating of perspiration had formed at each of his temples—from the spicy food, no doubt.

Or maybe, just maybe, from something else entirely.

“So tell me something, Shirley,” he said. “How exactly were you mixed up in a federal racketeering case, and why? I don’t recall your name mentioned anywhere in the papers or on the local news when that whole mess was getting investigated.”

“That’s an even longer story,” she muttered.

“As I said before, we’ve got plenty of time.”

“I kind of got roped into it by the man I was sort of dating at the time. And the man I was sort of dating was sort of the ex-husband of the woman who was sort of about to marry the chief surgeon whose patent royalties we were—ahem—
sort of
going to, um, shall we say,
appropriate
. And of course, the man in question assured all of us that his plan to cook the whole thing up as part of his divorce petition would be perfectly legal, as well as foolproof. But of course, that isn’t how it turned out at all.”

Randall smirked. “How
did
it turn out, then? Though I can well imagine. The newspapers didn’t exactly paint a pretty picture.”

“Well, Bob Watson—that’s the sleazebag I was dating—dragged us all into court, where he was challenging his original divorce decree from his wife, who was a coworker of mine. He was somehow going to finagle that both he and the hospital had the right to the new chief surgeon’s patent royalties because the new chief surgeon was dating his ex-wife while they were still married, or something.”

Randall blinked. “Sounds pretty convoluted to me.”

Shirley sighed and shook her head. “Well, you’re right, it was. But Bob Watson, he made it all sound so simple. The guy was a real smooth talker. You know the type—he could probably sell ice to the Eskimos if he tried. And I fell for it hook, line and sinker. I wasn’t the only one, either. As I’m sure you already know, since you followed it in the papers.”

“Didn’t the hospital administrator who was involved—Joe Middleton, was it—didn’t he drop dead of a heart attack right after the feds got involved?”

“Yep. And good riddance, if you ask me. He was even worse than Bob Watson, in my opinion. Sure, he didn’t come up with the scheme himself, but he was after the money. As soon as he found out there was a loophole in Dr. Wilkinson’s contract that might help him get his paws on those patent royalties, he jumped at the chance to exploit it. You could almost see the dollar signs flashing in his eyes.”

The waiter came to collect their appetizer plates. Randall dusted
samosa
crumbs from his hands and gazed at her intently. “And you? What were
you
supposed to get out of it?”

“Well, this is kind of the embarrassing part. I wanted money, of course. Who doesn’t? But in truth, the real reason I signed on to the whole thing was because I was jealous.”

“Jealous?”

“That’s right, jealous. Sounds petty, I know. But it’s true.”

Randall looked puzzled. “What exactly were you so jealous of that it induced you to commit a federal crime?”

Suddenly Shirley felt very small. “I was jealous of my coworker. Who also just so happened to be Bob Watson’s ex-wife.”

“Why?”

“Because the new chief surgeon was madly in love with her. And I would have much preferred that he was madly in love with me instead.”

“And matters of the heart have a funny way of not working out the way that we want them to,” Randall said.

“Exactly. So did what any good American girl would do. I committed a federal crime.”

Randall guffawed and clapped his hands. “You know, Shirley, that’s exactly why I like you. You don’t take anything too seriously.”

“I’m afraid I learned that the hard way.”

“So if you were in on the whole conspiracy from the beginning, how is it your name never came up at the trial? How did you stay out of the papers?”

“I had a very expensive lawyer. So expensive, in fact, that I went bankrupt from legal bills. I sold almost everything I owned to pay that lawyer, and it still wasn’t enough. So I had to file bankruptcy. I had to sell my living room set in order to afford the bankruptcy filing fee. Now I’m totally broke, with no retirement savings, no credit card, and I live in a studio apartment. I don’t even have a car.”

“So you’ve still managed to pay for your crimes, then.”

“Yep. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better if I’d just gone to jail.” The waiters arrived with their entrees; Shirley stared down at the strange-looking aluminum tray that contained eight different tiny round metal bowls filled with several different brownish-orange vegetable stews arranged in a circle. In the center of the circle was a pile of strange hot-pink meat that vaguely resembled chicken. Randall had the same, though he’d ordered his
extra hot
, while hers was (supposedly)
mild.

“What the hell is this?” she blurted.

“That’s your lunch. It’s a tandoori
thal
, the specialty of the house.”

“You told me you ordered the best thing on the menu.”

“That
is
the best thing on the menu. Try it, you’ll like it. I promise.”

She picked at the hot-pink chicken with distaste. “They took the skin off,” she said. “And why is it so—pink?”

“It’s a lot healthier with the skin off, you know. Less fat that way. And the pink color is from the spices they marinade it in.” Randall cocked his head and smirked with amusement. “You know, for someone with an advanced degree, you don’t seem to know much about food.”

“I don’t know much about anything,” she retorted. “Which would go a long way to explaining why I got sucked into Bob Watson’s little scheme. Only a really stupid, naïve person would do what I did.”

“I don’t think you’re naïve. Passionate, maybe. But not naïve.”

Her fork stopped in midair. “Passionate, huh? Whatever would make you think that?”

“It takes a passionate woman indeed to risk prison just to get back at a romantic rival,” he said, dipping a corner of
naan
into a spinach curry. “I used to think that kind of passion only existed in the movies. But maybe not.”

A thread of sexual tension grew in the space between them. And Shirley was stunned to find it wasn’t all just on her side of the table now, either. She’d taken a huge risk spilling her guts to Randall like this—and to her surprise and delight, it seemed to have paid off. Instead of being repulsed by her criminal past, in Randall’s eyes, it just made her more attractive.

And as much as Shirley wanted him to be attracted to her, she wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing.

“Well, Randall, I
am
a passionate person,” she said. “But in the case of what happened back in Statesville, I was passionate about the wrong things. Nobody should ever be passionate about trying to destroy the life of a friend and coworker. Something I wish I’d understood at the time.”

“What was her name? Joanna Watson? The press really took a shine to her, as I recall.”