Last Licks (15 page)

It wasn’t four
a.m. when the phone rang this time—it just felt that way to Sunny. After a couple of beers she wasn’t accustomed to anymore and a somewhat late night, even an eight a.m. call had her nerves jangling.

“H-h’lo?” Her voice was hoarse and raspy from yelling over the noise at O’Dowd’s. Luke had won the crowd over, even doing an encore. But congratulating him on his success had been a little difficult when the jukebox came on again. Sunny coughed, trying to clear away a film of cigarette smoke and beer in her throat—or was that just in her head? “Who is this?”

“Ms. Coolidge? It’s Rafe Warner.”

That got her eyes open. “Is there a problem? Is Mr. Barnstable okay?”

“Sure,” Rafe replied. “I was just talking with him. He gave me your number.”

Sunny slowly raised herself to a sitting position. “And why was that?”

“I’m getting off my shift now,” Rafe said, “and I’ve got something to give you.” His voice sank to a whisper. “Files.”

“What kind—” Sunny got out, but Rafe cut her off.

“I can’t discuss this on the phone,” he said. “I can be at your house in half an hour. Mr. Barnstable gave me the address.”

Thanks, Ollie,
Sunny thought.

“Half an hour,” Rafe repeated. “I’ll see you then.” Obviously it wasn’t up for discussion, because he cut the connection.

Sunny stared owlishly at the receiver in her hand, hung it up, and then grabbed the handset again. She punched in Will Price’s number. When he picked up, he sounded awake and much more human than Sunny felt.

“Files?” he said when Sunny told her story. “Intriguing. Be there in fifteen.”

That gave Sunny enough time to run a shower and get the fug of O’Dowd’s out of her hair. She sat drinking a large mug of coffee when Will rang the bell. He was in jeans and a T-shirt, and so was she.

“I see we’re both dressed to spend the day sorting through files,” he said with a smile.

“The question is, what are they, and how many?”

“I’m betting this is the stuff we asked Reese for.” Will leaned against the front of the refrigerator.

“The stuff he told us it was illegal to give out?”

Will didn’t answer. He stared at the coffeemaker, noticeably inhaling the brewing smell the way Shadow savored a rare scent. Sunny sat up a little straighter. Speaking of Shadow, where was he? He hadn’t been in her room, nor was he around when she came downstairs . . . She finally woke up enough to catch Will’s hints. “Oh. Sorry. Would you like some coffee?” Sunny poured him a cup and sat at the table.

Will added a little milk and sugar to his cup, took a sip, and sighed. “I told you cops live on this stuff. Do I dare ask who makes the coffee in this house?”

“That pot was my dad’s,” Sunny told him. “I found it on when I got down here, along with a note telling me he was off for his walk. Stick around, and you’ll get to try a pot of mine.”

Now that they’d both had their caffeine fixes, the conversation began to flow.

“We know Warner has a mole in Reese’s office,” Will said. “They must have overheard us with the big guy.”

“So Rafe is just going to give us what we want?” Sunny didn’t share Will’s morning optimism. “Why?”

The doorbell rang. Will grinned. “I guess we’ll just have to ask him.”

She opened the door to find a jittery Rafe, standing with a sheaf of papers in his hands. He thrust them over to her. “You don’t know where these came from, got it?”

When he turned to go, Will caught him by the arm. “We may not know who gave them to us, but I’d like to know what they are. Come in and have some coffee.”

Rafe reluctantly accepted a cup. They all sat at the table, the small pile of papers in the middle. Rafe kept looking at them as if he feared they’d explode. “There’s a list of the people who passed away in the last year and a half. Well, cases. Their names are blotted out, but I left the dates and the cause of death.”

That should give them a long enough time period to average out any normal peaks and valleys in the mortality statistics. Sunny figured that a careful search of the obits from the Portsmouth and Portland papers could probably discover names to line up with the dear departed, but she decided to let Rafe go with a fig leaf of privacy.

Will had more practical considerations. “You mean the official cause of death.”

Rafe nodded. “The rest are staff rosters for those days. I figure that’s close enough to what you asked for.”

“What made you decide to take such a risk getting these to us?” Sunny asked.

“I think you’ll look at them and decide you can’t use them.” Rafe’s confidence seemed to come back as he upped his caffeine level. “You’ve talked about a rise in mortality rates at Bridgewater Hall, and that’s true. Right now we’re above average. But you’re suggesting that the spike is because union people are angry, or aren’t doing their jobs, or whatever, because of what Dr. Reese has done since he took over.” He took a deep breath. “Reese has definitely made trouble—I ought to know, I’ve been banging heads with him since he came in—but if you look at the deaths month by month, the spike was higher when Dr. Faulkner was in charge, and we got along better with the administration.”

Will frowned. “So you’re saying—”

“I’m saying it’s not a job action, or people slacking off. As shop steward, I know the folks in the union. They may not all be saints, but they—we—do our best for the patients. I think this information should prove that to you. So you’ll either have to go barking up some other tree or just accept that Mr. Scatterwell died of whatever they wrote on his death certificate.”

Which is where we’d already reluctantly landed before you brought all this paper to my house,
Sunny couldn’t help thinking.

“I guess we should say thank you,” she said, wishing she sounded more sincere. “It must have been a lot of work for you.”

Rafe shrugged. “A little less looking at screens, a little more photocopying. Just promise me one thing. Shred them, burn them, destroy them somehow when you’re done. I think once you see that they back up what I told you, you won’t have any other use for them.”

Rafe thanked Sunny for the coffee and went to stand up. The scrape of his chair seemed to be the cue for a gray-furred form to come through the door.

Shadow’s gotten very good at putting in an appearance just as strangers—or Toby—are heading out the door,
Sunny thought with a smile.

She wasn’t sure if it was cat manners or just cat curiosity. Shadow would come over, give the guest a cursory sniff, accept a little petting if the mood was on him and the person was so inclined, and then move on.

But as Shadow approached Rafe, his standoffishness melted and he became friendly—maybe too friendly. Shadow was all over Rafe’s feet and ankles, practically clinging to him.

“Well, hello, fella.” Rafe sat back down and went to pet Shadow, but the cat surprised him—and Sunny—by veering away. It turned into a strange kind of dance. Shadow seemed magnetically drawn to Rafe’s bottom half, but repelled by his top.

Then Sunny had a thought. “Were you holding Patrick recently?” she asked.

Rafe looked surprised. “Why, yes. He was feeling a little rocky this morning, so I picked him up to help him feel better.”

“Meanwhile,” Sunny went on, “Portia was on the floor.” She laughed. “I bet Shadow’s smelling Portia from your knees down, but Patrick on your upper half. If you sit there and don’t pet him, you’ll have a new best friend all over your feet.”

Rafe did as she suggested, folding his arms and staying still. Shadow twined his way around the security guy’s legs, sniffing and purring.

“I’ve brought Portia’s scent home on me a couple of times,” Sunny explained. “And Shadow definitely likes it.”

“I guess so.” Rafe chuckled, looking down at the cat around his ankles, and then yawned. “I’d better be getting home.”

But when Rafe rose from the table and started down the hall, Shadow trotted right behind him.

“Uh-oh,” Will said. “This could be trouble.”

*

Shadow had avoided
Sunny since last night when she came home late, smelling of that smoke the humans liked to breathe and the stuff they drank to act silly. He’d found that a bad combination in other homes where he’d lived.

The Old One had gotten up earlier that morning and left something out for Shadow to eat, so he’d left Sunny to sleep by herself. Then the talking-thing had made a noise, and Sunny woke up and stood under the water so the bad smells were gone. But then the human male that spent a lot of time with Sunny had come along. Shadow had learned to give them space when Sunny’s He came to visit. He was just about to come into the room and let Sunny know he was around when the noisemaker at the door sounded again—some stranger this time. So Shadow had lain low in the living room while the sound of two-leg talk had drifted down the hallway. After a while, though, he’d decided to go check out the newcomer.

The human didn’t seem scared of cats, or angry at seeing one. That was good. In fact, he seemed friendly. Then Shadow smelled the mysterious She on him. He investigated the stranger’s feet and legs thoroughly. The scent was so strong, it made his head buzz. Yes, this was definitely the She! Could this be the two-leg the She lived with?

The human bent down and offered a friendly hand—but Shadow hadn’t liked that scent at all. It was a He, and Shadow smelled sickness on him. But when the hand went away and the offending He-scent dissipated, Shadow couldn’t keep himself away from the traces the She had left.

Then the human rose from his chair again, getting set to leave, and Shadow had an inspiration. This two-leg could lead him to the She!

So, as the human went with Sunny toward the door, Shadow had followed. The scent from the other human’s pant legs was a constant distraction. He stepped a little closer, the scent filling his brain . . .

And then hands came from behind and grabbed him up. Snatched from his happy fog, Shadow found himself held helpless as the door opened and the She’s human disappeared. Flinging himself around, Shadow managed to tear himself loose, but by then the door had already closed. He flung himself at the heavy wood, scratching and crying, but the two-leg was gone, and the She’s scent was already fading.

He heard Sunny’s voice. How dare she close the door on him, letting the She’s human get away! Shadow was so, so angry. With his back to the door, he hissed at her, one paw up and claws ready—

And then he remembered the scent of Sunny’s blood. He couldn’t do that again. Conflicting impulses all but paralyzed him. He jammed himself up against the door, the unyielding wood, right at the space where the faintest traces of outside air came in. But it didn’t bring the scent he most desired.

Sunny spoke, but she didn’t touch him. Maybe that was a good thing. Shadow couldn’t trust himself not to draw blood again. He just stayed where he was, letting out his feelings in mournful yowls.

*

“I’ve seen people
going through detox who didn’t look or sound as bad as that,” Will said as he and Sunny sat back in the kitchen. “Looks as though Shadow has a real case for Rafe’s Portia.”

“I don’t know what to do about it,” Sunny said as another disconsolate moan came from the front door. “So I guess we may as well ignore him.”

They sat together, reading down the list of names Rafe had left. Will ran a finger down the page. “I count twenty-three people here. That’s like a third of the beds in Bridgewater Hall, isn’t it?”

“That shouldn’t be so surprising. My dad told me the other day that the average life expectancy for a person in a nursing home is about three years.” She held up a hand at the look on Will’s face. “Hey, those are the kinds of statistics Dad keeps dredging out of the newspapers.”

Will pointed to the lower part of the list. “So, for the past twelve months, there are seventeen cases. But in the six months before that period, I count only six deaths. If that held as the average for the previous year, we’re looking at a big jump, almost fifty percent.”

“Yes, but remember, you’re working with a universe of only seventy-five beds,” Sunny pointed out. “A couple of very old or very sick people would cause a big swing in the statistics.”

Will divided the files into two piles, and gave one to Sunny. “I think that’s all we can get from the deaths. Let’s see what the rosters tell us.”

By the time she got to the third sheet, she said, “I keep seeing the same names.”

“Well, that stands to reason—it’s the night shift. Bridgewater Hall isn’t like the Sheriff’s Department, where people move around every couple of weeks. Soooo . . .” Will drew out the word. “Maybe we should look for names that
don’t
turn up all the time.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” Sunny said. “If the regular staff is a constant, regardless of when the mortality rate was low and when it got higher, we want to look for anomalies.”

Will nodded. “Pinch hitters who are hurting the team’s batting average.” It was boring work, looking over roster after roster, ignoring the names that were always there and marking the ones that stood out. The problem was that they didn’t really stand out. They were just tucked in among the same-old, same-old people.

They switched lists and went back to searching. It wasn’t exactly a needle in a haystack effort, but it was tedious.

The exciting world of plodding police work,
Sunny thought.

After they had each gone through the entire set of lists twice, Sunny said, “Are you hungry? It just struck me that I never ate breakfast.” She put a hand on her stomach. “And Dad’s coffee, good as it is, is beginning to feel as if it’s burning a hole in my innards.”

She left Will to tabulate the results while she went to check the contents of the refrigerator. “Looks like I could do sandwiches, if you don’t mind the dreaded roast turkey with lettuce and tomato,” she reported, after seeing what Mike had picked up on his latest shopping trip. “I could put a little honey mustard on them.”

“Sounds good,” Will said, still staring at the papers.

“And to drink there’s seltzer, or I could make a new pot of coffee.”

“Seltzer, please.” A low rumble came from Will’s middle. “Maybe coffee on top of old beer wasn’t such a good decision.” Eventually, Shadow came back into the room, heading for his bowl of dry food. Sunny checked her impulse to go to the cat.
If he wants company, he’ll show it,
she reminded herself.
Let’s see what kind of mood he’s in.