Beads of Doubt (31 page)

“I’ll do my best. Good luck.” He leaned down and kissed the top of my head. The tingle shot all the way down to my toes, and a delicious warmth rippled through me as I watched his long, lean body striding toward the emergency room doors.

Five minutes later, I arranged Rafferty’s blanket, gave him a few reassuring pats, and pointed the wheelchair toward the hospital. Within moments, the doors slid open, and a cool, antiseptic breeze enveloped us.

We were in.

I put my head down and walked briskly, heading for the elevator bank. Rafferty sat remarkably still for an Airedale, only his wet nose protruding from the blanket. So far, so good. We powered past the stuffed animals and balloons on display at the gift shop without running into anyone, and I hoped our luck would hold.

I turned the last corner jabbed at the elevator’s Up button, murmuring soothing words to Rafferty as we waited. One minute, two minutes . . . my body tensed at the sound of approaching footsteps. Just before they rounded the corner, the elevator dinged, and a woman with two small children spilled out of the furthest door.

As they passed the wheelchair, the younger child, a girl around Shelby’s age, peered at Rafferty. “Mommy, who’s in that wheelchair?”

“Someone who has a hard time walking, dear,” her mother replied. I smiled at the girl and pushed the chair into the elevator, pushing the Door Close button, praying it would work before whoever was coming down the hall turned up.

“But Mommy,” I heard her say as the door began its slow slide closed. “It didn’t
look
like a person. It looked like a . . .” Before she could finish, the door snicked shut, and I let out a long, slow breath. Close call. I stroked Rafferty’s head and told him we were almost there.

A moment later, the elevator door opened a mere ten feet away from the nurses’ station. Fortunately, Nate was in position, draped over the counter and entertaining the nurses. As I hustled past the station toward Tess’s room, the sound of women’s laughter followed me.

It was only when I reached Tess’s door that I remembered she had a roommate. I hesitated for a moment. Should I check first, to see if she was there? Maybe she would be asleep. If not, I could always disable the Call Nurse button.

After a moment of indecision, I pushed open the door and wheeled Rafferty through it. I needn’t have worried about Tess’s roommate, whose eyes hardly flickered from the program blaring from the television in the corner as I pushed the wheelchair past her bed. Instead of whining and complaining, she was listening to the television at top volume. Poor Tess. On the plus side, Tess’s roommate did look better today. Maybe she would be checking out soon.

As I rounded the curtain to Tess’s bed, my step light with relief, all the breath whooshed out of me, and the wheelchair shuddered to a stop.

Tess was hardly recognizable. In the twenty-four hours since my last visit, her eyes had sunken, and her pale skin looked stretched over the bones of her face. The IV was filled with red again—another transfusion—but it didn’t seem to be helping. I watched her shallow breathing for a moment, then pulled the blanket off of Rafferty, who leaped from the wheelchair to Tess’s bedside, propping his paws up on the edge of the bed and nuzzling his mistress’s face.

Her eyelids fluttered, and she lifted her head, staring at Rafferty in disbelief. A radiant smile transformed her hollow features, and for a few glorious seconds, I saw the woman I once knew and loved. Then her head dropped to the pillow in exhaustion and her face clouded with pain. My heart wrenched.

“Kitzi,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I can’t believe it. You brought him here.” She patted the bed next to her. “Come here, boy.” Rafferty hopped up and lay down next to her, licking Tess’s gaunt hand and gazing at her with shiny brown eyes. “I’ve missed you so much, Raff.”

As he snuggled into her, the door opened again, and Nate walked around the curtain. “Hi, Tess,” he said, smiling at her. “I’m glad to meet you; I’ve heard so many wonderful things about you. I’m Nate Wright, Kitzi’s partner in crime.”

Tess smiled. “It’s hard to keep up with Kitzi, isn’t it? I did it for years, and it just about wore me out.” Nate’s eyes darkened with worry as Tess laughed and then struggled to catch her breath.

“How are you doing?” I asked Tess, moving to the other side of the bed and squeezing her hand. My eyes drifted to her bedside table, where the Red Vines I had brought lay virtually untouched.

“Not so hot.” She stroked Rafferty’s head. The television droned in the corner, a woman wailing over a lost lover.

“I can imagine, having to listen to that all the time,” I murmured, jerking my head toward the television.

“Don’t they have rules about that?” Nate asked in a hushed voice. “Can we get her a headset?”

“Oh, that doesn’t bother me. It’s better than listening to complaining. Besides, I can sleep through anything these days.” She gave me a weak smile. “The trouble is staying awake.”

I eyed her gaunt frame. “Do they have you on new medication?”

She shook her head. “They’re doing everything they can,” she said. “But you know how this disease is. The test results didn’t come in too well.”

“What’s wrong?”

She looked away from me, out the window. “It’s spreading, Kitzi.” She swallowed hard. “And it’s inoperable.”

My heart felt like it was splintering in my chest. I squeezed back tears.

Tess took a shuddery, shallow breath and looked back at me. I could see the pain in her eyes, and more than anything, I wanted to do something to take it away, give her some hope, some peace. I couldn’t believe this once-vibrant woman was dying right in front of me. It wasn’t fair.

“There isn’t a whole lot anyone can do,” she said. “At this point, it’s mainly the painkillers that are keeping me going.”

I willed the tears away. “Oh, Tess. Can you get a second opinion?”

She sighed. “Three doctors looked at the tests. They’re pretty conclusive.”

I swallowed down the lump that had formed in my throat. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Tess hugged Rafferty. “You’ve already done it, Kitzi. You’ve already done it.”

We stayed for almost an hour, until Tess finally slumped back against the pillow and dozed off again, exhausted. Rafferty licked her face, but she didn’t stir. I coaxed him back into the wheelchair, arranged the blanket, and headed past the curtain to the door. As we passed the older woman’s bed, her sharp eyes flicked to Rafferty’s nose, which poked out from under the blanket.

“You brought a dog?”

I was about get down on my knees and beg her not to tell anyone when her hard face broke out into a sad smile. “I wish you’d told me. I haven’t seen my poodle Chamois for almost two weeks now.”

Nate smiled back at her. “I don’t think he can sit still long enough for another visit, but next time we bring him, we’ll make sure to include you.”

“Oh, I’m checking out the day after tomorrow,” she said, “so if you don’t come back soon, I won’t be here.”

As we hustled Rafferty back to the elevator, the awful thought occurred to me that Tess might not be there, either.

The nurses’ station was empty, and we slipped into the elevator without anyone noticing. Except for a touch-and-go moment when Raff spotted a stuffed squirrel in the gift-shop window, the rest of the ride to the parking garage went smoothly, and as Nate took Rafferty up the stairs to his car, I returned the wheelchair to the redheaded nurse.

“Did your visit go okay?” she asked.

I smiled. “Yes, it really cheered her up. Thanks so much for your help.” I turned and left the hospital, with its smell of cleansers and sickness and death, and walked out into the hot June air. It wasn’t until I closed the door of Nate’s Navigator behind me that the tears came.

Nate’s warm arms encircled me as I sobbed, my chest heaving. “It’s just not fair,” I snuffled into his soft shirt. “She’s so young, so vibrant. And there’s nothing anyone can do for her.” He held me tight as the waves of grief washed over me, until finally the tears stopped coming. After a long time, I sat up and wiped my eyes. “Sorry about that. Our parking fee is probably in the triple digits now.”

“That’s the least of my worries,” Nate said, kissing the top of my head.

I snuggled into him. “Thanks so much for your help, Nate. I couldn’t have made it past the nurses’ station without you.”

“Anytime, Kitzi. Anytime.”

I reached for a tissue. “I hate this disease.”

“I know,” he said softly. “Me too.” I remembered that he’d been through this before. He had lost his mother to ovarian cancer.

As I wiped my eyes, Nate glanced back at Rafferty, who had started doing minilaps in the back of the SUV. As much as he’d enjoyed his visit with Tess, the strain of having to stay still for so long was catching up with him. “I think we’d better get this dog home. What do you say?”

I nodded and reached for a tissue. “Otherwise your leather seats are toast.”

As we pulled out of the parking garage, my cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my purse and glanced at the number on the display. It was Gregg Jacques.

“Kitzi?”

“Hi. Gregg?”

“The very same. I didn’t expect to be hearing from you so soon after our little rendezvous at the Texas hold ’em tournament the other night.”

“Thanks for helping me get out of there.”

“It’s not every day that I get a chance to help a damsel in distress. So, are you calling for poker tips? Although as I recall, you seemed to be holding your own just fine.”

“Actually, no. I’m calling for legal advice.”

Gregg’s voice turned serious. “What can I help you with?”

As Nate drove toward Tess’s house, I laid out the situation with Houston, and his plan to take over the Manse.

“Why do you think he wants control? Is he interested in selling the place and splitting up the profits?”

I blinked. “You know, I hadn’t thought of that, but you could be right.”

“I think I have an appointment open Tuesday at ten thirty. Can you get all the paperwork together by then?”

I thought of the papers I filched from Houston’s office. Should I bring them, too? “I think so. Before you go, though, I want to ask you one more thing.”

“Shoot.”

“Last night, you were starting to tell a story about Houston and Andrew getting together with someone after one of the tournaments. I was curious to hear the rest of it.”

“Oh, yeah. It was a few months ago. There was a party after the tournament—out at Rob Roy, on Lake Austin. Andrew and Houston brought a few investors in from the coast, and they were playing high stakes—I mean
really
high stakes.”

“What happened?”

“I pulled out early, but Houston and Andrew kept going until they were the only two left. Houston bet everything, and I mean everything. It must have been twenty, thirty thousand dollars on the table.”

“What happened?”

“All he had was a pair of tens. He was bluffing, and Andrew took it all home with a full house.”

“Is that how Houston always plays? Betting everything?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t played with him that often—I only go to those tournaments once in a while—but he’s not a cautious player, I can tell you that.”

Twenty or thirty thousand dollars. That was a lot of money. Where were they getting it? “The man at the table with us—Sandy—was he there that night?”

“Sandy Corcoran? I think so, actually. Why?”

The skin on my arms prickled. “Do you happen to know what kind of car he drives?”

“I think I’ve seen him in an Expedition.”

“What color?”

“Navy blue, I think. But what does this have to do with Houston and the Manse?”

I thought of the dark-colored SUV that followed me home from the Texas hold ’em game Saturday night. It looked black, but it could have been dark blue. “I’m not sure,” I said. “But I plan to find out.”

When I hung up and told Nate what I had found out, his eyebrows shot up. “So you think this cat-eyed guy is Andrew’s silent partner?”

“Sandy is a nickname for Alexander, isn’t it? Too much of a coincidence.” I dialed another number on my cell phone. “Maybe Beth can help me find out.”

She picked up on the second ring. “Kitzi! Did you find out anything about the kid in the accident?”

“I’ll tell you all about it later. Beth, do you think you could ask Granger—Dwayne—to look something up for me?”

“Sure. What is it?”

“Ask him to run a check on Alexander Corcoran. He runs a company called A.C. Investments, based in Corpus Christi.”

“Is this related to the
High Jinx
?”

“That’s what I’m guessing. I think he was Andrew’s silent partner in the investment scheme.”

She drew in her breath. “Do you think he might have killed Andrew?”

“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure he’s the one who followed us home from the Texas Hold ’em tournament. Come to think of it, while you’re sweet-talking him, could you find out why Granger was there?”

“How exactly am I supposed to do that? He doesn’t know we were there.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something. Use those feminine wiles.”

She groaned. “When are you planning on coming home? The final banquet starts at six.”

I glanced at my watch. It was coming up on four o’clock already. “I forgot all about it. We’ll drop Rafferty off, and then we’ll head back to the Manse.”

“Tess’s dog?”

“We snuck him into the hospital for a visit.”

“You took an Airedale into the hospital? How did you manage that? Or do I want to know?”

“We stuck him in a wheelchair and covered him with a blanket. Our cover story was to say he was an amputee with a bad nose job.”

She laughed. “Only you, Kitzi. Only you.”