Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 07 - Vague Images (5 page)

Lucas was so intent on his story that he leaned forward in his chair and occasionally gestured to emphasize a point
. As he began to talk about arriving in Ocean Alley two days ago, Scoobie and I glanced at each other and then back at Lucas.

Lucas finished and his expression was expectant, as if Scoobie or I should say we’d seen Kim at Mr. Markle’s store.

“Where have you been sleeping?” I asked.

Scoobie gave me a look that conveyed, “Do NOT let him stay here.”

“It’s still warm, at least during the day. You know that park I was sitting in when I saw, um, saw the deer run in front of you?”

I knew that park better than I would like to. It’s not even two acres, surrounded by light woods
. A main road in and out of town goes past it. It’s not too far outside of Ocean Alley proper, and there was a murder there a couple of years ago.

“Sure,” I said, and Scoobie nodded.

“I have a back pack, not a big one, and a dark blanket. I leave my pack there during the day.”

“Leaves will be gone soon,” Scoobie said
. “Listen, Lucas, last I knew there weren’t showers hanging from the trees out there. You want a chance to get cleaned up?”

“Boy do I
. I stuck my head in the sink at a gas station, but it’s not the same.”

I sat, thinking, while Scoobie showed him where towels were and said T…Lucas could borrow a shirt and unmentionables
. I can interpret Scoobie’s expressions pretty well, and right now he was being very guarded. He’s usually the first to help someone down on their luck, as Aunt Madge would say. Why wouldn’t Scoobie want Lucas to stay with us?

Scoobie came back to sit near me
. “Jolie. Did you read the paper today?”  He took it off the end table next to the couch and tossed it to me.

“Yes
. What do you…?”

“Look on page three at the very end of the follow-up article on that woman’s murder.”  He leaned back in the rocker and looked at me intently as I read.

“Okay,” I murmured. “They’re looking at all the security tapes, no real suspects…”

“Keep reading,” he said.

“Oh.”  I had come to the end where it reiterated there were no suspects, but the police would like to talk to anyone who had been in the hospital just before and after the murder. They would especially like to talk to “a white man in his late teens or early twenties, about six feet tall, who was wearing a dark-color hoodie.”

“It’s probably him,” Scoobie said.

“I can’t imagine he would have killed that woman.”

Scoobie looked at me with a skeptical expression
. “Doesn’t seem likely, but we don’t know him. At the very least he needs to talk to Morehouse or someone.”

The shower went off and I leaned all the way back on a bedroom pillow that I had plopped on the couch
. “That might not be…good for him.”

“I care about whether he can find his sister, but if he stays here when we know the police are looking for him you could get in a lot of trouble.”

I registered that he said
you
instead of
we
. Scoobie moved into my spare bedroom after the fire at his rooming house. Most of the building could be occupied after a few days, but three rooms were badly damaged. The fire hadn’t gotten to his room, but it had been soaked and smoke-damaged, plus the wall his room shared with the next unit had almost burned through when that unit got toasted, as Scoobie said. George, our friend Ramona, and I had helped him clean and dry his stuff. Some of it is now at George’s and some in Aunt Madge’s cellar. The only really good thing was that he kept most of his books in plastic tubs, so they were saved.

Sometimes I wondered if we might get to be more than friends, or whatever euphemism could be used. For some reason I think most about this when we’re cooking a meal together. Cooking is a very intimate process
. Even though I think I know Scoobie really well, I can’t tell how he feels about me. More specifically us, if there is an us in our futures.

I sighed
. “Maybe we can get him to write a note to the police.”

Scoobie almost growled
. “You’re talking as if staying here is definite.”

“But the park, Scoobie.”

“Aunt Madge can keep him.”

I laughed and clapped my hands once
. “The headline would be ‘respected local businesswoman arrested for obstructing a murder investigation.’”

“I’m going back to the park.”  Neither of us had heard the bathroom door open
. His hair was tousled, and in bare feet and a t-shirt that read “We Feed Your Needs,” Lucas looked like a teenager. A scared teenager.

Scoobie surprised me
. “It’s not safe. You aren’t the only person who crashes there. You might not get hurt, but you could get your stuff stolen.”

“I don’t want you to get in trouble.”  Lucas hesitated
. “Why would letting me stay here, or someplace, be obstructing whatever?”  He came into the living room and sat on a dinette chair.

“It’s about that murder at the hospital.”  I said this as Scoobie took the newspaper from my lap and handed it to Lucas
. As Lucas glanced at it, Scoobie pointed to the end of the article on the murder.

“I guess I don’t know about that
. I don’t…damn!  I should have been reading the paper every day. If Kim got hurt it would be in there.”  He looked anguished.

“I didn’t see anything like that in the last week or so,” I said, and Scoobie nodded
. “The same day I hurt my foot, one of the senior staff at the hospital was murdered. You were on some of the security tapes, so they want to ask if you saw anyone, I don’t know, suspicious, I guess.”

Lucas’ eyes widened and his eyebrows went up
. “I didn’t see…I don’t really want to talk to the police.”  He gave yet another shrug. “I mean, if I didn’t see anything, being quiet can’t keep them from finding the killer.”

Scoobie’s tone was patient
. “You might not know if something you saw was important.”

I thought for a second
. “Like maybe they saw someone on a tape and they’re really interested in them, but they don’t know when the person left the building. Maybe you saw them leave.”

“Good one, Sherlock,” Scoobie said, amusement in his tone.

Lucas’ shoulders sagged.

“If Han…Kim were in trouble, you’d want someone to help,” I said, in a gentle tone.

He nodded, but looked at the floor.

“Did you eat?” Scoobie asked, standing
. “I make a mean omelet. Always easier to talk about tough stuff on a full stomach.”

“Just a grilled cheese
. I am real hungry.”

I used my foot as an excuse to stay on the couch while Scoobie fixed Lucas an omelet and, from what I could hear, two more grilled cheese sandwiches
. I hoped for a little male bonding. Scoobie had not really known Thomas Edward and Hannah. Other than probably saving their lives, of course.

The kids were my charges, and one of the few rules I never broke in high school was the no-friends-while-babysitting rule. Scoobie had met them a couple of times when I picked them up at the elementary school when it dismissed early. I hadn’t thought about where Mrs. Finch was, but I knew she didn’t work
. What I liked was augmenting my allowance. At the moment, my guess was that Scoobie wanted a chance to assess what kind of person Lucas was.

“Jazz!”  It was Lucas’ voice.

“What did she do?” I called.

“She jumped on the table and grabbed the last bite of my sandwich and jumped off.”  Lucas sounded gleeful
. “Where did she go?”

“She’s not thieving for herself,” Scoobie said.

“Did you see her go into the hall?  She took it to Pebbles,” I said.

Lucas peered out of the kitchen
. “Where is the skunk?”

“She goes under my bed when strangers are in the house.”

“And,” Scoobie threw in, “she might need her litter box soon, so we need to finish the dishes and get out of here.”

“It’s not in the kitchen,” I called
. “It’s in the coat closet by the back door. But she goes through the kitchen.”

“Yeah, when we don’t like someone, we hang their coat in there.”

Lucas laughed at Scoobie and then they turned the water on to wash dishes.

Since I didn’t want to get up more than I had to, I kept a notebook on the coffee table by the couch. I pulled it toward me and started a list
. A couple of lists, each with a new page.

I almost wrote Thomas on the first page, but managed to make the T into an L
. The other pages were Hospital Murder and Kim.

Lucas

HS or college grad?

Source of $$ —job?

Can we do
a background check on him?

Lucas—talk to Tortino

Hospital Murder

Lists of jobs to cut?

Who benefits?

Enemies before she came?

Who hired Tanya?

Kim

Where to look?

Who to tell to look?

Need a photo.

I would add items to each list as I thought of them. I closed the notebook as Scoobie and Lucas walked back into the living room. The look on Scoobie’s face told me that Lucas had passed some sort of test.

Lucas looked from Scoobie to me.

Scoobie cleared his throat. “You can’t sleep in the park. Probably the best thing about spending a couple of days here is that you can work with Jolie to find your sister. Me too, but I’m in class a lot.”

I felt a surge of relief at Scoobie’s change of heart and looked at Lucas. “I could do some of the running around for you, so you aren’t so obvious.”

“Running
around,” Scoobie said, quietly. Lucas grinned.

I frowned at the two of them
. “You know what I mean. I’m out and about town a lot. If I’m poking around, no one will suspect something.”

“Unless they know her,” Scoobie said
. Lucas kept staring at me.

“It’s less crowded in the off-season,” I continued
. “You’re not known here, and you’d get noticed.”

“But I haven’t done anything,” Lucas said.

“I know, but if you walk in and out of every store or public building, look around, and leave, you might get stopped. How will you explain what you’re doing?  Do you want a lot of people to know Kim is here?”

“That might help,” Scoobie added.

Lucas shook his head. “I dunno. I figure if she hasn’t been in touch, she’s maybe…doing something she shouldn’t be doing. I don’t want her arrested or something.”

“Drugs?” Scoobie and I asked this together.

He shrugged again. “She likes to smoke pot. Dad hates that. I don’t think she’d do more, but maybe she’s, I dunno, stealing to eat…or something.”

I nodded, slowly
. “The bottom line is if you’re with Scoobie or me occasionally, no one will think much of it.”

We talked for a couple more minutes, and only stopped as Lucas’ yawns grew wider
. I gave him an air mattress to blow up and we decided not to get his back pack until morning. It would be odd to drive into the park at such a late hour.

I could hear Scoobie and Lucas talking as Scoobie gave him sheets and a blanket. I was suddenly exhausted and began getting ready for bed
. As I switched out the light, it occurred to me that I should get contact information for Lucas’ father. It never hurts to know how to get in touch with someone’s relatives. As long as you don’t need to.

CHAPTER FIVE

I SCANNED GEORGE’S follow-up article in Thursday morning’s
Ocean Alley Press
. It sounded as if Tanya Weiss would have ticked off anyone she came in contact with. There could be forty suspects.

Hospital Staffer Led Effort to Cut Jobs

Ocean Alley Hospital hired Tanya Weiss six months ago for one reason. Cut costs. Since the most flexible item in the budget was people, this translated to cutting jobs. And since nurses and certified nursing assistants comprise the largest proportion of employees, Weiss focused her recommendations on the nursing staff.

Two weeks before her death, Weiss offered options to the hospital’s Board of Directors. Since Board meetings are closed, her ideas were not well known. Rumors flourished.

The Ocean Alley Press has learned that Weiss proposed, for medical and surgical patient units, to reduce the ratio of nurses to patients from one nurse to every four patients to one nurse for every five. Her rationale was that skilled rehabilitation units and nursing homes used the 1:5 ratio. Nursing-to-patient ratios in units such as cardiac care and ICU were recommended to stay the same, at 1:2.

The hospital’s director of nursing had no comment on the recommendations.

Weiss’ other recommendations are said to have dealt with postponing or denying purchase of several pieces of equipment, and automating some routine functions so that staff who oversaw them could be paid at a lower rate.

The hospital’s administrator, Quentin Wharton, declined to comment on any of the recommendations.

Board President Jason Logan issued a statement through the hospital’s attorney. “Ms. Weiss’ death is a tragedy for her family and friends and her work family at Ocean Alley Hospital. Her role was to help the Board initiate changes that would make the hospital the preeminent community hospital in the region. As technology changes and medical knowledge advances, the Board will likely realign some resources. As always, Ocean Alley Hospital is committed to providing excellent care in a pleasing environment.”

No hospital employees were willing to comment on the Board’s statement.

The medical examiner released Weiss’s body yesterday, and funeral arrangements have been finalized. The service will be private. (See page B-4).

“Rats.”  You can learn a lot at funerals. Even if it wasn’t private, I supposed it would be odd for me to attend.

I shifted my position on the couch and flipped to page four in the second section of the paper
. Prior editions had a death notice and said arrangements were pending. This one had a full obit. It said that Tanya Weiss was forty-two and had garnered a reputation in the health care field as someone to help hospitals improve operations.

That’s a bland way of saying cutting to the bone
.

She was raised in Connecticut and was an only child. Her father died a few years ago and her mother was in an Alzheimer’s care unit at a hospital in New Hampshire.
You’d think that would make her see the importance of having the right number of nurses.

The only other survivor was a cousin
. He lived in the assisted living area of the complex where Weiss’ mother lived. That likely explained why the mother was in New Hampshire, and it meant that no one in Weiss’ personal life could shed information on her background, sense of compassion (or lack of it) , likelihood to accumulate enemies, or anything else.

I lowered the paper to the table and thought about the article. What it made clear was that Weiss’ recommendations would gore oxen throughout the hospital
. Lots of motives to get rid of her, though not necessarily in a restroom with a blow to the head.

I thought about other reasons someone might want to hurt her
. There was always the personal angle. Maybe she was having an affair with someone’s spouse. But it seemed more likely that a scorned partner would find a way to let the Board of Directors know about Weiss’ spouse-stealing efforts. Would the Board even care? Likely only if the stolen spouse was the husband or wife of one of its members.

Professionally discrediting her made more sense
. The Board might still implement some of her recommendations to reduce staff, but at least she would be one of the people in the unemployment line. I frowned. She hadn’t been at the hospital long, and unless her work-related boo-boos were especially obvious, they would take time to uncover.

A motive for murder didn’t seem likely in any situation I could come up with, especially premeditated killing
. It was more likely that someone acted in a fit of rage. Maybe they tried to talk to her about some of the budget cuts. Weiss wouldn’t listen and they struck. But what would they have had to hit her with?  It would take a lot of force to hit someone hard enough to render them unconscious. And dead. It wasn’t likely someone’s fist could do it without injuring the murderer’s hand.

There was also the issue of a woman committing a murder
. I didn’t know any exact statistics, but I’d read several times that murderers were more often men, and by a large margin. A man could have entered the women’s restroom, but guys I knew would not do that unless not using it would be really embarrassing. Of course, guys I knew didn’t murder people.

Jazz hopped on my chest and put her nose on mine
. She knows this annoys me. “I take it you’re hungry.”  She apparently heard something she liked because she jumped to the floor and sauntered to the kitchen, black tail in the air.

I winced as I stood and tried to put weight on my foot
. Still not a good idea, and it seemed even stiffer than yesterday.

With Jazz and Pebbles sated, I planned my day
. I needed to appraise a house not far from Aunt Madge’s B&B, and wanted Lucas with me. He had gotten up when I did, but he looked so exhausted I suggested he get some more sleep. I delayed my work by a couple of hours. The house was vacant, so no one would care when I got there.

I decided to do at least one constructive thing while I waited
, and called Aunt Madge.

“Good morning Jolie
. I heard you felt good enough to drop in on Sergeant Morehouse yesterday.”

“You have more sources than George does.”

“I’m older. Did you tell him what you heard Nelson say?”

“Yes
. I thought I was pretty convincing about pain meds making me forgetful, but he didn’t believe me. No surprise to you, I’m sure.”

She chuckled
. “True. What are you up to today?”

“Not what I expected
. Remember that night in eleventh grade when my babysitting job got, um, interrupted?”

“That night we were never supposed to discuss?”

“You sound like Lieutenant Tortino when I told him. Anyway, I have a reason for bringing it up.”

Her sarcasm came through
. “Of course, if you have a reason.”

“One of those kids came to Ocean Alley
. Both, maybe.”

She didn’t say anything for several seconds
. “And they got in touch with you?”

“The elder one stayed here last night.”

“But not the girl?”

“The brother is looking for her.”  We were avoiding the names
. I felt kind of silly, as if I was playing spy.

“And Lieutenant Tortino knows.”  She said this as a statement, but I knew she wanted to be sure I wasn’t fudging on that point.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“When you call me ma’am
, I know you’re up to something. How long is he staying, and why doesn’t he know where his sister is?”

I told her Lucas and Kim’s names and explained their mom’s suicide and Kim’s
apparent distress. When I said that Lucas had taken off work, she stopped me.

“So, they’ve had structure in their lives?”

I smiled at her precise question. “It sounds as if they went from here to Atlanta and stayed there. Lucas went to college, I don’t know what Kim’s plans are.”

She sighed, something Aunt Madge rarely does
. “Are you and Scoobie going to help him look?”

“Maybe a bit
. Mostly I told him he could bunk here for a few days. He’d been sleeping at that park just outside of town.”

“Hardly a safe place
. Your house must be cozy.”

I thought she might offer to have Lucas stay with her, but she didn’t
. “A bit, but it’s fine.”

“Be careful for a change.”  She hung up.

I debated telling Lucas that Aunt Madge would be a good resource in his search, and decided to wait a day or so. A glance at the clock told me it was time to wake him.

Although he was anxious to keep looking for Kim, I planned to get him to help me this morning
. I had an ulterior motive. He could come to the vacant house and hold one end of the tape measure as I crutched around with the other end. And then I’d talk him into going to the police station with me.

It seemed like a no brainer. No one there needed to know his or Hannah’s…Kim’s former names. The police might even publicize Kim as a missing person
. Ocean Alley police are good about keeping an eye out for someone. They get calls from worried parents every summer. A high school or college student whose parent is worried about them has usually just forgotten to call, or is hung over. If the police see the kids, they tell them to get in touch with whoever’s looking for them. End of story.

Scoobie had left for class at about eight, so at ten-thirty I was the one to awaken Lucas again
. “Come on, lazy bones. We have stuff to do.”

He was quickly wide awake
. “I thought of another place to look…”

“First you’re going to help me with an appraisal
. Then we can both look.”  I lifted a crutch from the floor to stress that it was hard to work alone.

Lucas’ sense of responsibility won over his worry
. “Sure, I can help. But can we go fast?”

HALF-AN-HOUR later, I unlocked the door to a large ranch-style house on the edge of Ocean Alley. “Lock it for me, will you?  It’s a safety thing with me.”

“Sure.”

We both took in the large living room with its huge stone fireplace at one end and a hallway leading to other rooms at the far end. The house looked like an everyday brick and frame ranch from the outside, but the interior had been thoroughly remodeled at some point.

“So what do we do here?” Lucas asked.

I dumped my purse on the fireplace hearth, took a cloth tape measure from my pocket, and handed it to him. “What Harry Steele, my boss, and I do is establish a value for the houses we appraise. Walk to the fireplace, please.”  When he was in place, I continued, “If a bank is going to lend money to someone, they want to make sure the house is worth at least what they plan to lend.”

Lucas stood by the fireplace
. “Now what?”

“Put one end of the tape measure on the floor
. I’ll walk over there and put a crutch on it, and then you unfurl it to the other end of the room so I can take measurements.” 

Some appraisers use really long metal tape measures to do this
. One day when I was complaining about how the large measure had ripped the edge of my pocket, Aunt Madge had suggested sewing a couple of plastic tape measures together, the kind she uses for sewing. It was a great idea. Less weight in my purse and I could easily sling it around my neck while I wrote. Leave it to Aunt Madge.

When he saw I was going to take pictures in each room, Lucas’ face lit up
. “I took a couple of photography classes in college.”

Aha. You went to college
. “Great. Take a few and I’ll look at them before you take more.”

He walked into the kitchen and shot a couple, and then the dining room
.

I scrolled through them
. “These are really good. You picked good spots for the centers.”

“I’m an excellent photographer.”  He said this in the same tone Dustin Hoffman used in the movie
Rainman
. We both laughed.

Given my throbbing foot, I would have taken well more than an hour to measure and photograph all the rooms. We were done in half that time.

“Now what?”

I could tell from how he asked the question that Lucas wanted to continue his search
. “In a bit I’ll go to Harry’s and my office, which is in his house, and enter all this information into a computer. It’ll spit out nice-looking floor plans. But before that, I’d like you to come to the police station with me.”

For the first time I understood what the saying
mulish expression
meant.

“I can’t…” he began.

“You can. They won’t know who you are. And if you tell them about Kim, they won’t consider her a criminal. They’ll just keep an eye out for her.”