Falling Awake (33 page)

“That’s not fair. She loves you, Farrell, and it’s not because you’re successful. It’s because you’re the person you are—a good man with some big dreams. Okay, so maybe some of the dreams aren’t working out. So what? That doesn’t change the important things.”

“It’s not that simple, Isabel.”

She pushed herself to her feet. “Listen up, brother-in-law. My sister is sinking into a deep depression because she thinks Kyler, Inc., has become more important to you than having a family. Trust me, finding out that the reason you’ve been acting weird lately is because you’ve got financial problems is going to come as an enormous relief to her.”

Farrell hesitated, desperation in every line of his body. “How do you know that?”

“I know my sister.” She went to the door. “But try to remember that Leila has a few dreams of her own and that they all involve having a full-time husband who cares about his family. You might not be able to make every dream come true, but you have the power to make that one real, don’t you?”

She went out into the hall and closed the door very quietly behind her.

b
ruce Hopton dropped the heavy, leather-bound logbook onto the desk and flipped it open. “This is the sign-in sheet for the night the old man died. Need anything else?”

“One thing.” Ellis set his briefcase on the floor and pulled out a notebook. “I’d like to talk to someone who can give me a little background on every member of the staff who worked that night.”

Hopton rested his bulky frame against the edge of the counter, watching Ellis closely. “I’ve been head of security here at the center since day one. I know everybody.”

“You’ll do,” Ellis said.

It took them fifteen minutes to go through the list of people who signed in and out on the night of Belvedere’s death. As promised, Bruce recognized them all.

Halfway down the list, Ellis put his finger under Isabel’s name.

“Ms. Wright often worked nights,” Bruce said. “Sure miss her. She was a real nice lady.” He paused. “You ever hear of a condition called sleep paralysis?”

“Yes.” Ellis glanced up, curious about the change of topic. “It’s a sensation some people get occasionally when they’re transitioning from the dreaming state to the waking state. They suddenly feel paralyzed and they are because the brain hasn’t yet switched off the mechanism that keeps them from moving around during a dream.”

Bruce nodded, very serious. “Ms. Wright explained it. She said that mechanism is what protects the sleeper from falling out of bed at night or worse. But occasionally the switch doesn’t get turned off when it’s supposed to and you wake up still frozen. You can’t move. Can’t speak. Whatever dream you’re coming out of gets tangled up with the paralysis and you hallucinate. Very scary stuff.”

Ellis wondered where this was going. “Some researchers think that sleep paralysis may explain the stories of alien abductions. People who report that kind of thing usually say they felt paralyzed. Other cultures have other metaphysical or supernatural explanations for the experience.”

“My grandson was experiencing sleep paralysis once or twice a week,” Hopton said soberly. “Had terrible hallucinations and nightmares. Got so the kid was terrified to even go into his bedroom. Tried to stay up all night just so he wouldn’t fall asleep. His folks
thought at first that he was just being difficult. Then they started to wonder if he had some kind of mental illness, you know?”

Ellis understood. He smiled slightly. “So you told Ms. Wright about your grandson’s dreams and she explained what was going on.”

“Yep. She talked to the kid. Reassured him that he was okay. She also gave my daughter and son-in-law the name of a doctor who was familiar with that kind of thing. Turned out the sleep paralysis was being triggered so frequently because of some medication that my grandson was taking. When they switched meds, he stopped having the experiences.” Bruce rubbed the back of his neck. “Don’t know how long the poor kid would have gone on suffering if it hadn’t been for Ms. Wright.”

“I see.” Isabel at work, Ellis thought. Fixing things. He moved his finger to the next name. “What about this person?”

“That’s Dr. Rainey. She’s been on the staff forever. Works in the sleep lab so she spends a lot of nights here, too.” Bruce drew his busy brows together. “Huh.”

“What?”

“That’s funny. Thought Dr. Rainey was out of town for a couple of days that week. I remember she said something about going to visit her son and his wife in Mendocino. She must have got home early and decided to come in to work that night.”

The familiar, icy trickle of adrenaline slithered through Ellis.

“I’d like to talk to her as soon as possible,” he said, keeping his voice very even.

“Sure. No problem. Belvedere said you could talk to anyone you want.” Bruce glanced at the clock on the wall. “I saw her earlier today. She’s probably upstairs in her office now.”

Dr. Rainey was in her mid-sixties, short, stocky and impatient with the interruption.

“There must be some mistake,” she snapped, glowering over the tops of her reading glasses. “I was out of town that night. Didn’t get back until the following day. I remember what a shock it was to come back and hear that Martin had died.”

Ellis opened the sign-in log. “Is that your signature, ma’am?”

Dr. Rainey scowled at the scrawled name. “No, it is not. My handwriting is bad, but it’s not that bad.” She removed her glasses and peered more closely at Ellis. “I don’t understand. What is this all about?”

“I think someone signed in using your name that night,” Elis said.

“Why on earth would anyone do that?”

“Good question.” He looked at Bruce. “How hard would it be for a person to sign in under someone else’s name?”

Bruce did not look happy. “Not hard at all. Got someone on duty around the clock downstairs but the sign-in log just sits out on the counter. No one checks the names against the faces or bothers with ID unless the person signing in is a visitor or a new member of the staff.”

“In other words, one member of the staff could sign in under someone else’s name.”

Bruce scratched his bald head and appeared even more
uncomfortable. “Sure, guess that would be possible. As long as the guard recognized the person as a member of the staff there would be no reason to see what signature was actually written down on the log. I mean, you’d just assume it would be the right one. What would be the point of one employee signing in under another’s name?”

Mass confusion and plausible deniability in the event anyone ever questioned who was in the building on the night of Belvedere’s death, Ellis thought.

He walked out the front door of the center a short time later and got into the driver’s seat of the Maserati. He left the door open and sat at an angle, one foot inside the car, the other on the ground.

It was almost two o’clock. He needed food. He also needed to talk to Isabel. Of the two basic necessities, Isabel was more important.

He took out his phone and called her number.

She answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Congratulations. You have just graduated from amateur sleuth to professional. You were right. It looks like someone probably did murder Dr. Martin Belvedere.”

“Good grief.” She sounded shocked, in spite of the fact that it was her idea in the first place. “What did you find out?”

“Among other things, I confirmed that Belvedere met with Scargill or someone matching Scargill’s description on at least two occasions.”

“Dr. B. mentioned two meetings in his notes,” she said thoughtfully.

“In addition, it looks like a member of the professional staff signed in for the night shift on the night that Belvedere died. Whoever he was, he used another staff member’s name.”

“Wait a second. If it was a member of the staff, it had to be someone the guard recognized. That means it couldn’t have been Scargill.”

“True.”

“Whose name did the person use?” she asked, curious.

“Dr. Elizabeth Rainey.”

“Rainey? Whoever signed her name must be a woman, then.” She hesitated. “Or maybe not. Those guards never check the signatures if they recognize you. A man could have signed Dr. Rainey’s name.”

“Either way, it still leaves us with the fact that it wasn’t Scargill.”

“You sound annoyed.”

“Looks like he’s using someone else again.” He rested one arm on the wheel. “It complicates things.”

“Well, I doubt that this new assistant, whoever he or she is, will turn out to be a former resident of the Brackleton Correctional Facility or a graduate of the behavior modification program they operated there.”

He watched people coming and going across the parking lot. “What makes you so sure of that?”

“The center runs routine employment background checks. Granted, they are fairly superficial but I’m sure Hopton’s people would have picked up on a conviction and prison time.”

“Anyone who could change computerized hospital morgue records could probably change a prison record without too much trouble.”

“Good point,” she conceded. “Well, the upshot is that it looks like Dr. B. was probably murdered by a member of the center’s staff, one who was in the building that night.”

“Yes.”

“And I was just down the hall,” she whispered.

The self-recrimination in her words worried him. “Stop it. Don’t even think of going there, Isabel. There was nothing you could have done.”

She said nothing.

He wanted to reassure her, but he was far away and the feeling that time was running out was riding him hard.

He looked at the notes he had made. “At least I’ve got a list of suspects. That’s a start.”

“I just realized that, technically speaking, I’m on that list.”

“We’re not speaking technically,” he said. “I seriously doubt that we’d be able to prove murder in any event, even if we exhumed the body.”

“Because the drugs that were used probably wouldn’t show up in a toxicology report?”

“Right. Those scans are very limited.”

“What’s your next stop?”

He checked his notes again. “I’m going to talk to the guard who was on duty that night. Dick Peterson. Know him?”

“Of course. I remember he was one of the people I called after
I found the body. You’re in luck. Dick knows everyone at the center and he’s got an excellent visual memory.”

He tapped the notebook against the steering wheel. “I’ll let you know what he says. Everything okay on your end?”

“Well, no, to be honest. I handed in my resignation to Farrell this morning after my first and only class. I was a disaster.”

“Don’t worry about it, honey. Just increase your consulting fees. Lawson and I can afford it.”

“Oh, sure, easy for you to say. I still don’t have signed contracts with either of you. But that’s not the really bad news.”

“There’s more?”

“Farrell told me that he’s facing bankruptcy in three months,” she said.

“Oh, man. That’s gotta be tough to handle. It’s obvious he’s put his heart and soul into Kyler, Inc.”

“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “I’ve been sitting here thinking about his situation.”

“Yeah?” He flipped through his notes, making a mental list of questions he wanted to ask the guard.

“Maybe you could help him.”

“Help who?” He blanked for a few seconds. “You mean your brother-in-law?”

“That’s what you do, isn’t it? Consult for entrepreneurs and investors? Show them how to make their businesses profitable?”

“In my other life.” He closed the notebook. “Look, Isabel, I’m a little busy at the moment.”

“I know. But when this thing with Scargill is finished, maybe you could sort of consult for Farrell.”

He had to smile. “You just can’t stop trying to fix things, can you?”

“People tell me it’s my most irritating characteristic.”

“Lucky you’ve got a lot of other really interesting characteristics that more than compensate for your tendency to hand out free advice.” He pulled his foot into the car, closed the door and fired up the engine. “See you in a few hours.”

“Good. Drive carefully. The fog never did burn off completely today and the weather forecast is calling for more of it this evening.”

Her concern had the customary warming effect on him. It was the same feeling he got when she told him to read romance novels, get acupuncture and lay off the red meat.

“You know, Isabel,” he said, driving out of the parking lot. “When this is over we really are going to have to talk about our relationship.”

“It’s too late. I’ve already fallen in love with you.”

She ended the connection before he could recover from the shock.

f
arrell let himself into the front hall of the big house. He was sweating and his mind was still reeling. Ever since Isabel had left his office he had been trying to think about what to say to Leila. But nothing brilliant or even mildly intelligent surfaced from the maelstrom of emotions, fears and uncertainties that were seething in what was supposed to be his brain.

The house was very still. It occurred to him that he had not even realized that Leila had gone home early until he walked down the hall to her office and discovered she was not there.

That was not like Leila. She was always at headquarters in the afternoons on reception days. The special social events were important. They set a tone and encouraged interaction between attendees and instructors. It was Leila who handled all the
arrangements, from supervising the caterers to selecting the flower arrangements. Later she would play hostess to his host.

But today she had gone home early. And he hadn’t even been aware of the fact that she had left. For some reason that shook him almost as much as what Isabel had said earlier. Maybe he really had allowed himself to get sidetracked by the impending financial disaster.

He walked slowly through the elegantly tiled foyer and then crossed the glass-walled living room with its view of the foggy bay, listening for her in the deep silence.

“What are you doing here?” she asked from the kitchen doorway. “Is something wrong at the office?” Anxiety flared in her eyes. “Are you ill?”