Flipped For Murder (11 page)

I mustered my inner courageous being and took a deep breath. “Don, I have a question for you about what happened not a century ago, but a few decades ago.”

He glanced at me for the first time since we'd been in the hallway. “You do, do you?” His eyes looked as worried as the first time I met him.

“You knew my father, Roberto Fracasso.” I tried to keep my voice from wobbling. I shivered, whether from the chilly air or from nerves I couldn't tell, and clasped my left elbow with my right hand.

“I did.” He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets. “You look just like him, you know.”

“I saw a picture of you and my mom with him. I wished you'd said something to me about him. After I moved here, I mean.”

“I figured your mother would have told you.”

“She never did. And now I can't ask her.” I swallowed and blinked away sudden moisture in my eyes. “I read about the quarry accident, and how you saved him.”

“Yeah.” Don looked down at the tiles again.

“How bad were his injuries? The news article said something about a possible spinal cord injury. Was he in the hospital long? Was he paralyzed?”

“He survived and then went back to Italy.”

“That's all you know? Didn't you visit him when he was hospitalized?”

“I didn't.” His mouth slid to the side like he was chewing the inside of his lip.

“Mom must have.” I pictured her sitting at his side, holding his hand, stroking his brow.

“I guess she must have.”

“Did Roberto know about me? Have you had any contact with him since then?” I asked.

“I don't know, and no. You're asking too many questions.”

“Really? I find out after twenty-seven years who my father is. I discover you knew him, were friendly with him. Yeah, I have questions.”

“Robbie, that was a long, long time ago. Your mom dumped me for him. You think I'd want to ‘keep in touch,'” he said, surrounding the last words with finger quotes, “with this ‘so-called friend'? With the handsome foreigner who stole my girl?”

Chapter 18

When I returned to the reception hall, after Don turned and strode in the opposite direction, after I'd recovered a semblance of calm, I was grateful to see people were leaving. I needed to be in the store before closing time at two-thirty, so I walked out with Jim, but declined a ride home. This was the kind of day my brain needed a bit of fresh air and exercise to recover from, even though my too-short stroll didn't do much to clear the mind. I was still rattled by my encounter in the hall with Don.

“How was lunch? Quiet?” I asked Phil ten minutes later, who was wiping down the tables. “Seemed like everybody in town was at Stella's service.”

He shook his head. “Busy. A bus full of seniors came in, and I'm talking a full-sized bus. We were totally booked. Sold out of almost everything, and made a couple three cookware sales, too.”

“Great news for the bottom line,” I said.

“You need to order in for tomorrow, if it isn't too late,” Danna added from the sink, where she was loading up the industrial dishwasher.

“I guess it's a good problem to have. We're heading into the weekend, so I'll contact the supplier right away.” I put down my purse and tugged at the drawer in the antique desk, where I kept my tablet, but it wouldn't open. I whacked at it and jiggled it with no result.

“That drawer all whopperjawed?” Phil asked, moving toward the desk.

“What?”

“
Whopperjawed.
Out of alignment. Stuck.”

I nodded and watched as he treated the drawer more gently, finally opening it.

I thanked him and retrieved my tablet. “So I need to order buns, salad stuff, cheese?” After Danna nodded, I tapped those in. “What else? I have plenty of frozen patties.”

“Pickles. I think we're okay for breakfast tomorrow,” Danna said. “But order more OJ, eggs, and bread for the weekend.”

I entered those as Phil sang a song I didn't recognize, then I took the tablet into the walk-in and did a survey there.

“How do tuna burgers sound as a Friday special?” I asked as I emerged. “I saw a recipe that looked good, and I might try lamb burgers on the weekend, too.”

“Sounds delish,” Phil said.

I added a few more ingredients to my list. “Thanks, you guys. Go on home, I'll finish up,” I said. “I owe you, Phil,” I added.

He blew me a kiss. “I will exact an appropriate price from my friend,” he sang to the tune of “Oklahoma.”

After they left, I locked the door, turned the sign to
CLOSED
, and sank into a chair. So Don was still angry with Roberto all these years later. And with my mom, I supposed. Damn. I forgot to ask him about her pen. If he owned one, they must have been in touch, so he couldn't have been all that mad at her. I doodled on the pad in front of me.
Bloomington Hospital. Will they give me my father's records? His Italian address at the time?

A long, exhausting bike ride would calm me down and clear my brain. I could ride to Bloomington and find their records department. But that would take the rest of the afternoon and I had a business to run. I doodled for another minute, then I decided I could call them now and drive over once my ordering and prep were done. Oh, and take the day's till to the bank.

Two minutes later I disconnected in frustration. The woman in the records department, a Marie somebody, was distinctly unhelpful. She didn't care that I said Roberto was my father. More likely, she didn't believe me, pointing out the obvious that we had different last names, and that she could only release records to proven next of kin.
Damn it all to heck and gone.
I couldn't prove it if I couldn't find him. I wasn't sure I really wanted to talk to this man who had abandoned me—if he'd even known about me. At the same time, I longed to meet him, see the person I'd gotten half my genes from, especially now with Mom gone. Maybe Adele would sign a statement saying she believed he and I were related.

I returned to the tablet and jabbed in the order. I'd done fine without a father for twenty-seven years. Another few hours, days, or a lifetime wouldn't make any difference.

After I submitted my order, I made a hasty decision. The urge to find out about my father was too strong to put off. I locked the till in my little safe, instead of going to the bank, threw a load of napkins and aprons in the washer, and raced over to the IU Health Bloomington Hospital, the van bouncing on the bumpy road that led out of town to the state route. The Dodge complained on the uphills and rattled down the downs, but I shaved six minutes off the half-hour drive.

I cautiously approached the door labeled
RECORDS. I
needed to figure how to examine the records of Roberto's hospitalization. If I hadn't already called and been rejected, I might have been able to talk my way into it. Now what was I going to do? I peered at the hours listed next to the door. They closed at four-thirty, which was in ten minutes.

I glanced to my right as a woman strode down the hall toward me. Slim and fit, she wore purple jeans and a turquoise sweater. She carried a messenger bag slung across her chest, bandolier style, over a badge hanging from a red-and-white lanyard. She looked somehow familiar, but I couldn't place her. She extended her hand when she got close.

“Robbie, right? I'm Lou. We ate breakfast at your store on Sunday. We'd cycled out.”

“Of course.” I shook her hand. “Nice to see you again.” I checked her badge, which read
LOUISE PERL-MAN
. An old-fashioned name and likely the reason she went by Lou. “Sorry for not recognizing you.”

“No worries. Different clothes, different context.” Lou cocked her head and smiled. “So, what are you doing here?”

“Oh.” I gazed at the closed door. “It's kind of a long story. But I need to see the records of a man who was hospitalized here about twenty-eight years ago. I think he's my father—the one I never met. Never even knew his name until yesterday.”

Her dark eyebrows lifted and she whistled.

“Yeah, I know.” I blew air out through my lips. “Anyway, the woman on the phone said I'd have to prove we were related before she'd let me see his file. But he's Italian, and—”

She held up a hand. “I love a good mystery. Come with me and don't say anything.” She pulled open the door.

Since I had no choice but to follow her in, that's what I did.

“Hey, Marie,” Lou said. “Breaking in a new student.”

An older woman with a pinched face sat at a desk behind a counter, apparently the Marie who'd refused me access two hours earlier. She glanced up without speaking and then returned her gaze to her computer screen.

Lou beckoned to me with one finger. I kept following her until we passed through a door on the far side of the office and it closed behind us.

“I'm a new student, am I?” I said. “What kind of work do you do here?”

“I told you I was a grad student, right? I'm in medical sociology, and I'm researching the cultural effects of medical practices, specifically hospitalizations. Length, cost, and how it relates to social class, race, income levels, and stuff like that.” She lifted her bag over her head before sitting at a long desk holding five desktop computers. “I spend half my life here lately.” She tossed a long brown braid back over her shoulder.

“Wow.” I gazed around the room. It was enormous, and looked like library stacks, except instead of books it was rows of floor-to-ceiling files.

“Here, sit down.” She pointed with her elbow to the chair to her right even as she typed, staring at the screen.

“Is this going to get you in trouble?” I asked as I sat.

“Nah. I'm in here a lot. Our department chair got permission for me, and a couple of other students; that's why the gorgon out there believed the ruse.”

I leaned closer to her. “Marie was the one on the phone who said I couldn't have access.”

Lou lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “This is her fiefdom. Can't blame her, really. What other power does she have in her life? I bring her something from Nashville Fudge Kitchen once in a while to stay on her good side.”

I laughed my relief. “Eating their fudge is like going to heaven without having to die first.”

“You bet. Despite all these physical files”—Lou waved her head to indicate the rest of the room—“everything is online. And these days they only keep digital records.” She glanced at me, hands ready on the keyboard. Her nut-brown fingers sported a half-dozen silver rings on both hands, one with a triangular hunk of turquoise surrounded by a heavy silver band, and unpainted nails evenly trimmed to a no-nonsense length. “Now, how specific can you get about this Italian of yours?”

I shut my eyes for a second, trying to remember the date, then opened them. “I think it was June fifteenth,” and told her the year. “He dove into the Empire Quarry and hurt himself.”

She tapped and waited and typed some more, examining the screen as she went. “Got it.”

My heart was going triple time. My hands were cold and sweaty at once, and I felt woozy. I was about to find out if Roberto had been seriously hurt, and maybe even how to contact him.

Lou read aloud: “‘Admitted with injuries consistent with diving into the reported body of water, blah, blah, concussion, broke his left tibia, contusions, lacerations. . . '”

“No spinal cord damage?”

“I don't see anything about that.”

“Whew. I was worried he'd been paralyzed, or worse.”

She stared at the screen.

“What?” I asked.

“There's something here about a contusion on the back of Roberto's head.” She wrinkled her nose. “How'd he get that from diving?”

“From a submerged hazard, maybe? They're always warning people about old cars and underwater rocks you can't tell are there.”

“Hmm. Interesting.”

“What?” I was starting to sound like a CD that had been left in a hot car too many times.

“Some other guy was admitted at the same time—”

“Don O'Neill?”

“Yeah. All he suffered was a broken arm. Dove in to rescue Roberto, he said. A woman called the ambulance and came in with them.”

“That must have been my mom. She was seeing Roberto. Or Don. Or both. I couldn't get a straight story from Don earlier today.”

Lou looked sharply at me. “What's your last name again?”

“Jordan. Mom was Jeanine Jordan.”

“Well, unless she was in the witness protection program or something, it wasn't her. The one who reported the accident was a Stella Rogers.”