Your Chariot Awaits (20 page)

She frowned. “You don't have an insurance card or any-thing for the patient?”

“No.” I was pretty sure Joella had no insurance, but I didn't want to reveal that. “We were out at the park on a picnic—”

“Did they take her directly to the delivery room?” Fitz cut in.

“The patient is your daughter?”

“No, but—”

“You are family?”

“Well, in a way.”

“What way?”

“Joella lives in my duplex.”

“You're roommates?”

“No, I'm the, uh, landlady.” Which came off sounding not even third-cousin-once-removed close to being family.

“Please wait over there.” The woman motioned in the direction of the chairs arranged around the room, only two of which were occupied. Good. That meant Joella should be getting priority attention.

So we sat. We waited. The chairs had apparently been chosen for longevity rather than comfort. I kept thinking about all that food we'd eaten. Could wieners and onions and chili induce labor?

There was a coffee machine in the corner. Fitz went over and brought back Styrofoam cups of stuff as black as my impounded limousine.

“I guess it's coffee,” he muttered, peering at the dense liquid. “Unless it's something they're using to resurface the parking lot. I could run up to one of the espresso stands.”

“This is fine,” I assured him. I didn't want him to leave. We weren't doing much talking, but his presence was comforting.

“Matt arrived three weeks early,” he offered once. “And look how big and strong he is now.”

But Joella was almost two months early.

God, Jo says Your timing is always perfect, no matter how it
looks to us down here. Please make it perfect this time!

After an hour and forty-five minutes, I approached the reception desk. “Can we find out anything about my friend, Joella Picault?”

“I'll check.” The woman returned a little later with the information that they were still running tests.

“Is there a problem? Has she had the baby yet?”

All I got was a repetition of the “running tests” information, which is apparently all landladies were entitled to in this day of CIA-level privacy regulations.

After almost three hours, the swinging doors opened, and a woman in a white pantsuit pushed a wheelchair through. Joella stood up, still obviously pregnant.

I rushed over to her. “Jo, what's going on? Why are they letting you go? Are you okay? Are they kicking you out because of money
?
I can come up with—”

“I'm okay. The baby's okay. I need to go out to the car and get my checkbook. The lady inside said I need to pay something on the bill today and make arrangements about the balance.”

“I'll go get it,” Fitz offered. He headed out the double glass doors.

“They did something to stop the baby from coming too soon?” I asked anxiously.

“They didn't stop anything. She never was coming. My water didn't break, and I wasn't even dilated.” Joella sounded both embarrassed and frustrated.

“But all your pain—”

“I am here in the emergency room, recipient of every test known to pregnant womankind, with a huge, enormous, industrial-strength case of indigestion. A big, bad bellyache.”

“Indigestion!”

“With my breath smelling so strongly of onions, I practically asphyxiated the doctor. He asked me what I'd been eating.”

I went down the list. “Burned weenies. Garlic-flavored buns. Onions. Pickle. Mustard. Pepper-jack cheese. Greek salad . . . with kalamata olives. Chili. Chocolate cake. Fudge frosting.”

“That's what I told him. He said I could have found a healthier menu in a dumpster.”

I slammed a palm against my forehead. “It's all my fault. What was I thinking?”

“You were thinking of what would make the day fun for me, and I chose most of that stuff. And it was a glorious picnic.” Joella gave me a hug. “The best birthday ever. And if I hadn't been such a pig and eaten about three times as much as I should have, I'd have been fine. But the baby was never in any danger. I just . . . panicked, I guess, when I started feeling a little pain.”

“You're sure it's just indigestion?
They're
sure? Doctors make mistakes.”

“They did ultrasound, blood, EKG, urine, the works. Indigestion. They gave me some medication. I can't believe it. Telling you the baby was coming when it was just a dumb stomachache.” She shook her head in disgust. “What am I going to do when I have real labor pains?”

Laughter came from the other side of the swinging doors.

Joella rolled her eyes. “One guess what they're laughing about back there. They'll be making onion-breath jokes for days.”

Fitz returned then and handed Joella her purse, and she dug out a checkbook. I knew today must have run up a mammoth bill.

“I can help out—”

“I'll manage.”

She had to take the check to a different desk, and it took quite a while getting the financial arrangements made. I don't suppose they can repossess the baby if you can't pay a bill, but I was pretty sure they could make life miserable. Would “man- aging” mean she'd have to accept her parents' ultimatum about adoption to get financial help? And though I could and would help her out, I doubted I could do enough to make much of a dent in this bill.
Is this God's way of helping her make a decision?
I wondered with a stab of dismay.

I put a hand over my mouth and breathed into it as we went out to the car. Now I knew why she'd almost asphyxiated the doctor. Why hadn't I noticed this before? Maybe because it was like a skunk-on-skunk situation. If you're a skunk, you probably don't smell the other skunks.

But thank You, God, thank You for indigestion instead of
tragedy. Please, please take care of Joella and her baby.

Odd, I thought, how much I was talking to God here lately.

NEXT MORNING I brushed my teeth twice as long as usual, rinsed my mouth with Listerine, and took a breath mint for good measure. I had enough problems without burying innocent bystanders in an onslaught of onion-breath hangover.

Joella had already left for the coffee shop by the time I went out to my car. I'd checked on her earlier, and she was fine, no pains. We were both still apologizing, Joella for her mistake about thinking she was in labor, me for not using better judgment about limo-dog revelry. Fitz was bringing his fish over to cook this evening.

I visited the county personnel offices first, only to find out the hiring situation had changed there. A big sign said all job vacancies were posted on their Web site. A similar situation with the school offices, although I did pick up an application form there. By that time I'd had it with the advances in technology and decided to work on something more productive and perhaps even more important than a job.

Keeping myself out of jail.

21

O
nly a scattering of cars occupied the big F&N parking lot. They were huddled together as if intimidated by all the empty space. I found the door to the wing where I'd worked locked and had to go around to the main front entrance. A uniformed guard . . . a guard! . . . stood beside it. He checked my ID and called up to Letty's office before he let me pass.

I found my way up the stairs and down the hall to the section of cubicles where I used to work. Everything seemed the same, except that the desks were abnormally uncluttered, the phones silent, and Letty the only occupant.

She stood up and held out her arms. “Andi! It's so good to see you!” She gave me an enthusiastic hug.

We'd never socialized outside the F&N setting—Letty's grandchildren kept her busy—but I'd always considered her a good, dependable friend. She's my age, widowed, plump and energetic, a cheerful mile-a-minute talker. Her skin is enviably unlined, and there's always a flowered barrette in her buttercup yellow hair. Today it was my favorite, daisies.

“Good to see you too. What's with the guard?”

“They hired him after Mr. Findley found some homeless guy washing his feet in the sink in the executives' restroom. He'd just wandered in.”

“That's kind of creepy.”

“So's sitting here alone day after day. It feels like a deserted island, without the ubiquitous palm tree.”

Ubiquitous
. I'd forgotten Letty's determined system for improving her vocabulary. Pick a new word or phrase and use it at least once a day for two weeks. It was from Letty that I'd learned such words as
salubrious
and
rubescent
, although I hadn't yet found any particular use for any of them.

“How's everything going here?” I asked.

“I can't believe they expect one person to finish up every-thing for the entire department.” Letty waved both arms as if fighting off work hurtling at her from all directions, like strange creatures in some video game.

“How much longer will it last?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe a month or six weeks. I've been trying to get them to hire someone to help out, but you'd think I was asking for my own private Rent-a-Hunk. But I've made up my mind. Once I'm finished here, I'm
through.
I'd planned to work till I was sixty-five before taking my Social Security. You get more if you wait, you know. But now I'm just going to run
.
I'm thinking about expanding my herb garden and starting a small business selling herbs and spices.”

“Great idea. I'll be an eager customer.” I was a little short on basil and thyme right now, since the sheriff's department had custody of mine.

“Oh, but I should have called you. I was so horrified when I heard what happened to Jerry. Murdered! Here, sit down.” She pulled a chair from a neighboring empty desk as if the murder must have tired me. “I just made fresh coffee.”

She'd moved the shiny metal coffeemaker stand into the aisle closer to her desk. She bustled around, pouring coffee and setting out packets of creamer and sugar. “And how traumatic for you, having it happen right under your nose. Though I've never understood what a limousine was doing there.”

I explained about my inheritance, which brought an appreciative “Oooh!” Then a hopeful, “Are you giving rides to old friends?”

“I'd like to, but the sheriff's department impounded the limo. Actually, the reason I'm here has to do with the murder. As you may recall, you were the one who introduced me to Jerry at the company Christmas party—”

“And now I feel so guilty about that! But it wasn't as if I'd planned it. It was, well, you know,
propinquity
. I just happened to be talking to you when he came up. And at the time, I thought it was so wonderful that the two of you right away got started talking about a hiking trail out by some lake and seemed so taken with each other. But now, considering the circumstances . . .”

“The circumstances of his death?”

“Well, that too, of course. But also the circumstances of his life. I guess you know now, he was still married?”

“His brother told me.”

“I had no idea when I introduced you.”

“You found out later?”

“Not while he was alive! Or I'd have warned you. What happened was, I decided I should come in on the next day after Free Fall Friday to get organized for working alone. I was just walking in from the parking lot when the police arrived. They said they needed information from our personnel files about his next of kin.”

“Did they tell you why?”

“No, but I knew it had to be something serious. I tried to call Mr. Findley and then a couple of other executives, but I couldn't reach anyone. I didn't think I could access the personnel files to find out anything for them—I never could before. But San Diego had given me a new computer password a couple days earlier, and it worked. So I got into Jerry's file and gave them the information.”

“About his wife being next of kin.”

“Right. Which was a shockeroo, I can tell you. And I knew you had no idea he was still married. But it's a very handy little password,” she added in a sly way that suggested she'd done some extracurricular browsing of her own.

The thought occurred to me that if the police also figured out I hadn't known Jerry was married, they might consider it another black mark against me.
Unstable woman goes berserk
upon learning boyfriend still has a wife.

“The deputies came back on Monday and questioned both me and Mr. Findley, since he'd been Jerry's boss here. Then they came back again with a search warrant and took a lot of stuff from Jerry's office.”

“His computer?”

“Yes, although I don't know why they'd want that.”

I did. They were looking for whatever had been on Jerry's home computer that the killer had apparently been desperate to conceal. I doubted they'd found anything. I was sure he wouldn't have put any of his Web site information on the com-pany computer system where someone else might access it.

“How is Mr. Findley taking Jerry's death?”

“After the deputies left, he came in here looking kind of lost and dazed, as if he needed someone to talk to. He seemed pretty broken up. He kept saying how much everyone liked Jerry, and he couldn't understand how anyone could kill him. Jerry was going to be his assistant down in San Diego, I guess you knew.”

“Yes, Jerry told me.”

Over the months I'd known him, Jerry'd had various unkind things to say about his boss, including a wickedly accurate parody of Mr. Findley's stuffy speeches at company award ceremonies. More importantly, however, he'd also claimed he did more of Mr. Findley's work than Findley did. With the different perspective I now had on Jerry, I couldn't be sure there was any truth in that. But Mr. Findley must have held Jerry in high esteem if he'd wanted Jerry to be his assistant in San Diego.

“Do you think anyone here at F&N was particularly angry or resentful that Jerry was given a transfer and this other per-son, he or she,
wasn't
?”