Tussie, her back to Herb, reached for a plate, took a step back, and bumped into him. "Oh, I'm sorry."
"Take more than a little slip of a girl like you to knock me down."
"He's right. Tussie, you're getting too skinny. You're working too hard," Harry said.
"Runs in the family. The older we get, the thinner we get."
"Sure doesn't run in my family," Miranda called out from the other side of the table, worked her way around the three-bean salad, and joined them.
"Do you think poor patients will steal?" Harry asked Tussie.
"No," she said with conviction.
"Aren't hospitals full of drugs?" Miranda paused, then laughed at herself. "Well, that's obvious but I mean the drugs I read about in the paper-cocaine, morphine."
"Yes and those drugs are kept under lock and key. Any physician or head nurse signs in, writes down the amount used and for what patient, the attending physician then locks the cabinet back up. That's that."
"But someone like Hank Brevard would know how to get into the drug cabinets, storage." Harry's eyebrows raised.
"Well-I suppose, but if something was missing, we'd know." Tussie's lower lip jutted out ever so slightly.
"Maybe. But if he was smart, he could replace cocaine with something that looks like it, powdered something, powdered milk of magnesia even."
Slightly irritated, Tussie gulped down a bite of creamy carrot salad. "We'd know when the patient for whom the drug was prescribed didn't respond."
"Oh hell, Tussie, if they're sick enough to prescribe cocaine or morphine, they're probably on their way out. I bet for a smart person who knows the routine, who is apprised of patients' chances, it would be like stealing candy from a baby." Harry didn't mean to be argumentative; the wheels were turning in her mind, that was all.
"You watch too much TV." Tussie's anger flashed for a second. "If you'll excuse me I need to talk to BoomBoom."
Harry, Miranda, and Herb looked at one another and shrugged.
"She's a little testy," Miranda observed.
"Pressure," Herb flatly stated.
"I guess. Guess I wouldn't want to be working where someone was murdered. See, Miranda, imagine a murder at the post office-The body stuffed in the mailbag." Harry's voice took on the cadence of a radio announcer's: "The front and back door locked, a fortune in stock certificates jammed into one of the larger, bottom postboxes."
"Harry, you're too much." Miranda winked at her.
"And remember what I said about your curiosity, young lady. I've known you all your life and you can't stand not knowing something." Herb put his arm around her.
16
It was that curiosity that got Harry in trouble. After the meeting she cruised by the hospital when she should have driven home. The puddles from the melted ice glistened like mica on the asphalt parking lot.
Impulsively, she turned into the parking lot, drove around behind the hospital to the back delivery door, which wasn't far from the railroad tracks. She paused a moment before continuing around the corner to the back door into the basement.
She parked, got out, and carefully put her hand on the cold doorknob. Slowly she turned it so the latch wouldn't click. She opened the door. Low lights ran along the top of the hallway. The dimness was creepy. Surely, the hospital didn't have to save money by using such low-wattage bulbs. She wondered if Sam Mahanes really was a good hospital director or if they were all cheap where the public couldn't observe.
She tiptoed down the main corridor which ran to the center of the building, the oldest part of the complex, built long before the War Between the States. She counted halls off this main one but wished like Hansel and Gretel she had dropped bread crumbs, because if she ducked into some of these offshoot halls she wouldn't find her way out quickly. Bearing that in mind, she kept to the center hall corridor.
If she'd thought about it, she would have waited for this nighttime exploration until she could bring Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker. Their eyes and ears were far better than her own, plus Tucker's sense of smell was a godsend. However, she'd taken them home after work, whipped off her barn chores, and hopped over to the rectory for the meeting.
She thought she heard voices somewhere to her right. Instinctively she flattened against the wall. She wanted to find the boiler room. The voices faded away, men's voices. A closed door was to her right.
Stealthily she crept forward. A flickering light to her right told her a room lay ahead. The voices sounded farther away, and then-silence.
The door behind her opened. She hurried away, slipping into the boiler room. She'd found her goal. Again, she flattened against the wall listening for the footfall but the boiler gurgling drowned out subtle sounds.
She quickly noted that another exit from the boiler room lay immediately in front of her on the other side of the room.
Glancing around she took a deep breath, walked to the boiler. The chalk outline of Hank's body had nearly worn away. She knelt down, then looked at the wall. Though it was scrubbed, a light bloodstain remained visible. Shuddering at the picture of blood spurting from Hank's throat, jetting across the room, she started to rise.
Harry never made it to her feet. A clunk was the last thing she heard.
17
Sheriff Rick Shaw and Deputy Cynthia Cooper hit the swinging doors of the emergency room so hard they nearly popped off their hinges.
"Where is she?" Rick asked a startled ER nurse.
The young woman wordlessly pointed to yet another set of doors and Rick and Cynthia blasted through them.
A woozy Harry, covered with a blanket, lay on a recovery-room bed. A quiet night at the hospital, no other patients were in the room.
Jordan Ivanic, a sickly smile on his face, greeted the officers. "Why does everything happen on my watch?"
"Just lucky, I guess," Dr. Bruce Buxton growled at him. Bruce considered Jordan a worm. He had little love for any administrative type but Jordan's whining and worrying curdled his stomach.
"Well?" Rick demanded, staring at Bruce.
He pointed to the right side of Harry's head. "Blow. Blunt instrument. We've washed the blood off and cleaned and shaved the wound. I've taken X rays. She's fine. She's stitched up. A mild concussion at the worst."
"Harry, can you hear me?" Cynthia leaned down, speaking low.
"Yes."
"Did you see who hit you?"
"No, the son of a bitch."
Her reply made Cooper laugh. "You'll be just fine."
"Who found her?" Rick asked Jordan.
"Booty Weyman. New on the job and I guess he just happened to be checking the boiler room. We don't know how long she was there. We don't know exactly what happened either."
"I can tell you what happened," Rick snapped. "What happened was someone hit her on the head."
"Perhaps she fell and struck her head." Jordan tried to find another solution.
"In the boiler room? The only thing she could have hit her head on is the boiler and then we'd see burns. Don't pull this shit, Ivanic." Rick rarely swore, considering it unprofessional, but he was deeply disturbed and surges of white-hot anger shot through him. "There's something wrong in this hospital. If you know what it is you'd better come clean because I am going to turn this place upside down!"
Jordan held up his hands placatingly. "Now Sheriff, I'm as upset about this as you are."
"The hell you are."
This made Bruce laugh.
"Dr. Buxton." Cynthia leaned toward the tall man. "When did you get here?"
"I came a little bit after the meeting at the rectory, the God's Love group, you know. Herb's group."
"Yes." She nodded.
"Stopped at the convenience store. So I guess I got here about eight forty-five."
"Did you go to the boiler room yourself?" Rick asked the doctor.
"No. She was brought to me. When Booty Weyman found her, he had the sense to call for two orderlies. Scared to death." Bruce remembered Booty's face, which had been bone white.