Chapter 15
I sprang up to a seated position and could see my husband through the doorway kicking off his shoes and hurriedly peeling off his sweat-soaked T-shirt. He was obviously shaken up.
“Honey, what's wrong?”
He suddenly stood very still and looked at me with misty eyes. “Mama just called me on the cell. Daddy's had a heart attack.”
We both looked at each other helplessly for a moment, before Larry Joe resumed his frenzied activity.
“Grab your purse,” he said. “We're heading out just as soon as I wash my face and put on a clean shirt.”
I pulled on my shoes and, even though it was the middle of August in Tennessee, instinctively grabbed a sweater from the entry closet. I thought it might be chilly at the hospital. After a moment, I heard Larry Joe's feet thundering down the stairs. I offered to drive, but he said he was fine.
Neither of us was fine.
I was actually relieved when he said he'd drive, though. I felt a little unsteady and slightly nauseated.
We pulled onto his parents' street just in time to see an ambulance racing away, lights flashing, sirens blaring. One of the firefighters, who apparently had been among the first responders, walked to the curb when Larry Joe stopped in front of the house and rolled down his window. I recognized him as Jeff Kovacs, who had played high school football with Larry Joe.
“Where's my mama, Jeff?”
“She's in the ambulance with your dad. You go on and follow 'em to the hospital. They're taking him to County General.”
“How's Daddy?”
“He's a feisty old cussâhanging on with both hands,” Jeff said before slapping the car door twice, signaling for Larry Joe to drive on.
We rode in silence to the hospital, holding tightly to the nugget of hope Jeff had given us.
We parked the car outside the emergency room, and I struggled to keep up with Larry Joe, who was walking faster than I could run. We entered through the automatic doors and spotted Larry Joe's mom at the check-in desk, talking to a nurse. She seemed to be steadying herself against the counter just to remain upright.
Larry Joe walked up beside his mother, wrapped his arm around her waist, and guided her over to a chair in the waiting area. I sat down with Miss Betty, while Larry Joe went back to the desk to take care of paperwork. I gave my mother-in-law a hug. Her arms were ice cold, so I draped the sweater I'd brought with me around her shoulders.
“They wouldn't let me go back with him.”
“Well, we'd just be in the way right now.”
“He was breathing, though. I could see he was breathing.”
I felt tears welling up in my eyes and a lump in my throat getting so big, I could barely swallow. Unable to speak, I just reached over and grabbed her hand.
Larry Joe came over, took the seat on the other side of his mom, and put his arm around her. She placed her head on his shoulder and started to sob.
“That old goat better not die on me,” she said.
“Now, we both know Daddy's too stubborn to die. He's just had a lot on him lately. He's gonna have to slow down some, that's all.”
After what seemed like hours but registered only as thirty-two minutes by the clock on the wall, a nurse came through the swinging doors and called out, “McKay family?”
We jumped to our feet in unison and rushed toward her.
“Come on back,” she said.
We followed her until she stopped in the hallway, in front of some chairs like the ones in the waiting room, and told us to have a seat.
“The doctor will be out to talk to you in a minute.”
We were all relieved to see that the man in the white coat was Evan Chase, doctor and longtime golf partner to Larry Joe's dad. He came and knelt in front of my mother-in-law.
Before he could speak, she said, “Don't sugarcoat anything for me, Evan. Give it to us straight.”
“He's had a major heart attack. We've started a clot-buster medicine in his IV, and we're moving him up to the ICU. Our biggest concern at the moment is an arrhythmia, which could cause him to have another heart attack in the next twenty-four hours. We'll keep him hooked up to an EKG to monitor for that.”
“Can we see him?” Larry Joe said, rising out of his chair as the doctor stood up.
“After we get him settled upstairs. The last visiting period in the ICU is ten p.m. After that, I suggest y'all go home and try to get some sleep. The next visiting period won't be until eight o'clock in the morning.”
Larry Joe shook hands with Dr. Chase, and we walked to the elevators to make our way up to the intensive care waiting room. We sat in the ICU waiting room, listening to Larry Joe's mom fret over whether to call Daddy Wayne's brother and sister. We all agreed there was no point in calling and worrying Aunt Nora, who was the oldest sibling and was in frail health. As the clock ticked toward ten, we finally decided it was too late to call Uncle Ed, especially since none of us could remember if he was in the central or eastern time zone.
At straight up 10:00 p.m., the desk nurse announced visiting time. We were among eight or nine people who lined up for a brief visit with loved ones.
Daddy Wayne looked pale but seemed to be steadily breathing oxygen through a tube affixed to his nose. The nurse told us not to worry if he didn't wake up, since he had just been given a sedative.
I slipped out of the crowded, curtained-off corner that housed Daddy Wayne's hospital bed and monitoring equipment, where Miss Betty was holding my father-in-law's hand and Larry Joe was holding his mom's hand. The clock in the waiting room showed it was almost 10:15 p.m., so I texted Di on my cell phone.
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Is bunco over? I'm @ hospital.
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In less than a minute Di texted back, Call me.
The sign on the wall said cell phone use was prohibited in the waiting room or the ICU, so I stepped into the hall and stood next to the elevators.
I dialed, and Di picked up without bothering to say hello. “What happened? Who's in the hospital?”
I brought her up to speed on what had transpired thus far and what little we knew about Daddy Wayne's condition. She insisted on coming to the hospital, even though I told her she didn't need to. I reminded her she could enter the hospital only through the emergency room entrance after 10:00 p.m.
Larry Joe and his mom walked back into the waiting room at the same time that I did. The large room began to clear out a bit as family members of some of the patients said their good-byes for the night. Others started staking out the sofas and recliners scattered around the room for a place to sleep. Miss Betty had stopped to chat with an acquaintance, and I told Larry Joe he'd better grab a recliner for his mom before they were all taken.
“I'm going to try to get her to go home.”
“Good luck with that,” I said.
With a look of resignation, he put his mom's purse on a recliner, and we sat on the sofa next to it.
“Di's on her way over,” I said.
“Why don't you get her to run you home? You can drive my truck tomorrow, and I'll have the car here if we need it.”
“I'll stay. I hate leaving you here alone with your mom. What if something happens?”
Larry Joe and my mother-in-law both insisted I go home. So after Di and I had hugged them both and admonished them to get some rest, we headed to the parking lot.
“I don't know why I'm leaving,” I said. “I know I won't be able to sleep a wink tonight.”
“Where's Duane's diary?”
“In my car.”
“Good. Ray Franklin pulled out of the trailer park just ahead of me. So, if you're feeling up to it, let's grab the freaking diary and stick it back in the freezer for Dave to find.”
“Why not? No time like the present,” I said.
I retrieved the diary, which I'd stashed under the seat of our SUV, in the emergency room parking lot.
Chapter 16
Di retrieved the spare house key from inside the cement block, and we entered Ray's camper the same way as before. Without the forethought to bring a flashlight, we made do with the little penlight on my key chain. Since we'd been there before, I figured that would provide enough light to find the freezer and replace the diary.
I froze for a moment when I thought I heard the scurrying of tiny paws. “I'm sure that's just a cat under the camper,” I said out loud, refusing to entertain the possibility that I was stumbling around a dark room with a mouse.
I found that the book we had slipped into the empty frozen dinner carton was still in its place, and I felt relieved that Ray apparently hadn't noticed the diary was missing. I pulled out the book, placed the diary in the carton, closed the freezer door, and turned around just as the camper door was flung open and a huge flashlight beam smacked me in the face. Di and I both stood silent and stunned, like deer in headlights, fearing what Ray's next move might be.
Then a familiar voice spoke from behind the blinding light. “Just what in the hell do you two think you're up to?”
“Oh, Dave. Thank God it's you,” Di said as we both heaved a sigh of relief.
The sense of relief was premature. Dave let us know he was in no mood to be lenient.
“Step outside, ladies,” he said, motioning with the flashlight. We followed his instructions.
“I saw your car parked out here, and I was worried something might have happened to you,” Dave said, a slight tremor in his usually rock-solid voice. “Only to find out you and Liv McKay are just doing a little breaking and entering.”
“We didn't break in. We used a key,” I said hopefully. Di held up the key as proof.
“So, you have the key to Ray's trailer. Well, I'll just call him and get this whole mess straightened out.”
Dave took his cell phone out of his pocket, and Di and I said, “No” in unison.
“Wait, Dave. We can explain everything if you just give us a chance,” Di said in a sweet-as-molasses voice. “Let's all go back to my place and talk about this over a cup of coffee.”
Dave took a deep breath, and I could see his nostrils were flaring. In my experience, it's never a good sign when a man's nostrils flare.
“We're going to talk, all right. Down at the station.”
“Dave, you can't be seriâ” Di began, but Dave interrupted.
“Damn skippy, I'm serious. Diane Souther, you get in your car and drive straight to the station.” He shifted his icy gaze in my direction. “And, you, get in the police car with me. I don't want y'all cooking up a story on the drive over.”
We both stood there for a moment with a hangdog look on our faces, but Dave wasn't about to give us a break.
“Move it,” he said.
And we did.
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Terry, the dispatcher, watched quietly as Dave marched us through the station and into what I presumed was called the interrogation room.
“Terry, I don't want to be disturbed for anything short of a homicide.”
Terry said, “Yes, sir.” And that was the last voice, other than mine and Di's and Dave's, I heard for the next three hours.
There was obviously more going on between Dave and Di than the situation at hand. My best guess, based on their current behavior and my own assumptions about their clandestine relationship, was Dave felt betrayed that Di hadn't confided in him about our snooping. And Di, rankled that Dave was giving her such a hard time, was dropping the temperature in the room with her cold shoulder and frosty stares in Dave's direction.
Unfortunately, this prompted Dave to shift his attention toward me. I managed to remain guarded in my answers for a while, telling Dave about the diary, since he had caught us red-handed. I tried to avoid telling him about other activities, like stalking Ray and stealing the security tapes from the trucking company. But as I felt the long arm of the law reaching across the table and putting me into a psychological choke hold, I finally caved. I ended up confessing everything I'd ever done that was wrong, all the way back to stealing a T-shirt from Carol Gompers while we were at church camp in the sixth grade.
I sat limp and spineless in my chair. Dave, apparently moved to compassion, asked Terry to bring us some coffee and doughnuts. Di turned up her nose at the stale doughnuts, but I was devoid of pride at that point.
Satisfied I had told him everything we'd been up to, Dave finally relaxed, at least momentarily, and assumed a friendly demeanor.
“Since I saw for myself that you didn't remove anything from Ray's camper, and you did have a key, I suppose we can forget about that, for now. And seeing how you ladies have provided information that may prove to be helpfulâalthough you should have come to me with it soonerâI'll keep you in the loop on the investigation to the extent that I can, which hopefully will encourage you not to do any more snooping around on your own.
“Rudy, the one you saw having a scuffle with Darrell on the tape, is a person of interest. The Feds have him under surveillance. Their people took apart that truck in Oklahoma and discovered a hidden compartment for drug smuggling. It was smartly done. Basically, the power drive had been fixed to transfer all the drive power to the front-drive axle. The rear axle continued to turn like normal, but the junction box and rear axle liner were used to hide drugsâin this case, about half a million dollars' worth of heroin. Took a skilled mechanic to fix it up, so I'm thinking it was Darrell, and maybe Rudy, too.”
Dave adjured us not to tell anyone, including Larry Joe, about the hidden compartment just yet. “In addition to keeping their eyes on Rudy, the Feds are following other trucks and checking for hidden compartments as they can. Hopefully, this trail will lead to the drug trafficking ring that's been operating through Dixie.”
Dave was intrigued by the diary's implication that Ray Franklin could be Duane and Darrell's father. “Based on what you've told me, I'm going to bring Ray in for questioning tomorrow about some possibly stolen Confederate artifacts. But what I really want is to get him to drink a Coke or some coffee so we can retrieve a DNA sample for the lab. If he is a deserter, I'll gladly lock him up and hold him for the military police,” Dave said.
“Now, I've got a couple of things to wrap up here, but I will arrive at my house in exactly thirty minutes,” he said, his face suddenly stony and his nostrils flaring. It's creepy the way he can turn his bad cop look off and on as if with the flip of a switch. “When I do, I'd better find a box of videotapes that have a bearing on a certain murder investigation left on my front porch anonymously, which I'm obligated to share with the FBI. If I don't find said package when I get home, I know two people who will be arrested and charged with obstruction of justice before sunrise. Are we clear?”
I nodded vigorously.
Di just looked at me and said, “Let's go.”
I felt as pale as the moonlight, but I savored breathing unrestricted air again as Di and I walked out of the station and got in her car.
“I can't believe Dave was being such a jerk,” Di said, slamming the car door. “He knew good and well we weren't stealing anything from Ray's.”
“Yeah, but he also knew we were poking around in a murder investigation.”
Di appeared to have nothing else to say on the matter, so I dropped it.
“I guess it's just as well I wasn't planning to sleep tonight, since it's almost a quarter to three,” I said. “Di, maybe you should call one of your bunco buddies and get them to sub for you today.”
“I'm not that old and decrepit yet. I'll just get to bed early tonight . . . or tomorrow night. I don't even know what night it is anymore.”
Di pulled into my driveway.
“You go on home,” I said. “I'll drive Larry Joe's truck to take care of that little errand for the sheriff.”