Disturbed Mind (A Grace Ellery Romantic Suspense Series Book 2) (8 page)

(
V
alentine’s Day
; Sam’s House, Murray, Virginia)

B
eer before liquor
, never sicker.

Liquor before beer, in the clear.

Gin before rum, soon I’m gonna be drunk.

Rum before gin, then we start over again.

I
LINE
THE BOTTLES
up in front of me, my thoughts running away from the front of my mind. Honestly, I have a large collection of different kinds of alcohol, but not because I’m an alcoholic. It’s because I don’t drink and people always buy me bottles as gratitude gifts, Christmas gifts, or birthday presents. I suppose none of those people knew me very well.

I pour myself some more coffee liqueur and sip from it. Something is definitely wrong with me. I look down at the watch Grace bought for me. Why couldn’t I be the type of person who thought of personal presents to give to people? I should buy Grace something related to her being a teacher. Or helping kids. Or something that shows how much I love her. Literally, any of those things could have worked.

I should make her something.

I pick up the bouquet of roses and spread them out on the table. I pluck the petals off half of them. I form a heart with the petals and try to glue them all together. My fingers keep getting glued to the petals and the petals tear before I can get them to stick together.

Great. I failed at this, too.

I rest my head on the table and close my eyes. I just need to sleep. Hibernating would be an even better option. I’ll just sleep until spring and when I wake up, maybe some miracle will make none of this matter.

I’ve barely fallen asleep when I feel fingers caressing the back of my neck. My eyes flicker open and I see Grace.

“Grace?” I mumble.

“John was right,” she says. “You
were
drinking every kind of alcohol in the house.”

“I didn’t touch the beer.” I drawl. “Am I dreaming? Are you here?”

“I’m here,” she says. She slides onto my lap. I wrap my arms around her, feeling amazed at her corporeal appearance—feeling amazed that she returned. She gestures to the petals. “What’s going on here?”

“I was trying to make you something.” My voice sounds so small.

She smiles. “That’s so sweet.”

“I failed to actually make anything.”

“I still love it.”

I stare at her, amazed that she is still truly here and not just an alcohol-induced or sleep-deprived mirage.

“Why would you return?” I ask. “I mean, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m an ass and I completely don’t deserve you.”

She kisses me. “Because I love you.”

And that’s all I really need.

(
A
pril
, Saturday Afternoon; Dr. Meadows’s Cardiology Office, Murray, Virginia)

AT MY CARDIOLOGY OFFICE,
all I can think about is John Doe. This isn’t good for business when I’m supposed to be looking at an echocardiogram. The heart does more work than any other muscle in the body within anybody’s lifetime. It also delivers blood to almost every one of a person’s seventy-five trillion cells. It’s an amazing organ, but when amazing things fail, it tends to be noticeable and my patient, Donald Way, noticed he was having chest pains that weren’t related to his heartburn. Donald had taken a cardiac stress test to see if he has ischemic heart disease (more widely known as coronary artery disease). It doesn’t look good for Donald. His heart wasn’t getting enough blood flow while he was walking on the treadmill. I’ll have to get him to schedule an imaging stress test to make sure it’s not a different disease or simply poor fitness ability. It will be difficult to get him to do it because those tests aren’t cheap and this is a man who reuses floss.

“Dr. Meadows?” Lexi Seoh, my best friend’s daughter and one of my receptionists, asks as she knocks on the door. She pokes her head through the door. “Some lady is here to see you.”

The office isn’t opened today. Lexi and I are catching up on paperwork, so this lady has to be someone I know. Lexi knows who Grace is, so it can’t be Grace. It could be Mom, which would be a good enough reason to stay in my office.

“What does she look like?” I ask. “Is she older than me? Maybe in her midfifties?”

“Uh, no,” Lexi says. “She’s around your age. Tall for a woman. Beautiful. Brunette. Fancy clothes.”

“Alicia,” I mutter, covering my face. Knowing her like I do, she wants to know if I decided on painting the house a new color and adding her decorations like she wanted. Her mind goes a thousand miles a minute, while mere mortals like myself can’t figure out if we should eat lunch or not.

“So, should I send her in?” Lexi asks.

I shake my head, standing up. “I’ll go see her. Thanks. We should all take a break for lunch anyway.”

She nods before skipping down the hall. I follow her out to the waiting room. Alicia stands in front of the desk, wearing a black pencil skirt and a red silk blouse.

“Sam!” She grins. “I figured I should see you here instead of the morgue again.”

“I know why you’re here,” I tell her. “And I’m not sure what I want to do, yet. I haven’t even talked to Grace about it.”

She pretends to pout, her lower lip sticking out. “Come on, Sam. It’s the best time to be selling a house and this will take time to do. Why don’t I take you to lunch and we can talk about it there? There’s a new place called Caesar’s American Villa that I want to try out.”

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea,” I say. “I thought you didn’t want to become too involved because of Grace.”

She rolls her eyes. “It’s not like we have an active work relationship here. I’m just trying to help you by giving you ideas, and because we should have a cordial relationship after our breakup that happened years ago. It’s not like she’s your
wife,
right?”

Her last comment stings, but she’s right. There’s nothing wrong with lunch and now that I haven’t thought about John Doe in the last three minutes, my stomach is growling.

“All right, let’s go.”

She squeals and wraps her arm around me. I take in her warmth, her sweet, lily scent, and the way her hands linger for a second too long on my waist.

(
S
aturday Afternoon
; Caesar’s American Villa, Murray, Virginia)

THE FOOD AT
Caesar’s American Villa is worthy of any Roman god. First, Alicia and I have bruschetta for an appetizer. The tomatoes are so fresh and the bread has been rubbed with the most succulent garlic butter. I get fettuccine Alfredo, which is rich without being greasy, and Alicia gets Saltimbocca alla Romana, which is veal with ham and sage. She offered me some, but honestly, the thought of how veal came to be on her plate is a bit too much for me.

When we finish eating, Alicia pulls out her folder again. “So…have I tempted you into my idea by using food? I know how you love good cuisine.”

“Ah, so this was a trick?” I tease.

“Of course,” she says. “My plan was to drag you away from your office, so all escape routes are cut off, and you had no one to intervene. Then I was going to fill you up with good food to make you complacent, and now I am going to tell you wonderful things about my ideas, which you will agree to because my plan has worked.”

“Like I said before, I haven’t asked Grace, yet.”

“Most of the time, it seems like you’re trying to sell her house more than she is.”

“She’s busy,” I say, shrugging. “She has her job at Stoddard High School, she’s going to college to get a second master’s degree in counseling, and she’s…”

I’m about to tell Alicia about Grace going to therapy, but then I realize how private that information is. My mouth could get me into a lot of trouble.

“…And she’s got a lot going on in her personal life.”

“You’re working two jobs, one that you own, and both that are extremely important,” she says. Pride swells in my chest. Alicia has always known how to sweet talk to people. “You’re just as busy as she is, it’s not even your house, but you’re the one who is selling it. It’s probably best that you accept that and agree to let me help you.”

“Okay,” I say, just to appease her. “What colors do you think the rooms should be painted?”

“Not all of the rooms,” she says. “Just the major rooms—the living room, the dining room, maybe the kitchen. Either a rich red, pale yellow, or a jean-shade of blue. Of course, they would all need to be the same color for the rooms—just different shades. For decorations at the Red Silk store, they have that wooden vase, this ceramic swan that would look great on the coffee table, and this painting of red birch trees on cotton canvas would be amazing in the main bedroom.”

“Wow, you have really thought this out,” I say.

She laughs. “I love my job. It’s fun to make things look beautiful.”

“Well, you’re good at it,” I say.

She blushes. “Thank you, Sam. You’re good at being a medical examiner
and
a cardiologist.”

“I can’t be that good of a medical examiner,” I tell her. “I can’t even figure out who this John Doe is or even why he was killed.”

“Wasn’t the news saying he was probably killed because he could be connected to the killer?”

“But how would they be connected? Did my John Doe only have one friend, so there could only be one possible suspect?”

“Maybe only one friend in prison?” she guesses.

“It’s possible, but the detectives called the prison. They’re going through all the prisoners who have been released in the last few months, but there’s so many and we’re looking for a strand of hay in a haystack because we don’t know who the victim is.”

“Hmm.” She tilts her head. “Can you figure out more about him from his body? Like what he did for a job?”

“I’m not Sherlock Holmes.”

The waiter returns with the check.

“Thank you,” I tell him.

“I hope you and your wife enjoy the rest of your day,” he says.

“Oh, she’s not my wife,” I say. “We’re not together in an intimate way.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry, I thought…”

“It’s fine,” I say, placing my credit card in the check folder. I hand it back to him. “Thank you. The food was delicious.”

“I’m glad,” he says. “I’m sorry again for the misunderstanding.”

He walks away from the table. I turn to Alicia. She’s smiling.

“Wow,” I say. “I didn’t think we were doing anything that would make people think we were together.”

“You’re a man, I’m a woman,” she says. “We’re in a fancy restaurant. It’s what anyone would assume.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“You’re a brilliant man,” she says. “And I still love you, though it’s not the same as before. Why would it bother me to be connected to you? Does it bother you?”

“Of course not,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s just funny that he thought that.”

The waiter brings back the check, I write down his tip, and we leave. The weather outside seems more brisk than it was when we entered the restaurant. Alicia looks up at the sky.

“Are you happy with your life?” she asks.

“….yeah,” I say.

“You don’t sound so sure.”

“I think I’m going through a rough patch, but I’m still pretty happy,” I say.

“You still sound like you’re trying to convince yourself that you’re happy.”

“I guess you know me too well then,” I say.

She grins. “We did date for a few years. Though I never got to meet your parents or move in with you.”

I can’t help but laugh. “The whole thing with Grace moving in with me sort of just…happened. She wasn’t going to lose her mind over having two students attack her, but dealing with the Schneiders…that could have led to her being committed.”

“At least our time together wasn’t overdramatic, right?” she asks. “No psychos. No killers. No murders.”

“It was a simpler time,” I agree. Her mention of psychos makes me think of Deacon Cochrane. He was certainly mentally unstable, but his heart was in the right place. His murders were different from my John Doe’s murder. Deacon shot to kill—he didn’t want his victim to suffer. This killer doesn’t have any empathy.

“You know, I still think about those times that we—”

“I should look into psychiatric records,” I blurt. She glances at me.

“I’m pretty sure you need a warrant for that and no judge is going to let you search randomly through psychiatric records,” she says. “And that’s not even your job. You’re just supposed to find the cause of death.”

“I know,” I mumble. “I just wish I could do more.”

“You’re doing plenty,” she says. “When the police catch the killer, what you tell a jury about the body will make sure the murderer stays in prison for a long time.”

“I hope so. Thank you, Alicia. You’ve been so supportive of everything that’s been happening in my life. I feel like recently I haven’t had anyone to talk to, so I’m glad that we bumped into each other back in February and became friends again.”

“It’s my pleasure,” she says. She stops in front of her car. “So, should I pick up some paint?”

“Yes,” I say. She grins. “Just the paint though. I’m not sure about the other things.”

“I’ll get you to come around,” she promises. I pull out my wallet and take out a couple of twenty-dollar bills.

“Here’s for the paint,” I tell her.

She shakes her head. “I can pay for it. Pretend it’s a belated Christmas present.”

I fold the dollars in half, take her hand, and place the money in her palm. She closes her fingers around the money. She leans forward and kisses my cheek.

“I never stopped loving you,” she whispers.

She turns back around and gets into her car. She doesn’t look at me again as she drives away from the restaurant.

I touch my cheek. It feels like forever since someone has shown me that kind of intimacy—not exactly the kiss, but her words, too. My cheeks flood with heat—from embarrassment, from shame, from the tiny flicker of need to feel that level of love again.