Husband and Wives (15 page)

‘Ah ha!’ I said. ‘Not legally married. He had a first wife who ran off, and unless she divorced him, she’s his only
legal
wife. If she did divorce him, then I think Emily would be next in line to be the legal wife.’

‘Well, now wait,’ Jean said. ‘If he married Emily while legally married to the first wife, that negates his marriage to Emily, right? Which means if the first wife divorced him while he was married to Emily, and he didn’t remarry Emily, then when he married Rachael she’d be his legal wife. Right?’

I stood up. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed. And don’t wake me in the morning. I’m taking a couple of hours.’

She grinned. ‘Got you all confused, didn’t I?’

‘You’re a mean woman,’ I said as I headed out of the room.

‘Oh, but you like a mean woman,’ she said and laughed.

What could I say? She was right.

Jean Mcdonnell – Friday

First thing Friday morning, after dropping off my briefcase in my office, I went upstairs to check on the McKinsey family. When I got to the girls’ room, all was not well. Melissa, the nine-year-old who had been locked in the cage/crib, was quiet. Doctors and nurses surrounded her bed and a crash cart was there. The two other girls were together on one bed, holding each other and crying. I went to that bed and sat with them, holding them.

One, June, at eleven was older than Melissa, and the other, Samantha, at seven was younger. Both had long blonde hair and big blue eyes, and were dressed in hospital gowns that weren’t that different from the clothes they normally wore, except their normal clothes did have backs. With my arms around both backs I could feel their ribs jutting out.

I tried to ignore the orders the doctors were yelling out, the answers of the nurses, and all the life-saving things that were going on in the next bed. I got the girls to sing songs from their church in Tyler, Texas, uplifting songs of praise and peace. They held on to me for dear life and I kept my arms around both of them, finding some of the words and singing the chorus with them.

Finally all the excitement from the next bed stopped. The girls were still singing, and I couldn’t hear if the machine monitoring Melissa’s heart was still making the straight-line sound or the beat-to-beat. The two sisters noticed the quiet in the next bed and stopped singing.

Then I heard it. A strong beat-to-beat sound coming from the monitor. There had been only seconds of quiet, but it had seemed like years. Then there was the stampede to get her up to the ICU, bed rails coming up, connections being severed, IV being taken from its stand to the side of the bed – all the things necessary to move Melissa to intensive care.

The two sisters were on their knees on the bed. ‘Where are they taking Melissa?’ Samantha, the seven-year-old, asked.

‘Is she OK?’ demanded June.

‘She’s better,’ I told them. ‘They’re taking her to a part of the hospital where she’ll get special care. The same place your mother is. They might put her in the same room. That would be good,’ I said.

‘Why does she get to stay with Mommy?’ the seven-year-old asked.

‘Because she’s sicker than us!’ June answered. ‘Don’t be selfish, Samantha.’

The two boys hurried across the hall into the girls’ room. ‘Was that Melissa?’ Matthew asked. ‘What happened?’

‘We have to wait for the doctors to tell us,’ I said. Would they, I wondered? Would the doctors think to come tell these children what was happening with their sister? Who had authority over these children now? Their mother was in ICU, their father was dead, their stepfather and Emily – whatever she might be to them – were both in jail.

I excused myself from the children and went into the hall to use my cell phone. When the person on the other end of the line said, ‘Hello?’ I said, ‘Carol Anne, it’s Dr McDonnell.’

Dalton Pettigrew – Friday

The ME’s report was on Dalton’s desk when he got in that Friday morning. He opened it and began to read. There was a lot of gobbledy-gook he didn’t understand, but in the remarks section it said: ‘The victim appears to have been hit on the head by a hard object that was not the cause of death, but may have stunned him. Cause of death was suffocation.’

It also said the man was anywhere from fifty to sixty years of age, had type two diabetes, and probably suffered from high blood pressure. He only had seventeen original teeth, five replaced with a broken partial denture. And he was missing his baby toe on his right foot. Dalton figured with all this information, or these parameters, he should have no problem finding a missing person report on this guy. He smiled and walked over to Holly’s desk.

‘Hey, Holly,’ he said boldly.

‘Hi, Dalton,’ she said, returning his smile.

‘Could you help me check missing persons’ reports for these parameters,’ he said, grinning with his choice of words. He gave her the description he’d received.

‘Sure,’ she said, taking the sheet of paper where he’d written down the man’s description. ‘It might take some time.’

‘Hours?’ he asked.

Holly sighed. ‘More like days,’ she said. ‘The service is way backed up, and just trying to log in can cause major frustration. But I’ll keep at it.’

‘Don’t get stressed out,’ he said.

She looked up at him and smiled. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll try not to.’

‘Good,’ he said.

He stood there for a long moment, each of them looking at the other. A million comments flew through his mind but none landed. Finally, Dalton turned and walked away.

Milt Kovak – Friday

I stayed so late at the shop the night before that I decided to sleep late Friday morning. I left a message with Dalton, who was on call, told my wife, and shut off my alarm. I was wide awake at seven thirty. OK, I usually get up at six thirty, so I slept in an hour. Not what I’d planned on. But the whole mess of what was going on with these church people was getting to me. Somebody killed a woman everybody seemed to love. So what did that mean? Was it an accident? Was somebody after someone else and accidentally killed Mary Hudson? Or
was
it some vagrant after money or jewelry? The Branches is an exclusive neighborhood with lots of rich people. Was it an accident that this asshole broke into one of only three houses in all of The Branches that didn’t have cash-and-carry loot? I tried to remind myself that shit happens. It could have been a vagrant. Or maybe teenagers? The Branches teenagers would be more likely to get stoned and run somebody over in their brand-new Beamer than break into a home and kill a woman for no reason.

Of course, there’s always the scenario of the thrill-kill teens. Knew the Hudson children from school, thought they were weird because of the way they dressed, decided to get ’em, got to the house and only found Mary. And killed her.

I sighed and got out of bed and took a shower. That didn’t help much. I smelled better, but that was about it.

When I got to the shop, about an hour and a half later than usual, all hell had broken loose.

I came in the back door and could hear a commotion going on in the front. I dropped my crap on a chair in my office and walked to the bullpen. Holly was behind the counter, literally wringing her hands. In front of her stood Emmett Hopkins, trying to calm a very upset lady.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked Holly.

‘This lady’s father disappeared . . .’ she started but I tuned her out when I recognized the lady.

Brenda Burdy, as I live and breathe. I’d had a mad crush on her in my freshman year in high school, before I started dating my first wife, LaDonna. Brenda was the prettiest girl in school, already with a Marilyn Monroe figure at fourteen. She had naturally blonde hair, big blue eyes, gorgeous lips, righteous ta-tas, as we used to say, and an ass that looked damn good in a straight skirt. There wasn’t a boy in school who didn’t salivate when she walked by.

I recognized the blue eyes and the lips. The righteous ta-tas and the gorgeous ass had blurred a bit, rounding out to one very large body. ‘Brenda?’ I said.

She turned to me, eyes rimmed with red, face haggard. ‘Sheriff?’ she said.

‘Yes, ma’am. Can I help you?’

‘My daddy’s disappeared! I don’t know what happened to him! His bed hasn’t been slept in!’ She was clutching my arms, her face wet with tears and, forgive me, snot.

‘Was he living at home or in a nursing home?’ I asked her. This is when I happened to notice Emmett Hopkins making hand signals over Brenda’s head. I don’t read hand signals so I’m not sure what he meant, but I did interpret that something was up.

‘The nursing home out on the highway!’ she said.

‘Which highway?’ I asked.

That’s when she started shaking me. ‘You know! The one on the highway! Help me!’ And she started sobbing.

‘Brenda, come on, let’s go sit down over here,’ I said, trying to lead her to the bench in the reception area.

‘No! No!’ she said, pushing me away. ‘I’ve got to find my daddy!’

She headed for the front door, but Emmett blocked her way. ‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘we’re gonna do everything we can to help you find your daddy, but right now, we need you to sit down so we can figure out where he is, OK?’

She turned and looked at me, squinching her eyes half-closed. ‘Do I know you?’ she asked.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, ‘I’m the sheriff. We also went to high school together, but that was a long time ago.’

Her eyes slowly opened and she smiled and, Lordy, she was Brenda Burdy all over again. ‘You’re on the football team, aren’t you? You’re LaDonna’s boyfriend!’

I looked over her head to Emmett, and he just shrugged. Finally, looking back down at the former beauty queen of Longbranch High School, class of none-of-your-business, I smiled and said, ‘Yeah, that’s me. How you doing, Brenda?’

‘It’s my daddy,’ she said as I led her to the bench and we sat down together. ‘I can’t find him.’

‘I’m sorry to hear about that. When did you see him last?’ I asked.

Her eyes narrowed and she appeared to stare off into space. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘This morning? Or maybe yesterday morning?’ She shook her head hard, like she was trying to shake something loose. ‘It’s so hard to remember sometimes.’ She looked at me and smiled again. ‘But I remember you!’ Then she put her hands on either side of my face and kissed me smack on the lips. When she finished, she whispered, ‘Don’t tell LaDonna!’ and giggled.

I whispered back, ‘I won’t.’

Then the door opened and Steve Burdy, Brenda’s little brother, quarterback three or four years behind our class, came in.

‘Brenda!’ he said, running to where we sat on the bench. He knelt in front of his sister. ‘You OK, honey?’

‘Hey, darlin’,’ she said, patting the top of Steve’s head. ‘I’ve been looking for Daddy.’

‘That’s OK, honey, I found him,’ Steve said.

‘You did?’ Brenda said, clapping her hands and squealing with delight.

And then I remembered.

Steve pulled his sister up from the bench and I stood up. He said, ‘I’ll take her home, Sheriff. I’m sorry, this won’t happen again.’

I nodded my head. ‘You call us any time you need to, Steve.’

‘Yes, sir.’ He frowned. ‘Do I know you?’

‘Brenda and I went to school together. I was on the team a few years ahead of you.’

‘Kovak – Milton Kovak?’

‘Yeah, that’s me.’

He grinned and held out his hand and we shook. ‘You had a great rep, Sheriff.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, trying hard not to blush.

‘He’s LaDonna’s boyfriend,’ Brenda said. Then she whispered, ‘And I kissed him! Shhhh, don’t tell LaDonna!’ Then she laughed.

‘Come on, Bren, let’s head home,’ he said.

‘I can’t wait to see Daddy!’ Brenda Burdy said as she and her brother left the office.

Emmett, Holly and I stood there watching. When they were out of the building and out of sight, Emmett said, ‘The brother called just as she walked in, said she was confused. I’ve seen confused. What the shit was that?’

‘The prettiest girl at Longbranch High School. Miss Everything. Senior year she was driving her father someplace – work, I think – when they got hit by a semi. She was stuck in the car for over two hours, totally conscious and miraculously uninjured, with her father’s decapitated body. She never came back to school, and I’m ashamed to say I haven’t thought about her in all these years. Looks like she never left that day.’

‘God almighty,’ Emmett said under his breath. And Holly burst into tears.

Just another day at the shop.

Jean Mcdonnell – Friday

I explained to Carol Anne Hudson what had been going on at the McKinsey house.

‘Oh, dear God! That’s horrible! And Emily was part of this?’

‘It appears so,’ I answered. ‘The problem now,’ I told her, ‘is the children. I would hate for them to go into the system and be sent to separate foster care situations while their mom’s in ICU, but I can’t see what else to do. That’s why I called you.’

There was dead silence on the other end of the line.

‘Carol Anne?’ I finally said.

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry, this is too much . . .’ I started.

‘I was just thinking,’ she said. ‘We could make my old house a temporary boys’ dorm and my mom and Dennis could watch the boys, and we could make our house the girls’ dorm. Hallelujah!’ she cried out. ‘I think that will work! I’ll keep Mark here, of course, he’s just a baby. How old is Rachael’s youngest?’

‘Seven. A girl,’ I said.

‘That’s right. Samantha. How long do you think Melissa will be in ICU?’

‘I really don’t know about either of them – Melissa or her mother. I can find out tomorrow, though.’

‘And the other children?’ she asked.

‘They’re being hydrated right now, and fed and given vitamins. They’ll probably be released later today.’

‘Whoa, then I better get the kids and get to it! We need to figure out beds and bedding, and towels. Oh, Lord! I need to go grocery shopping!’

‘Carol Anne?’

‘Yes, Dr McDonnell?’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

She laughed. ‘The Lord never gives a person more than they can handle, Dr McDonnell. You should know that.’

SEVEN

Nita Skitteridge – Friday

I
rode with the sheriff to the hospital in the van we use to transport prisoners. We picked up the McKinsey kids, but there were only the four since little Melissa was in ICU with her mother. The sheriff sent me inside to deal with getting the kids released, which meant me signing a bunch of papers as temporary guardian, representing the sheriff’s department, and then signing more papers to prove I was with the sheriff’s department and had the right to represent the sheriff’s department as temporary guardian of these children. Then, finally, we got to the medical releases. It would have been a lot easier if the sheriff had come in, but he was out in the van, listening to the radio – and I don’t mean police calls either – I’m talking that awful country music he listens to. Sounds like somebody choking on their biscuits and gravy, if you ask me.