Lethal Little Lies (Jubilant Falls Series Book 3) (7 page)

Chapter 9 Marcus

              It was nearly one in the morning Tuesday and I’d been staring out the window of the waiting room, watching the cars—patients, staff, delivery personnel—come and go in the hospital parking lot when the surgeon came out to tell me Kay made it.

              The lights hung above the rows of cars parked haphazardly around the cold dirty piles of plowed snow, everything yellowed in the eerie glow. A few blocks to the south I could see the illuminated stone clock tower of the courthouse and the glassy black tower of Aurora Enterprises, the business Kay ran, which provided us with such material wealth.

              Between them sat the
Journal-Gazette
. I wondered if Graham Kinnon, who’d been up to see me after Kay went into surgery, had completed his story on Kay. I couldn’t even remember the quote I’d given him.

              Lillian, Bronson and PJ had gone downstairs to the cafeteria for coffee. Andrew hadn’t arrived yet. I was with my thoughts for a while.

              As each car came and went, passing into or out of those lights, their color changed, much like I feared my life was changing. Would I have the woman I loved? And who did this to her? What if she didn’t make it? How would the kids and I rebuild what we’d had for so many years? Would our lives retain the same color or would the hue be forever changed?

              “Mr. Henning?”

              “Yes?” I couldn’t turn around. If she was gone, I didn’t want to know. I stared at an ambulance, pulling silently into the parking lot. Who was in the back of that vehicle? Were they alive? Dead? Whose heart was being broken as the doors of the emergency room slid open?

              “Your wife is in recovery. She’s going to be OK.”

              Breath rushed out of my chest. I leaned my forehead against the cold glass and squeezed my eyes together to keep relieved tears from falling.

              “We got the bullet—what was left of it—out. She’s lost her spleen, but she’ll do fine without it. There were a couple small nicks to her stomach and intestine, which we sewed up, and she’s lost a lot of blood, but she’s going to be OK. Fortunately, the bullet missed her kidney.”

              I finally turned around. “Thank you so much.”

              The doctor was a short, muscular black man with a graying goatee. He wore blue scrubs and surgical cap. Reading glasses sat at the edge of his wide nose and his brown eyes told me he’d seen too many gunshot wounds in his medical career, even here in Jubilant Falls.

              “I’ve called the police and let them know she’s made it. When she comes to, which should be sometime later in the afternoon, they are going to want to talk to her.” He flipped through Kay’s chart. “She is going to be on a lot of pain medications the next few days, so she’ll be pretty loopy. Do you have any other questions?

              I nodded. “I just wish I knew who wanted her dead.”

              The doctor folded his arms across Kay’s chart, his muscular arms holding it to his chest.

              “Mr. Henning, I don’t know what led to this situation and I don’t know who you deal with on a regular basis, but I’m going to take a leap here and tell you something I wouldn’t say to many others. I’ve seen your name in the paper. A lot. I know what kind of stories you do. I’ve also seen this kind of injury more than once and whoever shot your wife didn’t want her dead. They wanted her—or you—warned.”

              “Excuse me?”

              “Your wife was shot with a .22 caliber handgun with a fully-jacketed bullet. I’ve had patients
walk
into the emergency room with that kind of wound. Your wife’s loss of blood was what put her life at risk.”

              The elevator at the end of the hall opened and the kids stepped out. High stepping like a model on the runway Lillian held a cardboard tray with four lidded Styrofoam cups. PJ had his hands jammed deep in his pockets and stared at the floor as he walked. Bronson walked dutifully behind Lillian.

              I turned back to the doctor.

              “What do you mean?”

              “Just what I said—somebody wanted to warn either you or your wife. I’ll share it with the police, but I recommend you don’t tell them.” He nodded at the trio walking toward us.

              “But what if whoever did this comes back?”

              “I would take precautions, but what I told you was my own conjecture. I might be completely wrong.”

              Lillian dropped her runway walk when she saw the doctor. “Daddy—what’s going on? Is Mom OK?”

              “She’s in recovery right now,” the doctor said. “She’ll be moved to intensive care and you can visit her there. Because of her condition, visitors will be limited to family. The nurse will come out shortly and bring you back to see her.”

              He looked me in the eye. “Remember what I told you,” he said, backing toward the double doors of the surgical suite. “Or at least think about it.” The doors swung open and he was gone.

              “What did that mean?” PJ asked.

              “He was giving me some hints on how to take care of Mom once we get her home,” I said, sounding smoother than I felt.

              Another forty-five minutes, after we’d finished our coffees, the nurse finally came out and led us back to the ICU. Glass-walled rooms circled spoke-like around a central nurses’ station.

              Kay’s red hair was spread across the pillow, her white skin looked even paler and there were oxygen tubes at her nostrils. Her face was bruised; there were a couple stitches in her lower lip. Her chest rose and fell deeply as the heart monitor at the head of the bed beeped rhythmically. We circled the bed. I held Kay’s left hand and Lilly took her right.

              “Mom,” Lillian whispered. “Mom, we’re here. We love you.”

              “She’s probably not going to be awake until later this morning, probably close to lunch,” the nurse said. “If you want to go home and get some sleep, we can let you know when she wakes up.”

              “I’d like to stay here, maybe sleep in the chair?” I asked. “You kids can head home.”

              The nurse nodded. “I’ll bring you some blankets and a pillow.”

              PJ and Lillian leaned over Kay and kissed her gently then left, Bronson close behind my daughter.

             
Smart boy
, I couldn’t help thinking to myself.

              With the hospital-issue pillow and blanket, I settled into the chair and before long, fell asleep.

              The voice woke me up—husky and dark, smelling of too much whiskey and too many cigarettes. I hadn’t heard that voice in months. I never wanted to hear it again.

              “I hope your wife gets better Marcus.
Terrible
what happened.”

              I shot out of the chair and to the door. The entire unit was semi-dark, except for the nurse’s station that sat in the center, illuminated enough for them to monitor their patients. Red numbers—5:31— glowed on the wall. A nurse looked up at me.

              “Everything OK, Mr. Henning?” she asked softly.

A cleaning woman in blue scrubs, with long dreadlocks crammed into a hair net, pushed a bucket out of the unit, using both hands on the mop handle to steer. The squeak of one wobbly wheel echoed off the walls.

              “Who was just in this room?”

              “No one.”

              “You sure? Not her?” I pointed at the cleaning woman, who turned around and glared at me.

              “No. No one except me and I haven’t been in there in twenty minutes.”

              I rubbed my thinning hair. “I guess I must have been dreaming.”

              “Sleeping in a chair is never very comfortable,” she said soothingly. “Bad dreams at times like this wouldn’t surprise me.”

              “I guess.”

              “See if you can get some more sleep. Rounds are going to start in about another hour.”

              I sighed and stepped to Kay’s side, smoothing her hair. I leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Baby, I love you,” I whispered. Her eyelids fluttered, but did not open.

              I pulled the chair I’d been sleeping in next to the bed and sat down. I folded my arms on the mattress close to Kay’s legs, laid my head down and fell instantly asleep.

*****

              I met Charlie on a plane.

              An angular woman of medium height, she sat next to me on a Thursday night flight out of Chicago. I was on my way to a Seattle mystery writer’s conference, courtesy of my publisher.

              I wasn’t the guest of honor, accorded the responsibility of speaking at the Saturday night dinner. Instead, I would be speaking at the Friday night welcoming dinner, on journalists as mystery novel characters, serving on a few panels, signing books and enduring part of a late Saturday cocktail party thrown by my publisher where fans could meet me and the three other authors they’d shipped to Seattle.

              It was the fourth weekend in a row that I’d left Kay at home.

              I was sitting in the window seat when my traveling companion sank into the chair next to me. She had a sharp jutting jaw, a hawk-like nose and her slightly graying brown hair cut just below her chin that angled forward toward her thin red mouth. She was wearing a black sleeveless dress, with large silver bangle jewelry at her ears and wrists. Something that looked like silver-coated shrapnel hung on a chain around her neck.

              “Hi, I’m Charlie.” Her alto-register voice rasped almost like a man, I guessed from too many years of smoking and drinking. “Real name’s Charlene, but nobody calls me that.”

              “Marcus Henning. Headed to Seattle?”

              “Yes. Writer’s conference.” She dipped her shoulder and tilted her head my way. “I write mysteries,” she whispered.

              “Really? Are you headed to the Blood on The Page conference? At the Hilton?”

              “Yes! Don’t tell me you are too?”

              “As a matter of fact, I’m speaking there.”

              “No! So am I!”

              I pulled the seminar schedule from inside my blazer. “Don’t tell me you’re Charlotte De Laguerre. You’re speaking Saturday night.”

              “The very same. I was born Charlene Deifenbaugh, but that doesn’t sell a whole lotta books. And as the only girl in a family of six boys, I got christened Charlie pretty quick. My agent suggested my pen name. So is Marcus Henning your real name or the name you write under?”

“My real name. My mother was a fan of Roman history.”

“You know, I’ve read your book—very good for a first time out.”

              “Thank you. I’ve read yours, too, you know. There are not many people who can pull off a Celtic murder mystery. I’m sure the research was exhausting.”

              “Not too bad—I had my husband do a lot of the legwork. He’s not currently working, so he had time to kill.”               Charlie rolled her eyes as she took another sip from her drink. “I had to verify it all, but at least he did the heavy lifting.”

              “Really? That’s great he’d do that for you. My wife, Kay, wasn’t all that interested in the writing process of my book.” Or the book itself, truth be told. Kay hadn’t been interested—or maybe she felt threatened. I don’t know if she even read it. I could see now, that vacuum was the beginning of our estrangement.

              She leaned in toward me, invading my space. “That’s too bad. Trust me, I understand when spouses don’t think your writing is interesting. So… tell me more about this very sexy Chapman character you’ve created.”

              Our conversation exploded. I barely remembered the rest of the flight. My character Rhys Chapman had been created in a vacuum—no critique group, no other writers to bounce my ideas off of, not a mentor to guide me. I’d written it alone.

              Charlie, however, was fascinated with his genesis and the stories I’d covered at the
Journal-Gazette
that formed the basis of my fictional hero’s adventures.

              Charlie bought us each an old-fashioned as soon as the flight attendants came through and bemoaned the fact she couldn’t balance out her other hand with a cigarette. Another hour of dishing on our separate editors and she bought a couple more. The next hour was filled with a third old-fashioned apiece and a discussion on the agony of revision. The third hour of our flight and I had to decline a fourth drink.

              “I’m sorry—I’ve got to stay sober to drive to the hotel.”

              “Oh, sweetheart, didn’t Promotions tell you? Somebody from Blood on The Page is picking us up. We don’t do
anything
ourselves this weekend. Unless, of course, you want to…”

Chapter 10 Addison

              By seven-thirty, just a short two hours later, I was at work.

              Two shootings and Santa Claus: That morning’s page 1A should have been an editor’s dream.

              So why didn’t I have my usual fist-pumping reaction to a great front page? The circulation director was already talking to the publisher about increasing the press run to meet the demand for extra single copy sales.

              I didn’t care. A reporter’s wife had been shot and a local guy with nothing but sunshine in his future was behind bars accused of murder.

              That banner headline screamed STARRETT HELD IN FERGUSON MURDER in huge 72-point font.

              I’d managed to take a mercenary photo of Plummer County deputies leading a handcuffed Rick Starrett from my barn to a cruiser. Rick’s head hung in shame.

              Once in the office, I’d taken the story I’d written the night before for the Web site and updated it with Rick’s arrest, exchanging my byline for “From staff reports” since he’d been found on my property. I wasn’t looking forward to the phone calls from my usual whack-job readers who saw conspiracy in every dark corner. No doubt the prosecutor’s office was already fielding calls to have me arrested for harboring a fugitive. My stomach turned as I thought about what my publisher J. Watterson Whitelaw would say.

              I also wasn’t going to examine my gut too much, thinking about when I grabbed Isabella’s camera from the kitchen counter to take a picture of the man who’d just begged me not to call 911. I couldn’t open that ethical door either. What the hell did it matter, anyway? Fisher Webb’s offer was looking awfully good after the last few days.

              Starrett was going to be arraigned that afternoon. I needed to get the paper put to bed before I could run over to the courthouse.

              We received Ferguson’s obituary as well—it began as a sidebar in the middle of my story and jumped inside to the obit page. My story continued on page three.

              On the left side of the page, just below the story of Rick’s arrest, but above the fold, was Kay Henning’s story: MISSING WOMAN FOUND SHOT with Graham’s byline on it. We had a one-column headshot of Kay. Graham was on his way out to the scene where the police found Kay and to check on her condition at the hospital.

              I made a mental note to check in with Marcus after Rick’s arraignment.

              In the lower right hand side, reporter Elizabeth Day had a picture of Santa Claus at the elementary school and a small story on a holiday toy drive.

              Normally I’d be grinning from ear to ear. Not today.

Dennis handed me a proof of the front page, marked up with a red Sharpie.

              “If you see anything else…” He didn’t need to finish his sentence. “We’ve got twenty minutes before it needs to be sent to pre-press, believe it or not.”

              I took the proof from him and sat at Marcus’s empty desk, chewing my thumbnail as I read over the page.

              “Dates right. Page count is right. Index correct?” I looked up at Dennis.

              He nodded at me.

              “I didn’t see anything else you didn’t already catch. Send it.”

              Within the hour, the floors rumbled as the presses began to roll. Soon after, a pressman brought me a copy of the paper, the ink still slightly wet.

              I looked it over again, tossed it to Dennis and headed out the door to the jail, grabbing a camera and a notebook.

Maybe before he went to court, Rick Starrett would still talk to me.

*****

              I didn’t get there soon enough.

              Starrett was being walked from a cruiser to the prisoner’s entrance at the courthouse. TV station pretty boys and out-of-town newspaper hacks surrounded the former state senate candidate, in an orange and white striped prisoner’s uniform and shackles. If we’d had video arraignment like bigger cities, Rick could have avoided this circus.

              “Did you do it Rick? Did you do it?” The question never stopped. I managed to get up on the courthouse steps and snap a photo of Rick surrounded by deputies and media. Sadly, I followed the throng into the courthouse.

              Starrett’s shackles clanked as he stood before the judge.

              “How do you plead, Mr. Starrett?” Judge Susan Vernon looked up briefly at the defendant.

              “Not guilty, your honor.”

              I couldn’t help but recall the irony that Susan and Rick dated in high school—the head cheerleader and the star center for the high school basketball team. They’d been voted ‘cutest couple’ our senior year.

              Now she was hearing him enter a plea on a murder charge. At some point, she would probably have to recuse herself from the case.

              “The people request one million dollars bail, your honor,” Prosecutor Steve ‘Dolph’ Adolphus said. He brushed his thick moustache with his stubby fingers and squinted through his bifocals as he spoke.

              “Your Honor, my client’s long history of public service and connection to the community show that he is clearly not a flight risk,” Starrett’s attorney, Anna Henrickssen, a public defender, spoke clearly and confidently.

              “The defendant is
obviously
a flight risk,” Adolphus countered sharply. “He was found in the barn of a local resident, attempting to flee.”

              At least he didn’t mention it was
my
barn, I thought, bowing my head and continuing to write.

              “Bail is hereby set at one million dollars,” Vernon intoned, banging her gavel. “Defendant is remanded to custody.”

              And it was over. I watched as Rick was escorted back to his jail cell. I waited until the TV remote trucks pulled away and the out of town reporters left. After a few minutes, Anna Henrickssen, her ash-brown hair pulled back into a conservative ponytail and wearing sensible low heels with her pinstriped suit, came down the steps of the Plummer County Courthouse.

              Henrickssen had just passed her bar exam a few months ago and worked part time for a local law firm while taking whatever public defender cases she could to build a name for herself. I’d never seen her try a case—I’d have to get Graham Kinnon’s opinion of her work when I got back to the newsroom.

              “Miss Henrickssen?” I stepped forward and extended my hand.

              “Addison McIntyre.” She knew my name—maybe not a good sign. “My client wants to talk to you.”

“On the record?”

              “Strictly off. He says he has some information which will exculpate him in the murder of Miss Ferguson.”

“Any conversation he has with me will be recorded by jail staff.”

              “Not if I bring you into a conference with me. That’s covered by attorney-client privilege.”

              “You’re sure?”

              “Absolutely. My client says he wants you to find the real killer. That’s why he went to your place and why he was hiding in your barn.”

              “That put me in all kinds of ethical gray areas. My boss could really ream me for this—he hasn’t yet, but if I talk to your client, he will.”

              “I’m sorry for that, but my client believes that you know who the killer really is.”