Jason stayed with her in the ER,
for all the good it did. Lacy was out of her head, beyond delirious. Most of
the time, she muttered about cronuts, only calming when Jason promised to find
one for her. First he needed to figure out what they were.
Mr. Middleton arrived solo.
“Frannie wanted to come,” he explained. “I think she’s had a change of heart
about the level of danger Lacy was in, but I wanted her to stay with Lucinda.”
Jason nodded, trying not to let his
relief show. The last thing he needed right now was to deal with Lacy’s mother.
“They’re going to admit her overnight for observation,” Jason said, just as two
men in scrubs came to retrieve her.
“You can wait in the fourth floor
lobby,” one of them said. “Someone will come to get you once she’s set up.”
They wheeled her away. Jason
watched helplessly. Lacy turned to him with wide eyes. “Cwonut?” she whimpered.
“It’s coming,” he promised. When
she was out of sight, he turned to Mr. Middleton. “What’s a cronut?”
“A cross between a doughnut and a
croissant, and only available in Manhattan.”
“Figures,” Jason muttered. Other
women wanted diamonds or shoes. Lacy wanted regional pastries. They went to the
fourth floor together and sat in the small lobby.
“Tell me how you found her again,” Mr.
Middleton said.
“She was in the equipment shed at
the ball field,” Jason said.
“That’s pretty far,” Mr. Middleton
said. “I can’t believe she walked that way all on her own.”
“I know,” Jason agreed. He was glad
to discuss the puzzling situation with someone. “She also had water.”
“She walked all that way with a
bottle of water?” Mr. Middleton said, echoing Jason’s dismay.
“She said someone gave it to her,”
Jason said.
Mr. Middleton looked at him,
pausing a long time before he spoke. One of the best things about Mr. Middleton
was his calm, rational demeanor. “But you don’t believe that,” he said at last.
“It’s not likely,” Jason said.
“That would mean that someone either took Lacy or found her wandering and used
it to his advantage. Who would do that? And why?” He didn’t like where his
thoughts were leading.
“Good questions,” Mr. Middleton
said. He looked equally disturbed.
“I bagged the water bottle, but I’m
not likely to lift any prints off it. Even if I do, what would they tell me?
Unless whoever might have taken her has a prior, but what are the chances of
that? I know everyone in town except the protesters.” One of them was now dead.
Was it possible that one of the protesters had taken Lacy? If so, why? He ran
his fingers through his hair, thinking. The whole situation was a mess.
“Lacy Steele.” Jason and Mr.
Middleton looked up when a nurse spoke. “She’s ready,” she added after catching
their eye.
“Mind if I pop in and check on her?
I’m going to go home after,” Mr. Middleton said. “It’s been a long day.”
“The longest,” Jason agreed. “Go
ahead.”
Mr. Middleton only stayed a few
minutes. When he emerged, he waved to Jason and left. Jason walked to her room
with some trepidation, not sure how to tell her that a cronut wouldn’t be
forthcoming anytime soon. But when he entered, he saw her sitting up, looking
lucid with an IV line attached to her arm. He vaguely remembered a nurse in the
ER saying they were going to pump her full of fluids, antibiotic, and pain
reliever.
“Yayshon,” she beamed, smiling as best
she could through enormously swollen cheeks.
“How are you doing?” he asked. He
leaned over the bed, looking for a spot to kiss and at last settled on her
forehead. It appeared to be the only part of her cranium not doubled in size.
“Weawwy well,” Lacy said.
He perched on the bed and took her
hand. “You scared me today.”
“I’m sowwy,” she said. “I’m fine,
weawwy.”
“Lacy, do you remember what
happened?”
“Yesh.”
“I need you to tell me everything.
Start from the moment you left the house and go until I found you. This is very
important, okay?”
She nodded solemnly. “I wemember
evewyfing,” she said.
“Good. What happened?”
“I had a fight wif my mom,” she
said.
“You did? She didn’t tell me about
that.”
Lacy nodded again. “It was pwetty
howwible. We bof said fings. I went to my woom, but when I woke up, I didn’t
know where I was.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well, my woom wooked da same, but
when I walked outside, evewyfing was diffwent. I walked for a while, den I met dis
talking scarecwow. He was weawwy nice, so we walked togedder for a while, and
den we found dis fowest.”
“Let me guess,” Jason interrupted.
“You found a talking lion.”
Her jaw fell, and she winced. “How
did you know dat? Did I teww you dis stowy befowe?”
“No, but I’ve seen the movie.
Sweetheart, that’s not your story. It belongs to Dorothy from the
Wizard of Oz.
”
“Oh,” she said. “Dat would expwain
all da dancing dwarves. I fought dat part was odd.” She lay back and stared at
the ceiling. “It was a good dweam, wots of singing. Evewyfing wooked wike
candy.”
Jason had been hoping that she
could tell him what had happened to her, but how could he maintain his
frustration when she was so cute and funny? “Did you sing and dance?”
“I was spectacuwar,” she declared,
straight-faced.
“Yeah? Lay it on me. Sing
something.” He expected her to sing, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” but he
should have known Lacy would never do anything predictable. She began to belt,
“If I Were King of the Forest,” and soon he was laughing too hard to breathe.
Perhaps what was most funny was that she was completely serious and undaunted
by the temporary speech impediment. Jason wished he had a recorder, but he had
left his phone in the car. Someday when she was lucid, she would enjoy hearing
herself sing, “If I were king of da fowest.”
She finished the rendition on a
yawn. Jason was still laughing. “Ah, Red, you keep me from being a grumpy,
lonely mess, you know that?”
She blinked sleepily and tried to
smile. He leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to her lips; when he pulled
back, she was asleep. The day’s stress and anxiety were gone. Both had a way of
magically disappearing, when he was with her. He was exhausted, but he stayed
for a long time, assuring himself that she was really okay.
The next morning came too soon. Not
even a run and a shower helped him wake up. He made two travel mugs of coffee
before remembering he wouldn’t be taking one to Lacy like usual. On most days,
he stopped by the Stakely building before work and took her some coffee. There
were five places to get coffee in the Stakely building, including Lacy’s
office, but they had come to enjoy the few minutes they spent together in the
morning. The evenings often disintegrated into craziness with work commitments
for him and family or friend commitments for her. Setting aside a few minutes
every morning just for them was quickly becoming a necessary aspect of their
relationship. He took the second coffee anyway. Maybe Lacy was with it enough
this morning to take a few sips.
A peek in her window at the
hospital quickly dispelled that notion, however. She was still sound asleep. He
wanted to see her, but it would be selfish to wake her. Instead, he waited in
the hall until the nurse had finished taking her vitals.
“How is she?” he asked.
“You’ll have to ask the doctor,”
the nurse said. “He’s the only one allowed to update on her condition.” The
frustration in her tone told him that she was no fan of the policy.
“Off the record, how is she?” Jason
asked, adding his most charming smile. Just because he wasn’t a flirt didn’t
mean he didn’t know how.
“Off the record, she’ll be fine.
She has dry socket and an infection. A few days of rest, fluid, and some
antibiotics, and she’ll be back to normal. Unless normal for her is sneaking
out of her room to hold the crash cart hostage until we double her pudding
rations.”
“She didn’t,” he said.
“She did,” the nurse said. “We
would have given her the pudding anyway, but she gave us a laugh.”
“That’s my girl,” he said. “I don’t
suppose I could ask you to tell her I was here when she wakes up.”
“For you, handsome, I’d get a
tattoo where the sun don’t shine,” she said.
He supposed he should have found
the statement creepy coming from someone twice his age, but he didn’t. “We’ll
start with the message and see where it goes.”
She was chuckling when she left
him; he hoped that would translate into extra care for Lacy. Over the years of
being a cop, he had learned to play nice with nurses. They were the power
players in a hospital, and they were also the ones who always knew what was
going on. Doctors swept in and out; nurses were there all the time. They heard
things. They saw things. And if they didn’t like you, they could make it hurt
the next time you needed medical attention.
His good mood lasted exactly until
he arrived at the office. That was when he remembered they were in the chaotic
early stages of a possible murder investigation. It wasn’t that he had
forgotten, exactly, just that his concern for Lacy had shoved it to a far
corner of his mind. Usually when he compartmentalized things, the reverse
happened and he forgot the real world in favor of work. Forgetting work for a
while was welcome relief. As soon as he walked in the door, however, it all
came crashing back with the appearance of Arroyo.
“Tox screen came back,” he
announced.
“You’re kidding,” Jason said.
“Who’d you bribe?”
“Let’s not look a miracle in the
mouth. Anyway, it turns out our vic was murdered with cleaning solution.”
“Cleaning solution,” Jason
repeated.
“Common everyday cleaning solution,
the kind probably found under every bathroom cabinet in America. Either our
killer used what was at hand or he’s some kind of clean freak with a fetish.”
He eyed Jason. “Wasn’t you, was it?”
In addition to giving him a hard
time about not drinking, his coworkers liked to razz him about his love of
cleaning. When he was a rookie, they used to torture him by leaving sticky
messes in his cruiser. He got them back by calling them in the middle of the
night to play Justin Beiber songs. The pranks ended for a long time after that.
“I wouldn’t use poison,” Jason
said. “Too uncertain.” Poison left the possibility of survival, however
gruesome that survival might be. It could also take a long time to work. Had Carl
Whether’s death been instant or slow and painful? Did the killer jab and dump,
or did he stand around to watch? Why had he used cleaning solution? Was it
premeditated or was that what was on hand? “Did you bring up any hits on the
method?”
“Nothing,” Arroyo said. “If our
killer’s hit before, he hasn’t made a habit of using this method.”
“Great,” Jason said. Basically,
they had nothing.
“Did you get anything from Joan
Baez yesterday?” Arroyo asked.
“A headache from the incense fumes.
According to her, ‘Forest’ liked naps.”
“Who’s forest?”
“That was her name for Carl
Whethers. She had known him all of three days. How about the others? Did you
get anything from them?”
“Nah. They might be worth another
look, though.”
Especially because we have
nothing else.
The unspoken thought hovered between them. “I heard you had
some trouble with your girlfriend last night.”
“I wouldn’t say trouble,” Jason
said.
“What would you say?” Arroyo asked.
“I heard she disappeared for hours and you had to do a search.”
“That’s pretty much the gist of
it,” Jason said. He was uncomfortable with Arroyo knowing too much about Lacy
or their relationship. “She had her wisdom teeth out yesterday and had a bad
reaction to the medication. She’ll be fine.”
“Good, glad to hear it,” Arroyo said
with no conviction.
“Have you talked to the vic’s
employer?” Jason asked, happy to change the subject back to work and away from
his personal life.
“Carl Whethers was a stringer. When
he wasn’t working toward a Pulitzer, he mowed lawns for cash. The paper never
had any idea what he was working on ahead of time, but they did say that he dug
deep whenever he was on a story, enmeshing himself completely until he had all
the material he wanted. The trailer yielded nothing? No clues?”
Jason’s phone rang, providing a
distraction while he thought of a way out of the tricky situation. Fortunately
the call turned out to be an informant who was helping him on a prescription
ring involving a doctor the next town over. Jason had been working closely with
the neighboring sheriff’s department for months, trying to track the doctor’s
activity. The problem was that his informant was also a user and therefore not
reliable. He waved to Arroyo to let him know the call would take a while.
Arroyo gave him an upward nod and ambled away.
The call finished, and Jason went
to the evidence room to re-inspect the photos of Lacy. Why had Carl Whethers
had them? Why were they in chronological order unless the story he was working
on was about Lacy? That was possible; Lacy’s rags-to-riches story was
intriguing, as was her single-handed revitalization of their once decaying
downtown. If he were being objective, he would continue to believe that Lacy
was his prime suspect. If Carl Whethers had been writing an in-depth article
about her, he might have discovered something she didn’t want made known. Jason
knew that she didn’t want the media to grab hold of the facts surrounding her
inheritance, mostly because her mother didn’t know she was adopted. But would
the desire to keep a secret be reason enough to kill someone? The answer to
that depended on the secret.
Even if he looked at things
objectively, he couldn’t see any way the secrecy of Frannie’s adoption was
worth killing for. If revealed, the worst that would happen was that it might cause
a family rift. Lacy was protective of her family, but not to the point of
murdering to keep them from arguing.