Chapter Thirty-one

Dead Ringer

Go here to read Chapter 30.

New subscriber? Like mysteries? Go here to read Dead Ringer from the beginning!

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Beams of sunlight pierced the early morning mist as I pulled up to Heavenly’s Doughnuts. Through my barely-open window I caught the aroma of deep-fried food, and my stomach responded with a low, excited rumble.

Behind Heavenly’s beige tile exterior the wide blue sky was dabbed with cotton-candy clouds of pink and lavender. Cathy Stearnes stood in front of the plate glass window with her arms crossed. I knew it was her, because the glare she gave matched the voice on the phone, and also the ultra-white polyester no-nonsense tunic top and pants gave her away. Also, just so you don’t mistake me for some super-sleuth, we were the only customers on the premises.

I got out of my car and walked around to her. “Good morning, Cathy, and thank you again for agreeing to meet.”

She ignored my extended hand and said, “Let’s get this over with.”

I followed her into the building like a meek child. From behind I could tell she didn’t mind a doughnut or two, and good for her, I thought. Life is short. Personally, I was salivating in anticipation of the apple fritter I was planning to wolf down.

We stepped up to the counter where a lanky dark-haired boy watched us through wary eyes, as if alarmed to see actual people approaching. Then he noticed Cathy and gave her curves a quick but thorough once-over, his face softening into an appreciative grin.

“G’mornin’” he said, leaning toward her, his hands on the metal counter. “What can I get you, miss?”

“I’ll take a dozen doughnuts,” she said, all business, not even glancing in my direction and missing completely the moony look in the boy’s eyes. “Two glazed, two apple cider, two chocolate-covered, two cinnamon, two plain with sprinkles, and two bear claws.”

He pulled a large piece of translucent bakery paper from a box on the table behind him. The delicious, dense smells of yeast and hot oil filled my head as he nestled the doughnuts in a bright pink box. “And what else?”

“That’s twelve,” she said a bit shortly.

“When you buy a dozen. You get a free one.”

“Oh,” she said. “Add another chocolate-covered one then.” Cathy turned to me and narrowed her eyes. “They’re for my co-workers.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Anything else?” That boy must have been born hopeful. You could see it in the wide-open sweetness of his slightly-pimpled face and his crooked smile. Cathy didn’t appear to notice any of it.

“A hot chocolate. With extra whipped cream,” she said. “And she’s buying.” She jerked her head in my direction. The boy handed her the box of doughnuts, making one last vain attempt to impart his admiration, but she walked away without making eye contact and took a seat at a table by the side window. He gazed after her for a second, then turned back and gave me a flat, annoyed look as if I’d thoroughly ruined his day by showing up.

“Black coffee and an apple fritter for me, please.”

He sighed and fished an apple fritter the size of a small kitten from the case, dropping the confection into a white paper bag that he handed to me. The heft of it made me weak in the knees. Then he splashed some coffee into a styrofoam cup, glancing in the direction of the fair Catherine. He handed me the coffee and turned to make her hot chocolate, whooshed a generous dollop of pressurized whipped cream on top, passing the cup to me. “That’ll be eleven dollars and seventeen cents.”

I gave him a ten and a five and joined Cathy Stearnes at the table. She pulled the box of doughnuts toward her as if I might try to filch one. “So what is it you want to know?” She made a show of glancing at her watch.

I took a good look at the young woman — her plump cheeks, pink and soft and the way her chin-length blond hair curved along her cheek, her bright blue eyes darting from me to the yellow formica table to the trees outside, noting how when she took a sip of hot chocolate, a small mustache of whipped cream laced the top of her pillowy upper lip, and it stabbed me. She was just a kid, really, a twenty-something whose teens were still in her rearview mirror.

I pulled out my pen and notebook and opened it, wondering how good she was at reading upside down. I turned to a clean page to save her the trouble. “This must be really hard for you, and I’m so terribly sorry,” I said.

She chewed on the inside of her lip for a second, then took a deep breath. “Just tell me what you want.”

“Cathy, I was a friend of Rachel’s.”

“So you said.”

“And her brother, Weston, hired…”

“I met him, yes…” She looked at her watch again, cuing me to get to the damned point.

“Look, we know someone injected fentanyl into Rachel’s IV. You are the one who discovered her. So anything you can tell me — anything at all — could help lead to finding out who did this.”

“I already told the police…”

“I know,” I said. “Indulge me.”

“Why should I?”

I fully understood and appreciated her anger at me. I let a moment of silence build before I asked, “Have you talked to an attorney yet?”

For the first time, she let her guard down. “Why? I didn’t do anything! I found her and reported it immediately!”

“I hear you. But don’t you think WindDancer has an attorney on retainer for just such eventualities as patients’ deaths in their facility? Because I can assure you they do. And that attorney’s job is to make sure the corporation doesn’t take responsibility for anything it can weasel out of. That attorney’s job is to make sure WindDancer stays out from under any suspicion of wrongdoing or negligence, and the best way to do that is to find a scapegoat, and that would be you and any other staff who provided care for Rachel. Because it sure as hell isn’t going to be the CEO, with his ginormous vacation house on the Outer Banks and his semi-annual golf trips to Scotland.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” she repeated, her voice rising.

“I know that. All I’m asking for is your help in giving me every detail you can think of.”

“I already told all this to the police,” she said.

“Without an attorney.”

“They told me I didn’t need one.”

“Yeah, they’ll say that. I’ll get you the name of a good one.” I was pretty sure Mark’s strawberry-blond knew what she was doing.

“I can’t afford one,” she said with a little catch in her voice.

“I’ll talk to Weston. I’m sure we can work something out with him. He wants the killer caught and brought to justice.” I saw how she winced at the word ‘killer’. “Cathy, someone planned and carried out the murder of a woman right under the allegedly watchful eye of an entire medical facility staff. Can you think what kind of person would do that? It chills me to the bone. We absolutely cannot let them get away with it. Please. Rachel deserved better.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “I was coming in after the night shift. I looked over her chart — someone had been in at 4:45 to switch out her IV bag, take her vitals. Everything looked normal. I said, ‘Good morning, Miss Roper,’ like I always do, I always announce that I’m there, because I didn’t want to startle her.”

“Okay, you said ‘someone’ had come in at 4:45. Do you know who?”

She nodded. “Yes, it was initialed ‘LD’ and signed ‘Larry Denton’, he’s part of the overnight staff.”

I scribbled ‘Larry Denton’ into my notebook and circled the name with a big question mark beside it. “Go on, please.”

“What I noticed first…I said, ‘Oh, Miss Roper, you got your hair done!’ because it had been combed out and arranged all nice. She had such long, beautiful hair. Then I saw her hands, and it was just wrong, all wrong. I touched her, and she was so cold, and that’s when I knew.”

“And then what?”

“I went right to the station and told the charge nurse I was pretty sure she had passed.”

“What happened next?” I asked as I jotted down the details.

“The charge nurse paged the on-call doctor and then she and I went back to Miss Roper’s room. No heartbeat, no discernible pulse. Lividity. We had to wait for the doctor to make the declaration, but we knew.”

“So no one called a code?”

“They told me we don’t call a code when somebody’s already dead,” she said with an edge in her voice.

“Right. I’m just asking what’s WindDancer’s protocol.” Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe they didn’t have one. Private hospitals for rich people can pretty much do what they want. I made a note to check anyway.

“So then?”

“The on call doc arrived and they told me I should leave,” she said.

“What?”

“They said it would be best if I left. They told me to pick up a report form at the nurses station and write it up and then I could go home for the day.”

“That seems odd,” I said, but Cathy made no response. “Okay, so you don’t know what happened after that?”

“I don’t, no. I completed the report — it was only a couple of pages, just basic yes-or-no boxes to check — and I went back to my agency, where I had to write it up for my supervisor and meet with her.” I didn’t mention that I knew on her way she’d stopped to chat with at least one guy from the transport team who would end up spilling details about Rachel’s death to Will.

“Let’s go back to when you found Rachel.”

“Okay, but my supervisor told me not to worry, I’m covered under their insurance? So I don’t really need a lawyer?”

Poor thing had no clue. Where were this kid’s parents? “Okay, well, back to the day Rachel died. Was there anything out of place? Anything you noticed that seemed unusual?”

“Nothing.”

“Anything at all.”

“I just said no.” Her voice shook with rising impatience.

“Okay. Can you tell me about her hands?”

That stopped her. “What?”

“I understand there was something unusual about her hands.”

“I guess, yeah,” she said with reluctance. “Formal-looking. Like they’d been arranged. Like, not something a person would do herself.”

“Can you show me?”

She stared at me. “Excuse me?”

“Do you mind showing me how her hands were?”

“They were crossed,” she said.

“I think I understand what you’re describing, but just to make sure…”

She shut her eyes and pressed her lips together, hard. Sitting up straight, she placed her hands on her chest with her right hand over the left.

Like how a body is laid out in a casket, I thought but didn’t say.

“And you’re sure the right hand was covering the left?”

She opened her eyes, clearly on the verge of tears. “What is wrong with you?!” She stood up and glared at me. “I know I shouldn’t have said anything about Miss Rachel to those guys, but I was very upset. I wasn’t thinking straight.” So she’d figured out what I knew and how. I imagined Cathy Stearnes had found at least one member of the transport team more than marginally attractive. I got it. That tingly sensation had made me do a lot of things I later regretted.

“Cathy, I certainly didn’t mean…”

“You shut up!” she said, kicking at her chair. “I only came here because Miss Rachel was so sweet and I felt so awful that she died.” She wiped tears off her cheeks with the back of one hand. “You are a terrible person. You lied to get me here, and now I don’t even know if anything you said is true, and oh, my God, I hope you die of something awful and go straight to hell.”

Well, now. The sweet young woman had certainly disappeared. And technically I hadn’t lied to get her to meet me, I’d lied to get her to return my call, but she’d made a fair point. “It’s ten to seven,” I said. “You’d better go. I’ll get you the name and number of that attorney.”

“Don’t bother,” she said, grabbing her box of doughnuts.

I didn’t want to freak her out even more than she already was, but it seemed pretty clear no one was looking out for her. “Listen to me when I tell you. Your agency’s legal protection is for their liability. It’ll be no help to you if you’re criminally charged.”

“Oh, my God,” she snapped. “Just fuck you!”

Abandoning her hot chocolate, she stormed out the door. I glanced over at the boy behind the counter, who shot me a look that said “You’re obviously a colossal asshole,” and I thought, yeah, I certainly can be. 

These mere twenty minutes had felt like an ominous precursor to my afternoon meeting with Fred Moseley, who would probably relieve me of my position as chaplain this very day. And honestly, I wouldn’t blame him one bit. 

I took a sip of weak coffee, bit an edge off the apple fritter, for which I’d lost all appetite, and grabbed Cathy’s hot chocolate, tossing everything into the trash. I couldn’t imagine there would be any charges coming from Detective Chad Miller and his gang, but I was fairly certain the attorneys for Cathy’s agency and for WindDancer would be more than happy to throw her and anyone else they could under the bus.

I’d call Mark on my way to St. Regis and get his lawyer’s number. My gut said Cathy Stearnes, CNA might just end up needing our help.