Chapter Thirty-two

Dead Ringer

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Poor Blainey Blair. We left her hanging as she pondered how to break the news to her boss, the Director of Pastoral Care, Fred Moseley, that she’s been moonlighting as an assistant to a local P.I. and her current case involves the murder of a former patient at St. Regis Hospital. Can you say “conflict of interest”?

Let’s rejoin her and see where she is in the investigation into Rachel Roper’s untimely death.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I both dreaded and welcomed my afternoon meeting with Fred. It was way past time to come clean and get things out in the open, but as I drove along, I mulled over how best to tell him, and the longer I mulled the more I wanted to chicken out. Also, in the back of my mind was a ringing awareness of my ever-diminishing savings account. Big Eddie had left the door open for me to come back and pick up bartending at McGill’s, but I didn’t relish the thought of returning to that work. Although I will say, having a background in pastoral care came in handy. That thing about people crying in their beer? Yeah, it’s real.

The back of my neck felt pinched as I drove, as if a hard hand gripped me. I swiveled my head and stretched, feeling the weight of the meeting with Cathy Stearnes. She’d come at me with more teeth than I expected, and who would blame her? But she was just young enough and naive enough that she didn’t know the danger she was in. I grabbed my phone and dialed Mark’s number.

“Hey,” he answered.

I didn’t beat around the bush. “Hey, yourself. I need the number for your hot attorney friend. I have a feeling the cops are going to look pretty closely at the CNA who found Rachel. I’ll get Weston to pay for it,” I added.

“Oh,” he said. “Elizabeth Walker. Hold on.” I heard footsteps and the high pitch of Angie’s voice. I was still trying to wrap my head around Mark as a dad, and not doing it very successfully. I still pictured him as a secretive womanizer. This reframe was going to take me a while.

By the time I got to St. Regis, the parking lot was a flurry of morning shift change activity, cars backing out in a hurry, on their way home to collapse and get some sleep before it started all over again. As I eased into the spot marked Pastoral Care, Guy Trubiano stepped off the curb and strode past without even glancing in my direction. I watched him in my side mirror, noting with admiration those broad shoulders and marvelous glutes. I knew I’d missed a chance with him. I hoped it wasn’t the only one I’d have, but my front burners were plenty full right now.

I still couldn’t shake the feeling that Rachel’s killer was not that far away, and I knew her death couldn’t be a random attack. To be murdered at the beginning of your search for the daughter you lost to adoption as a sixteen-year-old kid? Somebody was so desperate to keep the truth from coming out that they were willing to take the life of the one who could name them. It would be someone who had a lot to lose. Someone who had knowledge of medical procedures. Someone who would know how to gain access to a hoity-toity private hospital without arousing interest or suspicion.

It would also be someone who’d lived in the area twenty-some years ago, when Rachel lived here in Brady with her mother — her stinking rich mother, who had trafficked her daughter to men in exchange for pharmaceuticals.

I was more convinced than ever of the strong likelihood the person I was looking for had been a med school student then. A sudden chill came over me. In the weirdest twist of events, I might even know this person. A killer. Hiding in plain sight, with a calm, professional exterior that hid a sociopathic monster — someone who’d used Rachel for his own pleasure, as if she was a toy.

Mavis was tippy-tapping on her computer when I swung open the door to Pastor Care, her lips pursed in an officious “I’m so very busy” expression, but instead of seeming defensive she seemed to exude a new kind of confidence. I’d bet dollars to doughnuts the security guard Sam Thompson who’d been hovering around our office had something to do with it, and bless his heart for that.

The surgery schedule was on my desk, along with a couple of other notes about patients who’d requested a pastoral visit. It would be a busy morning, which worked fine for me. That would help keep my mind occupied and the dread tamped down while I waited for my two o’clock meeting with Fred.

I shut my door so I could call Weston Roper. When it rolled to voicemail, I left a quick update and insisted he pony up attorney’s fees for Elizabeth Walker.

I dialed her number next and was all ready with a rehearsed message, but to my surprise she picked up on the second ring.

“This is Elizabeth. Who am I speaking with, please?” Her voice was warm, comforting.

“Hi, Elizabeth, I’m a friend of Mark Danner’s, “ I said. “I know a young woman who might need your help.”

“You’re the minister, aren’t you,” she said, leaving me to wonder what stories Mark had been sharing.

“That’s me.” I tried to sound jaunty and fun and not like an anxious wrapped-around-the-axle middle-aged woman with questionable sense and problematic ego needs.

“How can I help?” she said, and I was gratified to hear she sounded like she really meant it. I gave her the condensed version of Rachel’s story — woman returns to where as a girl she was raped by one of mom’s friends, became pregnant, surrendered her daughter to adoption, is hospitalized, murdered, and a young CNA discovers her unresponsive and lifeless. Elizabeth agreed it would be wise for Cathy to at least have a consultation.

“They’ll be looking for someone to pin it on,” she said. “There'll be lots of pressure from the moneyed folks attached to WindDancer to make it go away real fast. I know some of those board members. Complete douche bags.”

Oh, well, now. The lovely Elizabeth Walker had a potty-mouth. She and I were going to get along just fine. Also, she didn’t mention payment until the very end of the conversation, which made me like her even more.

When I opened my office door, Mavis was standing there with one hand in a raised fist like she was getting ready to knock. We both jumped, startled, and I saw her eyes were wet. “Here,” she said and handed me a note written in her neat script. “It says that Jenny Malone’s mom is at Duke hospital with an aneurysm. It’s bad,” she said.

Shit, shit, shit.

After the harrowing journey of Jenny’s heart transplant, that family deserved nothing more than peace and comfort and every possible joy for the rest of their lives. I felt my anger rise. Not for the first time I wondered why a loving God allowed so damn much suffering.

“Also, Fred called to confirm your two o’clock with him today,” Mavis said, blinking against the tears.

I nodded. “It’s on my calendar.”

My mind raced. My instinct was to get back in my car and head to Durham. The pastoral care schedule was full, but I could pull in Benny, the wayward intern. He’d never returned my call after his disappearing act during his last overnight ER shift, and he’d kept dodging our supervision meetings. I left him an ultimatum on his voicemail — either come in to sub for me, take thorough notes with reflection on each visit and leave them on my desk, or he could pack up and leave the program.

Next, I called Maria Shelbourne, the director of Pastoral Care for the hospital at Duke, and she brought me up to speed. There’d been abdominal pain chalked up to stress — what mother wouldn’t be coming out of her skin after months with twelve-year-old Jenny hospitalized, clinging to life and hoping a heart could be found before she ran out of time? Then the hypervigilance of bringing Jenny home, gauging every cough, every sneeze, every ache and pain, and counting out a barrage of daily meds.

When Nora had collapsed on the kitchen floor, David, prepped and ready on the cellular level to respond to any emergency, immediately called 911. Now in the ICU, his wife clung hard to life. I couldn’t imagine the stress on Jenny’s frail body, her surgical wound barely healed.

“I’d like to come visit,” I said. “I know your folks are on top of it, I don’t mean to get in the way. Jenny, the family — they mean a lot to me.”

“Of course,” Maria said. “Just come on up to my office and check in. I’ll have a pass for you. It’ll be good to see you.”

I was all out of prayers. Instead, all I had to offer on the half-hour drive to Durham was a muttered “Please, please, please, please…” on a loop. Maria kept our conversation brief and walked with me to the ICU unit and back to Nora’s room where the familiar soundtrack of life support whooshed and beeped and gurgled and clicked as Nora lay unconscious. David stood by her bed, completely stricken, his eyes swollen and face the color of ash. I went to stand beside him and he gathered me in a hug.

“Thank you for coming,” he said, and then whispered, “She can’t die, Blainey. She just can’t.”

I nodded. What could I say? Of course she couldn’t die, that was utterly absurd. But also it was more than likely that she would die. I knew the powerful tool of denial that comes with shock was keeping David sane right now.

“And Jenny?” I asked, taking his hand.

“Nora’s sister is with her now. She’s doing great, Blainey. She’s doing so great.” He choked back a sob, and we turned our attention to Nora. Somewhere underneath all the hardware and surgical tape and silicone tubing and IVs was his wife, his love. I found my praying voice, Maria came to stand beside us, and we bowed our heads and beseeched the Almighty.

“If you can, go home and get some rest,” I said to David as I was leaving. “Jenny needs you, you need sleep, and Nora is in the best possible hands here.”

“I will,” he said, and we both knew he wasn’t going anywhere.

“I’ll check back later,” I said. “Tell Jenny I said hi?”

Maria walked me to the elevator. “It’s terribly serious, but the fact she’s still alive gives reason for hope,” she said, answering the question I hadn’t asked. “I promise to keep you posted.”

I was alone in the elevator leaning against the back wall when the cab slowed and the door opened and a young woman in dark green scrubs got on. I stared at her, my mouth open, and tried to breathe. Tall and slender with high cheekbones, cinnamon-colored hair, and eyes the blue of an October sky, as Guy had so eloquently put it, she was the spitting image of Rachel Roper. She nodded at me and gave me an odd look, obviously put off by my gawking.

I pulled my eyes away from her, but not before catching the name on her ID badge.

Mandy Wytheman. Oh, my God.

The words were out before I could stop them. “Is Miller Wytheman your father?”