Board Stiff (Mattie Winston Mysteries) (29 page)

“Yes, I see that now,” Dorothy says. “Very clever.” She is still straddling me, her knees pinning down my arms. She’s not a particularly heavy woman, but she is tall and solid. Getting her off me won’t be easy and my arms are starting to go numb from her weight on them. Hoping for a little more time, I go back to Dorothy’s coffee coup, and toy with her ego a little more.

“You were lucky . . . a chance . . . to get rid of . . . the coffee.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that one,” she says. “That
was
a stroke of luck. When I saw you and that detective go running out like the place was on fire, I saw my chance. I knew the guard officer on duty had just gone down the front hallway to use the public bathrooms, and he had a magazine with him so I figured I might have a minute or two to do what I needed. I went outside, climbed back through the same window I’d gone out earlier, dumped the coffee down the sink, rinsed the cup, and put it back on the desk. After the guard yelled out, ‘I’m back,’ there was a silence so loud I could hear my heart pounding. Then he started mumbling something and I could tell he was walking down the hall toward Bernie’s office. I thought for sure he was going to find me, but I heard the door at the end of the hall open again and heard the cop ask, ‘
Who are you?’ ”

“It was Arnie,” I say, recalling Officer Foster’s recounting of the events that night.

“Yes, how did you know?”

I don’t answer her. Instead, I let my eyes drift closed, feigning a barely retained consciousness.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dorothy says. “Anyway, I knew I had to get out of there because this Arnie fellow said he wanted to go into Bernie’s office to dust for prints. That’s when I realized that I hadn’t been wearing gloves when I rinsed out Bernie’s coffee cup. I pulled the sleeve of my sweater down over my hand, picked up the cup, and wiped it off with the front of my sweater. I set it back down and made a mad dash for the window. It was quite a rush!” she says, her voice excited. “Just as I slid that window back into place, the two men walked into the room.”

“Surprised we didn’t . . . notice window unlocked,” I say weakly, keeping my eyes closed.

“Remember when I paraded into Bernie’s office with the lawyers that first time?” she says with a smug tone. She doesn’t wait for me to answer or nod. “I locked the window while you and that detective were exchanging barbs with Trisha. It was the perfect distraction. I would have liked to get the sweetener then, too. I was prepared to grab it and hide it under my sweater, but it was already gone.”

I open my eyes and risk a look. The dizziness is better, but not gone. Dorothy is staring down at me and as soon as she sees me look at her, the smug smile on her face evaporates. I know my time is up unless I can find a way to keep her talking. I switch gears again and try to put her on the defensive.

“You weren’t . . . clever enough,” I say. “Bernie figured it out . . . didn’t he? That’s why you . . . killed him. He knew . . . what you were doing.”

“No way,” she says irritably. “Bernie was an idiot. He found those Cialis pills in my desk drawer, but he didn’t know what they were. He thought they were some kind of street drug or narcotic and told me I would have to be drug tested.” She rolls her eyes and scoffs. “Can you imagine someone suspecting
me
of drug abuse? I’m much too professional to do something like that.”

Clearly the irony of that statement, given that she has just admitted to committing cold-blooded murder on several people, is lost on her. “I’m confused,” I say, slurring my words on purpose. “Then why . . . kill Bernie?”

“Because he had no idea how to run a business for profit,” she says with a sneer. “He’d already run several other businesses into the ground and this place would have sunk months after he bought it if I hadn’t managed our patient population the way I did. Bernie didn’t care. He had family money to fall back on. But I put everything I had into this place. I never married and I have no children, so this place is the only mark I can leave behind. It’s my legacy.”

“The partnership agreement specifies a buyout option in the event that either partner is incapacitated or dies,” she goes on. “With Bernie out of the way, I can buy his portion of the business and become the sole proprietor. I intend to change the name of the place to the Granger Home.”

“Can you . . . afford that?” I ask, stunned that she is talking like she’s still going to be able to go ahead with her plan.

“I can now. I’ve saved quite a bit since I became a partner, and my mother died last year, leaving me a moderate inheritance. I’ve been trying to convince Bernie to let me buy him out for the past year, but he kept refusing. When he found those pills and started talking about drug testing, I saw the writing on the wall. He was going to flip things around and try to get rid of me so he could buy out my portion. I couldn’t let that happen, not after everything I’ve put into this place.”

Dorothy pauses and looks over at the spilled drink. “Enough of this talk. Clearly you don’t have enough of the nitro in you since you’re still conscious. And you got me talking long enough to weaken the effects of what you did get. Since you spilled the little cocktail I made for you, you’ve forced me to come up with a Plan B.” She reaches into her pocket and removes a small brown bottle that I recognize immediately as nitroglycerin pills. “I’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way.” She unscrews the lid from the bottle, grabs my chin in one hand, and squeezes my cheeks together hard, forcing my mouth open.

I realize she’s about to dump the entire bottle of pills in my mouth, and I know how fast they work. Whether I’m ready or not, it’s now or never.

My reaction time is a split second too slow. I feel the pills falling into my mouth and I struggle to spit them back out. I manage to rid myself of some of them, but a few are stuck under my tongue, to the sides of my inner cheeks, and to the roof of my mouth. At the same time I’m spitting, I lunge up as hard as I can with my legs and body in an attempt to throw Dorothy off me. I succeed in toppling her, but when I try to get on my hands and knees so I can get up from the floor, I discover my arms are half-asleep and not obeying me. Instead, I start to roll like a log, wanting to get as far away from her as I can. I roll until I hit something while I keep trying to spit out what’s left of the pills. They’re only pieces now, more than half dissolved. The medication is already in my system, absorbed through my oral mucosa. The question is how much.

I look over and see Dorothy struggling to get to her feet. She’s not a young woman and that’s working in my favor, but at the rate I’m going she’s still going to beat me. My arms are gradually waking up, but my mouth is tingling again and I know it’s the effects of the nitroglycerin pills. I feel something hard and cold at my back and I feel around with one hand trying to discern what it is. When I realize it’s Arnie’s scene-processing kit, I quickly roll back half a turn so I’m facing it, and I fumble with the latch. When I get it open, I try to raise the lid, but the kit is jammed against the wall and there is no room for the lid to swing.

Dorothy is on me then, and I roll onto my back to fight her off. The cold sweat has returned and I know that my moments of consciousness are numbered. I reach behind me for the evidence box again and manage to slide it away from the wall. As she grabs my chin with her iron grip, I think she must have more of the pills and I try to keep my mouth tightly shut. Instead of squeezing my cheeks together, she thrusts my chin upward, and I feel her hands close around my throat.

I fumble with the evidence box, getting the lid open. I visualize the layout in my mind as my hand grapples with what I can feel. I have what I need, a scalpel that’s used, among other things, to scrape dried blood samples off surfaces. With the last bit of strength I have left, I take it in my fist and swing it around, jamming it as hard as I can into Dorothy Granger’s neck, right where her jugular and carotid should be.

Everything goes dark again.