Fatal Error (22 page)

The whole west-facing wall was nothing but windows that overlooked a panorama of limitless blue water, and the hospital bed had been placed in a position so that when Velma was in the bed, she could gaze out at that million-dollar view. One of the sliders had been left slightly open, allowing an ocean-scented breeze to blow into the room. Velma sat in a wheelchair that had been parked directly in front of the window. A red, white, and blue afghan covered her legs and helped fend off the draft. She looked gaunt—little more than skin on bones—and the skin that was visible was an alarming shade of yellow that Ali knew indicated the beginnings of kidney and liver failure.

“Oh, good,” Velma said. Her face brightened as she turned from the window to greet Ali. “I’m so glad you’re here. We were about to have our midafternoon round of Maddiccinos.”

“Of what?” Ali asked.

“Frappuccinos made with lots of Bailey’s,” Velma said with a tired smile. “Maddy downloaded the recipe from the Internet, but we can only have those when the nurses are between shifts. They disapprove of my having liquor or coffee, although I can’t see what difference it makes.”

“Coming right up,” Maddy said. She headed for what Ali assumed to be the kitchen. “Come,” she added, speaking to the three dogs who were still on their rug command. They rose as one, Maddy’s now somewhat white-faced, leggy goldens and some tiny ball of fuzz whose canine origins Ali could only guess.

“They do really well together,” Velma said. “Candy is mine. She was a little upset when Maddy’s interlopers first showed up, but now they’re the best of friends.”

Looking around the room, Ali had an instant understanding of why hospice home care was preferable to hospice care anywhere else. Velma was at home in her familiar surroundings. Her dog was here. Her stuff was here. Her view was here, and so was her good friend Maddy and her two dogs. What could be better?

From the kitchen, Ali heard the squawk of a blender as Maddy Watkins mixed the unauthorized treat. Ali moved aside a scatter of Sunday newspapers that littered half a nearby couch and took a seat.

“I’m so sorry . . . ,” she began lamely, but Velma waved the comment aside.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” she said. “I’ve had a good run. They’re doing a good job of pain management. That was what scared me most—that I’d be in a lot of pain, but I’m not, and I’m reasonably lucid most of the time.”

Maddy emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray filled with three rocks glasses filled with generous helpings of mocha-colored drinks. The dogs, having recovered from the arrival of a newcomer, followed docilely at her heels and arranged themselves around the room. Candy scrambled up into Velma’s lap, Aggie settled comfortably near the wheel of Velma’s chair, while Daphne shadowed Maddy as she bustled around the room delivering drinks.

“Make that lucid
some
of the time,” Maddy corrected with a smile as she settled on the far end of the couch. “But when she sets her mind to it, she can still beat the socks off me at Scrabble.” She held up her glass. “Cheers.”

Ali raised her glass along with the others and tried not to notice the visible tremor in Velma’s hand as she lifted her drink
to her lips and took a tiny sip. Then she set the glass down on a nearby tray and smiled. Ali tried her drink. It tasted of coffee and chocolate and maybe a hint of whiskey, but not much more than that. Ali suspected that there was probably a thimbleful of booze in the whole blender pitcher.

“The nurses really do disapprove,” Velma said. “They think Maddy is a bad influence.”

Maddy raised her glass in another toast. “I am a bad influence,” she agreed. “And the nurses are unanimous in their belief that a sickroom is no place for dogs, but isn’t that what friends are for—to cause trouble whenever possible?”

Both women laughed at that, comfortably, the way only old friends can laugh, although Velma’s laughter ended in a fit of coughing. When the spasm passed, she picked up an envelope from the same table where she had placed her glass.

“Here,” Velma said, holding it in Ali’s direction. “This is for you.”

As Ali stood up to take the proffered envelope, her silenced iPhone vibrated in her pocket, but she ignored it. The envelope was made from thick linen-based paper and had Velma’s name elegantly embossed on the flap. Ali’s name was on the front, written in spidery, old-fashioned handwriting—Spencerian script.

“What’s this?” Ali asked.

“Go ahead. Open it,” Velma urged.

Inside Ali found a single piece of papers—a printed cashier’s check in the amount of $250,000 made out to the Amelia Dougherty Askins Scholarship Fund. The scholarship program, established in honor of the mother of one of Sedona’s movers and shakers, was designed to help young women from Arizona’s Verde Valley go on to college. As a high school senior, Ali had gone to school on an Askins scholarship. Now, in adulthood, she administered the scholarship that had once benefited her.

Ali looked at Velma in surprise. “Thank you,” she said, “but this is a lot of money. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Absolutely,” Velma confirmed with a nod. She took another sip of her drink, and it seemed as though she was somehow reenergized, more vital.

“I can say with a good deal of confidence that my son won’t like it. As far as he’s concerned, everything I have should come to him. Everything else will go to him, but I’ve noticed over the years that Carson is far more interested in accumulating than he is in doing—like a kid who collects marbles but never plays with them. Carson had the misfortune of being born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and I’m afraid he’s never gotten over it. You, my dear Ali, come from humble stock. I know the kind of impact receiving that scholarship had on your life and on the lives of countless other deserving young people. I don’t want that well to run dry.”

The long speech seemed to have drained her. Closing her eyes, she leaned back in her chair to rest and gave the morphine pump button a discreet punch.

“That’s one of the reasons Velma asked me to come down to help out,” Maddy explained. “She was going to do this as an addendum to her will, but her nephew—I believe you may have met her nephew—was afraid that if she did that, Carson would hold things up in probate for as long as possible. I was able to do the legwork for her, and now she gets to have the pleasure of giving the check to you herself. But if I were you, I’d deposit that check immediately. Monday’s a bank holiday, but I’d do it on Tuesday for sure.”

Ali had to think for a minute before she realized that Monday was Martin Luther King Day.

“You think her son might try to make trouble?” Ali asked.

Maddy laughed. “Oh, yeah,” she said with a knowing grin. “Carson is what my husband used to call a piece of work. He’s
going to have a conniption fit when he finds out about it, but he won’t have a leg to stand on. He’s a signer on all her other accounts, but she left him off one. Velma called that account her ‘mad money.’ It’s empty now—empty and closed.”

Next to the window, Velma’s breathing slowed and steadied as she slipped into a morphine-induced doze. Maddy got up and shut the door. Without the breeze, Ali noticed for the first time the pervasive sickroom odors that the fragrant ocean air had kept at bay.

“How long does she have?” Ali asked.

Maddy shook her head. “No way to tell. It’s already longer than Carson expected or wanted to pay for. He’s the one who hired the nurses, and he’s made it quite clear that they answer to him rather than her. Generally speaking, hospice is a pretty short ride, but Velma was determined to do this—to get you the money. Now she may be willing to let go.”

Ali looked down at the check. The scholarship fund’s investments had taken a big financial hit during the economic downturn. This unexpected infusion of cash from Velma was going to make a big difference in the program’s long-term sustainability.

She slipped the envelope into her purse while, in her pocket, the silenced cell phone buzzed again. For the third time. Ali took another sip of her drink. It was delicious, if not powerful.

She set the glass down. “I should probably go,” she said.

“Where are you staying?” Maddy asked.

“I’m not sure. I’m sure I’ll be able to find a room somewhere.”

“This is a beach town on a three-day weekend,” Maddy said. “Velma was worried you wouldn’t find a suitable place. There’s a two-bedroom guest unit in the building. As soon as we knew you were coming, we took the liberty of reserving it for you just in case. You could stay here, of course. There’s plenty of room, but with all the comings and goings overnight, I’m afraid it’s not very restful.”

Right that minute, the idea of not having to go look for a hotel room was appealing.

“Thank you,” Ali said. “That’s very generous.”

Maddy got up and collected the glasses. Velma had taken only a few tiny sips from hers.

“I’ll just wash up,” Maddy said. “The night nurse comes on duty at four. We wouldn’t want her to catch us with our Bailey’s showing, although what Velma thinks is full-bore Bailey’s is a very low-octane substitute. After all the excitement, she’ll probably sleep for the next couple of hours. A little later, perhaps you’d like to join the dogs and me for a walk on the beach. I can manage two dogs by myself. Three is more problematic. After that you can join us for a late supper.”

“A walk sounds good,” Ali said, “and so does dinner.”

“It won’t be anything fancy,” Maddy warned. “Cheese, toast, some fresh fruit. Just go downstairs and let the doorman know that you’ve decided to stay over. He’ll give you a key and show you to the unit.”

I
t was late in the afternoon before Gil Morris finally headed back to the department. Sometime in the course of the evening, he would need to consult with the coroner’s office to figure out who would be doing Richard Lowensdale’s next-of-kin notifications. The problem with that was that Richard’s driver’s license still listed his mother, Doris Mills, as his next of kin, and Gil was pretty sure Doris was deceased.

Now that he had finally left the crime scene behind, Gil’s first consideration was food. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and he was starving, so he picked up a Subway sandwich, and on the way to his cubicle, he stopped off in the break room to grab a cup of coffee.

Rachel Hamilton from Dispatch was there ahead of him. “How’s it going with lover-boy?” she asked.

He gave her a quizzical look. “Who?”

“You mean nobody’s told you yet? I talked to Allen Dodd about it but then he got pulled off your case to answer another call. It turns out that dead guy of yours has two fiancées. Two! One lives
somewhere in New York and the other one is from somewhere up in Oregon. What happens if they both turn up at the same time? That could turn into some kind of catfight. If you want somebody to sell tickets, here I am!”

Gil stared at Rachel in amazement. From Richard Lowensdale’s driver’s license photo, he had appeared to be a pretty average-looking guy, but an average-looking guy with at least two different aliases. He also lived like a hermit in a filthy garbage dump masquerading as a house. How was it possible for someone like that to have not just one but two women on the string?

Obviously I’m missing something,
Gil told himself.
I’ve been out of the dating game way too long.

Since Rachel seemed to have no intention of leaving the break room, Gil didn’t leave either. He poured his coffee. He could tell from the acrid smell that it was old coffee—this morning’s coffee. On Sundays there weren’t nearly enough coffee drinkers around the department to keep the pot fresh, but Gil was desperate.

Taking a seat across from Rachel, Gil unwrapped his sandwich.

“Where’d you hear all that?” he asked. “About Richard having two fiancées?”

“From Phyllis,” Rachel said. “Phyllis Williams at the Nevada County Com Center. She took both missing persons calls. The first one was earlier this morning. That’s when Phyllis asked Sandy to have officers do a welfare check. The second one came in closer to noon. Phyllis says that as far as she knows, two fiancées is some kind of record.”

Rachel was eating a Twinkie. Gil wished they had Twinkies in the vending machine, but they didn’t.

“It’s a record all right,” Gil said. “Is Phyllis still on duty?”

“Nope. Her shift ended at two.”

Gil munched his sandwich and made a mental note to track Phyllis down as soon as he got back to his desk. If a pair of feuding fiancées showed up when he and the coroner had yet to have an official next-of-kin positive ID, Gil’s life would be infinitely more complicated and so would Fred Millhouse’s.

Not only that, the Willie Nelson component in the homicide told Gil that Lowensdale’s murder might well be a love affair gone awry. The fact that the two fiancées claimed they were elsewhere at the time of Richard’s death didn’t count for much. Gil would need to look into both women’s backgrounds to see if one or the other of them had the kind of connections that might make it plausible for a pissed-off fiancée to hire a hit man. As far as he knew, that hadn’t ever happened in Grass Valley, but there was always a first time.

Once his sandwich was gone, Gil dumped out the dregs of his coffee in the kitchen sink and headed for his cubicle, where he turned on his computer. While he waited through the interminable boot-up function, Gil picked up a well-thumbed hard copy of the Nevada County Employee’s directory, where he located Phyllis Williams’s home phone number.

When Gil dialed, a male answered the phone. “Hey, Phyl,” he called. “It’s for you.”

“Who is it?” Her voice came from somewhere in the noisy distance, as if the house was full of noisy kids and probably grandkids.

“Work,” Gil told him. “Tell her I’m calling from work.”

Phyllis came on the line soon after that. She was glad to give Gil the details she could remember from the 911 calls. He’d be listening to the tapes himself in a matter of minutes, but he knew that Phyllis was a longtime emergency operator. He wanted to hear her impressions in case she had picked up vibes from either of the women that someone less experienced might have missed.