Interior Motives (19 page)

Bella rushed me, her Brillo Pad hair all aquiver, when I ran inside. “Took you long enough to get here.”

“Yeah. All of six minutes, forty-seven seconds. Anything yet?”

“Not a peep, and that scares me. They’re still working on her. She must be real bad.”

“Not necessarily.” I know nothing about emergency cardiac care, but I couldn’t let Bella stress out any more. “They may be running tests on her, and you know that can take beaucoup time.”

“Don’t know about none of those tests, but you’re right on the buckets of time.”

I had to turn her mind toward something other than what might or might not be happening behind closed doors. “Did anything happen today after Cissy came in to work?”

“Well, she looked super tired, and then she got a call from one of the Brothers Chromosov. She didn’t say much, but her face went tomato red. After she hung up, her hands shook like California on a real bad day.”

I’d give my Honda to know what Brother Brat had said. “That’s the only thing that happened?”

She snorted. “Not hardly. Your detective pal stopped by about forty-five minutes later. I couldn’t think of how to hang around and listen in, so it beats me what went on.”

“That stress would’ve done me in. And I don’t have Cissy’s heart condition.”

I heard the
click-click
of high heels. The stride was way too familiar. “Hi, Lila.”

“I figured you’d be here,” she answered, a wry twist to her mouth. “One of my guys called when he ID’d the patient in the ambulance. Any word on her condition?”

I waved toward Bella. “She knows more than I do.”

Lila’s smile made me blush. “So you finally admit to someone’s superior knowledge. I’m impressed.”

“Hey! That’s so not fair. I’ve never said I know more than you or anyone else. But when I’m sure I know something someone else has missed, what do you want from me? To lie about it? To say I don’t know when I do?”

She chuckled. “I knew you’d find your way around that.” She faced Bella. “Because she’s at least a witness in Darlene Weikert’s future murder trial, I’m concerned about Mrs. Grover’s trip to the ER. Did anything unusual happen after I spoke with her?”

Bella shook her head, excitement in her eyes. She loves anything that puts her close to the action. “Nothing after you came by, but before’s another kettle of clams.”

My elderly neighbor has a fine-honed sense of drama. Lila took the bait. “What happened earlier in the day?”

Bella preened. “I got a call, and I recognized the man’s voice. It was that sleazy foreign-car-pusher son of Darlene’s. He wanted to talk to Cissy.”

Lila’s notepad and pen put in an appearance. “Did she say anything about the conversation?”

“Nope. Nil. And I tried to ask, all smooth and sneaky-like, you know. But she didn’t want to talk about it.” She shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to talk about that kind of creepy-crawler crud either, so I can’t blame her.”

“Gee, Bella.” I shook my head. “You really dig Tommy Weikert, don’t you?”

“I’d like to dig him, all right. Right into solitary coffin-ment.” She glanced at Lila. “Do you have any of those dirt pits for his kind here in Wilmont?”

I swallowed a laugh. Lila looked like I feel around Bella: flustered, flummoxed, flabbergasted. Does Bella have a talent, or what?

“Uh . . . no,” the elegant cop said. “We don’t advocate extreme and cruel measures. We keep solitary
confine
ment prisoners in cell blocks with solid walls and doors, but not in Wilmont. Ours is not that kind of facility.”

Bella
hmphed
. “Too bad. Bet that’s who whacked the mother.”

“Bella, I warned you about that kind of talk.”

She tipped up her nose. “They talk like that all the time on that
Real, Regular Cop Arrests
show. If it’s good enough for them, then it’s good enough for me.”

Lila’s horror might have been funny if the situation weren’t so serious and grim.

In the interest of Bella’s preservation, I said, “She’s harmless. She just has a thing about bad cop shows, Court TV, and late-night cable news. She needs viewing rehab.”

Before Lila could speak, a man in green scrubs pushed through the swinging steel doors to the inner sanctum. “Anyone here for Cecelia Sparks Grover?”

For once Bella, Lila, and I agreed.

“Yes!” we all cried out.

“How is she?” I asked.

Lila held out a card case. “I’m with the Wilmont PD. How soon can I speak with her?”

“I’m her boss and friend.” Bella’s not the kind to be left out in the cold. “I called the ambulance too.”

The confused doctor looked from one of us to the next. He threw up his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. “The patient’s in CICU. She’s awake, lucid, and asking for Haley and Bella. If you ladies know who they are—”

“Me!” Bella squealed. “Me, me, me! I’m Bella.”

The doctor took a long step back.

A tad less wired, I stepped up. “I’m Haley Farrell, sir. Is it possible to see her?”

The leery doctor nodded. “Because she’s in intensive care, she’s allowed one visitor at a time, and for only ten minutes. I have to ask you ladies for patience. She can see one of you now and another in about an hour.”

Lila cleared her throat. “I’m on official business—”

“I didn’t think you’d come to play paintball with the patient,” the doctor said. “Mrs. Grover is not ready to be questioned.”

Lila wasn’t happy. I stopped myself from “nana, nana, nana-ing,” but only just.

She didn’t give up. “How soon can I have about twenty minutes with your patient?”

“Not for a couple of days, and then only if she remains stable, improves even.”

I watched Lila from the corner of my eye. She didn’t like that answer any better. For a moment she looked ready to argue some more, but then she seemed to reconsider.

She’s a smart cookie, all right. That doctor wasn’t budging.

Lila was, backpedaling even. “Here’s my card. Please call as soon as you’re ready to let me do my job.”

The guy in green didn’t give the card more than a glance. “Inside these walls, Detective Tsu, you only do your job after I’ve done mine.”

He spun and marched back to the swinging doors. Before he shoved his way through, he stopped. “Haley can see Mrs. Grover first, then next hour Bella gets a chance. The detective can wait for my call.”

I chuckled. “Don’t hold your breath, Lila. He’s not smitten with you. Let’s see if you take it as well as you dish it out.”

Lila shrugged. “I’ll see Mrs. Grover, just not today.”

“Can I buy a seat for the battle royal?”

“There won’t be a battle, Haley. I’m a professional.”

“And if you go into your ‘I’m so serious about my job I do so well’ bit, I’ll scream.”

Now she smiled. “Please do. I’d love to see security drag you away.”

I licked my index finger and chalked one up for me. “You won’t see that, but you will see me tread where cop woman has yet to go. One small step for Haley, one giant step for . . . for . . . Oh, I don’t know. You get my drift.”

She shook her head on her way out of the waiting lounge. Hey, I felt pretty good. This was the first time I’d gotten the better end of the stick around her.

“You’re staying here?” I asked Bella.

“What d’you think, girlfriend? I’m going nowhere until I see Cissy. So get a move on already. The sooner you see her, the sooner I get to go in.”

Even though I wanted to see Cissy, when I walked through the swinging doors, bad memories did a number on me. Not only had I spent two hideous days in ICU after I was raped, beaten, and left for dead, but I also put in hours there during my mother’s last days.

I wanted out as much as I wanted in.

With every step my gut twisted tighter. The mediciney stink did weird things to my brain, and that wacky brain of mine in turn detonated my “Go. Split. Run, outta here, fly!” alarm. But I wanted—no, needed—to see Cissy. She’d asked for me. I had to know what she wanted.

At the nurses’ station, I got directions to Cissy’s room. Although the curtains around the bed had been swapped from green to blue-gray, the room looked just like the ones my mother and I had stayed in. It had the same glass walls so staff could keep the patient in sight at all times, and once I stepped inside, the same eye-popping spread of electronic monitors, gauges, tubes, valves, and who knows what else made my stomach flip. Queasy pangs hit when I rounded the column of privacy curtain at the foot of Cissy’s bed.

Cissy was small, and the bed with its steel bars, the IV stand at her left, the oxygen tube at her nose, and the monitors behind her dwarfed her slight form beneath the white sheets.

“Hey,” I said in a loud whisper. “I hear you asked for trouble. They sent me.”

A weak smile did little to brighten her face. “You’re not half bad.”

“How are you?”

The smile gave a wobble before it drooped. “I’d like to get my hands on the elephant who thought my chest made a comfy seat.”

“Do you still have a lot of pain?”

“Not really. They pumped me full of all kinds of meds, and I’m more comfortable now. But that’s not why I asked for you.”

As she spoke she tensed up. The wiggles on one of the monitors staggered out of their regular pattern.

“Stop that!” I tried to sound stern. “Don’t stress out. It won’t help you get well. Besides, I’m on the job now. I’ll do all the stressing for both of us.”

Her smile returned, and even though I almost needed a microscope to see her shoulders ease a tiny bit, I did see it happen.

“You’re about as bossy as Bella,” she said. “But give you forty-some more years, and you’ll be just like her.”

“I don’t think I like that prognosis. I’ll have to give it some thought—later. Now why don’t you tell me why you wanted to see me?”

She sighed. “You know how things look for me in Darlene’s death. But I also think you realize that I couldn’t have done such a thing. I’m afraid Detective Tsu doesn’t agree. She’s ready to arrest me. But, Haley”—she grabbed my wrist—“I didn’t do it. And I’m so scared I’ll die in jail.”

Her cold fingers shook in spite of her tight grip. I had to reassure her.

“Now listen to me. I’m going out on a limb here, but I promise you won’t die in a jail. You won’t even spend a minute in a cell—not if I can help it. And I’m sure I can.”

The fear in her eyes reached out and struck me.

I barreled on. “But there’s one thing you have to do. And that’s ditch the fear. It’s more toxic than the arsenic that got Darlene.”

She refused to look me in the eye. “It’s easy to say but much harder to do.”

“It is when you go it alone.”

“I’m not alone anymore,” she said. “I now have you and Bella.”

“But we’re not the ones who can help you, not with this. There’s only one person who can do that, and that’s God through his Son. God stretches his hand out to you, Cissy. All you have to do is take it and believe.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It’s the easiest thing you’ll do in life. What can be better than to lean on the King of Kings, the Maker of everything? They don’t say he has the whole world in his hand for nothing.”

Her fear made me want to cry.

“I don’t think I could stand it if I put my trust in God and then he just wasn’t there after all.”

“Won’t happen. Give him a chance. He’ll draw you closer all the time. Come on. Just say, ‘Yes, Lord. I’ve been a mess on my own, but I’m yours now.’”

“That sounds simpler than what I’ve heard.”

“That’s all God asks for. He wants us to admit we’re sinners ready to live his way.”

Cissy closed her eyes. For a moment I thought she’d fallen asleep—she had said she was full of meds. But then her lips moved.

“Yes, Lord. I’ve been a mess on my own, but I’m yours now.”

Thank you, Jesus.

I took her hand. I also took the prayer reins—so to speak.

I thanked the Father for his love, I praised him for all his mercies, I asked his forgiveness for any and all sins, I prayed for his strength during Cissy’s illness, and I asked for wisdom as I tried to help her.

Cissy’s soft amen felt like yet another of God’s blessings, and he’s been very generous, in many ways. His Word too never fails to comfort me.

Which reminded me . . . “Do you have a Bible?”

“Last one I had was the one my mother gave me back . . . You know? I think I was still in junior high.”

I opened the top drawer of the nightstand by her bed. “Here. Just as I remembered. There was one in my mother’s room too.”

“It won’t do me much good if I can’t read it. I’ve had a hard time since I left my reading glasses at the Weikerts’ when you and I visited Jacob. I haven’t had time or money to buy new ones.”

“I may not be as hairy as Midas, but I do a pretty mean fetch,” I told her. “He’s trained me to the max.”

“Our pets own us more than the other way around,” Cissy said with a smile. “And I’m going to have to ask another favor—”

“Say no more. Super Haley to Garfield’s rescue.”

A nurse stuck her head around the edge of the curtain. “I’m sorry, but you’ve stayed longer than the legal ten.”

I winked at Cissy. “Busted! Bada-bing, bada-bang! Gotta move, gotta groove. Now behave, you wild woman, you. I’m sure Jacob’s new nurse will help me look. I’ll be back with those glasses in no time—if Sarge here lets me in again.”

The redhead in funky bedpan-bedecked scrubs grinned. “Every hour on the hour, ten minutes at a time. And who knows? You might be good medicine for Mrs. Grover, so I’ll let you in—as long as you play by my rules.”

I tapped my forehead in a crummy imitation of a military salute. “You got it.” With another smile for Cissy, I headed out. “I’ll be back later, okay?”

Her soft “okay” followed me all the way to the Weikerts’ home.

Dave, Jacob’s new nurse, answered the door on my first ring.

“Good to see you,” he said. “I figured you’d be back sooner or later.”

Guilt gnawed at me. “I’m sorry, but I can’t stay long this time, not long enough for checkers. Cecelia had a heart attack. She’s at the clinic, in ICU. She asked me to stop by to see if you would help me find the glasses she left behind.”

“Is that who they belong to? I tried them on Jacob, but you can imagine the frame didn’t fit. And Tommy and Larry insist they weren’t their mother’s either.”