One Dead Under the Cuckoo's Nest (35 page)

I looked back. No one. Thank you again, Saint T. My car was parked on the far side. After nearly slipping from the pain in my legs, I looked down to see a red streak along my robe. Obviously I'd torn some more skin when being a commando. But that was little worry compared to staying alive.

I'm sure Goldie and Miles wouldn't mind the ruined outfit.

I nearly wept when I saw my Volvo. It sat there in front of me screaming “safety.” Before the killer caught on, I leaned down behind the bumper and ran my hands across the freezing metal.

Nothing!

I had to bite back another scream. What the hell? Uncle Walt had said he'd stuck the spare key there for me. What if he'd forgotten? A few tears did escape, but hell, I was in danger and allowed them. My favorite uncle wouldn't let me down. I knew it. I'd feel awful if this was the cause of my death. That is, looking down from heaven, I'd feel awful.

“Come on, Uncle Walt.” I reached around some more. Where would I hide the key if I were an elderly man?
That had to be it
, I thought, as I reached around. He probably thought some thief would find the key there, so he made it harder to find.

Thank you very much, dear Uncle.

I hurried to the side and fiddled around above the wheel. There was lots of metal there, but no key box. Damn it. I kept feeling around the car until I looked up and saw the dark figure in the distance. I gulped. He'd made it to the caretaker's house. Good. Maybe he thought I was hiding in there. It would have been a good idea, but, wait, no it wouldn't have been, since he had figured it out first.

I pulled back, my hands frozen, dirty and stinging from the cold metal. “Please, Uncle Walt. Give me a sign.”

My Steelers' bumper sticker glared at me.

I reached underneath the bumper, felt what I'd hoped for and shut my eyes. “Yes,” I whispered then grabbed the metal box, pulled it open and took out the key.

With the key in my bloody fist, I stuck it in the lock, praying it wouldn't be frozen. How I wished I lived in sunny Florida.

The key turned. I let out a breath, yanked open the door and jumped inside. When I went to stick it in the ignition, the key fell to the floor. “Shoot!” I fumbled around under my cold feet but couldn't bend down far enough and there was no way I was going to get out to look. Quickly I sat up and shoved the manual locks on all the doors.

Then I swung down again, hitting my head on the steering wheel. Stars danced in front of my eyes, and they weren't celestial ones. A warm liquid trickled down the bridge of my nose. I was about to ask myself what Jagger would do when a figure leaped in front of my car.

I screamed.

A metal handle thrust at my windshield.

I screamed again and was pretty sure that I'd keep it up as long as he kept prodding the glass with the handle. I hoped the promise of “shatterproof windshield glass” was not false advertising.

A heard a crack, and a spiderweb pattern spread across the glass.

“No! Get out! Leave me alone! I won't tell anyone!”

“Too late, Pauline.”

I froze.

The female voice had stunned me into temporary silence. Despite the fact that
she
—not a he as I'd assumed, kept stabbing my windshield—I had to look past the web to see. . . .

Barbie Doll.

“What the hell are you doing, Sister Immaculatta?”

Sister? My injuries had me so mixed up that it just dawned on me that Barbie was as much a nun as the late Vito Doran had been.

I looked around the car. There had to be some weapon in here that I could use. I could take her. She was too beautiful and built to beat me. Then I watched her arms as the glass shattered more.

I couldn't take her.

I fumbled around in my glove compartment, pulling out a map, a bottle of water (Mother always made us carry water, as if we lived in the Sahara instead of Connecticut) and then the hammer I'd use if my car ever plunged into a river or something. I knew I could never get close enough to whack her, but I pulled it out anyway. Then I touched the key chain Nick had given me for my birthday.

I grabbed it.

I stuck my sore fingers on the center button, appropriately named the “panic” button.

I held it up and pushed the button, then the car started to honk and lights flashed. Barbie pulled her weapon back and cursed worse than I would.

She really was no nun.

“I'm gonna kill you, Sokol!” Barbie yelled.

I aimed the panic button toward her as if that would make a difference. All it did was make her curse more and start swinging the broom handle like a baseball bat.

Ex-sister Immaculatta had a darn good swing.

My car kept up its racket as I kept poking the button. Now Barbie ran from door to door yanking at the handles and swinging her weapon. She kept this up as I cried louder and louder for her to stop and let me live. I'd sunk to begging, but hey, who would worry about being embarrassed at a time like this? I paused only to see if my life was going to flash in front of me.

Nothing.

Yet.

Then I looked at my side window. The driver's side was only a few inches from my head.

The tip of the broom handle, the sharp metal tip, was poised directly on the other side of the glass. I wondered, only for a second, if that glass was as strong and shatterproof as the windshield.

I refused to be harpooned in my Volvo like Moby Dick.

I hit the panic button again.

The lights flashed, the horn honked and Barbie screeched.

Very unbecoming of a nun. Oh wait, exactly like a psycho-crazed killer though. “Get away!” I screamed over and over until the next thing I knew . . .

The tip of the broom handle punctured the window. A piece of glass flew off, and embedded itself in my left cheek. I screamed. “Now you did it! Now I'm pissed!”

She screamed louder, pushing the broom handle forward.

I think I screamed too, but it was getting confusing as to who was making all the noise.

Bam
!

The window blew out and she reached in and opened the door. Before I could move to the other side, she had me by the robe and had yanked me out of the car. I tried to get to my bracelet, but noticed it was hanging off my arm. In my commando maneuvering, I must have damaged the clasp on it. I tried to reach for it to taser her ass, but couldn't get a grip.

She was standing above me, holding my neck—and squeezing.

I kicked at her, and she released her hold a bit.

“You stupid fool. You ruined everything!” she shouted at me.

With enough air to speak, I said, “Ruined what?”

“You know, you bitch. I had my family almost set to move into someplace . . . nice. Lalli and Spike and my father.”

I pushed at her face, stabbing a finger into her eye. She let go. I tried to run, but she grabbed my robe and ripped the belt off. “Your father?” While she wrestled me to the ground, it dawned on me. “
Santa
is your father?”

“His name is Stanley and he's not crazy like the rest of them.” She yanked the belt and held me for a few seconds.

“
You're
crazy if you think you are going to get away with this. Doctor Dick is at the police station right now. He knows about Lalli, Spike and . . . you.”

She cackled more eerily than poor Joanna. “Yeah, right. You had no idea about me. You never figured out that I wasn't really a nun anymore. I gave up on the convent when I went home to see how my family lived. I couldn't let them stay in that squalor. I was responsible for them.

“Daddy couldn't take care of Lalli and Mother had split years ago. And you. I recognized you from the time you came to see Mary.” She pushed me to the ground and straddled my back.

Damn it! Mary and that convent. I tried to grab the bracelet, but Barbie held my hands above my head, leaning all her weight on top of them and pushing my face into the ground.

Barbie was no doll.

“So why kill Vito?” I figured if I lived this could come in handy at her arraignment. That is,
when
I lived.

“Vito, the jerk.” She pushed down at his name.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry.”

I'll bet she was. The word must have snuck out from her old upbringing.

“Stupid Spike came to work one night drunk. Spilled part of our scam to Vito. That's why he had to go. Couldn't let anyone spoil it. Daddy and Lalli didn't deserve to live in a place like that. They should be happy.”

“Are you really a nurse?” Grass stuck into my mouth.

“Of course. I wouldn't harm patients.”

Only kill those who get in your way. Very logical.

“So Vito was only trying to save his sister when he attacked me at the airport?”

“The damn fool. When she got to Ward 200B, I got all kinds of information from her. That, and my daddy listening to you, is how I found out what you were doing—you are a fake, Pauline Sokol.”

“No, I'm the real Pauline Sokol. I was a fake patient.” I'd gotten her talking and for a second had a tiny window of opportunity. So, I took a shot and lifted my hands enough to get my bracelet lined up with her arm and press.

“Aye!” she shouted. “What the hell did you do?” She sat up and rubbed at her arm.

Apparently the shock wasn't enough to stun her or else the taser had been damaged. Either way, I forced her off of me with a shove and kicked her in her pretty face.

She shrieked and cursed at me. Wow. Who knew an ex-nun knew such language. “I should have run you off the road when I had the chance!”

It had been
her
driving the white van and not Spike.

I fiddled with the bracelet and tried to get close enough to zap her, but still stay far enough away so she couldn't grab me. She didn't even try. Nope. Instead, she reached into the car and pulled out the broom handle.

Great! Her weapon of choice yet again.

Barbie swung and hit me upside the head. My world started to wink out, but I refused to let it. Instead I aimed my arm at her, bobbed up and down, and kept pressing in case I touched her skin.

It worked and sent her flying back toward the car a few times, but she was still coherent.

Damn, but lunatics are strong and persistent.

We kept going at each other with our weapons and alternately screaming and cursing.

Boom
!

Suddenly one of us stopped screaming. The broom handle dropped away. Barbie fell forward, her eyes glaring at me.

I pushed her back. What the hell?

She grabbed onto my side-view mirror and just hung there.

I kept screaming.

What the hell was she doing? Trying to play 'possum, like the nutty patients? Like her father?

Red lights flashed, and headlights lit up the darkness.

She merely glared.

Then, my voice froze as I saw her get up. Actually, she was lifted up, blood staining her black turtleneck and slacks. All I could think of was, someone so model-beautiful could have been more creative than to wear that clichéd black outfit for hunting me down.

Then again, she'd been wearing black since I'd known her.

After he'd shot Barbie, I nestled my head in the crook of Jagger's arm. It wasn't in any sexual way, since the red flashing lights of the cop cars, the staff from the hospital bustling around and a group of nuns, standing next to us reciting a litany of prayers, kinda put a damper on anything romantic—not to mention my looks. I had to look scary covered in grass, dirt, blood and ripped Burberry. I looked over to see Sister Liz. She made the sign of the cross and nodded at me.

I smiled.

After Jagger went through how he'd, in fact, figured out that one of the nuns really wasn't a nun, he'd rushed back to the hospital to make sure I was safe, and Margaret had told him about Spike and me.

“Timing is everything,” I'd mumbled to him.

He chuckled, a deep sound that vibrated beneath my ear. Then he'd explained how “Sister” Barbara had left the convent a while back, so was able to impersonate a nun to run a fraud ring here. She, Spike, Lalli and their father had lured people to this place with the promise of R & R in a luxurious New England resort, just as we'd been told. Apparently Barbie had been here as a novitiate, so she knew about the place and her way around.

What we hadn't known was that Dr. Pinkerton, the head of the staff—and Barbie's lover—was also in on it. That's how she got in here. They hijacked people from the airport, took their personal belongings, medicated them and then filed for the insurance reimbursement and pocketed it. Spike got four thousand dollars for each person he brought in. They had a contact at the insurance-company end who found the likely “patients.”

“I'll bet Pinkerton was pissed to find out he hired
you
to fill in for him,” I said.

Jagger chuckled.

He told me a woman in billing was in on it too. Poor Terry was innocent of all criminal activity. Spike had used Terry to scare me a few times with the straw, Margaret had been moved as a warning to me, and Ruby was not lying about only trying to scare me once. Barbie had been the attacker with the broom handle. I didn't have the strength to ask Jagger how he'd learned all of this, or more important, how he knew to come save me—I figured his cop connections had paid off again.

After all, this was Jagger I was leaning against.

Suddenly I felt something on my left cheek.

His touch.

“There's a piece of glass in your cheek,” he said.

“I'd forgotten about it. I'll get it out when I get home.” Home. I couldn't wait to hold Spanky, kiss Miles and Goldie, and call my folks.

“Look, Sherlock, I'm sorry it has led to this.”

I should have said that it was all part of the risky job we were in, but instead I said, “You damn well should be.”

“Next time I'll clue you in a bit more about the case.”

I sat forward, ignoring all the new pain the movement had caused. “Next time? Next time? Next time!”