Harper Connelly [3] An Ice Cold Grave Page 7

  “I’m Tolliver Lang, and I accompany this lady, Harper Connelly. She finds bodies.”

  Doak Garland cast a quick glance down at his feet, as if to conceal his reaction to this unusual introduction. What the hell was going on with Tolliver?

  “Yes, sir, I heard of you-all,” the preacher said. “I’m Twyla Cotton’s pastor, and she especially asked me to come by. We’re going to have a special prayer service tomorrow night, and if you should happen to be out of the hospital by then, we hope you’ll attend. This is a special invitation, from our hearts. We are so glad to know what’s happened to young Jeff. There comes a point when knowing, whether good or bad, is more important than not knowing.”

  I agreed with this completely. I nodded.

  “Since you-all were instrumental in finding poor Jeff, we were hoping you would come, if you’re well enough. I won’t lie and say we don’t wonder about this special talent you have, and it seems to pass our understanding, but you’ve used it for the greater glory of God and to comfort our sister Twyla, and Parker, Bethalynn, and little Carson. We want to say thank you.”

  On behalf of God? I tried not to smile openly because he was so sincere and seemed so vulnerable. “I appreciate your taking the time to come by the hospital to invite me,” I said, filling in time while I thought of a way to refuse the invitation.

  Tolliver said, “If the doctor says Harper can leave the hospital tomorrow, you can count on us coming.”

  Well, an alien had possessed him. That was the only conclusion I could draw.

  Doak Garland seemed a bit surprised, but he said gamely, “That’s just what I wanted to hear. We’ll see you at seven o’clock tomorrow night. If you need directions, just give me a call.” He whipped a card out of his pocket in a surprisingly professional way and handed it to Tolliver.

  “Thank you,” said Tolliver, and I could only say “Thanks” myself.

  By the time my room cleared out, I was tired again. But I needed to walk, so I got Tolliver to help me out of bed, and hold on to me while I and my IV walked down the hall. No one who passed us paid us any attention, which was a relief. Visitors and patients had their own preoccupations and worries, and one more young woman in a terrible hospital gown wasn’t going to rouse them out of their tunnel vision.

  “I don’t know what to say to you,” I told Tolliver when we reached the end of the hall and paused before we started the journey back to the room. “Is something wrong? Because you’re acting really strange.”

  I glanced at him, the quickest sideways look so he wouldn’t catch me checking, and I decided Tolliver himself looked like he didn’t know what to say.

  “I know we need to leave,” he said.

  “Then why’d you accept the minister’s invitation?”

  “Because I don’t think the police will let us drive away at this point, and I want us to be around other people anytime we can be. Someone’s already tried to kill you once, the police are so wrapped up in the murder investigation that they don’t seem to be sparing anyone to try to find out who attacked you, and the best guess I have is that the attacker was the one who killed the boys. Otherwise, why the rage, why take the chance? You ended his fun and games, and he got mad and came by to take a swipe at you if he could. He got his chance. He almost killed you. I don’t know if you’ve considered how lucky you are that you got away with a concussion and a cracked arm.”

  This was a long speech for Tolliver, and he delivered it in a low voice in bits and pieces to avoid the attention of the other people. We’d reached my room by the end of it, but I waved my hand down the corridor opposite and we trudged on. I didn’t say anything. I was angry, but I didn’t know who to aim it at. I believed Tolliver was absolutely right.

  We looked out the window at the end of this wing. The rain had turned into a nasty mix of sleet and snow. It rattled when it hit the glass. Oh, joy. The poor searchers. Maybe they would give it up and retreat into the warmth of their vehicles.

  I was going very slowly by the time we crossed in front of the nurses’ station and neared my room. I still hadn’t thought of anything smart to say.

  “I think you’re right,” I said. “But…” I wanted to say: that dodges the issue of your hostility to Manfred and his grandmother. Why does his interest in me make you so angry? Why Manfred more than anyone else who’s given me a second look? I didn’t say any of these things. And he didn’t ask me to finish my thought.

  I was glad to see the bed, and I leaned against it heavily as Tolliver arranged the IV stand and line. He helped me sit on the side, pulled off my slippers, and eased me back onto the pillows. We got the covers pulled up and straight.

  He’d brought a book for himself and one for me, too, in case my head was feeling better. For an hour or so we read in peace, the snick of the ice against the window the only noise in the room. The whole hospital seemed to be in a lull. I looked up at the wall clock. Soon people would be getting off work, coming by to visit relatives and friends, and for a while the traffic in the hall would pick up. Then the big cart with the supper trays would come around, and the nurse with the medication, and after that a spurt of early evening visitors. Then there would be another lull as everyone who didn’t have to stay at the hospital left for the night, and the only ones remaining would be the staff, the patients, and a few dedicated souls who slept in the reclining chairs by their patients’ beds.

  Tolliver asked me if I wanted him to stay. I was obviously better, and I thought it was touching that he would think of staying in that chair a second night in a row. I was oddly tempted. Maybe I was just better enough to have the energy to spare for fear. I was afraid.

  In the end, I couldn’t be selfish enough to condemn him to a night in the chair because I was a scaredy-cat. “You go on back to the motel,” I said. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be comfortable tonight. I can always ring for the nurse.” Who might come in thirty minutes. This little hospital, like so many others, seemed to be understaffed. Even the cleaners moved briskly because they had so much to do.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “The motel’s so full of reporters that it’s quieter here.”

  He hadn’t mentioned that before. “Yes, I guess it is,” I said. “I’m probably lucky I’m here.”

  “No doubt about it. As it is, I have to pretend I’m not in the room. One woman knocked for twenty minutes this morning.”

  He’d been going through his own problems and I hadn’t even asked. I felt guilty. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think about the press.”

  “Not your fault,” he said. “You’re getting a lot of publicity out of this, you know. That’s another reason…” But then his face closed down on the thought. He’d been thinking about Manfred and Xylda again, sure that Xylda was in town to jump on the free ride of publicity the multiple murders would engender. No, I’m not a mind reader. I just know Tolliver very well.

  “I’m not above thinking Xylda would cash in under ordinary circumstances,” I said. I was trying to be practical and honest. “But she’s so frail, and Manfred was so reluctant to bring her.”

  “He said,” Tolliver pointed out.

  “Well, yeah, he said. And you seem to think that Manfred’s capable of dragging a sick woman somewhere she doesn’t need to be just to satisfy his lust for me, but I don’t think that’s true.” I gave Tolliver a very level look. After a second, he looked just a bit abashed.

  “Okay, I’ll agree he really loves the old bat,” he said. “And he does take her wherever she wants to go, as far as I know.”

  That was as much of a concession as I was going to get, but at least it was something. I hated the idea of Tolliver and Manfred meeting up and getting into it with each other.

  “Are they at our motel?”

  “Yeah. There aren’t any rooms anywhere else, I can tell you. The road up the mountain is nearly blocked off to traffic because there are so many news trucks and law enforcement vehicles. There’s one lane open with guys with walkie-talkies
at either end of the bottleneck.”

  Again, I felt a twinge of guilt, as if I were somehow responsible for the disruption of so many peoples’ lives. The responsibility, of course, was the murderer’s, but I doubt he was staying up worrying about it.

  I wondered what he was thinking about. He’d vented his rage with me. “He’ll lie low now,” I said. Tolliver didn’t have to ask me who I was talking about.

  “He’ll be cautious,” Tolliver agreed. “That turning out to try to get you, that was just rage that his games were ended. He’ll have cooled off now. He’ll be worried about the cops.”

  “No time to spare for me.”

  “I think not. But this guy has to be a loony, Harper. And you never know what they’re thinking. I hope you get out of the hospital tomorrow. Maybe the cops’ll be through with questions and we can leave this place. If you feel well enough.”

  “I hope so,” I said. I was better, but it would be stretching a point to say I felt good enough to travel.

  Tolliver gave me a hug before he left. He would pick up something to eat on his way back to the motel, he said, and stay in the rest of the evening to dodge the reporters. “Not that there’s anywhere to go,” he said. “Why don’t we get more work in cities?”

  “I’ve asked myself that,” I said. “We had that job in Memphis, and that other one in Nashville.” I didn’t want to talk about Tabitha Morgenstern again. “And before that, we were in St. Paul. And that cemetery job in Miami.”

  “But most of our calls are from small places.”

  “I don’t know why. Have we ever done New York?”

  “Sure. Remember? But it was really really hard for you, because it was right after 9/11.”

  “I guess I was trying to forget,” I said. That had been one of the worst experiences I’d ever had as a professional…whatever I was. “We’ll never do that again,” I said.

  “Yeah, New York is out.” We looked at each other for a long moment. “Okay then,” he said. “I’m gone. Try to eat your supper, and get some sleep. Since you’re better, maybe they won’t come in so much tonight.”

  He fussed around for a minute or two, making sure the rolling table was positioned correctly, clearing it for the supper tray, drawing my attention to the remote control built into the bed rail, moving the phone closer to the edge of the bedside table so I could reach it easily. He put my cell phone in the little drawer beneath the rolling table. “Call me if you need me,” he said, and then he left.

  I dozed off for a little while, until the supper tray came. Tonight I got something more substantial. I’m embarrassed to say that I ate most of the food on my tray. It wasn’t awful. And I was really hungry. I hadn’t exactly been packing in the calories the last two days.

  After that, by way of excitement, a different doctor dropped in to tell me I was making progress and he thought I’d be able to go home in the morning. He didn’t appear to care anything about who I was or where home was. He was as overworked as everyone else I’d encountered there at Knott County Memorial Hospital. He wasn’t from around these parts, either, judging from his accent. I wondered what had brought him to Doraville. I figured he worked for the same emergency-room-stocking service that employed Dr. Thomason.

  Barney Simpson’s assistant, a very young woman named Heather Sutcliff, came in soon after the doctor’s visit.

  “Mr. Simpson just wanted me to stop by and check with you. Lots of reporters want to see you, but for the peace and privacy of the other patients we’ve been denying them visiting privileges. And we’ve screened the calls to your room…that was your brother’s idea.”

  No wonder I’d been able to recover in peace. “Thanks,” I said. “That’s really a big help.”

  “Good. Because it really wouldn’t be fair to the other people in this wing, to have all kinds of strangers tromping through.” She gave me a serious look to show she took my reporter problem as a bad thing. And then she slipped out the door, closing it gently behind her.

  The most interesting thing that happened after her departure was the tray guy removing my emptied tray. After that surge of excitement, I tried to watch television for a while; but the laugh tracks made my head ache. I read for maybe half an hour. I gradually grew so sleepy that I left the book where it fell on my stomach and just moved my hand enough to switch out the light I could control from my bed rail.

  I was awakened by a brilliant flash and the sense of sound and movement very close to me. I cried out, and flailed my good arm to drive the attacker away. In a moment of sense, I punched the button that turned on the light and the one that called the nurse. I was stunned to see there were two men in the room. They were bundled up in coats and they were yelling at me. I couldn’t understand a word they said. I punched the nurse’s button over and over, and I yelled louder, and in about thirty seconds there were more people in my room than it was designed to hold.

  The evening nurse was a starchy woman of considerable width. She was tall, too, and she scorned makeup, but she’d met a bottle of red hair dye she was real fond of in the past week or so. I admired her more by the second. She went for those reporters with both guns. Actually, if she’d had guns, the two men would’ve been dead without a doubt. Hospital Security was there (a man older than my doctor and not nearly as fit), an orderly was there (satisfyingly tall and muscular), and another nurse who added her opinion to that of my big nurse, as I thought of her.

  Of course this was a silly episode, and one I should have been able to throw off; and once I considered it, one I should have anticipated. Right at the moment, I couldn’t recognize any of those points. I’d been scared very badly, and my heart was thumping like a rabbit’s, and my head was hurting as if someone had hit me again, and my arm ached where I’d bumped it when I’d lurched sideways against the railings in my panic.

  When it all got sorted out the nurses had given the reporters a first-rate tongue-lashing, the security guard and the orderly were escorting the intruders out, and the two men were trying to hide their smiles.

  And I was a mess: frightened, hurting, and lonely.

  Six

  TOLLIVER was livid when he came in the room the next morning. The nurses had been full of the night’s excitement, and they’d been quivering to fill him in on the big event. They’d pounced on him with avidity. The result was that Tolliver was all but breathing fire when he flung open my door.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said. “Those bastards! To sneak into a hospital in the night and actually into your room! Jeez, you must have…were you asleep? Did they really scare you?” He went from rage to concern in two seconds flat.

  I was too tired to put a good face on for him. I’d come awake with a jolt at least three times during the night, sure there was someone else in the room with me.

  Tolliver said, “How’d they even get in here, anyway? The doors are supposed to be locked after nine o’clock. Then you have to punch a big button outside the emergency room door to get in. At least that’s what the sign says.”

  “So either a door was left open by accident or someone let them in. Might not have known who they were, of course.” I was trying to be fair. I’d really gotten good treatment at this little hospital, and I didn’t want to believe any of the staff had been bribed or were malicious enough to simply let reporters in for the hell of it.

  Tolliver even sounded off to the doctor about it.

  Dr. Thomason was back on duty. He seemed both angry and embarrassed, but he also looked as though he’d heard enough about the incident.

  I gave Tolliver a look, and he was smart enough to back off.

  “You’re still going to let me go, right?” I said, trying to smile at the doctor.

  “Yeah, I think we’ll toss you out. You’re recovering well from your injuries. Traveling isn’t going to be easy on you, but if you’re determined, you can leave. No driving, of course, not until your arm is well.” The doctor hesitated. “I’m afraid you’ll leave our town with a bad impression.”

/>   A serial killer, an attack out of the blue, and a rude awakening…why would I get a negative picture of Doraville? But I had manners and sense enough to say, “Everyone here has been very kind to me, and I couldn’t have gotten better treatment in any hospital I’ve seen.” It was easy to see the relief pass across Dr. Thomason’s face. Maybe he’d been concerned that I was the kind of person who slapped a lawsuit on anyone who looked at me cross-eyed.

  I’d been thinking of the good people I’d met here, and the fact that Manfred and Xylda had come here expressly to see us. That had made me wonder if we shouldn’t spend the rest of the day here in town to wind up our loose ends. But after the scare the night before, I was twitching with my desire to get out of this place.

  Of course, there was the usual long wait while the paperwork made its way around the hospital, but finally, about eleven o’clock, a nurse came in with the mandated wheelchair, while Tolliver bundled up and went out to pull our car around to the entrance to pick me up. There was another wheelchair waiting just inside the front door. A very young woman, maybe twenty, was perched in it, her arms full of a swaddled bundle. An older woman who had to be her mother was with her. The mother was herding a cart loaded down with pink flower arrangements, a pile of cards that were also predominantly pink, and some gift boxes. There was a pile of pamphlets, too. The top one was titled “So You’re Taking Your Baby Home.”

  The new grandmother beamed at me, and she and my nurse began chatting. The young woman in the wheelchair looked over at me. “Look what I got,” she said happily. “Man, the last time I was in the hospital I left my appendix. Now I get to leave with a baby.”

  “You’re lucky,” I said. “Congratulations. What have you named her?”

  “We named her Sparkle,” she said. “Isn’t that cute? No one will ever forget her.”

  That was the absolute truth. “It’s unforgettable,” I agreed.

  “There’s Josh,” the grandmother said and wheeled her daughter and granddaughter through the automatic door.