An Arm and a Leg (17 page)

“The police want to call it a hunting accident, but I know better. I just don’t know who did it, or why.”

“But who would want to hurt Tim? Everyone liked him—everyone except Doctor Bellamy, that is.”

Frankie scooted forward in her seat. She rested her forearms on the table and absently ran the fingertips of her right hand up and down the outside of her tea glass, describing parallel vertical lines in the condensation. “What do you know about Tim and Doctor Bellamy’s working relationship?”

“As you may have noticed, Doctor Bellamy is just a tad arrogant.” Mina shook her head a couple of times, her lips compressed. “Tim was building a reputation as a superb anesthetist, and I think it enraged Doctor Bellamy. The man is a narcissistic ego maniac. No one is allowed to outshine him. Certainly no one he would perceive as being an underling. And that would include the rest of humanity.”

Frankie did a quick mental run-through of Tim’s journal. “I never heard my brother say anything negative about the people he worked with.”

“That’s because he was a kind, gentle soul. But something relatively no one outside the hospital knows is that Doctor Bellamy is a hack. On more than one occasion I’ve seen him make some pretty awful surgical mistakes. I decided to leave long before Tim died. In fact, I’m sending out another batch of resumes today.”

Frankie pushed the manila folder containing Tim’s spreadsheet across the table. “Would you do me a favor? Would you look at this and tell me what you think?”

Mina picked up the envelope. “What is it?”

“It’s a copy of something I found on Tim’s laptop.”

The nurse pulled the pages out of the envelope and scanned them. A frown creased her smooth features. “Do you know what this is?”

“I assume it’s patient medical information.”

“You say Tim had this on his laptop?” Mina looked thoughtful.

Frankie nodded. “I considered deleting the spreadsheet and forgetting about it, but I couldn’t. It was obviously important to Tim.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I hoped you might be able to help me with that.”

“Me?” Mina’s carefully penciled eyebrows again rose into arches over her eyes.

“I didn’t know where else to start. It occurred to me that you could look over the names to see if any of these people stayed in the hospital recently. Maybe you helped care for them.”

Mina again studied the sheets then raised her head. “I do remember some of these.”

“And what about the dates…any idea what they refer to?”

“The first column seems to be dates of various surgeries, some of which I remember. And I believe the last column refers to a patient’s death. But some of this is not right.” Mina looked up. “This is an exact copy?”

“Yes. Straight off Tim’s laptop.”

The nurse frowned. “There are a couple of things I’m not sure about…”

“What?” Frankie prompted when Mina lapsed into a prolonged silence. “What are you not sure about?”

“Do you mind if I keep this? I’d like to check out a couple of things.”

“Please do. Anything you can tell me would be greatly appreciated.”

The two women finished lunch. Frankie tried several times to steer the conversation back to whatever it was about the spreadsheet that had caught Mina’s attention, but the nurse steadfastly refused any further comment.

“Give me a day or so,” Mina said. “I’ll call you either after my shift tonight, or first thing tomorrow.”

The women said their goodbyes, and Frankie headed to her car, uneasiness skittering across every nerve in her body.

“Uncle Mike, if you’re really there, tell me what was it about Tim’s spreadsheet that upset Mina so much.”

Silence.

“Just as I thought—a figment of my imagination.”

Her eyes darting back and forth between her rearview mirror and the road, she drove home via a different route than the one she’d come.

For several minutes after arriving home, she sat in her parked car and reviewed her conversation with Mina. She pulled her house key from her purse, exited the car, and walked toward her front door. Distracted by thoughts of what information she might get from the nurse, she didn’t look at her porch until she was standing on it. Then her breath caught in her throat.

A dead dove lay on her welcome mat, its head at a right angle to its body. Pearl gray feathers barely ruffled, the dull black eyes stared at nothing. On the smooth concrete next to the mat someone had printed
YOUR TURN
in white children’s sidewalk chalk.

The tiny hairs on Frankie’s forearms moved and a slight nausea sluiced around in her stomach. Her fingers fumbled with the key as she unlocked her door. She hurled her body through the door and slammed it behind her. She shot home the deadbolt, pulled her phone out of her purse and called the police. Leaning against the door for support, she commanded herself to breathe.

By the time an officer arrived, she had managed to calm down a bit. Her ears picked up the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, and she opened the door a millisecond before the doorbell rang. It was the same officer who’d caught her break-in call.

Frankie took a deep breath. “I’ve received a death threat.”

The officer looked closely at her face. “I see.” He sighed.

“It’s a note. It’s written on my porch, right there, in chalk, a little to the right of the dead bird.”

“Dead bird?” The officer stepped back and scanned the area.

Frankie opened her screen, stepped out, and pointed to the perfectly clean concrete. “Someone put a dead dove right there.”

The officer’s face devoid of expression, he widened his search to include the yard. But the bird was nowhere to be found.

Frankie fought to control her voice. “I’m telling you, it was right there.”

The officer studied her face. “Do you still see it?”

Gorge rose in Frankie’s throat, and her face warmed. “No, I don’t. But why would I make up such a thing?”

“I’m not saying you’re making things up.” Like a teacher talking to an offending student, the officer held his index finger in the air. “And I’m going to let this slide. But just so you know: calling for help under false pretenses is an actionable offense.”

“I’ll remember that.” Frankie clenched her hands into tight balls. “And I won’t bother you again.”

The police officer returned to his cruiser. He spoke into his car phone and sat for several minutes making notes.

What words would he use in his matter-of-public-record report?
Crazy
or
cracked
would work.

Maybe the whole being-followed thing had been her imagination after all. Or maybe her brain had turned into a big, thick, steaming bowl of oatmeal. But there was no way she’d misread the intentions on the face of the guy driving the Chevy. And although she had no explanation for their disappearance, her imagination had not manufactured the dead bird and note.

Frankie leaned her forehead against the cool wooden door frame, her thoughts turning to the guy in the old Chevy. She’d almost welcome his appearance right then. In her current frame of mind she’d make mincemeat of him and feed him to her cat.

She was getting tired of jumping at every noise, of acid shooting up her throat at unexpected shadows. She was sick of feeling like a marionette made to dance to someone else’s banjo.

To co-opt Angela’s words, it was time to thump a domino. And at this point, any domino would do.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Larry’s lips thinned as he listened to the threatening message Mel had left on his phone. Things were happening too fast, and he wasn’t ready. One thing he knew for sure, Mel didn’t make idle threats. That meant he’d have to speed up his timetable.

He jabbed Mel’s number onto the keypad with such force that pain shot up his index finger. Mel answered on the first ring.

“Leave her alone, she doesn’t know anything.” Tiny flecks of spittle flew from Larry’s lips and onto the phone.

Mel snorted. “Yeah, that’s what you keep saying. But how am I supposed to know anything about that, seeing as how I haven’t seen you in such a long time?”

“I’m busy checking things out and taking care of business. You can tell Bellamy that.”

“I’ll tell Bellamy you’ve lost it unless you come on back to the farm. I’ll tell him that you’ve made a deal with the police.”

“I’ll be back after I find what we’ve been looking for.”

“Bellamy told you to stop watching her. So, why are you still—?”

“Because I don’t agree with Bellamy. I guess he’s afraid if she finds out someone’s watching her she’ll tell the police and they’ll start up the investigation again. But I think watching her is the best way to find the stuff O’Neil took. That stuff is our only hope. If we find it, Bellamy will pay us enough so we’ll never have to work again. We can go someplace nice. Someplace with palm trees and pretty, willing women.”

“Okay. But what’re you going to do about her? You know…if she does find the stuff?”

“I’ll worry about that when the time comes. One thing for sure, if the police get it they’ll dig into every corner of Bellamy’s business. Then they’ll come for you and me. It’s us that’ll do time for killing O’Neil and that hunter. You can bet Bellamy won’t spend a day inside for that.”

“What’ll we do?”

“I’m working on it.” Larry felt like one of those circus guys who somehow managed to get fifty plates spinning on sticks all at once. If even one plate hit the ground though, all bets were off as to what his future would be.

“All right,” Mel said. “But when’re you coming back? Things don’t feel right, you being gone and all.”

“Like I said before, tell Bellamy I’m busy running down a couple of leads.”

“And then you’ll come back?”

“Yep,” Larry said, like a man telling his mistress he was going to leave his wife. “Then I’ll come back.”

****

In the sheriff’s office in Raton, New Mexico, Nick placed a cardboard box on top of his desk. On the side of the box were written in black permanent marker the words
O’Neil, Tim,
followed by a case number. The deputy lifted the lid off and peered down at the collection of what anyone else would see as garbage. One at a time, he pulled out the bagged and labeled pieces of potential evidence from the shooting.

The coroner had said Tim’s wound was a through-and-through, and the resulting search for the bullet had been intense. But the forest covered thousands of acres, and that crucial piece of evidence remained elusive. The bullet from the dead hunter had been retrieved, but without the one that killed O’Neil to match it, there was no way to know if the same weapon had been used on both men.

“Come on, talk to me.” Nick pulled a thick manila folder from a black wire, louvered holder on his desk, opened the folder and reviewed his notes on O’Neil’s death. He re-read every field note and scribbled marginal notation, all of which he’d read so many times he could quote them from memory.

Frankie had said two men tailgated her and Tim from the time they left Albuquerque. And she seemed fairly certain Tim knew them because of his reaction when she asked about a green pickup. If that was the case, someone at the hospital where he worked might know something. Or one of his neighbors might have seen something. And she was right about one thing, although it did happen, anyone who hunted knew it was illegal to fire a weapon from a vehicle. Especially from a moving vehicle.

That left three possible explanations: either the O’Neils had been partners in some scheme that made them both targets, but the shooter missed Frankie; or Tim had been the target all along; or Frankie had been the real target. But unless Frankie was a consummate actress, and Nick reluctantly had to admit to that possibility, she had no idea as to why someone would shoot Tim. He’d bet a year’s wages she didn’t manufacture the look that flared in her eyes when he told her the investigation had stalled due to lack of evidence. Anger, and not an inkling of fear for her own safety. No sign of guilt, or any other indication that she knew the reason behind her brother’s murder.

He read through the statements made by O’Neil’s friends, neighbors, and co-workers. All of them expressed surprise at Dr. O’Neil’s death. All of them appeared to have held Tim in high esteem. No one could think of anyone who would want to hurt the good doctor, et cetera, et cetera.

The statement given by a nurse named Landowski piqued his curiosity. He read with interest how she skirted some of the questions put to her by the interviewing officer, as well as her oblique references to an antipathy between doctors Bellamy and O’Neil. He reached for the desk phone and punched in a number. After several rings, a voice answered.

“Hey, Ted,” Nick said. “How’re tricks in the Albuquerque Police Department?”

“Nothing new, old buddy. Just the usual mayhem, political squabbling and bureaucratic BS you’d find anywhere else in this great country. No different than when we were MPs in the Corps. What’s happening in your neck of the woods?”

“You remember the O’Neil shooting? I’ve been going over the statements you guys took. By the way, thanks for keeping me in the loop on that.”

“No problem. Anything useful?”

“Not much to go on. But I was wondering if your guys did any follow up. Hoping maybe someone added something to their earlier statement, that kind of thing.”

“I sent you copies of everything we have in the file. You want to ride into town, shoot up the place, and drag answers from the populace?”

Nick chuckled. “Sort of. I’d like to pay a visit to the hospital where O’Neil worked.”

“Not a problem. I’ll let the powers that be know you’ll be in town. Anything in particular feel funny to you?”

“Nothing I can put my finger on.”

“Ahh, the famous Non-specific Rollins Brain Tingle.”

“Go ahead and make fun. But O’Neil’s sister said a nurse at the hospital where Tim worked might have some important information. A talk with her seems like a good place to start.”

“Have at it. Let me know if I can help.”

Nick hung up the phone. He sat at his desk, drumming his pen on its cluttered top.

No one lived a completely isolated life. Someone somewhere knew what had happened to Tim O’Neil and why.