Death on a Short Leash (17 page)

The file was sectioned and contained copies of board meetings, estimates for repairs and other items related to running the expensive home. Also—and Maggie couldn't help smiling—inflated bills for tending the residents' pets. But the most interesting piece of paper was an invoice to Dr. Carl Williams, dated just a week earlier, for the care of a patient, Mrs. Prudence Williams.

“It looks as if our Pru is in the Silver Springs Nursing Home,” Maggie said quietly.

“Whatever for?”

“Alcohol addiction.”

“I didn't think she was that bad.” Joan moved around the desk to look over Maggie's shoulder.

Maggie looked up sharply. “Did you hear a car door slam?”

“No,” Joan answered, “but it could be my husband arriving home. I'd better get back.”

“It sounded much closer. Oh my God! There's someone downstairs.” Reaching over, she turned off the desk lamp, plunging them into darkness. “Quick, Joan,” she whispered, “shut the door—but quietly,” she added.

“But I can't see a thing,” Joan whispered back. “Oh damn!” The telephone gave a little jangle as she bumped against it.

Maggie, in the process of following her accomplice around the desk, made a grab for the instrument, saving it from falling onto the floor, but toppling the receiver onto the desktop, where it happily transmitted the dial tone. Horrified and hardly daring to breathe, Maggie felt around in the dark until her hands closed over the receiver and quietly replaced it on the cradle. “Joan, the door,” she hissed.

“Okay, okay.” But as Joan reached out in the dark to close the door, the room was suddenly flooded with light from the hall landing.

“Shit!” Maggie could see that Joan was frozen with fear, and she quickly slipped around the desk.

The woman's voice that floated up the stairs did not belong to Pru. “You make us a drink, sweety, while I slip upstairs to the bathroom to pretty myself up.”

“Pink Lady, right, Pearly?”

“You've a good memory,” Pearly carolled back.

“How could I forget?”

“Oh, now don't you go buttering me up,” she giggled.

As the woman's footsteps mounted the stairs, Maggie pushed Joan aside and gently nudged the door closed. A crack of light seeping under the door illuminated Joan's face from below.

“Now what do we do?” she whimpered. “Howard will be wondering where I am.”

“Shh!” Maggie whispered.

“Is it this first door?” Pearly was standing outside the closed door.

“Oh no!” Joan dug her fingers into Maggie's arm as the door handle turned.

“End of the hall,” Williams called back.

“Of course. Silly little me.” Maggie let out her breath and gently unhooked Joan's fingers. The two of them leaned against the door jambs and listened. It seemed an eternity. “What the hell's she doing?” Joan whispered.

“You ready for me, Pearly?

“Just about, Cowboy. Meet me at the top of the stairs.”

The two women waited, holding their breath in the darkness. Then suddenly, there was a popping and crackling sound as something swished down the hallway past the closed door.

“Yow!” they heard Williams exclaim in pleased agony. “You even remembered your lasso.”

Maggie and Joan turned to one another in unison, both putting hands over their mouths. The next few minutes were taken up with yelps and giggles from the hallway. Then, “Come on, take the drinks, Pearly, and mount your steed!”

“Carefully, lover. I don't want to spill them.”

Maggie waited until the unidentified slithery sounds had passed the door before she turned the knob gently and eased the door open a crack. The two women watched in amazement at the sight of Williams crawling along the passageway on all fours, his fat bare behind lurching from side to side, with everything swinging. Astride him, holding two drinks aloft, was an over-bleached blonde dressed in a Dale Evans cowgirl costume—the minuscule blue denim skirt rucked high above her bare, ample white thighs. The lasso was draped around Williams' neck. Maggie quietly closed the door and leaned against it, her shoulders shaking as she tried to stop the bubbling laughter that threatened to give them away.

“What the hell are they doing?” Joan whispered.

Maggie put her fingers over Joan's mouth as she gave herself a few minutes to control herself. “Shh!” She turned the knob again and peeked along the passageway. By the sounds that were emanating from the master bedroom, Williams and his playmate had reached it in safety and were now fully occupied. “Come on, let's get out of here.” She led her partner in crime swiftly down the stairs and along the passageway to the garage.

“Howard will never believe this,” Joan exclaimed as they slipped out of the garage.

“And you're not going to tell him, are you?” Maggie asked.

“But . . .” Joan gave a little laugh. “No, I guess you're right.” She moved away from Maggie. “I guess it's going to be difficult enough explaining why I've been taking a walk in the dark.”

Not nearly as difficult as having to explain my night's adventures to Nat,
Maggie thought as she slipped behind the wheel of her car.
But I think I'll wait until Monday morning to do that.

C
onsidering her night of crime, Maggie slept well and awoke to overcast skies and a mewling cat. “Okay, okay. I hear you.” Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she felt for her furry mules and then reached for her warm robe. “Brr! Winter's on its way, puss.” Emily, impatient for her breakfast, rubbed herself against Maggie's legs and then marched to the door. “You don't care, do you?” Maggie said, bending down to rub behind the cat's ears. “All you're interested in is food.”

Over a leisurely breakfast, Maggie gazed out onto her very own small backyard. Spring was a long way off, but she had great plans for tackling the tangled mess. Half the fun was the planning and going through the seed catalogues that had arrived in the mail, but this Sunday morning she had other plans. She knew that she ought to bring Nat up-to-date on the previous night's escapade, but still couldn't face his fury when he found out where she and Joan Betteridge had been.
First of all, I think I should find out if Prudence really is in that nursing home, and then I'll tell him.
She felt much better after coming to this simple solution. She'd wait until she had all the facts.
But how do I find out?
She thought about the problem while she showered and dressed, and came to the conclusion that a direct approach would be best—she would telephone. She found the folder that the nursing home had sent to her when she enquired about placing her mother there, and, drawing the instrument toward her, dialed the number.

“Silver Springs Nursing Home.”

“The hospital wing, please,” Maggie answered firmly.

“Certainly, madam. Please hold while I connect you.”

“Edith Cavell Ward. Nurse Brinkley speaking.”

“I'm making enquiries about a dear friend of mine,” Maggie answered. “Mrs. Prudence Williams.”

“Mrs. Williams? No. I'm sorry, we have no record of a Mrs.

Williams being admitted. Are you sure it was this hospital?”

“I was told Silver Springs.”

“This is quite a small private hospital, madam, and believe me, I would know if she was here.”

Maggie replaced the receiver. “Well, so much for the direct approach!” She opened the folder to the section on the hospital's facilities. “Here we are! Visiting hours two
P.M.
to four
A.M.
”

Maggie timed her arrival at Silver Springs for three o'clock, hoping that, as it was a Sunday afternoon, both the hospital floor and the nursing home would be awash with visitors and she would be lost in the crush. The downside to her plan was that the small visitor's parking area was full, and she had to drive back out the gates, park her car on the street and walk back up the long gravel driveway in her high-heeled pumps. She leaned against one of the plaster pillars to balance herself, her purse and the huge bunch of bronze chrysanthemums she'd had the foresight to purchase, while she took off each shoe and shook out the loose stones. She had been right about the masses of visitors, but still terrified that she might run into either Mrs. Truebody of the huge bosoms or the stiff-as-a-poker Nurse Raintree, she held the flowers high so they covered part of her face, and quickly followed the signs to the hospital wing.

Most of the patients' doors were open, and Maggie took a quick peek into each room as she walked by. The place was suffocatingly hot, and even though it was fairly new, it had that tired hospital smell about it. She had reached the nurse's station without finding any sign of Prudence and was beginning to wonder if the receptionist was right and Pru wasn't in the place—or more likely that she was behind one of the closed doors—when suddenly she heard the now familiar voice of Carl Williams.

“I disagree with you, Miss O'Neill,” he was saying as he and a nurse emerged from a room at the far end of the corridor. “She needs to be kept sedated.”

Quickly raising the flowers to her face, Maggie slipped into the next open doorway and closed the door carefully behind her.

“Who are you, missy? Come to tuck me in, have you?” She turned to face an old man sitting on the edge of his bed, his feet searching for the carpet slippers that were just out of his reach.

“Uh, let me help you, Mr. Baldock,” Maggie improvised, as she walked quickly over to the bed and gently lifted his thin legs back under the covers. The shock of feeling thin, raspy fingers trailing up her legs and under her skirt made her jump back. “You little creep!” Her eyes met the old man's lecherous ones. There was a sly grin on his face.

“Oh, come on,” he wavered in his reedy voice, “you know all you gals like a bit.”

“Shut up, you nasty little man.”

“You women are all the same,” he grumbled. “Just lead a man on. Anyway, I want to pee . . .” And he struggled to extricate himself from the tight sheet. “Where's that damn bell?” His hand scrabbled to reach the bell pull attached to his pillow. “And my name's Herbert, not Baldock.”

Resisting the urge to smother the man, Maggie deftly untied the pull and placed it out of his reach. “You'll just have to wait.” She marched over to the door and opened it a crack to peek out. “Damn!” Williams and the nurse were still conferring by the station.

“Hey, you,” the old man yelled as he struggled to get out of the tight sheets. “Let me out!”

“Shh!” Maggie said, putting a finger to her lips. “Be quiet!”

“I'll going to complain about you. Give me that bell and take those damn flowers away.”

Maggie walked back to the bed, glared down at the man and said in her most no-nonsense voice, “Just be quiet or I'll get the nurse to come in and give you a shot.” Instantly, she realized that he must have been threatened that way before, as he slid fearfully down in the bed and pulled the sheet up to his chin. Grabbing the chrysanthemums from the bedside table, she walked back to the door and had another peek. Williams was now striding down the corridor away from her. “Thank God,” she whispered and turned back to the old man. “Unless you want that needle,” she said firmly, “I suggest you stay quiet.” And slipping through the open door, she closed it firmly behind her and sped along the corridor to the last room.

Eyes closed and seemingly in a deep sleep, Prudence lay on her back, her hands lying limply on the coverlet, her face looking lifeless in the filtered light that seeped through the slatted blinds. “Pru, can you hear me?” Maggie leaned over the rail and picked up one of the slim hands and gently squeezed it. There was no reaction. “Pru,” she said again. She could feel the rage rising in her as she thought of Williams doing this to his wife. “Don't you worry,” she said, squeezing the hand again. “I'll get you away from that monster somehow!”

Luckily, there were still a few visitors lingering in the corridor as she made her way back to the entrance of the nursing home and safety. She was on the steps when she heard the other voice she dreaded.

“Ah, Mrs. Spencer. How nice to see you again,” Mrs. Truebody trumpeted as she bore down on her. “Making up our mind about mother, are we?”

Damn!
“Just visiting one of the patients,” she answered, hoping that Williams wasn't in the vicinity too.

“And who would that be?”

“A Mr. Herbert. I know his daughter.”

“Daughter? But Mr. Herbert's unmarried.”

“Goddaughter,” Maggie answered quickly. “Nice seeing you, Mrs. Truebody. Got to run.” She pushed the bouquet of chrysanthemums into the woman's hands. “He says he's allergic to flowers.”

• • •

THE TELEPHONE WAS RINGING
when Maggie opened the office door the next morning. “Southby's Investigations.”

“Mrs. Spencer?”

“Speaking.”

“Inspector Farthing would like you to come down to his office this morning. You know where it is.”

“I've already given him a statement.”

“Ten o'clock, Mrs. Spencer.”

Damn!
She knew that Nat wouldn't be in until ten-ish himself.
It would be this morning that he has an appointment. I guess my confession about my weekend escapades will have to wait.
She wasn't sure if she was relieved or not.

Henny arrived dressed for winter. “Is a nip in the air,” she said, unwinding a long red, yellow and green striped scarf. “You like my scarf? I just knit it.”

“Yes, it's lovely,” Maggie said, trying not to shudder.

“I knit you one. You like these colours?” Luckily, Henny didn't wait for an answer before she added, “Boss in?”

“No, he'll be late. And I have to go and see Inspector Farthing.”