Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 07 - Vague Images (25 page)

But I didn’t think that was it
. I got off the elevator and stopped after walking a few feet. All of the odd feelings I’d had the last few weeks gelled
. I love that man. You always have. This is different…”

What I had always done was trust Scoobie
. And he made me laugh. When my parents dumped me at Aunt Madge’s for my junior year, he was my first friend. When the kids in the Ocean Alley High School in-crowd dumped me, he told me they didn’t matter. And when I moved back to Ocean Alley after I dumped Robby, Scoobie was there again.

Never judging
. Well, almost never. I smiled. I could hear him say, “You know it’s the earth that moves around the sun, right?  You aren’t the center of the universe.”

“Jolie?”  Todd Everly’s voice sounded tentative.

I came out of my reverie. “Sorry, I was just thinking about something.”

He smiled
. “Something good, I take it. Come on.”

I realized he must have come to the elevator to look for me
. “I’m sorry if I kept you waiting.”

“Not at all
. I figured I shouldn’t show you the film without showing the police at the same time. I called the station and they’re sending someone out.”

“Sergeant Morehouse?”

“No idea. He is the one who’s been around the most.”

I followed him into his office
. As he shut the door to the hall, he nodded at two cups of tea on a lamp table and took one for himself.

“I need a pick-me-up if I work late
. You probably drink a lot of tea at your aunt’s B&B.”

“More than I did before I moved here, that’s for sure.”  I looked at him and he saw my eagerness.

Todd smiled. Sit for a couple minutes. I want to get the replay in the right spot.”

I started to follow him into his office, but his spare chair was piled with papers and his windbreaker, so I went back to the small outer office and sat
. The tea was hot and smelled wonderful. “What’s in this?”

“I keep a jar here
. It’s a spiced tea and I add some extra cinnamon with the sugar.”  His tone was distracted, so I decided to leave him alone.

As I cradled the mug of tea
, I thought about my sudden feelings about Scoobie. Sudden?  Not really. Well, maybe. Whether I’d known a long time and ignored them or whether my certainty had really been a long time coming, I didn’t care.
How do I talk about this with him?
  It was pleasant in Todd’s outer office, and I decided that I should enjoy the feeling and put off big decisions.

I had drunk about half of the tea when I blinked a few times, trying to clear my vision. I can’t be that tired
.
Okay, maybe I am worn out. I’d been going on adrenalin for more than two weeks
. First the murder, then Lucas showing up—to say nothing of Kim – then the fundraiser. I had every right to go to bed early and…what?  What would I do after I went to bed?

I tried to stand, and as I did the mostly empty cup of tea fell to the floor and spilled. Todd was looking at me from the doorway to his private office
. “I’m having…”

“Trouble staying awake?” he asked
. “Sit back down, Jolie. You must be really tired. You’ve had a lot going on.”

He didn’t need to ask me to sit
. I’d already swayed and sat back down.

“Listen, if you don’t feel good, I can call one of your friends
. They know you’re here, right?”

I shook my head
. “You could…call…or Aunt Madge would, would whatchamacallit.”

“Drive you?”

Suddenly my mouth was very dry and I felt my chin drop onto my chest.

I COULDN’T TELL where I was when I woke up. It was dark, and there were linens, sheets maybe, around me. I was lying on my side with my knees almost at my chest, and the shoulder I was lying on was stiff. Wherever I was, it was bumpy. And I needed a pillow.

I must have fallen asleep again, because the bumping had stopped
. I was still lying on my side, but my legs were almost straight. A sound I wasn’t used to reached my ears.

It was an unusual noise, kind of like rain hitting the pavement really hard. But not as rhythmic
. I shivered. It seemed I was outdoors, but I couldn’t say why. I didn’t smell rain, and it was too dark to see anything.

The rhythm changed and I heard the sound of metal striking a stone or something metallic, and a man cursed
. My confusion lifted a bit. It sounded like Todd Everly.
Am I dreaming?

I tried to think clearly
. The last thing I remembered was being in Todd’s office. Why was I there? To see the security tapes!  So why was I lying down?  And why was it dark?

My eyes were closed
. No wonder I couldn’t see anything. I opened them. It was still dark, but I could see a fabric-colored kind of wall in front of me. Tweedy fabric.

Move, eyeballs.

As more things came into focus I realized I was in a car.
My Toyota?  Why am I in the back seat of my own car?
  I shifted, trying to sit up, but I was too woozy.
This can’t be good.

I moved my eyes more and saw that the back door of the car was open
. That must be why I’d been able to stretch my legs. Light crunching noises reached me. It sounded like someone walking on dry leaves.

There was a gasp
. “Jolie!”

“Todd?”  My words were slurred
. “Was there an accident?”

“Damn!”  His voice was almost a sob
. He opened the front driver’s door and sat on the seat, but facing out of the car. “I thought you were already dead.”

Excuse me?

“Already…?  Why?  What happened?”

His voice was hoarse
. “You were going to figure it out.”

The expectation of my demise was helping me wake up
. “Figure out wha…oh. Who hit Lucas?  You figured it out?”

I could barely hear him, so I managed to lean on my elbow and move my head closer to the space between the front seats
.

“I didn’t need help to figure it out.”

“Can I have a drink of water?”  Maybe if my mouth was not so dry I could think better. Or at least talk better.

Todd didn’t respond for a few seconds
. Then he said, “Sure. I saw you have some bottles in the trunk.”

I tried to think
. I had the idea about whoever called Lucas maybe being on the hospital’s cameras at exactly that time. Todd thought that was a good idea and was going to go through some tapes.

Then Todd called and said he had found something
. I met him at the elevator. Then what?  And no matter what happened then, how did we get here?

Todd was outside the back door of my car and reached into the back seat with a bottle of water
. “Don’t drink too fast.”

I couldn’t see his face well, but he sounded sad or defeated or something
. “Thanks.”  I stayed leaning on my elbow and reached for the bottle. He had taken off the cap, and I slowly raised the bottle to my lips and took a sip.

I could almost feel Todd staring at me, and met his gaze
. He spoke just louder than a whisper. “I thought the stuff killed you.” 

“But we’re not in the ER, are we?”

He squatted on the ground so he was at my level. “No. The tea was supposed to make you…sleep. I brought you out here after you drank it.”

My thoughts were clunking into place
. “You, you wanted me to drink the tea and die?”

He whispered
. “The tapes are digital, and they’re backed up. If you thought to look at people in the hospital who made calls when Lucas got his call, someone else might. But maybe not. Maybe just you. So…”

“Oh
. And if I didn’t tell anyone…” 

“If you
couldn’t
tell anyone, I’d be in the clear.”

“How did we get here?  And where are we?  Why did you hurt Lucas?  You don’t even know him.”  I was feeling more awake now, and had realized that the rhythmic noise I had heard earlier was probably Todd digging a hole to put me in
. This was not good.

Todd stared at me
. He looked as if he might cry. “I turned off the camera at the delivery entrance and took you out in one of the big plastic suitcases we use to move security equipment.”

That explains the bumping
.
“So, you hurt Lucas when he went to the hospital. That doesn’t make sense.”

“I just wanted to see if he recognized me
. He saw me near there, just after, after…”

Then I got it
. “You…killed Tanya Weiss?  I don’t believe it.”

He shrugged and grunted at the same time
. “It took me years to build my team. It’s the best group I ever worked with, and she was going to contract out the entire security function. She said I could
bid the job
.  That’s what she called it. I know about my job. I don’t know anything about bidding.”

“Holy crap
. So you really killed her?” 

“I didn’t mean to
. I saw her in the hall. I’d just gotten an email from her. She said she was on her way to talk to me. About getting rid of me and my guys.”

I didn’t have a clue what to say. And I was way too woozy to run away.

“She was…she didn’t care at all. I told her we worked our butts off. No contractor would do that. It was like she was telling the hospital to fire us, and we didn’t deserve it.” 

He nodded, to himself, I guessed
.

“When I stopped her in the hall, she could tell how mad I was
. Tanya said she had to go into the ladies’ room. I couldn’t let…I followed her in. I don’t even know why. It wasn’t to kill her. But she did this wave thing.” 

He waved one hand, in a gesture I figured Tanya Weiss had meant to be dismissive.

He whispered. “She said there were lots of jobs for rent-a-cops. I don’t…I don’t even remember taking my flashlight off my belt.”  His voice trailed off, and then got stronger. “You see, that hospital…I’ve put so much into beefing up security. And I’m either there or working out. If I didn’t have my job…”

It was as if Todd was trying to convince himself that killing Tanya was understandable
. I had begun thinking more clearly. Todd had told me he was out of the building, that he got back just as Tanya Weiss’ body was being taken out of the bathroom. But that was a lie. He’d been there. He knew there was no camera near the ladies’ room. And who would look for him on other cameras?  And if they saw him, so what?

“But why call Lucas?  He didn’t see you that day.”

“He saw me. He was walking fast and looked down the corridor toward x-ray right after he passed me. He
did
see me.”

“It was sort of an accident,” I said, softly, hoping he would realize a deliberate murder was a much bigger deal and decide he wanted to let me go
. “And Lucas was only thinking of one thing that day.”

“His sister
. I know that now.”

He stood and walked a few feet away from my car and then came back and squatted again
. His expression was anguished. “Why did you have to think of the phone call to Lucas being on a tape?”

I looked at Todd and then leaned all the way back on the seat
. We were in my car.
Why are we in my car?

His voice rose
. “You could have left it alone!”

His anger was scaring me, and I was scared enough already
. “What did you think you would gain by calling Lucas?”

Todd stood and paced a few feet away from the car and back again
. “I knew he’d come if I said his sister was there. I was going to tell him I was mistaken and tell him he could look at some camera footage with me, to see if she had been in the ER waiting room, or something.”

“That doesn’t involve giving him a concussion.”

“I told him he could get to her quicker coming in that side door. When I said I’d been wrong about her being there, he was almost frantic. I shrugged and started to walk away. Lucas shoved me. It almost pushed me to where the camera would get me. I had this small can of aerosol hair spray I carry, and I aimed it at his eyes. I don’t even remember taking out my Taser.”

This guy has amnesia about every time he used a weapon
. Convenient.

I stared at Todd some more. He is not a large man, and with his brown curly hair he looks harmless. Obviously not
. “Lucas said you sprayed something in his eyes, but he didn’t say he got tasered.”

He shrugged
. “He might not have known. It was quick, his head kind of thudded when he fell. You don’t have after-effects to a short dose. You’re sore, like from overdoing a workout.”

“So, he got up right away?”