Murder Takes a Dare: The First Marisa Adair Mystery Adventure (Marisa Adair Mysteries Book 1) (12 page)

“What’s going on here? Shall I get a bucket of cold water?”

Clay released Althea, and turned to face Anna Hill, the nursing home administrator. He smiled charmingly, but her lips remained pressed in a grim line. “I apologize, Mrs. Hill. My little turtledove and I got carried away.”

Mrs. Hill cocked her head, every short, wavy blonde hair on her head firmly sprayed into place. “I think it would more discreet of you to go to the privacy of either of your rooms.” The light catching the large diamonds and emeralds of her rings, the administrator toyed with the bright green print scarf draped elegantly over the shoulder of her pale green suit. “I expected something like this from you, Mr. Napier, with your flock of little turtledoves, but Mrs. Flaxton?” The stern face turned to the older woman, and one thinly plucked brow rose in surprise.

Althea was furious to be placed in such an undignified position. She brought her cane down sharply on Clay’s elegantly shod foot. When he cried out in pain, she smiled prettily in apology. “I’m so sorry, my little pigeon. Mrs. Hill, I assure you
—
”

“We’ll be more discreet in the future,” Clay finished hastily, rubbing his aching foot unobtrusively with his uninjured one. He managed a smile for Mrs. Hill. “If you’ll excuse us, dear lady?”

Mrs. Hill didn’t budge. Her tall, solid figure was perfectly still. She pulled her gold rimmed half glasses from her nose, and twirled them around by the stem in her manicured fingers. “I realize senior citizens have needs. I try not to be prudish or churlish about it. However, it would have been very disruptive if one of the residents had stumbled on this little scene.” She smiled faintly, but the hardness in her light blue eyes didn’t lessen. “One of Mr. Napier’s admirers could have started a riot.”

As Clay’s mouth opened in protest, Mrs. Hill raised a halting palm. “If this little—incident—is repeated in public ever again, I’ll be forced to transfer one or the other of you to another facility.” Her smile widened, showing sharp white teeth. “You may not find the next nursing home as
—
comfortable
—
as this one.”

Althea shivered. The nursing home administrator’s words had slithered down her spine as if they were a threat.

* * * * *

Dawn was breaking, streaking the sky overhead with broad brushstrokes of pink and lavender.

Twisting her head around to see if anyone was watching, Flora May self-consciously slipped into the woods behind the nursing home. In the thick trees of the forest, it was darker and dawn seemed further away. The dark trunks were shrouded with white mist, the tendrils like reaching, ghostly hands. Flora May shook herself.
Ghosts. Vampires. What a lot of nonsense.

A young girl’s dead body found in the cemetery. Mrs. Graham’s grandson gunned down in the hospital. Mrs. Graham herself dead of a heart attack.

Not nonsense. Then what?

Berating herself for being foolish, Flora May strode through the undergrowth toward the cemetery.

As she neared the clearing, she thought she heard the sound of an animal. She stopped, listening. It sounded like a sick or wounded creature.

Flora May veered off the faint trail, following the sound toward the river.

Nearly concealed by vines twined around a large tree, a man lay on the ground, moaning and writhing in the undergrowth.

Flora May ran toward him, stumbling when her foot hit a gopher hole.

She leaned over him.

The twisted face gazing up at her was barely recognizable as the man who had been contentedly fishing on the bank. “The woman I saw that day by the river. Are you real or the apparition of a fevered brain?”

Flora May crouched next to him. “I’m real. Just as real as this animal trap clamped on your leg.” She tried to open it, but she could barely budge the heavy, rusted steel jaws. The man groaned when the teeth sank deeper into his leg.

Flora May looked around for a heavy stick. She held the trap’s base steady with her white-shod foot. Sweating, she managed to use the thick branch as a lever to pry open the jaws. “Slide your leg away! Hurry! If this snaps shut on you, it will hurt like hell!”

With a groan, he awkwardly slid his leg clear of the trap.

She leaned over him. “I’m going to carry you through the woods.”

He shook his head. “I’m too heavy. Leave me and get help.”

Flora May thought of the dead girl found in the cemetery. She compared her tall robust body to the slim, shorter figure in the grass at her feet. “My mama always called me a strapping, big-boned girl. Guess my strength will come in handy now.” She worked her work-roughed hands under his body. “By the way, what’s your name?”

He opened his eyes, clear blue like the sky on a summer day. “Henry. What’s yours?”

“Flora May. I work at the nursing home.”

Henry’s eyes fluttered shut. “Flora May. Like flora.” He groaned. “A large, in your face, flowering tree. Not delicate and fragile, but full-blown and blooming and lovely.”

As Flora May carried him through the woods, staggering a bit as her feet hit roots or vines, she decided he must be delirious.

Marisa shivered in the early morning chill. As she hurried through the parking lot of the hospital, a cool breeze was swirling around her legs, chilling them through the thin casing of her hose. She was glad of her long-sleeved plum jacket with its matching skirt, which helped protect her against the chilly air.

Marisa’s hand trembled slightly as she keyed in her security code. She hurried through the empty lobby, dark except for the night lighting. Brandon did not start his shift until seven o’clock. With his computer shut off and his chair empty, his work area looked oddly lonely.

She was half-hopeful, half-afraid her office would be sealed off with police tape. On the one hand, she dreaded entering the scene of the horrific murder. On the other hand, she knew perfectly well life went on, and she had work to do.

She flicked on the lights in the outer office, irrationally afraid her door would be open and Jonah would still be lying on her office floor in a pool of his congealing blood.

Taking a deep breath, Marisa reeled in her racing thoughts. Her door was covered with yellow police tape. Relieved, she moved to the vacant desk. Before she was laid off, it had been occupied by Janie, the human resources assistant. A cheerful grandmother in her late sixties, Janie had been employed by the trauma hospital for over thirty years. She had ruled the outer office with a smile on her face and steel in her spine, and had handled visitors who ranged from angry employees to upset family members with aplomb.

Pulling a tissue from the box, Marisa swiped at the dust on the desk. She missed Janie’s veritable greenhouse of plants and flowers. Marisa glanced behind her. The gray filing cabinet had held Janie’s pride and joy, a rhododendron she had received thirty years before from her husband on her first day at work. Janie had used metal hooks to guide the dark green leaves all along the wall at chair railing height. By the time her job was eliminated, the growing vine had made its way the entire circumference of the room, and back to the huge potted base. The hooks had been removed, the holes filled in, and the walls painted. The only thing left of the greenery was the white water bottle Janie had used to water the plants and spray the leaves to keep them glossy.   

Work. Work would help her put the disturbing thoughts out of her mind. Marisa glanced at her office door. All she needed was a computer. She powered up the computer. She growled. In spite of the email filter, she continued to receive the Viagra and penis-enlarging spam.

She opened an email from one of the nursing supervisors. The email stated a cart was missing, and asked for its return. Another email from another supervisor stated several wheelchairs were missing from the department, and to please return them to the unit. Marisa thought of all of the missing carts and wheelchairs, cavorting and frolicking during the night shift, when the patients were in their beds and the staff at the nursing stations. She smiled at her own whimsy.

Probably a good time to run some reports she’d been putting off. As she deftly clicked the keys of the computer to compile data on turnover and new hires for the past six months, she thought about the propensity of staff to leave within the first few months.
Failure to pick the right people for the job? A need for better training in their first couple of months?
As she scrolled through the new hires listing, she frowned. She noticed the employees hired nearly six months ago all had French sounding surnames.

They’d all been hired while she was in the inpatient chemical dependency program.

How odd.

Curious, Marisa opened another window on the computer screen. From the digital employee records system, she pulled up the files of the employees hired six months ago. She squinted. The employee identification photos looked murky. She’d have to talk to the staff member in charge of taking them. One after the other, she pulled up the employees’ applications for employment. All applications for employment were entered into the system through the online employment system, then transferred via an automatic data dump into the records system once they were hired.

Frowning, she scrolled through the documents.

Each one of the employees had worked in New Orleans. They’d all been displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

What were the chances of a slew of employees who’d all been displaced by a hurricane years before suddenly coming to work at the same hospital in Kentucky? A hurricane which had destroyed businesses and homes, eradicated records, and made it virtually impossible to complete background checks on employees whose lives had been destroyed by it.

Marisa tapped her fingers on the desk. After a moment, she clicked the keys to send all of the documents to the printer. Something was off kilter. As the printer whirred in the quiet office, she took a deep breath. A delicate whiff of a coppery smell penetrated Marisa’s concentration.

Jonah.
How could she have forgotten him for even one moment? Who had killed him right here, in her office? She’d been to his condo before. Would anyone there know anything? She didn’t have a key…but could she convince the building manager to let her in his condo to look around?

He had lived in a maze of fairly new condominiums not far away. She would run over there, and see what she could find out.

As Marisa quickly typed an email for Brandon to let him know she’d be out of her office this morning, her boss walked in.

Under normal circumstances, Marisa would have found Payton Reed physically attractive. His eyes were a clear, startling blue in the strongly handsome face. Although he was pushing fifty, he would have easily passed for a thirtysomething with his slightly lined face and thickly muscled body under the perfectly tailored blue suit. The overhead lights caught the bronze highlights in the short mahogany hair as he gracefully slid into the chair in front of the desk.

As he crossed one ankle over the other, Marisa was unmoved by his physical beauty and wondered at her own immunity to his obvious charms. In his compelling face, she saw his sharp intelligence and driving ambition. Even with the most careful scrutiny, sensitivity and compassion were missing, along with any remnants of humor.

Reed glanced at the far door with its festoons of yellow tape. “In the face of yesterday’s tragedy, I was surprised to see your little red Miata in the parking garage. I thought you would be cowering in your bed under the covers. I admire such dedication. Especially since I need you in your human resources capacity to deal with a sensitive matter right away.”

Payton Reed had taken over the reins of the hospital as part of the acquisition process of their new corporate owner. He seemed to thrive on the contempt of the management staff. He continued to openly humiliate them and ridicule their ideas, then immediately take credit for those ideas with the corporate office. He appeared to enjoy cultivating and reaping the scorn of the nursing and therapy staff, he applied rules inconsistently, and he was arbitrary and subjective. He never praised and he gleefully and publicly criticized.

Rather than heart palpitations, she felt only a mild annoyance. She had a definite plan of action, and she didn’t have time for this. With a slight sigh, Marisa hit the send button on her email to Brandon and swiveled in her chair to face her boss across the bare desk.

Marisa’s eyes widened. Reed’s jaw was clenched, his lips were pinched, and a vein had popped out on his forehead. He was clenching white sheets of paper in his hand so tightly they were crumpled. With a start, Marisa realized her boss was in a towering rage.

He threw the sheaf of papers at her. They fluttered to the top of the desk.

“What?” Marisa was beginning to lose patience. She needed to leave.

“Your little friend, Tara Ross, has been using her work computer and her work time to post dribble on a live, online forum! Whoever heard of grown people using such names…Royal Bloodhound! Toe Tagger! People with nothing to do all day but type inane comments and opinions! I don’t care if she is your friend. You’re the freaking human resources director. This is grounds for instant termination and I want you to terminate her ass! I don’t care what she does outside work. But work is a different matter altogether. If I am going to bust my ass to make this hospital a success, then so are all of the rest of you. In my hospital, all lazy asses get fired—”

Bowing her head over the crumpled papers, Marisa raised a finger to shush him. She couldn’t think with him on a tirade. Scanning the papers, she thought furiously.

She knew Tara had spent a lot of time in the past, not only leisure time but admittedly work time as well, posting with her online group. Tara also used the online group as a way to meet to new guys. She loved the thrill of the chase, both as the predator and as the prey. Tara juggled the myriad relationships. She wanted to whip them into a frenzy of wanting her, needing her, doing anything to get her, while staying aloof. In Marisa’s opinion, Tara was addicted to the excitement and euphoria of constant, new relationships. At the same time, Tara kept her heart intact by not caring and retaining total control of the relationships.

When Marisa had checked herself into the chemical dependency rehab program, Tara had helped her and supported her. During the support process, Tara had realized she had her own problems. Marisa thought Tara had given it all up, but the papers in front of her told a different story.

Sufficient time had passed for Marisa to read the sheets, and Payton was getting restless.

Marisa couldn’t let Payton fire Tara. Not only was Tara her friend, but also it would be unfair; the punishment did not fit the crime. Marisa knew Reed was extremely smart, and she would have to be very, very careful in her approach.

“Tara sometimes leaves her desk without locking her work station.” Marisa spoke slowly, but her mind was leapfrogging ahead to work out the details of her defense of Tara. “You can’t prove Tara posted these online comments. The only thing you can prove is it was done using her company email account. She doesn’t have an assistant, thanks to our budget cuts. Anyone could have sat at her desk and used her computer.”

“Marisa, you know Tara Ross questions my every decision, she balks at every measure I’ve implemented to get this hospital back on track, and she bleats about the needs of the patients, the families, and the staff. Using her work time for this shit is the ultimate hypocrisy. This is the perfect opportunity for me to get rid of her and her insolence.”

Marisa surprised herself by asking the question she hadn’t had the nerve to ask before now. “Payton, why do you approach us, the management staff, as your enemies rather than collaborating with us? We’re smart, we’re seasoned, and we know our jobs. What are you gaining by treating your interactions with us as confrontations?”

Caught off guard by her question, Payton leaned back in the chair in surprise. “Marisa, I am an ambitious man. I took this job because it’s an opportunity for me to show the corporate office I can take a hospital from mediocrity to greatness. I felt I would have somewhat of an advantage because I grew up not far from here, and I am familiar with the area. I will be successful here, and I don’t care what it takes to meet my goals. This is just a proving ground, a stepping stone from this job to a high-powered, exorbitantly paid corporate position. I won’t let any of you get in the way of my plans. You were all spoiled and complacent. The previous CEO let you do whatever entered your heads, without thought of the financial consequences. We can all see where that approach took the facility—right on the edge of bankruptcy—”

Marisa interrupted sharply. “Our previous CEO did lead us with compassion and humanitarianism. It wasn’t his fault we faced dwindling reimbursements for our services from the government’s Medicaid and Medicare programs, and private insurance. Those are industry issues, not his shortcomings. He was making changes to adjust to prevailing market forces; they just hadn’t had time to be effective. You are making drastic changes with only the short-term view of ‘saving money,’ regardless of long-term ramifications—”

He held up one hand. “Marisa, you’re letting emotions cloud your normal objectivity. What is our single greatest expense?”

“Um, salaries, wages, and benefits?”

“Correct, SWB! And what has been the net effect of my ‘confrontational management style’ on the SWB?”

Understanding flooded Marisa’s brain. “SWB has decreased because all of the new hires earn less than the people who left.”

“Exactly! The Chief Information Officer, who in my opinion fell into the information technology job with the advent of computers and didn’t know anything about them as evidenced by the piles of paper on his desk, received an exorbitant pay check every month. And now—”

Marisa finished his sentence. “And now, you have a green kid with a fresh community college diploma and a childhood of video games as his experience, and a pay check a fraction of the size of the previous CIO’s pay!”

“The boy might be green, but he’s the one who dug up the dirt on your friend!”

Marisa ignored the dig. “The previous CIO left under his own power, so no severance and no unemployment. And if we add in the Director of Nursing and other leaders you’ve run off with your management style, we see a tidy overall savings in salaries!”

“You see, Marisa, the method of my so-called madness. And while we’re being so open and honest, do you think I’m not smart enough to know you’re just as insubordinate as your friend? While she is openly defiant, you’re just as much or more so in your covert way. Did you really think I did not realize you were manipulating me? As long as I have gotten what I want, I’ve let you think you’re in control. But when our goals diverge, you lose. This is my hospital, and you will do as you are told. That includes firing your little friend, Tara Ross, who I may add earns nearly as much as the gone, but not lamented, CIO.”