Текст книги "Brain Dead"

Автор книги: Eileen Dreyer

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

She froze for a second, staring. The door kept swinging and she got a good look at her living room. "Aw, hell."

She should have expected this. A lovely night out with a man, and she came home to find her house broken into.

Her first reaction was that somebody was going to be mighty disappointed. Her second was that only one person had ever broken into her house before, and that that person had started calling again.

He'd warned her. He'd served her with a notice. She'd ignored it, as she'd tried to before.

"Jason Michael Parker," she snarled, "if this is your work, I'll fry you like a hush puppy!"

Furious and frustrated and frightened, Timmie shoved the door all the way open and stormed inside.

"Timmie, don't go in there!"

Timmie hadn't even realized that Alex had gotten out of the car. But there he was, loping up the porch steps. Timmie didn't have any choice. Whirling to face him, she threw her arms wide to block his way in.

"Alex, no!"

But Alex didn't hear her. Before Timmie could get the door shut, Alex was pushing her out of the way. "Get in my car," he demanded. "I've called 911... Oh, my God," he gasped, stumbling to a sick halt. "You've been vandalized!"

And Timmie, more ashamed than she'd been since her father had thrown up on her at the father-daughter dance, had to stand there next to Alex as he took in the sight of the living room she'd been rooting through for two days and admit the truth. "No one's touched anything, Alex. This is the way it looks."

He hit his head on the Nerf ball as she ushered him in.

* * *

The police came five minutes later to dust the door and peer at the broken glass and gape at the sight of Dr. Alex Raymond calmly seated on a pile of Life magazines in the middle of the floor. Waiting until Timmie had made sure Meghan was still safe at Mattie's, they reluctantly asked Timmie if anything was missing, and agreed too quickly when she said no.

When they left, Timmie ushered a still-protesting Alex out right after them. And then, only bothering to board up her front door and take off the stiletto heels she'd pulled out for her famous date, Timmie spent close to an hour with the bat in her hand trying to knock that Nerf ball back off its line.

She was forty minutes into her therapy, her red dress hiked to her thighs and her stockings torn, when she saw the blinking light on her answering machine.

Nope. She didn't want to check it. After all, it was probably Jason calling to see if she'd checked his handiwork.

Nothing had been taken. Nothing moved. To Timmie's mind, that meant Jason. After all, if somebody'd broken in to rob her, they would have at least tried. She did have a few valuables tucked in her freezer. If it had been another one of those amateur threats, the perps wouldn't have settled for the front door.

No, it was Jason, which meant he was getting started again. He wouldn't hurt her. Jason considered violent men weaklings. His torture dujour was the subpoena, his chosen calling card the simple hit-and-run attack.

And he wanted to stay in touch with Meghan. Timmie had to get the hell to a lawyer and stop him.

When she had finished working off her rage.

Smack! A three-bagger at least, with Willie McGee trundling along the bases ahead of her.

After a while she ran out of energy. Barb called at one, and Ellen shortly thereafter, evidently having been contacted by the Mattie express. Then, finally, Cindy, who didn't understand when Timmie declined her offer to come over and sit.

"But I'm still at work," Cindy objected. "I can be right over there. I mean, my God, Timmie, you're there all alone. What if something else happens tonight?"

Timmie wasn't sure whether Cindy meant that she could help or that she didn't want to miss it. Either way, Timmie's answer was the same.

"Cindy, I lived in North Hollywood and worked in Central L.A. for almost ten years. I don't think the homeys here are quite so tough. So if everybody will stop calling, I'm going to bed."

She wasn't making Cindy happy. "I'm trying to be a good friend."

Timmie sighed, chagrined. "You are a good friend."

"I'll go right home. Call me if you need me."

"I promise." She'd made the same promise to Ellen and Barb. Maybe three promises like that was critical mass. By the time she shut off the phone Timmie had had it with just about everybody in this town. She was going to shut off the lights and go to bed and the hell with all of them.

She was halfway across the living room when she heard the creak.

The porch. The first board after the steps. It always creaked when people tried to walk too carefully on it. She knew. She'd tried to sneak past that board herself too many nights.

Her heart shouldn't thump like that. She shouldn't suddenly want to call Cindy.

It was nothing. Nobody. All those careful friends had succeeded in making her afraid, which was stupid. She'd survived more than a stupid B&E artist in a one-horse town.

Creak. Scrape.

How could silence be so loud? It seemed to roar in her ears, with only the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen to encroach on it. It was so quiet Timmie could almost hear herself sweat.

She should call for help. She didn't want to be laughed at again.

There was somebody at her front door.

Somebody who knocked.

It wasn't much of a knock. More like another series of soft scrapes. Syncopated and slow. For some reason, Timmie thought of every old urban legend, from the Hook to the hung guy with his shoes scraping the top of the lovers' car, all making slow, syncopated noises in the dead of night.

"Who's there?" she called out, feeling like an idiot.

All she had to do was check out the window. Make sure there was somebody on her porch. Call the police.

She took a step. She took another. She heard a muffled sound like a man's voice on the other side of her door. It was the Hook. She just knew it. Or worse. It was Jason, finally deciding to escalate the issue into insanity.

"What do you want?" she called more loudly, feeling really stupid now.

Timmie pulled back the curtain to check out front. She could see the porch, glossy gray flooring, clean white rails and wicker furniture. Empty sidewalk bordered by twin yellow columns of chrysanthemums. Some kind of large, lumpy shadow at her door.

"Move back so I can see you!" she yelled.

She got an answer. She just couldn't make it out. So she picked up the baseball bat and opened the front door.

And screamed.

The shadow hadn't been leaning over at her door. It had been leaning on her door. The minute she opened it, the weight forced it wide open. Timmie jumped back. A body landed on her floor with a smack and lay sprawled at her feet.

"Oh, for God's sake," she snapped in disbelief. "Murphy!"

That was when she realized that he hadn't fallen because he was drunk. He'd fallen because he was bleeding like a stuck pig.

Chapter 14

"Jesus, Murphy, what happened?"

M There was blood on his face, all down the front of his shirt, caked in his hair. There were bruises and scrapes on his knuckles, a couple of good rips in what was probably his only sports coat, and a funny catch to his breathing Timmie recognized all too well. Either Murphy had run afoul of the only grizzly in the state of Missouri, or he'd had the crap beaten out of him.

Timmie didn't even notice her nylon snag on the hardwood floor as she dropped to her knees next to him. "Murphy?"

"Nnngh."

At least he was getting his eyes open. Timmie tossed aside her bat to check his pulse. A little fast, but not thready. Not slow and bounding, which would have signaled a head injury. She lifted both eyelids to make sure his pupils were round and reactive to light. They were. Timmie also saw a spark of cognizance flickering in that deceptive green. He was in there, he just hadn't decided whether or not he wanted to make an appearance.

"Oh, Murphy!" she called as if he were a kid she wanted to come out and play. Unbuttoning his shirt and pulling his tie loose, she did a quick assessment with knowing hands to find a couple of lumps behind one ear, an impressive cut at his hairline, and more than one tender area over his left ribs and right kidney. "Come on. You got all the way to my house. Now tell me what happened."

He blew out a breath and flinched. So did Timmie. She could have stoked a Bunsen burner on that breath.

She sat back, disgusted with them both. With him for having evidently jumped off the wagon right into a bar fight and herself for feeling disappointed.

"Tell me what happened or I roll you right back out the door," she demanded, ready to get back up.

He didn't open his eyes again. "You're going to tell me... I had a drink."

"I don't think it'll come as a surprise to you."

He nodded his head fractionally and winced again. "Couldn't seem to... get here without a little painkiller."

"So you got beaten up before you got drunk?"

That at least got one eye open. "I'm not drunk, Leary. Trust me... I know the difference."

"And you got beaten up how?"

The eye closed. He spent a moment bracing his ribs with his hand. "Nice dress, Leary. Was the big date tonight?"

It was all Timmie could do to keep from hitting him. "You're asking for another bruise, Murphy. What happened?"

"I got jumped... Oh, Jesus, I forgot how much that hurts."

"You got jumped?" she demanded. "In Puckett?"

"By somebody with jackboots."

Jackboots. Oh, boy. Timmie let her own breath out and rested back on her heels. The only jackboots she'd seen in this town had been worn by the cops. "Where? When?"

"Ten... I think. My place. Three of them, maybe four. It all kind of blurred after that first boot."

"And so you came here instead of calling 911 because you didn't want to run into the same cops who jumped you?"

He managed a twitch of a smile. "You did live in L.A., didn't you?"

Even considering the evening she'd had, she had to grin. "You need to get checked over, Murphy."

"Thought you were a forensic nurse."

"That doesn't make me an X-ray machine. Let me call the paramedics. I'm not licensed to handle this. Especially if you've ended up with a pneumothorax or a bad kidney."

"And if I refuse?"

"I don't have any release-from-responsibility forms around here."

He bent a jean-clad leg to evidently ease the discomfort in his stomach and grunted with the effort. "I need some... stitching, Leary. Some ice. Not a new kidney."

She grimaced. "Familiar with the symptoms, are you?"

He grimaced right back. "Occupational hazard. I can breathe fine, my neck's not even sore, and I already peed on my own."

"No blood?"

He grinned. "No blood."

It finally dawned on Timmie that cold air was swirling in the still-open door. Jumping to her feet, she closed it, locked it, and returned to shove aside the pile of magazines to get to the Chippendale secretary in which her grandmother had stored the linen napkins. Perfect for stanching blood.

"Have you been... uh, tested lately?" she asked.

He grinned like a teenager. "During my latest unfortunate incarceration. I may be a headcase, but I'm a careful headcase."

She went back to getting her hands bloody. "And when you were dancing with these guys, did they deliver any message?"

"Your basic 'Be on the noon train outta town.'"

She nodded. "So you're upsetting people again."

"In my line of work, we prefer to say I'm getting close to the truth."

"Uh-huh." Pushing a stiff mass of hair back off his forehead, she assessed the two-inch cut that looked like it had been made with a blunt object. Maybe a nightstick or a flashlight. "You know the drill?"

He was still smiling, as if this were all faintly amusing. "Daniel Patrick Murphy. Timmie Leary's living room floor. Thursday, October thirtieth."

Oriented to person, place, time. He really did have the routine down. Timmie pressed a napkin against the cut and got a muffled oath for her trouble.

"I'll call Barb," Timmie said. "I can trust her."

"No. Just you."

Timmie sighed, furious with herself. With him. With whoever had done this. Murphy really did look like hell. And he'd brought it right to her door, as if she could make it better. What the hell was she, Caregivers "R" Us? With her own muffled oath, Timmie swiped an old olive-green throw pillow from the couch and slipped it beneath his head. "I don't have my own suture kit, Murphy. Besides, Barb can at least get you some Darvon."

Damn him if he didn't chuckle with his eyes still closed.

"No good. I was hooked on that, too."

Timmie wanted to laugh, damn him. "Anything you weren't hooked on?"

He considered. "Not that I can remember."

"A full life lived, huh? I'll just go throw out all the cough syrup and aftershave so you don't end up crawling across the floor in the dead of night."

"Won't happen," he said, then offered another crooked grin. "Not this time, anyway."

Timmie had been about to get to her feet. That one stopped her cold. Well, wasn't that just the story of her life? The man she'd dreamed about was a disappointment, and the one she was attracted to was a dead-end proposition. Not this time. It pretty much closed the conversation.

"Well, then," she said, wiping her hands as she finished her climb. "I guess I should probably at least get the name of your next of kin, so I know who to contact if you croak on my floor."

He seemed to think about that, too. "My wife, I guess."

Another double take. Her third in only five minutes. It was definitely not her night. "I thought you said you had three strikes against you."

He grinned again, which was making her testy. "I do. I just haven't worked up the energy to walk away from the plate... Oh, God, I must feel bad. I'm doing baseball analogies."

This time Timmie did laugh as she walked over to the phone. "So, what's the opera equivalent? The fat lady's sung but the curtain puller's asleep?"

He laughed back and groaned. Served him right. Timmie was just about to lift the receiver when the thing rang. For a second, all she could do was stare at it.

"I think it's for you," Murphy suggested in that hurt-rib-careful voice he was using.

"Uh-uh," she disagreed, shaking her head. "The way my luck's been going tonight, it's probably Jason wanting to gloat about breaking in."

The phone kept ringing, shrill and threatening in the early-morning quiet.

"Breaking in? What are you talking about?"

"The board over the door," she said. "You weren't the first one to make a surprise appearance tonight."

Timmie looked over to see Murphy open his eyes, assess the hastily attached boards on the graying door. "Leary..."

But she couldn't wait anymore. She just picked up the phone. "What?"

"You didn't listen."

Oh, shit. It wasn't Jason at all.

"I think I'm getting my phone threat," she informed Murphy dourly, then turned to her caller. "Okay," she said, infuriated by the fact that her heart rate had just doubled. "I give up. Who is this?" She also hit the Record button on her answering machine, because half-whispered threats in the dead of night pissed her off.

"Your voice of reason. You should have listened."

"Listened to what?" she demanded. "You think I'm going to pay attention to somebody who cuts his threats out of a Cosmo?"

"Take a look at Mr. Murphy. You think that's a joke? How about your front door?"

Her front door. Wonderful. Better and better. She had the creeps harder than she'd ever had them in L.A. Well, at least that meant that Jason wasn't harassing her. Yet. He'd probably show up right after she got the glass replaced. And she didn't even want to think right now about what the hell they'd done to her house if she hadn't noticed anything out of place.

"Okay, I'll bite," she drawled. "Who are you and what are we supposed to stop doing?"

"We're just people with the welfare of this town in mind. You and Air. Murphy obviously aren't."

Timmie probably shouldn't have, but she laughed. "Great. I'm being threatened by the Puckett Chamber of Commerce. I would have thought you guys were too busy printing up complimentary calendars to bother with breaking and entering."

"You're not taking this seriously enough."

"You still haven't told me what we've done."

"You know what you've done. Do you think Dr. Raymond would still see you if he knew you were trying to ruin him?"

Timmie actually found herself spluttering. Stunned, furious, frightened all over again.

Alex.

No, no, no. It couldn't be Alex.

She tried to form a coherent answer, at least a noise of real outrage, but the caller had already hung up.

"Leary?" Murphy asked from behind her.

"Well, that tears it," she snapped, slamming the receiver down so hard the phone jumped in its little alcove. "I'm on the next stage out of town. Los Angeles was way more fun than this."

"Leary? Who was it?"

That finally got her to turn around, only to find that Murphy wasn't where she'd left him. He was, in fact, tottering toward her, his free hand leaving bloody smudges on the dingy brown couch, his arm tight around his ribs, his face the color of her front door.

"You idiot!" she snapped, truly mad. "Lie down somewhere before you fall again and knock all this crap over and I just have to clean it up right after I clean you!"

His grin was probably about sixty watts shy of what he was trying to project. "It is an... interesting room."

"Shut up." She stalked over and grabbed him by the armpit.

"Ouch."

Timmie at least got him on the couch—after she'd swept it clean of the insurance forms her grandmother had seemed to collect on a par with Christmas cookie recipes.

"Hey, Leary?" Murphy asked as she stuffed another pillow under his head.

"What?"

"Tell me that's not a tattoo on your thigh."

Timmie instinctively looked down to make sure her dress hadn't hiked up. It hadn't. But it did tend to float out a bit.

"Great view from the floor," Murphy allowed, eyes half open. "Good thing I'm an honorable man. Is it a tattoo?"

"What's it to you?" she demanded, hand instinctively covering the spot even over her dress.

Murphy groaned. "It's a rose, isn't it, Leary? I love rose tattoos. They're sexy as hell, especially there. I don't suppose you'd want to have my babies, would you?"

There he went again. How could he be this offensive and this funny at the same time? How could he make her feel so itchy with just that damn smile? Timmie grabbed a particularly vile puce afghan and plopped it over him as if she were burying not only him, but every wayward thought in her head. "I'd rather skin myself alive with a nail file than have another relationship with an unreformed drunk, Murphy."

He smiled. He smiled! "Okay, then, how about some meaningless sex?"

For just that second before her better sense kicked in, Timmie actually considered it. Thankfully, her better sense was stronger than her libido, and she remembered just what a disaster it had been when she'd followed the meaningless-sex dictates of stage three of divorce. "I only have sex after I jog, Murphy. If you can get off that couch and run six miles right now, it's a deal."

She got another groan. "You're heartless, Leary."

"No, I'm not," she said, feeling a little better. "If I were heartless, I'd tell Barb what you just said before I let her stitch you up."

And with that, finally, she went to call her friend.

* * *

"This probably isn't a good idea," Murphy managed almost an hour later.

"Shut up," both Timmie and Barb answered in unison.

"But you shouldn't be involved," Murphy insisted as the sleep-tousled giantess pulled his shirt off to check him.

He was colorful, that was for sure. The bruises were brick red and purpling, even with the Baggie-loads of ice Timmie had already supplied. Clad in bright orange sweats, Barb examined him with gentle efficiency. Murphy winced and cursed under his breath as they moved him, but he behaved. Having already seen the worst when she'd cleaned him, Timmie kept her mouth shut and her mind on the newest problems they had.

Alex.

It wasn't going to be Alex. She wouldn't let it be, no matter what.

But if not Alex, then who? If she was right about the death rate going up in Restcrest, why wouldn't he have noticed? And why the hell couldn't she just have focused on cleaning the house and teaching trauma nurse certification courses instead of always getting into trouble?

"So, you're telling me that the long and short of this evening is that you got beaten up because you're sure Vic was murdered, and it has something to do with that little dustup at the horse show," Barb said, squinting into Murphy's retina through an ophthalmoscope. "Which might lead back to Restcrest, if not—and I don't believe it for a minute—Alex."

"Shouldn't you be more surprised?" Murphy asked.

Barb just kept working. "The last time I was surprised was when my children told me that they'd walked in on Daddy handcuffing his girlfriend to the bed. If Vic had to die, I'm glad it wasn't from stupidity."

Standing beyond Murphy, Timmie could see the glitter in Barb's eyes that belied her brisk words. She offered the only consolation she could. "He was trying to be a good cop."

Barb nodded, spared Timmie a quick glance that betrayed too much, and picked up her percussion hammer and Murphy's elbow. "Then what do we do about it?" she asked.

"We do nothing," he answered, his attention on the gig-twitch of his arms in response to her deft taps. "It might just be time to take this to the state police."

"State police wear jackboots, too," Timmie quietly offered.

Murphy glared at her.

She shrugged. "In a little while. Can't we just kind of make sure we've got the right field of wheat before we bring in the harvesting equipment?" Now both of them were staring at her. She scowled. "All right, so there are some drawbacks to being raised in a literary household. I think in analogies. What I mean is that Restcrest is a wonderful place. I don't want it leveled in a panzer attack for the truth."

"It may end up leveled anyway," Murphy told her. "Even if it isn't Raymond, an investigation of any kind could cost the facility its license."

Timmie was already shaking her head. "That won't happen," she insisted. "Alex Raymond is the heart of Restcrest. As long as he isn't the culprit—which he isn't—Restcrest will be fine."

Barb leaned over to look Murphy full in the face. "Mr. Murphy," she said, gesturing to Timmie. "I'd like to introduce you to Cleopatra."

Murphy grinned. "Queen of denial, huh?"

"I am not," Timmie insisted out of habit. "I'm serious."

Besides, she thought without bothering to tell them, I'm Scarlett. No denial necessary when you can just put things off till tomorrow.

"You really think somebody's killing gomers?" Barb asked as she tapped knees and Achilles tendons. "Why?"

"Could it just be negligence?" Murphy asked.

Both women shook their heads. "That'd make Alex the culprit," Timmie told him. "Alex may be many things. He isn't negligent."

Murphy rolled his eyes again. Barb, on the other hand, looked pensive. "Then who? And why?"

"Could be a number of things," Murphy assured her. "Could be cost cutting. For some reason right now, Restcrest doesn't have very many patients in its most expensive division. Then there's the researcher, Davies. He's happy as a clam that he has lots of fresh brains to play with. Or you could have one of those mercy killers on the loose."

Timmie shook her head. "That usually doesn't involve a police cover-up."

"Even if the hospital involved is the town's biggest industry?" Murphy asked. "Awful lot of good publicity generated in that facility, not only for the hospital, but for the town and the county. It's top on the local job hit parade right now."

"Well, that would definitely explain the chamber-of-commerce angle," Timmie admitted.

"You're sure it's Restcrest?" Barb asked.

"It's sure Alex they mentioned on the phone," Timmie said.

"It's not Alex," Barb said simply. "Think of somebody else. Lie down, Mr. Murphy. I'm going to make you beautiful again."

Murphy laid down and in quick order had sterile towels draped over head and bare chest, and his forehead painted a bright Betadine orange. Settling herself on the coffee table like a ripe pumpkin waiting for a good carve, Barb set to work.

"Okay," she said, drawing up the lidocaine. "If there is something going on, what about that Mary Jane Arlington? I wouldn't put anything past her."

Just south of the sterile towels Barb had draped, Murphy's eyes followed the movements of the syringe. "How about if we wait to discuss this?" he asked in astonishingly faint tones. "I'm not sure I want you to be wielding sharp instruments close to my face if you get upset."

Barb snorted unkindly. "Oh, don't be a baby. I've sewn up screaming kids, fighting drunks, and hallucinating psychos. I even sewed up a hysterical poodle once."

Timmie grinned. "Didn't even leave a scar."

Murphy just sighed in resignation and closed his eyes. His fists were still suspiciously tight, however, as Barb first numbed, then sutured the laceration with stitches as delicate as any master seamstress.

"Mary Jane," Barb reiterated. "You see the serious Hinckley eyes she puts on Alex? I think she'd take out the town council with a machete if she thought it'd help. When was your last tetanus?"

Murphy didn't even hesitate. "Last year. Mary Jane, huh?"

Barb nodded. "Rabbit in the stew pot, you know what I mean?"

"What about Paul Landry?" Timmie asked. "Mattie doesn't like him at all."

"Who knows?" Barb asked, snipping a pair of hairlike threads. "He's sure a big-time player in a nasty league."

"Would people be upset that he's involved with GerySys?" Murphy asked, bringing the proceedings to a screeching halt.

"What?" Timmie demanded before Barb could.

"You know about GerySys?" he asked, opening his eyes.

"You are talking about the worst nursing home chain since the invention of the bedsore," Barb informed him. "Parent of the notorious Gulag Golden Grove. That GerySys? Why?"

"Because Paul Landry is negotiating with them to cosponsor Restcrest. I found out today from a contact at the Post."

Murphy almost ended up with a pierced eyebrow. "Alex would never let him do that," Barb informed him tightly.

"Alex has no say," Murphy said. "It was part of the deal. Landry's in charge. And Landry's talking GerySys into helping defray a much more expensive unit than anybody at Price had anticipated."

"Oh, God." It was a chorus now. Distress, disgust. Disbelief.

"This'll kill Alex for sure," Timmie said.

"So they—Landry or Mary Jane or whoever—killed Victor because he found out people were dying at the home," Murphy said. "And maybe it had something to do with this new deal with Golden Grove—"

"Or maybe they're keeping it quiet so GerySys won't be scared off," Timmie said.

"And somehow they have Van Adder involved so the deaths go virtually unnoticed."

"If they killed Vic," Barb said, "why not just kill Murphy, too?"

Murphy was once again eyeing the instruments. "Because I got the impression that this was stage one. If somebody had threatened Victor, would he have listened?"

Barb laughed, a booming intrusion in the echoing room. "Not Victor. It would have been an insult to the memory of Jack Webb."

"But it does mean they're serious," Timmie admitted.

Murphy allowed himself a minimal nod beneath the towel. "Hard to believe, but I think you're right. We need to make sure your kids are safe."

Timmie shared looks with Barb, her stomach knotting. She could tell that Barb's was doing the same. Decision time. Unfortunately, Timmie couldn't go back on the one she'd already made.

Barb clinched it by bending back to work. "We can take care of our kids," she said. "And I'm not about to insult the memory of Jack Webb, either. The question is, what do we do now?"

"Well," Timmie said, grabbing the scissors and snipping threads to speed things up, "I have an appointment to meet with the St. Charles ME to talk about it. And I have a Morbidity and Mortality printout I'd like you to—" She got that far, and froze.

The printout.

The very same printout she'd sneaked out of the ER like a counterfeit diamond and perused like secret missile plans. Oh, damn. Dropping the scissors at the edge of the tray, she spun on her heels for the stairs. "Excuse me."

Upstairs nothing seemed changed. The same mountain range of books commanded the hallway, now in disarray from where Timmie had burrowed for items for that damn memory case. Her room was still awash in fabric samples and purloined wallpaper books and outdated missalettes. Timmie did a quick check to see if she could spot a strange hand at it, but she couldn't tell because she'd tossed the room too many times herself looking for her dad's things.

In the end, it didn't matter. There between the old sleigh bed and the wall where she'd left it with all her busy work was her cloth nursing bag. And inside that was the list.

Timmie chuckled with embarrassment. As if this would made a big difference. Unless three separate computer systems crashed, the printout was like an extra roll of prints. Yanking the sheaf of papers from her bag, Timmie carried them back downstairs where Barb was telling Murphy what a lucky boy he was.

"I think I found something on the M and M printout," she said, reclaiming the scissors. "I need you to look, too, Barb."

"There's one other thing you have to do," Barb told her in a tone of voice that portended trouble, her attention still on the tiny needle and thread in her large hands.

Timmie held still. Murphy opened his eyes. Barb smiled, and it wasn't pretty.

Timmie blanched. "Not..."

Barb nodded, enjoying herself much too much. "You know damn well that if there's something hinky going on at Restcrest the staff knows about it, and at least one person over there's pissed as hell. You know it, Timmie. And there's only one way to find out who it is."

"No."

"Oh, yes. You're going to have to go undercover."

"You go undercover," Timmie demanded of the big woman, now truly distressed. "I'd rather play coroner truck with Van Adder."

Barb was laughing now. "Sorry, girl. I'd stick out like a sore thumb. But they're always needing nurses over there. And you are, even with all those fancy initials behind your name, a nurse. The next time Restcrest calls for help, you're going to have to go on gomer patrol."