Music of Ghosts (27 page)

Thirty-nine

Ginger was snuggling against
Cochran when the phone jarred her awake. She grabbed it quickly, hoping to cut it off in mid-ring. She and Cochran had gone to sleep late and she didn't want him to wake up this early. Clutching the phone to her chest, she tiptoed into the bathroom and closed the door.

“Ginger Malloy,” she answered in a whisper.

“Ginger?” Mary Crow's voice came over the line. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Ginger replied, surprised. “Jerry's asleep. I didn't want to wake him up.”

“I'm sorry to call so early, but this is important.”

Ginger sat down on the edge of the bathtub. “Don't tell me you've got bad news.”

“No news at all—the judge hasn't ruled yet,” said Mary. “Listen, last night I couldn't sleep, so I read your Fiddlesticks article, and you won't believe what I found out!”

“What?” Ginger was both surprised and flattered that Mary Crow had taken the time to read her piece with everything she had going on right now.

Mary then launched into a tale that sounded like a
Snitch
article—about how the original Fiddlesticks had changed identities with another inmate, escaped the gas chamber, and was transferred to a mental hospital.

“How did you find this out?” said Ginger, wondering if all this custody mess had pushed Mary over some kind of edge.

“I hacked into the penal system database.”

Instantly, Ginger pictured the story in the paper. Front page, above the fold, her name in the by-line. “Well, it's a hell of a story.”

“Why do you think I called you?” asked Mary. “I know just how you can get it, too.”

Deciding that Mary was neither drunk nor hysterical, Ginger listened to her plan. She wanted her to go to Naughton Mental Hospital and look for a patient named Thomas Robert Smith from Iredell County. “But don't go as a reporter,” said Mary. “They'll claim patient confidentiality and clam up.”

“What should I go as?” asked Ginger.

“Say you're an attorney trying to settle an estate. Tell them Smith's been named in a will and has some money coming to him.”

“Okay,” Ginger whispered. “I can do that. But what do I do if I find him?”

“Just shoot the breeze with him. If he gets suspicious, then get out of there fast. Call me whatever happens.”

“What if I don't find him?”

“Call me anyway. The story's still there—it just won't be quite as thrilling without Fiddlesticks.”

“Can I have a look at your notes when you get home?” Ginger asked.

“Absolutely,” Mary replied.

“Okay,” she said hurriedly as she heard Cochran getting out of bed. “I gotta go … I'll talk to you later.”

She hung up the phone just as Cochran appeared at the bathroom door. “What's going on?” he asked, yawning.

“Mary called from Oklahoma.”

“Did they get custody of Lily?” he asked, pulling her up from the edge of the bath tub.

“They don't know yet,” she answered, as he carried her back to bed.

That had been three hours ago. Now Ginger was heading down the long driveway that led to Naughton Hospital. From the interstate, the place reminded her of one of those Victorian hotels in upstate New York. Red brick with sparkling white woodwork and tall turrets, the building commanded a long expanse of clipped lawn shaded by trees and dotted with flowerbeds. As she drove closer, she almost expected to see pale ladies in long white skirts, laughing as they played croquet. Only after she pulled into the parking lot did she realize that though the windows sparkled in the sun, a darkness hovered behind them, as if the building itself made a long practice of gazing inward, at its own shadowy corners.

She parked in a space marked for visitors. As a couple of vacant-looking men raked the lawn, she grabbed her briefcase and went over her cover story. She was Virginia Malloy, from Asheville. She had a deceased client who'd left one Thomas Robert Smith a rather large bequest in her will. She was trying to find Mr. Smith, whose last known address was here. The ruse was perfect, she decided. The news was non-threatening for everyone involved. Nobody was accusing Mr. Smith of being a psychotic felon; nobody was investigating Naughton Hospital for patient abuse. All she was trying to do was brighten the life of a patient with a nice fat check from his recently departed sister.

She got out of the car. A sudden breeze whispered through the leafy trees that surrounded the place. She glanced up at one of the turreted rooms above her head, feeling as if someone was watching her. Then she remembered where she was.
Somebody probably is watching you
, she told herself.
Any number of people could be peering out those dark windows.

Squaring her shoulders, she took a deep breath and walked toward the front door. The brick steps had been swept of leaves; the wide veranda freshly painted a crisp gull gray. Whatever went on inside Naughton Hospital, outside it was painted and groomed to perfection.

She trotted up the steps and was about to enter the building when a face appeared in the windows next to the door. A young man with pale eyes sprayed cleaner on the glass. Their gazes met for a moment. Ginger smiled, but his expression did not change. He wiped the glass with a dull, robotic intensity, as if he did the chore a thousand times a day.

She opened the door. A cloying smell of geraniums mixed with antiseptic greeted her. She stepped into a smallish waiting room, with upholstered chairs and a coffee table that held a few tattered magazines about North Carolina. Opposite the front door was a windowed reception area, where a gray-haired woman sat at a computer. She looked up over silver reading glasses as Ginger entered.

“May I help you?” she asked, penciled-on eyebrows lifting.

“Gosh, I hope so,” Ginger said, adopting the breezy charm that usually loosened even the most reluctant lips. She lugged the briefcase over to the desk as if it weighed a hundred pounds. “My name is Virginia Malloy,” she said, pulling out the fake business card she'd printed up this morning. “From Asheville? I'm Mrs. Edith Ellington's attorney.” She said Mrs. Edith Ellington as if anyone would surely snap to attention at the mention of the name.

“Yes?” The woman looked unimpressed with her or Edith Ellington.

“Mrs. Ellington passed away this April. I'm the executor of her estate. She left a rather sizable gift to someone who was once one of your patients.”

The woman looked at her with cold eyes.

Ginger pulled out another fake form she'd downloaded off the Internet. “My research indicates that this gentleman has been here since 1977. Could you tell me if he's still a patient here?”

“I can't give out that information,” the woman replied. “All patient records are private.”

“I realize that,” said Ginger. “But this man was not young, even in 1977. It's highly likely that he's deceased, too.”

“And you can't determine that on your own?” the woman asked sharply.

“I haven't found him in the Social Security Death Index,” Ginger said, bluffing her way through a source she often used at the paper.

Again, the woman shook her head. “I'm afraid I can't help you.”

“I understand.” Ginger smiled, playing her trump card. “I talked to Commissioner Hatch about this yesterday. Since this is a non-medical inquiry on a patient who is likely deceased, he told me to try on-site first. He said if you all were sticklers, I'd have to come see him in Raleigh. So,” she said, retrieving her business card. “I guess I'll go east and have a chat with Charlie Hatch. Thanks for your time.”

Ginger grabbed her briefcase and headed for the door, letting Commissioner Hatch's name work inside the woman's head. She figured this would go one of two ways—either the woman would do nothing, happy to let her drive east to Raleigh or she might decide that Commissioner Hatch would not be pleased to have such un-helpful sticklers working the front desk at Naughton. Ginger was halfway to the door when she got her answer.

“Wait a minute,” the woman called huffily. “I guess I could pull up a name for you.”

Good girl
, thought Ginger,
no point in wasting Charlie Hatch's time
. She turned back. “Thanks,” she said, smiling. “It would save me a lot of time.”

Lips pursed, the woman turned to her computer. “What's the name? Ellington?”

“Actually, it's Smith. Thomas Robert Smith of Iredell County. Mrs. Ellington's baby brother.”

“Hang on.” The woman pulled up a bright purple screen and typed in Smith's name. For a moment, nothing happened, then the screen changed to a softer blue.

“Smith, Thomas Robert, transferred from Central Prison in April of 1977?”

“That's him,” said Ginger eagerly. “The black sheep of the family. Mrs. Ellington still loved him, though.”

“Well, he's not here any longer,” said the woman.

Ginger nodded, trying to hide her real disappointment. “I figured he might have passed away.”

“I'm not saying he's dead.” The receptionist scrolled down a long list of categories. “He was re-diagnosed and transferred to Pine Valley Nursing home in Iredell County, in 1982. But he wasn't that old,” she squinted at the computer screen. “Only forty-one.”

“Which would make him around seventy today,” Ginger whispered, amazed at the twists this man's life had taken.

“Well, if he's still alive, he should be at Pine Valley,” the woman said, turning away from her computer. For the first time she gave Ginger a tight smile, undoubtedly pleased that the Thomas Robert Smith affair was off her desk.

“You don't happen to know where that is, do you?” asked Ginger.

She shrugged. “Somewhere in Iredell County. Once they leave here, they become their home county's problem.”

“Thanks.” Ginger smiled. “I'll be sure to let Commissioner Hatch know how helpful you were.”

She hurried back to her car, passing the young man who was still cleaning the same pane of glass. Amazingly, Mary's fantastic theory seemed to be holding up—Thomas Robert Smith, who was really Robert Thomas Smith had, one way or another, traded places with a man on death row, gotten transferred out of prison to a mental facility, and then been released to a county nursing home. He was either the luckiest or the most devious man she'd ever heard of.

She got back in her car.
I should probably let Mary in on this,
she thought.
At least tell her what I've learned
. But the story was huge—if she found the real Fiddlesticks wheezing around in some nursing home, it would be the scoop of her life. She would leave Jessica Rusk laboring in the tabloids forever. Buckling her seatbelt, she keyed Pine Valley Nursing Home into her GPS.

An hour later, she pulled off I-40 and drove down a broad six-lane road flanked by fast food restaurants and strip malls. She passed a regional hospital, a Toyota dealership, and an amusement park called Carolina City. She'd just begun to think the smart-ass male voice on the GPS had totally screwed up when she saw a sign that read Pine Valley Heights Road.

She turned right. Within half a mile the commercial development gave way to houses set far back off the road. A mile past that, she was driving through undeveloped land. Just as she began to doubt the GPS again, she saw a battered sign that read
Pine Valley Home
. She turned where it indicated and drove down a two-lane road that bordered acres of pasture land. Bright bluebirds perched on honeysuckled fencerows while cows chewed their cud beneath shady trees.

She drove along, finally coming to another sign that pointed to the right. She turned up a hill that overlooked the pastureland, wondering what she was going to say if Smith was indeed still alive. She'd felt safe asking for him at Naughton—mental hospitals had guards to deal with violent patients. Nursing homes were different. They rarely had more than a couple of beefy CNAs to turn the heavier patients.

“Oh, come on,” she chided herself. “What's he going to do—run over you in his wheelchair?”

She went on. She passed one more sign advertising the home, then she drove under a cast-iron archway. She was just thinking what a good idea it was to have a nursing home out in the country when she crested a small hill. As she did so, she gasped. Though there was a driveway and a paved parking lot, all that remained of the Pine Valley Nursing Home was a burned-out shell.

“What the hell?” Stunned, she turned off her engine and got out of her car. Though the concrete walls of the structure still stood, there were great sagging holes in the roof. The windows had long been broken out and a family of wrens swooped in and out of what had once been the lobby. Dark smoke stains scorched the top level of the brick, just below the roof, as if something had caught on fire in the attic.

Instinctively, she reached for her iPad. She needed to know when this place burned down, what had happened to the patients inside. She tried to get online, but the signal was too weak. Figuring she'd have to drive to the nearest town, she started back down the road. She'd just reached the farm with the fencerow when she saw a man pitching bales of hay off a flatbed truck. She pulled over and got out of her car.

“Excuse me!” she called. “Sir?”

The man looked around, waved. He jumped off the truck and ambled over toward her. He wore a green John Deere cap and faded denim coveralls. “Help you?”

“I'm doing some family tree research—trying to find an old relative who used to live in that nursing home.” She pointed up the hill. “When did it burn down?”