Weddings Can Be Murder (23 page)

“Yes, honey, that’s it.” Jane flinched as
another spasm racked her body. She caught her breath and spoke
again. “Keep it with you. If a man named Al Proletti ever comes
around, take the box to the police.”

“…
conscious yet?”

“
No, doctor. She’s restless, though. Not
comatose.”

“…
her name?”

“
Still a Jane Doe at this point …
checking with police.”

Jane? Mom? She looked down at the sickbed.
Jane Morgan took her last breath. Victoria closed her eyes, wanting
nothing more than to sleep forever.

Chapter 23

Kent Taylor’s warning dimmed a little after
he left. Yes, I got it that he wasn’t happy about our looking
through Victoria’s emails, but he would soon know that we hadn’t
deleted or messed with anything. To save his own skin he’d have a
police forensic team all over that thing. I took a slow breath and
resolved not to let it bother me. Sally’s message slip was still in
my pocket so I pulled it out. The police had now officially shown
no interest in the flowered address book so I fully intended to
resume my mission—to either find something worthwhile or discard
this line of thinking.

I picked up the phone and dialed the number
Carol Ann Henderson left.

“Yes, Charlie. Yesterday you asked me to
call you back if I thought of any more information about the Morgan
family you’d asked about. I’m so sorry to say this, but I had to be
sure I could trust you.”

Her voice definitely had a Southern
accent—funny how I hadn’t especially noticed that the first time we
spoke.

“And now you do?”

“Well, yes. I checked out your private
investigation firm to be sure you were for real. See, I think I
made a terrible mistake a few months ago. Someone else called,
asking about my friend Juliette … and I’m afraid I let it slip that
she’d changed her name to Morgan. And then the man hounded me into
saying she’d moved to New Mexico. Well, when you said you were
calling from Albuquerque … I don’t know … I got so worried you
might be helping him. The man frightened me something fierce.”

“Why is that?”

“I mean, how was I to know? Juliette died
years ago and I—well, it just didn’t occur to me that there was any
way he could harm her anymore. Anyway, I’m sorry I said anything to
him and I wanted to apologize to you, and that’s really all I had
to say.”

She hung up before I could process her rapid
train of thought. I stared at the dead phone in my hand, debating
whether to dial her right back. Maybe better to let some time go by
and try to catch her by surprise. If I could even begin to
formulate questions to go along with the babble she’d just
offloaded. I hung up my phone and headed across the hall to Ron’s
office to run it all past him.

Ron wasn’t at his desk and when his cell
phone rang it startled me. I reached toward it. The display said it
was Albuquerque Police Department.

Uh-oh. Despite my bravado earlier the guilts
came creeping back, along with Kent Taylor’s lecture about our
having searched Victoria’s computer for evidence. We really should
have told him about it, not acted on our own. Now, if he’d
discovered anything he didn’t like—well, he had mentioned jail time
and I had no doubt he was serious. So, answer it or not?

On the third ring I succumbed to the need to
shut the thing up so I answered.

“Ron, Kent Taylor here,” came the familiar
voice. Some detective—he hadn’t noticed it was my voice.

“Sorry,” he said, when I corrected him. “I
called with some news.”

Dread. Hope. Elation. It took all of
one-point-two seconds for my emotional range to hit all of
them.

“Where?” I asked, a moment after I’d
shrieked for Ron to get to his office—now!

“UNM Hospital. She was brought in early this
morning. Charlie, I have to tell you that she’s in critical
condition.”

“Alive, though.”

“Yes, she’s alive. She has a gunshot wound
and severe hypothermia. She must have been out in the elements most
of the past three days.”

Ron came into the room in time to catch my
query. I had to stop and pass along what Taylor had said. I
couldn’t imagine poor Victoria out there in the cold and what all
she’d been through.

Ron took the phone from my hand and hit the
speaker button. “We’ll be right down there,” he told the
detective.

“You won’t be able to see her,” Taylor
said.

“I have to. I have to see that she’s okay.
I’ll hold her hands—she’ll get better when she knows I’m
there.”

“Ron, until we can talk to her and get her
version of the events, I’m afraid you’re still a suspect.”

“What! Seriously?”

“It’s procedure. I’m sorry.”

Ron was breathing hard. I expected a temper
explosion any moment so I stepped between him and the desk.

“I can’t stop you from going to the
hospital,” Taylor said in a low voice, tossing us a bone I
supposed. “But there are guards outside her ICU room. I’m asking
you not to make a scene.”

I tried to assure him it wouldn’t happen but
it was kind of like promising to hold back a raging bull. I would
have to get Ron settled down before I dared let him walk into that
building.

“The doctors have said they will call me the
moment she’s conscious,” Taylor said. “Once I can talk to her, I’m
sure we’ll get the answers we need and—most likely—you’ll get to
see her then.”

He was saying he didn’t truly believe Ron to
be guilty, which was huge. My relief must have been evident as I
clicked off the call because Ron’s whole demeanor changed. He
rubbed his eyes, scrubbing at his face to hide the intense
emotions.

“She’ll be all right,” he said in a ragged
voice.

“She’s alive. That’s the important
thing.”

“I’m going up there,” he said. “I know, I
know.” He held up a hand to quash my response. “I’ll behave myself.
I need to be there, in the same building, in the same place if I
can. She’ll come around and I have to be there for her.”

Truthfully, I’ve never seen my brother so
emotional and it hit me how very much Victoria was his whole world
now.

“I’m coming with you.” Finding Victoria
alive, if not exactly well, was only half the equation, I realized.
We still had to find out who shot her. What possible motive could
they have had?

* * *

There are few places less fun to be than a
hospital waiting room. Bright upholstery on the chairs and cheery
pictures on the walls do nothing to dispel the weighty sadness and
worry of the people who would pretty much give anything not to be
there. It was nearly noon so added to the generally depressing
atmosphere were overtones of cafeteria-cooked food, that mélange of
flavors and smells that do not go together, no matter how much they
try to spice it up.

We approached the ICU nurses’ station but
didn’t have to ask which room was Victoria’s. Armed policemen stood
on each side of the first door on the left. Beyond the glass
windows we could see a bundle of white blankets with a bank of
blinking machines beside the bed. Wires and tubes ran everywhere.
At this distance, the only real sign it was our girl was her long
brunette hair visible in tangles against the pillow.

The nurse took pity, no doubt because of the
ravaged looks on both our faces, and led us to stand in front of
the window for a moment. Both cops straightened their stances,
letting us know that breaking through and getting inside was out of
the question.

“The blankets and heat packs are there to
warm her up. Her core temperature had dropped dangerously low,” the
nurse said. “She may lose a couple of toes.”

Ron and I both blanched a little at the
reality of it.

“Once we get her warmed to a safe
temperature and she’s stable, she’ll go to surgery for the gunshot
wound. The bullet’s still in there. We have to get it out and
address any infection.”

“How long—?”

“With luck, we can get all that done today.
A surgeon is on call, waiting for us to let him know to come. We’ll
address the frostbite issues, and then it’s a matter of recovery.
Her own strength and will to live have a lot to do with it.”

She glanced sideways at Ron when she said
this, and I got the feeling she’d heard the news stories which had
so badly branded him already. Luckily, his attention was so fixed
on Victoria he hadn’t really noticed the nurse’s hesitation.

“I’m afraid there really isn’t anything you
can do but wait. The detective told us to notify him when she’s
conscious and able to speak, but I have to be frank. It’s not going
to be until later tonight, maybe tomorrow. You might as well go
home for awhile.”

She ushered us out of the forbidden zone and
went back to her desk and all those monitors. I steered Ron toward
the row of stiff-looking chairs.

“Should we do as she suggested?” I asked.
“Go home, figure out what’s next?”

“I can’t even wrap my head around what’s
next,” he said. “I can’t imagine being anywhere but here until I
get the chance to talk to her.”

“Okay, buddy.” I patted his arm. “Okay.”

* * *

I discovered going back to the office with
the hope of catching up on my accounting duties was useless.
Businesses have so many little things to do at the end of the year,
tax-wise, December is always a busy month. With the wedding plans
last week and the heartbreak this week I was already hopelessly
behind. I spent two hours doing what should have been fifteen
minutes’ worth of work, and I didn’t make even a small dent in the
whole job.

Finally, I closed everything up, ran by the
house to take Freckles home, called Drake to bring him up to date.
He told me he’d finished the game count and was now returning the
Fish and Game crew to their headquarters, then would be on the way
home. He would hangar the helicopter and pick up his truck then
come join us at the hospital.

I picked up Ron’s favorite burger—he’s
addicted to Whoppers—and found him in the same chair where I’d left
him.

“Any news?”

He brightened at the sight of the food,
dipping into the bag for the fries. “So far, so good. She’s
stabilized enough for the surgery. As soon as the doctor arrives
they’ll take her in and get rid of that bullet.”

I had a feeling Kent Taylor would show up
around that time. I knew he wanted the bullet for testing, to
compare with ballistics tests from Ron’s gun. My theory proved to
be true, although it was still awhile before the nurse called him
over and handed him a little baggie, the contents of which I didn’t
even want to look at.

I wondered if he would wait with us until
Victoria came out of the anesthetic—it could prove to be an awkward
wait—but he didn’t. No doubt the hospital would call him again when
she could talk.

Again, Ron asked if he might sit by her
side. Again, the answer was no.

It was going to be a long night.

Chapter 24

Drake arrived sometime around when I might
normally be thinking of bedtime if I was home. He looked slightly
bedraggled after flying half the length of the state, not to
mention two nights in motel rooms that surely were not four-star.
His flight suit definitely needed a wash and he smelled of jet
fuel. He apologized for this, saying he hadn’t wanted to take time
to go home and shower until he saw us. We filled him in.

Victoria’s status was the same—surgery went
well and recovery room time seemed to take forever, to us anyway.
Eventually, we sensed motion around the nurse’s station and I
jumped up in time to see them wheel Vic’s bed back to her ICU
cubicle. There didn’t seem to be any fewer machines or wires now
but the mood of the nurses had definitely picked up. I hung
unabashedly nearby as the nurse we’d spoken to earlier picked up
the phone. I could tell she was talking to Kent Taylor. She granted
him five minutes if he could get here within the hour.

I kept staring wistfully toward Victoria’s
little room but the nurse firmly shook her head. The two police
officers came back. I supposed I should be grateful for them. We
knew Ron wasn’t the assailant but they didn’t. And none of us knew
who really shot her. The added protection was a good thing.

I’d rejoined Ron and Drake in the waiting
area when Kent Taylor arrived. He greeted us.

“They say she’s been able to speak a
little,” he said. “I won’t learn much, I’m afraid.”

“Can you at least tell her we’re here,” Ron
asked, “and tell her I love her?”

If Taylor was uncomfortable with that
request he didn’t show it. He pulled out a small notebook and
headed toward the desk.

“If he gets five minutes with her, I’m
betting the rest of us will be allowed even less time, if at all,”
Drake said. “So, if you don’t mind, I’m heading home for a hot
shower and something to eat.”

“Go,” I said with a little laugh. “That fuel
smell is getting a little overwhelming. Throw your clothes in the
washer while you’re at it.”

Ron shook his hand and they turned it into
one of those man-hugs that involves hearty slaps to each others’
shoulders. Drake’s elevator arrived and there was a slight
commotion as four people emerged, one carrying a camera and one a
microphone. They headed our direction.

“Oh, no you don’t,” called the head nurse.
She buzzed around the end of that desk faster than I would have
thought possible with her stocky body. “No press in here. This
waiting area is for families and there’s no way in hell you’re
getting near any of our ICU rooms.”

The blond reporter opened her mouth, looking
as if she would argue, but the nurse was larger, older and carried
herself with a lot more authority. She placed herself between us
and the media gang.

“Get, now! Go on out. If the police want to
talk to you it’ll have to be in the conference room on the first
floor or outside the building.” She swished her hands, the way you
might send a group of kindergarteners out to play, and they
minded.