She lifted one hand off the clipboard, took mine loosely. Her nameplate read JACQUELYN BELL, R.N.
“No problem,” she said, her voice cautious. “How’re you feeling?”
“Lots better.” I smiled at her as pleasantly as I knew how. Maybe she could help me, but I had to warm her up a bit first. “The bump on the head’s almost gone. Say, Nurse Bell, I was actually looking for you. Is there someplace we could talk? Privately, I mean. This won’t take long. Honest.”
“Well,” she hesitated. Her voice was riddled with a deep drawl, the voice of a young girl who’d grown up in the country, gone to school in Nashville, and fallen in love with the big city. The kind of girl who drove an expensive car she couldn’t afford, lived in an apartment complex catering primarily to singles, and plastered her walls with hunk posters. “We’re pretty busy around here.”
“It’s important, Ms. Bell. You were one of the few people up here who actually knew what happened that night.”
“Wait a minute, I don’t have any idea what happened that night. I told the police that. All I did was find you and-”
“No, that’s not what I mean. Of course, you don’t know what happened with Dr. Fletcher’s murder. I’m talking about what happened after you found me in the hall.”
I paused awkwardly, trying to figure out how to articulate this. “Listen, Jacquelyn-may I call you Jacquelyn?”
She nodded her head.
“C’mon, is this room empty? Can we step in here for just a second?”
She looked around nervously, as if I were a dirty old man in a trench coat offering her a piece of candy just outside the school playground. “It would really be better if we talked alone. What I’ve got to tell you, nobody else should hear.”
That got her. Her curiosity primed, she opened the door next to us and led me into an empty hospital room. We stood in the dim glowing light of the fluorescent tube at the head of the bed.
“Jacquelyn, I’m Harry James Denton. I’m a private investigator.” I pulled out my license and flipped it open, with my impressive gold and chrome badge that I’d bought from a mail order supply house. The badge was damned impressive. And absolutely meaningless.
“A private detective?” she whispered, intrigued.
“Yes. I was up here that night trying to find Dr. Fletcher. I’d been hired by the family because they thought, well, they thought he was in some trouble. And they wanted me to help him out. Anyway, I was trying to track him down, but I was a little slow. Somebody got to him before I could, and they killed him.”
She nodded her head. “Yeah, I know that.”
“What you don’t know, though, is that I’ve got a … well, let’s say a friend, who let me take a peek at the autopsy results before they were released to the police.”
Her eyes widened, a young woman dying to be let in on something no one else knew. “Yeah?”
“Before he was killed, and
“No kidding,” she spewed, “you mean?” She pointed behind her.
“Yes,” I said. “In that room.”
“Wow! I knew he was a sleaze ball, but boinking somebody right here on the floor. Wow!”
“Well, you knew the kind of guy he was, right?” Talk about leading a witness.
“Oh, yeah. We all knew it. He hit on everybody. He was gutter slime.”
“Yes, Jackie, he was gutter slime. But his family loved him. Don’t ask me why. And they’ve hired me to keep digging, to try and find out who really killed him.”
“But what about the police?”
“Well, you know how the police are,” I said, fully confident that she had no earthly idea how the police are. “They have their own agenda, their own methods. Sometimes the interests of the police don’t jibe with the family’s. I’m involved in this to represent the family’s interests. To make sure they’re taken care of. You can understand that, can’t you? If something like this happened in your family, even if it was somebody you didn’t care for, you’d want your interests protected. Wouldn’t you?”
She thought for a moment. “Actually, I’ve got a cousin who reminds me a lot of Fletcher. If somebody killed him, yeah, I’d want the family protected.”
“So help me out here, Jackie. I’ve got to find whomever it was Fletcher was having an affair with, if you want to call it that. You know what’s going on up here. Who could it be?”
She backed off a couple of feet and laid the clipboard down on the bed. She was young, pretty, naive, thrilled to be the center of attention. “Well,” she cooed, “I’ve heard a few rumors.”
She was teasing me now, only I knew it, and I’m not sure she did. “Yeah,” I said, taking a smooth step toward her. Maybe she expected me to hit on her. Maybe I should. What is it about hospital rooms that make people so frisky? Then I remembered Rachel’s assertion about the amount of playing around that goes on when the patients’ backs are turned. “So what have you heard?” We were flirting now, big time.
I had this flash of Humphrey Bogart charming the bookstore clerk in
“Well,” she whispered, lips pursed, “we change shifts at midnight. It’s kind of late to be going out, so we all kind of stick together. Usually we go out as a group, maybe three nights a week, over to the Commodore Lounge at the Holiday Inn, you know. But lately, one of the girls on the shift hasn’t been around after work. Somebody said she’d been dating one of the doctors. A married one.”
I grinned at her, a motion that brought a devilish grin to her face as well. “And you think it might have been Fletcher?”
“Well, that’s not to say he was the only doctor who’d cheat on his wife. But if you ask me, he’d be near the head of the line.”
“Jackie, darling, I did ask you. And I’m glad I did. You’ve been a great help. Who is she?”
Jackie shut down for just a bit, either playing coy or honestly wondering if she’d talked too much. I tried to figure out a ploy to keep her talking.
Suddenly, she shook her head and put her hands on her hips. “Oh, why not? I’m sure LeAnn didn’t have anything to do with this. She’s a sweet girl. I’ve known her for months now. She’s just the cutest thing you ever saw.”
Yeah, I thought, doll freaking precious. “What’s LeAnn’s last name, Jackie? I just want to speak to her. That’s all.”
“Oh, I’m sure everything’s all right. LeAnn won’t mind. Her last name’s Gwynn. LeAnn Gwynn.”
I spelled the last name out loud, making sure I got it right. Then: “Where’s LeAnn now, Jackie? She on the floor?”
“No, tonight’s her night off.”
“You know where she lives?”
“Well, not exactly. I’ve never been out to her apartment. Somewhere on Franklin Road, though.”
“I’ll check the book.”
“Oh, she’s got an unlisted number. She told me some guy’d been calling her, hassling her. The usual trash, you know. I had to have my number changed just last month.”
“Gee. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be,” she said. “The guy was a jerk.”
“So how do you get in touch with her in emergencies?”
“Oh, that’s easy. We call Personnel during business hours, or at night the information operator can pull it up on the computer. Only nobody’s really supposed to know that. Say, Harry, we’re going to be over at the Commodore tonight. Why don’t you drop by, join us for a drink?”
I was old enough to be her father, or at least her much older brother. The truth is that I’m at the age where the thought of being at a table full of twenty-two-year-old nurses is more intimidating than arousing. My God, what would I say to them?
“The Commodore at midnight, huh? Sure, I’ll try to make it.”
She smiled. “I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Okay, Jackie. Hey, listen, thanks for your help.”
