enveloped the evergreens and aspens outside. The investigation had produced plenty of suspects—the Vikarioses, Courtney MacEwan, Lana Della Robbia and Dannyboy, whom I was sure had been the suppliers of the cash to be laundered, even though the investigators had yet to prove it. I groaned.
Tom had said that when an investigation stalled, he went over every bit of information he’d already gathered. So I booted up my computer and reloaded the espresso machine. Five minutes later, I was sipping another double shot, this time mixed with half-and-half and poured over ice, as I scrolled through my notes.
When Marla ding-donged our bell and banged on the door—she always wanted you to
“That stuff’ll kill you. Fix me one, will you?”
I smiled and followed her to the kitchen.
“My doctor says I should drink herb tea. I told him if I chugged down herb tea first thing in the morning, I’d puke.” Marla smiled when I handed her the latte. She sipped, nodded approvingly, and lifted her chin toward the computer. “What’re you doing?”
“Reading through my file on John Richard. Trying to see what I missed.” I brought her up-to-date on the case, including the shot-up pink tennis ball, the pearls, and the possibility that the Jerk had fathered a child by the former candy striper Talitha Vikarios. Marla whistled.
“I heard about Courtney being picked up for questioning,” she said. “I wonder what she’ll tell the cops, if anything.”
“Ah. While we’re on the topic of wondering, I want to show you something.” I put down my coffee and handed her the pictures from Tom’s envelope. “Does someone look familiar here?”
“I’ve never seen the guy,” she said immediately. “The woman. I know her. Who is she?”
“Ruby Drake.”
“Ruby, ruby. Red hair.” Marla tapped the photo. “Didn’t recognize her right away. I mean, not with her clothes on. She was at the Rainbow when we went down there. Don’t you remember, she was dancing near us, with a red light? It made her hair look almost purple. I thought she’d been one of the Jerk’s girlfriends, remember?”
“And she sat with us and said she hated the Jerk. Now the firearms examiner says Ruby’s husband, that guy you’ve never seen, was shot with the same gun that killed John Richard.”
“Oh, dear, oh dear. Does Tom know about this?”
“No, but I’ll tell him. He’s asleep.” I sighed and stared at my computer. “I just…feel as if I’m missing something else. Say John Richard was laundering money; say it was from the strip club. Even if you tortured him by shooting him in the genitals to tell you where the money was, and even if he wouldn’t tell you, why shoot him right in his garage, instead of when he was strolling along a sidewalk somewhere? Why use a homemade silencer and then drop it in the street?”
I sipped my coffee and frowned. “Whoa.” I put down my coffee and tapped keys, then I read the screen. “Here we go. The letter about the rape. It was sent to Cecelia Brisbane. Why? The day after the Jerk was killed, the note was delivered to me. And
“It’s weird, all right.” Marla drained her iced latte glass. “Who do you think could help us figure it out?”
“Who would know about the history of Southwest Hospital?” After a moment, I answered my own question. “Nan Watkins. While Tom alerts the department to check out the strip club again, maybe you and I could go visit her.”
Marla strode to the sink and rinsed her glass. “Let’s do it. I know she walks around the lake every morning. Maybe we can catch her.”
“Hold on.” Would Tom count this as a dangerous situation? “You don’t suppose Nan could pull anything on us, do you?”
“Are you asking if a woman in her late sixties, who looks and walks like a large rodent, is going to karate- chop the two of us? The answer is no. Let’s go.”
Marla insisted on taking her Mercedes, as Nan might recognize my van and skedaddle before we could question her. Main Street looked strangely deserted, the stores swallowed in the murky cloud of fire smoke. The lake had turned an ominous, opaque gray, and I doubted we’d see any walkers.
But I was wrong. Marla and I had been huffing along the lake path for no more than ten minutes when we encountered Nan Watkins going in the opposite direction. She was striding along, pumping her arms vigorously. She looked like a short, pear-shaped, gray-haired drum majorette.
“Stop!” Marla called, out of breath. “Nan! I’m dying. Cardiac arrest.”
“Really?” Nan asked, all concern. She halted abruptly on the dirt path and backtracked to us. Her cheeks flamed from exertion, and she was even puffing a bit, which made me feel marginally better.
“No, not really,” Marla retorted. “But our ex-husband is being buried today, and there’s something we have to know before we put him to rest.”
“Something you have to
“No,” Marla said, her hands on her hips, suddenly all business. “We need to know the name of the teenage girl he raped at Southwest Hospital.”
“What?” Nan looked nonplussed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” She licked her lips and looked at the ground.
“Won’t work, Nan,” Marla replied. “The cops have a note the victim wrote to Cecelia Brisbane. If you don’t tell us who it is, we’re going to the sheriff’s department and have them subpoena the information from you.”
“You can’t!” Nan sputtered. “They can’t!”
Marla said, “Wanna bet?”
“Wait,” I said. I looked straight into Nan’s brown eyes. “Nan, my son needs closure on the death of his father. Please. If this woman or someone close to her shot John Richard, it would help us all put our lives back together if we could find that person and get them arrested. Please help us. Otherwise, this person could go over the edge and kill more people.”
“She couldn’t have done this,” Nan whispered. There was a bench nearby where fishermen sometimes sat as they tended their lines. Nan moved over to it and sat down. She said, “I hate remembering this. Talking about it. Nobody knows about it but me, and I failed.”
“You failed?” I asked gently.
“I failed
“Is the woman alive?” I asked.
“I think so.” Nan fixed her eyes on the dark nimbus hanging over the lake. “This all happened, oh, eight years ago? Anyway, I heard she had left town to pursue other endeavors, far away.”
“She was from Aspen Meadow?” I asked. Nan nodded.
“What endeavors did she go pursue?” Marla demanded.
“It…doesn’t matter. Anyway, she’s far away from here and unlikely to come back.” Nan was quiet for so long I thought she’d changed her mind about telling us. Then she let out a resigned sigh. “She was fourteen.” Nan’s voice was just above a whisper. “She was in the hospital for a bacterial infection, which is extremely unusual for a woman so young.” Nan explained, “You may not know that bacterial infections are often transferred from men to women. Anyway, she was very pretty and voluptuous. Dr. Korman…was making jokes about her, wondering aloud what she could have been up to that would have brought on the infection.”
I shook my head. So far, so typical.
“He…he came in one night when it wasn’t his shift. I thought he’d been drinking. He disappeared into the young woman’s room. She had a single because her family had money. A few minutes later, he brought her out and took her into an exam room. I asked him if he needed me to be with him, and he said no, absolutely not. Of course, back then nurses were always required to be in the room during a gynecological exam. So I…I figured he’d taken her in for a bandage or an injection…something. I never thought….” Again Nan lapsed into silence.
“What happened?” I prodded, keeping my voice low.
Nan lifted her chin and closed her eyes. “He left the room about twenty minutes later. You know”—she opened her eyes and gave us an immensely sad look—“I thought I heard him laughing to himself. She, the patient, didn’t come out. Then I heard her crying, so I raced down there. She
