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He made for the bank of elevators where Dan slouched against the wall, busy charming the new girl from the secretarial pool.
J.Z. asked, “The permits?”
Dan patted his jacketed chest. “All set.” He then arched an eyebrow. “Your mood took a different turn. It’s safe to say you didn’t kiss and make up with the dragon lady.”
J.Z. ignored the comment. “Need to pack?”
Dan pushed the elevator call button. “You know I keep a bag in the trunk of my car.”
“Let’s go.” J.Z. followed Dan into the elevator. As the silver doors closed out the disappointed young woman, Dan faced J.Z.
J.Z. held up a hand; with the other, he punched the button. “Don’t say it.”
“I did warn you before you started dating her. You can be as charming and kind as you want, but you can’t get involved with coworkers. It’ll smack you in the face sooner or later. Keep business and pleasure far, far apart, I say.”
Exhaustion hit all of a sudden. “Just drop it.”
Dan stepped out of the elevator. “It’s just that when you make a mistake, Prophet, you really make a doozy.”
J.Z. followed the younger man to the street. Dan’s words continued to mock him. The Prophet family was known for their mistakes. And as Dan had put it, whenever they made one, it was of the doozy variety. J.Z. was determined to stop making mistakes.
He would have to take extra care this time, if for nothing else than to avoid Eliza’s payback. Because, without a doubt, he was going to nail Maryanne Wellborn for the murders.
Even if it killed him. And it might. If Eliza grounded him, the failure would do him in.
“Happy Birthday, dear Stanley…Happy Birthday to you!”
As the residents of New Camden’s Peaceful Meadows Residence and Nursing Center sang to her father, the guilt Maryanne Wellborn had carried for months began to lessen. Maybe Dad had been right to insist on the move into the multilevel care facility.
“I want to be where the action is, Cookie,” he’d argued, roguish grin in full bloom. “All the—” he winked “—dudes and babes are there, the ones old enough to speak my language, that is.”
Maryanne had wanted to care for her only surviving parent at home—his home. But Stan Wellborn’s obstinacy rivaled a mule’s, and he’d insisted on putting the family home up for sale. It had sold distressingly soon.
She’d known how much attention he needed. An insulin-dependent diabetic and recent amputee, his blood-sugar levels needed constant monitoring, as did his blood pressure and diet. Not to mention, his penchant for merriment and trouble. He’d been lonely and bored at home while Maryanne worked. Boredom had led to nutty amusements, which then mushroomed into mischief. Mischief had invited risk along, and both had courted danger.
She couldn’t discount the friendships he’d made since he moved in. He wasn’t bored anymore.
“Hey, Stan!” called a bald-headed fellow of her father’s vintage. “Whatcha waiting for? Blow out them candles already. We want some of that cake.”
Murmured agreement broke out.
Her dad winked. “I’m making my wish, don’t you know?”
“Ha! What do you need more wishes for?” This gent leaned on a cane. “The ladies here have made them all come true since you moved in.”
The birthday boy grinned, closed his eyes and then blew out the eight candles—seven fat ones for the decades and a thin one for his additional year—on the large blue-blossomed cake. “You’re just jealous of my irresistible charm, Hughie.”
The residents howled at the banter, no one louder than Maryanne’s dad. For a moment, she wished her mother were still alive to share his pleasure. Then she realized how silly her wish was. Mother would have frowned upon the whole scenario. Quiet and unassuming, Martha Wellborn would have been mortified by her impulsive, happy-go-lucky husband’s lack of restraint.
Propriety had been Mother’s underpinning, and she’d drilled its need into her daughter’s psyche from the moment Maryanne could understand.
What she never did understand was how two such disparate souls had made a match in the first place, but she’d never questioned her parents’ love for each other. Martha’s death two years ago had plunged Stan into a depression deeper than Maryanne had expected in such an upbeat man.
The depression vanished once he moved into the home.
She shook off her dark thoughts, stepped closer to her father and kissed his high forehead. “I brought you something.”
His hazel eyes twinkled. “What are you waiting for?”
With a nod to the nursing home’s activities coordinator, Maryanne smiled back. “Let me help Sherri bring it in.”
The two women lugged in a stack of cartons and set up the stereo. Tears gleamed in his eyes.
“Oh, Cookie. I oughta say you shouldn’t have, but I’m tickled you did.”
Blinking her own mistiness away, Maryanne said, “I knew how much you missed your music, and your old record player was useless. Enjoy this one, okay?”
“You know I will. C’mere.” He patted his blanketed thigh. “Let your old man give you a hug and kiss.”
Maryanne perched on her dad’s lap and hugged him tight. She loved the old scamp, and she meant to keep him as healthy and happy as possible for as long as she could.
“I love you, Dad.”
“Love you always, baby.”
“Harrumph!” offered the bald man. “You’re getting too mushy for a party. Let’s try out that stereo.”
With a final pat to his daughter’s back, Stan gave a whoop. “Go for it, Charlie. We need music to make this a real party.”
Under cover of the hubbub, Maryanne said, “You’re really happy here, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Cookie, I really am.” He winked. “Now it’s your turn to find some action. Of the young, male, falling-in-love kind, that is. It’s not God’s plan for a beautiful young woman to spend her life buried in a library or visiting a bunch of geezers.”
“You’re not a geezer, and I love books.”
“You need a…a—Oh, yeah! A chunk to show you what’s what, girl.”
Maryanne rose to hide her blush and stifle a nervous giggle. “I’m too busy, and I’d rather spend my free time with you.”
Stan shook his finger and grinned. “Mark my words, girl. When that lovebug bites, you’re gonna fall hard.”
“Hey, I use bug spray by the gallon. It’s my favorite fragrance. But I’d better go help Sherri—look at that mob of cake-starved partiers around her.”
While she doled out cake, Maryanne watched her father from the vantage point of the activities hall stage. The stack of small gifts from his friends thrilled him. Then, after they’d finished eating, with his favorite Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo and Jimmy Dorsey tunes on the new stereo, he drew each ambulatory lady near and twirled her around his wheelchair.
“I told you not to worry,” Sherri Armstrong told Maryanne as she tied off another bag of trash. “He practically begged you to move him here.”
“I know. But it was hard.”
“He’s busy, and he’s happy. And he wants you to build a life for yourself. That’s your next assignment, you understand?”
“Not you, too. First Dad, now you.”
Sherri, happily married mother of two, nodded. “We know what we’re talking about.”
“We’ll see.” Maryanne gathered the empty punch bowl and headed for the kitchen. “Right now, we have a mess to clean.”
No sooner did she enter the vast, equipment-filled white room, than Dean Ross, Peaceful Meadows’ director, called her name. Her middle knotted. The busy man rarely found time to discuss the library cart she brought twice a week to the home. She doubted he’d come for the birthday party.
“How are you, Dean?”
He grimaced. “Same as always. You’re going to have to cancel Audrey White’s library privileges.”
“Oh, no. I missed her at Dad’s party and meant to stop by her room to see how she liked the last historical novel I suggested.”
“The ambulance just took her to the hospital. She slipped into a coma a little while ago, and she won’t be back.”
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I can be. You saw how weak she was when you brought her books.”
“You’re right. She couldn’t even sit up when I came…was it day before yesterday? The day before, maybe. Rosie, Audrey’s nurse, was getting the other bed in the room ready for a new patient. I helped her…I had to push the meds stand out of the way to get to Audrey’s side of the room. And Audrey mentioned she was headed to another floor.”
“She was. Intensive care. And the new patient did no better.”
Maryanne winced. “Audrey didn’t say a thing. Now…can’t they do anything more?”
“Cancer at that stage is merciless. Morphine for the pain is the best we have. Nature helps and lets the patient enter a coma toward the end, but I’m afraid Audrey—”
“I understand,” Maryanne said around the lump in her throat. “I’ll take care of her library card.”
“She’s not the only one.”
She bit her lip. “Who else?”
“I don’t think you had a chance to meet him. Mr. Papparelli, the patient who moved into Audrey’s old room. He passed on, too.”
“You’re right. I never did meet him.” His death wouldn’t hit her as hard as Audrey’s decline. “I set up his privileges as soon as I got word he was coming—I never knew he was the one moving into the bed I helped make. Then day before yesterday Marlene in Admissions called to say he’d gone into cardiac arrest and wouldn’t need books. He wasn’t dead yet, but close. I terminated him right away.”
Dean sighed. “It’s never easy, you know.”
Maryanne nodded and again tried to swallow the knot in her throat. “I know, and I’d better say good-night to Dad. I have to be at work early tomorrow.”
She fought more tears—these hot and painful by comparison to her earlier tender ones—on her way back to the activities hall. As usual, a bevy of aged belles surrounded her father’s wheelchair, smiling and chatting with the unrepentant flirt. Maryanne sighed in relief. It was foolish to need the reassurance just because a sweet woman she had befriended was near the end. And yet, she did.
She donned a bright smile and made her way through his admirers. “I’m going home now, you party animal. Some of us have to work.”
“You work too much,” he countered. “But I won’t keep you. You need your rest. Thanks for everything, Cookie. Just don’t worry about me. I’m in my element.”
Feminine laughter tittered around them. Maryanne swooped down for her good-night hug and kiss. Then, before she broke down and cried for real, she rushed from the building and into her car.
She was going to miss Audrey. Just as she missed Mary Margaret Muldoon and her love of mysteries, Helmut Rheinemann’s armchair travels and Toby Matthias’s penchant for art books. She loved to serve the nursing home residents. She felt called to bring the joy of books into their often lonely and frequently pain-filled days. If only she could learn the art of detachment. Each loss broke her heart.
Tomorrow she would order Audrey’s termination. Then she would work surrounded by sadness. And she counted on the Lord to see her through the day she had to terminate her own dad.
Maryanne wiped her eyes with a tissue and then typed the curt e-mail first thing the next day. Terminate Audrey White. She expected a visit once Sandy Rodriguez, the card privilege clerk, downloaded that morning. The young man had learned that each message was written with a fresh batch of tears.
She clicked the Send icon and received the message sent confirmation. Before she signed off, however, the screen went blank. “Rats.”
The system was down. Again. The glitch, no matter how short-lived, would only make what had started out as a crummy day even worse. Since the county library system joined the information superhighway a couple of years earlier, it had become close to impossible to operate without the computers.
She set her sad thoughts aside and reached across the desk for her correspondence folder. She might as well wade through it while the equipment stayed down. Who knew how long it would take to get things up and humming again.
A short while later her door swung inward and two men in jeans, white shirts and navy ties, brass nameplates over their pocket, stepped in.
“Hi,” said the shorter of the two, his brown eyes as warm as his smile. “We’re from Uni-Comp. I’m Dan Maddox, and this—” he glared at his companion “—is J.Z. Prophet. We’re here to fix the system and check the machines.”
Surprised by that odd look, Maryanne took note of the names on the plates and stood. “Be my guests. I can’t do a thing until you do yours.”
Dan Maddox went right to her desk, but the other man, J.Z. Prophet, stayed in the doorway, his gray eyes fixed on her.
“Maryanne Wellborn?” he asked in a deep voice.
“Yes, and if you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you to your work.”
Maryanne stepped out to the hall. What an intense man. His eyes…so cold. She shivered. With a deep breath, she regained her composure.
But from the other side of the not-quite-closed door, she heard Maddox say, “I’m waiting for that modem card.”
J.Z. muttered a response she didn’t quite catch.
Maryanne’s curiosity got the better of her and she pressed up against the door frame. Holding her breath, she peered through the crack into her office.
Long seconds crawled by, minutes…centuries. No one moved.
Maddox turned to his partner, who still stood, statue-like, by the equipment case. “Come on, J.Z. Before the librarian gets back.”
Gray eyes speared to the door. Maryanne froze under the impact of that icy stare. She suddenly wanted to run, take cover.
J.Z. Prophet, a complete stranger, really, really didn’t like her.
Why?
TWO
“Whatever you say, Trudy Talbot.” Maryanne tucked her work-loosened brown-and-white gingham blouse into the waistband of her dirndl skirt. “But you should have seen the look in his eyes. So tell me. What would make a computer geek look so…so scary? So disgusted? So angry?”
The classy, prematurely gray director of the Children’s Collection shrugged. “Beats me. Maybe his wife served him eggs for breakfast when he wanted Frootie Tooties instead. Or maybe his cat presented him with a dead mouse…just before he swallowed the eggs. The adult male is beyond my comprehension. That’s why I stick to those under the age of twelve.”
