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“Oh, did you think I was stupid because I keep house for you?” she asked blithely. “I have a Master’s Degree in History,” she added with a sweet smile. “I taught school in the big city until one of my students beat me almost to death in front of the class. When I got out of the hospital, I was too shaken to go back to teaching. So now I keep house for people. It’s safer. Especially when the people I keep house for work in law enforcement,” she added. “Your supper’s on the table.”
“Thanks.”
She was gone before he could say anything else. He was still reeling from her confession. Come to think of it, the Jacobs County Sheriff, Hayes Carson, had recommended Miss Jane. She’d worked for him temporarily until he could get the part-time housekeeper he wanted. No wonder she was afraid of her old job. He shook his head. In his day, teachers ran the classrooms. Apparently a lot of things had changed in the two or so decades since he graduated from high school and went off to college.
He was lying awake, looking at the ceiling, when there was a frantic pounding at the front door.
He got up and threw on a robe, tramping downstairs in his bare feet. Miss Jane was there ahead of him, turning on the porch light before she started to open the door.
“Don’t open it until you know who it is!” he shouted at her. His hand was on the .40 caliber Glock that he’d stuffed into his pocket as he joined her.
“I know who it is,” she replied, and opened the door quickly.
Their next-door neighbor, Grace Carver, was standing there in a ratty old bathrobe and tattered shoes, her long blond hair in a frizzed ponytail, her gray eyes wide and frantic.
“Please, may I use your phone?” she panted.
“Granny’s gasping for breath and her chest hurts. I’m afraid it’s a heart attack. My phone won’t work and I can’t start the car!” Tears of impotent fury were rolling down her cheeks. “She’ll die!”
Before she got the words completely out, Garon had dialed 911 and given the dispatcher the address and condition of the old woman.
“Wait for me,” he told Grace firmly. “I’ll be right back.”
He ran up the stairs, threw on jeans and a shirt and dragged on his boots without socks. He grabbed a denim jacket, because it was cold, and was downstairs in less than five minutes.
“You’re quick,” Grace managed.
“I get called out at all hours,” he said, taking her elbow. “Jane, I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’ve got my keys. Lock up and go to bed.”
“Yes, sir. Grace, I’ll keep her in my prayers. You, too.”
“Thank you, Miss Jane,” she said in her soft voice. She had a faint south Texas drawl, but it was smooth and sweet to the ear.
Garon bypassed the Bucar, unlocked the black Jaguar and put her inside. She felt uncomfortable, not only because she was in her nightclothes, but because she wasn’t accustomed to being alone with men.
He didn’t say anything. He drove to her grandmother’s house, pulled up in the driveway and cut the engine. Grace was up the steps like a flash, with Garon on her heels.
The old lady, Mrs. Jessie Collier, was sitting up on her bed in a thick blue gown that looked as if it had been handed down from the 1920s. She was a big woman, with white hair coiled on her head and watery green eyes. She was gasping for breath.
“Grace, for God’s sake,” she panted, “go find my bathrobe!”
“Yes, ma’am.” Grace went to the closet and started rummaging.
“Stupid girl, never can do anything right.” She looked at Garon angrily. “Who are you?”
“Your next door neighbor,” he replied. “The ambulance is on the way.”
“An ambulance!” She glared at Grace, who’d returned with a thick white chenille robe. “I told you…we’d go in the…car! Ambulances cost money!”
Grace grimaced. “The car won’t start, Granny.”
“You broke it, did you?” she raged. “You stupid…” She groaned and held her chest.
Grace looked anguished. “Granny, please don’t get upset,” she pleaded. “You’ll make it worse!”
“It would suit you if I died, wouldn’t it, young miss?” she chided. “You’d have this whole house to yourself and no old lady to wait on.”
“Don’t talk like that,” the younger woman said softly. “You know I love you.”
“Hmmmf,” came the snorted reply. “Well, I don’t love you,” she returned. “You cost me my daughter, held me up to public disgrace, made me ashamed to go to town…!”
“Granny,” Grace ground out, her face contorting with pain.
“Wish I could die,” the old woman raged, panting.
“And be rid of you!”
The ambulance came tearing up the dirt road, its sirens blazing, its lights flashing. Grace gave a sigh of relief. She hadn’t wanted their neighbor to hear any of this. It was none of his business. She was too embarrassed even to look at him.
“I’ll go and bring them up here,” she said, anxious to escape.
“Fool girl, ruined my life,” the old woman grumbled.
Garon felt a ripple of pure disgust as he watched the elderly woman clutching her chest. The girl was doing all she could for her grandmother, who seemed about as loving as a python. Maybe it was her illness that made her so nasty. The woman in his life had died expressing apologies to the nurses for having to lift her onto bedpans. That kind, loving, sweet woman had been an angel even in her final hours. What a contrast.
The paramedics came up the steps behind Grace, carrying a gurney. With a nod to Garon, they went to work on old Mrs. Collier.
“Is it a heart attack?” Grace asked worriedly. “Will she be all right?”
One of the paramedics glanced at her. “Are you her daughter?”
“Granddaughter.”
“Has she had spells like this before?”
“Yes. Dr. Coltrain gives her nitroglycerin tablets, but she won’t use them. He gives her blood pressure medicine, but she won’t take that, either.”
“Medicine costs money!” the old lady snarled at them. “All I have is my social security. Couldn’t feed a mouse on what she makes, working part-time at that flower shop and cooking…”
“I can’t leave you alone all day, and I’d have to if I worked full-time,” Grace said in a subdued tone. She didn’t add that she’d have to pay someone to stay with her grandmother, also, and there was no way anybody who knew her would take the job.
“Good excuse, isn’t it?” Mrs. Collier grumbled. She cried out, suddenly, clutching her chest. “Oh!”
“Where are her nitroglycerin tablets?” one of the medics asked quickly.
Grace ran around the bed to the side table, and handed them to him.
Mrs. Collier protested, but he got it under her tongue anyway.
She shivered as it took effect, but the medic who was monitoring her vitals gave the other one a speaking glance.
“We’re going to have to transport her,” he told his colleague. “Can you come with her?” he asked Grace.
“Yes. Just…just let me get dressed. I won’t be a minute.”
She went out without a backward glance, dashed into her room, threw on jeans and a sweatshirt and her old sneakers and rushed right back to her grandmother. She didn’t bother with makeup or even comb her hair. She wasn’t going to a social event, after all.
Garon glanced at her. She wouldn’t win a beauty contest, but she was a fast dresser, he thought with admiration. Most women he knew took hours dressing and making up.
“I’ll follow you in the Jag and bring you home,” he told her.
She started to protest, but one of the attendants shook his head. “We’ll probably have to keep her overnight at least,” he said.
“I won’t stay!” Mrs. Collier raged, but she was still gasping and clutching her chest.
“She’ll stay,” the older paramedic said with a deliberate smile. “Let’s load her up, Jake.”
“You bet.”
Grace stood back beside Garon as they wheeled Mrs. Collier out, still muttering angrily.
Garon didn’t say anything. He escorted Grace down to the Jag and helped her into the passenger seat.
“You’ll need your purse, won’t you?” he asked.
She indicated the fanny pack around her waist. “I’ve got Granny’s cards to check her in,” she said dully. “She can’t die,” she added in a hollow tone. “She’s all I’ve got in the world.”
Which wasn’t a hell of a lot, Garon was thinking. But he didn’t say it. He was resigned to losing most of the night’s sleep he’d been hoping for.
2
IT WAS MIDNIGHT before they had Mrs. Collier through the battery of tests that had been ordered. It had been a heart attack, fairly severe. Dr. Jeb “Copper” Coltrain came out into the waiting room to talk to Grace after he’d seen the results of the tests.
“She’s bad, Grace,” Copper told her. “I’m sorry, but it can’t come as much of a surprise. I told you this would happen eventually.”
“But there are medicines, and they have these new surgical procedures that I saw on the news,” she argued.
He started to put a hand on her shoulder but immediately drew it back before it could make contact. She’d stiffened, something Garon noted with idle curiosity.
“Most of those procedures are experimental, Grace,” he said gently. “And the drugs still haven’t been approved by the FDA.”
Grace bit her lower lip. She had a beautiful bow of a mouth with a natural pink tint, Garon noticed without wanting to, and a peaches and cream complexion that he’d rarely seen on a woman once she took her makeup off. Her hair was a soft, golden-blond. She had it in a ponytail, but when unfettered, it must reach halfway down her back, and it had just a faint wave. She had small, pert breasts and a small waistline. She was perfectly proportioned, in fact. Looking at her long legs and rounded hips in those tight jeans made him uncomfortable and he averted his gaze back to Coltrain.
“Maybe it was just a little attack,” she persisted.
“There will be a bigger one, and soon,” he replied grimly. “She won’t take her medicine, she won’t give up salty potato chips and brine-soaked pickles—even if you stop buying them for her, she’ll have them delivered. Face it, Grace, she’s not trying to help herself. You can’t force her to live if she doesn’t want to!”
“But I want her to!” she sobbed.
Coltrain drew a long breath, his gaze drawn to Garon, who hadn’t said a word. He frowned. “Aren’t you Cash’s brother?”
Garon nodded.
“The FBI agent?”
He nodded again.
“I couldn’t get the car to start and the phone didn’t work,” Grace told Coltrain before he could interrogate Garon any further. The redheaded doctor was abrupt and antagonistic to people he didn’t know.
And Mr. Grier here looked like a man who wouldn’t take much prodding before he exploded. “I had to ask him for help,” she concluded.
“I see.” Coltrain was still staring at Garon.
“I could stay with Granny tonight,” she offered.
“No, you couldn’t,” Coltrain said shortly. “Go home and get some sleep. You’ll need it if she gets to come home.”
Her face fell tragically. “What do you mean, ‘if’?”
“When,” he corrected irritably. “I meant, when.”
“You’ll have them call me, if I’m needed?” she persisted.
“Yes, I’ll have them call you. Go to the office and do the paperwork,” he ordered. She hesitated for a minute, glancing at Garon. “He’ll wait,” Coltrain assured her. “Git!”
She went.
Coltrain stared at the taller man through dark-circled eyes. “How well do you know the family?”
“We’ve spoken once until tonight,” he replied.
“They live next door to me.”
“I know where they live. What do you know about Grace?”
Garon’s dark eyes began to take on a glitter. “Nothing. And that’s all I want to know. I did her a favor tonight, but I am not in the mood to take on dependents. Especially spinsters who look like juvenile bag ladies.”
Coltrain was indignant. “That attitude won’t get you far in Jacobsville. Grace is special.”
“If you say so.” Garon didn’t blink.
Coltrain drew in a long breath and cursed under it. He stared after Grace. “She’ll go to pieces if the old lady dies. And she’s going to,” he added coldly. “Along with the other tests I ordered, I had them run an echocardiogram. Half her heart muscle’s dead already, and she’ll finish off the rest of it the minute I let her out—if she even lives that long. Grace thinks I sedated her. I didn’t. She’s in a coma. I didn’t have the heart to tell her. That’s why I can’t let her see Mrs. Collier—she’s in ICU. I don’t think she’ll come out of it. And Grace has nobody.”
Garon frowned. “Everybody has relatives.”
Coltrain glanced at him. “Her mother and father divorced when Grace was ten. Mrs. Collier had to take Grace,” he added without explanation, “and never let the girl forget what a favor she did her. Her mother was living out of town when she died of a drug overdose, when Grace was twelve,” he said. “Her father had been killed in a light plane crash two years before that. There are no uncles or aunts, nobody except a distant cousin in Victoria who’s elderly and disabled.”
“Why does she need anyone? She’s a grown woman.”
