Trouble in a Big Box (A Kelly O'Connell Mystery) Page 3

  “Mike’s better,” I said cheerfully. “Much more like himself. Not groggy.”

  “Good. You notice that car parked across the street?”

  “Car? No.” I went to the door to look out, but a sharp word from Keisha drew me back. “Could you be a little less obvious?”

  I peeked through the slats of the blinds and saw a battered brown Mustang. My sharp intake of breath must have been heard in the next block—or by the guy in the Mustang. I looked again but couldn’t make out much about the driver except a baseball gimme cap.

  “How long has it been there?”

  “Since I got to work at eight-thirty.”

  “You get the plate this time?”

  “Nope. But you’re going to when you leave out the back emergency door.”

  “Oh, okay.” Then I switched the topic. “How was breakfast with José?”

  “Dreamy. I may be takin’ that man home to Mama. He’s just perfect, kind of quiet. Suits me, since I’m kind of noisy.”

  I laughed. I’d be delighted if Keisha found a young man—as long as she kept working for me. Somehow I still wasn’t taking this brown Mustang seriously. It just didn’t make sense that someone would follow me. Maybe they were following Keisha? Maybe it was José’s old girlfriend. After all I couldn’t tell gender from the glimpse I got. “Whoever it is will get tired of staring at us. We’re boring,” I said. I riffled through messages, asking Keisha to return a few phone calls—to which she replied in exaggerated tones, “Yes, ma’am, yes ma’am”—and left for the hospital by the back door. When I stopped at Magnolia to check the Mustang’s license plate, I saw only an empty parking place.

  José had been replaced by another officer I didn’t recognize, a young man with just a bit of fuzz on his upper lip where he was trying to grow a moustache.

  “You can’t go in there, ma’am.” He blocked the door.

  I moved to push him aside. “Of course I can. I’m his wife.”

  “No, ma’am. Doctor’s orders.”

  Doctor’s orders? Had something catastrophic happened to Mike? My stomach lurched, and my heart skipped a beat. “What’s happened?”

  “They’re getting him up to walk. They said absolutely no interruptions. I don’t care if the president came to give him a medal, I can’t let him in there. You neither.” The young man was a tad nervous about his job.

  “Okay, I’ll wait.” I began to pace the hall, back and forth in front of the door to Mike’s room.

  “Care to sit, ma’am?” he offered me his chair.

  “Thanks.” I seated myself but found I was still so restless that my right foot bounced in a crazy rhythm I didn’t understand and my fingers drummed on my purse. Finally, with an awkward smile at the young officer, I got up and started pacing again.

  It was hours—maybe twenty minutes—before the door opened and two women in scrubs came out, laughing of all things. “Told you so,” one said.

  “Well, I’m glad we were both in there,” replied the other.

  “Excuse me,” I’m sure my voice was harsh and rude. “That’s my husband. Can you tell me if he’s all right?”

  They looked a bit guilty, and one said gently, “He will be. He just fainted. Nothing serious.”

  Nothing serious! Mike Shandy never fainted in his life. Planting myself in front of the two, I demanded to know what happened.

  One of the women shrugged. “We’re PTs, and we came to get him on his feet. It happens all the time.”

  “What?” I demanded. “That people faint? Isn’t that a sign you shouldn’t get them up?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s a sign that he’s a macho man. We told him to wait for us to help him, but he insisted he could get up by himself. He did—and then he puked and fainted, in that order.”

  The second woman said, “An aide will be here in a minute to clean him up. You might want to save him more embarrassment and wait until she’s through. Besides, he’s having a rough day. They’ll set his arm this afternoon. Shouldn’t be too bad.”

  Shouldn’t be too bad—only because it was his arm and not hers they were going to set. But insisting on getting up by himself sounded like Mike Shandy, and I almost grinned in spite of myself. I went down the hall to a lounge area and began making some business calls.

  About fifteen minutes later, an aide came to tell me that Mike was ready to see me. I hid my grin as I went in. “So,” I said brightly, “how did standing up go?”

  “Don’t ask,” he said glumly. “I learned lesson number one: listen to the staff.”

  I threw my arms around him, and this time he returned my kiss passionately. Mike was on his way to recovery.

  Day followed day for the next week or so. I learned to take my cell phone and some office records to the hospital, so I could work while he was in therapy sessions, which to this point were brief but apparently intense. He came back exhausted and ready to sleep, so I sat and watched him sleep and read a book. Our days settled into a routine. I sped by to greet him after I dropped the girls at school and then spent most of the morning at the office or showing houses—or looking for a house for Anthony to renovate. He was almost through with Mrs. Glenn’s house, and I scheduled an appointment to take the young nurse through it. Anthony had done wonders with what, when I first saw it, had been a dark, crowded house—old carpet, old drapes smothering the windows, a kitchen beyond repair. Now hardwood floors gleamed, the walls were a clean taupe, the windows bright with plantation shutters open for light. They could be closed at night for privacy. The kitchen was the triumph, now a small corner of efficiency. Anthony had designed it so effectively that the workflow was perfect; the appliances were top of the line. There was no room for an island, but ample workspace and a built-in cutting board made up for that. Any young couple that started their lives together in this house was bound to be blessed. I hoped whoever it was would keep up Mrs. Glenn’s garden, maybe update it a bit with xeriscape plants. She had treasured her garden, though it was a bit old-fashioned with dusty miller, petunias, monkey grass, and nandinas—the latter the plant that every old lady in Fairmount had.

  I spent the early afternoons with Mike. Sometimes we talked about what had happened to him. He relived the accident over and over in his mind, berating himself about what he could and should have done differently. He knew by now that a young girl had died, though I’m not sure if he knew about Sonny Adams who had left the scene. Other times, we talked about the future. He knew it would be a long time, if ever, before he was back on patrol, and he despaired about that.

  “Maybe now’s the time to go for that detective ranking,” I said.

  He waved a hand dismissively. “I’d have to pass tests and all that.”

  “You could do it, if you prepared.”

  We talked about the triathlons he wouldn’t be doing—he really regretted that, and I did too. I’d been looking forward to taking the girls to races. And we talked about his work on the history of Fort Worth—that, we both knew, he could do, but it wouldn’t give him the sense that he was supporting his family. And he couldn’t do a whole lot at the computer with one arm in a cast, even though it was his left arm.

  My late afternoons were taken up with the girls, their after-school activities, and their homework. As often as I could, I brought them to the hospital right after supper, and they inundated Mike with accounts of their daily activities. He was happier in those moments than any other time.

  Sometimes I saw the brown Mustang, but I rarely paid attention to it, and Keisha had stopped talking about it.

  Chapter Three

  By the time Mike had been in the hospital almost a week, he was taking halting walks in the hallway, using a walker. The only time he was in a wheelchair was when they discharged him from the hospital about two weeks after the accident and sent him to a rehab hospital.

  “If we let patients use a wheelchair much, their leg muscles atrophy,” Dr. McAdams explained to me. “And it’s too easy to fall off crutches. A walker is a lot sa
fer.”

  Predictably, Mike fumed. “Look like a damned old lady,” he stormed at me.

  “Why not at least an old man?” I asked but that only exasperated him more. So did the fact that a walker wasn’t easy to manipulate with one arm in a cast. Mike was even told, sternly, to exercise the fingers that dangled out of his cast. And no shower while it was on—French baths for him. He really groaned at that. My offer to help was met with a withering glance, even though I meant it well—mostly.

  Dr. McAdams said the purpose of the rehab was to recuperate and begin recovery therapy. What he had done in the hospital was designed just to keep him from stiffening up, not to rehabilitate him. Now he’d have to learn to walk again, bit by bit, as he could put weight on his bad leg. But Mike itched to get home. He complained that he wanted to be home with us. He wasn’t getting much therapy anyway—an hour a day at most. The indignity of nurses bathing him was getting to him, and he hated the food. But Dr. McAdams remained firm, and I told Mike I’d bar the door if he checked himself out against doctors’ orders.

  He finally laughed.

  Our routine didn’t change much during those two weeks. I spent early afternoons and most evenings at the rehab place instead of the hospital, but it was actually closer to my office. Yes, I would be glad to have him home, but I was so grateful that he was alive and would walk again that I easily accepted my life divided between the office, taking care of the girls, and visiting Mike.

  The brown Mustang seemed to have disappeared. Even Keisha commented on that.

  The young nurse and her husband, after several walk-throughs, were interested in Mrs. Glenn’s house. I’d had a couple of other people look at it, so they knew they had to act quickly. They asked for a price, but Anthony had finished the house so quickly, their interest came up just as quickly, and what with my distraction with Mike, I didn’t have the firm price. I’d been giving them ballpark figures. So I sat at my desk punching numbers into the adding machine when I noticed Keisha staring at me.

  “What?”

  “When’s Mike coming home?”

  “End of the week,” I said. “I think I’ll have a party.”

  “Hold on to yourself, lady. He don’t need a wad of people around when he first comes home. You remember coming home from the hospital? You feel like a truck run over you and then backed up and did it again. Have dinner with the girls and save the rest of us for a few nights later.”

  I’d only come home from the hospital twice, each time with a new baby girl, and there were no people around because that wasn’t Tim’s way. I missed family—well, Mom—and friends. I wanted to show off my babies, but Tim insisted we needed time as a family and I needed to recuperate. Not that he did much for me. I cooked and took care of the girls, and he went about his business, including accepting mysterious phone calls which were, of course, from other women. Thinking about Tim made me suddenly desperate for the two weeks of rehab to be over. I wanted Mike home.

  Keisha, as always, was psychic. The night before he was to come home, Mike said, “Kelly, I know how you are about celebrating with friends. But, please, could we do this quietly? Just you, me, and the girls. Maybe we can invite everyone over Sunday night. Only I won’t be able to grill. Joe will have to do that.”

  So that’s what we did. I went to Central Market for T-bone steaks—I could grill a steak myself, for Pete’s sake!—baked potatoes and a Caesar salad. The classic “let’s splurge” meal. One steak for Mike, and one for the girls and me to share—they were huge (and expensive). I also got a good bottle of cabernet sauvignon.

  Anthony and I had prepared the house carefully. He’d built a ramp from the driveway to the front door—Mike wouldn’t be able to manage even the two steps to the porch. For the immediate future, the back yard was simply off limits to Mike—too many stairs. Inside, we’d measured furniture and doorways, making sure that Mike’s walker wouldn’t get stuck anywhere. The girls and I went to the flower market and arranged a bouquet for the center of the dining table. We put out my best linen, silverware, and china. The sheets on the bed were crisp and clean. Everything was as perfect as I could make it. I’d even called Mom to make sure she didn’t come over until tomorrow.

  I haven’t seen many patients come home from the hospital before, except myself, and there’s a euphoria about bringing a new baby home. There was no euphoria this time, and I was unprepared for the ordeal—well, it didn’t seem like an ordeal to me. Getting from the rehab facility to home wore Mike out. He was, to put it bluntly, downright crabby. Fortunately we got home about one in the afternoon, and he took a nap before the girls got home.

  They were overly solicitous, hovering over him, wanting to bring pillows, water, whatever they could think of. At one point, Mike rolled his eyes at me, as if to say, “Help!” I assigned them chores, and Mike sat back to watch the news while I put the finishing touches on dinner.

  It was strange having to help Mike stand from the chair to the walker, and I thought to myself that I’d develop some great muscles by the time this was over—arms and legs both. He’d learned his lesson and didn’t try to brush me off. Dinner was a success. I toasted to Mike’s recovery and the girls, now having learned to say, “Cheers,” joined me with flutes of 7-Up. They were as delighted as I was to have him home.

  Getting the girls to bed was an endless process. They whined, cajoled, and played on Mike’s sympathies. He finally agreed that they could snuggle around him on the couch, and he’d read, though neither one cared what he read. Maggie read her own books these days and usually didn’t like to be read to. Then there was a fuss about who got to sit on the side of his good arm—I made them both sit on the floor in front of him. No sense jostling him as they fought for the prime space. Finally I got them tucked in and began the process of helping Mike to bed.

  It was indeed a process, though he tried to be as independent as possible, and I bit my tongue and stood back, letting him bump into a doorway—I won’t quote what he said—and nearly fall over while brushing his teeth. At least his right arm worked, and he could do most things—but it’s amazing how many things take two arms. Homecomings, I decided, were never smooth.

  By the time I got him settled in bed with the latest James Patterson novel he was reading, I was so sleepy I was ready to crash. I kissed Mike hard and long, put my book on the floor, and turned out the light on my side of the bed. It had been a big day for both of us.

  “Mike? Want me to sleep on the couch? I’m afraid of hurting you in the night.”

  “Don’t you dare,” he growled.

  We slept tight and close to each other, though I swear I was half awake all night, for fear of crashing into his bad leg or the cast on his arm.

  ****

  Buck Conroy called my office the next morning. With a lot of nervousness, I’d left Mike home alone. I worried and fretted and asked him what he needed until he finally blew up and said, “I need for you to leave me alone. I’m not helpless. I can still dial the phone.” He promised to keep his cell phone with him all the time.

  I worried that he couldn’t make it to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, whatever. But I left, got the girls to school by the eight o’clock bell—so far we hadn’t been tardy all semester except the morning we went to the hospital. I hoped we could keep that record the entire year. I was at the office by eight-thirty, knowing I’d go back at ten to take Mike to his first physical therapy appointment for a one-on-one session with a therapist.

  Buck called before nine. Without a good morning or any greeting, he launched into what was on his mind: “We haven’t caught Sonny Adams yet. I thought I ought to tell you, but don’t tell Mike yet. He might try to do something foolish.”

  “I don’t think he’s capable of doing anything foolish right now. He can barely get from the bedroom to the bathroom. Besides, other than ticketing him for various traffic offenses, such as leaving the scene of an accident, is there a problem?”

  “Yeah, there is. Word on the street is that he’s
talking revenge. Says Mike killed the love of his life. Of course, she just happened to be the most recent in a string of them, but he’s playing it to the hilt, talking big.”

  “She was only nineteen, for pity’s sake. How old is this character?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  Somehow I’d envisioned forty-or fifty-something. Twenty-four made it a lot different to me.

  “You noticed anything unusual at all?” Buck asked.

  “Well, there was a battered brown Mustang that followed us home from JPS that first night and then kept showing up in front of the office or at the school. But I haven’t seen it for a while.”

  “And you didn’t tell me why?”

  “Because you’d dismiss me as a nervous Nellie.”

  “Yeah, right. Good excuse. Kelly, we’ve got to keep Mike, you, and the girls safe. You can’t play these games with me. I respect you…and I’ll try to show it in thought, word and deed. But we’ve got to come to an agreement.”

  The very mention of the girls terrified me. “Okay. I’ll keep my eyes open and tell you anything I see. Whoever that was knows where we live, where I work, where the girls go to school.”

  “Damn! Why are you always the one who needs a police guard?”

  “You’re doing it again,” I said. Then, righteously, “That doesn’t reflect your new attitude.”

  He slammed down the phone, but he’d succeeded in scaring me. Keisha came in a bit later—our office day didn’t officially start until nine—and I told her about the car.

  She looked serious. “Then you might want to check out that green Nova across the street.”

  “Are you for real? Or are you making this up?”

  She shook her head. “I saw it yesterday too but didn’t think it was a big deal. But if it’s there two days in a row, it’s a big deal.”

  I looked. A green Nova, again slightly battered, with the driver slunk down in the seat and wearing a gimme cap pulled low. “Wonder why whoever it is changed cars,” I mused.