The Remains Of The Dead Part 23

She needed to send invoices to three insurance companies and to pay her medical waste bill. She also needed to put lime on the moss patches on her lawn and do some laundry. Instead of doing any of these tasks, she drove into a Seattle area with numerous hospitals, known as Pill Hill, and rode a hospital elevator to the third floor of one of them.

As she walked down the hall, an old man pa.s.sed her, wearing a hospital gown that was open in the back, exposing his wrinkled b.u.t.t to the world. Unfortunately, since the man was obviously deceased, she was the only person who got to cringe at the sight.

She dodged the spirit and walked into Sylvia Toth's room, where she found the woman sitting up and playing cards with another lady. The woman had bottle-blond hair with a couple inches of pure white at the roots and was at least ten years older than Sylvia. Both women looked up at Sadie with surprise when she walked through the door.

"I wanted to see how you're doing," Sadie said, "but you've got company, so I'll just go."

Mrs. Toth blinked at Sadie, but she didn't seem to know what to say. Finally proper upbringing won out, and she was forced to make an introduction.

"This is my sister, Janet," Sylvia explained. "She's from Portland and will stay with me until I've recovered."

"h.e.l.lo, I'm Sadie."

"Nice to meet you," Janet said, breaking into the hacking cough of a longtime smoker. She got to her feet and they shook hands. Then she took the flowers from Sadie's arms. "Aren't these lovely."

"How are you feeling?" Sadie asked, tentatively approaching the bedside.

"Kind of tired, actually," Sylvia answered, turning her head away.

"I've probably been keeping you awake by beating your a.s.s at hearts. Why don't you rest and I'll swing by and check on you later," Janet said. She gave Sylvia a peck on the cheek, then nodded for Sadie to follow her.

"I'm glad your prognosis is good, Mrs. Toth," Sadie said. "And, well, I'm sorry...for everything."

Outside the room Janet said, "Can I buy you a cup of coffee?"

"That would be nice," Sadie said, not knowing if it really would be nice or if she was agreeing to a caffeinated verbal abuse session.

They grabbed bad coffee from a vending machine and took it to the end of the hall and out to a terrace where other smokers were huddled against the cold, puffing away.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your visit with your sister. I guess I shouldn't have come," Sadie said, standing to the side a little as the wind whipped across the patio.

Janet lit up and her smoke plumed in Sadie's face.

"Sylvia wasn't exactly thrilled to see me," Sadie went on.

"She's had a lot to handle," Janet said. "She just buried her son and daughter-in-law, and now she's been shot."

Sadie nodded. "I feel awful."

"You didn't shoot her."

"Yes, but it happened at my house."

"Life's too short to blame yourself for things you can't control," Janet said. She sipped her coffee, then took another drag from her smoke and added thoughtfully, "Sylvia told me that you don't believe that Grant killed Trudy." Her gray eyes were unwavering steel as her gaze met Sadie's. "I'd like to know if that comes from evidence or if you're just playing with my sister's emotions."

Sadie had no idea if Sylvia would've told her sister about the ghost thing or not, so she felt her way carefully.

"I thought I owed it to her to explain how I feel and-"

"I worked as a nurse for three decades. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen well-meaning people tell folks on their deathbed that they look great and that everything is going to be hunky-dory. Optimism has its time and place, I guess, but Sylvia doesn't need to get her hopes up."

"I understand your concern, but Sylvia knows I was just expressing my opinion about-"

"She also doesn't need to take up a cause that doesn't exist."

"Yes." Sadie figured if she wanted to complete a sentence around Janet, she'd better make it short.

"Sylvia told me that you don't believe that it was a murder-suicide. That means that either you have proof that you're not sharing with the Seattle police or you're just playing into Sylvia's delusions that Grant was perfect and could do no wrong."

"I've heard nothing but good about Grant. Could he do wrong?" Sadie asked.

"Grant and Trudy lived with me during the months they were in Portland." Janet drew in another drag of smoke. "My husband and I are retired, and the house is really too big for just the two of us, so it wasn't inconvenient. Mostly Trudy and Grant did their own thing, of course, but you get to know people when they're living under your roof. During that time I never once saw Grant treat Trudy with anything but love and respect. He wors.h.i.+ped that girl. Plain and simple. It was very hard on him to transplant her to Portland, even though it was only temporary. He knew she wasn't happy there."

"Sounds like he loved her very much."

"He sure did. Maybe too much."

A gust of wind howled across the patio, and they moved into a corner for the protection offered by a jutting of the brick building.

"Is it really possible to love someone too much?" Sadie asked.

Janet appeared to debate her answer before replying.

"Don't get me wrong-Trudy wasn't a bad person, but she was unhappy. She was restless in Portland and hated taking a leave of absence from her job at the school for the deaf. She was able to tutor some deaf children in Portland a couple days a week, but it wasn't enough. You know what they say about idle hands...."

Sadie winced at the foul-tasting coffee and dumped her cup into a nearby trash bin. Janet followed her lead and tossed hers as well.

"So if Grant was at the new store all day, Trudy must've been bored. Plus, she probably missed all her friends in Seattle."

"Hmmph." Janet grunted and flicked the ash off her cigarette. It blew around her feet. "They had their own phone line installed in our house. Trudy had a phone she typed into and would get on it practically the second Grant would leave for the day. In this day and age of computers and gadgets I think it's pretty d.a.m.n hard to really miss anyone. When she wasn't on that phone, she was on the computer chatting online. One day she left herself logged in on the computer while she went to run some errands. I went into their room just to dust. I wasn't snooping, you understand."

"Of course," Sadie said, but she got the feeling that was exactly what Janet had been doing. "Go on."

"Anyway, messages kept popping up on the screen and I couldn't help but read them. They were from an anonymous person but the messages were private. Very private."

"From a lover." Sadie stated it as a fact, not a question.

Janet nodded.

"I confronted her when she got home. She denied it at first, but I didn't let her off the hook. This was my nephew's wife we're talking about. Every time she'd walk away, I was in her face." She shook her head slowly. "It's not easy arguing with a deaf person. She could lip-read fairly well, but when I said stuff she didn't want to hear, she would just turn away or close her eyes." Janet laughed then, a chuckle that turned into a hacking cough. Once she'd recovered, she continued, "Finally, she admitted that she'd been sleeping with someone else when they lived in Seattle. She even confessed that some of her all-day tutoring sessions were actually day trips to Seattle to visit him."

"You must've been angry."

"Furious. I wanted to tell Grant about it, but I knew it would kill him." She smiled sadly at the irony of that. "Trudy begged me not to say anything. At first I said there was no way I'd lie to my own nephew, but then I agreed to keep it quiet as long as she promised to end the affair immediately. She said she would."

She took a last drag on her smoke, then walked over to grind it into a nearby pillar ashtray.

"So she broke it off?" Sadie shouted over another gust of wind that blew forcefully across the terrace.

"She promised that it was over. I have to admit that I didn't believe her right away, but then a small package was couriered to the house. I signed for it, since she was out. When I saw it had a Seattle return address, I was curious, so I opened it and peeked inside. It was a beautiful emerald pendant. There was no note. She never knew I opened it, but when I asked about the package, Trudy said it was a good-bye gift."

"Don't you think that's kind of a strange gift to give to a married woman, since she would have trouble explaining it?" Sadie commented.

"Yes, I sure did, but Trudy was adamant that she'd ended the affair. I a.s.sumed that she either returned the necklace or sold it, because I never saw it after that." Janet stuffed her hands into the pockets of her coat. "I thought that was the end of it."

"But it wasn't?"

"Yes and no. A few weeks later she came to me extremely upset. She was pregnant and she didn't think the baby was Grant's."

"Wow!" Sadie blinked in surprise. "That must've been hard."

"Yes. I tried to convince her to have the baby. I knew Grant loved kids and always wanted a houseful. He would've been thrilled and Sylvia would've been over the moon. Although I'm not a fanatic, I'm not pro-choice either. Abortion just seemed wrong."

"And Trudy wanted to end the pregnancy?"

"Yes. She didn't think there was any other way. She had the procedure done and Grant never knew."

"All this time, do you think Grant ever suspected Trudy was having an affair?"

"No." She shook her head. "At least not while they lived in my house. Grant was working his a.s.s off to get that new store up and running and self-sufficient so they could return to Seattle and buy the house she wanted. He was constantly rea.s.suring her that it wouldn't be too much longer." Janet shook her head. "Maybe if it had taken longer, things would've been better. I think when they moved back to Seattle, Trudy hooked up with that guy again and this time Grant found out. I'm sure it drove him to do what he did."

"You seem pretty sure he killed Trudy and himself."

"You'd never get Sylvia to admit Grant was capable of such a thing. That's why I don't want you messing with her head." She looked pointedly at Sadie. "But when a man loves a woman as much as Grant loved Trudy, I don't think he can imagine living without her. He was obsessed. It would've killed him to think she'd leave him for someone else."

"A man with nothing left to lose is a man capable of anything," Sadie remarked sadly.

Janet only nodded.

"Sylvia doesn't need the heartache you're offering her," she said. "She doesn't need to fill her head with your pie-in-the-sky hope that things happened differently."

"But if things did happen differently, wouldn't it give her comfort?"

"A mother just buried her son, her daughter-in-law, and all of her hopes and dreams. I'm the only family she has left in this world. Nothing you uncover will ever change that, will it?"

"No, but-"

She held up a hand to stop further discussion.

"I've said my piece. I ask that you keep our conversation in confidence and stay away from my sister and let her grieve."

Sadie sat in the hospital parking lot, her head resting on the steering wheel of her car.

"Let it go. Let it go," she mumbled to herself like a mantra. "You clean up after the dead. No more. No less. You have no business playing detective."

Maybe it was time to take a couple of days off. Even just an afternoon would be great. She still had that gift certificate for a full-body ma.s.sage that her mother had given her for her birthday. As she turned left on Madison, she realized she could be at the day spa in five minutes.

Buoyed by the idea of spending a couple of hours in a state of self-indulgent bliss, Sadie could feel her body begin to unwind. Even the jerk hugging her b.u.mper couldn't get her riled.

She glared in her rearview mirror and punched the accelerator as she turned onto First Avenue. She was relieved to see the small green car get left behind a slow-moving dump truck. Her grip tightened on the wheel when she thought of the green Toyota whose driver had sprayed her house with bullets.

"There are a thousand green Toyotas in Seattle," she reminded herself. "You can't freak out every time you see a small green car." But her grip didn't relax until she pulled into the spa's lot and made sure that a green car wasn't anywhere nearby.

Stepping through the doors of the spa was like walking into a blissful sanctuary of soothing music, waterfalls, and aromatherapy candles.

Sadie took a deep, cleansing breath and exhaled it slowly as she floated up to the reception desk. She was greeted warmly by an angelic figure in white.

"Welcome. What service do you have an appointment for today?" she asked, her voice as calm and soothing as the surroundings.

"No appointment, but I was hoping for a full-body ma.s.sage."

"Of course." The young woman tapped her keyboard, glanced at the screen, then looked back up at Sadie. "We've had a cancellation, and I can fit you in a week from tomorrow at eight in the morning."

"A week?" Sadie struggled to keep the whine from her voice. "Nothing today?"

"No and a week from now is good. Often our ma.s.sage packages are booked a month in advance."

With an exhale of frustration, Sadie halfheartedly agreed to the appointment, then shuffled back to the parking lot. She was a foot from her car when a sharp retort sounded and a spray of pavement dusted her shoes. She looked down in surprise for a split second before she realized she'd narrowly missed being shot.

Bolting to her vehicle, she tore open the door and huddled low on her seat, fumbling to get her keys. A shadow fell across her car and she was sure it was the shooter, who would blow her head off at close range. However, the sound of a motor caused her to glance up. A large linen supply truck had pulled up right next to her car. The driver hopped out his door, rolled up the back of the truck, unloaded supplies onto a dolly, and headed for the spa.

Without thinking, Sadie slowly opened her door and, staying low, opened the pa.s.senger door of the truck, climbed inside, and gently closed the door behind her. Crawling on her knees, she made her way to the back and hunkered down between bins of dirty laundry. The driver was back in seconds. He slammed down the rolling back door and climbed behind the wheel. Sadie didn't let him know she was there for fear he'd run the truck up a pole. When he made his next stop, at a medical clinic two miles away, Sadie casually hopped out of the truck after looking in all possible directions for gun-wielding a.s.sa.s.sins.

Fumbling with her cell phone, she dialed Zack.

"I need you to come get me," she said. "And, if you don't mind, bring your gun."

Only a few minutes pa.s.sed before Zack showed up. He found her sitting with her back against the wall and watching the door in a far corner of a Subway sandwich shop.

"Spill it," he ordered, grabbing her by the elbow and walking her to his car She told him everything and swiped tears from her eyes.

"Don't suppose you got the plate number for this green car?"

"No," she admitted, feeling foolish. She sipped some soda and blinked back fresh tears.

They went back to the spa, and Zack circled the lot more than once before pulling up alongside her vehicle.

"Stay," he ordered, flinging open his door and walking around her car. He peered inside and under and finally announced it looked sound.

"Are you okay to drive?"

She nodded, not knowing if she'd ever truly feel okay again.

"I'll follow you."

The excitement wasn't over yet. As soon as she pulled onto her street she could hear the noise of her house alarm, screeching wildly. An SPD car was just pulling up to her driveway. Sadie was certain that pretty soon the neighbors would take up a pet.i.tion to put her on a dinghy and float her out to sea.

The officers had obviously heard of the drive-by shooting at her house, because they weren't treating this like a routine alarm call. Their weapons were drawn and they were quickly circling the residence.