"Meow." Elocution closed her eyes.

Bruce said, "I've been able to secure the cooperation of at least one physician in each department. Our problem now is convincing Sam Mahanes to use a portion of the hospital, even a room, to initially screen these people.

"He did voice one other small concern." Bruce's voice was filled with sarcasm. "And that is the paying patients. He didn't feel they should be around the charity cases. It would engender hard feelings. You know, they're paying and these people aren't. So he said if we could find s.p.a.ce and if we could solve the liability problem, where are we going to put people so they wouldn't be visible?"

"Ah." Herb exhaled.

Miranda shifted in her seat, looked down at the floor, took a deep breath, then looked at the group. "Bruce, you weren't born and raised here so I don't expect you to know this but sequestering or separating the poor gets us awfully close to segregation. In the old days the waiting rooms in the back were always for colored people. That was the proper and polite term then, and I tell you no white person ever went through the back door and vice versa. It brings back an uneasy feeling for me and I expect it does for those of us in this room old enough to remember. The other problem is that a goodly number of our people are African-American or Scotch-Irish. Those seem to be the two primary ethnic groups that we serve and I couldn't tell you why. Anyway, I think Sam needs to be-" She looked at Herb and shrugged.

"I know." Herb read her perfectly. After all, Sam was a Virginian and should know better, but one of the problems with Virginians was that many of them longed for a return to the time of Thomas Jefferson. Of course, none of them ever imagined themselves as slaves or poor white indentured servants. They always thought of themselves as the masters on the hill.

The group continued their progress reports and then adjourned for tea, coffee, and Miranda's baked goods.

BoomBoom walked over to Harry. "I'm glad we're working together."

"It's a good cause." Harry knew BoomBoom wanted to heal the wounds and she admitted to herself that BoomBoom was right, although every now and then Harry's mean streak would kick up and she wanted to make Boom squirm.

"Are you going to work on Little Mim's campaign?"

"Uh-I don't know but I know I can't sit in the middle. I mean, I think Jim's a good mayor." She grabbed another biscuit. "What about you?"

"I'm going to do it. Work for Little Mim. She's right when she says our generation needs to get involved and since Big Mim will sit this out we won't offend her."

"But what about offending Jim?" Harry asked as Cazenovia rubbed her leg.

"Some ham biscuit please."

Harry dropped ham for the cat.

"He won't be offended. I think he's going to enjoy the fight. Really, he's run unopposed for decades." BoomBoom laughed.

Bruce, his eye on BoomBoom-indeed, most men's eyes were on BoomBoom-joined them. "Ladies."

"Our little group has never had anyone as dynamic as you. We are so grateful to you." BoomBoom fluttered her long eyelashes.

"Oh-thank you. Being a doctor isn't always about money, you know."

"We are grateful." Harry echoed BoomBoom's praise minus the fluttering eyelashes. "Oh, I heard about the chicken blood on the blade. I'm sorry. Whoever did that ought to be horsewhipped."

"d.a.m.n straight," he growled.

"What?" BoomBoom's eyes widened.

This gave Harry the opportunity to slip away. Bruce could tell BoomBoom about his experience and she could flirt some more.

"Harry." Herb handed her a brownie.

When his back was turned from the table, both cats jumped onto it. People just picked up the two sneaks and put them back on the floor.

"M-m-m, this thing could send me into sugar shock." She laughed.

He lowered his voice as he stood beside her. "I'm very disturbed by Sam's att.i.tude. I think some of the problem may be that it was Bruce who asked. Sam can't stand him, as you know."

"He'll talk to you."

"I think so." He picked up another brownie for himself. "There goes the diet. How are things with you? I haven't had any time to catch up with you."

"Pretty good."

"Good." His gravelly voice deepened.

"Rev, do me a favor. I know Sam will talk to you-even more than he'll talk to Rick Shaw or Coop. Ask him flat out who he thinks killed Hank Brevard. Something doesn't add up. I don't know. Just-"

"Preys on your mind." He dusted off his fingers. "I will."

"I asked Bruce before the meeting started what he thought about Brevard," Harry continued. "He said he thought he was a royal pain in the a.s.s-and maybe now the hospital can hire a really good plant manager. Pretty blunt."

"That's Bruce." Herb put his arm around her rea.s.suringly, then smiled. "You and your curiosity."

Tussie, her back to Herb, reached for a plate, took a step back, and b.u.mped into him. "Oh, I'm sorry."

"Take more than a little slip of a girl like you to knock me down."

"He's right. Tussie, you're getting too skinny. You're working too hard," Harry said.

"Runs in the family. The older we get, the thinner we get."

"Sure doesn't run in my family," Miranda called out from the other side of the table, worked her way around the three-bean salad, and joined them.

"Do you think poor patients will steal?" Harry asked Tussie.

"No," she said with conviction.

"Aren't hospitals full of drugs?" Miranda paused, then laughed at herself. "Well, that's obvious but I mean the drugs I read about in the paper-cocaine, morphine."

"Yes and those drugs are kept under lock and key. Any physician or head nurse signs in, writes down the amount used and for what patient, the attending physician then locks the cabinet back up. That's that."

"But someone like Hank Brevard would know how to get into the drug cabinets, storage." Harry's eyebrows raised.

"Well-I suppose, but if something was missing, we'd know." Tussie's lower lip jutted out ever so slightly.

"Maybe. But if he was smart, he could replace cocaine with something that looks like it, powdered something, powdered milk of magnesia even."

Slightly irritated, Tussie gulped down a bite of creamy carrot salad. "We'd know when the patient for whom the drug was prescribed didn't respond."

"Oh h.e.l.l, Tussie, if they're sick enough to prescribe cocaine or morphine, they're probably on their way out. I bet for a smart person who knows the routine, who is apprised of patients' chances, it would be like stealing candy from a baby." Harry didn't mean to be argumentative; the wheels were turning in her mind, that was all.

"You watch too much TV." Tussie's anger flashed for a second. "If you'll excuse me I need to talk to BoomBoom."

Harry, Miranda, and Herb looked at one another and shrugged.

"She's a little testy," Miranda observed.

"Pressure," Herb flatly stated.

"I guess. Guess I wouldn't want to be working where someone was murdered. See, Miranda, imagine a murder at the post office-The body stuffed in the mailbag." Harry's voice took on the cadence of a radio announcer's: "The front and back door locked, a fortune in stock certificates jammed into one of the larger, bottom postboxes."

"Harry, you're too much." Miranda winked at her.

"And remember what I said about your curiosity, young lady. I've known you all your life and you can't stand not knowing something." Herb put his arm around her.

16.

It was that curiosity that got Harry in trouble. After the meeting she cruised by the hospital when she should have driven home. The puddles from the melted ice glistened like mica on the asphalt parking lot.

Impulsively, she turned into the parking lot, drove around behind the hospital to the back delivery door, which wasn't far from the railroad tracks. She paused a moment before continuing around the corner to the back door into the bas.e.m.e.nt.

She parked, got out, and carefully put her hand on the cold doork.n.o.b. Slowly she turned it so the latch wouldn't click. She opened the door. Low lights ran along the top of the hallway. The dimness was creepy. Surely, the hospital didn't have to save money by using such low-wattage bulbs. She wondered if Sam Mahanes really was a good hospital director or if they were all cheap where the public couldn't observe.

She tiptoed down the main corridor which ran to the center of the building, the oldest part of the complex, built long before the War Between the States. She counted halls off this main one but wished like Hansel and Gretel she had dropped bread crumbs, because if she ducked into some of these offshoot halls she wouldn't find her way out quickly. Bearing that in mind, she kept to the center hall corridor.

If she'd thought about it, she would have waited for this nighttime exploration until she could bring Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker. Their eyes and ears were far better than her own, plus Tucker's sense of smell was a G.o.dsend. However, she'd taken them home after work, whipped off her barn ch.o.r.es, and hopped over to the rectory for the meeting.

She thought she heard voices somewhere to her right. Instinctively she flattened against the wall. She wanted to find the boiler room. The voices faded away, men's voices. A closed door was to her right.

Stealthily she crept forward. A flickering light to her right told her a room lay ahead. The voices sounded farther away, and then-silence.

The door behind her opened. She hurried away, slipping into the boiler room. She'd found her goal. Again, she flattened against the wall listening for the footfall but the boiler gurgling drowned out subtle sounds.

She quickly noted that another exit from the boiler room lay immediately in front of her on the other side of the room.

Glancing around she took a deep breath, walked to the boiler. The chalk outline of Hank's body had nearly worn away. She knelt down, then looked at the wall. Though it was scrubbed, a light bloodstain remained visible. Shuddering at the picture of blood spurting from Hank's throat, jetting across the room, she started to rise.

Harry never made it to her feet. A clunk was the last thing she heard.

17.

Sheriff Rick Shaw and Deputy Cynthia Cooper hit the swinging doors of the emergency room so hard they nearly popped off their hinges.

"Where is she?" Rick asked a startled ER nurse.

The young woman wordlessly pointed to yet another set of doors and Rick and Cynthia blasted through them.

A woozy Harry, covered with a blanket, lay on a recovery-room bed. A quiet night at the hospital, no other patients were in the room.

Jordan Ivanic, a sickly smile on his face, greeted the officers. "Why does everything happen on my watch?"

"Just lucky, I guess," Dr. Bruce Buxton growled at him. Bruce considered Jordan a worm. He had little love for any administrative type but Jordan's whining and worrying curdled his stomach.

"Well?" Rick demanded, staring at Bruce.

He pointed to the right side of Harry's head. "Blow. Blunt instrument. We've washed the blood off and cleaned and shaved the wound. I've taken X rays. She's fine. She's st.i.tched up. A mild concussion at the worst."

"Harry, can you hear me?" Cynthia leaned down, speaking low.

"Yes."

"Did you see who hit you?"

"No, the son of a b.i.t.c.h."

Her reply made Cooper laugh. "You'll be just fine."

"Who found her?" Rick asked Jordan.

"Booty Weyman. New on the job and I guess he just happened to be checking the boiler room. We don't know how long she was there. We don't know exactly what happened either."

"I can tell you what happened," Rick snapped. "What happened was someone hit her on the head."

"Perhaps she fell and struck her head." Jordan tried to find another solution.

"In the boiler room? The only thing she could have hit her head on is the boiler and then we'd see burns. Don't pull this s.h.i.t, Ivanic." Rick rarely swore, considering it unprofessional, but he was deeply disturbed and surges of white-hot anger shot through him. "There's something wrong in this hospital. If you know what it is you'd better come clean because I am going to turn this place upside down!"

Jordan held up his hands placatingly. "Now Sheriff, I'm as upset about this as you are."

"The h.e.l.l you are."

This made Bruce laugh.

"Dr. Buxton." Cynthia leaned toward the tall man. "When did you get here?"

"I came a little bit after the meeting at the rectory, the G.o.d's Love group, you know. Herb's group."

"Yes." She nodded.

"Stopped at the convenience store. So I guess I got here about eight forty-five."