"Shut up, Watson. By your waffling answer, I deduce you weren't hired, yet are still investigating, meaning that someone close to you is involved. Taking into account the rumors going around, I conclude that Marco doesn't want Vlad to be accused of Lori Willis's murder and is undertaking to find the killer himself. With your help, of course."

"Spot on, Holmes. Good show. Plus it allows Marco and me more time together."

"Why does it have to be a secret?"

"Because Reilly is a.s.signed to the case, and Marco is afraid that if it gets out that we're helping Vlad, the cops will try to interfere."

"Do you seriously think Reilly won't find out?"

"Hey, it's Marco's call. I'm just along for the ride."

"Now, was that so hard, Watson? I'll phone-I mean send word-as soon as I have some information."

At three thirty, Tara and her friend Jamie bopped into the workroom. "Guess what," Tara said, showing me her notebook. "We got His Most Hunkableness's autograph."

I glanced at the neat script on the inside cover: Tara, thanks for being a friend. Vlad.

"Isn't that awesome?" my niece asked. "He even knew my name."

"Mine, too." Jamie showed me where Vlad had written to her below her giant balloon letters that said I Vlad. "Isn't he totally adorable?"

"That dark hair, those long fangs . . ." Tara fanned her face. "Vampires are so s.e.xy."

"Stop!" I said. "Vampires are fictional characters! And never say the s word in my presence again. You're too young."

"Too young to say s.e.xy?" Tara asked.

I put my fingers in my ears and began to hum. The girls looked at each other with saucer eyes, then burst out laughing.

"You sound like Grandma," Tara said through her giggles. "How old are you? Eighty?"

"I'm twenty-seven. I do not sound like Grandma. And fine. Say s.e.xy all you want. I'm totally cool with that."

For some reason, that caused more giggling.

"We've got to get down to the bar," Tara said, trying to stifle her chortles as she gave me a hug.

"Be careful. Oh, wait. I'm stuck. Would one of you pull my wheelchair out from under the table?"

They laughed so hard, I could hear them gasping for breath as they left Bloomers.

With only twenty minutes to go until closing time, Marco phoned me at the shop. "Hey, Sunshine, can you talk in private? I want to bring you up to speed on the investigation."

I was alone in the workroom, but with Grace's superhuman power of hearing, that was no guarantee of privacy. "Let's just say I can listen in private."

"Starting with Kyle-I found out he was enrolled in the nursing program at County a few years back but was dismissed because of charges brought against him by the nursing supervisor. Guess who the supervisor was."

"That's too easy. Lori."

"Yep. She accused him of stealing drugs and had him tossed out. The charges were later dropped, but Kyle never reapplied for the program."

"That gives Kyle a motive. We have our first suspect, Marco. I hope you've lined up another source."

"I'm still working on that."

Not having Reilly on our team was really putting a cramp in our style.

"Next," Marco said, "I went to the county clerk's office to see what I could find about Lori Willis and hit pay dirt-a medical malpractice suit filed against her and County Hospital five years ago. Willis was blamed for injecting a patient with heparin, a blood thinner, in an amount ten times greater than what was prescribed, causing the patient to have a stroke and die. The patient's husband sued Willis and the hospital, and after a two-year battle, he got a large settlement.

"Here's where it gets interesting. I spoke with a doctor who worked at County Hospital at the time and remembered the incident well. He said the patient's husband demanded that Willis be fired, but the hospital refused to put that in the agreement. The husband was so outraged that he refused to accept their offer as long as Willis was employed there. Eventually he capitulated. A year later, Willis left County to take the position of director of nursing at Parkview."

"Wow, Marco. Lori made a fatal error, then not only didn't get fired but landed a better position. I'll bet the patient's husband was enraged."

"His name is Jerry Trumble. He's a pharmacist now at Dugan's Pharmacy. I checked his background and found out that he worked as a veterinary a.s.sistant during college, so I called the clinic where he worked and was told one of the duties of an a.s.sistant is to-"

"Let me guess. Draw blood?"

"You got it."

"We have another suspect."

"You bet we do. After we talk to the manager at the Tumbling Dice this evening, we'll stop at Dugan's. Trumble is on duty from two to ten p.m. Tuesday through Sunday."

It was going to be a busy evening.

"I have to put you on hold, Abby. There's some kind of trouble outside the bar."

A minute later Marco came back on the line. "Gotta go, babe. Don't come down until I let you know it's safe."

"Wait, Marco! What kind of trouble?"

"Vigilante trouble."

Oh, no! Tara and her friends were outside Marco's bar!

CHAPTER NINE.

I tossed the handset onto the desk, wheeled through the doorway, and got caught in the purple curtain.

"What is it, sweetie?" Lottie asked, as I freed myself with a muttered curse and headed toward my crutches.

"Marco said there's trouble at the bar," I said. "Tara is down there with her posse."

"You're not gonna make it through the crowd on crutches," Lottie said, grabbing her jacket. "I'll go."

She was out the door before I could thank her. As I rolled to the big bay window, Grace poked her head out of the parlor.

"Where did Lottie run off to?"

"She went to check on Tara for me. Marco said there was trouble at Down the Hatch."

"Good heavens. You'd think this was the Wild West."

For a while I sat at the window, hoping to see what was going on two buildings down, but there were too many people on the sidewalk. At least I hadn't heard any sirens.

Finally, I gave up and turned away from the window. "Let's close up shop, Grace. It's almost five o'clock."

Before Grace could flip the sign to CLOSED, Lottie hurried in, locking the door behind her. "Whew! What a madhouse! Tara and the girls are fine, but there are cops all over the place. Seems there was a dustup in the alley behind the bar when Vlad showed up for work. Several members of a group calling themselves the Garlic Party were hauled off to jail, but apparently Vlad is okay. Tara said he waved to her from the window. I tried asking a cop for details, but he was busy dispersing the crowd and didn't want to chat with me."

With a sigh of relief I said, "Thanks, Lottie."

"Perhaps Tara's parents should be advised of the situation," Grace said. "They may wish to remove her from the posse."

"Oh, they'll find out," Lottie said. "TV crews were there shooting film for the evening news. I pointed them out to Tara. She was texting her mom when I left."

The phone rang, so I wheeled myself to the cash counter to answer it.

"Abby, it's me," Nikki said. "I've got some info for you on Lori Willis."

"Just a minute." I put Nikki on hold and said good-bye to my a.s.sistants, then went to the workroom and picked up the handset I'd tossed onto the desk. "Go ahead, Nikki."

"I've got good stuff, Abby. Do you remember me telling you about Dr. Sebastian Holloway, that gorgeous cardiac surgeon who could pa.s.s for George Clooney?"

"No, but go on."

"You have to remember him, Abby. Early fifties, salt-andpepper hair, tanned, fit, arrogant, an ego the size of Texas. I pointed him out at the hospital picnic at the Indiana Dunes last summer. Think buns of steel and blue Speedo."

"Oh, him!"

"Yeah, him! Lori Willis walked in on Dr. Speedo and a young nurse in the utility room, catching them in a compromising situation. It happened before I started here, three or four years ago, when Lori was a supervisor. Anyway, instead of turning a blind eye to it, which is what most people here do-you wouldn't believe how much of that goes on-she fired the nurse and reported Dr. Holloway to the chief of medical staff, which got him a-wait, I want to read this to you-a 'reprimand for improper behavior on hospital property and with a hospital employee.' "

Wearing that Speedo at the company picnic should have earned him another. "That is good stuff, Nikki!"

"There's more. When Holloway's wife found out, she dumped him in a long, nasty, bitter divorce that dragged on for two years and cost him tons of money."

"Wow! I can only imagine how he felt about Lori Willis after that."

"No kidding. Then she went to Parkview."

"Leaving behind a doctor with a life and a career in tatters, and a young nurse with no job."

"So if you're looking for someone with a motive, Ab, you found two of them."

And they both knew how to draw blood. I grabbed a pen and had Nikki spell both names for me. "You did a great job, Nik. Thanks so much."

"No problem. If I find out anything else, I'll let you know."

Four suspects in a matter of hours. Not a bad start.

While waiting for Marco to give me the all clear, I pulled an order from the spindle and went to work. No sense letting the time go to waste.

The arrangement was for a fiftieth birthday party, and the person who ordered it wanted a centerpiece with fifty b.u.t.ton mums in it, the birthday girl's "fave" flower. I pulled all the mums I had, all in bright spring colors, and went to work. I didn't want just a boring old mound of flowers, so I cut thick slabs of green foam to form a layer cake, with white mums for the frosting, green mums for the piping around the base and the top edge, pink mums to spell out the name Barb, and yellow mums for a border of flowers, accented by dark green leaves.

The phone rang just as I finished, and I was relieved to hear Marco's voice at last, telling me everything was fine. "The cops chased everyone off the sidewalk, even Tara and her posse."

"What happened? Lottie said people were arrested."

"Several guys waylaid Vlad when he turned the corner into the alley. They told him they were his escorts out of town. Luckily, Evan opened the back door about that time to take a sack of trash to the bin."

"Was Vlad hurt?"

"He's going to have a few bruises. I suspect the guys got as good as they gave."

"Have you talked to Vlad about Lori Willis yet?"

"Haven't had a chance. If you're ready, get your coat on and I'll be right down."

Down the Hatch was so busy that people were standing four-deep at the bar, every booth was occupied, and more people were waiting at the door. So Marco and I found ourselves eating in his office once again, while Vlad and two other bartenders struggled to keep up with the demand for drinks.

I filled Marco in on the two new suspects Nikki had uncovered as we dined on hearty beef stew and crusty bread. "That gives us four so far," I said. "I hope Lori didn't make many more enemies. We don't have all that much time to work on the case before . . ." I realized where that thought was headed and decided not to go there.

Marco didn't comment.

I reached into my purse and pulled out a piece of paper with the doctor's and nurse's names on it. "Dr. Holloway is still at County," I said. "The nurse lost her job there, so she may be a little harder to find."

Marco set aside his empty bowl and went to his desk. "Spell her name. I'll do a search right now."

I read the spellings of her first and last names and waited while the search engine did the work. "Two Courtney Anne O'Keefes in the state," Marco said. He typed in another command and watched the screen. "But only one from New Chapel. She works at Loyola Medical Center in Chicago."

In a minute, her information printed out, and Marco put it into a folder. "I'll give her a call Monday morning. Dr. Holloway will be harder to pin down. Cardiac surgeons are usually either in surgery or running back to their offices to see patients in between surgeries."

"Dr. Holloway found time in between surgeries for Courtney Anne." I fingered the top b.u.t.ton of my sweater. "He might find time to talk to me."

"I'm sure your crutches will make quite an impression, especially when you tell Holloway he's a suspect in a murder investigation."

Rats. "Then I'll have one of my brothers set up a meeting with him. He wouldn't refuse a fellow surgeon's request." I scrolled through the address book until I found Jordan's name, hit the green b.u.t.ton, and put the phone to my ear. "Jordan will help me," I a.s.sured Marco.

Marco leaned back in his chair while I explained what I needed to my brother. Jordan and I had always been closer than Jonathan and I, because Jordan was the closer to me in age. He was also Tara's father. "So would you set up a meeting between us and Holloway?" I asked.

"No freaking way, Ab. I'm the new surgeon on the block here. I keep a low profile around seasoned veterans like Holloway. Mentioning Lori Willis would be a bad move on my part. All the doctors know what she did to his career. In fact, if you're going to call to set up a meeting, I highly recommend you not mention her name either."