Happy Hour Page 18

  I sat there fuming at the thought that my father had been forced to hold back from leveling that rotten bastard.

  “I asked him if whole blue drink thing was a lie, and he laughed it off, saying it might be,” Alex said with a frown. “He’s really a piece of work.”

  “Is that why you hit him?”

  “The official record is that he took a swing at me and I defended myself. At least that’s what Derek and his new girlfriend saw, along with dozens of other people enjoying themselves at the bar. I think he just posted bail after a long night in jail.”

  I couldn’t believe it! Alex had defended my honor and put Jared in jail. I could barely contain my glee.

  “My hero! And he spent a night in jail too? And who is Derek’s new girlfriend?” I asked, dying to know the details.

  “So much for focusing on the important stuff, Poppy,” Alex said, rolling his eyes.

  For a moment, I didn’t think about my father still under investigation for the murder of one man and the attempted murder of another, but my happiness didn’t last for long and my dread of what would happen to him came rushing back seconds later.

  “Any chance after all that you found some clue and my father’s off the hook?” I asked, hoping against hope he had.

  He hesitated in answering, so I added, “I know you probably can’t tell me anything now that I’m not allowed on the case because I’m too close and my father’s still a suspect, but if you blink once for yes and twice for no, that would be good enough. At least I’d know.”

  “Poppy, I’m going to do everything I can to show that your father had no part in this crime. I promise. But until I can…”

  He didn’t finish his sentence, but he didn’t have to. I knew what the answer was. As long as my father was a suspect, I would have to keep my nose out of the case. I tried to pretend like it didn’t bother me, but my Irish face couldn’t hide my true feelings.

  “Oh, forget the damn rules. You’re my partner, and that means you should be working this case with me, no matter what. We have work to do, so if you’re finished with breakfast, let’s get going,” Alex said, instantly cheering me up.

  “Are you sure? I don’t want you to get in trouble or for my being with you to affect the case against my father.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ll handle any questions that come up. For now, we have work to do. After my little field trip to Diamanti’s last night, I did some investigating on our second victim. I want to go speak to him again, so finish your breakfast and we’ll go back to the hospital.”

  Quickly downing the rest of my coffee, I asked, “Investigating on Gerald Engels? So you don’t think I’m crazy about him being a possible suspect in all of this?”

  Alex smiled in that sexy way that always made me want to take him in my arms and kiss him. “I never think you’re crazy, Poppy. When are you going to realize that?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “So it seems Marcus Tyne and Gerald Engels weren’t as close as we originally thought,” Alex said as we drove toward Sunset Ridge Regional.

  Surprised to hear the two friends hadn’t been just that, I said, “Really? How is it we didn’t know this before?”

  My question got a smirk from my partner. “Because someone got sidetracked with antifreeze and other scientific nonsense.”

  “Scientific nonsense?” I asked with a chuckle. “Be careful there. I’m a big fan of that kind of evidence. Science never lies.”

  I knew the irony of my saying that and still completely believing my father had nothing to do with Tyne’s death or Engels’ poisoning sounded strange, but there it was. I trusted science, even though it currently pointed to antifreeze being at McGuire’s and therefore made my father the prime suspect.

  “They had a falling out a while back and hadn’t talked for months,” Alex explained. “Then all of a sudden on Monday afternoon, Gerald called Marcus about meeting up that night for a drink. He said he wanted to talk things over and clear the air.”

  “How did you find all this out?”

  Smiling like he was pleased with himself, he looked over at me as he shifted the police cruiser into park. “I got the phone records for Marcus Tyne’s house and cell this morning. Gerald called him on Monday around noon and left a message on his voicemail about meeting up and burying the hatchet. Then Marcus called him back, ostensibly to say yes to meeting that night and likely to suggest going to McGuire’s since that’s where they ended up a few hours later.”

  “Interesting that Gerald never mentioned any of this, but then again, we did talk to him that first time when he’d been under the influence of the antifreeze in his system making him loopy.”

  Alex grimaced. “Under the influence of antifreeze. That’s something you don’t hear every day. Well, regardless of how he was feeling that day, he wasn’t under any influence when we talked to him in the hospital. He could have mentioned something about this disagreement that lasted for months then.”

  As we closed the car doors behind us, I wondered what had caused the falling out between the two men. Business deal gone bad? They did work in the same profession. Maybe antique dealing was more cutthroat than at first glance. I could see my boss practically jumping for joy already at the juicy article I’d write detailing the ruthless world of antiques.

  Then an idea struck me. “I bet it was a woman!”

  Alex stopped dead just before reaching for the hospital glass front doors and spun around to face me. “What?”

  “I bet they fought over a woman.”

  He thought about my theory for a moment but quickly dismissed it. “I don’t know, Poppy. We have no indication they dated anyone in common. It’s not like these two guys were exactly studs.”

  I walked through the door as he opened it, undeterred by my partner’s unwillingness to jump to the same conclusion. Two men fighting meant a woman or money. I placed my bet on a woman.

  The question was, though, who was this woman?

  We got into the elevator, both of us staring straight ahead, and Alex said almost under his breath, “I’m not convinced there’s a third person involved in this case.”

  “So are you saying you think Gerald Engels killed his friend and then drank antifreeze to throw the police off his trail? That doesn’t seem like a very smart move since he could have died.”

  He turned to look at me and shook his head. “Did I say anything like that?”

  “Well, if you don’t think anyone else was involved, that means you think Gerald put the antifreeze in his friend’s drink to kill him and then drank some of it on his own to make it look like he was another victim.”

  Alex thought about that for a long moment before his face lit up like a lightbulb had just been turned on inside his head. Pointing at me excitedly, he said, “But he didn’t. In fact, remember the doctor explaining that there wasn’t enough in his system to kill him? Maybe he knew exactly how much to ingest and did that.”

  As the elevator doors opened, I tried to imagine Gerald Engels being the type of man who would risk death that way. Granted, I’d only seen him loopy from being poisoned and then recovering in the hospital, but he hadn’t struck me as a daring soul willing to leave his fate to the exact measurement of a poison that might kill him if he ingested merely an ounce too much.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t get a devil-may-care vibe from him. He’s more of a measure-twice-cut-once kind of guy,” I said to Alex as he followed me into the third floor hallway toward Gerald’s room.

  “Well, we’ll soon find out.”

  We reached Room 319 and both of us stopped dead in the doorway. The bed where Gerald had been in for the past week sat empty, its white sheets neatly made and the white blanket carefully folded at the foot of the bed. Stunned, Alex and I stared into the room and then at each other like we didn’t know what to say.

  He turned on his heels and stormed over to the nurses’ desk on the middle of the floor to angrily demand to know where Mr. Engels had been moved to and w
hy the police hadn’t been informed. As he barked at the woman standing behind the desk, a horrible thought tore through my mind.

  What if Gerald Engels had died?

  Quickly, I hurried over to stop Alex before he went any further with his impromptu interrogation of the staff. Grabbing him by the arm, I whispered in his ear, “Alex, did he pass away and that’s why he’s not in there?”

  A look of horror crossed my partner’s face. Looking back at the nurse, he asked in a much lower voice, “Did Mr. Engels die? Is that why he’s not in his room?”

  The nurse shook her head quickly back and forth, making her long ponytail swing left and right as she indicated he hadn’t passed away. “Oh, no. Mr. Engels left the hospital this morning against his doctor’s advice.”

  I’d never seen Alex move so fast to call anyone in all the time I’d known him. His phone came out of his pocket like a cowboy’s six-shooter from a holster in one of those old western films my father loved to watch.

  As he called the station, he pointed down the hall. “Poppy, we need to talk to Dr. Carter now! I need you to find him.”

  The nurse understood the urgency by the frantic tone of Alex’s voice and hurried out from behind the station. Looking to her left, she said, “Dr. Carter should be in the lounge at the end of the hall. I saw him walking that way about fifteen minutes ago. I’ll page him too, if you want.”

  “That would be great! Thanks!” I yelled as I took off down the hall to find him.

  Dr. Carter sat alone reading a magazine at a large round table in the lounge. As I approached him, catching my breath, I heard the woman’s voice come over the loudspeaker telling him he was needed at the desk. He rose to leave and nearly ran into me.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Carter. Officer Montero needs to speak to you about your patient, Gerald Engels,” I said while I hurried him out into the hallway. “We need to know what happened to him.”

  Halfway to the nurses’ station, Alex reached us, and before the doctor could get a word out, he said, “I want to know how this man could have walked out of this hospital when he nearly died just a few days ago. What’s going on here?”

  Dr. Carter took a step back and looked startled, likely because he hadn’t expected to have to endure the inquisition simply because one of his patients decided to leave the hospital against his advice. “I couldn’t stop him, Officer Montero. He wanted to leave, and no matter what I told him about how imperative it was to stay in bed longer, he wouldn’t hear of it.”

  Placated by that answer, at least for the moment, Alex sighed. “Let’s leave the fact that I should have been contacted immediately to the side for a moment. I need to know what kind of shape he’s in. Just the other day he was at death’s doorstep, so what’s he like now?”

  Moving to walk toward the nurses’ station, the doctor said, “Let me check his chart.”

  But Alex’s patience had come to an end. He stepped in front of him and shook his head. “We don’t have time for that. I don’t need specific stats. I just need to know if he’s going to be on certain medicines or if he’ll need to rest often. Things like that.”

  “Well, I don’t usually do things like that. I prefer to see the chart, to be honest, officer,” Dr. Carter hedged, taking a step to his left to get around Alex.

  He didn’t get far, though. “We don’t have time for that now. Mr. Engels is part of a murder investigation, and at the moment, you’re impeding that very investigation by not giving me the answers I need. Now for the last time, doctor, tell me what I need to know!”

  The demanding tone of Alex’s voice shocked the doctor, who looked like he wanted to protest even further for a moment before accepting the urgency of the situation. Finally, he gave in to Alex’s strongly worded request and answered, “He won’t be able to go very far without resting since he’s still recuperating from cardiac arrest. He’ll need more fluids than a normal person would, so I expect he’ll be consuming a lot of liquids. He didn’t take any prescriptions with him, that I remember, but overall, I wouldn’t expect him to be feeling anywhere near one hundred percent yet.”

  “Thank you. Oh, by the way, why did Mr. Engels want to leave the hospital all of a sudden today?”

  The doctor’s shoulders sagged in relief that this question didn’t force him to go against any of his usual methods. Nodding, he said, “I think it was the woman who came to visit him yesterday. Ever since he talked to her, he wanted to leave.”

  “A woman?” I asked before Alex could get the words out of this mouth. “Who? What did she look like?”

  Dr. Carter shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t see her. All I know is after he got that visit, he couldn’t wait to leave here.”

  Turning to face me, Alex said, “We need to get to Gerald Engel’s house right now.”

  As we raced to the elevator, I wondered aloud, “I hope he made it that far. From what the doctor said, he doesn’t sound like he’s going to be standing for long. And who’s the woman who came to see him?”

  Tapping his fingertip on the down button, Alex said, “I don’t know, but I fully intend on asking Gerald. And if he’s unable to stand, then he can answer my questions lying down.”

  I elbowed Alex in the arm. “See? I told you a woman was involved.”

  Alex stared straight ahead as the kindergarten class from Sunset Ridge Elementary School waddled across the intersection like a bunch of ducklings behind a mama duck. Each child held hands with the child in front of them and the one behind, and at the rear of the line followed a tall older woman wearing a stern look like this outing didn’t please her at all.

  “I know Derek told us to go easy on using the sirens and lights because the town council had received complaints from some people in town, but we’re wasting time sitting here. We’ve got to get to Engels’ house before he skips town.”

  Reaching over, I gently touched Alex’s forearm. “He’s not going to go anywhere in the five minutes we’re sitting here. Relax. They’re just kids out for a stroll on a beautiful spring day. Look at how cute they are! That last kid in front of the cranky woman is having the time of his life because he only has to hold hands with that one little girl. He’s feeling like the king of the world.”

  As Alex groaned and grew increasingly impatient, I watched that little boy at the back of the line with his giddy smile and cute little blue windbreaker with the zipper he kept pulling up and down as he walked. How great it must be to feel that good about something so simple.

  I nudged his arm and pointed toward the woman in charge of the end of the line of kids. Only halfway across the street, she looked about as irritated as Alex. “That’s what you look like, except you don’t have the excuse of having to deal with twenty kindergarteners.”

  He turned his head and glared at me. “I have you, though.”

  “Funny. Are you comparing me to a class full of little kids?”

  Sighing, he shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just on edge about this because every minute we sit here, Gerald Engels could be getting away.”

  I gave him my best sympathetic smile. “I know. Trust me. My father’s reputation and freedom depends on us solving this case, but I don’t think Engels is getting anywhere too far.”

  At least I hoped he wouldn’t.

  The line of children stepped up on the curb, and the irritated older woman followed them, leaving the road open for us to continue toward Gerald Engels’ house. Just as Alex pressed his foot on the gas, that last little boy with the blue windbreaker waved his tiny hand at us and smiled, like his day had been made seeing the police car.

  We took off down the road as Alex huffed, “Finally. I really need to say something to Derek about us getting to use the sirens and lights more.”

  “I think he’s the reason why people started complaining in the first place. Nobody loves the sirens and lights more than Derek. It’s been a running joke for a while that he’s a little too liberal with all that for people around here. Even with simple parking tickets he’s
been known to use them.”

  Alex didn’t seem impressed by my opinion on the chief’s overuse of the sirens and lights and instead remained focused on simply driving as fast as he could up Gerald Engel’s street. I wanted to ask why he seemed particularly out of sorts about this case, but his mood appeared to have gotten even worse after sitting at that crosswalk, and I didn’t want to risk us fighting again.

  We’d had enough spats on this case already.

  A few minutes later, the car skidded to a stop in front of the house we’d visited earlier this week when we saved Gerald’s life. Now, just days later, we were there for an entirely different reason, one I still wasn’t sure about.

  Alex didn’t say a word as he headed up the sidewalk to the house. I followed quickly behind praying we’d find Gerald sitting in that same recliner and hopefully in good enough shape to answer Alex’s questions.

  He knocked on the door, yelling into the house, “Gerald Engels, open the door! It’s the Sunset Ridge police! We need to talk to you.”

  His words were answered with silence. Banging on the door this time, he repeated his demand for Gerald to open the door, but it was no use. I peered in through the window I’d looked through last time and saw no evidence anyone was inside.

  “He’s not home,” I said as I rejoined Alex at the door. “So he leaves the hospital for some unknown reason and doesn’t go back to his house?”

  Alex let out a sigh of frustration. “Or he was here and is already long gone. Damnit!”

  I gently touched his shoulder in the hopes that I could make him see we weren’t finished by any stretch of the imagination. “Hey, we’ll find him. Don’t let this get you down. But you seem to be really stressed out about this case, and that’s not your style. What’s going on?”

  Looking off in the distance, he quietly said, “I feel like I’ve let you down on this case, Poppy. Your father is still our only reliable suspect because of that science you love so much, and I haven’t been able to find anyone I can honestly tell Derek would be a better suspect.”