“Not yet. Another doctor examined me here at the hospital. Really, Mom, it’s okay. I’m going to be released soon, hopefully within the hour.” She checked the clock and saw that it was after ten.
Charlene said, “Okay, good. That’s good. But I’ve been watching the news. They’ve pulled two bodies from the old Beaumont home. I assume that’s why you were there?”
Nikki closed her eyes as her mother rambled on and on about what she’d seen on television, where the crack news team from WKAM had filed the first report of two bodies being located in the basement of the Beaumont manor. “The reporter said that not only you but a police officer was pulled from the river, Detective Morrisette.”
“That’s right.”
“Reed saved you? But she was trying to save you?”
Nikki wanted to argue that she hadn’t needed saving but knew there was no reason to pick nits over what had happened. “Yes, essentially.”
“Well, what were you doing? Nosing around again? Nicole, when will you ever learn? You seem to have some kind of death wish.” She started rambling about Nikki’s past near-death experiences, and she really did have a point. For someone in her midthirties Nikki Gillette had defied the grim reaper more than once. This—falling into the river—didn’t compare with the other hair-raising times when she’d faced what she’d thought was certain death. Charlene, though, wasn’t convinced. “You have to be more careful! It’s not just you this time, you know.”
“Yeah, I do,” Nikki agreed, though she didn’t want to admit it.
“You’re carrying my grandchild.”
And our child, Reed’s and mine. But she bit her tongue rather than start any kind of argument and said instead, “Look, Mom. Sorry, but I’ve got to go, the nurse is back.” It was a bald-faced lie, but she had to end this conversation before Charlene really got going.
“Oh. Well. Fine.” Her mother sounded disbelieving but didn’t push it. “You’ll call after you see Dr. Kasey tomorrow?”
“Yeah, of course.” She was nodding as if her mother could see her.
A pause. Then, “Well. Okay, then, you . . . you take care and knock off all this investigating stuff, okay? You’re a wife now, soon to be a mother.”
Charlene was SO old school. It ticked Nikki off. Big-time. And she didn’t need any reminders of her mother’s disapproval or a lecture—make that another lecture—on how to live her life. “Got it,” she said, though that was another lie just to cut her mother off. They both knew Charlene was wasting her breath, and man, oh, man did Nikki want to keep arguing, to push her mother out of the Dark Ages. But they’d been ’round and ’round on the subject before with neither woman ever backing down nor giving an inch. A waste of breath. It was time to end this. Past time. “I really have to go.” And she didn’t wait for her mother to respond, just hung up the bulky receiver and told herself to cool off.
She thought about the news reports. Charlene and the rest of Georgia knew as much about the bodies located at the Beaumont estate as Nikki did. Despite being on the grounds at the crime scene and her husband being the lead investigator Nikki hadn’t gotten any more information than the general public through the Public Information Officer. It was irritating and frustrating and . . . and just plain wrong.
However, Bronco Cravens’s name hadn’t been released.
Yet.
So Nikki still had a bit more insight into the case and if she could get Reed to open up a little—not enough to compromise the investigation, but give her something—she would have a little more to go on. She was trying and failing to remember Millie’s cell phone number when the nurse who had helped admit her returned with the news that the doctor, having spoken to her obstetrician, had signed the discharge orders. Nikki, complete with sling, ice pack and instructions on care for her shoulder, was essentially released. Reed showed up ten minutes later with fresh clothes. While he again checked on Morrisette, Nikki, with an aide’s help, managed to dress in the sweats her husband had plucked out of her closet. She was still trying to figure out how to broach the subject of the investigation when he returned, his face once again grim.
“Bad news?” she asked, immediately concerned as she adjusted her sling.
“Not good. She’s still in surgery.” He met the worry in her eyes. “Complications.”
Her heart dropped. “What kind of complications?”
“I don’t know. It’s a brain injury, Nikki. I’m sure there can be lots of things.” As he gathered her bag of wet clothes, he added, “Her kids are here. In the waiting room. With their father.”
That surprised her. Morrisette had never had a kind word to say about Bart Yelkis and had often put him in the category of “deadbeat dad.” “I didn’t think they got along.”
“They don’t, but he’s probably here to support his kids.” He glanced around the small room. “Can we get out of here now?”
As if on cue, an orderly appeared with a wheelchair and soon enough she was home, where Mikado and Jennings greeted her at the front door. Mikado, a small mutt of undetermined heritage, wanted to lick her face and had to be ordered to sit, so he wriggled, tail swishing the floor, while Jennings twined between her legs before she gave them each a pet, then climbed the stairs to their bedroom.
“I might have to go out again,” Reed told her as she sat on a bedside chair and kicked off the flip-flops Reed had brought to the hospital. “I just got a call from the station. We’ve located Bronco Cravens. You okay with that?”
She looked at him as if he’d just flown in from the moon. “It’s only my shoulder, Reed. I think I’ll be fine.”
It didn’t seem fine with him. “If you say so.”
“I do.” She knew what he was getting at: the pregnancy. But she let that elephant in the room remain invisible, for now. Wouldn’t bring it up, not directly. Instead she said, “Seriously, I’m okay.”
“I wouldn’t even consider it, but since Morrisette’s laid up, we’re a body down.”
“You’re going alone?”
“Delacroix is going with me.”
Making her way to the bed, she asked, “Delacroix?”
“A newbie. Assigned to the case. Computer wiz, as I understand it. Figured out it was Cravens who called.”
“Good. Then go, go.” She made shooing signs with one hand as she sat on the edge of the bed and tried to stifle a yawn. “You need to find out what he knows,” she added, and winked at him. “You can fill me in when you get home.”
“In your dreams, Gillette.” But he rapped on the doorjamb with his knuckles. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” As Mikado jumped onto the bed, Reed pointed a finger at the scrappy little mutt. “And you. You’re in charge.”
Nikki laughed, then winced at a sharp pain in her shoulder. “Damn.”
Reed caught her grimace. “You okay?”
“Fine. Just got to remember the stupid shoulder. So go already. Go ‘serve and protect’ and most important: Find out what Bronco knows.”
“Okay. If you’re sure.”