Murder in Paradise Read online

  When she removed a framed photo of a vine-tangled winery, something fell from behind the picture and slapped the floor. A manila envelope. Across which someone had written—in blocky letters—BLACK WINE.

  But before she could finger it open, a knock sounded at the open door of her office, and she turned to see a silver-haired, deeply tanned man in a gingham shirt. “Sorry to startle you,” he said.

  This was Matthew O’Neel, the CEO of the hospital. He smiled and held out a hand to shake. “I see that you’re buried, but I wanted to drop by and say welcome.”

  “Thanks. I’m just…digging my way out.” She gestured at the office, the almost archeological layers of paperwork she had to burrow through. She tossed the manila envelope onto a pile that collapsed in a flutter.

  “Yes, well,” Matthew said, taking in the mess, “I’m sure you’ll have this place in order soon enough. That’s why we hired you. Because we knew you were up for a challenge.”

  “Have you met Pete Rustad? Good guy. Knows the ropes. He’ll be your copilot through this transition.” Matthew encouraged her to take full advantage of Millennium. That’s why they existed, to help with the impossible workload.

  “I’m not looking for help,” she said. “I can manage.”

  “Right,” he said. He tap-tap-tapped his finger against the doorframe while studying her. She noticed then the ring he wore around his middle finger. A black band.

  Chapter 7

  Jeremy could crunch numbers like a calculator, ink his way speedily through crossword puzzles, hear a song once and later play it from memory. But he couldn’t remember names. Not for the life of him.

  The head nurse—the one with the crooked nose and the smile that took over her whole face—who was she again? Tiffany? Amber? Sharon?

  Every time he met someone, he tried to repeat their name aloud, but more often than not, before they finished shaking hands, he had forgotten. It made him look like an uncaring fool.

  He was tapping his knuckles against the counter at the nurses’ station. “I’m sorry—I’ve just met so many people so quickly.” He screwed his face up in a cringe. “Your name again?”

  “Stacie.”

  “Stacie! So sorry. Stacie Parsons. I’m terrible. Forgive me.”

  She rolled her chair over to him. “Don’t worry about it. What’s up?”

  “Can you help me out with this kid?”

  He felt like an idiot. Because he had forgotten her name. Because he was only a few hours into his first day and already asking for help. And because his career had already plateaued. For eighty dollars an hour, he was working three days a week at the Stelling Free Clinic—offering up TB screening, gyno exams, immunizations, diabetes management, anything, everything. They catered to the poor and undocumented.

  He had always liked the idea of volunteering at a free clinic but not working there. This was as good as it was going to get for him. Abi had angled for a spousal hire and the hospital had said no thanks, but how about this?

  He was proud of Abi. Of course he was. For landing the medical examiner position. For anchoring their professional life in Napa Valley of all places. Even for making piles more money than him.

  His grades were never great as a premed. His MCAT scores weren’t stellar. His reviews—as a resident—were kind but never generous. Everyone seemed to think he was a good guy. But only an adequate doctor. He had never been ambitious. He didn’t want to perform cutting-edge brain surgery or rise up the ladder to chief executive or present a keynote address at a national conference. He was content with the day-in, day-out routine of listening to someone breathe through a stethoscope, of advising patients on their prescriptions, of jotting down numbers on charts. Helping.

  Now Stacie followed him down the hall. The walls were patterned with grape vine borders, but he felt a long way from the luxury of Napa Valley. The clinic smelled like stale urine and iodine. Water stains darkened the ceiling tiles. The doors were splintered. Earlier that morning, the light switch in the bathroom had zapped him when he reached to shut it off.

  The door to the exam room was open, and through the crack they could hear the boy whimpering and the mother trying to hush him.

  “He’s small, but he’s strong,” he said.

  Jeremy had taken Spanish in high school and college, but he couldn’t speak or listen as well as he could read and write. The six-year-old boy, Jorge, wouldn’t respond to any of his questions, and Jeremy’s conversation with the mother had been halting and confused as he tried to explain the immunizations required by the school district. But when he pulled out the syringe, Jorge understood what was happening, leapt out of his mother’s arms, and ran for the door.

  Jeremy tried to corral him as gently as he could, but the boy balled up his fists and hit him in the chest, bugged his eyes, and screamed until his lungs emptied of air. His mother tried to hold the boy down, but he thrashed in her arms. She was heavily pregnant and the strain of holding her son seemed to pain her. When she said, “Lo siento,” Jeremy wasn’t sure if she was speaking to him or the boy.

  Normally doctors didn’t have to deal with this sort of thing, but at the Stelling Free Clinic—Stacie told him—it was all hands on deck. If their volunteers were short, or the other nurses were out sick, he might even find himself answering the phone and manning the front desk.

  He had brought Stacie along now to help hold Jorge still. As soon as they entered the room, the boy started screaming again. Tears rivered down his cheeks. He wore camouflage Crocs and one of them went flying off as he kicked his legs and reared back against his mother’s grip.

  Stacie picked up his chart. “What’s he need?”

  The syringes were lined up on the countertop next to the sink. “Polio, DTaP, MMR, hep, chicken pox, the works.”

  She crouched down beside Jorge and softened her voice and in Spanish asked if he liked kittens. This silenced him. Gatitos? He nodded uncertainly. “Sí.”

  She pulled out her smartphone and punched at an app that called up a video of kittens playing in a living room. “Hold this.” She handed the phone to Jeremy and he positioned the screen for the boy to see.

  Jorge wiped away his tears with the back of his hand and his mouth trembled with a smile.

  Stacie slid open a drawer and pulled out a bag of M&M’s. She explained to Jorge that these were magic M&M’s; they worked better than Band-Aids in making pain go away. She would give them to him if he was good. Did he understand?

  The boy barely glanced at her, his eyes focused on the kittens tumbling over each other and pawing at each other’s tails, but he nodded and only winced a little when she pricked him with the syringe and depressed the plunger. The kittens in the video made more noise than he did, mewling in the background.

  “Kittens, huh?” Jeremy said.

  Stacie patted him on the shoulder. “Pro tip. Works every time.”

  She then focused her attention on the mother and her very pregnant belly.

  Her name was Sonora. She wore a sleeveless sweatshirt with YOSEMITE printed in faded lettering across the breast. She put her hands on her stomach, as if she could hide it, and said she was five months pregnant, maybe six. No, she hadn’t had a gyno exam, and no, she wasn’t in their system, and no, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be.

  Jeremy couldn’t keep track of the entire conversation, but the gist of it seemed to be Stacie saying, “We don’t care if you’re undocumented or not. We just want you to stay healthy.”

  Stacie asked if Jeremy could watch the boy for a second, while she and Sonora left the room. Jorge continued to watch the screen while absently fingering through the bag of M&M’s, popping the candy in his mouth until his teeth were brown with chocolate.

  Twenty minutes (and several cat videos) later, when the mother returned and called for the boy, she was rolling her sleeve over a fresh Band-Aid on her shoulder.

  Jorge wouldn’t look up until Jeremy paused the video and said, “Better get going, bud.”

  The boy to
ok another handful of M&M’s, slid off his seat, and raced past his mother and into the hallway, as if worried that if he lingered one more second, he would be asked to get his toes removed.

  “Welcome to the free clinic,” Stacie said. “Hey, small request. Can you make sure I get face time with all first-time female patients?”

  “Of course.” Jeremy handed her back her phone, and when he did, her fingers lingered for a beat on his.

  “What did you give her, by the way?” he asked.

  Stacie said, “Oh, just what she needed.”

  Chapter 8

  The Queen of the Valley Medical Center was located at the eastern edge of town, where the concrete and asphalt began to give way to vineyards. The parking lot gave off the heat of the day when Abi walked to her car, a Subaru with 140,000 miles on it. She carried her purse in the crook of her elbow. Her hands were busy with the shifting pile of Paul Bures’s framed photos, along with some homework, including an orientation packet and the manila envelope that read BLACK WINE.

  She could have worked until late into the night, but Matthew insisted she take off early—“They’re not in any rush,” he’d said, motioning to the freezer—and attend a happy hour gathering hosted by his wife. “We want you to feel welcome here. Taken care of.” She couldn’t let the job own and ruin her life. That’s what had happened to her predecessor.

  She had agreed to the happy hour invitation. But first she had something else she wanted to do.

  The hospital was under construction—a wing being added, a new home for the ICU—and a crane was presently hoisting a sign into place. The name of the donor, STELLING, ran across it. The sun winked off the golden letters when she drove off the lot. She called up Google Maps and plugged in the address for the former medical examiner’s home.

  It was located off Big Ranch Road, in a development called Del Sur. Abi didn’t know if Paul’s wife still lived there, but like everything else in this small city, it was only a ten-minute drive. She wanted to return the photographs and pay her respects. And maybe ask if Mrs. Bures had any helpful insight into a job that seemed to have overwhelmed her husband.

  The development had been built in the eighties and was comprised of half-acre and one-acre lots featuring three- and four-bedroom homes of a similar design, mostly stucco with Spanish tile roofs. Most of the yards were decorated with rocks and thorny bushes and native grasses, but a few had lawns. The grass was a shade of green that would require meticulous fertilizing and watering in this dry climate.

  Paul Bures had kept one of those perfectly manicured lawns. She guessed he was the gardener, and not his wife, because the grass had gone to seed and browned to a crisp. The tidy edging and heavy mulch and arrangement of shade plants seemed at odds with the messy office he kept.

  The house appeared dark and several newspapers lay on the front porch. Abi rang the doorbell and it sounded a lonely two-toned chime. Thirty seconds passed and she tried knocking. Just when she was about to leave, she heard footsteps inside.

  The woman who came to the door could have been sixty or eighty. She had sleep-matted hair, with gray roots grown out into a skunk stripe down the middle of her head. Her eyes were puffed and purpled with exhaustion and her cheek still carried the red lines of her pillow. She wore a T-shirt and no bra with stained lavender pajama pants.

  “Mrs. Bures?”

  “Who are you?” Her breath smelled like a miserable cocktail of sour milk and whiskey.

  “You’re the wife of Paul Bures?” Abi asked.

  “I was. My name is Neysa.”

  “I’m sorry to just show up like this. But…” She held out the photos as a way of explanation.

  Neysa reached for reading glasses that weren’t on top of her head, then leaned forward and squinted. “What’s that? Are you trying to sell me something?”

  “I’m the new medical examiner. Abi Brenner. I was cleaning out your husband’s office and I thought you might like to have some of his things.”

  Neysa took a step toward her and stumbled on the welcome mat, knocking it askew.

  “His photos,” she said in a quiet voice, and then her eyes focused severely on Abi. “So you’re their patsy?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “They bring in a young pretty stupid face. Someone who will do as she’s told and not interfere with their nasty business.” Her voice grew steadily louder until she was nearly shrieking. She was clearly drunk, the edges of her words slurred.

  Abi took a few steps back and set the photos on the porch between them. “I’ll just leave them here. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  “Those photos are what got us into trouble in the first place. Paul’s meddling.” She kicked at the framed photos and they toppled over with a clatter, revealing the manila envelope marked BLACK WINE.

  Neysa said, “If you know what you’ve gotten yourself into, then damn you. And if you don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, then you’re damned anyway.”

  A pea gravel path led from the porch to the driveway and Abi began to follow it now, walking backward as if afraid the old woman would chase her down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “They’re killing people!” Neysa said, and retreated into her house once more until she was nearly invisible, just a pale wraith in the wedge of darkness. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  Chapter 9

  Abi didn’t want to go before, and she certainly didn’t want to now, but she felt obligated to attend the happy hour gathering hosted by her boss’s wife. “She’d love for you to come,” Matthew had said. “No pressure, of course. You’re obviously overwhelmed, but maybe this is just the dose of medicine you need?”

  Abi met them at Fumé Bistro, on an outdoor patio busy with flowering pots and a veranda tangled with wisteria. Ruth was honey blond and yoga-toned, taller and younger than her husband by a decade or more. She wore jewelry that caught the light and flashed when she moved. She kissed Abi on either cheek when she greeted her. “Let me introduce you to everyone. You’re one of us now.”

  The sun was low enough in the sky to soak everything with a golden glow. There were two dozen women in their fifties, sixties, or seventies, most drinking chardonnay, wearing white jeans and brightly colored floral tops.

  Abi kept thinking about Neysa Bures. She was likely the same age as many of the women here but looked far older. Haunted and ruined. Had she once mingled with them? Laughed and toasted a glass of rosé in this very place?

  Abi’s mind wandered but she maintained her smile as she was escorted around the patio. She had expected doctors and nurses, the women she would be working with; these women curated art galleries, ran foundations, or played around with real estate. None seemed to have any connection to the hospital, except as donors or board members or surgeon’s wives.

  Abi had grown up on a dairy farm, working forty hours a week as a waitress to pay her way through college. She had never had a pedicure in her life. Or bought a new car. Or shopped at Lululemon. This wasn’t her crowd, but she did her best to make nice. She nodded sympathetically when someone complained about the housekeeper always misplacing the television remote. She tried to hide her yawn behind her hand when another woman talked about how acupuncture and her nutritionist had changed her life. And she tried not to spit out her wine when she overheard one woman say, “I’m thinking about leaving Harry. But only after he takes me to Rome for Christmas.”

  Ruth had her wineglass refilled and chimed it against Abi’s goblet of Perrier. “Now, I heard you were at the Mustards Grill the other night when Mary Rizzio…” She didn’t finish the sentence, as if it was too distasteful to say the word: died. “What dreadful timing.”

  “Did you know her?” Abi said.

  “Oh, everybody knew her.” Ruth explained that Mary had been an outspoken member of the city council. “A bit of a stick in the mud. Or thorn in the side. However you want to put it.” Her voice had taken on a slurred edge. “To be honest, I don’t think she�
��ll be missed by many. She was completely opposed to development.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” Abi said.

  Ruth’s voice was strangely loud when she said, “I’m sorry?”

  “Just that…don’t you want to protect a special place like this?”

  “From McDonald’s and Walmart, of course,” Ruth said. “But not from real progress. The hospital, for instance, is on the brink of…” Her smile failed a little as she trailed off.

  “What was that?” Abi said. “About the hospital?”

  Ruth’s smile returned, showing off teeth so white they appeared carved from porcelain. Before she could answer, her eyes wandered, focusing on something over Abi’s shoulder. “Shit. Is nothing sacred?”

  A woman had come through the gate from the street to the patio. Her long black hair was pulled back in a braid. Her jeans and shoes were grass- and mud-stained, and she wore a sweatshirt with the sleeves scissored off. It had been washed so many times that the YOSEMITE lettering across the breast had faded to a ghostly imprint, straining against her pregnant belly.

  She held small-petaled roses in her hand, individually wrapped in plastic, each one no bigger than a baby’s fist. She held them out and said, “Floras, floras, floras,” in a singsong voice. The night was cool, but she was sweating heavily. And the smile on her face appeared more like a grimace.

  As she moved through the patio, more and more conversations died off, until everyone was staring at her and “Floras, floras, floras,” was the only sound.

  When the woman stood before Abi and offered a rose, Abi could smell the hint of its perfume and could see the beads of sweat running down the woman’s face. She noticed a bright pink Band-Aid on her shoulder.

  Looking at the woman’s pregnant belly, Ruth sighed audibly.

  Abi knew what everyone was thinking—She doesn’t belong—but Abi didn’t belong either.