Beverly Connor - One Grave Too Many

Frank left, and Diane settled into the comfort of the couch and dozed off. Hours later she was awakened by the ringing of the phone. She reached over and picked it up and managed a muffled hello.

“Diane? Is this Diane Fallon?” The voice sounded hysterical and came in gasps and sobs.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“It’s Star. Please come. Please. It’s Uncle Frank. They told me somebody shot him. I’m afraid he might be dead. Please come.”

Diane put down the phone and fell on the sofa, sick, shaking and panicky. She ran to the bathroom and threw up.

“Oh, God, no. Not again, no. Please, no. Please not again.”

When she thought she was finished vomiting, she rinsed her mouth and washed her face with cool water. She had told Star she would come as soon as she could. At the moment, she wasn’t sure she could even drive. One thing at a time. First, she packed an overnight bag, just in case. I’ve got to get control, she told herself as she tried to calm her shaking hands. Packing done, she raced down the stairs of her apartment and out to her car.

She hardly remembered the drive to the hospital, but there she was, pulling into the visitors’ parking. By the time she got inside, she was shaking almost too much to walk straight. She went up to Star’s room first and found her sobbing uncontrollably while a nurse was trying to give her a sedative.

“Can you take off these restraints?” asked Diane.

“I’ve asked the policeman outside and he said no. You’d think he’d have more compassion.”

Star cried and pulled at the restraints. Diane stroked her hair as the nurse gave her the shot.

“This will take effect pretty quickly,” she said.

“Will you find out for me?” said Star. “Go see him and tell him not to die.”

“I will. I’ll go right now. I know it’s hard, but try to stay calm. The shot the nurse gave you will help.”

Diane left the room, sweeping past the guard at Star’s door who was reading his Western. She resisted the urge to pull it out of his hands and toss it down the corridor.

The nurse at the front desk downstairs told her that Frank was in surgery and gave her directions to the waiting room. When she got there, Izzy Wallace and his partner were already there.

“How is he?” she asked.

“We don’t know. He’s in surgery. It didn’t look good.”

“What happened?”

“He’d just taken some money out of the ATM outside the hospital and was leaving, when this black guy came up, shot him and took his wallet.”

Diane looked at Izzy in amazement. “Frank and I are certainly having a run of bad luck, aren’t we?”

“We have witnesses to what happened.” Izzy sounded defensive. He didn’t like Diane, and she didn’t care.

“What did the witnesses say?”

Izzy hesitated a moment, as though thinking whether he should give her information.

“A black guy in a cap and dreadlocks came up to within about ten feet of Frank and pulled out a gun and shot him just as he was putting his money in his wallet. The perp grabbed the wallet off the ground and ran. He got lost in the dark. It happened quickly. Two people saw it-well, three, but one was a little girl, a little black girl.”

The way Izzy said a little black girl made Diane suspicious. “What did she say?”

“Well, naturally, she didn’t want it to be a black person. That’s understandable. She was just a kid.”

“So she said the perp wasn’t black?” Diane prodded. She was going to have to pull this out of him.

“She gave a similar description-black skin, dreadlocks, but she said he wasn’t really black.” He shook his head. “She was only about nine years old. What would she say? Look, I need to ask you-now, don’t get mad, but I have to ask. The guy who works for you at the museum. We met him when we were there. He fits the description. Do you know if he has something against Frank?”

“Who?” asked Diane. “Do you have a name?” She knew who, but was going to make him say it.

“He was in the lab, the one he said got broken into.”

The one he said got broken into. Damn you, Izzy. As much as she wanted to, Diane didn’t voice her thoughts. If I didn’t need information from you, I’d tell you where you can put that tiny brain of yours.

“Korey, the head conservator?” said Diane. “He hardly knows Frank, and Korey has impeccable credentials. He doesn’t rob ATMs.”

“I had to ask. He does fit the description.”

One good thing about talking to Izzy; the adrenaline rush his conversation gave her was helping with the shakes.

A doctor came out of the swinging doors toward Izzy. Diane held her breath.

“A bullet grazed his heart, and another pierced his lung. He’s fortunate he was at the hospital when it happened. Time is everything in cases like this. The surgery went well. We’ll know something more in the next twenty-four hours.”

“Doc, you haven’t told me anything,” said Izzy.

The edges of the doctor’s mouth twitched slightly upward. “I’ve told you what I know. I’m cautiously hopeful.”

Diane hung on to cautiously hopeful. That’s what she would tell Star.

“I need to see Star,” she said to Izzy when the doctor left. “She’s so hysterical they had to give her a sedative. While I’m gone, I’d like you to consider all the coincidences here. George Boone finds a human bone-and before you say anything, I can tell a human bone from a deer bone. We’ve since found three human bones at a site where George and his son visited a week before they brought the clavicle to Frank. Right after it’s known that George has this bone, the whole family is murdered. A week later, as I start investigating, I’m attacked outside my home. The next day Frank is shot. Do the math.”

Diane turned and left for the elevator to go to Star’s room. A nurse in green surgical scrubs writing something on a pad at the desk turned and laid a hand on Diane’s arm. “That was Dr. Sampson. He came to us from Grady in Atlanta. We’re very lucky he moved his family here. Your guy’s in good hands.”

Diane smiled and thanked her. She was a pretty woman in her mid-thirties with a smart twinkle in her eyes and she was good with people. Diane felt instantly better. Grady Hospital has one of the finest trauma units in the country-thanks in part to the frequent gunshot victims they get through their doors.

She found Star groggy, fighting the sedative. Stubborn little girl. Diane stroked her hair.

“Star.” Her eyes popped open. “Frank came through surgery fine. The doctor believes that he will be all right.” She had put a more positive spin on the doctor’s words.

“Are you sure?” she managed to say.

“That’s what the doctor said. One of the nurses told me that he is an expert in trauma cases. That means Frank has the best of care.”

Star sighed and seemed to breathe easier. She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Will you stay a while?”

“Sure.”

Diane pulled up a chair beside Star’s bed and almost drifted off to sleep in it. She didn’t leave until the rising and falling of the sheet covering Star was smooth and regular.

She rose quietly and went back down to Frank’s floor. Izzy was still there, but his partner was gone. Jake Houser was there talking with Izzy and two men, dressed in suits, that Diane didn’t recognize.

“Dr. Fallon. This is just terrible,” said Jake. “They put me on the case, and I want you to know we’ll get the scumbag who did this. It means I won’t be showing up at the museum for a while. . ”

Diane nodded. She didn’t feel like going into lecture mode again. Frank had a lot of confidence in Jake, so maybe it was good he was on the case. Jake introduced her to the two men standing with them-Frank’s boss and his partner from Atlanta. Both were somber and looked like they were at a funeral. She wanted to kick them. She couldn’t seem to shake her irritable mood.