Dead On Arrival

Five

Payne Sterling eased closer to me, the knife blade mocking me with its sparkle.

“Oh, hey, Payne. I mean, Mr. S. Somehow I got lost and was looking for the forms Lilla gave me this morning.” I mumbled and rambled so that suddenly Payne looked confused. This after he’d heard me accuse him of insurance fraud-and he’d admitted it.

So, I took that opportunity to cut and run (forgive the pun again!). I kicked at his groin, stayed around only seconds to hear him groan, then grabbed the stack of files from the desk and threw them in his face, buying me only nanoseconds.

By the time I got to the door, his hand was on mine. I started to scream like a girl-hey, we’re talking life and death here-but he had his hand on my mouth faster than I could take a breath.

“Shut up or you’ll end up needing 911 called for you.” Wow. His voice had grown eerily threatening in a few hours.

Gone was the “Laugh-In” guy. Replaced by a threatening maniac who had a knife at my throat.

Payne knew his anatomy. I’d give him that as he pressed the blade into the area of my carotid artery.

Big-time bleeder when cut, that ol’ artery was. I was talking pumping out the entire ten pints of blood that the average human being has in their circulatory system in a very short time.

“Payne,” I mumbled. “Please. Let me go, and we can make a deal.”

He’d slowly eased his hold so I could talk. Or make that money could talk. When he let go and started to ask what I meant, I kneed him again, used a few self-defense moves Jagger had taught me, and before I knew it, I was running like hell down the corridor, through the empty reception area and out the door.

In my haste, I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t sound as if Payne was fast on my heels, and I wasn’t stupid enough to turn to look.

I pushed at the front door so hard, it swung out with a thud-and I banged smack-dab into Jagger and Lilla.

I screamed.

Jagger shook his head.

Lilla pulled back as if she was afraid of me, and I started to chatter on and on.

Jagger grabbed my shoulders. “Calm down, Pauline. What the hell are you talking about?” He’d grown serious and with the use of my name, yanked me out of my hysteria long enough to tell him what I found out and how Payne tried to kill me.

Jagger pushed me to the side so hard, that I stumbled into Lilla, knocking her down.

“Chéri!” she shouted.

“Sorry!” I yelled as I pulled her up, and we ran after Jagger-although my first instinct was to run in the other direction. I couldn’t let him face a knife-wielding Payne all by himself. I know Jagger would smirk at that, but still, I meant well.

We got to the office door and found Jagger standing there.

Standing there?

I figured Payne had hightailed it out the back door-until I got side by side with Jagger.

Lilla screamed and slithered in a faint, very sexy-like, down to the floor with one hand running along the wall.

I grabbed Jagger’s arm and my first words were, “Damn, there goes our suspect.”

The two of us stood staring down at Payne Sterling with the aforementioned knife sticking out of his chest. Heart level.

And we both knew calling 911 was out of the question-because ambulances didn’t carry dead bodies.

Ambulances didn’t carry dead bodies, I thought over and over to take my mind off the scene in front of me.

Lieutenant Shatley, Hope Valley homicide and close friend of Jagger’s-although I had no idea how they knew each other-gave orders to the police staff while I stood behind the yellow-taped area-trying to think of anything else but…a dead body.

Pansy had been notified, or make that heard the commotion, and hurried over. To this very minute, she was still wailing in grief.

I wondered if losing an identical twin hurt more than a regular sibling and then told myself that was crazy. However, I do think it was different, as they were way too close. And now that I thought about it, her wailing was eerie and strange and-I was ashamed to even think it-almost…fake.

I looked at her. She stood with one of the other secretaries holding her by the shoulders and glaring down at the body of her brother.

I realized I couldn’t do that if it were a sibling of mine. I couldn’t just stand there looking. Hmm. Maybe it was me, and I shouldn’t let my personal feelings get in the way.

Deciding to have a more Christian attitude, I felt a bit better, until I saw Pansy wiping her face.

No tears.

Had she cried herself out already? Or was it something else? Then again, she could have had some condition that dried up her tears. That was a reality for some people. But she acted as if she was crying.

And made me wonder if acting was the operative word here.

Once the lieutenant said to clear the scene, we all started to move about, and before I knew it, the undertaker was taking out Payne’s body.

And Pansy nowhere to be seen.

I knew, just knew, I’d be following the stretcher along, not ready to let go of a loved one so easily.

Lilla walked past me with a solemn look on her face. “Chéri.” She nodded.

For some reason I needed a bit of confirmation on my thoughts, and I touched Lilla’s arm. Before I let her startled look stop me, I asked, “If that was your brother, would you just let them-”

“Wheel him away like that?” she finished while shaking her head. “Never. I’d be clutching onto their shirttails to not take him.” She shrugged. “Guess we are all different.”

“That we are,” I said, making a mental note to observe dear Pansy much closer. Hopefully I wasn’t shifting suspicion onto her just because my number-one suspect was now deceased.

I hated when that happened.

Although a gloomy air now filled the TLC Land and Air halls, work resumed. No one joked around, but phones rang, clients came in and 911 calls never stopped.

Before I knew it, I heard, “Number Four five six, Code Eighty-three at 114 Buckingham Place.”

ER Dano rushed out of the lounge, grabbed me by the arm and said, “Get going!”

Not able to protest, I remembered why I was here-or make that what my cover was-and obediently followed him. Jagger was nowhere to be seen, and Dano didn’t seem to notice or care.

“Where’s Jagger?” I asked as Dano nearly shoved me into the front seat of #456.

He shrugged and said, “Breathing difficulty. Can’t wait.”

With that I fastened my seat belt, said a fast prayer to Saint T for the patient and myself (the driving, you know) and we were out onto East Main Street, siren blaring and Dano leaning back and driving as if in a kid’s bumper car.

I swallowed hard, refusing to let my lunch even near my mouth again.

After several deep breaths, we pulled into the driveway of a dilapidated house on Buckingham Place-not exactly the ritzy section of Hope Valley. Dano grabbed the bag of supplies, muttered something to me, and we ran up the stairs to the front door, which wasn’t locked.

For a fleeting second I thought, How convenient, until we ran down a long hallway into the kitchen.

Lying on the floor was a rather attractive woman dressed in tight jeans and a slinky black top-with a phone cord wrapped tightly around her neck.

Difficulty breathing?

Her coloring was pale, but her eyes were still open if not watery, and her lips were a bit cyanotic-that horrible grayish blue of someone in need of oxygen.

Dano immediately began unwrapping the phone cord while I dug into the bag for the portable oxygen and a mask. We worked for a few minutes until the woman looked a tiny bit better.

“How’d this happen, ma’am?” Dano asked.

She turned toward him and in a raspy voice said, “Er…I tripped. I tripped and got tangled in the cord.”

Dano and I looked at each other and I controlled the urge to shout out, “Are you kidding us?” Due to the seriousness of her condition, I only raised an eyebrow to Dano.

“Really?” he said, while taking her blood pressure and adjusting the oxygen mask on her face.

I assisted him with whatever he needed until I felt something. Something behind me.

Gradually I turned around to come face to knees with a pair of jeans.

I heard Dano mutter, “Shit.”

And I looked up into the barrel of a shotgun-aimed at my face.