Page 147 of Summers at the Saint
“Let me see my baby girl,” Shannon said with a hiss. “Right now.”
The clerk shrugged, pushed a button, and a pair of automatic doors opened.
Shannon rushed through them and Traci followed close behind.
“Hey! You can’t go back there—”
The doors closed, cutting off the clerk’s objection. A nurses’ station was directly in front of them, but was currently unmanned. Beyond that were four curtained-off examining rooms.
Shannon moved quickly ahead of her, pulling aside curtains until she reached the last cubicle. She peeked inside. “Here she is.”
Traci heard her talking in low tones to a man, presumably Dr. Ochoa.
In the cubicle right next door she heard another man’s voice, and then a young woman’s voice, hoarse, but unmistakably her chef, Felice.
After a moment of hesitation, she stuck her head inside the curtain. “Felice?”
Felice was lying on a hospital bed. Her face was dotted with some kind of ointment and her hands, lying atop a sheet stretched up to her chin, were heavily bandaged. Sitting on a rolling stool beside the bed was a uniformed sheriff’s deputy.
He had a graying crew cut and didn’t bother to hide his annoyance at the interruption.
“Who are you? And how did you get back here?”
“It’s okay,” Felice told him. “This is Mrs. Eddings. My boss. At the Saint. She owns the dorm those guys tried to burn down.”
The deputy paged back in his notebook. “That’d be KJ Parkhurst and Garrett Wycoff? They’re your employees?”
“Formerly,” Traci said. “As of right now.” She gazed down at Felice, her fierce chef who looked so unexpectedly diminished and vulnerable in that hospital bed.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Better. I think the drugs are wearing off.” She held up her hands, which were swathed in gauze bandages. “But I don’t think I’ll be back in the kitchen for a few days.”
“Never mind that. All I want is for you and Livvy to get better.”
Traci glanced at the deputy. His name badge said he was Detective G. W. Shapley. “And I want you to arrest the men who did this to them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Shapley said. “We actually have Parkhurst in custody. He didn’t even make it off the island. We found him hiding out in the carriage house at his granddad’s house.”
“What about Garrett?” Felice rasped. “This was his idea. Him and Charlie Burroughs.”
“Who’s he?” the deputy asked, his pen poised above a small spiral-bound notebook.
“He’s the general manager at the Saint,” Traci said. She looked down at Felice. “But what do you know about Charlie’s involvement?”
Shapley glared at her. “Ma’am? I’m asking the questions here.”
He pointed at Felice. “What do you know about Burroughs’s involvement in this matter?”
Felice shot her boss a sheepish look. “Livvy and me, we were friends with Parrish. So we decided we’d figure out who killed her, and why.”
“And why would a couple of girls decide to play detective?” Shapley asked. “Talk about stupid. And dangerous. The two of you nearly got yourselves killed.”
“Hey!” Felice croaked. “I don’t appreciate being called stupid, or a girl.”
“How?” Traci asked, ignoring the deputy. “What made you think Charlie was involved with what happened to Parrish?”
“Livvy found Parrish’s notebook,” Felice said. “She kept notes of all the complaints people had. She called it her bitch book.” She shotthe deputy a withering look. “We found it, hidden in her room, in her pillowcase, after the sheriff’s office searched it.”
