Page 83 of Summers at the Saint
“So I’m supposed to thank you? For dragging my little girl’s name through the mud?”
Traci felt her head beginning to throb. Maybe it was because she’d skipped lunch, or maybe this was the same fight-or-flight reaction she had every time she had an unpleasant encounter with her brother-in-law. And lately, they were all unpleasant.
“You’re not supposed to threaten to do bodily harm to me,” she shot back. “Especially when I’m doing my best to save this company. And to find out who killed Parrish.”
“Shiiiit,” he drawled. “All that reward money is gonna do is draw out every crackpot and nutjob who’s looking for an easy payday.”
“Or, just maybe, it’ll motivate someone to tell us something that will help the cops solve this,” she said.
“And maybe a frog will sprout wings and fly. Do me a favor, will you, Traci? Keep your mouth shut about my kid.”
“I can’t do that. I can’t pretend her loss isn’t devastating. And by the way, have you told your dad what’s happened?”
“No. And I don’t plan to. He’s a sick old man. He’s dying. I don’t want him spending his last days on earth thinking about the horrible way his only grandchild died.”
No,she thought.You want him spending his last days rewriting his will to give yourself a jackpot after he’s gone.
“He’s not senile,” she pointed out. “He’s gonna want to know why Parrish hasn’t visited him. Unlike you, she went to see him every week.”
“It’s not your business to tell him. Stay out of it, Traci, or I swear to God, I’ll get a restraining order to keep you away from him. Hell, I may do it anyway. Because I can.”
Traci massaged her aching forehead with her fingertips. “You really are a miserable excuse for a human being, Ric. I still don’t understand how Parrish turned out as decent and kind as she did—with you as her father.”
“Maybe you should ask her so-called mother,” he said. “Yeah, I saw you and Heather leaving the service together yesterday, which you were deliberately not invited to, by the way.”
“I figured it was an oversight,” she said. She glanced at the clock. It was past five and she decided she’d had enough torment for one day.
“Bye, Ric. Lovely speaking to you as always, but I’ve got a hotel to save now.”
She allowed herself the distinct pleasure of disconnecting while he was still sputtering.
CHAPTER 42
Shannon was in the break room at the hospital, eating a dish of tapioca she’d rescued from a patient’s untouched lunch tray, and half-heartedly watchingDays of Our Liveson the wall-mounted television, along with assorted other nurses and aides who madeDOOL,as they referred to it, their daily guilty pleasure.
Mostly, they watched it because they’d always watched it, or because their moms or grandmoms had always watched it, so the room was buzzing with the usual low-key gossip and whining and bitching.
But then there was a news break, and Shannon looked up to see what appeared to be a press conference, with Traci Eddings standing just outside the Saint Cecelia gatehouse, speaking earnestly into a microphone about the investigation into her niece’s death.
She dropped a glob of tapioca down the front of her scrubs, and the dish went clattering onto the tabletop.
Shannon squinted up at the television, focusing on the figure of a young woman standing off to the side of the platform, gazing up at Traci and the local sheriff, who was saying something about a drug overdose, and she felt her pulse quicken.
“Shut up, y’all,” she hollered, and the room quieted suddenly, as all eyes turned to the television. She grabbed the remote from a table near the television and turned up the volume.
Now the sheriff was saying something about no sign of sexual assault, and Shannon’s heart rate flattened a little. But it was thesight of that girl, her daughter, Olivia, standing there that made the blood hum in her ears.
Then the sheriff was talking about a reward of $50,000 for tips leading to the apprehension of Parrish Eddings’s killer. The news break ended and now there was a commercial for weatherproof siding.
Shannon flipped around to the other channels, but couldn’t find any other news break mentioning what had happened at the Saint.
Briana, her best friend, who also happened to be her shift supervisor that day, was sitting at the table next to hers, working on a Sudoku puzzle.
“Bree, can you get someone to cover the rest of my shift?”
“But you get off in a couple hours,” Bree said, not bothering to look up.
“It’s about Livvy. And it’s life or death.”
