“I can’t believe Carter is sending us to the hospital,” Gertie said. “Maybe spending the night with you is influencing him.”
Ida Belle snorted. “Not even close. Not to disparage any of Fortune’s, um…skills, but this one is so obvious to me.”
“Really?” I asked. “Then fess up, because I’ll admit to being a little floored myself.”
Ida Belle grinned. “Think about it—what are we going to do when we get to the hospital?”
“Try to get information out of Tiffany before Detective Casey shows up,” I said. “Ooooohhhhhh…”
“Exactly,” Ida Belle said. “He knows good and well we won’t be able to resist getting the story and he’s using us to keep himself in the loop since it’s no longer his case.”
“Sneaky,” I said. “I can appreciate that.”
“Seems a bit one-sided,” Gertie said. “Him expecting us to feed him information when he never helps us out.”
“That is where that honor and rules thing comes in again,” Ida Belle said. “Carter can’t talk to us or he’s breaking the rules, but we can talk all we want because we don’t have those limitations.”
“True,” I said, “but the problem comes in where Carter has to give Casey anything he finds out. So how does he explain that? Carter and Casey have both warned us about getting in the middle of things.”
“Well, then, I guess if we don’t tell Carter anything, then we can’t get into trouble, can we?” Gertie said.
Ida Belle laughed. “I can’t wait to see the look on his face when Fortune lays that one on him. He thinks he’s being sly but he hasn’t thought it all the way through.”
“That’s what happens when you have to jump up in the middle of the night and work,” Gertie said. “It’s hard to think when your rollers are pulling on your scalp.”
“I don’t think Carter has that particular problem,” Ida Belle said. “But lack of sleep is a good enough deterrent against long-term thinking ability. It’s been a long week for him, and then add the disappointment of having his case yanked from beneath him and I imagine he’s got a good round of mad piled on the disappointment, especially after that whole thing with Emmaline and St. Ives.”
“I definitely think he’s having flashbacks to that,” I said.
The last big crime that we’d gotten involved in solving had Carter’s mother, Emmaline, as one of the victims. That had meant Carter couldn’t work the case and it had been handled by the state police. Or mishandled, as the case was. Ida Belle, Gertie, and I had solved it and caught the bad guys. And now it looked as if we might have to go that route again. This attack on Tiffany worried me. Gil was murdered for a reason, but whatever that reason, it obviously wasn’t resolved with his death. We needed to figure out what was going on before more victims stacked up, even if they were just victims of a police investigation, as Liam could potentially be, assuming he wasn’t involved.
Ida Belle parked and we headed inside. Thankfully, the niece of one of the Sinful Ladies was working the front desk in the ER. Ida Belle explained why we were there and she nodded.
“She’s in a room now,” she said. “They’re waiting for MRI to clear so they can take her for testing.”
“Is she okay?” Gertie asked.
The nurse glanced around and leaned forward. “She wasn’t sexually assaulted. Thank God.”
I felt some of the tension leave my shoulders. I had hoped it wasn’t that kind of attack, but we hadn’t really known, so it was a relief to hear it now.
“She seems a little out of it,” the nurse said as she waved us down the hallway. “And very edgy. But then, I can’t blame her. I got my own apartment a couple months ago and this is the kind of thing that had me installing an alarm and dead bolts.”
I nodded. “Women living alone can’t be too careful.”
She knocked on a door and pushed it open. “Mrs. Forrest? Deputy LeBlanc sent some people to see to you while you’re here.”
Tiffany looked up as we entered the room, looking so relieved when she saw us that I briefly wondered who she’d thought was going to walk in the door.
“Thank you for coming,” she said. “I’m a bit of a mess. It’s so nerve-racking sitting here alone waiting, but I was afraid for a moment that someone from the church might have offered to come. The Catholic church, I mean.”
“Carter would never send Celia to check on anyone,” Gertie said. “Unless maybe he really didn’t like them.”
Tiffany smiled, then grimaced and put her hand on her forehead.
“How bad does it hurt?” I asked.
“Not bad if I don’t move,” she said. “Or smile. I sneezed earlier and asked for morphine.”
I went over to get a better look at the injury. There was a fairly large gash on the side of her head, right around her temple. Blood was caked in her hair, but I could tell it had stopped bleeding some time before.
“Ouch,” I said. “Couldn’t be a worse location. Every movement of your face is going to aggravate it, and don’t be surprised if you have a black eye before too long. Do you remember what happened? It looks like this is hours old.”
“I remember,” she said. “For what it’s worth, anyway. I went to bed around eleven. I think I dozed off about thirty minutes later. I sleep with the TV on and the show I had on was a repeat and close to the end, so that’s how I know. Anyway, a noise woke me and when I sat up, something cold and hard hit me right in the side of the face.”
She shook her head, then grimaced again. “You know that expression about seeing stars? Well, I get it now. It was like my head exploded into balls of pain and light and then I was gone. When I came to, I was still in bed and there was blood everywhere. I grabbed my cell phone and called 911 while I dug the shotgun out of the closet.”
“So you were out for over two hours,” I said. “Did you get a look at the person who struck you?”
“Not really,” she said. “My eyes weren’t focused yet and even though there was light from the television, he seemed really dark. At least, that’s the impression that I have, but who knows if it’s right.”
“He might have been wearing all black,” Gertie said.
“That would make sense,” Tiffany said.
“No impression as to size, height?” I asked.
“None at all,” she said. “It all happened so quickly.”
I nodded. “Was anything taken or did you even have a chance to look?”
“The cash we kept in a kitchen drawer was still there and my wedding ring was on the dresser along with a couple other good pieces. My purse was on the kitchen counter and all the cash and credit cards were intact. Carter said the stereo equipment and my laptop were in the living room…I don’t get it.”
“Me either,” I said.
A tech popped in the room. “I’m going to take Mrs. Forrest for an MRI. She’ll be back in about an hour. You can wait in the lobby if you’d like.”
“Will you please stay?” Tiffany asked, sounding more like a little girl than a young woman.