Aunt Aggie would never have left Celia alone, but when Jill assured her that she’d canceled all of her appointments for the day and needed to spend the afternoon with Celia anyway getting all the information she could on the first trial, Aggie decided, with Celia’s blessings, to go to the hospital in Slidell.
She was glad she’d gotten a few hours’ sleep, at least. Now maybe she wouldn’t try beating up any more cops. She grimaced at the thought of how she’d slammed her purse into Sid Ford’s head. If she hadn’t been an old lady who’d been up all night, he probably would have thrown her in the slammer. Being old did have its perks, she supposed.
She pulled into the parking lot of the Slidell Memorial Hospital, carefully avoiding the “senior citizen” spaces marked near the wheelchair spaces close to the door. There was no reason she couldn’t walk like everybody else, she told herself. The day she surrendered to her age was the day they would bury her.
She checked with the information desk to see where Stan was and found out he was on the sixth floor. The elevator took her there, and she got off and saw the crowd of off-duty police officers, a few firemen, the preacher, and a few people she didn’t know, spilling out of the waiting room. No wonder Stan didn’t want to wake up, she thought. A crowd like that would keep anybody in a coma.
Bypassing them, she headed straight for his room. After all, she was his wife’s aunt, so if anyone was allowed in his room, she was. She reached his door and hesitated, wondering if she had the right room. There was an armed guard standing outside it, and she wondered who had hired him. With an air of authority, she walked right past him and pushed the door open.
He reached out and grabbed her arm, stopping her. “May I help you?”
“I want to see Stan,” she said, indignant. “I’m his tante.”
“You’ll have to wait,” he said. “I’ll check with his parents.”
His parents, she thought as he stepped inside the room. The ones who threw her Celia out. She had a bone to pick with them while she was here.
She waited for his parents to invite her in, but instead, the guard came back out. “Mrs. Shepherd said to tell you to wait in the waiting room with the others.”
“What you mean, ‘with the others’?” Aggie protested. “I ain’t one of them others. I’m flesh and blood, practically.” Realizing she was getting nowhere with the guard, she pushed past him, anyway. When he tried to grab her arm again, she felt for her purse and considered using it. Jerking away, she pushed into the room.
Bart and Hannah sat side by side on the vinyl sofa next to the bed, and she consoled herself with the fact that Hannah, who was at least twenty years her junior, looked worse than she. She stood up as Aggie entered, and Aggie started to tell her to sit down and rest before she keeled right over of natural causes.
“I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Shepherd,” the guard said behind her as he took Aggie’s arm again. “I didn’t think she would be so pushy. Looks can be deceiving.”
“It’s all right,” Hannah said, prompting him to let go of her in the nick of time.
The guard disappeared back out the door, and ignoring both Hannah and Bart, Aggie went to Stan’s bedside. He still looked as white as death, and had a breathing tube under his nose. An IV ran fluid into his veins, and a cardiac machine monitored his heart rhythm. Several other machines were attached to him, but Aunt Aggie couldn’t identify them. She touched his forehead, pushing the hair back from his eyebrows. He needed a haircut, bless his heart. She should have brought her scissors.
“Aggie, don’t touch him. Please.” Bart’s voice was just above a whisper.
“Please, Aggie,” Hannah whispered across her son. “We want you to wait in the waiting room.”
“What you’re whisperin’ for?” Aggie demanded loudly. “Ain’t the goal to wake him up? No wonder he still in a coma.”
“Aggie, please,” Hannah said again. “Don’t make us call the guard back in. You really need to leave.”
Aggie gaped at them, indignant. “I got as much right in here as y’all got. I love this boy arry bit as much as y’all do!”
“He doesn’t need visitors,” Bart whispered harshly.
“Is it ’cause of Celia?” Aunt Aggie demanded. “Cause what you done to that girl, sendin’ her home like you done…oughta be a law. Now you tryin’ to thow me out?”
“I’ll call the guard if I have to.”
Aggie wondered if this was the day she’d surrender to her age—and the burial part, too—as her heart began whamming into her chest. “You oughta be ashamed!” she threw back at them. “You know my Celia didn’t do this! She saved his life! If she wants him dead, she’d have waited to call the ambulance! Let him croak, then act like she tryin’ to save him.”
“She lied to us,” Hannah said through her teeth.
“How? When she told you a lie?”
“It’s what she didn’t tell us,” Bart returned. “She didn’t tell us that she’d killed her first husband!”
Aggie felt the weight of her purse and wondered if she could hit them with it from across the bed. She clutched her chest, as if that would slow her racing heart, and through her white caps said, “My Celia ain’t never killed a bug! She ain’t never lied to you! She didn’t tell you she was accused of Nathan’s death, ’cause she knowed folks like you wouldn’t wait for the firin’ squad. You’d mow her down before the words was even outa her mouth!”
“She betrayed us,” Hannah said, livid tears springing to her red eyes. “Stan may die. He’s our only son!”
“Read my lips,” Aggie said through her dental work. “She…didn’t…do it! ’Stead of bein’ mad at her, be mad at the po-leece who’s stopped lookin’ for the killer. He still’s out there, you know, the monster what really tried to kill Stan. It ain’t the likes o’ me that guard needs to keep out!”
“Until the police tell us differently, we want Celia to stay away,” Hannah said. “And we aren’t allowing any visitors at all.”
“Well, ain’t that con-ven-ient? She been good to y’all people, and she make your son happier than he ever been. And this what you do to her!”
“Bart, do something,” Hannah said.
He headed for the door and got the guard to come in. “Get her out,” he ordered.
Aggie swung her purse like a lasso, aiming right between the guard’s eyes. “You lay one hand on me, I’ll lay you out just like him,” she said, referring to Stan. “I know the way out.” Then, straightening her dress and picking a dot of lint off of her skirt, she made her way to the door.
Just before she left the room, she turned back. “You be sorry for this one day,” she said. “Destroyin’ somebody never did nothin’ but love your son. Someday she’ll be the mama of your grandchildren.”
Hannah didn’t answer. She only turned back to her son.