YEAH, DEATH is always messy, especially when I’m smack-dab in the middle of it. Or in this case, smack dab beside it.
After the “Ha-ha, very funny”, “He’s just sleeping,” and “Oh, that’s just our Albert,” were done, people actually started looking over. Questioning. Pulling their heads out of their holes (the Cuddle-Uppie holes), getting their socks back on in some cases, and scrambling to their feet.
As Albert lay there unmoving, panic started to set in among the cuddlers.
Eva gasped and started chewing her hair to an omigod omigod omigod beat.
In no time flat, Brandy had her arms around Eva, soothing her.
Zoey, hand over her mouth, started backing away from the scene.
Babe, who’d emerged at the commotion, started gathering the abandoned blankets and ran back to the office with them as if keeping things tidy was important at a time like this! (Yep, panic sure did strange things to people sometimes.)
And Gaetan? Well, he started accusing me.
“What happened?” he yelled.
“How should I know?”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing!” I protested. “I mean, I hardly said a word to him. Well, just that business about twisting off pricks and—”
“Oh, God, no!” someone muttered. (Someone of the male persuasion—maybe they knew me from Florida.)
“On roses,” I clarified. “We were talking about the prickly thorns on rose stems.”
Judging by some of the expressions around me, not everyone was convinced. Well, that was their problem. I was in no way responsible for Goatman’s death. But as usual, I was in the thick of things.
Or rather, I would be in the thick of things if the crowd hadn’t started thinning so rapidly. People were leaving. Grabbing coats, sliding on shoes and hustling out the door. What the hell? Okay, I know we don’t talk about cuddle club, but really, people!
At least Detective Head was here to take charge. Off duty, or not, undercover or out from under the covers, he was still law enforcement. Any minute now, he was going to step up to the plate.
Or not.
Ruth-Ann (who, it turns out, was once an RN/PhD ethicist with the faculty of nursing at Marport University) was checking Albert Valentine for vitals.
“Nothing,” she announced, her voice clipped. “No pulse, no respiration.”
Then she leaned over Albert and started administering CPR.
I glanced up to see a knot of people rushing the door, jamming it in their haste to get away. The bulge of bodies in the door frame would have been amusing if the circumstances weren’t so dire. I was surprised to see Elizabeth Bee quickening her pace to get to the door. I really didn’t think she’d give a rat’s ass about being seen at the cuddle club. But then I realized what her hurry was. Hugh Drammen was standing precariously close to Eva and Brandy near the door. Well, precariously close for Elizabeth’s liking, I imagined.
Then, with a move that would have fit perfectly into any old Marx Brothers’ comedy, the log jam broke and everyone fell out through the door frame at once. Righting themselves, they darted off for the exits.
A movement from Ruth-Ann drew my eyes back to the resuscitation attempt. I watched her tilt Albert’s head back, lift his chin, seal his nose and deliver a couple of breaths. It was eerie watching Albert’s chest rise and fall. Then she went back to the chest compressions. There was a rhythm to it, I saw. Thirty compressions, two breaths, back to compressions again. After a few cycles of this, she paused and checked again for breathing.
Dylan, who’d stepped back momentarily to call 9-1-1, came to stand at my side, cell phone still pressed to his ear. “Ambulance is on the way,” he announced. Then he knelt to address Ruth. “I’ve got dispatch on the line, Ruth. If I take over CPR, can you give them a status report?”
“That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.” Ruth blew a strand of hair out of her face, sat back on her heels and took the phone Dylan proffered. I listened to her calmly describe Albert’s status and the rescue efforts she’d been employing, but my eyes were on Dylan. Huh. I didn’t even know he knew CPR. Though I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d taken over where Ruth-Ann had left off, and as I watched, it seemed to me his compressions were more aggressive, deeper than the older woman’s. Then again, he was younger, bigger and stronger. And he hadn’t been doing it for five minutes. Poor Ruth-Ann looked done in.
Those of us remaining (the very few of us) looked on, knowing the efforts were to no avail. I could tell by the grim look on all their faces.
Especially Albert’s.
Come on, EMTs.
As I watched Dylan pause and deliver a couple of breaths, it occurred to me that the cops would be arriving soon, too. Maybe they’d even be first on the scene ahead of the ambulance. The thought had me looking for Dickhead. I didn’t have to look far. He’d moved right up beside me. In fact, he took my elbow and drew me back.
“The smoothie—it’s gone,” he murmured in my ear.
“What?”
His grip tightened on my elbow. “Could you keep it down?”
“Fine,” I hissed. “What happened to the evidence?”
“Babe must have dumped it out when she was doing her manic Merry Maids routine.”
I groaned. I could hear it now. The churning sound of the dishwasher blended in with the sound of the agitating washer from the other room.
“Shit. Nothing to analyze.”
“Not exactly. Unless Albert perks up a whole helluva lot, the medical examiner will have the contents of his stomach to work with,” Dickhead pointed out.
“Yeah, but they won’t necessarily know if it got into his stomach here.”
“I know.” He sighed, looking over at Albert.
I followed his gaze. Dylan was still doing CPR. Ruth-Ann still held the phone. Head’s next words ripped my attention back to him.
“Okay, Dixiecakes, I’m outta here.”
“What?” This time I managed to keep my voice down. “Are you kidding me? You’re leaving? Seriously?”
“I wasn’t joking,” he said, looking flushed and uncomfortable. “No one talks about cuddle club.”
Oh for pity’s sake! How stupidly far would they carry this cloak... or rather Cuddle-Uppie... of secrecy? Okay, sure, I could picture the reaction from Dickhead’s fellow cops if they found him here. He’d be drummed out of the blue brotherhood. But I really thought professionalism would override that macho crap. For God’s sake, he’d dragged me into this with his suspicions, and he was bailing on me now, when there was a body?
“C’mon, Dix, you can handle this.”
“Well, duh. Of course I can handle it, but—”
My words trailed off as I realized I was talking to myself. Dickhead was already blasting toward the exit. He paused in the doorway and shot me a meaningful look, as if to say, “You’re on this, Dix Dodd.”
Fine. I was on it. I gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up. Well, okay, strictly speaking, it was the middle finger I gave him, but it was enthusiastic.
Dickhead’s eyes narrowed, but he held my gaze a moment longer, his message clear: he found Albert Valentine’s sudden demise as suspicious as I did.
Damn it!
As soon as Dickhead disappeared, the first faint sound of a siren reached my ears. Also, the sounds of Gaetan moaning and wringing his hands. Maybe he’d only just started up with this whining, or maybe I’d just managed to ignore it until now.
“Oh, God!” He threw his chubby little hands in the air in a why-me kind of way.
“I... I can’t believe it,” a quavering female voice said.
I turned to see Babe standing close to the body, practically leaning over Dylan and Ruth-Ann. After her frantic, compulsive tidying (frankly, I’d seen more bizarre and irrational responses in this kind of situation), she’d re-emerged from the back room, presumably ready now to confront what had happened. Except as soon as she got a look at Albert, she started to cry.
“Our poor Albert!” she sniffed.
Ruth-Ann, on her feet now, put her free arm around the woeful Babe, as she held Dylan’s cell phone to her ear. Both of them watched Dylan’s grimly determined efforts.
“Oh, God,” Gaetan said again. He’d been leaning against the counter for support, but now he slid down to sit on the floor.
This was my chance. I walked over to Gaetan, slowly, wobbly like I was as upset as the other ladies, and slid down beside him. I slid a little too quickly and landed with an involuntary, “Umph!” A fleece-covered butt sliding across worn carpet is one thing; a fleece-covered butt sliding down a polished wood counter was quite another.
Gaetan turned his head and gave me a distracted look, then went back to staring intently at Albert Valentine, as if willing him to draw a breath.
That wasn’t happening.
“Poor fellow,” I said. The sweet, sympathetic approach—that would work best here, I reckoned. “Oh, poor, dear... our Albert. He seemed fine one minute, and the next—”
“I hope this doesn’t hurt business. Oh, God, a death. On the premises! That’s just... so unfair!”
Yeah, Gaetan Gough was all heart. The little prick.
Hold your temper, Dix, counseled that little voice in my head. Just for once in your life, keep your mouth shut.
Then a bigger voice in my head slapped the little voice down.
“I’m guessing Albert’s death is more of an inconvenience to Albert than it is to you.”
Gaetan blinked, as though only now really becoming aware of my presence. “Of course. Poor Albert.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “Yes, yes, poor fellow. Very unfortunate.”
As fake sincerity went, it wasn’t bad. I’d caught Gaetan off guard momentarily, but he was clearly back on his game.
The door opened, and two hulking ambulance attendants strode in with a gurney, led by one of the cuddlers, a middle-aged lady whose name I didn’t remember. Well, at least one of the club members had conscience enough to hang around to greet the ambulance crew and direct them to the scene. Bringing up the rear were two police officers who’d also responded to the call.
Dylan and Ruth-Ann gave way to the EMTs. Ruth-Ann hung up with the 9-1-1 operator and handed Dylan his phone back. The older woman looked exhausted, but she still had enough energy left to comfort Babe, who was still sniffling. Ruth-Ann wrapped her arms around Babe in a very there there way, pulling her gently backward to give the emergency responders room to work.
Once Albert had been bundled onto a gurney between chest compressions, the paramedics slapped leads from a portable external defibrillator onto his extremely hairy bare chest and zapped him, to no effect, or at least none that I could see. One of the paramedics—the older of the two—rose and asked what had happened. Ruth-Ann handed Babe off to Dylan (a process that resembled peeling off a limpet) and stepped forward to answer the paramedic’s questions. Once he realized she was a clinician, the two of them lapsed into medicalese. After a second jolt from the defibrillator failed to alleviate the grim expression on the EMTs’ faces, they piled the defibrillator onto the gurney and evacuated without further delay.
The police had questions, too. Mostly for Gaetan.
Yes, Albert had seemed fine when he’d walked in. No, he’d shown no signs of distress. Never had he complained of chest pains or anything like that! Cuddle club? Well, yes, there’d been a few others here, but they’d all been so upset about poor Albert...
“It was his heart.” That pronouncement came from Ruth-Ann, who was standing there with her arms wrapped around herself. The paramedics had gleaned all they could from her and were whisking Albert out the door.
“Are you familiar with his medical history, ma’am?” the female officer asked. She was definitely the senior of the two on this call. I recognized her, actually. Officer L. Pivans—Leola to her friends (of which I wasn’t). And though Dickhead still shouldn’t have rabbited, I was blaming him less and less for doing so. Pivans would have ridden him hard, and not in the good way.
“Not really,” Ruth-Ann said dryly, “but I know sudden cardiac arrest when I see it.”
“Did you know him outside of this... um... club?” Pivans asked.
“Only casually. The last time I saw him outside of this room was on campus last month. One of my former colleagues was retiring, and they had a big do for him at the Stark Center.”
“Ah, Albert did the flowers,” I guessed.
“Flowers?” Ruth-Ann looked at me like she wanted to ask if I was on crack. “Hardly. He was tending bar.”
I blinked. “But I thought he was a flower salesman?”
She shook her head. “No, he was definitely a bartender.”
Ah, of course. It looked like Dickhead wasn’t the only one lying about who he was at cuddle club.
“Albert was always so friendly here,” Ruth-Ann said. “Such a gentle soul.”
Gaetan snorted behind me, in that you’ve-got-to-be-kidding way. When all eyes turned toward him, he schooled his expression into sympathetic lines again. “Yes, that was Albert. Gentle.”
Constable Pivans cleared her throat. “So, did he have any heart issues that you’re aware of?”
Ruth-Ann, who’d been giving Gaetan a frosty look, turned back to Pivans. “Nothing specific, though I think he was under some stress. That’s why he was coming to cuddle club—to help him combat stress.”
Gaetan made a choking noise this time, but turned it into a cough. Interesting.
“Also, he was very short,” Ruth-Ann added, then turned an icy glare on Gaetan. “It’s been observed that short men are statistically more likely to develop heart disease.”
Gaetan’s face flushed, and he drew himself up as tall as he could make himself without actually going on tiptoe.
Suddenly, I felt Constable Pivans’s eyes on me. I looked up to see that she’d been studying me while I’d been absorbed studying the interplay between Ruth-Ann and Gaetan. Whoops.
“This has just been so upsetting!” I turned to Dylan, clutching at his arm. “We’d better go.”
“Of course.” Dylan peeled a puffy-eyed Babe away from his chest, revealing big dark splotches on his pajama top. He handed a tear-soaked and snotty Babe gently off to Pivans’s alarmed partner.
While the young male cop sputtered and stuttered, Pivans turned to me. “I’ll walk you out.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary. You’re far too busy—”
“Oh, I insist. And you alone, Ms. Do—”
“Davidson!” I shouted.
Pivans blinked, then nodded imperceptibly.
Dammit. Now she knew for certain that I was undercover.
Dylan cast me a questioning look, and I shot back an it’s-okay-I-can-handle-this look.
He inclined his head slightly. “I’ll get our coats and meet you out there.”
I headed outside with Pivans.
“How do you know Albert Valentine?” she asked.
“Well, Leola... may I call you, Leola?” I asked with a smile.
“No.”
Fair enough. “I met him here at the club.”
“Nice guy?” she asked.
“I suppose. Liked flowers.”
“Known him long?” She looked at me sidelong. “I mean, you seemed kind of upset just now.”
“I’m sensitive,” I said.
She laughed with real amusement. I guess my reputation really did precede me.
Pivans asked me a few more questions. What did I know of Gaetan Gough? How many people had been there earlier? Where did I learn of this club?
Fair questions. Easy enough to answer or evade. But then she asked me one more question.
“Who hired you to stake out the cuddle club, Dix Dodd?”
My heart gave a little jolt, which I’m sure was just what Constable Pivans was trying to accomplish. “That’s confidential information.”
Pivans smiled, then turned and walked back into the building.
Dammit. She’d be on this now like white on rice. (Yeah, I stole that metaphor too).