The Missing Comatose Woman Read online

  THE MISSING COMATOSE WOMAN

  Sarah Ettritch

  PUBLISHED BY: Norn Publishing

  The Missing Comatose Woman

  Copyright © 2013 Sarah Ettritch

  All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, except for brief quotations in articles or reviews, without written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Editing by: Marg Gilks

  Cover design: Boulevard Photografica/Patty G. Henderson

  *****

  DEDICATION

  For Jennifer

  *****

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My thanks to Jennifer Brinkman (my lovely partner and wonderful beta reader), Marg Gilks (my fabulous editor), and Patty Henderson (my talented cover designer).

  Table of Contents

  The Missing Comatose Woman

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  The End

  Chapter One

  Ellen Myers watched the numbers change as the elevator rumbled its way up to the sixth floor. God, she hated hospitals; they made her itch. Couldn’t the elevator go any faster? When the doors finally opened at her floor, she squeezed out of the elevator, scratched her arm, and tried not to touch anything. Everyone always said that if you didn’t want to get sick, stay away from hospitals. But how could she, with Mom lying in a coma?

  For the past month, Ellen had wolfed down her sandwich and yogurt, hopped into her car, and driven the ten minutes to Downtown General. She’d babble to Mom for fifteen minutes, race back to her car, and be back at her desk promptly at 1:00. Nobody could accuse her of slacking off because of “family troubles.” Bastards.

  She slowed as she approached Room 622. What would she say today? Could Mom hear her? Was she aware, only trapped inside an unresponsive body, or was Ellen talking to herself? How much longer would this go on? Every time she cornered the doctor for ten seconds, he bleated the same words: “No change. Still optimistic. Keep talking to her. Your visits are important.” Her vision blurred. No, she had to be strong for Mom, breeze into that room and tell Mom all about her wonderful weekend at the spa. She’d leave out that she’d sniffled into her drinks.

  Forcing a smile and squaring her shoulders, Ellen strode through the doorway chirping, “It’s a lovely day today, Mom. I have lots to tell—”

  She frowned, backed out of the room, and looked at the silver plate screwed next to the doorframe: 622. Heart pounding, she walked into the room again and blinked at the empty, neatly made bed.

  *****

  Casey Cook carried two glasses of lemonade into the living room and handed one to Gran. “Thank you,” Gran mumbled, taking her glass without looking away from the TV. Sipping her own drink, Casey sank into the armchair and scowled at the screen, wishing she could turn down the volume as the audience roared with laughter at some joke a charismatic afternoon talk show guest had cracked.

  Would she ever find a paying gig? She’d put up a website that promoted her services, but only bots and spammers had visited. Her friends were keeping their eyes and ears open for her, but half of them hadn’t hidden their dismay when she’d left her job at Walmart to study for her private investigator licence, and the other half were just better actors. Casey hadn’t doubted her choice, until now. She no longer daydreamed about landing eager clients and deftly handling whatever investigations came her way. Reality was a bitch.

  The phone sitting on the coffee table rang.

  “What?” Gran snapped.

  Casey snatched up her phone and set the glass down in its place. “It’s the phone.”

  “What?”

  “The phone!” Casey bellowed, holding it up for Gran to see.

  “Oh.”

  “Turn your damn hearing aids on,” Casey said, knowing Gran couldn’t hear her and would ignore her, if she could. If Casey didn’t love the old bird, she would have killed her by now. She went into her bedroom and shut the door. “Hello.”

  “Casey Cook?” a woman said.

  “Um, speaking.”

  “Oh, thank god! I was talking to a friend and she said maybe you could help me because you’ve helped a couple of people before and—”

  “Slow down, slow down.” Casey plunked onto the bed. Midnight uncurled and shot her a dirty look. “Sorry,” she mouthed to the cat.

  The woman on the other end sucked in a couple of deep breaths. “My mother is missing. A friend said you might be able to find her.”

  “I’ve helped people find their missing pets,” Casey said as she stroked Mid. “I’ve never found a missing person before.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she kicked herself. Telling prospective clients that she was inexperienced would never land her a case. Every private investigator had started out with a zero in the found persons column, right? “But that doesn’t mean—”

  “Look, I’m desperate. My mother’s been missing for over a month. You’ve got to help me!”

  Casey suppressed a whoop. It looked like her spanking new PI licence was about to see some action. “Why don’t we meet and talk about it, Ms…uh—”

  “Myers. Ellen Myers. I can swing by your office after work. What’s the address?”

  Shit. If she didn’t tell the truth, it would come back to bite her. “I usually meet clients at a local coffee shop.” Okay, half the truth. After meeting Myers, it would be the truth.

  “Oh. Sure. Diane said you were just starting out.”

  “Diane?”

  “Jenkins.”

  “Jenkins?” Casey echoed, not sure she’d heard Myers correctly.

  “Yes.”

  Considering that Diane had tried to persuade her not to “waste her time” studying for the licensing exam, she was the last friend Casey had expected would recommend her services. “How far away are you from Third and Jones?”

  “Not far at all. I can be in that area by quarter after five.”

  “I’ll wait for you outside the coffee shop on the northeast corner. I’ll be wearing…” A trench coat and fedora? No. “Jeans and a gray hoodie. Brown hair. Slim.”

  “I wish I could say I was slim,” Myers wailed. “I’ll be the anxious woman with desperation in her eyes. God, I hope you can help me. See you later.” The line went dead.

  Casey slipped the phone into her pocket and wondered if she’d dreamed the call. Self-doubt quickly killed her euphoria. Oh god, she’d have to review her notes about missing person investigations. Not only that, in her excitement, she’d forgotten to discuss her fee. What if Myers balked? What if Casey couldn’t find her mother? She stared at her reflection in the dresser mirror. Private investigator, my ass.

  Mid blinked at her. “Yeah, I know, I know. What the hell was I thinking, getting a PI licence? So I have a knack for finding missing cats, so what?” Instead of spending her time studying for her licence, maybe she should have thrown posters up around town advertising herself as some sort of pet locator, or contacted people who’d lost pets. Nah, that would have been preying on distraught owners, something she’d never do. She wanted people with missing pets to contact her.

  Come on, you can do this. Everyone
must have been nervous about their first case, right? Imagine telling her friends—especially Diane—that she’d given up before she’d started. Yeah, after spending all the time and money on getting my licence, I thought, meh, not my thing. I didn’t need to actually work on a case to figure it out. Sometimes you just know. Jesus, after listening to her babble for hours on end about her future as a hotshot PI, they’d never speak to her again. “Do you realize what this means?” she said to Mid. “More toys that you’ll play with once and never touch again!”

  Her nervousness couldn’t stifle her exuberance as she bounded down the hallway and into the living room. “I have a case, Gran. An honest to goodness case!”

  Gran squinted at her. “Why do you need it?”

  “What?”

  “The suitcase.”

  “No. A case. A missing person,” Casey said, enunciating every word.

  Gran chortled. “Someone’s taking a chance on you, eh?”

  “Yes, someone’s taking a chance.”

  “I hope they know they just hired the best damn private investigator in the country.”

  Casey plopped down next to Gran, squeezed her shoulders, and kissed her cheek. “And the investigator with the best damn grandmother.”

  *****

  Casey slipped the photo of Jacqueline Rose, Myers’ mother, between the pages of her pocket notebook and sipped her coffee. “So, you just arrived one day and your mother was gone?”

  “Yes.” Myers ripped open her third sugar packet and emptied its contents into her tea.

  “And she was in a coma.”

  Myers glanced at Casey’s notes.

  “I have it all down.” She’d merely wanted to confirm that she would, indeed, be looking for a person in a coma who’d apparently vanished. “What did you do when you realized she was gone?”

  “I went to the nursing station. I figured they’d taken her away for a test, even though they knew I turned up every day at the same time. As soon as I arrived at the station, they were all, ‘Oh, Ms. Myers, you must have forgotten. Your brother transferred your mother to a long-term care home.’”

  “I take it he didn’t,” Casey said.

  “He couldn’t. I don’t have a flipping brother!” Myers gulped down some tea, then grimaced. “How much sugar did I put in here?”

  “Three.”

  “Three? I swear to god, I don’t know where my head is these days.” She plopped the cup down. “When I said I didn’t have a brother, they looked at me like I’d grown horns. Then they buzzed around me, took me into an empty room and told me sit to down, that they’d look into it.” Myers snorted. “Silly me. I thought they were serious. What they were actually doing was hitting the panic button. The next thing I knew, the director had arrived, with a posse of attorneys and security in tow. They treated me like I was a threat to national security.”

  Casey scribbled down brother, imposter, then said, “What did they do when you told them you don’t have a brother?”

  “They got all hoity-toity. The man had a power of attorney. His name was Steve Rose, so he had the same surname as Mom. How were they supposed to know he wasn’t my mother’s son? I’ll tell them how. Where’d he been for the past month? I visited Mom every single day, except Sundays.” She waved her plastic spoon at Casey. “Even God had a day of rest.”

  Something tugged at Casey. “Wait a minute. Why did the nurses say you must have forgotten?”

  “They claimed that they called me when brother dearest showed up. I was away at a spa that weekend. The only time I didn’t have my phone with me was when I was in the sauna. Do you think I’d risk missing a call telling me that Mom had snapped out of it? There were no messages on my phone. None. Nada.” Her lips trembled. “How was I to know that the one weekend I’d be away, somebody claiming to be my brother would kidnap my mother?” She stared at Casey with bewildered eyes.

  “I thought you said you visited her every day except Sundays.”

  “You have an ear for detail.” Myers’ brow crinkled. “That’s a good trait for an investigator to have. Okay, I slacked off for one weekend, only because I won the spa stay.” She shrugged and drank more tea, even though it made her grimace again. “I can’t remember from what contest. Probably some form I filled in at a store.”

  Casey added the information to her notes.

  “According to the nurses on duty that Saturday, my brother,” Myers rolled her eyes, “wasn’t in any hurry. He presented the paperwork, called the long-term care home, told the nurses that an ambulance would arrive in about an hour to transfer her, then went in and sat with her until it arrived. Can you believe that?” Myers shook her head. “Because he sounded nice and wasn’t in a hurry to wheel her away, I guess they weren’t suspicious.”

  “I gather she’s not in the long-term care home.”

  “No. Once I got the name, I drove out there. They’d never heard of her, and they wouldn’t let me look around the place to see if I could find her. Said they couldn’t have me blundering into private rooms. It was posh,” Myers added. “Way out of my budget. Even if I’d wanted Mom in there, I couldn’t have afforded it.”

  “Did the police search the place for her?” Casey asked, assuming that Myers had contacted the authorities.

  Myers bobbed her head. “Gave them a recent photo. Couldn’t find her, on the grounds or in the files. Searched the admissions records of every damn long-term care facility in the country. Nothing. She was gone.” Myers snapped her fingers. “Just like that. Oh, they say they’re still working on the case, but I get the feeling they think it’s a family dispute, especially since the signature and handwriting on the power of attorney matched my mother’s.”

  “They did?”

  “Yes. That’s about the only thing those numbskull nurses did right. They made a copy.”

  “But the police must have confirmed you don’t have a brother.”

  “Sure they did, but the nurses must have misheard, you know, because he only said it once. It’s not indicated on the power of attorney itself.” Myers’ mouth pinched. “I guess I can’t blame them for believing him.”

  “I don’t suppose you have a copy of it?”

  Myers sat back, eyes wide in mock disbelief. “Are you kidding? They behaved as if I was the criminal, and god forbid they give me anything that might work against them in a court case. All I care about is finding my mother. Once we’ve found her, then I’ll think about suing.”

  Damn. Casey might not have gleaned anything useful from the document, but it was the only tangible item connected to the impostor.

  “You could try asking Detective Walker if she’ll make a copy for you. She’s the most sympathetic cop out of the entire bunch. When I said I was going to hire an investigator, she’s the only one who didn’t tell me not to bother—but maybe she was relieved that I’d be somebody else’s problem.” Myers plopped her purse onto her lap and lifted out her wallet. “She might be willing to offer other information, too. Or she might tell you to take a hike. Here. Keep it. I have another one.”

  Casey took the business card from Myers. Detective A. Walker. Missing Persons. Feeling a mixture of fear and excitement, she glanced at the phone number, then tucked the card into the back of her notebook. “If the police know,” her eyes went to her notes again, “that Steve Rose isn’t your brother and you don’t know him, why would they think it might be a family dispute?”

  Myers waved a dismissive hand. “He could be a boyfriend.” She chuckled at the question in Casey’s eyes. “Mom’s, not mine. I told you, they act like I’m the bad one. Maybe they think I hate him and so I claimed not to know who he is.”

  “How did your mother end up in a coma?”

  “Well, there’s another mystery for you.” Myers leaned over the table. “Mom was at a work party, celebrating some project or other.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She’s a scientist. Anyway, she calls me around seven, tells me she’s having a bad reaction to something in th
e buffet and the first aid person thinks she should go to emergency. Can I meet her there? Sure, I say. It didn’t sound serious. She was joking with me on the phone. But by the time I got there, she was in a coma. Doctors couldn’t explain it. Idiopathic. That’s all they kept saying. Idiopathic. Which is a big word for ‘We don’t know why.’”

  “There hadn’t been any change in her condition over the month she was in hospital?”

  “Nope. No improvement. No decline.”

  “Would it be possible for me to look around your mother’s home, to get a sense of who she was—is?” Shit.

  Fortunately Myers didn’t notice Casey’s slip. “Sure. The police didn’t find anything useful, but another pair of eyes couldn’t hurt. Do you want to go there now? You can follow me.”

  “Uh, I’m on a bike. The pedalling kind, not the vroom-vroom kind.”

  “Oh. How about I drive you and bring you back here when we’re done?”

  “That would be great. Thank you.”

  “Just let me finish my tea.” Myers took another sip and made a face. “God, that’s wretched. I don’t know why I’m torturing myself. Or maybe I do.”

  Casey quickly read over her notes. Right now, she didn’t have any more questions, which left the one topic that had nagged at her since Myers had called. She cleared her throat. “About my fee…”

  Myers nodded and pulled a chequebook and pen from her purse. “Diane said something about a five thousand dollar retainer.”

  Casey grabbed her coffee cup and gulped down what was left. Five thousand? Holy shit. When she’d been in business for a while and had a track record, maybe. She set the cup down and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Uh, Diane was joking. I charge fifty dollars an hour. I figure it’ll take me a few days to do my preliminary investigation. So why don’t you pay me for eighteen hours and then we’ll meet and decide where to go from there.”

  “Eighteen hours. So that’s…”

  “Nine hundred dollars,” Casey said, having already worked out the amount.

  “Sounds good to me. Better than five thousand.” Myers chuckled.

  Casey shoved her notebook into her back pocket and watched Myers write the cheque. Why hadn’t Diane mentioned her friend with the missing comatose mother when Casey had met her for dinner last week? You’d figure it would have come up in conversation at some point. “Do you know Diane well?”