Death at the Door, page 15
“Cordelia? Is that you?” I asked, and then immediately felt foolish. Who else would be in a locked bathroom with me, rolling pill bottles across the floor?
I bent over and grabbed the generic pharmacy bottle with its bright white cap and diamond-shape blue pills inside. The label seemed standard: a pharmacy, a barcode, a physician. I didn’t recognize the doctor or the pharmacy, but I blushed when I read the prescription: “Viagra, 50 milligrams.”
I knew I should be adult about such things, but I cringed as I checked for the name of the patient. There were a few other offices on this floor. We shared the hallway bathroom, and they each had their own key. Anyone could have dropped anything at any time. It could have belonged to anyone.
“Please don’t let it be someone I know,” I said, steeling myself.
I read the label. The bottle of Viagra belonged to Marty Spencer.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CORDELIA
“I found a clue!” Ruby exclaimed, holding up the pill bottle like it was a trophy.
“You found a bottle of Viagra prescribed to Marty,” I corrected her. “Not exactly a smoking gun. We already knew he was dealing. You’re missing the important part. And seriously? You found a clue? Give me a little credit. And if it was a clue? Good job getting your fingerprints all over it.”
It bothered me that the bottle had gone unnoticed for so long. The police hadn’t even pretended to look for evidence or they would have seen it. The fact that they missed something so obvious was proof that we were on our own. And the cleaning crew was doing a bang-up job, too. Tucked in behind the toilet bowl, it wasn’t exactly in plain sight, but I hadn’t missed it. How had they?
As frustrated as I was with the police and our cleaners, I did think it was cute how Ruby had blushed when she read the prescription name. “There’s nothing wrong with Viagra. It treats a legit medical condition. You wouldn’t get embarrassed if you found aspirin or eyedrops, would you? And stop and think about it a minute before you claim that you found anything.”
Normally I avoided bathrooms as much as possible, for the creep factor alone, but I was glad that I’d decided to tag along. Without me, Ruby never would have noticed the prescription bottle. The bathroom in our apartment was strictly off-limits—my rule, not hers. I’d spent an entire week trapped in that bathroom after my death, before I figured out how to get out. I hadn’t realized I was a ghost at the time, so I hadn’t figured out that I could have walked through the door anytime I liked. Instead, I wasted days focusing on prying the very physical door open with my completely immaterial hands.
The bathroom at work, on the other hand, had no such unpleasant memories. In fact, there was that one time that Adam and I …
“No,” I told myself. “No more of that.” I’d wasted more than enough time pining over Adam, and frankly, I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. I didn’t know how much more I wanted to take. Seeing him make out with his wife in the doorway of their condo was more than I had bargained for. It was one thing to be alive and corporeal and know that while the man of my dreams would never actually be mine, at least I could touch him. Losing that, too? Pure, unadulterated torture.
Unadulterated. Ha. Good one, Cordy.
I could feel the edges of a memory of our time together tugging at me, threatening to pull me under. I shook it off. We had more important things to do. I could recharge and revisit my biggest mistakes later.
“The pill bottle is more important than the pills,” I said. I nudged it just enough that the little blue pills rattled around inside of it, just like I’d nudged it so it would roll out from its hiding spot and catch her attention after everyone else had missed it. Sure, I could have picked it up and handed it to her, but where was the fun in that?
People, as a whole, weren’t very observant. Something about evolution and being on the top of the food chain had made us lazy. Add onto that a couple billion people crammed onto a planet that was constantly screaming advertisements at us twenty-four hours a day, and was it any wonder that our senses were dulled? Not noticing every detail around us had become a modern-day survival strategy. Which was great for people who spent too much time nose-down in social media, but not helpful for someone trying to solve a murder.
The cops didn’t care. What was one more dead drug dealer to them? They probably saw it as a win. But Marty was more than a drug dealer. He was a brother. A father. An uncle. A friend.
And, for what it was worth, it wasn’t like he was selling meth or fentanyl on a playground. He was providing a service to the community. Was that service in a gray area? Yeah. But he got ordinary prescriptions for people who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, get them through normal channels. And now that I had found this pill bottle and got Ruby to pick it up, we knew what drugstore he was getting them from.
“How do you feel about swinging by the pharmacy after work?” I asked Ruby.
Since she couldn’t hear me, she headed for the hall, but I held the door closed, much like I had done on Monday. But instead of keeping Ruby from getting inside and being traumatized by finding Marty, now I wanted her to stay inside the restroom just a little longer.
Because as much as I wanted to keep Ruby safe and far away from this investigation, I needed her help if I was going to find out who killed Marty.
“What are you trying to tell me?” Ruby asked.
In response, I turned on the hot water and let it run into the sink. Unlike our apartment, the hot water at the office actually ran hot, and only took a moment to warm up. Within a few minutes, the bathroom was thick with steam. As soon as the mirror fogged over, I wrote “Pharmacy?” in carefully printed letters.
She studied the letters hard as they dripped with condensation.
“Oh come on, my handwriting isn’t that bad,” I grumbled.
“Pharmacy?” Ruby reached over and turned off the faucet. The letters on the mirror faded. “Of course we’re going to the pharmacy, as soon as I get off work.”
“Glad to see we’re on the same page,” I said, opening the door and holding it as Ruby walked through. It felt like we were finally moving in the right direction.
We were the last people out of the office. Ruby checked that all the lights were set to auto, turned off the coffee maker and the big photocopier that hardly anyone ever used but took forever to warm up, and rattled the doors of the executive and HR offices to verify they were all locked. Then she set the alarm and locked the office behind us.
Ruby had no trouble finding the pharmacy, which was conveniently located only a few blocks beyond Beantown Deli. For all I knew, Marty made pickups there during his normal lunch delivery route and no one was ever the wiser.
Like the bigger chain pharmacies, the store was devoted to a mix of things to help people live healthier, like vitamins, and the less-than-healthy options, like high-fructose snacks. There was no line at the pharmacy counter, so Ruby walked right up to the window. “Can you tell me which one of your pharmacists filled this?” she asked, setting the bottle of Viagra in the pass-through.
The pharmacist ran the bottle under the scanner. It beeped. I took a step back lest I interfere with the computer. She scowled and ran the bottle again. It beeped again.
She shook her head and placed the pill bottle back on the counter. “Didn’t come from here.”
“Are you certain?” Ruby asked. “It’s got your label on it.”
“Don’t know what to tell you. That barcode doesn’t exist. It wasn’t filled here.”
“Can you run it again?”
“That might be my fault,” I told Ruby as if she could hear me. “We could get me a heavy-duty X-ray gown or one of those hazmat suits people wear that work with radiation. It might cut down on the tech-splosions.” Then again, that would be the least of our problems after people saw an empty hazmat suit walking down the street under its own power.
I’d already learned that anything electronic that was more intricate than the old intercom system at my building was subject to random acts of kablooey when I got too close, and the computers at the pharmacy were a lot more sensitive than the average light bulb.
The pharmacist looked annoyed. “I already ran it twice.”
“Can you try it on a different computer?” Ruby asked.
The pharmacist crossed over to the counter that separated the shelves of medicine from the checkout window. She ran the pill bottle through the second scanner. It beeped. She shrugged and returned empty-handed. “It’s not in our system.”
“Thanks for trying,” Ruby said. “Can I have my pills back, please?”
The pharmacist shook her head. “Sorry. No can do. I can’t let those pills leave with our label on them until I verify the content and the prescription. Don’t worry. Once I confirm they’re not counterfeit, we’ll call the person they were prescribed to and have them come pick them up. Have a nice day.”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” Ruby said, and hurried away from the counter.
“Bad news,” I muttered.
I knew Marty’s prescription racket wasn’t completely aboveboard, but I hadn’t stopped to consider that he might be selling counterfeit pills, not even when I was buying from him. And now a real pharmacist at a real pharmacy had the bottle with his real name on it and the potentially counterfeit pills inside. This was not the way I wanted to involve the cops, not when Ruby’s face was on every security camera in this store.
Except, I realized, it didn’t have to be. After Ruby left, I looked around. There were two cameras over the pharmacy counter, one pointed out at the customers and one pointed at the pharmacists. The first one threw off sparks as I waved my hand through it, but no one noticed. A sharp pain ran down my arm as I fried its innards, but it was worth it. Then I repeated the process until all of the cameras in the store had been disabled.
I’d always disliked surveillance cameras. Sure, they provided a layer of security, but at what cost? Didn’t people have the right to go about their business without being filmed all the damn time? Taking out the cameras in the pharmacy was fun. That could be my new thing. After all, everyone—even a ghost—needed a hobby.
Since I was already futzing with the cameras, I decided to erase all evidence of our visit by walking through both computers the pharmacist had used to scan the bottle.
“What’s going on?” the confused pharmacist yelled as smoke poured out of the computers. “Call IT! Call nine-one-one!”
While she wrestled the fire extinguisher off its brackets, I scooped up the Viagra bottle. Might as well be thorough, right? Finally, I slid through a door marked “Employees only” and found the video controller. One little poke of my finger, and all evidence of our visit was erased.
As I stepped away from the computer station, my foot slid straight through the floor.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
RUBY
For the second time this week, there was a man in my apartment when I got home, but since I was pretty sure he wouldn’t hurt me, and he was studiously making dinner in the kitchen, I didn’t kick him out, at least not right away.
“Excuse me,” I said, clearing my throat loudly.
Ian Graves turned around. He had a carrot in one hand and a peeler in the other. There was a blue and white kitchen towel slung over his shoulder and a savory aroma emanating from my oven. I didn’t own a carrot peeler or dish towels. While the rest of the apartment was comfortably furnished, thanks to Cordelia, the kitchen was more of an afterthought with plenty of coffee mugs and not much more.
The few towels that had been there when I moved in went in the trash, along with the sheets. Living in an apartment with a dead woman? No problem. Sleeping on a dead woman’s sheets? Eww. No thank you. I’d since bought a bath towel, a few washcloths, and a sheet set, but I hadn’t gotten around to cloth napkins or dish towels.
“You’re late,” he stated.
“How can I be late? I didn’t invite you over,” I countered.
“I don’t need an invitation. I’m not a vampire,” he said.
“There’s no such thing as vampires,” I replied. At least, I didn’t think there was. What did I know? A few months ago, I wasn’t sure that ghosts existed. Then I met Cordelia.
“Good to know.” He turned back to the counter and finished peeling the carrot before slicing it up on a chopping board. “We got off on the wrong foot. I wanted to apologize for my reaction the other day, but I didn’t have your number. I thought I could make you dinner, you know, as a peace offering, but since you weren’t home, I let myself in.”
“You let yourself in,” I repeated. “So Cordelia did give you a key?”
Ian finished one carrot and reached for the bowl. “Hand me that, will ya?”
I hung my bag up next to the door and came around to the kitchen. I picked up the bowl, but instead of passing it to Ian, I wrapped my arms around it. “You didn’t answer my question.”
He took a step closer and plucked the bowl out of my arms. He put it on the counter and then started scraping a pile of carrot slices from the chopping board into the bowl. “Cordy let me stay over here a lot.”
“Even if that’s true, Cordelia doesn’t live here anymore,” I said, my arms still crossed.
I got the impression that Cordelia didn’t invite people over often, and there was no sign that anyone else lived here. There was only one bedroom. The loveseat was barely adequate for me to take catnaps on, and I was a good foot shorter than Ian, at least. I hadn’t found an inflatable mattress, extra pillows, spare toothbrushes, or any men’s clothing or toiletries when I moved in. If Ian stayed here regularly, he would have smelled like strawberries and baby powder after using her shampoo and deodorant.
I wondered if Cordelia was in the room with us now. I hadn’t felt her presence since fleeing the pharmacy, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. She could be standing over my shoulder for all I knew, but if she was, she wasn’t giving me any sign of whether Ian was lying or not.
“I realize that,” he said. His voice had a sharp edge to it. He turned his attention to a pot boiling on the stove, adding a dash of salt and paper. “Do you have any siblings?”
“Two of them. Sisters. One older and one younger.” And suddenly, I wanted more than anything in the whole world to see my sisters. To hug them. To tell them how much I loved them. Baltimore had never felt so far away as it did right at that moment. “I don’t know what I would do if I lost one of them.”
“And I hope you never find out.” Ian’s voice was rough. Then he abruptly changed the subject. “Hand me the heavy cream.”
“I don’t have any heavy cream,” I told him.
“Check the top shelf.”
I opened up my refrigerator and stared at the contents. It was fully stocked. There was chocolate milk. Diet Coke. Three types of cheese, including the stuff that came in a spray can that I wasn’t entirely sure qualified as cheese. In the door was a new bottle of yellow mustard and a plastic container of lime juice. On the shelf was a carton of eggs, a bundle of celery, and a package of pudding cups. And of course, a small carton of heavy cream.
“You went shopping,” I said, handing him the heavy cream. Then I helped myself to a Diet Coke. I didn’t often splurge on soda, much less name-brand soda, but it was in my refrigerator, so I was going to drink it.
Ian poured heavy cream into the bowl, along with some melted butter and a ton of brown sugar. He handed me the bowl, along with a long wooden spoon that I didn’t recognize as belonging to me. “Stir this,” he told me. “Someone had to go shopping. Your fridge was bare. Also, I watered your plants and moved the little one onto the windowsill. What happened to the other ones?”
“The other plants?”
“No, the other windowsills,” Ian said sarcastically. “My sister loved her plants more than she loved me. Everything else of hers is still here, but most of the plants are gone. Was there some kind of plant apocalypse? Or do you just hate the color green?”
“I don’t hate the color green,” I told him. “I’m just not real good with plants.”
There had been some kind of apocalypse, and that apocalypse was me. I didn’t know how to take care of plants, and all but one had died under my neglectful watch. But in my defense, Cordelia did know how to tend to plants and could pick up a watering can as easily as I could, so she bore at least some of the responsibility.
“Good, because there’s mint chip ice cream in the freezer. I wasn’t sure what you like, so I took a guess.”
“I like mint chip,” I told him. “Is that what’s for dessert?”
He dried his hands off on the towel. “I don’t think mint chip ice cream would go very well with pie, but there’s some vanilla in the freezer, too.” He slid the casserole dish Cordelia and I had used to make eggplant parm earlier in the week toward me. “Pour the carrots in here and I’ll pop that in the oven.”
“What are you making?” I asked, as I carefully poured the mixture into the dish.
“Baked macaroni and cheese with mashed potatoes and roasted carrots.” He put the carrots in the oven and checked on the macaroni.
I didn’t recognize the pan it was in. Where had all these dishes come from? Knowing he probably wouldn’t give me a straight answer if I questioned him about the unfamiliar dishes, I asked, “That’s an awful lot of carbs for one meal, don’t you think?”
“Comfort food. It’s my mom’s specialty.”
“Really? I thought your mom wasn’t in the picture,” I said.
Ian froze. Behind him a giant pot of potatoes boiled nosily. “Who told you that?”
I blinked at him. How was I supposed to explain it?
Before I could think of a plausible explanation that didn’t break my promise to Cordelia, he asked, “Have you been going through my sister’s stuff?”
I latched onto that. “She left a lot of junk.”
“That’s not junk,” he said, raising his voice. “That’s Cordy’s life you’re talking about.” His voice hitched, and he spun away from me, directing his attention back to the stove. He turned off the burner and picked up the pot. “Coming through.” I stepped out of his way and he dumped the potatoes into a colander in the sink. Steam rose up from them.
