Dreamwheel: R&P Labs Mysteries, #7

DREAMWHEEL

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CYNTHIA E. HURST

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R&P Labs Mystery 7

Copyright © 2012 Cynthia E. Hurst

All Rights Reserved

Plane View Books

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The characters and situations in this work are entirely fictional and do not portray any actual persons, businesses or organizations.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter  4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Prologue

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Appropriately for Halloween, there was a full moon in the night sky, hanging low over the horizon and looking as weightless as a white balloon. The afternoon rain had cleared and now only wisps of clouds drifted across the face of the moon from time to time. Far below, costumed children were running along the moonlit street, carrying bags full of candy and comparing notes on which neighbors were the most generous with their treats.

A young man dressed in black stood on the sidewalk, watching them with a tolerant smile. He was not too old to have forgotten what it was like to be a child at Halloween,  the excitement of receiving free candy combined with the exhilaration of being out after dark, and he half wished he was still that young and carefree.

He turned the corner and started down the last block toward his home. It was a house that came into its own on Halloween, being fairly shabby, draped with cobwebs and looking as though a ghost or vampire would be completely comfortable living there. A dim light shone in one downstairs window, but otherwise the building was dark. The man wasn’t concerned; he knew that didn’t mean the house was empty but rather that its occupants were gearing up for the evening’s entertainment.

As he walked along, he heard the swish of bicycle tires on the wet pavement behind him. That wasn’t unusual in the neighborhood, which was home to numerous students and other environmentally minded residents who tended to walk or ride, rather than drive, to their destinations. Subconsciously he waited for the bicycle to flash past him, the rider hunched over the handlebars. But the sound of the tires continued and the bicycle stayed behind him. Almost as if, he thought, it was slowing down and following him.

He had barely formulated that thought when he heard another sound, a more metallic one. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the cyclist was wearing a Halloween mask, a grinning skull, framed by a black hooded sweatshirt. Instead of riding on the street, he was now on the sidewalk. And instead of steering around the pedestrian, the bicycle seemed to be aiming straight at him. Someone trying to be funny on Halloween, he thought, but it was unnerving and he suddenly felt uneasy. He broke into a run, heading for the comparative safety of the house.

The bicycle accelerated behind him and he dodged back and forth across the sidewalk. If he was going to be made a target, he wasn’t going to be a complacent one.

He reached the walk leading to the house and hesitated momentarily, unsure of whether to make the rider aware of where he lived. Tires skidded on the wet sidewalk and the man made up his mind, turning swiftly into the walk. As he did, his foot slipped on a patch of soggy leaves. He swore briefly and violently as his leg twisted under him and he fell onto the unkempt lawn bordering the cement. As he landed on the ground, he looked up to see the grinning skull above him, and in the space where his head had been a moment earlier, a shining blade sliced through the night air.

With a final swish of  wheels, the bicyclist disappeared as quickly as he had arrived, and the man lay on the wet grass, panting with relief. For an instant, he wondered if the events of the past few minutes had been another of the strange dreams he had been having lately. He could hear children’s laughter in the distance and reminded himself that it was Halloween and meeting the Grim Reaper, armed with a sickle and riding a bicycle, was not entirely impossible.

Bad juju, he said to himself. He got to his feet, brushed himself off and went into the house.

Chapter 1

There was a certain unpleasant atmosphere about hospitals, Rob Mangan thought, no matter what one’s reason for being there. It might be due to the faint medicinal smell pervading the building, or the preoccupation of both staff and patients. This was a place where birth and death and everything in between happened, and nothing was taken lightly.

He shifted uncomfortably on his plastic chair and reminded himself that he was here for a positive reason, not a negative one. That didn’t make the tepid cup of coffee he was nursing taste any better, however, and he abandoned it on a nearby table.

His wife Holly had been in the consulting room for what seemed like an eternity, and Rob wished he could be there with her. But she had insisted on seeing the specialist by herself, so he was here in the waiting room, reading magazines without seeing them, drinking awful coffee and trying to tell himself everything would be all right.

Finally Holly came out, an unreadable expression on her face. As usual, she looked effortlessly elegant, her long dark hair framing an expressive face highlighted by eyes the color of dark honey. Rob leaped to his feet and took her arm as they walked out of the room.

Holly didn’t speak and so Rob didn’t either, until they were in the corridor, well away from the waiting room.

What did she say? he asked her quietly.

Oh, she had lots to say, Holly said. We looked at all the test results and had a long discussion. She was very sympathetic and understanding, which I appreciated. But what it all boils down to is that they can’t find any reasons. It’s just what they call unexplained infertility.

Rob digested this in silence. Holly had been trying to conceive for ten months now, a period of time that seemed to her, Rob knew, like a century or more. It hadn’t helped that during that time, her sister-in-law had given birth to an unplanned third child, and that one of Rob’s employees was facing parenthood due to an equally unexpected pregnancy.

Since Rob was already the father of a nine-year-old daughter from his first marriage, Holly was prepared to shoulder all the responsibility for their failure to become parents, and as someone who had normally achieved whatever she had set out to do in life, this was particularly difficult.

I would have thought that was slightly encouraging, Rob said finally. I mean, there’s nothing actually keeping you from getting pregnant, is there?

No. There doesn’t appear to be.

So it’s entirely possible that you will.

Maybe. But don’t try to sugar coat it, Rob. The longer it goes on, the greater the odds are stacked against me.

Sometimes things happen against all the odds. You know that.

Holly squeezed his arm. You’re a darling, Rob. Yes, of course there’s always a remote chance. There are other options to consider, like IVF or egg donation or even adoption. And of course, we’ve got Sophie.

We do indeed. And you’re a wonderful stepmother.

They walked toward the front entrance of the hospital, Holly carefully avoiding looking at anyone accompanied by babies or children. They emerged into an overcast October afternoon, typical of Seattle in the autumn.  Slate gray clouds hung low in the sky and a few drops of rain spattered down as they headed for the parking lot, side-stepping the puddles on the pavement.

You’re not going back to work this afternoon, are you? Rob asked her.

No, there doesn’t seem to be much point. It’s already nearly four.

So how about going for a cup of coffee somewhere? That stuff from the vending machine was totally undrinkable.

I thought you would want to go back to the lab.

I think they can manage without me for one afternoon, Rob said. It’s not like I’m the CEO of a multi-million dollar corporation.

That was an understatement of massive proportions. Rob was the senior partner in R&P Laboratories, a small independent research facility located only a mile or so from the hospital. The lab occupied an unattractive little brick building dating from the second world war, and was perpetually on the verge of insolvency, but Rob felt very affectionate toward it. He, his brother Phil and the other three employees were friends as well as co-workers, bound together by the need to keep the business financially afloat and also by the unusual experiences they had shared.

As if reading his mind, Holly said, And you’re not even involved in any criminal investigations at the moment, thank heavens.

No, we’ve managed to stick to what we’re supposed to be doing for several months now.

How boring.

Rob shot Holly a quick glance, just to reassure himself she was joking. I’m sure the various law enforcement agencies are relieved we’re minding our own business for a change.

Even though you’ve really been very helpful to them in the past.

I don’t think they see it that way. The word ‘meddling’ seems to crop up fairly often.

Holly smiled as they reached the car and Rob unlocked it. Where shall we go for coffee? she asked him.

There’s a new place in Sand Point that I saw the other day; would you like to try that? I think they do pastries and sandwiches, too.

That sounds good. There’s something about being poked and prodded and discussed at length that makes you work up an appetite.

OK, let’s do it.

Holly slid into the passenger seat as Rob got behind the wheel. As he did, the blare of a siren made him jump and a red paramedic van sped past them toward the entrance of the hospital, slowed, and then passed from sight behind the building.

That’s funny, Rob said. You wouldn’t think a hospital would need to call Medic One.  I mean, they’re already at the right end of things, so to speak.

No, you wouldn’t. Maybe it’s bringing someone in.

But the ambulance entrance is at the other end of the building.

Rob knew he should start the engine and drive away, but something kept him riveted to the spot. He noticed that Holly seemed similarly entranced. It was as if they knew something else was about to happen and they were proved correct when two police cars shot past them, blue lights flashing, and drove rapidly around the building toward the rear of the hospital where the van had gone.

No, Rob said firmly. I am not going around there to find out what is happening.

If it’s something major, it will be on the news anyway.

I imagine it will.

And it’s certainly nothing to do with us.

No, it’s not.

I wonder if Janet would know what it is.

Holly burst out laughing. You just can’t resist a mystery, can you? All right, phone Janet and see if she knows what’s happening.

Rob took his cell phone out and found the number. Dr Janet Traub was on the hospital staff and had been friends for more than forty years with Virginia McClain, R&P Labs’ senior bacteriologist. As a result, she had become acquainted with the rest of the staff, and had played a key role in some of their more unorthodox activities.

The phone rang several times and then Janet’s crisp voice said, Hello, Rob.

Hi, Janet. I hesitate to ask, but is something unusual going on at the hospital?

Are you psychic or something?

No, I’m in the parking lot. Holly and I saw the emergency vehicles go by.

There was a pause. In the parking lot?

Yes, Holly had an appointment and we were about to leave when we saw two police cars and Medic One race past us. We were just curious.

As you always are. Well, you must be in the front parking lot, or you’d probably know what happened. There’s been an incident at the rear of the building.

What kind of incident?

Someone fell out of a fifth floor window. It didn’t end well.

Rob froze. He looked at Holly and said, Someone fell out of a window on the fifth floor.

Holly winced visibly and Rob said to Janet, How could that have happened? I mean, usually you can’t get windows in a big building open more than a few inches, especially on the higher floors.

I don’t know any details, Janet said. All I know is that it happened not long ago and the person died on impact, as you might expect. There were people outside who saw it happen and of course they called 911.

Why? It’s a hospital – there are doctors all over the place.

We’re not a trauma unit. It’s possible they thought he or she could be saved and there are places better equipped to deal with emergencies like that. And regardless of whether it was suicide or an accident, the police would have to be called.

This person wasn’t pushed out of the window?

There was silence for a moment. Then Janet said, Rob, I don’t even know who it was, but as you’ve already pointed out, normally the windows don’t open very far, precisely to avoid this sort of incident. And pushing someone out a window in the middle of the afternoon in a busy hospital would be a very risky way of committing a murder, don’t you think? The odds of being observed would be pretty high.

No riskier than pretending to be a doctor and giving a patient with severe burns specially prepared dressings designed to kill him.

Holly gasped; the patient Rob was referring to had been her younger brother Frank.

I don’t think you can assume everyone who dies has been murdered, Janet continued. Is business slow at the lab these days?

Rob took the implied criticism on the chin. You’re right, he admitted. I suppose it’s because we’ve been involved in all these cases that I tend to see crime where it doesn’t necessarily exist. Sorry.

No need to apologize. And if I find out anything interesting, I’ll be sure to let you or Virginia know.

Thanks, Janet. Bye.

He closed the cell phone and turned to Holly. Dr Traub’s diagnosis is terminal curiosity, complicated by an overactive imagination.

In other words, mind our own business and don’t see criminal activity if it isn’t there.

Precisely. So let’s go and have that coffee.

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DESPITE his determination to ignore the incident, Rob couldn’t avoid it altogether. It had been reported briefly on the evening news that night when he and Holly returned home, although the television station had not named the person who had died. That was left to the morning newspaper, which identified him as Dr Owen Kilmer, 55, a psychologist on the hospital staff.

Neither the newspaper nor the television station seemed prepared to hypothesize how and why Dr Kilmer had left the hospital via a fifth floor window and he was in no position to explain, having died rather messily on impact. His relations and colleagues were predictably shocked but could offer no explanations, either.

Rob put the newspaper down and gazed out the window of his little office. It gave him an uninspiring view of the lab’s parking lot, festooned with puddles. Rob subconsciously counted the cars: his own modest Nissan, his younger brother Phil’s mini-van, Virginia’s immaculate Chevrolet sedan, a sleek black BMW and a very old Volkswagen Beetle with a sticker-covered rear bumper, tucked away in the far corner of the lot, as if sulking.

He could hear the normal sounds of the lab outside his door, the clinking of glassware, the burble of the coffeemaker, and the sound of two people talking. The voices were coming from the bacteriology lab next to his office, where Virginia and her colleague Mitch Okada were testing food samples – today it was crab and salmon from a seafood restaurant – to make sure their bacterial levels met industry standards.

The bac lab was the only one that normally had two occupants; Phil did most of his work in the chemistry lab across the lobby from Rob’s office and Ellis Freeman’s domain was the biology lab at the rear of the building. Rob, when he could snatch a minute away from the demands of paperwork or salesmanship, rotated among the three labs, helping out where needed.

He pushed his chair back and wandered out to the coffeemaker, located in the lab’s small kitchen area off the lobby. As if by osmosis, the two bacteriologists materialized beside him, as different from each other as was humanly possible and living proof that opposites could attract.

Silver-haired, blue-eyed Virginia was in her sixties, calm, methodical and sensible, while Mitch, forty years her junior, was half Japanese, brash and streetwise. Despite this discrepancy, they were great friends, partly due to Mitch’s fondness for the fashions and music of the 1960s, a subject of which Virginia had vast first-hand knowledge.

Rob poured coffee for the two of them and wondered, as he often did, how much more work would get done if the coffeemaker was banned from the lab’s premises. He was sure productivity would increase, but that was only if his staff  didn’t disappear as well. There weren’t many fringe benefits at R&P Labs, but coffee and conversation were always available in large quantities.

As if to prove the point, they hadn’t been there more than two minutes when Ellis came down the short hallway from the bio lab. Phil was the last to arrive, carrying a large, flat box across the lobby, with his coffee mug balanced on top of it.

Here you go, he said, setting the box on the counter. He removed the mug and lifted the lid. Cupcakes for everyone. Enjoy.

Oh, is it a special occasion? Rob asked his brother innocently.

Carolyn offered to make me a birthday cake, but I thought this was a better idea, so I picked them up on the way in, Phil explained. You can thank me later.

You couldn’t fit thirty-five candles on a cake anyway, Rob said. Or if you did, you’d set off the smoke detector.

That’s not nice, Mitch said, inspecting the cupcakes. Hey, these are wicked. Look at the fancy little doo-dahs on them.

I believe they’re called decorations, Ellis said, filling his coffee cup.

Although not yet thirty, Ellis seemed to have been born middle-aged, and took life very seriously. However, he rarely missed an opportunity to score a point off Mitch – or vice versa – and some of their exchanges had passed into lab legend.

In fact, it had come as something of a shock to Ellis to discover he could occasionally end up on the losing end of a verbal encounter. He radiated self-confidence and had reaped the benefits of a privileged background, a private education and family money. As an opponent, Mitch had nothing going for him but intelligence and attitude.

You keep that up and I won’t let you have any of my birthday cake, Mitch told him. It’s only a couple of weeks away, you know, and Catherine’s going to make me her awesome spice cake with the cream cheese frosting. She said she’ll bring it over here so we can all have some, but I could persuade her to change her mind.

Hmm, Ellis said. Well, that might almost be worth the effort. That spice cake of hers is quite edible.

"Edible?"

It’s delicious, Virginia said, interrupting Mitch’s retort. And I’m sure Carolyn could have baked you a cake, Phil, if she had more time. Three young children must keep her extremely busy.

Carolyn, Phil pronounced, is a wonderful wife and mother and has numerous excellent qualities, but a domestic goddess she ain’t. I’m sure our doorstop was one of her cakes in a previous incarnation. Have a cupcake, Virginia.  He held the box out to her.

Thank you.

Phil passed the box around and they each took a cupcake.

I thought you’d be eating pine needles, Mitch said to Ellis.

They are Douglas fir needles, as you know, not pine, and they’re not a snack food, Ellis said. He looked thoughtful. At least not yet. I’ve been researching possible uses besides the ones we already know about. One source suggests they can be used as a coffee substitute. Maybe we should try it.

It sounds disgusting.

And that from a man who’s wearing a forty-year-old t-shirt and someone else’s shoes.

"Hey, this shirt is vintage, Mitch said, looking down at his purple Woodstock Festival t-shirt. It’s a collector’s item. He held up one of his feet, encased in a worn snakeskin boot, for inspection. And these boots are well wicked. I was lucky they were my size. Anyway, what does that have to do with Doug fir coffee?"

Good question, Rob said. Seriously, Ellis, how is it going?

Ellis pushed his floppy blond hair back and took up his lecturer’s pose. The others, recognizing the signs, prepared themselves for a long, detailed response. Several weeks earlier, R&P Labs had been chosen to conduct some of the peripheral research on non-traditional uses for Douglas fir needles, as part of a project being undertaken by the nearby university’s biology department.

Their selection had been the result of some smooth-talking salesmanship on Holly’s part, as she had managed to convince Bill, her project director, that R&P would be the best choice, without actually revealing that the lab was run by her husband and brother-in-law. By the time Bill had discovered this, Ellis was already deep in research mode, and it would have taken a bulldozer to remove him from the project. It was the kind of work he loved, with no definite boundaries or pre-conceived ideas, making the best use of his combined biology-chemistry training.

Now he said, "I’m concentrating on medicinal uses at the moment, since they would ultimately be of the most use. Mitch is right; I don’t think Douglas fir coffee would prove very palatable. But the resin has antiseptic properties and can be used for all sorts of things. It can be made into a poultice for applying to burns and cuts, for example, and Holly’s team did some research last year on its use in treating