Private Demon

"Everything is okay, right?" she asked, more tentatively now.

"Of course it is." Meryl recovered first, with a vengeance. "Daniel took me to see a heart specialist, and the tests took longer than we had expected."

Daniel cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. "We should have the results in next week."

Were these two acting guilty? Jema almost asked, but then remembered that her birthday was next week. Her mother had never celebrated it in a big way, but it was a landmark date—she'd always been told she'd be lucky to live to thirty. Well, I made it, and if I keep hitting the bran muffins and the sugar-free, lactose-free yogurt, I might even make it to thirty-five. "Let me know how it turns out. See you tonight. I shouldn't be late."

Jema liked visiting Luisa in the mornings. At night the hospital could be a little creepy, especially when they turned down the lights in the hallways. Today she stopped by the gift shop to pick up a small flower arrangement for Luisa's room. She made sure to pick flowers that had a nice scent, as her friend wouldn't be able to see them.

"I brought you a present," she said as soon as she came into the room.

Dr. Keller, who was standing at the window, glanced back at her. "Oh, you shouldn't have."

Jema put the arrangement within Luisa's reach—she felt sure that when she was alone, the girl liked to touch the soft petals—and squared her shoulders to face the doctor. She didn't like Alexandra Keller, but she could try to be polite to her. "I didn't think I'd see you here again, Dr. Keller."

"I try to be unpredictable, Miss Shaw." Alex gestured to Luisa. "Our mutual friend doesn't want me around, but I came today hoping to change her mind."

"You shouldn't upset her." Jema didn't feel like verbally sparring with Alex, and went to sit by the bed. "Did the eye doctor come by to check on you? It should be time to take the bandages off soon."

"Yeah, he did." Luisa reached for the flowers and caressed them with her fingertips. "What you buy me these for? It ain't my birthday."

"It's almost mine." Jema chuckled. "I thought you might like to smell something besides Nurse Kohler."

"The one that leaves a trail like a skunk?" Luisa shook her head. "My mama say she uglier than roadkill. Smell like it, too."

Jema thought of Nurse Kohler's trademark bright blue eye shadow. "Let's say she's cosmetically challenged." She saw Alex watching them, and then she saw two Alexes. With all her bouncing around this morning, she'd forgotten to take her morning injection. "Uh-oh." Fighting off the weakness, she groped for her purse. She could feel all the color fading from her skin, and Alex was staring at her. "May I use your bathroom, Luisa?"

"If Nurse Kohler ain't in there. She go a lot."

Jema walked carefully to the small lavatory and put her purse on the sink. She considered shutting the door, but the dizziness was getting worse, and she didn't want to pass out and scare Luisa.

"Need a hand?" Alex came in after her.

"With this, no, thank you." Daniel gave her prefilled syringes to carry in her purse kit, so all she had to do was strap up and raise a vein, which was never a problem. "I'm a diabetic, in case you're wondering."

"I heard that you were." Alex's reflection frowned at her. "You take your insulin intravenously."

"I'm a bad diabetic." She tied off her arm, flicked a likely spot with her fingernail, and then prepared the syringe. She felt self-conscious about injecting herself in front of Alex, but it couldn't be helped. "I was born this way."

The dizziness receded a few seconds later. She applied a small round Band-Aid to cover the injection spot and looked around for the biohazardous waste container, but saw none.

"Who manages your case, Miss Shaw?" Alex asked.

"Dr. Daniel Bradford. He's our family physician." She packed up her kit and washed her hands at the sink. "He lives at Shaw House with me and my mother. We both require a lot of monitoring. He's taken care of me almost from the day I was born."

"Sounds like a very dedicated guy." Alex handed her a paper towel. "Have you seen anyone else about your condition?"

"Dr. Bradford takes great care of me and my mother." Jema knew that Alex was simply being a good doctor, but she didn't like her insinuations. "He's become an expert on diabetes over the years, of course, and he's also done all sorts of research into treatments for lower spine trauma and paralysis. He has a full lab set up at our home. Unfortunately my mother will never recover, and neither will I." She gave her a cool smile. "We've never felt the need to go looking for a second opinion."

"That's great. You're lucky. And you look much better." Alex reached out and pressed the back of her hand against Jema's cheek. "A little flushed, but that's probably my fault for poking my nose in your medical business."

"Did you have to walk out on Luisa the way you did?" Jema asked on impulse. "Couldn't you have stayed in Chicago until she was stable?"

Now it was Alex's turn to pale. "I had no choice. I can't get into the details, but believe me, Miss Shaw, I wanted to be here."

Jema could hear the sincerity in her voice. "It was very generous of you to give her mother all that money. I know it's made a big difference in the quality of her care and recovery." She looked down at the used syringe and capped the needle. "I'd better take this out to the nurses' station. I think they have a needle box out there."

"Let me. I've got to get going anyway." Alex held out her hand, and when Jema gave her the syringe she tucked it in her pocket. "One more sort of nosy question before I go. Do you have any other family besides your mother?"

Jema frowned. "Well, my mother's family, but they disowned her for marrying my dad and they've never had any contact with me. My dad was an orphan."

"Your mother owns your father's estate, and I assume you're her heir," Alex stated. "Who inherits from you?"

"My mother," Jema said. "We set up our wills so that if one of us dies, the other inherits. If we both die at the same time, or close to each other, everything goes to fund the museum and about a hundred charities. One of them is this burn ward. Why?"

"Eventually the money I gave Mrs. Lopez will run out. I'm going to arrange a life trust fund to pay for Luisa's medical care, and I thought you might like to mention her in your will." Alex glanced out at the girl, who was holding the flower arrangement Jema had brought and was exploring the petals with her fingers. "Not that I'm wishing you an early death, but she'll need certain treatments and physical therapy for the rest of her life."

"That's a marvelous idea," Jema said, liking Alex a little more. "I'll speak to my mother about it."

Things did not go so well for Jema when she got to the museum. The doors had not yet opened to the public, thanks to a staff scheduling problem, which had administration in something of a muddle.

"I need three guards on the floor, not two," the head curator was telling the events coordinator.

"You can't use my tour manager for security," the coordinator argued. "She isn't trained for it."

Jema never interfered with the daily management of the museum, but as she needed help bringing up crates, she was obliged to get involved. With a little creative juggling of the staff, she was able to help the head curator get the museum open, and find a tour guide for the events coordinator to help her with a middle school class scheduled that day. That allowed her to borrow Thomas for an hour of work downstairs.

"I don't know what the deal is with Roy," Tom told her as they went into the storage area. "He's never missed more than one shift, and only when he's really sick. I even tried to call him, but he doesn't answer his phone."

"People have problems that are more important than work sometimes. Roy's a good employee; I'm sure he'll turn up." Jema went to the storage shelves designated for the Athos dig, but one of the crates for lot two-forty was missing. "Okay. Now I know this was right here last week. I did a count for the inventory program and I had to requisition more sample containers to send to the Wisconsin lab."

"You know, Roy was down here a couple of nights back, arranging things," Thomas told her as he helped her look. "He does that for Dr. Shaw now and then."

"Arranging things how?"

"I'm not sure. He gets a call from her, and he has me take over upstairs while he checks things for her. Once he had to take something over to your house after his shift. I saw him loading it into his car."

"My house." Jema glanced at him. "Tom, we don't keep any of the museum's property at home. It's against our insurance company's policy, for one thing, and we don't have reason to have them there."

"All I can tell you is that he took a crate out of here one morning," Tom insisted. "He didn't say it was for Dr. Shaw, but he'd had a phone call from her, and he took the lake road out of here. Roy doesn't live anywhere near the lake." He sniffed the air. "Have you been eating apples? I've been smelling them all morning."

"No, sorry, it's not me." She smelled the fruity scent, too, but dismissed it. "Bring the rest of lot two-forty into the lab now, Tom." Jema went to her office and called Shaw House.

Meryl took her call immediately. "What is it, Jema? Are you sick? I told you to stay home today."

"I'm fine, Mother. We're missing a crate from lot two-forty, and if I can't find it, I have to make a police report." Jema looked up at the painting over her desk. "One of the guards seems to think Roy might have brought it over to the house for you."

"Yes, I had a number of things brought to the house so I could examine them," her mother said, astonishing her. "I do have the missing crate here now, and it will be returned to the museum as soon as I'm through with it." ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">