Power of Attorney Page 3

  Taylor was Deborah’s partner and it was a fairly well-known secret that she Deborah had started dating six months ago. This was generally frowned on, but Nikki had looked at the stats — Taylor and Deborah’s success rate had actually gone up since they’d gotten together, and those in the know indicated that a break-up was nowhere on the horizon. Odds were in her favor.

  “Then you’re cleared for takeoff. Check-in as soon as it’s done.”

  “You got it, boss.” Deborah hung up without saying good-bye; it was one of Nikki’s pet peeves.

  She returned to the waiting room. Brett was lounging even more ostentatiously then when she’d left and Mark was perusing a magazine, looking annoyed. Nikki was about to comment when she heard her name from the hallway. Jane approached wearing one of her more conservative outfits. If it weren’t for the startling blue streak in her hair, an observer might never know that she hearted the Emo, Steampunks, and Goths with big googly eyes.

  “Did he go in already?” Jane asked, her eyes surveying the room and stopping on Mark.

  “Just now,” said Nikki. “They said it was probably a six-hour surgery from start to finish, so we’ve got a bit of a wait ahead of us.”

  “I’ll have lunch brought in,” said Jane nodding.

  “I’m sure you have to go to work,” said Brett, without turning his head from the TV. “Don’t stay on our account.”

  “I’m not,” said Nikki. “I’m staying on Mr. Merrivel’s account.”

  “Yeah, what’s with that,” said Brett. “You got a thing for the old coot, or what?”

  Nikki put out an arm to stop Jane from rushing forward. Jane had limited field training, but she was scrappy and Nikki had no doubt the assault would start with a shot at Brett’s nether regions and only get meaner from there.

  “Dad!” snapped Mark.

  Nikki tried to think of a snappy comeback, but her mind only provided long-winded explanations and involved set-downs that Brett would inevitably shred. Nothing was going to say what she wanted to say, and it was just going to turn into a war zone. She had to hold this together; she didn’t need a little Vietnam here in the waiting room.

  “Yes, Jane, we’ll be needing lunch,” said Nikki, turning her back on Brett. “Please let the team know that I’ll be here all day, but I’m available by email or phone.”

  Jane shot Brett a final look of hatred and focused on Nikki.

  “Yeah, got it. Legal sent over a bunch of shit that needs signatures.” She handed Nikki a folder full of papers.

  “Thanks.” Nikki retreated to a corner of the waiting room to sign the stack. In her peripheral vision she could see Mark and Brett having a heated, but whispered, argument.

  “Mark is telling his dad to lay off,” said Jane.

  “Those courses in lip reading are paying off, then?” Nikki thumbed to the last flagged page and signed rapidly. One week in the big chair and her signature quality had dropped rapidly. No wonder Mrs. Merrivel’s looked like a scribble; the amount of signatures per day was ludicrous. She really ought to find a way to streamline that.

  “Yes!” exclaimed Jane. “I’m now up to 75% accuracy.”

  “Astounding.”

  “Don’t mock,” said Jane. “I’m expanding my skill set. You’ll be thankful next time we get some surveillance video without audio.”

  Nikki looked up at Jane and felt a sudden burst of affection as she handed the folder back. “Jane, I’m thankful now. I appreciate every single one of your bizarre skill expander classes.”

  “They are not bizarre,” protested Jane, but looking pleased as she did so.

  “Even pine needle basket weaving?” Nikki walked with her toward the elevator.

  “Very useful trade skill in the event of a zombie apocalypse.”

  “Got it,” said Nikki.

  “I’m also working on animal hair felting. It’s proving difficult though. My neighbors only have a Yorkie, so I don’t really have enough dog hair to work with.”

  “My neighbors have a Golden Retriever. You can ask them if you want.”

  “We have Newfoundland at home,” said Mark, approaching as they waited for the elevator. “I’m sure I could ship you hair.”

  Jane attempted to look haughtily indifferent to a Newfoundland bonanza.

  “It’s important to get trade agreements in place prior to the zombie apocalypse, you know.” Mark’s eyes twinkled and Nikki watched in surprise as Jane giggled and blushed.

  “It is important to be prepared,” she said.

  “Sorry, about my Dad,” said Mark, switching his gaze to Nikki.

  “It would mean more if he apologized,” said Nikki.

  Mark shook his head. “I don’t see that happening. But I promise, he’ll keep it civil from now on.”

  Jenny showed up half an hour later, with the latest update on the Istanbul situation, and then Jane again — ostensibly to get everyone’s lunch order. Jenny and Nikki watched as Jane went first to Mark and stayed to chat with every appearance of flirting.

  “I guess I should have taken the lip reading course with Jane,” said Jenny, watching the pair.

  Nikki was about to reply when a scrub-covered surgeon came out of the surgery unit.

  “Merrivel family?” he asked, looking around. “Ah, Nikki,” he said finally spotting her.

  “Is there a problem?” Nikki felt her chest constrict and her heart speed up. There was no way they should have been out this early, even for an update.

  The surgeon nodded. “I’m afraid there is. As you know, we were expecting some trouble from the scar tissue when we went in.”

  “Scar tissue?” repeated Brett.

  “However, what we didn’t know… His medical records didn’t indicate it…”

  “Indicate what?” demanded Nikki, cutting him off.

  “When we cut into the scar tissue around the heart we discovered that it was surrounding a large chunk of shrapnel that’s been impinging on his heart tissue.

  “Shrapnel?” Brett and Nikki repeated the word simultaneously.

  “It’s small, and the piece is ceramic, not metal, which is why it didn’t show up on any of the scans. It read as part of the bone mass. I really wish he’d said something.”

  “Where did he get shrapnel in his chest?” asked Brett. “My father is a lawyer. He works in an office.”

  “I don’t know,” said the surgeon. “But we’ve had to call a halt to the surgery, while we assess the best way to remove it. We need to make sure that we’re proceeding in the safest possible manner.”

  “Of course,” said Nikki.

  “You’ll be able to see him in another hour or so; we’ll try and keep you updated as things progress.”

  “Thanks doctor,” said Nikki.

  The surgeon was already backing away toward the surgical unit.

  “Shrapnel?” asked Brett again, of no one in particular.

  Nikki sat down in the nearest available chair.

  Shrapnel?

  Oysterville

  Brett slammed the papers down on the waiting room coffee table. He had demanded his father’s medical records from the hospital staff and they had been delivered — not that they did him much good.

  “How do they call this a record?” He stomped away from the table. “The information is full of holes, and half the time, it’s unreadable.” He stared out the window, his hands gripped tightly behind him. Mark was sitting with his head in his hands.

  Jane slid onto the couch and began to sort through the papers, making stacks.

  Jenny came back into the room and joined Nikki. “I just chatted up the charge nurse. She said the surgical staff was estimating that the scarring, and probably the shrapnel, dates from the seventies. She says the team assumed the old scarring was a Vietnam injury from some things he said and since a lot of vets medical records get misplaced.”

  “Did she say anything else?” asked Nikki.

  “Yeah, apparently Nephrology has to do with kidneys.”

 
; “Nephrology?” repeated Nikki. It sometimes struck Nikki that her team dealt with stress by focusing on trivialities.

  “I keep seeing it on the signs,” said Jenny. “I kept thinking it sounded sort of dirty. I wanted to know.”

  “It is sort of dirty,” said Jane, still sorting through papers. “Kidneys filter impurities in your body,” she added, to their blank stares. “Cleans out the dirty stuff, you know?”

  “Apparently, I should have just asked you, Jane. Although, we’re going to have to talk about how to appropriately use the word dirty.” Jenny lowered her voice and purred the last word out.

  “It’s no use. I still can’t do ‘buns’ right,” said Jane, squinting at a form from the file before consigning it to a pile.

  “Also,” Jenny added turning back to Nikki, with a shake of her head. “The nurse said he’ll be awake in a little bit, but they don’t want more than one person back at a time and for no more than fifteen minutes at a time.

  “Duly noted,” said Nikki.

  “1971,” said Jane, holding up a single sheet of paper. “He was released from the hospital at McChord Air Force base in…” She squinted at the paper. It was a carbon copy, dim and faint with age. “December, 1971. Doesn’t say what he was released from. Released for? I’m not sure how to make that sentence work.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Mark, ignoring Jane’s syntax issues. “He wasn’t in Vietnam; he wasn’t even in the military. Grandma said he was a salesman when they were married. They weren’t even divorced until ’72. How is he supposed to have been in Vietnam?”

  “A lot of people who weren’t military were in Vietnam,” said Nikki.

  “You think he sold stuff to the Vietnamese?” asked Mark.

  ‘That’s not what she means,” said Brett.

  “Well, I’m glad you two know you’re talking about. Does someone care to explain it to me?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Mark! I teach American history. Didn’t you listen to any of my lectures that summer I had to take you to work with me?”

  “It’s called a GameBoy, Dad. They’re practically designed to assist kids in ignoring their parents.”

  “Hmph. I would ground you if you didn’t carry a gun.”

  “I’m a cop,” said Mark, to the sudden, fixated attention of the girls. “Much to the disappointment of my father’s liberal sensibilities,” he added and Brett snorted.

  “Oh,” said Jane, rather sadly.

  “Anyway, regardless of grounding, what are you saying about Grandpa? How could he have been in Vietnam?”

  “There were plenty of non-military personnel in Vietnam,” said Brett. “Pilots. Nurses. CIA.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Mark. “That seems a bit farfetched.”

  Brett opened his mouth as if to argue, then shrugged. “It does seem farfetched. It’s more likely he was injured here in the states and treated at that military hospital for some reason.”

  “Injured in a shrapnel-causing explosion?” asked Nikki, and Brett’s mouth twisted unhappily.

  “Maybe he sold something to the military and was injured on base.”

  “He knew what a Soviet T-72 was,” said Jane, softly. “He recognized it right away when we showed him the picture.”

  “There, you see, maybe he sold… Soviet T-72’s or whatever,” Brett waved his hand at Jane, as if wishing for the facts to magically align themselves.

  “The Soviet T-72 is a tank,” said Nikki. “I don’t think that’s it.”

  “That has to be it,” snapped Brett. “Dad sold shit up and down the coast, for all kinds of companies. I got postcards from Oysterville to Darwin. He was never home. He never had the same job for more than a year! He probably sold some piece of shit war machine to the government and it blew up in his face — got what he deserved.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” said Nikki, through her teeth.

  “And what would you know about it,” said Brett crossing the room in swift angry strides until he was nose to nose with Nikki, leaning down to do it.

  “I know your father,” said Nikki, her toes clenching inside her shoes. “I know he didn’t ‘deserve’ to get shrapnel stuck in his chest. We’re not hearing the entire story.”

  “I don’t need to hear the whole story,” said Brett, jabbing a thick finger into Nikki’s shoulder. “I lived it. Mark! Come on, we’re leaving.”

  He walked from the room, his footsteps heavy and even on the carpet.

  “I think you’re right. I think we’re not getting all the facts,” said Mark, standing up and collecting his jacket from the seat. “Just let him calm down, and we’ll see what we can’t figure out. I’ll call you later when he’s calmer. Maybe we can see if there’s any better records back at the house. There has to be a reasonable explanation of how he ended up with shrapnel in his chest.”

  Nikki forced herself to nod, then smile. Some part of her brain pointed out that the disjointedness of those movements revealed them as lies. “Thanks, Mark,” she said, forcing her smile to be more natural.

  He nodded and hurried after his father.

  She waited until he was out of ear shot. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this much mystery and I don’t like Brett and Mark poking around.”

  “What do you want to do?” asked Ellen. Nikki took a deep breath, trying to decide just how angry she wanted to make the Merrivel’s. She let out the air slowly. They were going to be annoyed no matter who started going through their past. If she was going to do it, she might as well go all the way.

  “Jane, get back to the office. Start going through Mr. Merrivel’s financials. Brett said he never worked for a company longer than a year during that time period — that sounds…” She hesitated. “It sounds suspicious. Also, Oysterville is a ghost town in Washington. I don’t think Mr. M would be selling much or sending many postcards from there, even in the ‘70’s.”

  “Oh sure,” said Jane, when Jenny looked impressed. “She gets to know about Oysterville, but I know Nephrology, and it’s weird?”

  “That’s because Nikki knows how to make it sound casual,” said Jenny.

  “But, guys,” said Nikki, ignoring the color commentary, “let’s keep this within the team, yes?”

  “You got it,” said Jane, reaching for her things.

  “Jenny, can you and Ellen head over to the law firm and take a look around his office?”

  “Looking for anything in particular?” asked Jenny, hitching her purse onto her shoulder.

  Nikki shook her head. “No.” “Just look for things that don’t fit and anything from that time period. I know he has a safe in his office; he uses it for items he wants to protect in case of a home burglary or fire. Start there. The combination is probably Katie’s birthday.”

  “Seriously?” demanded Jane. “Didn’t he hear my lecture on password and combination protection?”

  Nikki gave her a look.

  “Right, focusing. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to go to the source. I’m going to talk to Mr. M.”

  L.A.

  Nikki leaned her forehead against the steering wheel of her car. It was raining again. The moisture always seemed to bring out the faintest scent of the car’s original owner; it smelled like cigarettes and J’Adore.

  “This job makes you old, Val,” said Nikki to the empty car.

  Which was a silly thing to do. Val was dead. And even if she hadn’t been, her response surely would have been to say something withering.

  Stop being a whiner, Nancy Drew.

  And then she would have blown smoke through her nose or something equally draconian. Because, if Val had been anything, it was tough.

  “No second thoughts, huh, Val? Always moving forward like a shark?” Nikki sighed and sat up, fluffing her hair in the mirror and checking her forehead for a steering wheel imprint. “Only problem is that none of us can swim fast enough to leave the past behind.”

  Her phone rang, and Nikki jumped, even as her hand
reached to answer it.

  “Lanier, go,” she said.

  “Hello Miss Lanier, this is Marisa from Support Services. We’ve gotten a request from the German branch. An…” Nikki could practically hear Marisa scrolling down the screen. “Astriz Liebenz has just arrived on a cargo ship and is requesting a gun, a new phone, and that you should ‘get your sweet ass’ down to the docks ASAP.” Marisa sounded scandalized.

  Nikki laughed. “Tell her she can’t have my ass. Deborah and Taylor have wrapped up, haven’t they?”

  There was a pause. “Yes, I believe so. Not that they’ve filed their reports yet.” Marisa didn’t sniff in disapproval, but it was implied.

  “Send them over to Astriz. Tell them to try not to let her shoot anyone. Tell Astriz they’re on their way and that I’ll be there as soon as I can. Meanwhile, get on with the German branch and find out why the hell she’s in my city.”

  “Yes, Miss Lanier. Should I call immediately, once I receive the information?”

  “No, it’s not top priority. We just can’t have the Germans thinking they can drop in without calling first. It’s rude.”

  “Then I’ll send an email. Thank you for your time, Miss Lanier.”

  “Thanks for calling Marisa,” said Nikki, pleased that the conversation was winding down in a normal fashion — a pleasure that was short lived as Marisa promptly cut contact. “Do they teach them to do that?” Nikki stared at her phone. “Is an abrupt hang up part of the manual?” She shook her head as she started the engine.

  Mr. Merrivel’s law office was theoretically twenty minutes away. With traffic it took forty-five.

  She walked in and smiled briefly at the front desk, who waved, but didn’t say anything as Nikki walked past her and up the stairs to Mr. Merrivel’s office. Jenny and Ellen looked up as Nikki entered.

  “Nikki,” said Ellen, climbing down a ladder that stretched up a wall of books. “We’ve got a slight problem.”

  “Couldn’t get into the safe?”

  “That was the easy part,” said Jenny. She was sitting at the desk, looking gloomily at something on the computer screen. It was clear that Jenny and Ellen had been pulling books off the shelves. Books sat on the floor or leaned on shelves next to gaps in the line-up of books. “It was Katie’s birthday, just like you said.”