Trudy, Madly, Deeply (Working Stiffs Mystery Series) by Wendy Delaney

hurried the process along?”
    He was the one who’d called Frankie with his suspicions about Trudy’s death. So, yes. That was exactly what I was asking.
    I nodded.
    “There isn’t anything there,” he said, pointing at the paper in my hands, “to suggest anything that I’d call unusual.”
    That didn’t answer the question. “If you were going to kill one of your patients, wouldn’t you make sure that nothing unusual was recorded in his chart?”
    “I’d be stupid not to.”
    Warren Straitham’s name was conspicuously absent from these pages. If nothing else, it confirmed what I already knew. He was guilty of something, but it wasn’t stupidity.
    “Thanks for this,” I said, tucking the printouts he’d given me into my tote bag.
    “What are you going to do with the information?”
    Other than talk to Cindy and Tina, I didn’t have a clue.
    * * *
    It was a few minutes after eight when I huffed and puffed my way up the steps of the courthouse. Patsy arched an eyebrow at me as I passed her desk, my to-go cup in hand.
    “Late night?” she asked.
    I ignored the Chimacam County Courthouse Hall Monitor’s insinuation. “Early morning.”
    She glanced at the glass domed gold anniversary clock ticking next to her computer monitor and her mouth formed a lemon-worthy pucker. “Uh huh.”
    For being on the receiving end of this much disapproval I should have been having a lot more fun.
    I noticed that the overhead light in Frankie’s office was off. “Is she in?”
    “She’s in a meeting with Ben. She told me to give you this.”
    Patsy handed me a white envelope addressed to a Dr. Roland. From the Seattle street address, I ventured a guess that Dr. Roland’s office was in one of the Pill Hill area medical buildings near Swedish Hospital.
    “It needs to be delivered today.”
    “What is it?”
    “A subpoena. He’s going to be called as a witness next week.”
    If I had been told about this yesterday, I would have cut my visit short at the hospital and driven straight to the ferry terminal to catch the eight o’clock sailing. Given the lines during the busy summer tourist season, I’d be lucky to get out of Seattle before one.
    Patsy’s telephone rang. “Everything you need to know is in the envelope,” she said, reaching for her telephone receiver.
    En route to the break room to refill my cup, I opened the unsealed envelope and pulled out a list of instructions. Identify myself, confirm the recipient’s identity, serve the subpoena. Sounded easy enough. As a process server, I’d delivered dozens of notices to appear; I could certainly serve one measly subpoena. At least it would give me a reprieve from making coffee for the next few hours.
    Eighteen minutes later at the ferry terminal, I forked over the last twenty in my wallet for a round trip ticket and pulled behind a black Suburban idling in the second row of a long line of cars waiting for the 9:10 sailing to Seattle. Since I had a fifteen-minute wait until the ferry arrived and had just drained my to-go cup, I figured I’d better make a fast pit stop at the picnic area restroom before boarding.
    Killing the engine, I climbed out of the Jag and was promptly greeted by gusts of briny wind blowing in from Puget Sound. With the hem of my shirtdress whipping around my knees as I approached the pier, I noticed a mother with a pair of towheaded toddlers feeding the ducks on a patch of grass across from the restroom, much to the chagrin of the squawking gulls circling overhead.
    It seemed like a typical summer scene at the ferry dock until I spotted Heather Beckett sitting alone at one of the picnic tables as she stared out at the waves glistening like sugar crystals under the morning sun.
    The last thing I needed this morning was some stink eye from Heather so I did an about face and scurried back to my car. “No problem,” I said to myself as I unlocked the car door. Nature might be calling soon, but there were restroom facilities on the ferry.