When Charlie had sent the Frisbee a little too close to a window, the Frisbee was shelved and their break was over. Charlie had been pleased to see the smile on her cousin's face, even if it had only been brief and after walking her back to Martha's room and giving her a hug of support, she'd left her cousin and Jay and rejoined Joey and Ruby in the parking lot.
"How is Aden?" she asked Joey as her arms slid around her girlfriend's waist. Joey had ducked into see her friend while Charlie had been with her cousin.
"He's doing much better since he's getting out today."
"That's great news. Does he need a lift home?"
Joey shook her head. "He already has a couple of chauffeurs lined up in Belle and Irene."
"They really are giving things a go then."
"Seems like it."
"Look, I know Belle has given Aden the run-around, but she is very much like Georgie when it comes to giving her love to someone, so give her a chance and you'll see that Aden will end up being a very well loved young man."
"Good, because he deserves the same happiness that we have." Joey kissed Charlie quickly. "So, where to now?"
"I still have a few hours before I'm due at the station, so we could do a movie or go to the beach."
Joey turned to Ruby. "What do you think?"
"That depends."
"On what?" quizzed Charlie.
"Well, if we go to the movies, then god only knows what you two loved up lesbians will get up to in the darkened cinema, whereas if you're strutting around in your bikinis on the beach, then," she shrugged, leaving the rest unsaid.
"I think we can promise that we'll behave in public," Joey assured her.
"Speak for yourself," joked Charlie. "Seriously though, I'm just looking for a way to unwind before I have to go to work and the best way to do that is to keep my hands off Joey."
"You don't unwind with me?"
"You get me going baby." She brushed her lips over Joey's. "And the kind of unwinding we do together, can tend to leave me feeling very blissfully tired and distracted."
"Ah and so probably not the best state to be in for work."
"Yeah, especially when I'm supposed to be projecting this air of authority, which is kind of hard to do when I'm skipping through the day with a permanent idiotic grin that just screams out that 'I've just had sex with my gorgeous girlfriend'."
"Oh, I don't know, I kind of like the image of a skipping, grinning police officer catching the bad guys," Joey said cheekily.
"And I'm sure the bad guys would be trembling in fear with me after them in that state."
"Let's leave the trembling between us and in the bedroom," whispered Joey.
"Oh god," flushed Charlie, as her mind brought up a very erotic image of them both trembling in bliss.
"I think Charlie needs to cool off, so the beach it is," decided Joey.
An hour after Charlie and the others had left, Watson was tucking her son into the bed the nurse had provided for them. "I wish I could sleep so peacefully," she murmured. Kissing his forehead, she turned away and came face to face with one of the last people she wanted to see.
"God, it's like Grand Bloody Central Station today," Watson muttered under her breath. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"I think it's time we had a talk," Shandi said to her.
"Talk away but I ain't listening," Watson said and tried to walk around her, only for Shandi to block her path.
"I realise you're worried about Martha, but you can't keep ignoring your family."
"I'm not ignoring my family," she replied. "In fact, I just had lunch with some of them."
"You know what I mean."
"We may share some blood but that doesn't make us family."
"God, you are so like dad with your stubbornness." Shandi nearly took a step back at the rage brimming in Watson's eyes, but she held her ground. "I know you resent dad and think he abandoned you, but he never did. A lie kept him from you when you were a kid and then after your mother's death, he ended up keeping his distance only because you had settled into Irene's home and he hated to upset you more than you already were at the time, but that never stopped him from caring for you and it never stopped him from watching over you," Shandi told her. "Do you know that when you were shot, he was here every day, even though he couldn't be in the same room as you without telling everyone why, but he was always nearby, he even managed to sneak in a few times to sit with you when you were alone."
Watson looked away.
"You could at least give dad a chance to tell you what happened back then."
"Why the hell should I?"
"It might help you to change any misconceptions you may have about him."
"My mother would still be dead."
"Dad had nothing to do with your mother's death."
"You don't know anything."
"Then tell me."
Watson shook her head.
"Georgie, I know we've been far from friends and that's largely my fault. I treated you poorly because I resented you and blamed you for my mum walking out on us."
"How was that my fault?"
"It wasn't, but in a child's mind, I added up the arguments about dad's affair and your existence to equal my mum leaving and figured if not for you, then there wouldn't have been a problem and mum would have stayed."
Watson snorted.
"Yeah, I know, it was a childish thought, but I was a child at the time but later on, I realised my mother leaving was more about the fact she and dad never should have married in the first place. Anyway, as much as you may not like it, we are family and I'd like a chance to at least be a friend to you."
"Then be a friend and leave me alone."
"You're right, I shouldn't be adding to the stress you're already under, but please Georgie, remember that you have family out there that cares for you and is willing to be by your side through this." She surprised Watson by moving in quickly for a hug. "You're my little sister," she whispered. "And just like dad, I'm not giving up on you."
Watson choked back a sob as Shandi released her and left her alone.
After having some fun in the sun and water with Joey and Ruby, Charlie had rushed home, showered, put on her uniform in record time and rushed to work. She'd barely sat down at her desk when Robertson and Graves showed up at her office door. She took one look at their faces and sighed. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"
Robertson closed the door behind them. "Angelo's mechanic buddy, a Michael Frinchetti, made a statement to us that Angelo had told him he had side-swiped a parked car because he was distracted while on his mobile and needed the car fixed quickly before his wife saw it and got pissed at him for not paying attention on the road."
"You believe him?"
He nodded. "I'm sure that is exactly what Angelo told him, but I got the impression that Frinchetti didn't totally buy into Angelo's lie."
"Even if he had doubts, he still went ahead and fixed Angelo's car."
"A fact he's not entirely happy about, especially when we informed him that the damage to the car had come from running a mother and her young son off the road and that he was in the car with his mistress at the time," Robertson said. "Let's just say that Frinchetti's not Angelo's biggest fan at the moment."
"I doubt a man like that has any fans," muttered Charlie. "What about the clinic?"
"That's where things get a little more interesting." Robertson set a file on the desk and opened it up. "This is the medical report Dr. Richard Cranium took on Miss Scott."
Charlie's brow rose at that. "Seriously, that's his real name?"
"Dr Dick Head," Graves quietly mentioned.
"God, his life must have been hell in school," Charlie murmured. "So, the doctor gave up Bianca's file, just like that?"
"The good doctor wasn't actually in, but his assistant was most accommodating and no one even mentioned the word warrant when we asked to see Miss Scott's file," Robertson replied and everyone in that office knew doctors never just handed over a patient's medical record unless a court ordered them to do so, which just raised Charlie's suspicions about the contents of the file.
"What was he so happy for us to see then?"
"It pretty much just says that Miss Scott received a blow to the head that left her a little dazed afterwards and with a lingering headache. According to the file, Miss Scott explained to the doctor that she hurt herself after."
Charlie held up her hand to stop him. "No, no, let me guess," she said. "Bianca told the doctor she slipped while going up an incline and fell backwards and hit her head on a rock," Charlie said, having already heard this explanation from Angelo during his previous interview.
Robertson nodded. "The doctor wrote her a prescription for her headache, told her to take it easy and be watchful for a possible concussion, at which point, Miss Scott then left under her own steam and the doctor stressed," and here, Robertson held up the page for Charlie to read and even from across the desk, she could make out the bold and double underlined wording. "Miss Scott seemed rather in a hurry to leave. Now, being the ever suspicious person that I am, I took one look at this report and decided the doctor needed a closer examination himself." He tossed the file aside. "And it didn't take long to find out the reason our helpful clinical doctor was absent from work today, was because he had a sudden financial windfall and has taken off on a holiday, but not before leaving that file with his assistant with the instruction to hand it over if anyone enquired about it."
"His actions are just screaming that the file is a complete fabrication," Charlie said.
"I believe the closest he ever got to examining Miss Scott was her picture. We're trying to track down where the good doctor is, but he left no word with anyone as to where he was going. I also believe the file was backdated, as the assistant couldn't recall seeing it amongst the other files until the doctor pointed it out to him on his way out yesterday."
"What else did his assistant say?"
"Well, he admitted he found it a little odd he was told to just hand over the file if someone asked to see it, but he couldn't help us any further as he wasn't working on the day Miss Scott supposedly came to the clinic. We did show Miss Scott's photo to the other employees at the clinic, but none could say with any certainty whether they saw her or not," he said. "They see a lot of patients every day in that clinic, so it's not exactly surprising that no one could recall whether they saw someone there or not unless they dealt directly with that person or they're a regular patient."
Charlie sighed and rubbed her temples and said what they were all thinking. "Bianca is dead, isn't she?"
"That is looking more and more the most likely scenario, especially when we take this into account." He held up another file.
"What's that?"
"The report on Angelo's impounded car."