“We’ll be fine, you’ll see. You’ll love it.”
“You never talked this way before,” Jill said, hurt.
“I never had to.”
“Are you unhappy?”
“No, I’m happy, and I’m trying to stay that way. We were fine before Abby entered the picture, just last night. We were great.” Sam smiled and tried to touch her arm, but Jill found herself backing away, wishing she had a sounding board.
“You know what, I’m not that tired, so maybe I’ll drop by Katie’s and see if she still needs me.”
“Really, babe?” Sam looked disappointed, puckering his lower lip.
“Well, she is cooking.”
“Fair enough.” Sam managed a smile. “She could burn down the neighborhood.”
“Right.” Jill picked up her handbag, gave Sam a dry kiss on the cheek, and left the kitchen. “I should be back in an hour, or so.”
“Okay, drive safe,” Sam called after her.
“Love you.” Jill called back, and it wasn’t until she reached the front door that she realized she hadn’t told Sam about the pharmacy or the padiddle.
But he wasn’t exactly a willing ear.
Chapter Fifteen
“Sorry I missed your call.” Jill followed Katie into her kitchen, which was in disarray. Flour dusted the butcherblock counter, and grated potatoes made a lopsided snowdrift on a plate, next to a lineup of cracked eggshells, chopped onion, and a Pyrex bowl of batter. The air smelled like something good was cooking. “Yum. What’s going on here?”
“Paul took the boys out to dinner, then the bookstore.” Katie hurried back to the stove, her blonde ponytail swinging. Like Jill, she had on a light cotton sweater, capris, and clogs, the uniform of suburban moms. Katie picked up the spatula. “I was having an I’m-gonna-kill-my-kid moment.”
“Why?” Jill asked, though she knew Katie was kidding. They’d been best friends since Penn State, and Katie had gone on to become a teacher, then an at-home mother of three sons, all under twelve years old. She always said humor and a cattle prod were her only weapons.
“Monday is International Day at school, and Robbie tells me this an hour ago, when we’re gone all day tomorrow.” Katie rolled her large, cornflower blue eyes. She was wholesomely pretty, with no makeup, an easy smile, and a turned-up nose under a sprinkling of soft freckles. “We’re moving my mother-in-law to a retirement village. With her, it’ll take a village.”
“Yikes.” Jill set down her purse and came over to the stove. The big Viking oven gave off a homey warmth, and she started to relax, after the talk with Sam. She felt lucky to have a friend like Katie and she could only imagine how Katie would react when she found out about William’s death.
“You want soda or coffee? Or a margarita? Feel free.”
“No, thanks. So what are you making? It smells great.”
“Irish potato pancakes.”
“Ambitious.”
“Insane.” Katie flipped the pancake. “He has to bring in a typical food that represents his family, and you have to make it, so no Entenmann’s.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Am I screwed or what? Can I just say that not all moms can cook? And what kind of time do they think we have? Should I thatch the roof next? Jeez! You know, the joke is, I assigned all this crap when I taught, too. Payback’s a bitch.”
Jill smiled. “How can I help?”
“Just keep me company. It’s good to see you. I called you to get an old family recipe of yours, for anything, but then I found this old family recipe on the Internet.”
“How many do you have to make?”
“Too damn many.” Katie flipped the third pancake. “There are twenty-three kids in the class, and I figure some kids will eat two, so that’s thirty-three. Plus I have to suck up to the teacher, the aides, and the secretaries in the office, so that makes fifty. I bribe everybody. Elementary school is a banana republic, without the limos.”
Jill smiled. “It’s nice to include the office. I always did. Nobody makes them anything. They’ll never forget it.”
“I know. Great minds, right?”
“Here, let me help.”
“Okay.” Katie waved the spatula at the base cabinet. “Get another pan going. We’ll get it done twice as fast.”
“On it.” Jill went into the cabinet, got a heavy skillet, and set it on the stovetop, then reached for the butter, glancing over. “You need to let them cook longer.”
“No, I don’t. This is for eight-year-olds. They eat crayons.”
“You’ll give them salmonella.”
“You get what you pay for.” Katie flipped another pancake. “I’m so glad you came over. What’s shakin’?”
“Brace yourself. I have big news.” Jill held the pan’s handle, turned on the heat, and waited for the butter to melt, a spreading pool of gold. “You’re not going to believe this, but William’s dead.”
“What?” Katie gasped. She looked over, her eyes wide, in disbelief. “William, your ex-husband? Are you kidding?”
“No, it’s true.”
“Hallelujah!” Katie broke into an incredulous smile. “Was it painful? Please tell me it was painful.”
Jill felt torn. “I admit, I’m not crying over the man, but—”
“Look, a jig! Kiss me, I’m Irish. Happy International Day!” Katie put down the spatula and did a dance, shaking her butt. “Lordy be, what goes around really does come around. Hey, can we go dance on his grave?”
“He was cremated.”
“He did that for spite.” Katie made a face, scrunching up her nose.
“Come on, stop. Be nice. Abby came over with the news last night, and she thinks he might have been murdered.”
“Abby was at your house?” Katie asked, suddenly growing serious. “Aw, I love that girl. How was it to see her again? How is she? Tell me everything.”
“I will, but your pancake’s burning.” Jill gestured with the ladle, then poured some batter into the pan. “I feel terrible for the girls.”
“Oh, well, okay, that is sad, only because they’re hurting.” Katie’s face fell, and she picked up the spatula. “But they’re better off without him, they just don’t know it. He didn’t really care about them. Narcissist, crook, thief, liar, sleaze, cheater.”
“Cheating was unproven.” Jill reached over and flipped one of Katie’s pancakes. “Now, don’t speak ill.”
“You can’t talk about William Skyler without speaking ill.” Katie shook her head, disgusted. “I’m sorry, Jill, but he almost ruined you, and he kept those girls from you, too, after the divorce. He punished you, and he punished them, too. He used them like pawns to hurt you, and he straight-up abandoned Megan. I’ll never forgive him for that, ever.”
Jill tasted bitterness on her tongue. “Well, he’s gone now. You want to hear what happened or not?”
“Yes, please,” Katie answered, calming down, and while they cooked, Jill told her the whole story, from Abby’s visit to the surveillance film at the pharmacy. Katie asked questions, Jill elaborated, and sixty-two pancakes later, the story was finished.
“You want to see the photo from the drugstore?” Jill went to her purse, slid out her BlackBerry, thumbed her way to the photo, and showed it to Katie. “Think it’s him?”
“I can’t see it, it’s too small. Email it to me.” Katie went over to her laptop on the counter near the chopped onions, and Jill emailed her the photo. They huddled around the computer while Katie opened the email, saved the photo, and enlarged it. Katie shook her head. “It could be William, but I can’t tell.”
“Me, neither. He could be disguising himself.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know.” Jill dug in her purse. “Hold on, let me check something else on the web.”
“What?”
“The prescribing doctor.” Jill found the paper with Abby’s notes, logged onto the Internet, Googled licensing authority in Pennsylvania, and got the website. “I have his li
cense number, so I should be able to find his address.”
“How?”
“Anybody can check the status of a doctor’s license, online.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Most people don’t. Luckily, Abby didn’t.” Jill found the Pennsylvania Department of State website, typed in Medicine, then supplied the doctor’s name and license number from Abby’s paper. She had to add a location, so she plugged in Philadelphia, then hit Search. The screen switched to a single line of text:
Dr. Raj Patel, Lic. No. 9483636, DEA # 393484, DECEASED, 3/9/09
Jill felt her heart sink. “The prescribing doctor is dead, so Abby’s right about one thing. This script is a fraud.”
“Whoa.”
“And it’s not even recent, so it’s not like the doc wrote the script, then died.”
“Are you sure it’s the same Dr. Patel?”
“Yes, it has to be. Only one doc is given that license or DEA number. They’re unique.” Jill shook her head. It meant that she couldn’t put the matter to bed, not yet. “If it’s William, he’s up to his old tricks, using stolen prescription pads. But I don’t know why he’d fill them himself, if it wasn’t his meds.”
“Wonder where he got Dr. Patel’s pads?”
“He could have called on the practice in the old days, or got them from the office trash.” Jill opened the enlarged photo of the man in the black ballcap, eyeing it in confusion. “None of this makes sense. William knew enough about drugs to know not to mix them with alcohol.”
“Is there life insurance?”
“Yes, for a million bucks. The girls benefit.”
“We’re worth more dead than alive, too.”
Jill blinked, thinking. “That’s funny. What if he took the pills intentionally? What if it really was suicide, but insurance companies don’t always pay off for suicides. He wanted the policy to pay off, so he made it look like an accidental death? What if he staged the whole thing?”
“Why would he do that?” Katie’s eyes narrowed, sharply blue. “He had money, so he didn’t need it from the insurance company. Unless he doesn’t really have the money, and it’s all a sham.”
“True, but I can’t find that out. Victoria and the lawyer took his financial info, but some of it should be in Quicken.”
“Definitely, if he pays his bills online.”
“He didn’t, at least when we were married. He said he didn’t trust it.”
“The pot calling the kettle.” Katie snorted. “I don’t see him killing himself for them. It would be a supremely unselfish act.”
Both women fell silent a minute, thinking, and Jill picked at the pile of rejected potato pancakes. “I wonder if I should call the cops. Tell them about Patel and the faked script. They can check out the surveillance video.”
“No reason not to call, but why would they care? It’s not evidence that he was murdered, and they don’t care if he committed suicide.”
“The insurance company does.” Jill thought of the implications. “But if it’s suicide, and I start raising questions, I could do the kids out of their benefits.”
“Right.” Katie looked over, her brow wrinkling with new concern. “Can I ask you a question? Why do you care?”
Jill smiled, but Katie wasn’t kidding this time.
“Who cares why or how William died?”
Jill answered, “I told you, Abby thinks it was murder.”
“I’m asking why you care.”
“I don’t care, I’m just exploring it.”
“It sure looks like you care. You’re running around to drugstores and researching licenses online.”
Jill realized she was right. She valued so many things about Katie, and her honesty, above all. “Okay, good point. I care because of Abby. She believes it was murder and she’s going to try to figure out who did it. She reached out to me, after so long.” Jill knew it now, she felt it inside. “I care because Abby does, and I can help her. She needs to get her life back on track, and she won’t do that as long as her father’s death is a question mark.”
Katie shrugged. “Okay.”
Jill smiled. “That easy?”
“It was such a good speech.”
“So glad we had this little talk. Do you think I’m wrong to help Abby?”
“I don’t judge you, honey. I understand why you’d want to help, and why you feel you have to.”
“Sam doesn’t.”
“He didn’t know her, and he’s not a mother.”
“He’s a father.”
“It’s not the same. Sorry to be politically incorrect, but it’s true.” Katie ate a piece of blackened pancake. “Paul is a great father, but he got to take the kids out while I stayed behind, and I guarantee, he’ll read the computer magazines while they pick out their books. He won’t sit with them, helping them pick one like I would, and he won’t worry if they get out of his sight. Men don’t worry like we do, but we know, things go wrong.”
“True.” Jill saw it in her practice, when a child’s eye got injured by a paintball gun, or an arm sliced with a fishing knife. She knew things went wrong, and some made wounds you couldn’t suture.
“My real worry is my godchild. Megan.” Katie’s features softened. “You’re talking about Abby’s loss, but Megan lost a father, too, and William’s death comes at a bad time for her, with you about to get married. And now Abby’s back in the picture. Even if Megan’s happy about it, it’s a change. Megan’s got a lot going on, for a kid.”
“You’re right.” Jill felt a guilty pang. “It’s like the King is dead, long live the King.”
“Exactly.”
“I guess I haven’t been paying enough attention to Megan, with Abby so needy.”
“It’s understandable. Like my mother says, you give to the kid who needs it the most.”
“What if they all need it the most?”
“Margarita time.”
Jill smiled. “Sam wants to get out of the kid business.”
Kate scoffed. “Gimme a break. Moms never get out of the kid business. Last time I checked, motherhood had no expiration date.”
Jill laughed. “How’d you get so smart?”
Katie smiled. “Hanging around you, except for the padiddle part. First off, can I just say, I hate all car games?”
“Do you think the black SUV is following me? Or Abby?”
“No, that’s totally paranoid. Don’t worry about it.”
“But what if the driver is the man in the black ballcap?”
“The man in the ballcap had the worst disguise ever, and anyone who would follow you in a padiddle is the worst stalker ever.” Katie snorted. “Come to think of it, maybe it is the same guy, but he sucks.”
“If he killed William, he doesn’t.”
“Tell me about it.” Katie raised an eyebrow. “If he killed William, he deserves a medal.”
Chapter Sixteen
Jill pulled into her driveway and cut the ignition in the dark. She hadn’t seen any padiddle on the way home, and she was starting to think Katie was right about her being paranoid. She got out of the car, breathing in the cool night air, damp from all the rain. She closed the door behind her, looking down at the end of the street where she’d seen the black SUV.
What SUV? I parked around the corner.
Jill thought a minute. She had first seen the SUV in front of the Bakers’ house, but they didn’t own an SUV, so on impulse, she walked down the street to the Bakers’. The lights were on inside the house, a Dutch colonial, and a flickering TV shone through the curtains in their living room, so she walked to the front door and knocked. It was answered in a minute by Janet Baker, an older woman with a round, sweet face.
“Hello, Janet,” Jill said. “Sorry to bother you.”
“It’s okay.” Janet smiled, pleasantly. “What brings you here?”
“Last night, during the rainstorm, did you have a visitor who drives a black SUV? I saw one pull away from the front of your house.”
> Janet frowned, shaking her head. “Why, no. We were home alone. Just us.”
“Do you know if the DiLorios did, or the Jacksons?”
“I have no idea.”
“Thanks. Sorry to keep you. Goodnight.” Jill backed off the steps, wondering, then put it out of her mind. It had to be nothing. She walked back down the street to her car, retrieved the box with William’s files and laptop, then closed the door and went into the house, juggling her house keys, purse, and the box to open the door, which was when her cell phone started ringing, with Megan’s ringtone.
“Arg.” Jill clambered into the house to the sound of Lady Gaga, plunked the box on the console table, and slid her phone from her purse, pressing ANSWER. “Honey, aren’t you home?”
“No, I’m at Courtney’s. Can I sleep over?”
“Again?” Jill sat down in a ladderback chair, and Beef came over, wagging his tail and sniffing the box, which had a paper plate of pancakes on top, covered with tin foil.
“I know, but we’re working on our English project, and we’re not finished yet.”
“What is this project, anyway?” Jill could hear the sound of the TV, playing in the family room.
“We’re studying Romeo and Juliet, and we have to memorize a scene and do it for the class, so we have to practice together. I’m Juliet.”
“How much longer will you take to finish?”
“A while, Mom,” Megan answered, with theatrical impatience, and Jill let it go, trying to take it easy on her.
“You can come home after you finish it. I’ll pick you up, whenever.”
“Why can’t I just stay here? Her parents are home.”
“But I was hoping to see you tonight. I know it’s been a tough weekend for you, and I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine, Mom.” Megan sighed, and in the background, Courtney was saying something.
“I have fresh potato pancakes,” Jill offered, though the days of food bribes had gone. Pizza bagels used to be her trump card. “Wait, don’t you have a meet tomorrow?”
“Yes, but I’ll sleep, I promise.”
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