Time Expired

by Susan Dunlap

  “Smith, I’ll tell you what you need to be doing. You need to be going to the Emergency Room. Now go on.”

  “I’ll stop by the hospital later. After I finish with Timms—”

  He grabbed my shoulder. “You get yourself to Emergency now. When they finish with you, then you worry about these meter maid incidents. You pull every report on every one of them. We’ve got to find this guy before he blows up the entire city.”

  My fingers were squeezing together as if Herbert Timms were about to slip out between them. “Inspector, we don’t know this explosion is connected to the meter pranks.”

  Doyle breathed slowly, angrily. “If it’s not, fine; you can write up a report supporting that theory. But, Smith, if this is the work of our perp, we’ve got ourselves a guy who’s gone over the edge. He’s setting traps for no apparent reason.”

  I started to speak but he stopped me. Giving my shoulder a pat, he let go. “You could have been killed down there. You or one of the neighborhood kids if they’d gotten there first.”

  I sighed. No amount of complaint was going to sway him. Medical treatment after an incident like this was regulation; I didn’t have any choice. Being an officer injured on duty allows you to cut to the front of the line in Emergency. But that “advantage” is less of a boon when it just means you get back to the station sooner to start pulling reports. And Herbert Timms goes on seeing spaniels.

  I could have asked who would be assigned to Timms, but that meant admitting his decision was final. Grudgingly, I nodded and left.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to trot right up to my car. I stopped in the main house. At least I’d find out what Delia was up to.

  Delia was nowhere in sight. I checked the dining room and the kitchen. I stood at the bottom of the stairs and called her name. I walked up the carpeted steps to the second floor and glanced in each of the rooms. One resident was asleep, the other was sitting by the window as if he had a front row seat. But no Delia. Defeatedly I walked back downstairs and was almost to the front door when Pereira burst in.

  She was panting. “I was afraid you’d be gone. We just got word from Santa Cruz County.”

  “Yes?”

  “The sheriff contacted the guy running the Seaside Veterinary Conference. Would you like to guess what the topic of that conference was?” She smiled.

  “No.”

  “Veterinary dentistry. Brushing for Bruno, flossing for Fido, periodontics for puss. Dr. Timms was a lecturer. Root canals for Rex.”

  “Connie!”

  “Right,” she said, swallowing a grin. “Seems our Dr. Timms is a big name in the world of canine canines. But, Smith, that’s not the really interesting part.”

  My leg and back muscles throbbed. “What?”

  “Dr. Herbert Timms’s presentation was Sunday morning at nine. He checked out of his motel beforehand. And at ten he left the conference for good.”

  I whistled. Sunday night was the hostage operation. Sometime Monday Madeleine Riordan had been killed. It was now three days later. Where had Timms been between ten A.M. Sunday and whenever he got to his office this morning? It was a long time for a man to be gone when his wife was dying.

  I picked up the office phone and dialed Dr. Timms’s, D.V.M. office, a number I knew nearly by heart now.

  “This is Detective Smith, Berkeley Police. I need to speak to Dr. Timms.”

  “I’m sorry, the doctor is in surgery.”

  “So he is in the office.”

  “Yes, but he’s very backed up. We had to reschedule all his patients. He’s got patients till eight this evening.”

  I took a breath, repressing the urge to snap: The man’s wife has been murdered! Instead, I said, “This is a police matter. Tell Dr. Timms I will be at his office in an hour, and I expect him to be available.”

  “But he’s got patients—”

  “An hour!”

  CHAPTER 19

  I STOPPED BY EMERGENCY, cut in front of a woman on crutches, a man holding his side and moaning, and two teenagers so green I didn’t want to think what disease they might have, or be spreading. Ten minutes later I was out and on my way home for the world’s quickest shower and change of clothes—black turtleneck, green wool slacks, and a blazer—and made it to the veterinary office right on time.

  Dr. Herbert Timms’s office was in a dark, wood-shingled Victorian on Telegraph Avenue, but not in the four blocks nearest campus, which most people think of as “the Avenue” with its sidewalk table displays of tie-dyed long johns and red feather earrings. There, there was no place to park when bringing a chihuahua for a checkup. Parking is an important consideration to a veterinarian and his two-footed clientele. And, I suspected, the folk who considered splinting the teeth of their Shar-Peis were not likely to park their Mercedeses blocks away.

  I thought of Snowball—my brother Mike gave the Great Pyrenees his name, which quickly was shortened to Ballsy, a distressingly apt name. His vet’s office was a cheery place with pictures of all of his patients and their people, and a huge family tree chart of the dog world from the beginnings of canus familiaris. Happy hounds stood next to eager sporting breeds, smug miniatures, and serious working dogs. And each time I saw Ballsy’s vet, I made him explain again how the Russian tracker, ancestor of the golden retriever, could possibly have become extinct. Spotted owls become extinct, not big furry red dogs.

  But there were no cute snapshots or genealogical maps on the walls of Herbert Timms, D.V.M. The tiny waiting room looked like a Victorian front parlor with linoleum floor slanted down to a drain in the middle. The only decoration was a time flowchart of the progress of dental decay, each stage accompanied by dire prognosis of misfortunes of the nonbrushing dog. The smell of vinegar battled with wet fur. And my entrance had raised a communal howl worthy of a National Geographic special. It suited my mood—cold, damp (hair), stiff (from the explosion tossing), and grumpy (from Doyle, the lack of progress on both cases, and from Dr. Tour-California-While-Your-Wife-Dies Timms).

  I made my way past three cringing cock-a-poos and a very smug-looking shepherd to the counter. Behind it sat a woman with file cards in one hand and the phone in the other. “I’m afraid, Mrs. Templer,” she said above the chorus of barks, “that shedding is not Duke’s only problem. The main issue in his contact with humans and other canines, is that he is simply inadequately socialized.” She glanced up at me and quickly returned her gaze to the cards.

  I plopped my shield in front of her. Then I pointed to the door.

  She shook her head.

  In a voice that would carry through the waiting room, I said, “I’m here to see Dr. Timms on police business.” Behind came three distinct shhh’s. I chose to believe they were aimed at the dogs.

  “Mrs. Templer, I’m going to have to put you on hold.” The woman pushed two buttons and said in a soft but no-nonsense voice, “Doctor, I think you should see the police officer now.”

  His voice rumbled incomprehensibly in the receiver.

  “Doctor, I’d see her now.” She clicked off.

  I expected her to tell me he’d be with me in a minute, but she merely switched back to Mrs. Templer and her socially stunted dog.

  I strode to the surgery door and stood tapping my foot. Ballsy’s vet used to have a doghouse roof painted over his office door with DOCTOR where ROVER might have been. Timms’s was just a door.

  A plain wooden door, nothing to ease the passage in, that suited the kind of man who cared so little about his wife of two years that he went off for the weekend when she was dying. He didn’t even bother to drive her to the nursing home. I tapped my foot more sharply, vainly trying to keep an open mind about him and what caused her to leave him and go back to a place where she was lonely and vulnerable enough to be murdered.

  I hadn’t really formed so much a mental picture as an image of Herbert Timms. But when the door opened, I knew the man who emerged didn’t fit it. He was tall, tan, with a long, exceedingly narrow face, bagged brown eyes, and silk
y chestnut hair that hung flyaway from his narrow bald pate—a Saluki in medical garb. His attenuated fingers looked as if they could reach all the way down any hound’s throat.

  Madeleine Riordan had waited a long time to marry. The man before me wouldn’t have been my first guess for one to sweep her off her feet.

  “I’m already backed up,” he said, ushering me in through his plain wood door. Salukis were temple dogs, seated next to the pharaoh, hounds to be revered, not told to sit and stay. Madeleine Riordan was not a woman who revered.

  The dogs in the waiting room were still barking. From the back of the surgery came low whines, presumably from patients coming off anesthesia. Timms led me into a small white room. A large rectangular metal tray jutted out from the wall—the examining table, I recalled, on which a dog spends his time futilely trying to control his splaying legs. Timms stood on one side like a clerk behind a low counter. The only chair was beside him. It was a room suitable to concluding an interview rapidly. Whether from habit or the urge to avoid eye contact, he looked down at the tray. “I’ve just gotten back. I’m running behind.” His hands were steady, his voice matter-of-fact, as if he were asking me to condense the description of Fido’s symptoms.

  I remembered Madeleine Riordan propped up in the bed, her hand digging into Coco’s fur, and that wrenching aura of loneliness that had chilled me for hours. “Dr. Timms, the cock-a-poos can wait. Your wife is dead. Where were you all weekend?”

  He cringed—minutely—as if reeling from a jab in the ego. I couldn’t imagine him having a normal-size reaction to anything. “I had to give a paper. Madeleine and I lived with the prospect of her death for over a year; I couldn’t stay home every moment. I have a responsibility to my science.”

  No wonder Madeleine had been willing to come back to Canyonview. Michael, Delia, Claire, and even Champion with his camera had their faults, but any one of them was better than this hard kernel of self-absorption. I took a moment to steady my voice before saying, “Your wife was murdered. I will stand here as long as it takes to find out your exact movements from the end of your lecture till now. Is that clear?”

  Still staring at the tray, he said, “Officer, I don’t like your attitude.”

  “You wouldn’t be getting this attitude if you’d bothered to call us anytime in the last three days.”

  “I didn’t know—”

  “Your wife’s death was in the papers.”

  “I didn’t see the local papers. I was too far away.”

  “Please! We left messages with your service. Surely you are not so irresponsible that you don’t check in with your service.” Sarcasm was spilling off my tongue; I knew it, but I couldn’t make myself control it.

  “They didn’t tell me.”

  “That’s not what they told us.” I was guessing.

  “I didn’t know it was important.”

  “Not important? A message from Homicide!” I leaned forward over the tray. “Look, Dr. Timms, when there is a murder, the best suspect is the spouse. When the spouse has an alibi and is cooperating, we’re still suspicious. In your case I’m on the verge of putting you in the cage and taking you down to the station.”

  “I am cooperating. I’m holding up my surgery schedule to cooperate. Look, I will write out what I did hour by hour after I left Carmel if you want, but it’s not going to make any difference. I drove around. I ate; I can’t remember where. I walked on the beach. I can’t give you a precise enough description of my time to be of any use. That’s why I didn’t call you.”

  “You didn’t comply because it didn’t benefit you. And now you’re acting like that excuses you.” He started to speak but I held up a hand. How had Madeleine Riordan put up with him? “We’ll deal with that later. But I have to tell you, Dr. Timms, you seem remarkably unconcerned about your wife’s murder.”

  “I’m not,” he said, his mouth barely moving.

  “Okay, then let’s start with why your wife left her own home to return to Canyonview.”

  “She needed supervision.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Timms must have caught the meaning, for he said, “Not supervision like control. She just had to be someplace where there was always someone around. She went there because she didn’t want to be a bother.”

  “A bother to you?”

  He nodded: the silky chestnut strands flapped gracefully in response. “So she wouldn’t interfere with my practice.”

  I breathed in slowly. The smell of antiseptic filled my nostrils, and I had the sense of it drying out the lining of my nose. I could picture Timms and Madeleine together, so restrained, talking about her death as if it were an appointment that necessitated some rearranging of their social schedules. “Was that an agreement you two had?”

  “I’m out of town a lot, lecturing. This is an exciting time in veterinary dentistry; there are ground-breaking procedures in odontology, particularly exciting in endodontics—vital pulpotomy. It’s wonderful to be—”

  “Couldn’t she have hired someone to care for her at home if you were out of town?”

  It took him a moment to gear down from the heights of endodontic enchantment. “She didn’t want me to worry. And there would have been all the hassle of hiring someone, dealing with them.”

  I didn’t bother pursuing that. Trying to keep my voice neutral, I said, “Her decision to go back to Canyonview, was that something you discussed and decided on together?”

  “We discussed it. She decided.”

  “And you concurred?”

  He ran a long lean finger along the edge of the tray, watching its progress. I had the feeling he was using the time to search for an answer he prepared. “It was the sensible decision. Why should she have spent her last days home alone, with just hired help, when she could be with other people in her own condition?”

  Like all the dogs coming off the anesthesia in the cages down the hall. I just caught myself before I shook my head in disgust. “You haven’t been married long. How did you meet?”

  “Professionally.”

  “You were in court?”

  “Oh, no! Coco had been hit by a car. He was in terrible shape, had a—”

  “I don’t need the details,” I said quickly.

  Again his finger traversed the tray. “Well, it was touch and go whether Coco would pull through. It required extremely tricky surgery to save him, and virtual around-the-clock care. Madeleine got a month’s leave from work. She sat with him in here—I don’t usually allow that, but Coco was in such bad shape I felt it was the right decision. And after Coco went home and she couldn’t transport him properly”—he hesitated—“I initiated home visits. And, things progressed from there.”

  I hadn’t realized how flat his voice had been when speaking of his wife until I heard the normal highs and lows as he described Coco’s condition. Clearly both he and Madeleine had responded much more warmly to the dog than to each other. I knew people who’d stayed together for the children. But this was the first couple who’d married for the dog. It seemed so ludicrous, a situation with which sharp-witted Madeleine Riordan would have had a field day. And yet it made me think better of her. It was a mistake that made her seem more human. “Tell me about her. What was she like?”

  He looked blankly at me.

  “What did she enjoy doing?”

  “Oh. She was meticulous about her work. A lot of times I’d come home from evening hours and she’d be sitting up at her computer, or on the phone with someone connected with her cases.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. She never talked about them.”

  Not if she got that type of response, I guessed. “Did she ever mention the name Herman Ott?”

  “No.”

  “Delia McElhenny? Claire Wellington? Michael Wennerhaver?”

  “No.”

  I closed the pad. I wasn’t going to need notes to remember this interview. “What do you inherit from your wife?”

  “That’s rather a personal—”


  “I can contact her lawyer; that will just delay me. Or you can assist the investigation of your wife’s murder and tell me now.”

  Again he ran his finger along the edge of the tray, watching its progress. Not once had he come near making eye contact. I wondered if that level of personal recognition was within his range. “The bequest,” he said slowly, “isn’t to me, it’s to the clinic here. And being married doesn’t matter. She told me about the bequest after I saved Coco. She was so impressed with that and with my inroads in endodontics she wanted to make it possible for me to teach others—”

  “But she was willing to have you wait to do that teaching till after her death?”

  He looked up and nodded slowly. “She had to live.”

  “But you will benefit from her death.”

  “I suppose. But my point is, she made the will before we married. Before we thought about marrying. There was nothing personal in it.”

  All the fury I’d been holding back erupted. “Of course, there was nothing personal. Your wife was dying and you didn’t even bother to drive directly home from your conference, much less stay home to spend the weekend with her!” My voice echoed off the metal tray. I was too close to this case; I was losing it entirely. “No wonder she left you to go and die somewhere where she at least had her dog for company!”

  His chestnut hair was quivering. Then I realized his whole body was shaking. He stared hard at the tray, peering down as if into a crystal ball. “I couldn’t stop her.” His voice was so low I had to lean forward to hear. “You think I wasn’t much of a husband. I wasn’t. I didn’t know what to do, not with her. I tried, really, I tried, but I couldn’t reach her. Even when she got the diagnosis, knew she was going to die, and I lay next to her in bed, holding her against me, I knew it didn’t do anything except make clear to both of us how ultimately alone we were.” For the first time he looked at me, his eyes big, brown, wet. “I didn’t have to go to this conference. I wasn’t on the schedule. Hardly anyone came to my lecture. But I couldn’t stay here, not when I knew she was dying and she’d chosen to move back with people she laughed at instead of having to stay with me.” He wiped at his face with his fist, but he was too late. A tear hit the metal tray. Instead of spreading out and evaporating, it rolled to the side, and then down the trough that his finger had traversed, becoming smaller and smaller till it ceased to exist.