Safe at home, I poured a vodka tonic with shaky hands and took a sip. I shuddered at the first bitter swallow and sat down. The alcohol was no better than I remembered from when Steve had fixed me one. Not usually my thing, but tonight I was inclined to try it his way. A malpractice suit suddenly seemed much less menacing than a murder charge. Why had the insurance company tried to stir it up in the first place? I took another sip and stretched out my legs on the couch, sinking back into the cushions. The evening was cool and I would have enjoyed a fire, but my legs were jelly, and my body refused to carry out another task. My mind, however, was spinning out of control.
Insurance companies don’t usually have such a personal interest in their patients or their doctors. I wondered why Kinder would have been calling Sheila Summers. I knew that the HMO was a part of the same conglomerate as Ness Inc. where Sarah worked, and figured her coverage was probably a job-related benefit which would end within a few months of being out of work unless she could afford to pay COBRA, which I was sure that she could not. Sarah was costing them tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills, plus she was still working in spite of her disability. Was this of interest to them because it was ruining their bottom line, or because she was an internal figure? She was just a line worker. She wasn’t anything more than a pawn to them. I took another sip and the warmth of the alcohol reached to my toes.
I recalled that Fiona Crawford, the insurance agent, had been at the hospital on the night of Sarah’s death, walking out while I was walking in. Suddenly I couldn’t sit still— there had to be a connection. Krauss didn’t know all of this when we had met the other night. Perhaps if she had, she would have also suspected another source for the arsenic.
I rose and poured out the rest of the drink in the kitchen sink. I needed my wits about me. In a frenzy, I paced around the kitchen. How could I find out what had happened? I could notify the police of my suspicions, but I needed some kind of proof. Tomorrow I would see Fiona Crawford and see what I could find out.
I found myself in my workshop and continued to pace as I rolled a pair of cabochons back and forth between my fingers; one was a blue larimar, the other was a purple amethyst. There had been a green peridot with them, which I had already set in a ring. They were meant to be worn together as stacking rings, but the peridot ring had disappeared in the burglary.
When I heard the upstairs clock strick midnight, I put down the jewels and slowly climbed the stairs. The bedroom had such a huge, empty feeling now that Steve wasn’t in it. I thought about moving to the tiny guest bedroom, but at least from the master, on the many nights when I couldn’t sleep, I could step out onto the adjoining patio and watch Orion.
I’d read the myth of the handsome hunter as a child, and then watched him every night to see if his shoulder would bleed. The sight of my childhood companion was a comfort now that I could no longer call my mother for comfort. She died last year of complications from a minor surgery. The combination of the loss of my mother and then the estrangement from Steve, had wedged me into work. Most of my outside ties had gradually faded away, and I had few other social obligations.
I awoke before dawn with a start. I had slept quite soundly for five hours and hardly remembered dozing off. Now I listened to the darkness. Maybe I could hear something; maybe they were coming for me. No, not yet, not the police. I shook my head and tried to separate dream from reality. Sweat was chilling on my skin. There were no sounds. It was 5:30 AM, and I’d been having nightmares. I had to talk to the insurance agent.
I got up, skipped my morning exercise, and showered. I drove into the office through more rain and gloomy April showers. I was changing my agenda again, and I wouldn’t be reopening my office today after all. I left a note to cancel all appointments for the day. Then I picked up all of the letters I had received from the insurance company and the chart on Sarah Summers. The signature on the letters was Fiona Crawford’s. Kinder Health Care and Crawford were connected to this in some way, and I was going to find out how.
The rain beat on the windshield as I drove to Kinder Health Care’s headquarters. It was just approaching eight-thirty. Kinder indeed, I thought, as I ran across the parking lot in the rain. I banged on the glass-front doors of the old brown building. Inside, office workers were milling around, waiting for the solitary elevator. The security guard walked over from his desk, but he refused to unlock it. He called through the glass that the offices would not be open until nine.
“Can I just wait right inside the door?” I called back as I shivered in the rain.
He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders as though the whole thing was out of his control.
“C’mon, just inside the door? This rain is freezing me out here.”
He shook his head and turned away.
Oh yeah, I thought, definitely kinder. Chagrined, I went back across the street to huddle in the car with the heater on. At eight-fifty-nine, I watched the receptionist unlock the door, and I marched in.
“Fiona Crawford, please,” I said curtly. I was soggy, chilled through, and thoroughly put out.
“I’m afraid that she’s not available,” the receptionist said from behind a high, chipped, wooden desk that curved in a semi-circle, protecting her like an ivory tower.
“She can’t be busy, I’m the first person in here. Believe me, I’ve been watching,” I said
“She isn’t here, ma’am.” The receptionist was nonplussed.
“Then let me speak to her supervisor.” I spoke in my most authoritative voice.
“Let me check to see if he is in,” she said. She picked up a telephone extension. “Mr. White, there’s a woman here to see Miss Crawford. Yes, I see, of course. Thank you.” She hung up. “He can’t see you now. I would suggest that you make an appointment.”
“Mr. White? Reid White is in? Where is his office?” I knew that he worked with her, but not that he was her direct supervisor. Suddenly, I could see where this could have gotten personal. My lip twitched at the thought of another encounter with my ex-husband’s friend.
Reid had been a friend of Steve’s since we had moved to town. He had talked his way into his job with no experience, and had continued to move up the ladder by wooing higher-ups to his way of thinking. Reid exuded charisma and charm, but I could see him only as a cheap con man. His real name was Reynauld Wierzbicki. He said he’d had it changed when he moved to this country because he thought it was too ethnic, but that never quite added up for me. He had almost no accent either. I hated for Steve to associate with him, especially since the night they had gotten smashed and ended up in jail. Steve had spent the night there for public drunkenness, but Reid talked his way out, as usual.
“You can’t go up there. He’s in a meeting,” called the receptionist to my back.
Professionalism be damned, I thought. “This is personal,” I replied over my shoulder as I marched over to the office directory to find his office. My shoes then stacattoed up an ancient, circular flight of stairs to his room. Besides, who could have gotten in before the magical hour of nine to be in a meeting with him already? I heard two male voices through the narrow window abutting the door as I approached it, so I stopped. The hallway was dimly lit, so I was unlikely to cast a shadow through it into the room.
“I had her check Haiti,” said Reid.
“And what did she find?” responded the second voice, which I also recognized.
No longer caring to hear Reid’s response, and since the receptionist was likely to be sending someone up after me, I burst in. “Reid White. Long time, no see.”
“Veronica!” Reid’s face was a mask of surprise. He started halfway out of his chair, then sat back down.
“Veronica!” repeated a shocked voice behind me.
I twirled to face the source of the voice I had recognized from outside. “Steve, what are you doing here?”
“I make calls on him. Same as I did when we met.” Steve had regained his composure but he didn’t smile, and he didn’t explain wh
y this ‘call’ was before business hours. His face was rather unflatteringly covered with three days’ growth of moth-eaten beard.
“Forgive me for interrupting, but what on earth are you checking in Haiti?” I demanded. Steve’s presence here had shaken me perhaps as much as my barging in had shaken them, but I’d had my shake-up in the hall and I was determined to hold the upper hand.
“Veronica, why are you here?” interrupted Reid. His hand was on the phone receiver preparing to call security to oust me. I doubted he would do it, though. I knew him well enough for that.
“I’m here to talk about Sarah Summers.”
“Excuse me,” Steve interrupted. “I’ve got to be going.” Steve stood up from the overstuffed chair, nearly knocking over a stack of books in his haste to leave the room. The books were law texts, similar to what I had seen Jackie lug around years ago. I would wonder about that later.
I ignored Steve’s departure as best I could. “Going back to law school Reid? Or just trying to give the wrong impression as usual?” I sat down in the leather chair in Steve’s place and crossed my legs. My feet were resting on an expensive oriental carpet.
“Well, Dr. Lane, you seem to be your usual pleasant self. Now that we’re alone, what can I do for you?” Reid inquired in a pleasant tone, calmly opening a drawer and pulling out a stack of papers as though he needed to take care of other pressing obligations.
“I need to speak with Fiona Crawford about my patient.” I watched him carefully.
“You mean Miss Summers?” he asked, knocking the papers together in a preoccupied manner.
“Yes.”
“I’m afraid that Fiona is away now. Come back sometime next week.” He leaned back with a cold smile.
I assumed as cold and haughty a façade as possible in response. Leaning forward in my seat with all the menace I could muster at one hundred twenty pounds soaking wet, I planted both feet on his overpriced rug and stared him down. “I need to see her right now. Where is she?”
Reid didn’t look away. He smiled with his lips sealed tight, “She’s in Europe, where I should be.”
“I see. Okay then, you explain to me why my patient’s family was called by the insurance company and told that the company was concerned about my choice of therapy. What insurance company would do that? Did you order that call?” Of course he had.
“We thought it was prudent to notify them of the event.” Reid clasped his hands primly on the desk on top of the papers he had been shuffling.
“Why are you doing this?” I gripped the arms of the chair in an effort to appear calm and cool.
Reid looked like the cat that ate the canary. “Ah yes, Mother Theresa, how are you doing? Always crusading. Your poor, your hungry, your huddled masses,” he sneered. “Like the rest of us don’t have real world problems. How does it feel to be wrong?”
“Wrong! What wrong? She was poisoned!” I almost choked in my fury, all pretense of cool self-possession gone.
“Poisoned?” Reid’s hand went to his throat, no longer fully self-possessed himself. “When was that found?”
“At the autopsy you ordered,” I said dryly.
He looked down at his desk and shook his head. “That autopsy. Oh bon dieu!”
“I came to find out what you know about it.” I walked over to the desk, placing my hands on the wooden cigar box at the front edge, and leaned over, glaring at him with as much anger as I had ever felt.
“I have nothing to tell you,” he finally called for security.
“Fine.” I straightened and moved toward the door. “I will find out what happened, though. You tell Ms. Crawford that I’m looking for her.”
He nodded. “I’ll do that.”
My face was hot and I could feel a deep flush rising across it. Reid had ordered that call, I knew it, and he’d done it with every intention of provoking a suit. But as far as I could tell, he had not wanted the autopsy. I wasn’t sure what that meant, nor what I should do next. Outside the door, I sighed. I hoped that Crawford would come back soon. I still needed to know how involved the company was. If it was involved, then Crawford probably didn’t have any intention of returning anytime soon. This thought did not serve to make me feel any better. Maybe Steve knew something about Kinder. I bit my lip, realizing that I would have to go see him too. Was this some kind of vendetta against me?
The rain had slowed to a fine mist, and the temperature outside of Kinder Health Care had dropped several degrees. ‘Saft,’ Ellen liked to call it. Shivering in my damp clothes, I turned up the heater as soon as I cranked the engine. I still wanted to visit Sarah Summers’ home. I had checked the chart for the address and was soon driving in a wooded neighborhood full of older homes. The houses I passed had neat lawns and big overhanging oak trees that gave the street a feeling of mature contentment. The address I was looking for was less manicured than the others, but still nicer than I had expected given Sarah’s situation. The yard was overgrown, but the white clapboard duplex was clean and well-kept otherwise. Puddles had collected alongside the street from the recent rain and I could hear a swollen stream arguing with itself from the rear of the property.
I walked up the gravel drive to the edge of the yellow-taped perimeter surrounding the right side entry to the house. As I wondered what to do next, an older woman came out of the left.
“She’s not there. She won’t be coming back,” called the woman. I studied her in her old, worn tennis shoes and loose gingham check dress. Her face was soft and amorphous with deep wrinkles that obliterated the features of her face. “She’s dead.”
“Yes, I know. I was there.” I had come to a halt on the gravel.
She paused in confusion. “You’re not a bill collector?”
“No, I’m her doctor,” I explained. I wondered how much she could tell me. Probably a lot if she was as nosy as she seemed.
“If you’re the doctor, then why are you coming around here when you know that she’s dead?” asked the old lady. Another thought struck her. “Maybe I should call the neighborhood watch.”
“I am Dr. Lane. I had hoped that I would find someone who could tell me about what went on before her death,” I said in my most matter-of- fact voice.
“I don’t know what I could tell you.” The woman climbed down from the old stoop and stopped halfway to me in a tangle of sweet pea vines that spilled over from Sarah’s porch to hers.
“What I want to know was whether she had any friends or regular visitors.” I inched closer to the house.
“Most of her visitors were bill collectors, and insurance salesmen. They sometimes came to my door to leave her their papers, but I refused to do their dirty work for them.” She scowled with her hands on her hips.
“Insurance? Was there any one in particular?” I stepped toward her, dodging overgrown weeds.
“No, just the door-to-door men. A different one each week. They like to work in our neighborhood because of all of the older folks here.”
“Was there ever a red-headed woman?”
The woman frowned, “Not that I recall. Sometimes I don’t hear them when they come. My hearing’s going, you know.”
That I doubted. “Did she have any regular visitors?”
“Just one. She used to come every couple of weeks, usually right before the end of my stories; I didn’t always get up to see her.”
“What did she look like?”
“She dressed like a soap star, with sunglasses and a scarf over her head. Did you see the one last week with Victor and the new girl, the one who’s having his baby? She looked a little like her.”
I shook my head, wondering if I could get her to let me inside. “Was it possible that she could have been red-headed?”
“Could have.”
“What did they do when she came to visit?”
“Are you sure you’re not a reporter? You ask a lot of questions,” she said.
“No, I’m Dr. Lane, her doctor. Maybe she mentioned me?”
“Lane. No,
I can’t say that she ever did.” She cocked her head shrewdly, but said no more.
“How long did the soap star stay?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t like to pry into other people’s business.”
“Did she stay overnight?”
“Oh, no. She was only here for about an hour each time. Usually not even past the last commercials. I think she came for tea. At least that’s what I gathered. Sarah invited me to join them for tea once, but of course I couldn’t go,” said the old woman.
“Of course,” I agreed sagely.
“I have lumbago.”
“I see.” I said. “So you’ve never seen this woman’s face?” I kept my face composed to reveal only polite agreement and inquisitiveness. I did not want her to pick up on my frustration.
“I’ve seen parts of it. She wore bright red lipstick and rouge. Very loud. Not attractive at all in a young lady,” said the old woman.
“Anything else? What did she drive?” I looked out toward the street, gauging the distance from the windows. There should have been a good view of any car parked near the duplex. There were no large trees in this yard to obstruct the view.
“I don’t guess I ever looked.”
“Never?” I thought she’d picked a helluva time not to be nosy. Where was all of this avid interest then?
“I don’t know that much about cars. I’ve never driven one. I guess I should have learned, but I was too old when I had the chance.” The woman resumed her soft, helpless appearance.
“So you didn’t see the car at all?”
“No, I didn’t,” said the woman.
“Okay, well, thank you for your help.” I looked at my watch. The day was flying by. It was nearly two o’clock, and my stomach growled as a reminder. I drove toward town. Tall smokestacks exuded the sour smells of the paper mill, a stench that permeated the air as I sat in the wet, slow traffic. I wrinkled my nose. At some point I was going to have to call Jackie’s lawyer friend, Hal Keats.
Treating Murder: Book One of the Veronica Lane, M.D. series (medical thriller) Page 9
