by Linda Barnes
I hung up on him. Then I quickly placed the call again, going through the same harried receptionist. “Personnel,” I said this time.
“To whom may I direct your call?” She was really trying to weed out the uninformed.
“Janet Lee, please.” Names are power. Any good skip tracer knows that.
When I got through to Lee, I immediately mentioned Peter Knowlton, and repeated my tale. She wasn’t from New England. We had less rapport.
“We’re not hiring,” she said flatly. Careful, I warned myself. Don’t push too hard.
“Well, this wouldn’t be like new hiring, this would be just replacing somebody who left.”
She relented. “What was your friend’s name? At least I can check the department, to see if they’ve already filled the requisition.”
“Tina Sukhia.”
A pause, then, “That name’s not familiar.”
“Well, I’m sure she said Cee Co. Pharmaceutical research.”
“That’s what we do. Sukhia?”
It was my turn to spell. “S-U-K-H-I-A.”
“Sorry,” she said after a long interval. I could hear the quick clicks as she punched away at her computer terminal. “No one with that name has ever worked here.”
I hung up.
“You’re a good liar,” Donovan said.
“And I’m comfortable with violence. An attractive combination.”
“I think so,” he said.
“But you haven’t acted on it.”
“You’re the one who said to cool it. Until Emily’s found. I took you at your word.”
“Good. I like to be taken at my word.”
“You don’t look happy,” he said.
“Shrinks are certainly perceptive.”
“And we love to be called ‘shrinks.’”
“Tina Sukhia is not the connection,” I muttered.
“Still think there is one?”
“Yeah.” But only Emily Woodrow knows it, I said to myself.
I left him, taking the files and an extra napkin-wrapped slice of Sara Lee with me. Now, I thought, would be a terrific time for a fat special-delivery envelope from Emily Woodrow to arrive at my front door.
Nothing came.
I studied the files, circling all references to Cephamycin. I hammered my fingers on my desk top and yanked at strands of wayward hair.
What did I know?
Five children had died at JHHI on the same day. Five.
Three, including Becca Woodrow, had been Tina Sukhia’s patients.
Tina Sukhia administered chemotherapy drugs.
Cephamycin was a chemotherapy drug. All five patients had received Cephamycin the day they’d died.
Tina Sukhia was dead.
The CEO of Cephagen was dead.
My fingers moved to my temples and inscribed deep circles. Oh, for Chrisake, Emily, Emily, Emily.
I wished I’d made a copy of the anonymous note Mooney had shown me. “She will live when you all die!” Something like that.
Had Emily written the text? Who would die next?
I swallowed. Me. Mooney would kill me.
I took the photocopies of the file I’d lifted from Griffith Investigations out of my handbag. I’d been too tired to read it the night before. I couldn’t take time to deal with it now. I stuffed it into a desk drawer. Locked it.
I changed from jeans to dark blue slacks. My white shirt would do, thank goodness. And I had a hat I’d once borrowed from a meter maid and forgotten to return.
I woke Roz. Placated by coffee cake, she agreed to take Paolina out to breakfast, then to the hospital to visit Marta. I admonished her to behave nicely and not frighten the nurses with obscene language or vulgar Tshirts.
“I’ll be a good girl,” she mumbled sleepily and sarcastically, her mouth full of crumbs.
“Then, if Marta’s up to handling Paolina, I have a research job for you. Find out anything you can about a company called Cephagen. Not on any of the exchanges, so they’re probably closely held. Offices in Orlando.”
“Can I take a field trip?”
“No. And stay awake.”
Downstairs, I hurriedly unlocked the desk drawer where I store dangerous or incriminating items, including my unloaded .38. I reached behind it to grab a set of slender picklocks—handcrafted by a former and future resident of the state prison at Walpole—thrust them into my handbag, and raced out to the car.
32
I had to crack my Arrow Street Guide to locate the Woodrow house, a huge mock-Georgian brick set on a couple of gently rolling acres bordering a golf course. Distant marker flags flapped in the breeze.
As a native Detroiter, I’m happiest surrounded by concrete, but I could see the charm of the area. Anyone who looked like Paolina’s buddy, Paco, would be arrested on sight here. I, on the other hand, in my uniformlike dark slacks, with my meter maid’s hat squashing my curls, would closely resemble the person who reads the gas meter, or delivers the mail.
B&Es, such as the one I now contemplated, are easier to pull off on busy city streets, where no one notices another car parked on a teeming block, a new face in the crowd. Your suburban crook banks on absence and indifference: closed curtains, housewives hypnotized by soap operas, dads and kids away.
I strolled up the walk and pressed the doorbell, feeling like a suspicious person.
Harold Woodrow yanked the door open and put an end to my criminal fantasies. He was dressed for the office, but his navy suit was wrinkled, his expensive tie askew, his thinning hair unkempt. The lines under his eyes had turned to gray pouches. Pathetic and arrogant don’t generally go together, but he managed to look both down-in-the-mouth and insufferable at the same time.
I whipped off the hat and stuffed it under my arm. Maybe it was the shape of his nose that made him seem forever arrogant. I could sympathize with that: I’ve had my nose broken three times and it may say things about me that nature never intended.
I read recognition in Woodrow’s eyes, anger.
“Savannah Cates,” I shouted, leaning my weight against the rapidly closing door.
I almost fell into his arms when he suddenly reversed motion.
A flicker of uncertainty crossed his face. He made a stab at denial. “Savannah who? What did you say?” He applied pressure to the door again.
I held my ground. “Don’t try it,” I advised. “Any jury would convict. Guilty as charged.”
“What do you want? More money?”
“Let’s discuss it inside,” I said.
He released a pent-up breath and held the door ajar. “This way,” he said tersely, leading me down a long hallway lined with framed hunting prints, into a room shelved with law books and furnished in deep red leather. I sat, without permission, on a buttoned-down loveseat.
“Have you heard from your wife?” I asked.
He remained standing. “No.”
“Did you really have a burglary?”
“Someone broke in through the kitchen window.”
“No burglar alarm?”
“Emily always sets it. I forgot.”
“Let’s look at this logically,” I said. “If your wife had hired me to break in—to conduct a little asset search, let’s say, just in case she were interested in divorcing you—would I need to crawl through the kitchen window? Don’t you think she’d lend me a key?”
He contemplated the theory, his lips stretched into a tight line.
“Is anything missing?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” he admitted.
“Where did this supposed burglar search?”
“There was a burglar, dammit. And he searched this office, for one.”
“How do you know?”
“I keep my things extremely neat. Does this look neat?”
It looked average to me, papers strewn on the desk in multiple piles. Stacks of books on the floor.
“What was the burglar looking for?” I asked.
“I have no idea.”
; “Papers? An address book?”
“I have no idea,” he repeated stubbornly.
“Do you keep files from your firm here? Legal documents?”
“My office has a safe.”
“Savannah might be interested in your financial situation.”
“She doesn’t care about money,” he said. I didn’t see how his lips could draw themselves into a thinner line, but they succeeded.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Absolutely. She seemed like the spiritual type to me. But you probably don’t entertain her here, what with a wife and curious neighbors and all. And she might just happen to have a friend in the burglar business.”
“You’re as bad as that oaf at the hospital,” he said. “I consider that a racist remark.”
“Which oaf is that?”
“Savannah’s a beautiful woman, elegant, passionate—”
“And you’d be proud to introduce her as your bride at the next office Christmas party. I know. And the fact that she works for a temp agency and lives in a tenement, while your present bride has millions, that’s never crossed your mind. So let’s leave it be, and you answer my question, okay?”
He seemed to consider his options for a moment before angrily responding, “I resent your assumptions.”
“Fine with me. Who was this oaf at JHHI?”
He sat on the companion loveseat, deftly yanking the knees of his trousers to preserve their careful crease. “A friend of Dr. Muir’s saw us holding hands at a coffee shop near the hospital. An indiscreet bit of foolery. I’d met the man before. Socially and professionally. Renzel, Hank Renzel.”
“Professionally?” I leapt on the word. “Does that mean you represent him? Do you legally represent anyone at JHHI? Jerome Muir, for instance?”
“I won’t answer that. I won’t answer a single one of those questions.”
“Did Muir introduce you to Savannah?”
“No.”
He’d answer questions, all right. As long as they didn’t involve his legal practice.
I said, “Let’s get back to Renzel. What oafish thing did he do?”
“Stared at me. Stared at Savannah. He knew us both. He—he shunned us. Like we carried the plague.”
“Maybe he has a thing about infidelity.”
“He has a thing about race,” Woodrow blurted. “Before she started temping, Savannah had a steady job at the pharmacy. Until he forced her to resign.”
“Really?” I made my tone skeptical.
My disbelief seemed to loosen his tongue. “He faked an incident, said she miscounted pills on purpose. It happens to every person of color who gets assigned to pharmacy,” he finished awkwardly.
It never ceases to amaze me, this man-woman thing, this astonishing chemistry. “Person of color.” Even Savannah’s choice of words sounded wrong tripping off Harold Woodrow’s staid establishment tongue. Oh, I could see what might be in it for him: a fling, a tonic for male menopause, escape from his wife’s preoccupation with their daughter’s illness and death, a way to forget his own pain at Becca’s loss.
For Savannah, what?
“Let me ask you something,” Woodrow said abruptly. “Do you think Emily will come back? What’s happened to her?”
“I might be able to answer your questions after I go through her things.”
“Impossible.”
“Do you want a divorce?” I asked. “If she is alive, I’ll find her. How do you think she’ll react when I tell her you’re having an affair with the receptionist at the hospital where your daughter died?”
“Get out of my house,” he said, but there was no menace behind the words. He sounded exhausted, drained.
“As soon as you let me look through Emily’s things.”
“Let me understand this. If I allow you to invade Emily’s privacy, you’ll keep quiet about my, uh, personal business.”
“Your wife never hired me to spy on you,” I said.
“Why, then? Why did she hire you?”
“I won’t answer that,” I said, perversely echoing his earlier refusal.
“What could pawing through her belongings tell you? How would that help?”
I got to my feet.
He rose as well, took a deep breath, and stared around his study, seeming to view the disorder as a shambles, the rest of his life as the same. “The room at the top of the stairs to your left,” he said.
“I won’t be needing your company,” I replied.
33
Top of the stairs to the left.
It was a large overdecorated room—finished, perfect, and yielding few signs of human habitation. The queen-size four-poster, shrouded in yellow-and-rust-flecked paisley, matched the chaise lounge and the curtains. The scallop-edged pillows contrasted. The framed watercolors looked as if they might have been selected for an upscale hotel room. Even the knickknacks seemed impersonal, like books chosen by the yard for their attractive spines.
I rested my meter maid’s hat on the top of the bureau and started opening drawers.
Emily folded her sachet-scented bras and panties. Organized her closet rigorously by color. Harold maintained a separate closet and dressing room, also unimpeachably neat.
I wondered what Keith Donovan would make of the room. Compulsive personality disorder?
A full-time maid with too much time on her hands, I concluded.
The only papers in the tiny desk, which the decorator had doubtlessly called an “escritoire,” were contained in a single drawer and amounted to one box of blameless blue stationery. Two gold pens huddled in a leather case.
Three skin magazines were crumpled at the back of a bedside drawer on what I assumed to be Harold’s side of the bed. Very tame stuff.
I worked my way through Emily’s scarves and stockings. Her jewelry box, a large leather case, gave me hope, but the only thing I discovered in a promising envelope was a handful of pearls awaiting restringing.
Nothing taped to the bottoms of the drawers. Nothing lurked under the mattress. I ran probing fingers over the back of each picture frame, hoping to find an attached manila envelope.
Where were these documents I was supposed to receive? Did Emily travel with them? I recalled her ultraslim handbag. Did she keep them in her car?
Mooney would be looking for her car.
The master bedroom’s medicine chest was packed with over-the-counter cure-alls, vitamins, and bath oils. A muscle in my neck unknotted when I found the prescriptions Donovan had mentioned—Serax, Xanax, Dalmane—all intact, unsampled. I discovered a vial labeled Halcion.
Since the sleeping pill had received such unfavorable press, I counted the Halcion tablets carefully, slowly. None was missing.
I returned to the bedroom, sank into the desk’s padded chair, and stared around me.
Was this where Emily had sat while slipping photos of her dead child into blue envelopes? Here, in front of a deep-red paperweight and a chunky crystal vase?
If Emily had wanted to keep secrets from Harold, she’d hardly have hidden them in a room he shared. I snatched my hat off the bureau, plunked it on my head so I wouldn’t forget it. I listened for a moment at the head of the stairs, heard no footsteps, and hurried down the hall.
Of seven doors lining the second floor hallway, three were shut. I twisted the handles with care. They opened noiselessly, one to reveal a spacious linen closet, the next, a bathroom.
Rebecca’s room had suffered under the same interior decorator as her mother’s, resulting in an overblown “little-girl’s” room, all pastels and florals. But the housekeeper had been kept away, and a bit of the child who’d lived there remained with the dust.
She’d collected stuffed animals. A large lion crouched in a corner next to a propped-up giraffe and a kangaroo with a baby in its pouch. Smaller animals crowded the bed. Hippos had been a favorite.
A large wooden chair seemed out of place in a corner. I lifted it and found that the marks it left on the carpet were shallower, newer, than the marks left by a nearby
rocker, the only other chair in the room. Had someone brought it in recently? Did Emily sit for hours in her late daughter’s room?
Did she keep her secrets here?
I started with the bureau, opening each drawer, working methodically, bottom to top, left to right. My fingers sorted through piles of white undershirts, cotton panties, colored turtlenecks. Rebecca’s socks were neatly rolled, some banded with lace.
I surveyed a shelf of dolls: worn Raggedy Anns and much-used baby dolls, stiff porcelain collectors’ items, foreign figurines in exotic outfits, a row of Barbie dolls with wasp waists and clouds of hair.
Her closet was a miniature of her mother’s, color coded, excessively neat. Her shoes were paired: patent leathers, sneakers, tiny pink-and-white saddle shoes.
I sat in the big chair, bit my tongue, and tugged at my hair. The chair was positioned oddly; it faced neither window nor bed. What had Emily looked at when she sat here? Why here?
Was the view unimportant, only the fact that she was in her daughter’s bedroom, pretending Rebecca might rush upstairs, home from school, ready to change into play clothes? Did she keep her eyes closed to strengthen the fantasy? To better smell any lingering scent? At seven, Paolina had smelled of cherry Life Savers. Rebecca’s room smelled of mint.
I stared at the ceiling and read nothing on its white surface. I glanced down.
Faint tracks led from the foot of the chair toward the closet, as if something had been dragged over the high-pile carpet. I traced the drag marks to a rectangular laundry hamper, hesitated. If the woman communed with her daughter’s soiled clothes, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know about it.
The hamper was heaped with photographs: scrapbooks, loose snapshots, paper envelopes from Fotomat and One Hour Photo. FREE DOUBLE PRINTS! screamed a coupon. JOIN OUR PHOTO CLUB! I hauled the hamper back to the chair, using the old track marks as a guide.
While Harold went to his office, Emily sat in a straight-backed chair and reviewed her daughter’s life. I lifted five fat volumes from the left-hand side of the hamper. A pink and lacy baby book had a brass plate inscribed REBECCA, HER FIRST YEAR. Four subsequent albums in peacock-feather design—one per year—were as methodically organized as the color-coded clothing.
