A Dose of Murder

by Lori Avocato

  I opened the door to the office and heard sobbing. Trudy sat at her computer, wiping at her eyes. I walked closer.

  “Morning.”

  She looked up and nodded.

  “Can I get you something? Water?” I’m not sure why water makes someone feel better, or if it really does, when they are sad, but that’s what they do in the movies, so I offered.

  “He was a good boy,” Trudy said, then continued sobbing.

  “Yes, he was.” Linda came up from behind. Her eyes were red, along with the tip of her nose.

  I wondered if they really thought Eddy was a “good boy” or if their way of handling grief was to “imagine” that Eddy wasn’t as bad as he seemed to me. Very similar to when a public figure dies and the press mentions all the good they did, even if half their life was spent on doing bad. Or was Linda and Trudy’s display of grief meant to cover up something? Still, he shouldn’t be dead.

  Linda and Trudy started to tell me all the funny things Eddy used to do until Tina came walking in. She too looked as if she had been crying. What a day this was going to be. They’d all be so preoccupied over Eddy’s death I wondered if anyone would get their work done.

  Preoccupied.

  Maybe so preoccupied that I could look at the records of the boys from the YMCA.

  I looked up to heaven. Thanks Eddy.

  Again, he should be here annoying me, but since he wasn’t, I chose to believe that his death wasn’t in vain. Now the case might take a giant leap forward if I could find some evidence to give Jagger.

  After shuffling double my load of patients in and out of the examining rooms for hours, I sank down into the couch in the lounge. What had I been thinking? I didn’t have time to pee, let alone go snooping in records, since now I was the only nurse on duty today. Tina came and went, but never lifted a finger to help. No great surprise.

  Linda busied herself at her desk with shuffling files back and forth. I swore she moved the same ones from the IN tray to the OUT tray and back about five times. She had to be affected by Eddy’s death. Finally she stopped and leaned back.

  I stuck my head in her door. “How about a cup of coffee?”

  She looked around. “Geez, I didn’t even know anyone was here.” She moved another file into the OUT tray. “That’d be great.”

  I thought offering to fix her coffee could soften my next question. When she took the cup and her first sip, I asked, “Are you having any luck replacing Eddy?”

  She choked on the next sip.

  “Oh, Linda! I’m sorry.” I pulled her hands up in the air. That trick came from when I’d worked with kids and, of course, Mom always used it on her children. It would stretch out someone’s rib cage enough to help them swallow better. Worked on adults too. “Keep them up a few seconds.”

  She coughed and let her hands down. “He just died last night!”

  Taken aback by her tone, I said, “I know, and I’m so sorry. But you know, I’ve only hired on for this week.” And nothing on God’s green earth could get me to stay longer.

  “And you’d leave us hanging?”

  So much for coffee softening.

  “Well, I do have something I need to do.”

  Saved by the door, I thought, as I heard it shoved open. Tina came bounding in. “I need coffee.”

  I need you committing fraud documented on film, thank you very much. “Hey, Tina.” I went to the lounge and sat back down, deciding they could all get their own coffee. I wasn’t hired as their waitress. Why the heck was Tina back anyway?

  After Linda talked to Tina for a few minutes in a voice not loud enough for me to understand, Tina grabbed her purse and they left. I looked at the clock. Noon. The office would be closed for the next hour.

  And I really wasn’t that hungry.

  I pushed myself to stand. A sudden stream of adrenaline had me in “investigative” mode. I looked down the hall. No sounds. But I couldn’t take any chances, so I hurried from room to room, not sure what lie I’d use if I found someone. I didn’t have to worry since I’d found no one. I stopped at the reception desk. Trudy was just going out the door.

  I saw her back, today covered by a black-and-white-striped caftan, but didn’t say a word, and she obviously didn’t see me. A sharp click made me jump.

  She’d locked the door to make sure no one could get in. I was alone and feeling a bit claustrophobic.

  But this time I didn’t care. I had work to do, I told myself, as I shook off the feeling of confinement. The phobia wasn’t too strong since it was a set of rooms and offices and not an eight-by-eight-foot elevator with a closed door. Just the same, I knew I couldn’t leave or I’d be locked out.

  I went into Donnie’s office on a gut instinct. Since my gut had served me so well in my nursing, I decided to trust it on this one. His office was the nicest of any of the doctors. A picture of Tina, looking quite lovely, sat on his desk. Ain’t love grand. Behind his mahogany desk was a file cabinet. Had to be patients’ files.

  I took a Puffs Plus from my pocket, held it in my hand and tried his top desk drawer. It slid open without a groan. Inside sat several pens, papers that looked like doctor stuff and an extra pocket protector. Donnie hadn’t changed. Nothing good in there.

  Then, still using the tissue, I rummaged through the files in the cabinet. Not much in there for my case. Looked like real, legit patient files.

  I leaned against the desk to think. The picture of Tina tumbled over. “Shit.” As I went to pick it up, I noticed a key taped to the back. “Hello,” I whispered and gingerly took it off so as not to rip the cardboard back of the frame.

  I held the tissue, turned the key in the lock of the bottom drawer. Something said to look there, and, besides, it was the only drawer with a lock on it. I opened it and found a few charts.

  They should have been filed with all the others.

  Hmm. With the tissues in hand, I took out the stack. Tina Macaluso’s sat on top. Why would Donnie have his wife’s chart here? When I opened it and did a bit of reading, it was all clear. Donnie had treated her, or at least written up the accident report on her. After all, there was nothing to treat. It said her “injury” had occurred on a Monday morning. Lifted patient. Back injury. The hardest to prove. Interesting. Of course, by her actions I knew she was faking it, but when I thumbed through the file, a thought occurred to me.

  “Monday morning” stuck in my head. From what I’d seen of her, she wasn’t a morning person. I had asked Eddy about her once, and he’d said how lazy she was and that she didn’t always come to work on time. Perks of being married to the boss. Then how did she get “injured” on a Monday morning?

  Maybe Tina had “hurt” herself at home and was claiming it happened at work to get the money. She could have had a minor injury, and they’d gotten the idea to make some bucks—to pay for two houses. I made a mental note to run it by Jagger and check out her neighbors to see if anyone had seen her get hurt.

  The other files glared at me. Had to be something important in them if the doc kept them locked in here. I picked up the stack. Eddy. Trudy. Linda. A few more names I didn’t recognize, but soon found out they all were employees over the past few years. I opened poor Eddy’s chart first. Two Workers’ Comp claims. Hmm. One was for a sprained wrist, the other an injured leg, leading to partial disability.

  Eddy didn’t even limp.

  The other charts all had more Workers’ Comp claims on each of the employees—and I’d bet my life that they were never injured.

  I looked at the clock. Damn. Armed with mucho info, I shoved the charts back, locked the desk, re-stuck the key behind Tina and hurried out.

  In the hallway, I turned around—and bumped right into Dr. Levy.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Damn! What the hell was he doing here, and did he see me in Donnie’s office?

  He nodded, then looked at the floor. I’d caused him to drop his medical bag. It’d opened and a disposable syringe had fallen out along with several Ace wraps.

&n
bsp; “Sorry again.” I bent to pick them up.

  He tried to grab the stuff first, mumbling something about goddamn nurses and women.

  Weirdo, I thought. No wonder you have to pay for sex. “It’s still sterile since the wrapper didn’t rip,” I said, handing him the syringe. Obviously he was too preoccupied to have seen that I had come out of Donnie’s office.

  He merely looked at me, took the syringe from my hand and shoved it into his bag. “Go to lunch.” With that he turned and walked through the reception area, opened the door and shut it with a click. A locked click.

  I leaned against the wall and shut my eyes. “Phew.”

  Then my logical brain said I had less time to snoop more now, so I forced my eyes open and turned toward the reception desk.

  I went to the computer Trudy worked on and pressed a key. The screen popped on with today’s appointments listed. I really had no idea what I’d find on the computer since I had no idea what to look for. I didn’t want to mess up any of Trudy’s files or have her find out that someone had tampered with them, so I decided to stick to investigating only hard copy. Files. Like Linda’s. And Donnie’s. Trudy obviously only worked on the computer.

  I got up and walked down the hall headed for the area where I knew most of the active files would be found.

  Linda was a neat freak, I decided. Although she looked to me like all she did was move files all day, her desk was immaculate, and not locked. I looked over the files in the IN basket. All were patients I’d seen today.

  Nothing seemed odd.

  So, I took the stack from the OUT tray. Half were from yesterday’s patients. The bottom half from the morning, the top from the afternoon.

  Bingo.

  The YMCA basketball boys.

  All six charts were held together with a rubber band. I opened Emanuel Louis’s. Soft-tissue injury to the left leg while playing basketball. The next one was a broken wrist on Nicky Scarlucci, who I guessed was the white boy. I shut my eyes to remember if I’d seen a cast on his arm.

  For several seconds I kept my eyes closed until I could picture him. Shorter than Emanuel and the others, Nicky had dark brown curly hair. He’d had on a black bubble-type jacket that teens wore nowadays and jeans, ten sizes too big, that dragged along the floor. But no cast. “Uh-huh.” Nope. In my mind’s eye there was no cast on Nicky. I took one last mental look before opening my eyes.

  A hand grabbed my shoulder.

  Eighteen

  Someone grabbed my shoulder! My eyes flew open. In a split second I swung around, my hand in a tight fist—which landed smack-dab in Jagger’s left eye.

  “Jesus Christ!” His hands flew up to his face. “What the fuck? Why are you always attacking me? You trying to blind me or something?”

  “You scared the shit out of me! Why do you insist on scaring me?” I jumped up and ran to the fridge and got out a handful of ice, which I shoved into a paper towel. “Stick this on.”

  “I called your name when I came in.”

  “You did not.”

  “Did too.” He held the paper towel of ice to his eye. “Christ.”

  “I said I’m sorry, and you didn’t call my name.”

  “Maybe you were too engrossed in the files, but I swear I did and you mumbled something that sounded like ‘Uh-huh.’”

  “Ack. I did.” I looked at his eye. A huge red mark circled the deep brown color, and I knew that within hours he’d have a whopper of a shiner.

  I wondered if he’d admit that he’d gotten it from a girl.

  “Okay. I’m sorry, but you have to stop sneaking up on me. Now, what the hell are you doing here—in that?”

  For the first time I took a good look at him. And Mrs. Bakersfield thought Vance looked good in white. The lab coat Jagger wore made his olive complexion a bit darker—swarthier. His hair was combed a different way so it didn’t touch the nape of his neck. I wondered if he’d cut it, but thought no. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and had a gold tiny loop earring in his left ear. These disguises were too much. If I saw him in the hallway, I wouldn’t have recognized him.

  Yet, I would have drooled.

  He ignored my question about his lab coat and asked, “What’d you find in the files that you were so preoccupied with?”

  “Oh. You are going to be so proud of me.” My face heated to the boiling point. Why did I say such a stupid thing?

  “I’m listening.”

  I told him about the files in Donnie’s office and my theory about Tina.

  He ran a hand through his hair and nodded.

  From Jagger that compliment was like getting a gold star on your kindergarten drawing.

  “More than likely they misclassified their employees’ injuries to make bogus Workers’ Comp claims,” I said.

  “I guessed that.”

  My chest puffed out like a prize-wining turkey’s. “More good news. I found the files on the YMCA boys. They have injuries listed that I didn’t see any evidence of. Even if I didn’t notice their injuries though, they weren’t here but a few minutes, so I know they weren’t seen by the doctors.”

  “Who handed them the bags with the shoes in them?” He leaned over my shoulder.

  I inhaled “scent of man.”

  “Sherlock? Earth to Sherlock?” He lifted the top file I’d been looking at.

  “Hmm?”

  “Okay. I believe you that you don’t use, but have you ever had your attention span checked out? It’s shorter than a toothpick.”

  Suddenly I visualized him playing with that dumb toothpick in his mouth. Between his full lips. Touching. Tapping. Tasting. Oh … my … God.

  I felt my chin being lifted and found myself looking directly into his eyes. And this was supposed to help me concentrate? His finger on my chin? Puleez. How could I, with fire burning my skin?

  Professional, I screamed inside my head. You are a professional, Pauline Sokol! “What did you ask me?”

  “Forget the attention-span thing. We only have thirty minutes left. The shoes?” He removed his finger.

  Yikes.

  I couldn’t believe that we’d wasted so much time—or that my thoughts had strayed to his finger. “Oh, yeah. The shoes. I never saw who gave them to the boys. The first time I noticed the bags was when the boys walked out, and they opened them in the lobby while waiting for the elevator.”

  He paused a minute. Maybe he had figured out something important about the case.

  He looked at me and said, “Let me get this straight. Did you get on an elevator with six giants and one short Polack, when you won’t ride in an elevator with me anymore?”

  Shoot. I didn’t want him to know that I hadn’t, so I gave him a dose of his own medicine and ignored his question. “Don’t mess up the files. Linda is very anal.”

  He ignored me and looked through each chart.

  “What I don’t understand is, how do they get money out of the insurance companies?”

  He kept flipping through papers as he said, “The shoes are used to get the kids to give them their insurance card info—and to keep their mouths shut. The office bills the insurance company for visits, X-rays, casts. You name it.”

  “Nicky’s chart said that he had a broken bone, but when you snuck up on me I was trying to picture a cast on his arm, and I couldn’t.”

  “I’ll forget the sneaking-up part. Which, in fact, I didn’t do. As far as the no-cast part, the fake break.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A con artist will take advantage of an old break, an existing injury to make a claim. I’ll bet Nicky had a break not long ago.”

  “And they used his old X-rays.”

  Jagger smiled. Nice. “Atta girl, Sherlock.”

  “I’m learning from the best.” Now I was psyched for the rest of the day.

  Jagger held open the files on each kid and stared at them a few seconds, adjusting his glasses each time.

  “Something wrong with your glasses?”

  He stopped and looked at me. “No, S
herlock.”

  “Oh, it’s just that you keep adjusting—” He leaned closer to one of the files whose writing was a bit smudged. “Camera!” I shouted.

  “Keep it down!”

  “Oh, sorry. Right,” I whispered.

  Damn. I hadn’t taken pictures of the files in Donnie’s office. I wasn’t about to share that with Jagger. I’d let him assume I had and sneak back in there later.

  He finally set the files back exactly in place. And here I’d warned him not to mess things up. Duh. The guy was a professional, and I’m guessing never left a trace of himself anywhere.

  He was like a current of air.

  First he’s not here. Then he’s here—without any fanfare.

  And usually scaring the bejeevers out of me.

  For a second I thought his disguising himself could be construed as comical, but now, looking at “Doctor” Jagger, I knew he’d found a way to get himself into places I never would be able to go. He was a master at his job.

  And anything but comical.

  He looked at the clock on Linda’s desk. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Yeah. I am a bit hungry. Good thing I’ve got a few minutes to run to the cafeteria.” I blew out a breath and went to the employee exit. “Damn, stuck again. We can’t get out.”

  Jagger merely looked at me.

  The last I saw of Jagger was him getting on the elevator and starting to tell me he was going to see Lieutenant Shatley, and that I should go back and take pictures of Donnie’s files. Damn him. Then the door shut and I hurried up the stairs. Sure, he’d more than likely bring up that I was chicken to ride with him, which was 99.9 percent true, but I also had to hurry to get lunch and think about how the heck he got us out of the stuck office.

  I remembered going into the waiting room where the employee door was and then Jagger opening it—from the other side! Somehow he’d gotten out of the office and let me out. I shook my head as I grabbed a ham and cheese on a croissant. Forget the calories in the buttery roll. I needed something after my brush with fear caused by Jagger.