Natural Causes

by Jonathan Valin

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” she said back. “Why didn’t you stay last night? That was you, wasn’t it?”

  I looked at her for a moment. “I don’t like to watch.”

  “Oh, hell, I would have gotten rid of him. It didn’t mean anything, anyway.”

  “What does, Marsha?” I said it before I could think about it.

  “Lighten up, Harry, will you? That asshole was kinda hard on me last night, and I got a bad headache. I told you you were welcome. What more do you want me to say?”

  I sat down on the diving board and stared into the blue, sun-streaked pool. Another Dixie cup was bobbing in the water, like a small white buoy.

  “Quentin called you last Friday.”

  The girl took her sunglasses off, dangling them in her free hand. Her eyes looked bruised and puffy, as if she hadn’t slept at all.

  “So this is a business visit, right?”

  “I guess it is,” I said.

  She stared at me for a brief second, then flipped the glasses back on her nose. “I didn’t get any phone call on Friday.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Marsha. Please? The hotel has a record of it. So do the cops.”

  “I don’t give a shit what the cops have a record of,” she said. “I didn’t get any goddamn phone call.”

  “Were you out?”

  “Yeah,” she said sharply. “As a matter of fact, I was.” She pursed her lips and sighed. “I didn’t get the phone call because Quentin left call-forwarding on his phone—not because I was out. The phone didn’t even ring here. It rang wherever he forwarded the call to. O.K.? I didn’t even know about it until Monday night.”

  “You mean you didn’t use the phone until Monday?” I asked.

  “I don’t use that phone at all—the one in Quentin’s study. That’s Quentin’s phone. It took the phone company a whole week to get around to fixing it.” She giggled. “I guess you know that, don’t you?”

  “I guess I do,” I said. “How’d you find out about the call-forwarding?”

  “Quentin’s cardiologist, Phil Feldman, called me on Monday evening, after I got back from L.A. Quentin always left Feldman a number where he could be reached when he went out of town—it made him feel safer. This time he left him the number of his study phone. Feldman had been trying to get hold of Quentin since Saturday and kept getting no answer. So he called me on my line. Eventually we figured out what was wrong. The phone repairman explained it to me. Quentin had forwarded his calls, so that the phone was ringing out on the coast. Somewhere in L.A., I guess.”

  “Yeah, but why would Quentin call his own phone on Friday if he was trying to reach someone in L.A.?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “And you don’t know exactly where Quentin forwarded his calls to?”

  “No,” Marsha said. “Maybe Feldman does. I think he talked to Quentin on Saturday morning. What difference does it make at this point?”

  It made a big difference to me. Those calls might have been going to wherever Dover had been staying on Friday night and Saturday, although it was damn odd that he would have used call-forwarding to reach somebody in L.A. when he could have dialed directly from the Belle Vista phone.

  “I guess I’ll have to talk to Feldman,” I said. “Do you know his address?”

  “Quentin made me memorize it,” she said. She gave me an address on Burnett, a couple of blocks from the Delores.

  “Is that it with the business?” Marsha said, getting up off the chaise. She walked over to where I was sitting and kissed me hungrily on the mouth.

  “Don’t you ever get enough?” I said, when she came up for air.

  “Aw, don’t be shitty, Harry. Please?”

  She stared at me for a moment. “Why’d you come out here last night?”

  “I heard some bad news,” I said. “I wanted some company.”

  “Yeah, but why me?”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Sure you do.” She stretched her arms above her head and her breasts rose beneath the light bikini halter. “Just like me. You wanted some more.”

  “I guess I did,” I admitted.

  “So why don’t we do it?”

  “‘Cause I gotta go talk to Dr. Feldman.”

  “Oh, don’t go,” she said. “Please? I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t know you were going to come back.”

  “I’ll come out later.”

  “I don’t need you later,” she said. “I need you now. I don’t feel good. I can’t sleep. Just stick around until I fall asleep, O.K.?”

  I couldn’t help thinking about the night she’d asked Connie to stay with her—to keep her from having bad dreams. As beautiful as she was, I didn’t want to be her babysitter. I didn’t know what I wanted to be to Marsha Dover. But I didn’t want to leave her alone, either.

  ******

  We ended up making love—that was almost a given with Marsha—in a big bed with bolster pillows and pale blue silk sheets. I watched her face as I screwed her—that beautiful, blonde child’s face. She kept her eyes squeezed shut while we made love—not fluttering shut as if she were fantasizing, but shut tight as if she were afraid to open them. When she came, she turned her head back and forth on the pillow and pushed me away from her with the palms of her hands, as if she needed room to breath. Her hips never stopped moving. I came immediately after she did.

  Afterward, she curled up against me beneath the cold sheets, burying her head in my chest and draping her arms around my neck. She stayed huddled against me for a long while—not saying a word, sheltering herself against my body. I looked around the dim room at the shuttered, off-white closets and the creamy enameled furniture, and knew that she was thinking of Quentin—that she’d been thinking of him all along, as if he were still with us, hidden somewhere in that shuttered room. It was an unsettling thought—enough to make me close my eyes, too.

  “You’ve got to get out of here, Marsha,” I said. “Take a couple of weeks and go somewhere.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. “I don’t know if I could leave.”

  “Sure you could.”

  “Sure,” she said weakly. “It isn’t that simple. If it was that simple...I would have gone.” She raised her head and peeked out at the room. “You know, sometimes I still think he’s out there. Sitting like he used to sit.”

  She swallowed hard and dropped her head back on my chest.

  “The only way to get away from him is to get away from this room. You know that. Away from this room and everything else that reminds you of him.”

  “Fucking reminds me of him,” she whispered.

  I guess so, I said to myself. I stroked her hair and she looked up at me.

  “You’re very beautiful,” I said.

  She bit her lip. “You still think so.”

  “I know so.”

  She started to smile.

  “You think you’re going to be able to get some sleep now?”

  “I can try,” she said. “There are some Nembutols in the medicine chest.”

  “You take a lot of them?”

  “Only when I’m worn out and can’t sleep. It’s them or booze or fucking.”

  “Stick to booze and fucking,” I said.

  She pulled herself up to my face and kissed me. “I like you,” she said. “You’re like him—only different.”

  “I’m not like him at all,” I said.

  “I know one way you’re not like him.”

  She ran her hand down my belly.

  “Marsha,” I said with a laugh. “I gotta go.”

  “I just want to hold it for a minute,” she said.

  We ended up fucking again. I didn’t watch her this time. This time, I kept my eyes shut, too.

  29

  BY THE time I’d tucked Marsha in for the afternoon, it was three-thirty. She promised to stay in bed until I came back later that night. But I had my doubts whether she’d be able to keep that promise. She didn’t look
too confident herself about braving the day alone, in that house, without booze or drugs or a man to protect her from her bad dreams. As I was leaving the bedroom, I could feel her watching me—clinging to me with her eyes. It wasn’t a feeling I liked.

  I found myself hurrying down the stairs and out into the sunlight, where the smell of freshly cut grass smacked me like a sea breeze. It felt good to be outside. I walked quickly to the car and drove off.

  ******

  It took me about fifteen minutes to get back to Clifton on 71. I exited on Taft Road and coasted up to Burnett. Philip Feldman’s office was located at the corner in a converted brownstone—one block north of the Delores. I’d passed it a thousand times without giving it a second look.

  There was a tar lot on the south side of the building. I parked in it and walked up a short flight of concrete stairs, past a big bed of peonies, to the front door. A sign on the door said “Ring Before Entering.” I pressed the doorbell and went in. A pretty nurse with teased brown hair was sitting behind a white counter to the right of the door. There was a waiting room to the left, half-filled with patients.

  “Can I help you?” the nurse said.

  “I’d like to speak to Dr. Feldman. About Quentin Dover.”

  The nurse gave me a funny look. “I thought Mr. Dover had died?”

  “He did. I’m a private investigator, looking into his death. I don’t need much of the doctor’s time. Just a few minutes.”

  “I’ll see if I can fit you in,” she said.

  I went into the waiting room and sat down. It was not a happy place—most of the people waiting with me looked very ill. I sat there for about fifteen minutes, then the nurse came out from behind the counter and called my name.

  “This way,” she said.

  She directed me down a tiled corridor, lined with examination rooms, to a small, paneled office at the back of the building. It was an unprepossessing place compared to some of the doctors’ offices I’d visited—a tiny desk in one corner, a desk chair behind it, a green vinyl couch on the opposite wall, and a few bookshelves above the couch filled with numbers of the Journal of the American Surgical Society.

  I sat down on the couch and waited about ten more minutes. I wanted to smoke, but there weren’t any ashtrays in the room. There was nothing to do, except to read Phil Feldman’s diplomas. He had an impressive array of them on the walls. I was examining one of them—an honorary certificate from a surgical association—when he stepped into the room.

  He was a tall, burly, rugged-looking man in his mid-forties, with crinkly brown hair, receding in narrow horns at either temple, and five o’clock shadow on his cheeks. He had on a shirt and tie, but the shirt sleeves were rolled and the collar unbuttoned and the tie had been pulled loose at the knot. Perhaps it was his size and rugged face, but Feldman didn’t look like a doctor.

  “I’m Phil Feldman,” he said, sitting down behind his small desk.

  “Harry Stoner.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of hornrim glasses. “I’ve never met a private detective,” he said, slipping the glasses on his nose. They made him look a lot more professional. “What can I do for you, Mr. Stoner?”

  “Quentin Dover was a patient of yours, wasn’t he?”

  “Of mine and of half a dozen other specialists. I was his cardiologist, yes. I was also his friend.”

  “You knew him a long time?”

  Feldman took his glasses off and tucked them back in his pocket, as if he’d seen all of me that he’d wanted to see. “For ten years.”

  “You were close, then?”

  “As close as Quentin ever let anyone get.” Feldman leaned back in his chair. “Why all the questions?”

  “I’ve been looking into his death.”

  “I was told that it was accidental,” Feldman said.

  “I think it might have been a suicide.”

  He looked sadly off into space. “I guess that doesn’t surprise me. His father killed himself, you know.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Quentin was always afraid that he’d end up doing the same thing. All the pills in the world couldn’t protect him from that fear.”

  I thought of the coroner’s verdict of death by natural causes and of all those pills. Fourteen a day, Jack had said. “Were any of the medications he took for his heart potentially lethal?”

  “Almost all medications are potentially lethal,” Feldman said, “if taken in sufficient quantity.”

  “If he’d overdosed himself with some of them, wouldn’t it have shown up in the autopsy?”

  “It depends on the condition of his body,” Feldman said. “He took so many different potent drugs that there would have been large traces of a number of them. That makes a confusing picture for a coroner, especially if the body has decomposed.”

  “But he could have poisoned himself with the medicines that he carried with him?”

  “Easily,” Feldman said.

  I turned to the phone call. “When was the last time you talked to Dover?”

  “On Saturday morning.”

  I edged forward on the couch. “And do you know where he was when you talked to him?”

  Feldman smiled. “I’m not sure. I thought he was in Cincinnati, but that apparently wasn’t the case. You see, he always left a number with my answering service where he could be reached, especially when he went out of town. It was a habit with him—more than a habit, an obsession. He wanted me to know where he was in case he needed emergency medical attention. This past Friday he left his private home phone number.”

  “Had he ever done that before when he went out of the city?”

  Feldman shook his head. “No. Usually he left me the number of the Belle Vista in Los Angeles or of the Plaza in New York—his regular stops. That’s why I assumed he was still in town when I talked to him on Saturday. He’d told me on Thursday morning that he was going to the coast for some new project.”

  “Did he happen to mention what the project was?”

  “No,” Feldman said. “But I had the feeling that he wasn’t looking forward to the trip. He seemed rather melancholy about it. When I got the number that he’d left with the answering service, I assumed he’d changed his mind about going. So I called to find out what had happened. It wasn’t a professional call.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said that he was feeling fine and that he hadn’t changed his mind about the project, he’d just postponed it. I thought I was talking to him at his home in Indian Hill.”

  “He gave you no indication of where he really was?”

  “No,” Feldman said. “Quentin didn’t always tell the truth, Mr. Stoner.”

  “So I’ve learned,” I said.

  “He sounded a little edgy. That’s why I tried calling him again on Saturday night at the same number. But there wasn’t any answer. I tried several times on Sunday. On Monday morning I finally got through to someone. But it was a weird conversation.”

  “How so?”

  “The man I talked to spoke with a Spanish accent and hung up on me abruptly when I mentioned Quentin’s name. So I decided to call Marsha to find out what was going on—whether they’d hired a Mexican houseman, or what. Of course, she wasn’t home either. She was in L.A., identifying the body. I didn’t get through to her until late that night. That’s when she told me that Quentin had died in L.A. and that he’d been there the entire weekend. It was only then that I realized that that was where I must have been talking to him on Saturday. With some help from the phone company, we eventually figured out that he’d forwarded his calls from the number here in Cincinnati out to the coast.”

  “Yeah, but to where exactly in L.A.?”

  “You’re asking the wrong man,” Feldman said. “It’s pretty clear that Quentin didn’t want me to know where he was. I wish I knew why.”

  It was pretty clear that Quentin hadn’t wanted anyone to know where he was. And if Feldman hadn’t acted like a friend on Saturd
ay morning, no one probably ever would have known.

  Feldman looked at me for a moment. “I can accept the fact that Quentin killed himself. But I’d like to know why. I mean, why on Sunday rather than on some other day.”

  “He was in deep trouble in just about every aspect of his life. I guess you’re aware of that.”

  He shook his head. “For a frightened man, Quentin had a lot of courage. He put up a brave front, most of the time. The only trouble I knew about was his medical problems. And, of course, Marsha’s problems. I’ve had to make several late-night trips to their home.”

  “She’s tried to kill herself?” I said.

  He nodded. “I wonder what she’s going to do without him. They were suited to each other in a way.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “They were both pretty badly wounded by their childhoods. Quentin by his father’s suicide. Marsha by her fundamentalist upbringing. Being as pretty as she is was not an advantage in her family. Her parents gave her a hard time, and she’s never gotten over it. Quentin protected her from her fears to a degree—mostly by allowing her to indulge herself. With him gone...” He sighed. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to her.”

  “I don’t think her marriage was as healthy as you think.”

  “I didn’t say it was healthy. I just said they suited each other. Marsha’s problems predate her marriage, anyway. She was institutionalized rightly or wrongly by her family several times before she met Quentin.”

  “For what?”

  “For being herself, I think. For being promiscuous. They claimed she was mentally ill. By the time they’d finished with her, she undoubtedly was. I think that’s partly why Quentin was attracted to her—not just because she was so beautiful but because she was so unhappy with her life, like him.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  Feldman nodded. “He said they might have been made for each other.”

  30

  AFTER LEAVING Feldman’s office, I pulled the car down one block and parked in front of the Delores. Then I went upstairs and called Frank Glendora from the bedroom phone. It was Sunday, so I called him at home.