by Rachel Brady
Then he reached behind him for a wheeled-stool and pulled it forward without ever looking at it. He rolled forward, studying my face without really seeing me, and as he drew nearer, my Giorgio Beverly Hills mixed with something equally divine on his end.
“I’d like to smooth the bridge.” I ran a finger lightly over my nose. “And maybe bring the tip down a little bit.”
He propped my chin on his hand and turned my head, considering it from the front, then sides. “Your overall facial structure is proportional,” he said. “Pretty chin, nice cheekbones.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Dr. Platt thought so too.” I turned my eyes away and gave what I hoped was a convincing sad smile.
King flipped backward in my chart. “You saw Dr. Platt?” he asked. “It’s not in your folder.”
I waved off the question. “Informally. We were to meet here for our first visit, but then…you know.”
“Mm,” he said, more to himself than me. “We certainly miss him.” He scribbled something in my chart, then looked up abruptly. “The concerns you express can be addressed with minor reshaping. It would be a closed procedure.” He lifted a plastic model from the countertop. “We’d make incisions within the nose and separate the skin from the bone and cartilage here. Once that’s done, tissue can be removed or reshaped as required. We can correct the asymmetry too.”
“Asymmetry?”
“The way your columnella—” more pointing to the model “—is offset to the left there.”
I tried not to take offense.
“The procedure will take about an hour or two,” he continued. “Will this be your first surgery?” He flipped around in my chart some more and paused on my medical history form.
“Yes.”
I watched him study my file and wondered how to bring things around to his business arrangement.
“What happens now?” I tried. “Do you have twice as many patients? Will you get another partner?”
King clicked his pen and dropped it into his pocket. “It’ll be an adjustment. But things always work out somehow, don’t they?”
He’d answered my question with a question. I recognized this as one of Richard’s tricks.
“Let’s do your photos,” King said. “Our computer imaging package will approximate your new look. You’ll have an opportunity to review various possible outcomes and let me know which most closely captures what you’d like to achieve. I can’t guarantee the final result will look like the picture, but we get very close.”
He stood and opened the door. I remembered Jeannie: Give him a reason to impress you.
“I know how computer imaging works.” I passed him in the doorway. “You’re my third consult.”
He escorted me down the hall.
“I want the right surgeon,” I said. “Someone to make me feel as comfortable as Dr. Platt did. Diana insisted I meet you.”
“Ah.” A new bright tone came to his voice. “My wife is match-making.”
“She recruited me at Tone Zone.”
“She lives for that place,” he said. “Hell, she lives at that place.”
“Girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.” I smoothed the twist Jeannie had pinned in my hair. “We’re not twenty anymore.”
“You’re lovely, both of you,” he said. “And I know you work very hard at it.”
Unsure whether that last bit was a compliment, I didn’t answer.
He peeled to the right and we passed Platt’s office, identified by a chiseled name plate mounted on the door. Open cardboard boxes waited on his desk and I wondered who among Platt’s circle would come to claim his things today. Dr. King gestured to a crowded little room with a backdrop and diminutive flash umbrella against the far wall. He flipped on the lights and I went inside and sat in the empty chair where I would pose for my Before shots.
He deposited my folder on the counter. “Lucy will take care of you.”
I crossed my legs as suggestively as I could. “The other doctors took my pictures personally.”
“I’m a better surgeon than photographer. We’ll talk again when she’s finished.”
He left the room, evidently less impressed with me than I was. And when Lucy finally came, she was no help either. I asked what would happen to the practice now that Dr. Platt had passed. She said, “They-never-tell-us-anything-look-to-your-right-please” and raised the camera. She snapped pictures of my asymmetrical nose and left me alone in the room. I viewed her abandonment as an opportunity.
Two doors down, I slipped into Platt’s office and closed the door to barely a crack. I peered into the half-packed boxes on his desk and found books and picture frames, two coffee mugs and a sweater. He used one of those desktop calendars that cover the full writing surface of a desk. I moved the boxes aside and ripped off the top page, July, without reading it. I folded the giant sheet over and over until it was small enough to shove in my bag. Then I replaced the boxes and tried his desk drawers, all locked.
A quick look around the room suggested nothing else of interest, only wall-mounted diplomas and overflowing stacks of medical journals. When I returned to the photography room, Dr. King was waiting, reading a message on his iPhone.
“Ladies room,” I apologized, and dropped back into the chair. “Are my images uploaded?”
Chapter Fifteen
Kendra found me loitering in the lounge, flipping through a celebrity gossip rag.
“You snoop in style.” Her eyes took in Jeannie’s dress, which I was growing to like.
“I feel radioactive.” It was the first time in my life I’d worn hot pink. “I made a salon appointment for later, in case anyone wonders why I’m here twice in the same day.”
She nodded. “How will this work?”
“I need time in Diana’s office.” A pair of women in tennis skirts passed, smoothies in hand. “How much time depends on the file sizes.”
“The best chance is during her staff tag-up,” Kendra said. “It lasts fifteen, twenty minutes.”
“When’s the meeting?”
“Whenever Diana says.”
I checked my watch, not that it mattered. “Put my number in your phone, okay? Call me when it starts.”
“I’ll text you. It’s quieter.”
“Fine.”
She pulled out her phone and stopped. “Give me a few seconds, then follow me. Don’t make it obvious.”
Before I could ask, she turned and walked away. I gave her a nice head start before following her through the twisty-turny hallways to a strangely shaped nook between a ladies room and a storage closet. Kendra was waiting beside some drinking fountains, leaning against a fire alarm box.
“No security cameras here,” she said. “Tell me your number now.”
I thought her precautions were a bit extreme for sharing a phone number, but I gave it to her without commentary and she punched it into her cell.
“All of us can’t be at the meeting, obviously. People still have to man the floor. So if you get caught—”
I rested a hand on her shoulder. “I won’t throw you under the bus.”
She forced a smile, lips tight. “You’ll need this.” She pressed a key into my hand.
“Thanks.”
I turned to leave but she touched my wrist. When I looked back, her bold, brown eyes were intense. “Diana didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Maybe not.” I turned the key over in my hand. “But somebody here did.”
***
Situated on the building’s second floor, Diana’s office opened off of an elevated, rubberized running track that encircled a colony of Pilates machines. A poster on her door advertised the July special: two free chemical peels with the purchase of permanent make-up.
Unwilling to draw attention to myself by circling the track in a tight dress and strappy heels, I found a nearby bench and pretended to read the latest issue of Houston Woman while waiting for Kendra’s all-clear text message.
I checked my phone compulsively. During one
idle pass through its menus, I saw I’d missed several calls. They’d been logged throughout the afternoon, but the callers weren’t listed. Immediately, I thought of Annette. Then before I could investigate further, a message from Kendra arrived: “Go.”
At least I was still receiving texts.
Her key, warm from its time in my hand, felt like a secret weapon. I carried it purposefully toward Diana’s office, unlocked the door as if I had every right to, and closed myself inside. Like everything else at the club, the office was plush to the point of being overdone. I stepped across thick, well-cushioned carpet to a chair behind her desk, dropped into it, and wiggled her mouse to wake up the dark computer monitor.
Diana kept a spiral notebook and a file caddy on the corner of her desk, right next to a glorious amethyst geode the size of a basketball. I wanted a look at her papers but forced myself to stay focused. I had no idea where I’d find the camera files on her hard drive or how long they’d take to copy and I wouldn’t leave without at least having those. Her screen came to life.
I scanned the Programs folder for software applications that sounded remotely relevant. After a few duds, I found the right package and figured out how to get to last week’s files. I decided to copy both Wednesday’s and Thursday’s footage, just in case. When I clicked on the first one, the screen divided into quadrants with views from various cameras around the club playing in each corner. Tabs at the bottom of the screen let me switch to even more camera views and I was instantly drawn into the activity playing out before me. Copy now, watch later, Emily. Don’t be stupid.
I plugged my thumb drive into Diana’s computer, which she kept under her desk. While the files copied, I pilfered through the papers on her desk. Diana’s appointment calendar was as empty as mine and I thought she might be the sort who remembered all her engagements without writing them down. Or maybe she tracked them digitally with one of those fancy phones that does every damn thing. I bristled, annoyed because my own impaired phone had probably been permanently damaged in the morning’s downpour.
Diana’s desk drawers didn’t give up anything juicy until I came to the last one. There I discovered a blue folder with a collection of neatly arranged newspaper clippings inside. Filed in reverse chronological order, the most recent article, a week old, was on top: Houston’s Tone Zone to Open Second Facility.
Last month, it had been: Local Health Club Donates $5,000 to United Way
I flipped through the stack.
April: Tone Zone Fundraiser Offers 5K/10K Challenge to Area Runners
March: Fitness Club Donates Rodeo Scholarship Funds
January: Women’s Health Club to Open Doors This Month
August: Investors Announce Plans for Ladies Gym
With a steady hand, Diana had meticulously highlighted specific quotations and as I studied them, the complexity of Claire’s case skyrocketed. Five investors shared ownership in the club, but neon yellow said Diana only cared what one of them had to say. The quotes she’d highlighted were all ascribed to Wendell Platt, MD.
I chewed on a fake thumb nail and stared at his name.
Plenty of folks had multiple business interests, especially rich people. But, at the surgery center Platt worked with Chris King and at Tone Zone, he worked with King’s wife. The arrangement had Triangle written all over it.
I slipped the newspaper articles back into their folder and returned them to the drawer. The files finished copying and I was about to eject the thumb drive when Diana’s doorknob twisted.
Almost reflexively, I grabbed the telephone handset and raised it to my ear. Natalie burst inside and, upon seeing me, stopped. I held up an apologetic finger and continued talking to nobody about a car that wasn’t broken.
“But yesterday you said I’d have it today,” I said. “Am I at least getting a loaner?”
I shook my head at Natalie. She gave nothing back.
After a suitable pause, I muttered insincere thanks and hung up with a huff I hoped wasn’t too much.
“Cell’s on the fritz,” I said. It wasn’t a total lie.
“How’d you get in here?”
I shrugged. “Door was open. Seemed as good a place as any to get the bad news.”
She regarded me for a moment. “You’re not dressed to work-out.”
I leaned down, as if to scratch my ankle, and pulled my thumb drive from the computer’s USB port. Since I’d taken the drive without the usual “safely remove device” ritual, a familiar error message appeared on the screen and I made a conscious effort not to look at it.
“Hair appointment.” Foresight was working for me now. “Thought I’d try a new look.”
Natalie couldn’t see the screen, but Diana would wonder about the message when she returned. There was no way to close the error box without being seen so I left it there and stood.
Natalie swiped a spiral notebook from the file caddy on Diana’s desk, returned to the door, and twisted the little lock in the knob. “After you.”
She stepped aside so I could leave first.
Outside on the rubberized track, she closed the door behind us and push-pulled it twice to check that it was locked. She left me behind as she headed downstairs, apparently scurrying back to Diana’s meeting. I watched her calf muscles flex as she descended the first few steps. My phone chimed.
It was another text message from Kendra: GET OUT NOW.
I flipped the phone shut, pissed.
Chapter Sixteen
Driving to the Heights, I thought about Thursday’s security files buried in my purse beside me. A big clue waited somewhere between my sugarless gum and lipstick, but first I owed Richard a report from Platt’s neighbors.
My thoughts flitted between three things—how best to approach those interviews, what I’d learn from the security files later, and the faint chemical smell wafting around my head.
My crutch in all things cosmetic—Jeannie—hadn’t been there for my impromptu hair make-over, so I’d left all decisions to my stylist, a spiky-headed blond who I wanted to believe had cheekbone implants because she was inhumanly gorgeous. She brought my length up six inches, cut in some sassy layers, and punched up my natural auburn color to a bolder, lustier shade of red. I liked it and wondered what Annette would think.
In front of Platt’s bungalow, I unfolded the July page from his office calendar and spread it over my steering wheel, letting the car idle so I could keep the A/C running. His calendar margins were scribbled with phone numbers, some with doodles and others with characters traced over and over until they were thick and dark. A few numbers had names beside them, but not most, leaving me to wonder if maybe this was the place the doctor jotted phone numbers when he retrieved his voice mail.
Through the windshield, I watched a gaunt neighbor water her hydrangea bushes without leaving the front porch. The attachment on her hose sprinkled water in a wide cone that reminded me of my grandmother’s old watering can. I turned off my ignition, stepped from the car, and passed a mailbox painted to resemble the Texas flag. Inside its star, “L. Herald” was written in silver glitter glue.
Approaching her, I took care to obey the “Please Stay Off the Grass” signs. When I turned up her front walk, she removed her hand from the nozzle trigger and the flow dwindled to a pathetic trickle.
“Not interested,” she said. “No solicitors.” Behind her, a posted sign over the doorbell said as much.
“No worries, I’m not selling anything. But I wonder if you’d talk to me about your neighbor, Dr. Platt.”
“You a reporter?” She looked me over, spending particular time on my naked legs. “Don’t look like a cop.”
I tried to put her at ease with a smile, but it had no effect.
“Dr. Platt’s family hired me to look into a few things. It seems that shortly before he died, something was troubling him, but we don’t know what that was. Do you have any idea?”
She planted her free hand on what would have been a hip had she not been a bean pole. “No.”
Her tone, somewhere between insulted and surprised, made me think she was hurt that Platt hadn’t confided in her.
She squeezed the trigger on her hose again and immediately a conical spray enveloped the plants. A lawn ornament near her steps caught my eye, a miniature outhouse fashioned to look like a medieval castle.
I decided not to ask.
“How many years have you been neighbors?” I raised a hand to my brow to block the sun.
She moved to the next bush. “Eight.”
“Were you friends?”
“Sometimes he helped move my ladder.”
My head cocked sideways involuntarily. I forced it back to neutral.
“Tell you what,” I said, groping in my bag. “I’ll write down my number, and if you think of something that might help us figure out what was troubling Dr. Platt, I sure would appreciate a call.”
I carried a slip of paper to her and she took it without looking at me. Holding it at arm’s length, she squinted at the print. I turned to leave.
To my back she said, “I used to have a car named Emily. Nineteen seventy-seven Ford LTD II.”
Touching. The Ninja Runner had mentioned Platt’s kooky neighbor. I wished I could give her a big loud Amen to that.
At the end of the walkway, I turned toward Platt’s other next-door neighbor and as I crossed the property line, the old woman shouted after me, “She was the last V8 I ever owned!”
Two doors over, a stately three-story Victorian overshadowed Platt’s smaller home. When I rang the bell, a figure moved behind the door’s ornate beveled glass, but no one answered. For a moment I doubted what I’d seen. Then interior shadows shifted again and I realized I was being ignored.
I rang again.
On the other side of the door, a figure was nearer now, but still not answering. Jeannie, in the same situation, would have pressed her hand to the glass and gaped inside to see exactly what was going on. I couldn’t make myself do it.
A white aura grew larger on the other side of the decorative panes and the knob jangled. Finally, someone cracked the door open about three inches.
