The girl with the runner’s build who had been standing with them returned. I hadn’t noticed that she’d left. Sanda turned to her. “Any sign of Matisse?”
The girl shook her head, the frizzy burst of hair tied at the crown of her head flicking wildly. “It’s so crowded and noisy. He’s probably hiding somewhere safe, watching everything. He’ll come out when things calm down.”
“Matisse?” I asked.
“Her cat,” the searcher answered.
“Come on.” Shirl tugged again at Sanda’s elbow. Sanda moved under the force of that persuasion, but she paused long enough to say, “Let me know if—” Her request died out and she disappeared into the crowd, flanked by her friends, leaving me standing on the columned portico.
The scattered clusters of watchers began to thin as others along the street decided the show was over.
I turned south on Rutledge, I hoped the shortest way back to the inn. I walked quickly past the dark, hulking houses, my soft-soled shoes padding quietly along the uneven sidewalks. No street, no matter what the illusion of safety at other times, felt safe in the dark hours of morning after a scene like the one behind me.
7
EARLY FRIDAY MORNING
My cellphone’s buzz jolted me into a defensive mood.
“Yes.” I barked into the receiver.
The voice on the other end didn’t respond immediately, then asked hesitatingly, “Is this Avery Andrews?”
“Yes.”
“Sanda MacKay. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
I lied. “No. No problem.” The clock said 8:00, well past my usual waking time.
“I—I hope you don’t mind. I called Mr. Tilman. To find out how to get in touch with you.”
“I’m glad you did.” She must not have gotten the number I’d left yesterday.
“I—this morning—” She paused. “A package came this morning. I—can you come—see this? I don’t know—” Her stumbling didn’t sound like the older, strong-featured woman I’d seen last night. After the night she’d had, though, she had a right not to be herself.
“Sure, Sanda. What is it?”
“A notebook. Mark’s notebook. He sent it. Quik-Courier delivered it this morning.”
I held my questions. Since she was staying with a friend—Shirl or the other girl from last night, I supposed—we agreed to meet at the Marina Variety Store, a restaurant near both Barnard Medical and the Medical University of South Carolina. A favorite breakfast hangout for medical students and hospital staff, the Variety Store offered a high cholesterol count and strong coffee. We would both need it.
When I arrived, Sanda was sitting in a booth near the wall of windows, clutching her coffee mug in both hands. She wore an oversized sweatshirt, jeans, and the same jacket she’d worn last night. As I slid into the bench opposite her, I could smell the leftover smoke floating around her like a bad aura.
Strong coffee wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough for Sanda. To give her some due, neither of us looked too perky. But I’d only lost part of a night’s sleep. She’d lost a lot more.
She pushed a thick manila envelope across the table toward me.
“He sent it to me yesterday, from the island clinic. To be hand-delivered this morning before ten A.M.” She attempted a smile. “Before eight is very punctual, wouldn’t you say?”
I opened the flap and eased out a thick volume bound in black.
She shrugged. “His notebook. Apparently from his research work. At the hospital.”
“Why would he send it to you by next-day courier?” On the front cover, someone had written “Mark Tilman” and an August date, six months earlier, along with some kind of coded letters and numbers.
Again, she shook her head as if on some kind of time delay. “I don’t know. I couldn’t decipher any of his notes. I—didn’t know what else to do with it.”
The notes appeared in chronological order, all written in the same hand. Each entry contained initials—maybe patients’ names—and other undecipherable scratchings.
“Sanda.” I hesitated before asking, since in some circles, my question would be a bit indelicate. “Were you and Mark—urn—where did you—were you—?”
“—living together?” She finished for me.
I nodded.
“I have a garage apartment and studio out on Sullivan’s Island, but the commute’s long. I often stay at Mark’s, the place that burned.”
“Mark addressed this to you, at his apartment?”
She nodded.
He’d probably planned on being there to get it himself. So why use Sanda’s name? The address the courier had for Mark’s apartment was now nonexistent. “How’d the courier find you?”
“Sitting on the porch at Shirl’s, a couple of houses down. Somebody told him where I was. The guy asked for a photo ID. A driver’s license or something. I didn’t have anything.”
Slowly my own dim-wittedness dawned on me. “Sanda. You were there last night? In the apartment?”
She nodded. She looked as shocked as I was at the realization. “God, it was awful.” Her gaze was far away from the booth where we sat.
“Dear Lord, Sanda.”
“I’m not sure what woke me up. At first, I thought Matisse had knocked something over and broken it. I heard something break, like glass.” She wasn’t talking to me. She was remembering out loud. “I think I went back to sleep. Then I thought I heard voices. I woke up, called out. You know, suddenlike. For a flash, I thought Mark was home. Then, just as quick, it rolled over me that he couldn’t be home. That old house can be noisy, with kids coming and going all night. My place at the island is small and quiet. Too quiet. I just couldn’t bear staying out there last night, by myself. After Mark ...”
She stopped, her gaze tracking around, as if looking for something, but not anything in front of her. “Good thing I did stay at the apartment. Good thing something woke me up. Some of those kids might not have gotten out.”
“You spotted the fire?”
She nodded. “I smelled smoke first, then saw the light, on the balcony. The whole thing was on fire. The draperies in the living room, at the back, were burning and blocking the fire escape. One long interior staircase ran up from floor to floor, on one side of the house. I just ran for that door, screaming. We were on the top floor because Mark didn’t like to listen to people walking over his head. Luckily, I made it out the front door to the stairs. I pounded on the other doors. Screaming. Some of the kids came quickly. They knew who the others were, so we got everybody out. The fire was mostly in Mark’s apartment, so they hadn’t seen it or heard it until I started screaming. I’m so thankful no one ...”
I didn’t want to say anything to Sanda, but too many odd occurrences were gathering, like storm clouds. Something had Mark worried enough to come see me, then he had a car accident and was apparently robbed. Medical residents often have empty wallets. But they don’t throw their wallets across the creek, and they don’t end up dead with their apartments burned to the ground. Why send what looked like a research journal to his home? Sanda didn’t need to be burdened with my musings right now, so I changed the subject.
“Did Matisse make it back home?” I asked gently.
She blinked and looked at me for the first time since she’d mentally revisited the fire. “Yeah.” She put one hand over her heart. “Thank goodness. Shirl found him this morning, hiding under a bush next door, eyes as big as saucers.”
“Did they say what started it? The firefighters?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t heard. It’s just too much, all together. You know? Mark. Then the fire.”
I nodded. It would be too much, even if it had been dished out in smaller doses. Way too much.
“I’m so sorry, Sanda.”
She stared out the window. “I’m just—numb. It was so hot. And smoky. So fast.”
To give her some space, I flipped slowly through the pages of Mark’s journal, looking for something, some hint about what w
as so important that he had to see me and had to send the journal. The handwriting changed slightly from entry to entry. Always the same person writing, but with varying moods and different pens.
“Sanda, could I take this with me, to try to make some sense out of it?” The other thing I couldn’t bring myself to admit to Sanda was my guilt. I owed Mark something for all my bad thoughts at the restaurant. Maybe his notes would give some hint at what had concerned him. A stretch, but I owed him.
“Sure. Maybe—” She stared at a line of dry-docked sailboats outside.
I felt ravenously hungry but didn’t order anything. Eating in the face of Sanda’s fatigue and grief seemed needlessly rude. Maybe I should get her to eat something, but I didn’t want to be pushy. Her friends had appeared capable of force-feeding her, if necessary. Sanda struck me as someone I would like very much, given the chance to know her. She probably wanted to be alone, but she also needed to have her mind occupied with something other than overwhelming grief, at least until she’d processed part of it.
“You said you have a studio?”
She nodded. “I’m a painter. Among other things. That’s how I met Mark.” She stopped to add sugar to her newly refilled coffee. The stuff in her cup must already be so sweet she could stand a spoon up in it. “As a medical illustrator. For the hospital.”
“That must be interesting. Were you involved with any of the research projects?”
“No. I worked on a journal article with Mark and Blaine Demarcos and several others.” She allowed herself a wry smile. “I never understood how six or eight people all write a single article. It mostly looks like the junior guys do the work and the big shots stand in line for the credit.”
I’m sure I looked surprised at the mention of Demarcos. “Mark worked with Blaine Demarcos?”
“Occasionally. He was one of the chief physicians on Mark’s latest project. Even though Mark was supposed to be a resident, his research Ph.D. and his background always got him involved in extra things.”
She warmed to her subject—or to the caffeine and sugar. “I don’t know how he managed everything. This latest project involved some of his patients, both at the hospital and at the island clinics, so he could sort of do two things at once.”
She stared at her milky brown coffee. “He really loved practicing medicine. He always laughed about that: doctors always practice, they never quite perfect it. He was so wonderful, as a doctor.”
She stated matter-of-fact observations, not hollow adulation. Sanda MacKay was old enough to have had the subjectivity worn off her, but in love enough to have a broken heart. The broken heart looked to be getting the better of her right now.
I thumbed through the notebook, more slowly this time. Toward the end of the entries, one set of initials appeared more frequently than others: TJ. I couldn’t, with a cursory reading, decipher much else. TJ looked like someone’s initials rather than some obscure medical abbreviation, like Hx for history or SOB for shortness of breath. Of course, as a legal term, SOB means something different.
I glanced at Sanda, to see if she’d recovered. She stared out the window. The sky and water had turned from indigo to a watered gray as, somewhere behind the fog, the sun spilled through the clouds.
“Did you know any of his patients?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Mark would’ve considered it a breach of confidentiality to mention a patient. He was a stickler for privacy and professionalism.”
I kept flipping through the pages. The portions I could read easily seemed casual, random thoughts jotted in his own shorthand. This must have been his personal journal, where he talked issues through with himself, rather than a formal research record.
The last entry was dated February 5. Day before yesterday. Got to find Tunisia Johnson. Hasn’t been in office since 1/30. His emphatic words had embossed the page. I thumbed through the last pages, all blank.
“Even if we’d met someone on the street somewhere, he wouldn’t have introduced her as his patient any more than he would’ve introduced me as ...” Her voice trailed off behind her fingers as she covered her mouth.
“Who would know about his research, do you think?”
She shrugged. “Somebody at the clinic, I suppose. I don’t know. Blaine, you could ask him.”
The casual, off-hand way she mentioned Demarcos telegraphed something important. “Do you know him well?”
“We dated for a while. Before Mark. He got me involved in the project where I met Mark.”
Her choppy, abrupt sentences returned as soon as she mentioned Mark. She went back to staring out the window and chewing on her bottom lip. During my life as a malpractice attorney, I’d often heard of Demarcos, even used research articles he’d authored. From the gossip around the medical center, I had trouble imagining someone could go from dating him to Mark Tilman. Demarcos was known as a medical hotshot—bold, brilliant, an effective self-promoter. Among female med students, nurses, and legal associates, he rated as an exceptionally good time but an impossible catch. From what I’d seen, Mark Tilman, all-American hometown boy, wouldn’t have played in the same league as Blaine Demarcos. But Mark had managed to end up with mature, sensitive, seemingly sensible Sanda MacKay, even though she still spoke of Demarcos with a telltale inflection in her voice, a too-casual aside that tried to downplay their past.
I looked forward to meeting Dr. Demarcos. Real-life soap operas always intrigue me. If I didn’t hurry, I’d be late for my appointment with him.
“Sanda, thanks for calling me.” I slid my hand across the table toward her, but stopped short of patting her hand. “I’ll call you if I learn anything, okay? You have my number, in case ...”
Sanda nodded but didn’t make a move to leave. Even though no amount of caffeine would jolt her out of her grief, I left her there, pouring more sugar into her cup.
8
FRIDAY MORNING
Blaine Demarcos’s office wasn’t far, so I left my car at the marina and walked. Ever since Dad fixed up Granddad’s Mustang convertible and handed me the keys, I’ve been wracked between giddy pride and the fearful burden of stewardship. I hoped it would be safe there.
Charleston changes dramatically at Calhoun Street around the hospitals. To the south, historical homes crowd together near the harbor; on the other side of Calhoun, the run-down houses are still uniquely Charleston construction but jarringly different from the expensively maintained ones the tourists come to see.
Even farther north and invisible from Charleston proper, though sometimes pungently near, the chemical and heavy industries, shipyards and docks, and suburban developments sprawl around the military bases. Most true Charlestonians limit themselves to their safe nesting ground on the peninsula between the Ashley and Cooper rivers, the confluence of which forms the Atlantic Ocean, or so Charlestonians opine. In their genteel time warp, they can ignore most of the twentieth century—as long as they don’t have to cross Calhoun Street.
As I waited at the intersection of Calhoun and Barnard, a medical student, her stethoscope dangling from her lab coat pocket, joined me. On the opposite corner, also waiting to cross toward the hospitals, stood four shabbily dressed men. They looked like street people, but they stood at attention and each wore some element of military dress—a fatigue shirt on one, heavy black boots on another, a vest shiny with badges and medallions on a third. Probably military bumouts who’d settled here near the Veterans Hospital to live on their disability checks.
The walk light blinked green. I should have known better than to stare. Until they started marching in a loose formation, I didn’t notice the head gear on the guy leading them: a straw horn of plenty, upturned on his head. He saluted a woman pushing a baby carriage as they passed in the intersection. The sights you see.
I had visited the medical complexes often in my medical defense attorney days, talking to experts, using the library, but I’d never learned my way around the maze of passageways that connect the confusion of h
ospitals and affiliated buildings. I asked directions at the Pink Lady desk, stuck on my paper ID badge, and headed in search of Demarcos’s office. She’d said turn left at the elevators, and I found myself heading down, maybe to go under a street.
The smells of stale food and too-strong disinfectant got stronger the farther I walked, and, for some odd reason, that disgusting combination reminded me that I hadn’t eaten anything at the Variety Store. I needed to be sharp for this meeting, but I didn’t have much time to find something to nibble on.
In frustration, I pushed open an exit door in the corridor, hoping to get my bearings. I found myself well down the block from where I’d entered the hospital. A man wearing green scrubs leaned against the wall near some garbage bins, his back to me.
“Excuse me. Can you tell me the quickest way to the staff physicians’ offices?”
It wasn’t until he turned to face me that I deciphered what he wore on his head. An upturned horn of plenty. A straw one. The guy from the sidewalk. How had he gotten here so quickly? Where were his compatriots?
He looked down at me, his eyes not quite focusing. Then he gallantly removed his headgear, offered me a deep, exaggerated bow, and stood at attention. Then he burped. A loud, luxurious belly belch.
“You’re warm, but not hot, dear lady. The next mole hole will take you to your destination.” He gestured past the trash bins toward an unlabeled door. “Pop through, up one, to your left. Bid greetings to Gatekeeper Deb.”
I left him guarding the green bins, from which issued odd noises, and pushed through the door with a backward glance. Who was I to criticize his wardrobe or pursuits? His directions magically delivered me to the staff physicians’ offices, a few minutes early for my appointment. I made sure I knew exactly where Demarcos’s office was and then headed toward some food.
I hate hospital cafeterias. It’s not the food so much as the stories I find myself making up about the other patrons—the hollow-eyed family on a death watch, the sleepy intern with mysterious stains on her jacket, the gossipy techs, the old man eating alone. Who needs that much drama on an empty stomach? I bypassed the congealed scrambled eggs, got a gigantic glass of iced tea, and rummaged in my satchel for Mark’s journal.
DONE GONE WRONG Page 6
