by G. H. Ephron
I didn’t know. I’d been to Robert Smythe-Gooding’s funeral, but the standing-room-crowd of people—even the ones who’d spoken and shared their memories of the man—were a blur. Surely Channing had been among them, had spoken eloquently, but I didn’t recall.
“How’s Livvy managing?” Daphne asked, sitting at her desk.
“Hard to tell,” I said. Daphne’s brown sweater was over the back of her chair. “What did you think? You stopped by to see her this morning, didn’t you?”
Daphne stroked her neck with one hand and helped herself to a few nuts from a bowl on the desk with the other. Her nails were stained yellow with nicotine.
“Can I get you some coffee?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Black.”
She poured two cups. To hers she added a spoonful of sugar, then another. She handed me one cup, and took the other and sat at her desk. She settled back. “Actually, I did stop by. Channing asked me to come.” I knew she meant Olivia. “You don’t mind, do you?” Daphne asked.
“Mind? Why I …” As a practicing psychiatrist, never mind one of the top administrators, Daphne could pretty much go anywhere she wanted at the Pearce. I wondered what Olivia had needed to talk to her about, and why Olivia wouldn’t tell me Daphne had been there? But I couldn’t come right out and ask. After all, Daphne had every right to see her own patient, to talk to her privately. I only hoped she wasn’t trying to continue seeing her regularly. With two of us, it would be confusing for Olivia, not to mention counterproductive. “Next time, would you just let me know? As a courtesy.”
“So what can I do for you?”
“I’m trying to learn more about the treatment Channing was testing. It might be something we can use to help Olivia with her craving for Ritalin.”
“Channing talked to you about her results?”
“Only that she was very pleased. She said someone was reviewing her analysis. I thought maybe you?”
“Her results are quite impressive,” Daphne said. She opened up her top desk drawer and foraged around. She pulled out a floppy disk and offered it to me. “I wonder, what did you make of that row at the end of Channing’s party?”
I tried to take the diskette from her, but she held onto her end. So this was going to be a barter. “I had the impression they were arguing about reporting a death,” I said. Daphne’s look turned grave. “Channing wanted to report it. Jensen didn’t.” Daphne let go of her end of the diskette. I went on, “Said it could hurt the hospital. I’ve been trying to make sense of it. Maybe one of the subjects in a drug trial died and no one filed an Adverse Event report.”
“A death,” Daphne said. “No, I hadn’t heard anything about anyone dying during a clinical trial. Now that the Kutril trial is completed, there’s only one other drug trial going on in the Drug and Alcohol Unit. Jensen’s testing DX-200.”
“You don’t suppose …” I started.
“I was on the phone with Acu-Med this morning. They’re delighted with the results, so far. There certainly hasn’t been … I wonder …” Her hand hovered over her mouth, then dropped away. “I could dig a little. One of the benefits of being in charge of clinical trials for the hospital, it’s just the kind of question I’m supposed to ask.”
“Let me know what you find. And thanks for the report. This will be a big help.” I stood. “Any idea where I’d find her raw data? The patient files? I’d like to understand what individual subjects experienced, just to be on the safe side before we try Olivia on it.”
“Probably locked up in her office. I’d be very surprised if her research isn’t in a file drawer, in tiptop order and neatly annotated. Just give me a minute to get my things together, and I’ll let you in before I go. You’re welcome to look about.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Daphne put on her sweater, then her coat. She picked up her briefcase. “She trusted us, Peter,” Daphne said, grasping my arm. “Now we’ve got to help Livvy.” Her voice shook with emotion, and tears pooled in her eyes.
I knew we were both trying to help Olivia. I just hoped we were pulling in the same direction.
Daphne let me into Channing’s office and left for the night. The room smelled of disinfectant. I gagged and felt my coffee trying to make its way up my throat. The same smell had lingered in Kate’s studio, insinuating its way into our bedroom and the downstairs, long after she was killed.
The telephone receiver was in its cradle. Even so, the three-tone screech replayed itself in my head. I forced myself to turn and face the corner where I’d found Channing. The leather chair was there. It had been cleaned.
I steeled myself and began to look for Channing’s research. Someone had cleared her desktop. The drawers were locked. I checked under the blotter for a key. None. Then I tried in the mason jar she used to hold pencils on her desk. There I found a ring of small keys.
I opened the desk file drawer. There was an orderly array of neatly labeled hanging files holding purple file folders. It was a hodgepodge of stuff—her own health insurance, notes from talks she’d given, information about substance-abuse support groups.
I turned my attention to the tall gray file cabinet. A key was sitting in the lock. The top drawer was labeled RESEARCH. This was it—if the files were here, this is where they’d be. I pulled and the drawer flew towards me—empty.
I tried the second drawer. It was packed so tightly with files, it was hard to pull a folder out without tearing it. All patient files. The third and fourth drawers were packed with administrative reports and patient billing. Nothing on the Kutril trial.
I pulled the top drawer open again. The emptiness taunted me. Had she put all her research somewhere for safekeeping? Or had someone helped himself or herself, after her death?
I scanned the bookshelves. There were medical references, psychiatry texts, medical journals, a few standing boxes of scholarly papers. I took down a few and flipped through. Tucked in at the end of a shelf, I spotted a fat black datebook. I took it out. Weekdays were densely scribbled with appointments.
I turned to the day Channing was killed. In the eleven o’clock slot, she’d written down “P and O, caf.’ At ten, she’d written “D.” Who or what was D? Destler? Daphne? It could have been anyone—a patient, a staff person, a friend.
I put the datebook back. Then I scribbled a quick note to Daphne, saying I hadn’t taken anything because there wasn’t anything to take. I left the office, hooking the padlock back in place and squeezing it shut.
After I slipped the note under Daphne’s door, I started to the elevator, passing by Liam Jensen’s office. His door was ajar. I backed up and knocked.
“What is it?” Jensen barked, an edge of irritation to his voice. I went in. He looked up at me, surprised. “Yes? Peter?” He closed the file folder that he had open and slapped it facedown on the desk.
“I hope you don’t mind,” I said. “I was up here, talking with Daphne, and I saw your door open.”
“Not at all, not at all.” His lips stretched taut in what I think was supposed to pass for a smile. “What can I do for you?”
“Actually, I was hoping to track down Dr. Temple’s research on the Kutril trial.”
“I should think the files would all be in her office,” Jensen said. He said it looking past me, his right hand twitching.
“I checked there. I thought perhaps she gave them to you.”
Jensen gave a bitter laugh. “Me? I think not.”
“Your research studies were in competition with one another, weren’t they?”
My eyes drifted to the file cabinet alongside his desk. On top, a row of about two-dozen coffee mugs stood at attention. Lined up in alphabetical order from Acu-Med to Zoloft, he had quite a collection. I gazed down. A bottom file drawer was partly open. Jensen pushed it with his foot, but the tops of a few purple file folders kept the drawer from closing completely.
“I suppose you could say that,” Jensen said. “Though it didn’t have to be that way. After all, we�
��re all working for the betterment of humanity.”
He sounded so smug, I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Didn’t I hear that there were some adverse events with the DX-200 trial? A death?”
“A death?” Jensen choked on the word. “Absolutely untrue. Who told you that?”
“Wasn’t that what you and Channing were discussing at the end of her party?”
“What?” Jensen looked genuinely baffled. He seemed to think back. His brow cleared for an instant, then he looked even more guarded. “What we were discussing had nothing whatsoever to do with the DX-200 trial. Or any other drug trial for that matter. That was a private matter between Dr. Temple and myself.”
“You don’t think it had anything to do with her death, do you?”
“Her death?” Jensen’s eyebrows raised in astonishment. “Well …” He considered this possibility. “No,” he said slowly. “Not that.” There was a pause. “I can’t imagine—”
Whatever it was, he wasn’t about to share the details with me. I said, “I was just in Dr. Temple’s office. Her research file drawer is empty.”
Jensen’s waxy face colored slightly. “How odd. Perhaps the files have been moved to a more secure place, now that …”
“If the concern was confidentiality, I’d have thought patient records would have been moved as well. But they haven’t been. Besides, the office is locked. Daphne let me in.”
“As I say, I wouldn’t know. But as director of the unit, it’s my business to make sure all confidential files are kept confidential.”
“Director of the unit?”
Jensen coughed. “Why, yes. Dr. Destler has appointed me to take over Channing’s responsibilities.”
“Acting director?”
“Uh, no. I believe the appointment is permanent.”
Had this been in the works all along? “Sounds as if congratulations are in order,” I said.
He waved away the remark. “I hardly think so, given the circumstances.”
12
FRIDAY WAS my mother’s birthday. I’d wanted to take her out to dinner, but she insisted on getting together for breakfast. It was the only time she could squeeze me in, as she put it. As usual, I was a little late. Also as usual, she wasn’t waiting. At eight sharp, she rapped on my door. I opened it.
Her white, perfectly combed and curled head came barely up to my chin. She was wearing a purple running suit with pink flowers painted on the jacket and up the side of one leg.
“French toast?” she chirped, and immediately disappeared into the apartment in the other half of my two-family. I locked up and followed, down her dark entry hall into the kitchen, warm with light, redolent with the smell of brewing coffee.
“But I thought I was going to take you out,” I complained. She already had a cup of coffee poured for me. “It’s your birthday.”
“So, happy birthday to me. Shouldn’t I get what I want?”
I sighed. “And you want … ?”
“To stay here and make French toast for my handsome son.” She beamed at me.
“You were afraid I was going to take you out for dim sum.”
My mother looked aghast. When it comes to food, my mother doesn’t like surprises. She’s afraid of what she’ll find nestled in the warm Chinese dumplings that about a half-dozen Chinatown restaurants serve early in the day—my idea of heaven.
“Don’t worry. I’m not sure we could even get dim sum during the week.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“I was going to take you to the Spinnaker on top of the Hyatt. They’re supposed to have a terrific breakfast.”
“That’s the one that goes around and around?”
“Great view.”
My mother made a face as if she’d bitten into a very sour pickle. “Restaurants shouldn’t twirl. They should stay in one place so you can properly digest your food. And so expensive. I’ll bet three dollars, just for orange juice.” My mother pulled a quart of Tropicana from the fridge, shook it, and poured me a glass.
“Don’t you want any?” I asked.
“I’ve already eaten,” she announced, and poked at the contents of a yellow mixing bowl. There was a fresh challah on the counter, its burnished crust gleaming, and in the bowl were two slices soaking in eggs and milk. Butter was melting in a frying pan. Real butter. My mother thought margarine was a plot—I’m not sure what kind, but a plot nevertheless.
There was no point trying to convince her to let me take her out. She’d taken charge. And to be honest, the prospect of her French toast weakened my resolve.
The pan sizzled as she dropped in the first soggy slice, then again as she dropped in the second one. Then the gentler sound of the bread sighing as it expanded, each slice turning into an airy pillow as it cooked. The rich smell filled my head, taking me back to our apartment in Brooklyn, to the kitchen that was bigger than any other room.
“How’s that little girl doing?” my mother asked.
“She’s … I don’t know actually. She’s been going through a difficult ordeal. Plus she’s addicted to Ritalin. That’s what they give …”
“Psssh,” my mother exhaled. “Ritalin I know what is. How many times I wished we could have given your brother, Steven, a magic pill to calm him down.”
“Not me?”
“Not you. You were easy. Except that you only ate Corn Toasties Breakfast for three years. That and a glass of milk.”
The mention of Corn Toasties brought back the smell—something between cardboard and corn husks. Now I couldn’t bear the sight of them. What my mother didn’t know was that every day, on the way to school and on the way home, I was stopping in at the local candy store for chocolate egg creams, then at the bakery for a big black-and-white cookie, iced half with chocolate and half with vanilla. I’ve never found cookies to match, anywhere in Boston. And I’ve looked.
“Did you ever consider taking Steve to a psychiatrist?” I asked.
My mother smiled and shook her head. “Those days, if you couldn’t see a problem, it didn’t exist.”
Maybe if they had, it might have saved my brother three unhappy marriages. Or maybe not.
I was halfway through my second helping when my mother said, “I’ve got to be down the senior center in forty minutes.” Down the senior center? Sixty years in Brooklyn and five in Boston, and already she had a Boston accent. At least she didn’t say seen-yah centah like a native.
She disappeared, then came back a few minutes later wearing her parka and wheeling a black, zippered overnight bag. I stuffed a last piece of French toast into my mouth before she whisked the plate away. She gave the dishes a quick rinse, stacked them efficiently in the dishwasher, added some soap, and started it up.
“Ready?” she asked, and glanced at the clock on the stove. “Thirty-two minutes to departure.”
“To where?”
“Windsor.”
“Canada?”
“Too far to go by bus, if you ask me.”
“Gambling?”
“And drugs,” she said with a straight face. She waved away my surprise. “A person could go broke paying for pills in this wonderful country of ours. And I usually win. Blackjack,” my mother added, well pleased with herself. “Can’t win bubkes on slots, you know.”
“I can easily help you pay for …”
“That’s not the point. Do you know how much money those drug companies steal from us? Gonifs, all of them,” she said, and wheeled her suitcase out the door.
Annie was out of town for the weekend. Saturday and Sunday passed in a blur of chores I’d agreed to look after in my mother’s apartment. I replaced broken window ropes, rewired a light switch, put a new washer in a leaky faucet, patched some cracks in her bathroom ceiling, and painted. Between jobs, I called in to check on the unit.
I arrived at work Monday and stopped first at the nurses’ station, as I always do. Gloria was sitting at the desk—very unusual for a woman who never sits down on the job. She raised her head when
I came in and flicked her eyes in the direction of the waiting area. Sergeant MacRae was sitting there, reading a newspaper. Beside him was a uniformed female police officer. They were early.
When I asked how Olivia was, Gloria shook her head. “They caught her last night, trying to break in to the med room,” she whispered.
“Damn. That’s just great. Perfect timing.”
“I already read her the riot act,” Gloria said. “She’s trying to pull herself together.”
I went over to MacRae. He lowered the newspaper. “You’re a little early,” I told him. “Ms. Temple’s father will be here at nine.”
I expected him to complain, to say Olivia’s father didn’t need to be here since, after all, she wasn’t a suspect. But he didn’t. He just introduced me to his colleague, Officer Connor, a large, thick woman with a pleasant face.
“Coffee?” I offered. They declined. MacRae went back to his newspaper.
I poured myself another cup and carried it down the hall to Olivia’s room. She was standing, staring out the window. Her elbows poked out from her T-shirt sleeves; her jeans rode low on her hips. Her face was scrubbed, her hair damp.
“They’re here,” I said. “You okay?”
She bit her lower lip and nodded. “Where’s Daddy?” she asked. An eyelash lay curled on her cheek.
“We’ll wait for him. He should be here soon.”
She gave a ragged inhale. She was shivering.
“You’re not feeling so good, are you?” I asked.
From her look, I knew she thought I had the IQ of a frog. “I can’t concentrate. I ache all over. All I want to do is sleep. You took me off the Ritalin too fast.”
“I heard you went looking for some yourself last night.”
“I need it to help me think straight.”
She clearly did need help. Even sugar pills. On the other hand, why settle for a placebo when we might have a bona fide treatment for her with Kutril? I felt in my pocket for the floppy disk Daphne had given me. “We might have something …” I started.
