Her Dr. Wright

by Meredith Webber

  ‘It was an accident!’ Mary-Ellen retorted, as Nick helped her back to her feet.

  ‘Yes,’ Sarah said, though her voice revealed her doubts about this statement. ‘Well, if you’ve got a problem with the autopsy, address it to me as I’m the one in charge here. The policeman is merely following correct procedure, which, in a case of suspicious death, means not letting the body out of his sight so evidence can’t be destroyed.’

  Mary-Ellen glared at her.

  ‘You’ve no right to be doing an autopsy. This place isn’t equipped for the job and, besides being far too close to the man responsible for my sister’s death, you certainly wouldn’t be qualified.’

  Sarah, who’d been prepared to give the woman a little leeway, considering the shock she’d suffered earlier, now stiffened her spine and drew her slim body erect, making herself as tall as possible.

  ‘As it happens, I am qualified—and experienced—so I’d suggest you leave me here to do my job, under the watchful eyes of the police, of course.’

  No need to tell Mary-Ellen she wasn’t doing an autopsy but a preliminary examination. She looked beyond the woman to the tall quiet man and felt uneasiness stir in her stomach.

  ‘Do you have any right to be here?’ she asked him, but she’d hardly registered the barely perceptible shake of his head before Mary-Ellen replied.

  ‘Of course he has the right to be here. He’s working for me. He’s a detective—trained in homicide. He’s probably forgotten more than these local yokels would learn in fifty years.’

  ‘If he’s working for you, he’s private now, and that doesn’t give him the right to be here,’ Sarah said firmly.

  The woman started forward as if to strike at her, but the man caught her arm and murmured something that stopped the headlong rush. But Sarah hadn’t been concerned about possible attack, more concerned about the uneasiness within her which had now turned to nausea.

  ‘You said you came to sort through your family belongings,’ she said, staring at Mary-Ellen as she tried to make sense of all the implications. ‘Why would you bring an experienced homicide detective with you?’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘BECAUSE your friend murdered my sister!’ Mary-Ellen snapped. ‘I’ve always known he did, and now I’ll be proved right!’

  She smiled triumphantly at Sarah, before rounding on Nick, who was kneeling on the concrete floor, carefully collecting bits of the broken camera and torn film and dropping the debris into an evidence bag. He’d even taken the time to pull on gloves, but somehow Sarah couldn’t see Barry taking the ‘accidental’ destruction any further.

  ‘Where’s your boss? The other policeman?’ she demanded.

  ‘He’s inside—in the hospital. His wife’s having a baby.’

  Mary-Ellen threw up her hands in disgust.

  ‘I don’t believe this! You stay right here, and don’t let that woman touch my sister again. I’m going to get this nonsense stopped if I have to go to the Premier himself.’

  She whirled out of the room as suddenly as she’d whirled into it, leaving the original occupants bemused, while the enigmatic private detective remained where he was, just inside the door.

  ‘Can she stop you?’ Rowena asked.

  Sarah shook her head.

  ‘I doubt it, though the gentleman could probably tell you for sure.’

  She nodded towards the stranger, but Rowena had no intention of speaking to someone who was seeking to do harm to David.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ She tried Nick this time, but the young man simply set his bag of camera scraps on the bench then turned towards her and shook his head.

  ‘There are all kinds of legal angles to everything a copper does,’ he said, ‘so I wouldn’t like to say for certain what she can or can’t do.’

  He looked uncertainly at Sarah.

  ‘Are you a good friend of David’s?’

  Rowena saw the flash of anger in Sarah’s eyes.

  ‘I hope you’re not implying my friendship with David would make any difference to my findings here.’

  ‘No, no, of course not!’ The young man backed off. ‘I just didn’t know. I thought you were probably someone he’d got through an agency or something. Like the force sends a replacement when Barry or I take holidays.’

  It was exactly what most people would think, Rowena realised. David hadn’t told his patients he was taking leave until Sarah had arrived on the island, when he’d simply introduced her as his locum—the woman who’d be taking over for three weeks.

  ‘How did—?’ Rowena began, but a look from Sarah, who had ignored Mary-Ellen’s decree and continued sorting bones, silenced her.

  Rowena took the hint and turned her attention back to the carpal bones, sifting through the collection and selecting matching pieces one by one. But the question wouldn’t go away—so as she sorted and arranged the little bones, her mind chased possible explanations.

  The door opened again, and Barry returned, fortunately without Mary-Ellen.

  Ignoring the private detective, he spoke to Sarah.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’m not quite finished sorting these small bones, but I’d be willing to say we’ll find it all here.’

  ‘Good!’ he said. ‘Then as soon as you’re done, wrap her up in the plastic and Nick will help you slip the lot into a body bag. We’ll bag the trunk as well. Mr Page, I’ll allow you to remain where you are as Ms…the lady’s representative…seeing as how she’s got a…as she’s upset over all of this…but you’re not to touch anything or move from that spot. Once the doc’s all done, this room will be locked and padlocked until either the homicide detectives get here or the body can be taken to the mainland.’

  He then ran his hands through his hair and muttered, ‘Do you think you can handle things, Nick? I’m having a baby here. I can’t be running backwards and forwards all the time to tell you what to do.’

  It was an unjust remark, given how good the young man had been, but Sarah realised how uptight Barry must be, and Nick obviously understood, for he grinned at his boss and said, ‘I’ll try, mate. I really will.’

  Sarah worked more quickly now, scanning the body, listing the bones, assuring herself they were all accounted for.

  Nick produced a body bag and with Rowena’s help he and Sarah wrapped the fragile remains of Sue-Ellen Wright in plastic, then slid the sheath into the thick rubber bag and zipped it up.

  By the time they emerged from the room, the silent watcher still with them, it was dark, and the rain that had drummed relentlessly on the tiles above them while they’d worked now whipped around them like icy flails, driven by a wind that had picked up speed as it had crossed thousands of miles of empty ocean.

  ‘Come to my house,’ Rowena suggested to Sarah. ‘We’ll go through the hospital to tell David that’s where we’ll be. He might want to stay as well. With Margo in labour, he’ll be closer to the action.’

  They made the dash across the covered walkway to the hospital together, leaving Nick behind to secure the building, and Paul Page to do whatever private investigators were supposed to do.

  Perhaps report to his boss—if he could find her!

  ‘Can David go home—if he wanted to?’ Rowena asked Sarah. ‘I mean, is his house a crime scene? What’s happening out there?’

  They were on the back veranda of the hospital, dabbing at their damp skin and clothes with towels an aide had provided for them.

  ‘I can’t see what harm it could do, him going back. After all this time, what could anyone find? Barry said earlier he didn’t want people in the house, but I doubt he could seal off the house as well as the shed. For one thing, all my clothes are out there and, though I’m happy not to be driving far in this weather, I’ll need them eventually. And David will need clothes as well.’

  ‘Which a person delegated by our trusty local policeman will go out and collect, though not tonight, I believe.’

  David’s voice made them both turn, and the statement t
old them he’d heard at least part of the conversation.

  Rowena dropped the towel she’d been using onto a chair and went to him.

  ‘You’re going to stay at my place, and don’t argue,’ she told him. ‘In fact, let’s all head over there now. I know what we’ve been doing this afternoon should put anyone off their tucker, but it hasn’t worked for me. I’m starving.’

  She hoped she’d sounded like the calm, sensible nurse-receptionist he’d come to trust over their years as colleagues, not the erratic in-love female who’d kissed him the previous evening.

  But whatever he thought of the invitation, he had little choice but to accept as Sarah added her approval to the scheme.

  ‘Great idea. Let’s all go. Who knows when one of us will be called out? So obey the first rule taught to med students. Eat when you can, and sleep when you can.’

  ‘That’s two rules,’ David told her, but he didn’t argue and Rowena felt a pleasurable warmth ease its way into her blood at the thought of having David stay in her house.

  For whatever reason!

  ‘Whose car is where?’ he asked.

  ‘Yours is here. I parked it just over there,’ Sarah responded, pointing through the driving rain to where a barely discernible dark shape hunched beside the outbuilding might, with imagination, be taken for a vehicle.

  ‘Mine’s undercover around the far side of the hospital,’ Rowena said. ‘Let’s all go in it so we don’t have to get wet again.’

  ‘I’ll check on Margo first,’ David told her.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Sarah said. ‘You can introduce me to her. I’m actually the doctor on duty on this island at the moment so I’m the one who should be on call.’

  David gave her a tired smile.

  ‘We’ll argue about it later, shall we?’

  He led Sarah into the hospital and, watching them go, Rowena wondered again about Mary-Ellen’s knowledge of their friendship. Would the sisters have been so close that Sue-Ellen had mentioned David’s friend, even though, according to Sarah, the two had never met?

  Or had the detective been employed some time ago? Had Mary-Ellen paid him or one of his colleagues, to sift through David’s past, searching for any secrets, relentlessly tracking him until yesterday she’d been confident enough to pounce?

  The thought of such silent but dogged pursuit made Rowena feel physically ill.

  ‘But it didn’t make you suspicious of David,’ Sarah pointed out when, much later, they were washing and drying their dinner dishes. It had been dinner for two, as in the end David hadn’t returned with them, staying on at the hospital to reassure his expectant patient and her nervous spouse.

  ‘Of course not!’ Rowena told her. ‘Anyone who knows David couldn’t possibly suspect him of killing anyone—particularly someone he loved as much as he loved Sue-Ellen.’

  ‘Has he talked about her a lot?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘No. Now I think about it, I doubt he ever has—except in passing. My wife used to ride, learnt to fly a plane—things like that.’

  ‘Then what makes you think he carries this undying passion for her?’

  Rowena remembered what had first made her think it, but ‘because he hated me for kissing him in the bedroom they’d shared’ didn’t seem like an appropriate reply, so she said instead, ‘Well, the way he reacted to the anklet, for one thing! He nearly fainted. I thought it must be because, at that moment, he knew for sure it was his wife. Perhaps up till then, he’d held this dream in his heart that one day she’d come back. Maybe she’d had amnesia…’

  Sarah chuckled and flipped the teatowel at her.

  ‘You read too many romances,’ she teased. ‘Have you been torturing yourself with these thoughts all along? Convinced David nurtured this undying love and hopeless dreams of Sue-Ellen’s eventual return?’

  ‘He came back to the island, didn’t he?’ Rowena argued. ‘Why would he return to Three Ships if not to be near the place where he first met her? Everyone here knew the story. Knew he was staying with Ted Withers for a long weekend, went to a party and fell instantly in love with her.’

  ‘And probably fell almost as instantly out of it again,’ Sarah told her. ‘David’s too loyal a person to talk about his relationships but, reading between the lines of the letters I did get from him, it wasn’t joy and sunshine all the way. They were married in the US, when he was in Saint Louis doing further paediatric training, so no one who knew him well saw much of him for ages. They’d been back in Melbourne less than a year when Sue-Ellen disappeared—’

  ‘But if he didn’t come to work on Three Ships because of Sue-Ellen,’ Rowena interrupted, ‘why did he come here? He wasn’t an islander.’

  Precisely what I’d like to know, Sarah thought, but a sudden rush of wind then the slamming of the front door told them David had returned, and no further speculation could take place.

  He stood in the hall and leaned against the door. The storm had not only approached faster than predicted, it had grown in strength and now battered the island with its fury.

  And he’d forgotten to get the keys to his car from Sarah so had had to dash through the rain, first to the surgery where he’d stupidly left his raincoat then on to Rowena’s house.

  Not wanting to drip water through Rowena’s house, he’d discarded the raincoat and shoes in the outer porch, and he now stripped off his sodden socks. He felt the dampness in the lower part of his trousers where the raincoat had failed to reach, and decided he’d be better off without them as well.

  Which was when the lights went out.

  He managed in the darkness, and had them in his hand, wondering where to put them, when a soft light illuminated the gloomy hall.

  ‘Here’s a towel, and a lamp. I’ll set it down here. Give me your wet things. I’ve got a fire going in the living room—I’ll hang them above it.’

  He heard all Rowena’s sensible instructions, but they failed to make much imprint on a mind transfixed by the image of the woman who was giving them. She’d unbound her hair, no doubt to dry it, so it fell like shimmering golden cloth around her shoulders, while, in the lamplight, the grey of her eyes appeared to have darkened so he was looking into deep mysterious pools.

  She set the lamp down on the hall coatstand and reached out for his clothes, mimicking her movement of the previous evening.

  Only this time it was he who caught her arms, he who leaned in and he who pressed his lips to hers.

  ‘Oh, Rowena, I really shouldn’t be here,’ he murmured helplessly, as his protective instincts duelled with desire, and lost. He dropped the damp clothes and drew her close, absorbing the faint perfume of her hair, feeling the solid strength of her body, bewitched by the magical essence that seemed to emanate from her, enveloping him in its power.

  With his resolve further weakened by the traumatic events of the day, he let his lips find hers.

  ‘And I definitely shouldn’t be kissing you,’ he breathed against their softness, then kissed her hungrily, common sense flying out the window as his body sought solace in the sheer physical delight of holding her close.

  Damp shirt-tails and wet jockey shorts did little to mask how he was feeling, and Rowena’s thudding heart and aching body responded with a fierceness that suggested it was time for her as well.

  Leaving the lamp burning, the wet clothes on the floor and a guest in her living room, she steered David through the door behind him and into the bedroom she’d shared with Peter.

  And had never expected to share with another man!

  ‘Rowena!’

  The word, her name, was rough with passion, but a question lingered in it. She answered with her kiss, and with her body pressing even closer to his, letting it speak for her, letting her hands and kisses tell him, seduce him. She knew his exhaustion had diminished his will-power but with all her heart she wanted to comfort him in the only way she knew. Ignoring his muttered objections, she used skills she’d forgotten she had, bringing him to such a peak of desire he stoppe
d arguing, and together they fumbled out of their clothes and fell into the downy comfort of the bed.

  Murmured sounds, too inarticulate to be called words, whispered from his lips and Rowena felt her skin becoming alert to every movement of the man she’d grown to love so dearly. She spread her fingers across his back, slid them to his hips, feeling the ridge of bone, the tight muscles. His fingers carried on their own tactile exploration, one hand on her breast, one between her thighs, feeling her warmth—her excitement.

  She sensed him withdrawing into himself, heard her name uttered in a kind of protest, and once again took command, touching and teasing him until whatever scruples he’d failed to voice were overcome by his desire.

  But though his need was as urgent as hers, he didn’t hurry, teasing her in turn until she wanted to cry out for release. He must have known, for he entered her, filling all the emptiness she hadn’t realised she’d been feeling, bringing the physical side of her to life with a wondrous explosion of sensation and an inner ecstasy that left her shaken and exhausted.

  Afterwards, when she felt him grow heavy in her arms, she eased away from him, knowing he’d sleep.

  Knowing she wouldn’t—at least not for a while.

  And not in here. She didn’t want to see any regret in his eyes when he woke—and definitely didn’t want them to repeat the very pleasurable experience in the hazy warmth of just waking—when the brain would still be slumbering but the bodies remembering enough to want more.

  Next time, if there was a next time, it would be in the full knowledge of what they were doing, for both of them.

  She gathered up her clothes and crept out of the room, pausing in the hall to pull them on and button herself into some semblance of order. Now all she had to do was face Sarah—the guest she’d deserted halfway through the washing-up!

  The light from the fire revealed an empty living room, but the lamp Rowena had left in the kitchen was gone and noises from the bathroom suggested that Sarah was taking a bath.

  Damn! I should have got more clothes from my bedroom while I was in there, Rowena realised. She walked back, left the lamp in the hall once again while she opened the door and tiptoed inside, finding by feel a warm nightdress for Sarah and another for herself. Then, remembering Margo in labour at the hospital, she grabbed a handful of underwear, a couple of shirts and a clean pair of jeans.