She opened her eyes again and found that she’d uttered her words so softly Neil had been forced to lean in to understand them. He was close enough for her to see the stubble on his cheek, to breathe in his scent. Close enough to kiss.
He must have heard her quick intake of breath at his nearness, because he moved away a half step.
“Sorry—the noise in the background. Better?” Neil asked.
Oh, no. It wasn’t better at all. Had her mother’s matchmaking put ideas in her head? She realized with startling clarity that she’d wanted to see Neil tonight—maybe not talk to him, but just see him, hear him sing. She’d wanted to know what he sounded like, whether he was a clear-voiced tenor or a strong bass.
But how to say that without coming across like a blithering idiot? “You asked me why I’d come tonight. I guess you made it sound interesting,” she finally said.
“Good. I’m really glad to see you. It seems like I keep ticking you off, and I don’t mean to do that.” He leaned against the doorjamb, giving off that I’ve-got-all-the-time-in-the-world vibe Charli found refreshing. The men she’d known—in college, in med school, her fellow residents—had never been so patient.
“If you’ll give me a pass on all things Christmas, I expect we’ll get along swimmingly,” she said. “I’m not usually a Scrooge....”
“I know.” He nodded and grinned. “It’s the timing. I get it. I guess I’m like Flora—I try to convert the world to my own obsessions.”
She liked his self-deprecation. Again, this was like none of the guys she’d been around for a while. They seemed to take every opportunity to remind her that while she was planning on going into the lowly family-practice field, they would be elbow-deep in neurosurgery or cardiothoracic surgery or trauma or oncology.
Here, Neil had no such pretensions, and she liked the way he seemed at ease with himself.
It soothed her—and her anxiety about her father’s money, and what that amount of cash could mean. She felt certain, all in a moment, that she could tell the man in front of her anything and he’d understand it, help her through it.
It was on the tip of her tongue to blurt out about the money and ask Neil for his opinion. But then the lights dimmed twice, and she recalled it was Flora’s signal to get back to the grindstone.
“Gotta go,” he told Charli. “Why not stay and watch?”
She did. As she slid into one of the old wooden seats in the back of the auditorium, she discovered Neil’s voice to be a strong, clear tenor that nailed a solo in an old English Christmas carol.
He probably had sung right beside her dad the Christmas before. She hadn’t come home for Christmas last year. She would have if she’d known that Christmas was to be her father’s last one. It was a regret she knew she’d have for the rest of her life.
Still, as Charli watched Neil sing with the rest of the choir, she was glad of the interruption that had prevented her from spilling the beans about the money. What on earth had made her think telling Neil about the money was a good idea? What could he do about it? And he owned and edited the newspaper. Would he feel compelled to report her discovery before she had a chance to figure things out?
The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became. That amount of money couldn’t mean anything good.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, Charli awoke gritty-eyed and groggy. Thoughts of the money and Neil had chased themselves around in her head until the small hours of the morning. When she faced herself in the mirror, seeing the bags under her eyes, she knew something had to give.
She called Marvela at the office and told her she’d be a half hour late coming in. “I’ve got a stop I need to make first,” she told her.
That stop was at Floyd Lewis’s house. Floyd had been her dad’s CPA for years. Charli hadn’t seen a professional listing in the yellow pages for his office, so she’d rung his house and he’d told her he’d retired three years before, but to drop in at home.
When she pulled up to Floyd’s house, she saw a Corolla parked at the curb—a Corolla that looked suspiciously like Neil Bailey’s. Her heart went into overdrive as two emotions battled for primacy—a little jolt of joy at seeing Neil again, and frustration that she wouldn’t have a chance to talk to Floyd alone.
Maybe it’s not Neil. There have got to be a dozen cars in Brevis that look like his. She soldiered on, up the steep little hill of grass between the curb and the sidewalk. Good thing she’d ditched her heels in favor of flats today.
But, no, it was Neil. There he was, struggling to get out of his car one-handed, diving back in for a camera he slung around his neck and the skinny reporter’s notebook he jammed into his back pocket.
“Fancy running into you. I figured you’d be neck-deep in office hours, or at the hospital,” Neil said by way of greeting. “I see you’re sporting another one of those scarves. Your mom’s handiwork?”
Charli’s hand went to her scarf du jour, a frilly confection of aqua and black. “Yeah. Should I put in an order for you? She’s about to bury me in yarn.”
“I’m kind of a hot-natured guy—hardly ever wear a coat if I can get out of it. Maybe you should ask her to knit you a throw or something—that would take longer, right?”
She chuckled. “You might have an idea there.” Twining the scarf’s end around her fingers, she said, “You visiting Floyd?”
“Yeah. So...you here to see the chicks, too?”
“What?” Did he mean chicken chicks, or...
“The baby chickens. Floyd is raising chickens in his backyard, and he wanted me to do a story on it. He called me and said he had about a dozen hatchlings.”
“Oh.” Charli groaned. “What a lovely way to raise a good case of salmonella.”
Neil came to full alert. “Really? That’d be a good counterpoint to balance the article. Can I quote you on that?”
“No!” she said firmly. “It’s just that I treated a whole family who had an outbreak of salmonella after the mom had decided eggs from the supermarket were nasty.”
“Wow. How do you get it?”
“The salmonella? From the chickens. Wait. This is not on the record. I don’t want to come across as the new-in-town know-it-all doctor who’s out to be a spoilsport. So before I say anything, I repeat—this is off—”
“Got it. Background only, so I’ll know what to look up on Google.”
“Chickens can carry salmonella, and people can get it from handling the birds or their...poop. And there’s the whole bird-flu worry. In China, it was domestic flocks, not commercial, that really started that scare. But—” Charli could see him struggling to one-hand his reporter’s notebook out of his pocket. “I’ll send you a link, okay? If you’re careful when you raise chickens, you’re not likely to get sick. I just don’t want people to think growing your own chickens is as easy as simply throwing some chickens and scratch into your backyard.”
“Thanks. Now let’s go back and see if ol’ Floyd is a Typhoid Mary.”
At least I distracted him from wanting to know why I’m here, she thought.
In the garage, empty of a car, and full of chicken brooders, Floyd was leaning over one waist-high pen. “Hey, Neil! You made it! And Charli, too! I mean Dr. Prescott.”
“Hi, Floyd. Thanks for the flowers you sent—and the egg salad.” Suddenly her stomach churned. Had she eaten salmonella-laden homegrown eggs?
“Hatched those eggs right here! My very own flock of chickens! Can’t beat the taste, can you? Made the mayo myself, too. My mama’s recipe.”
Honestly, Charli couldn’t remember whether she’d partaken in any of the egg salad. She usually steered clear of any buffet-served dish that had mayo—homemade or otherwise—in it, for precautionary reasons.
But she was pleased to see Floyd was wearing coveralls and elbow-length gloves. At leas
t he was taking his care seriously.
Floyd brought out a few chicks to show off, fluffy little balls of feathers he had raised in an incubator. “Got ’em in the garage because the weather’s cold. See my heat lights? Got two of ’em over each brooder in case one of ’em fails. Redundancy. That’s the way to go.”
Neil dived into the interview, bracing the notebook on the top of the brooder and scrawling notes with his good hand. Charli looked on with dismay. She wasn’t going to have time to wait out the interview for a chance to speak to Floyd alone.
As she was about to go, Floyd said, “Neil, why don’t you go on and get a picture of my big girls in the backyard? I can’t leave these little guys just now—I’m sexing ’em, and I need to do it now.”
“Sexing?” Neil’s eyebrows shot up, and Charli burst out laughing.
“He means he’s trying to detect the gender of the chicks. He’s not doing anything to them.”
“Oh. Okay. I’ll go get those pictures.” Neil left them, albeit looking a little confused.
Now Floyd asked, “What’s on your mind, Charli? I guess I didn’t think you’d have anything private to say, or I would have told you Neil was coming.”
“I can come back—”
“Nope. Me and the missus are heading down to Savannah for some Christmas shopping, and we’ll probably crash at Lila’s to see the grandkids. I won’t be back for a week. Got a buddy of mine to check on the chickens for me. So? What’s on your mind? Make it quick, because Neil will be back any second.”
“Um, did you know if my dad had a lot of cash?” The tentative way she asked certainly didn’t fit in with his suggestion to “make it quick.”
“No. He didn’t. I told him years ago not to take cash. Makes the IRS look at you harder when you run a cash business. Sure, people will write bad checks, but it’s a lot less of a headache than going through an audit. Why?”
She craned her neck to see where Neil was. Through the garage door, she could see him in the backyard, clicking away with the camera at the chicken coop. “Well, what if he did? I mean, do you know how he might have accumulated a chunk of—”
“Whoa!” Floyd dropped the chick he was holding back into the brooder and stopped her with one gloved hand. “I don’t need to hear this. But hypothetically, if someone found some cash, if they declare it now, it would mean amended tax returns for all the years the cash could have been accumulated. And it doesn’t stop there. The IRS would probably assume there was more cash, so you’d have penalties. Lots of penalties. And anybody—say, like a wife—who signed a joint return... Well, it wouldn’t be pretty.”
“So what do I do?”
“You?” Floyd raised his eyebrows suggestively. “Why, Charli, you know you didn’t find any cash. Chuck didn’t have any.” This was delivered with pointed suggestion of the answer she should be giving if someone quizzed her on the subject. “I was his accountant. I should know. By the time he bailed your mama out of debt from all her shopping sprees, he’d just about got to the point where he was turning couch cushions over, looking for spare change. But hypothetically?” Again with the suggestive lift of his eyebrows. “If you ever did find some money, I’d leave it lay. Spend it in small amounts.”
Charli saw Neil turn and head back toward them. “But if you say he couldn’t have gotten it legally, what if I can’t bear to keep it?” She saw him fix her with one stern eye at her question. “Hypothetically, I mean.”
Floyd eyed her. “It can’t be much. So don’t screw up everybody’s life to make nice with the IRS.”
She swallowed. Neil was almost back within hearing distance. To cover up the conversation, she said, “I’m glad you’re being so safe with your chickens, Floyd. Be sure to tell Neil all about it so that people will understand the risk.”
Floyd had once again assumed that “aw shucks” air he’d had before he’d sent Neil to photograph the chickens. “You bet, Doc! Good to see you. Tell your mama I said hey.”
With a wave to Neil, who looked rather suspicious at her departure, she headed for the car and the patients waiting at her dad’s office—no, her office.
CHAPTER SIX
THE DOOR TO HER father’s private office squeaked as it opened, giving Charli a moment’s notice to jam the pocket-size notebook into her pocket. Marvela’s head popped around the door.
“Hey, there you are! I know you’re dead on your feet,” Marvela began, then broke off. “You looking for something?”
“No, I...wanted to sit here. It’s like being with him,” Charli told her. It was true enough. After her last patient of the day, she’d come in here for that very reason. Then it had occurred to her to do some digging, to find out anything that could explain where all that money had come from. Her father had not been a rich man, wouldn’t have been even without her mother’s shopping compulsion.
Charli had found more than she’d bargained for. A stack of notebooks in her father’s bottom drawer.
They were journals of sorts—a combination of medical notes about patients and personal reflections. She’d pulled a notebook off the bottom of the stack, seeing a set of dates from the early 1980s in her father’s favored blue fountain pen ink.
Now, with Marvela’s eyes alight with curiosity on her, Charli toed her father’s drawer closed. “Did you need something?” Charli asked her office manager.
“Louredes Garcia over at the community clinic is on line one. In a jam. Your dad...he’d help them out sometimes.”
“Okay. Give me a minute.”
Marvela hesitated. “You okay? You look a little peaked.”
“Sure. Fine.” Charli flashed her a smile that she hoped would reassure her.
Marvela pulled the door closed. Charli knew she should pick up the phone, but she couldn’t resist the words she’d just read in the notebook.
Hernandez, Miguel: TB seems progressed, and patient’s lungs show textbook lesions. Not responding to antibiotics.
A few pages over, he’d noted in clinical, detached language that one Miguel Hernandez had died of complications from the TB, and that other family members showed similar symptoms.
No. What she was reading couldn’t be right. Her father hadn’t let a man die of TB. There hadn’t been a reported case of TB in Broad County in decades, much less a fatality—
Unless...maybe he hadn’t reported it. But why not? It was state law to report all cases of tuberculosis. Her father had been a meticulous man...in his notes, in his charting, in his dictation.
With a shaking hand, she set the notebook aside to read it more carefully later. There had to be an explanation.
The red light on the phone blinked insistently. Charli marshaled her strength and punched the button.
“Yes?” she asked, her eyes straying to the notebook.
“Dr. Prescott, I am so sorry to bother you, this is Louredes Garcia, over at the community clinic.” The woman rushed the intro as though she was afraid Charli would hang up. “Your receptionist said you were about to leave for the day, and I really hate—”
“What’s the problem?”
“Our nurse practitioner is out with the flu, and our backup doctor is out on medical leave. We have a waiting room stacked. Is there...? There’s no way—I’m sorry. I mean, your father has just passed away and all. I shouldn’t have asked you....”
Charli recalled the Hispanic names in the notebook. Could the money in the safe deposit box have something to do with the clinic? “Didn’t my father help you?”
“Yes, yes, he did. He was very generous with his time. And we couldn’t have had this clinic without him.”
“Then I can help for a while this evening. It’s the least I can do.”
“¡Es increíble! Thank you, thank you! You are a miracle!”
* * *
INSIDE THE CLINIC, the slightl
y dingy waiting room was packed. A roomful of people turned their faces to take her in like sunflowers in a field. A cluster of dark-haired tots played under the clinic’s white plastic Christmas tree, shaking what Charli hoped were fake presents. ¡Feliz Navidad! banners and Santa cutouts were liberally sprinkled around the walls, and despite the Spanish lyrics, Charli could recognize the tune of “Jingle Bells” over the speakers.
A murmur swept through the room and she could see elbows jabbing into neighbors’ ribs. Clearly, they were excited to see her.
Not as excited as Louredes Garcia. “¡No me lo puedo creer! You really came! I can’t believe it! Thank you!” The short, plump woman’s dark eyes snapped with joy.
Charli’s conscience nagged at her. If she hadn’t hoped to find some clue about the money and her father’s notes, would she have said yes so quickly? “It’s my pleasure,” she said simply. “Show me where I’m supposed to be.”
Four hours later, well past eight, Charli was numb with exhaustion. She’d treated six ear infections, two cases of the flu, four sprains, two pulled backs and a host of stomach ailments, and now, her last patient had sky-high glucose readings.
Louredes hovered near her shoulder, waiting for her recommendation so she could translate.
Charli reviewed the thick file. The man’s A1C readings had stayed high, his kidney functions had been abominable the last time he’d had them checked and now he had the beginnings of an ulcer on his foot.
He sat on the exam table, his hands folded, his mouth a straight line.
“Louredes, he needs to be in the hospital. We’ve got to get these readings stabilized, and that foot is only going to get worse. Plus, I’m afraid he’s heading for renal failure. Can you tell him all this?”
But Louredes didn’t immediately start translating. She shook her head. “Dr. Prescott, he’s got no insurance, and his permit is a work permit, so if he goes in the hospital, he’ll lose his job, and then he’ll be illegal.”
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