The Plague Doctor

by E. Joan Sims

  “Mother, can we please go? We’re wasting time analyzing my nervous reaction to illegal activities.”

  “Well, you should work on it, dear. Look at me. I’m cool as a cucumber, and so is Cassandra. Maybe some meditation exercises. I have a new book you could…”

  “Mother, if you don’t get your elegant little butt out of the door and into Watson in the next two minutes you can’t go. I’ll leave you here to worry all alone. We’ll just see how cool, calm, and collected you are then.”

  “No need to threaten me, Paisley, my girl. It’s so unbecoming.”

  If she could have run in her high-heeled, black suede, thigh-high, Donna Karan boots she would have. Instead she walked as fast as she could to the car and climbed in with all the grace and decorum she could muster. My mother, dressed to the nines, taking me to commit a felony. I loved it!

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mother drove so slowly into town that we became an positive road hazard.

  “Well, so much for keeping a low profile! That’s the second time we’ve gotten flicked off, and three people have blown their horns at us on Main Street. Way to go, Coco!”

  “Paisley Sterling DeLeon! The Bible promises a long and happy life to those who respect and honor their parents. I hope you’re prepared for the worst!”

  “And just what does the Bible say about parents who drive the getaway car for their children while they are committing a crime?”

  “Mom! Gran! You all are just a little bit too nervous. Maybe we should call this off for now and do it another time. I’m sure anything we can find tonight we can find tomorrow night, or next week for that matter.”

  “Mother, park over there under those trees, and let’s relax for a moment. Cassie is right. We’ve got way too much adrenaline going on here.”

  Mother pulled the Jeep wagon over to the curb and parked under the cover of three very large cedar trees. The limbs hung down almost to the ground, forming a protective canopy over the dark green car body. We had found the perfect hiding place, which was about the only thing we had done right so far.

  “Hey, Gran, this is terrific. Way to go!”

  Our vantage point was at the end of a side street just one block from the courthouse square. The object of our interest was straight ahead across the narrow, one-lane alley which served as both service drive and back entrance for the stores that lined Main Street.

  Doctor Edgar Baxter still occupied the same office space he had when I was a little girl. He shared the old two-story building with the town’s oldest pharmacy. I remembered going through a Dutch door in the doctor’s office to sit behind the counter while the pharmacist mixed up whatever potion had been prescribed. Then he or his assistant would hold a lollipop out in front of me, so I would swallow the nasty-tasting concoction without a fuss. After a particularly bad bout of whooping cough in my fourth year, I developed a hatred of lollipops and the pharmacist.

  Needless to say, Dr. Baxter’s office did not hold many pleasant memories for me. The one good thing was that I did remember every inch of the place. I knew right where his desk and his files were. This would be a piece of cake.

  We sat in silence and watched as the owners of the Main Street stores turned off their lights and locked up to go home for dinner and a good night’s sleep.

  I found myself yawning in the toasty warmth of the car just thinking about it. I stretched my shoulders and neck and casually looked out of the back window. I was horrified to see the red glow from the brake lights extending like a beacon from our hidey hole!

  “Mother,” I whispered harshly, “do you have your foot on the brake?”

  “Oh, my goodness!”

  She took her foot off the pedal and we lurched forward into a large overhanging evergreen bough. The heavy limb slapped forcefully against the wide glass windscreen and snapped off one of the windshield wipers. It went flying into the air and fell in the middle of the street with a loud metallic tinkle.

  “Turn off the engine now!” I hissed. “Damn! We might as well send up a flare just in case some poor idiot hasn’t noticed us!”

  “That’s it! I’m leaving. I’ll walk home. You two can fend for yourselves. I’m just not cut out for a life of crime. Paisley, you’re obviously much better at this than I, you do it.”

  She pulled the keys out of the ignition and threw them in the back seat. I turned around to try to locate them in the dark and saw a car approaching. I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, or rather, by the collar of her Calvin Klein black leather jacket just in time to prevent her from opening the car door.

  “Duck down! Somebody’s coming.”

  Cassie and I dove for the floor at the same time and banged each other on the head so hard we saw stars.

  “Ow! My God, Mom, I always knew you were hardheaded,” she whispered. “I think I’m bleeding.”

  I struggled to clear the ringing in my ears, “Don’t be a goose. That’s just something wet down here on the carpet.”

  I felt around with my hand on the floorboard.

  “Yuck! Wet and sticky. Remind me to get the car cleaned this weekend.”

  “Sure thing. If we’re still at liberty.”

  “Are they gone, Mother?”

  I dared a peek up over the seat.

  “You mean, is he gone?’”

  “He who?”

  “Horatio, that’s who!”

  I could hear the anger in her voice.

  “Did he see us?”

  “I certainly hope not! How could I ever explain this utter nonsense to him?”

  “What in the world is Mr. Horatio Raleigh doing out at this time of night?”

  “Maybe he’s two-timing you, Gran.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Cassandra. You know we don’t have that kind of relationship.”

  “Maybe you don’t, but he does.”

  “He probably has a stiff to prepare for a funeral tomorrow.”

  “Don’t be vulgar, Paisley.”

  Cassie and I sat back up in the seat and looked around cautiously. All the stores were now closed. The only sounds we heard were the katydids and the crickets singing in the yards of the big houses that still bordered the edge of the business district of Rowan Springs.

  “It’s now or never,” I whispered. “You still with us, Mother? Or are you going to fink out again?”

  She sighed dramatically, “I’m here, aren’t I? Just please do it quickly.”

  “Okay. Here’s what we do. Mother, you open the front door and push down on the little button so the overhead light won’t turn on. Cassie will sneak out of her door, and I’ll get out on this side. We’ll cross over the street up by the alley and go in through the back entrance. That is, if this lock-picking set I bought at the Spy Factory works.”

  I patted my pocket where I had hidden the nifty little set a locksmith friend had told me about for one of Leonard’s heists.

  “I understand, Paisley. Good luck, and please be careful. It would be a shame to tarnish the Sterling family name with a police record.”

  “You should have thought of that earlier. Go, Cassie!”

  We opened the doors as quietly as we could and slid out of the car. Cassie pulled her turtleneck up over the lower part of her face so that only her eyes could be seen in the dark. I hunched my shoulders down and pulled the collar of my black denim jacket up. It was the best I could do.

  We scurried across the street and hid for a moment behind a big holly bush at the corner of the dentist’s office.

  “Ow!”

  “What?”

  “Prickles.”

  I crouched down as low as I could and ran across to the alley. Two large garbage cans next to Doc Baxter’s back entrance afforded the perfect hiding place while I tried my hand at picking the lock.

  * * * *

  Five minutes later I was cursing and sweating like a longshoreman.

  “Damn! It wasn’t this hard when Jimmy did it.”

  “Let me try, Mom.”

  “Did y
ou go with me to the Spy Factory? Did you see how it was done? Do you even know Jimmy? I think not!”

  “Let me try while you rest a minute.”

  I let Cass take the lock-picking tools and slumped down on the cold, hard cement of the doorstep, wiping the sweat out of my eyes. My hands were trembling and my heart was pounding.

  “I want my money back, that’s what I want. Forty dollars for nothing but three broken nails, a skinned knuckle, and…”

  “And an open door! Come on, Mom, we don’t have all night.”

  Unpleasant childhood memories of the measles, mumps, and chicken pox came back in a rush as the medicinal smell of alcohol and ether filled the darkness.

  “Doc Baxter’s private office is in the back, down that hallway.” I stepped in front of her. “Here, follow me, and pull your sweater back down off your face or you’ll sweat to death.”

  We made our way cautiously down the hallway past four examination rooms, two on each side. The old-fashioned leather examining tables were now covered with white disposable paper. I remembered crisp white sheets which I had held onto for dear life while I wailed in terrified misery as my sore throat or aching ears were probed and poked.

  There was a small dispensary on the left at the end of the hall, its shelves crammed with boxes of pharmaceutical samples, cotton balls, and gauze bandages of all sizes. Large bottles of different-colored liquids balanced precariously on a shelf sway-backed with age. I wondered how long it would be before it all came tumbling down. After only three weeks unattended, the office already looked abandoned and forlorn.

  Edgar Baxter had started his professional life in this office when he was a young doctor straight out of medical school. His wife, Julia, had been his nurse and receptionist for the first few years until they had “made it,” then Julia quit working and started trying to have babies. She never succeeded. Bored and bitter, she finally found solace in alcohol and the drug samples she took from the office. She’d died almost eighteen months ago of chronic liver disease. And though no one ever acknowledged it out of respect for Doc Baxter, she had been an alcoholic, plain and simple.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The private office Edgar Baxter had occupied for over four decades was much neater than I had expected. It was situated in a large interior room with no windows to distract him. There were two doors: the door from the hallway and another one which opened to a bathroom. The bathroom had another door as well, that opened into the dark pharmacy. The facilities were apparently shared.

  Each of us had brought little penlights, but I now turned on the larger flashlight I had tucked into the back of my jeans and upended it on the desk as we looked around the room.

  One wall was occupied by floor-to-ceiling shelves of medical books and journals. I checked some of the dates. Most of them were current issues. Apparently the doc kept up with the latest professional news.

  All of the drawers of his big old oak desk were unlocked and opened easily but neither of us could find anything of interest—just pens and paper clips and other office supplies.

  Baxter had no computer. Old-fashioned oak file cabinets no doubt held the information I was seeking. I took the list of patients I had printed from Ethan’s computer out of my pocket and went to pull the charts.

  “Hey Mom,” whispered Cassie, “look at this!”

  How many times had I heard my daughter say that during the last twenty years?

  “Don’t bother me now, Cassie. We can’t stay here forever,” I replied in an irritable whisper.

  “Okay then, if you don’t want to examine a large cardboard filing box labeled ‘Obstetrical Patients 1997-2000.’”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Shsssss!”

  “Wonder what this is doing here?”

  “I don’t know. I just found it tucked under the desk. It looks like he was planning to move it somewhere.”

  “Terrific! Let’s just take the whole box home.”

  “But, Mom, he’s bound to come back looking for it. What’ll we do then?”

  “Look, Cassie, we can’t possibly review all the charts under these conditions.”

  “You’re right there, Sherlock. You’re sweating like a pig, and I’m about to die in this wool sweater. It’s like a greenhouse in here. You’d think they would have turned off the furnace to save money when they closed the office.”

  “Probably can’t. These old buildings only have one common furnace, and the pharmacy is still open for business.”

  “So what’s your plan, Mom?”

  My throat ached from the forced whispering and I was dying for a cold drink.

  “Let’s take this file box home and go over it at our leisure—meaning tonight and tomorrow. We can bring it back tomorrow night and no one will be the wiser.”

  “We hope!”

  “We hope.”

  “Okay, I’m with you. You grab that end. I’ve got this one.”

  Cass hefted her end of the box. It was heavier than it looked. She staggered and accidentally backed into a small table in the corner. There was a loud crash and the sudden smell of something pungent and medicinal.

  “Damn! What in the world is that?”

  I held my nose against the odor as I bent down to pick up the broken bottle. The wet label was already smeared and barely legible.

  “All I can tell is it’s ‘highly flammable.’”

  “Great!”

  Cass set the box down and opened the door to the bathroom.

  “There are some paper towels in here. We can clean it up and toss the bottle. Maybe the doctor will forget it was ever here by the time he comes back.”

  “What’s that!”

  Our voices had grown increasingly louder. I dropped mine back to an urgent whisper as I turned my flashlight off and peeked out of the crack in the door to the hallway. Down by the entrance, another light was bobbing along with someone’s measured tread. We only had a few moments before they reached us. I closed the door as quietly as I could.

  “Quick! Grab the box and let’s get out of here.”

  “How?”

  There was panic in her voice.

  “Through the bathroom. The pharmacy is on the other side. We can get outside from there. Hurry!”

  We each lifted the heavy file box and lugged it into the bathroom. I closed that door and turned the inside lock hoping the locked door would buy us some extra time.

  Cass braced her end of the box on her hip as she opened the other door into the pharmacy. The street lights shone in brightly through the big front windows. We no longer needed our flashlights. As a matter of fact, if anyone had peered in from the street they could have seen us huffing and puffing as we dragged the heavy box across the back of the store to the side exit.

  “Do you think they have an alarm system?”

  “There’s only one way to find out.” I told her. “Open the door and get ready to run.”

  Cass bit her lip and opened the door. Nothing happened.

  “Thank God! Now let’s go!”

  Cass opened the door wider and peeked out.

  “Gran’s gone!”

  “Don’t be silly. You just can’t see Watson under those trees.”

  I awkwardly maneuvered my side of the box around to the door and looked out to the empty street.

  “Mother’s gone!”

  “Duh!”

  “My God, what’ll we do?” My mouth was dry as a bone and my breath rattled in my throat like a pair of dice.

  “Well, we could walk out of here totin’ this one ton box. It’s only four miles or so to the farm,” Cassie hissed. “I’m sure no one will notice us, including whoever that is in the doctor’s office.”

  “Twit!”

  “Okay, then tell me ‘O great writer of mysteries,’ what would The Honorable Leonard Paisley do?”

  My heart leapt with joy and relief as I saw Watson speeding down the side street with my beloved mother behind the wheel.

  “He would hitch a ride with Mat
a Hari! Let’s go!”

  Mother careened to the curb and slammed on the brakes. We dashed out and opened the back door—overhead light be damned! Cassie pulled and I pushed the heavy box into the back seat, and we piled in on top of it. I started to shout something dramatic like “Fly like the wind!” but Mother needed no encouragement. She was down the block, around the courthouse, and halfway home before I caught enough of my breath to admonish her.

  “Where have you been? You had us scared half to death!”

  “I had a nature call,” she sniffed. “I had to run home for a moment.”

  “You had to pee! And you left us swinging in the wind for that?”

  “Don’t be common, Paisley. What was I supposed to do? I don’t have a car commode like Queen Elizabeth, and I really had to go. Maybe we should invest in…”

  I sank down on the cardboard box. The top folded in under my weight, but I was exhausted and way past caring. I let her prattle on about the advisability of our purchasing a port-a-potty for Watson until we reached the safety and comfort of home sweet home.

  Cass and I carried the box to the library and dropped it in front of the fireplace with weary relief. Mother hurried to the kitchen to try and appease our anger at being abandoned by fixing us a celebratory feast.

  I was in the middle of my second roast beef and horseradish on a sourdough bun when I heard the siren.

  “Is that the fire alarm?”

  “Yes, dear. It’s still mounted on the top of the fire station. They only use it when there’s a really big fire and they need to call out the volunteer firemen.”

  “Too bad Mavis is still so angry, Mother. You could phone and find out what’s going on.”

  “I imagine it will be quite some time before Mavis speaks to me again. Amy from our Sunday School class called this afternoon to tell me Mavis was sitting propped up on the sofa with her leg bandaged to the hip. She has that poor simple husband of hers running around fetching ice cream and bonbons and magazines. Mavis is quite the actress.”

  I was still curious about the fire. “Who else has a police radio?”

  “Forget about calling anyone, Mom. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s twenty past three.”