The Plague Doctor

by E. Joan Sims

  I yawned hugely, “No wonder I’m so sleepy. Those files will have to wait until tomorrow. After all, ‘tomorrow is another day.’”

  “I’ve heard that before. If I weren’t so sleepy, I might remember where.”

  “You poor culturally deprived little child. What did the sisters at the Escuela San Romero teach you? Remind me to take your not-so-classical literary education in hand some day.”

  Mother had slipped off her high-heeled boots, and looked petite and fragile in her stocking feet. I was beginning to feel guilty about my outburst in the car.

  “I’m sorry I got angry, Mother. I was just acting out of fear. You really had us scared there for a moment.”

  She waved her hand distractedly. “Forget about it.”

  “Then is something else the matter?”

  She looked at me with the lovely brown eyes that Cass had inherited. “It’s just that sometimes I think perhaps we get carried away and do things we shouldn’t.”

  “Like break into your doctor’s office and steal his files?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Point well taken. Let’s go to bed.”

  “Goodnight, dear.”

  She leaned over and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “In case you haven’t noticed, your daughter has fallen asleep on her plate.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I felt a sense of déjà vu when I got up the next morning and looked out of the bathroom window. Chief Andy Joiner was here again. He was leaning his big, rumpled, bear’s body against his police cruiser and talking to Mother. This time I opened the window just a tad so I could hear their conversation.

  “…started in the Doc’s office and spread to the drug store. It looks like arson, but we can’t be sure until all the tests are back from the lab in Nashville.”

  Joiner ran his big hands thorough his thinning hair.

  “Whoever did it broke into the office through the service entrance. We don’t know if anything was taken. Doc Baxter says he never kept any money there. And what equipment he had was too old to be worth much. Nobody seems to have any idea who would want to torch the place, or why. The building is not worth much by today’s standards but the insurance won’t begin to replace it. Doc Baxter seemed almost relieved when I told him, like the fire kinda set him free. He’s tired. I don’t think those of us who’ve known him for so long realized just how tired he got taking care of us for all these years. I hope he goes away and gets some rest. Maybe he can sit on a beach somewhere and do nothing for a while.”

  Joiner paused. That had been a long speech for him. He seemed very ill at ease and more than a little embarrassed. When he continued, I realized that he had been talking to avoid getting to the unpleasant reason for his early morning visit.

  “I came out this morning, Miz Sterling, because last night someone saw a vehicle leaving the scene of the fire. They said it looked something like that Jeep Cherokee of your daughter’s. It was that same weird green color, too. And one of the firemen found this in the middle of the street.”

  He reached in his car and pulled out the windshield wiper that had snapped off Watson last night.

  “Damn!’ I whispered under my breath. We were dead ducks for sure.

  Joiner was showing the wiper blade to Mother.

  “I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to let me take a look at your vehicle. That is, if you don’t mind, M’am.”

  I picked up my comb with trembling fingers and tried to smooth the night’s sleep out of my hair. No use going out to ’fess up looking like a total wreck. I wondered what to wear to jail. It should be something comfortable, something that would not show wrinkles or dirt too easily. Mother would know just what to choose. I looked back outside and watched as she carefully examined the incriminating piece of metal.

  “It certainly looks like a windshield wiper,” she agreed. “But how can you tell what car it came from? They all look alike to me.”

  He held it out arm’s length so he could find what he was looking for.

  “See there, the name…‘Jeep’…those tiny little letters.”

  Apparently Chief Joiner was getting very farsighted.

  “Oh,” she responded carefully.

  “Like I said, Miz Sterling,” he insisted, “I need to see your wagon.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, Andy, but my granddaughter has gone out in it this morning. When she gets back I’m sure she will call you.” Her smile was tight and brittle.

  He looked everywhere but at her face. I almost felt sorry for him.

  “It’s not that easy. I’m gonna have to stay here till she gets back, just in case.”

  “Just in case what, Andy?” she asked pointedly.

  “Well, you know.”

  “Are you suggesting that my daughter had anything to do with that unfortunate business downtown last night?”

  He rocked back and forth from one big-booted foot to the other, thrusting his hands roughly in his pockets, probably to keep from chewing on his fingernails.

  “Look, Miz Sterling…”

  “And one could infer from your conversation,” she continued unrelentingly, “that you think we might be so bold and impertinent as to try to circumvent justice.”

  Joiner looked heavenward as if begging God to open a hole in the ground so he could fall in and disappear. He looked miserable.

  About that time I heard the sound of a car engine. Cass was coming around the circular driveway towards the house.

  I mentally reviewed my options for an incarceration wardrobe again while I watched my mother turn a particularly interesting shade of green, somewhere between celadon and mint.

  Joiner turned toward Cass as she drove up the gravel driveway. She slowed down as she neared the two of them. With the engine still running, she called out, “Hi Gran! Hi Chief Joiner! Tell Mom I forgot her hair spray. I’ll be back in a few minutes. You want something from the grocery?”

  Mother looked like she was going to vomit but she gamely held up her end of the conversation.

  “Yes, dear, get some celery.”

  Cass laughed gaily. She hated celery and we all knew it. I imagine that she knew Mother could think of nothing else because her attention was on not one, but two, bright and shiny windshield wipers. They were sitting exactly where they should be on Watson’s front windscreen.

  Cass pulled on around the driveway and headed back towards town. Andy Joiner and Mother stood for a moment and watched her leave. Then Mother turned to face him, flashing a brilliant smile.

  “Well, Andy, give Connie my love. We’d really like to have you all out for dinner sometime soon. Tell her to give me a call and we’ll arrange things just between us girls.”

  Andy smiled back. He looked almost as relieved as Mother did.

  “Sure thing Miz Sterling. We’d like that. Constance thinks the world of you. And she loved Paisley’s last book.”

  He hopped in his cruiser with the agility of a man half his age and no cares in the world. He even waved as he drove off.

  I turned away from the window to realize that I had been holding my breath for what seemed like ten minutes. My head was spinning and little black stars sparkled in front of my eyes. I sank slowly to the cold tile floor because my knees were too weak to hold me up. I was still there when Mother came bursting into the bathroom.

  “How did she do it? How did that blessed child manage to pull that off?”

  She smiled gaily into the mirror as she ran my comb through the sides of her always flawless hairdo.

  “My, your father would have been proud of her today, and her’s too, no doubt.”

  “No doubt,” I answered sourly.

  Rafe was always one for outsmarting the authorities.

  Cass did not return until after I had showered, dressed, and had two cups of really strong tea with lots of little raw sugar cubes. I was beginning to feel more like myself when she came bouncing into the kitchen, all smiles and good humor.

  “Whatcha think, huh? Am I not the best
, the greatest, just the cat’s meow?”

  “You’ve been listening to too much Glenn Miller, but ‘yes’ to all of the above, my sweet. Now tell us how you managed to pull it off.”

  She pulled out a kitchen chair and plopped down.

  “Pull it off is exactly what I did.”

  She turned to Mother. “Sorry Gran, but you’ll have to replace one of the windshield wipers on your Continental.”

  “What?”

  Mother loved her car. It was white with red leather seats. She cut quite a sporty figure behind the wheel.

  “Well, you see, after I passed out on the table last night I couldn’t really get back to sleep once I went to bed. I guess I got overstimulated. Like you used to say I did when I played too hard, Mom. Anyway, I started thinking about our little adventure, and I remembered the wiper popping off in the street. As far as I know, it’s the only piece of evidence we left behind. I decided to go back early this morning and retrieve it so nobody could trace it to us. But then I thought, what if somebody sees that Watson is minus a wiper and guesses what happened? I went down to the garage and tried to unhook Gran’s. I finally had to break it off,” she added apologetically. “And I superglued it onto Watson. Then I went to town and saw…Mom, it’s all burned down. The doctor’s office, the drug store…it’s just a smoldering mess of rubble. And it stinks. I guess from all those chemicals.”

  She grabbed both of my hands. “Do you think I started the fire? Remember, when I knocked over that bottle of flammable what-ever-it-was?”

  “I don’t know, Cassie. I honestly don’t know.”

  A horrible thought occurred to me. “Oh, my God, what if that other person was burned in the fire?”

  “Oh, Mom, I didn’t think of that!” Cassie’s white face mirrored what my own must have looked like.

  “Take it easy, you two, and calm down. Andy told me that no bodies were found in the building. What’s more, the fire started not in Edgar’s private office, but in the dispensary.”

  “Thank God!”

  Cass sank back down in the seat and poured herself a cup of tea with shaking hands.

  “Yes, thank God that we are only burglars and not arsonists or murderers. But do you realize that now we have a file box full of charts and nowhere to return them?”

  “Can’t we just take them to Edgar, dear?”

  “Oh, yeah, and say what? ‘Hi Doc, here’s the files we stole out of your office the night it burned down. Sorry we couldn’t sneak them back in like we had planned, but, oh well!’”

  “Hmm, I see what you mean. That does pose somewhat of a problem.”

  “Well, Mom, just look at it this way. At least we have all the time in the world to check them out now.”

  She stuffed some more buttered toast in her mouth, her worries about being a murderer apparently forgotten.

  “And if we find something,” I mused, “how can we introduce that ‘something’ as evidence to clear Ethan’s name when we purloined the files in the first place? We’ll be incriminating ourselves.”

  “I’ll go to prison to save Ethan,” declared Cass.

  “Not me.”

  “Mom!”

  “Who’d feed Aggie?”

  We took a vote after our late breakfast and decided three to nothing to take the rest of the day off. Besides, we had to go to Morgantown and get a new wiper blade. Cass was a little reluctant at first because she was counting the days that Ethan had been behind bars. They added up to a grand total of four by now. She had called Teddyville three times each day to inquire about him but had never been allowed to talk to him personally. His hearing had been postponed another week, so he would have to stay there at least ten more days no matter what we did. I convinced her we had to cover ourselves first so we could continue to try and help him.

  We left for Morgantown.

  My college friend, Bubba, who had sold me Watson, was only too happy to slip me a new windshield wiper under the table. Getting it on the car was another problem. I knew Bubba would never tell the police we had been there, but I was concerned about the rest of his employees, so we drove to an isolated picnic spot near the lake. We had to tug and scrape and pull and push because Cassandra had used extra heavy-duty superglue, but finally, with the help of some really smelly fingernail polish remover, we got the wiper from the Lincoln off of Watson. Attaching the new one was a piece of cake. Now no one would ever be the wiser. Except we had to go buy another wiper blade for the Continental.

  By the time we had accomplished all of our CYA “Cover Your Ass” errands it was nearly four o’clock, and we were famished. When Mother suggested that we eat at Sallie’s, we readily agreed. We had not been there since last year, and I, for one, could manage a tender, juicy, two-inch-thick pork chop at least once every twelve months.

  The servers were still wearing silly Gone with the Wind dresses with paper flowers in their hair, but the food was good, and the homemade flowerpot bread was fresh and hot.

  It had been a while since we had been out, and after last night, we needed to relax. My batter-fried mozzarella sticks were the best yet. Cassie moaned passionately over her Hot Brown with Mornay sauce, while Mother delicately devoured a large dinner salad. The meal was great, and the company couldn’t be improved upon. It wasn’t until I was licking the last drop of burnt caramel sauce off my dessert spoon that I heard the commotion.

  A rowdy customer in the back dining room was apparently causing the staff some real problems. Twice, I observed the manager hurrying past with a worried look on his face. A few minutes later two strong-looking young busboys quietly ushered the problem customer outside. Mother and I clearly saw Dr. Winston Wallace being firmly escorted out the back door. He was accompanied by a blonde who definitely was no lady, and just as definitely not his wife.

  Chapter Seventeen

  We drove home through the natural forest that was the land bridge between the two lakes. I lowered the windows so we could enjoy the sweet fragrance of the wild honeysuckle. The air was warm and almost balmy with a soft, gentle breeze blowing from the direction of the lake. We got an occasional glimpse of the shore through the screen of pine and cedar. The still, dark water was calm, and its surface mirrored the big white moon above. It was a beautiful romantic night that was definitely meant for two.

  Cass was very subdued. I surmised correctly that she was missing Ethan.

  “Don’t fret, Munchkin, he’ll be free soon.”

  “I hope so, Mom. I really hope so.”

  “Cassandra dear, your Ethan is a very intelligent and resourceful young man. I’m positive he will weather this little difficulty with no ill effects whatsoever.”

  “Gran, if you say ‘someday you’ll look back on this and laugh,’ I swear I’ll pitch you out of the car.”

  “Why, I would never say anything so trite. I might, however, express that same sentiment in a more unique and creative way. It is true, you know, dear.”

  “I don’t think so, Gran. It may have been true for you and Mom. I know both of you have been through some really tough times. You and Grandad had a terrible war to endure. Mom and Dad protected me during a wild South American revolution. But I’m afraid I’m not made of the same stern stuff as you two.” Her voice broke. “I don’t think I can keep my chin up much longer.”

  I thought about stopping the car and consoling her, but Mother had other ideas.

  “What utter nonsense! I can hardly believe my ears. You, my dear child, are full of…what does your mother say? Crap!”

  “Gran!”

  “Mother!”

  “Well, I mean it, Cassandra. Don’t you know that being afraid and full of doubt doesn’t mean you’re not courageous? Courage is going on with your life no matter how frightened and doubtful you are. You have shown some real backbone these last few days. You have been clearheaded and quick-witted enough to take care of details the rest of us overlooked. I congratulate you for that.”

  “Thanks, Gran. I guess sometimes I just feel like sm
all potatoes around you and Mom.”

  “Wow, am I dreaming?”

  “No, Mom. I really admire you both. And I appreciate the way you all have handled this business with Ethan. Neither of you has ever once suggested that he could be guilty, and you’ve both taken tremendous chances trying to help him. I don’t know anyone else who has such a terrific family. I am a very lucky girl.”

  I was speechless. I had just received the maternal equivalent of the Oscar, the Tony, and the Pulitzer. My first thought was of Rafe. How proud he would have been of his little girl; he had loved her so very much. I suddenly wished for him with all of my heart and soul. I didn’t allow myself to do that very often. It served no purpose and only made me sad. I bit my lip and struggled against the tears that threatened. After all, I was made of sterner stuff. My daughter told me so.

  Mother said she was exhausted and went to bed as soon as we got home. I think she was as touched as I had been by her granddaughter’s speech and simply wanted to savor it in solitude.

  Cass and I grabbed some iced tea and headed for the library. We had work to do.

  We pushed the heavy cardboard file box around until it was under the bright light of the floor lamp. Just like it said on the top, it contained the files on obstetrical patients for the last three-and-a-half years. Yesterday, I had found a notation on one of Ethan’s logs that the average birth rate for Rowan Springs was seven to ten births a month. It was clear that Doc Baxter had more than his share of the patients. There were at least three hundred manila folders in the box. I pulled one out at random and began to read.

  “Well, we need a medical dictionary, that’s for sure. And maybe a Sanskrit translator.”

  “How so?” asked Cassie.

  “Take a peek at the handwriting of our esteemed medical practitioner.”

  “Hmm, Sister Maria Mercedes would definitely give him a D- in penmanship.”

  “I always thought that ridiculous scratching on prescriptions was some sort of code that only the pharmacist could decipher. Looks like it goes farther than that.”

  “It must be something they teach in medical school.”