Well, that wasn’t going to happen. The minute the door closed behind the three doctors, Bella was pawing through her purse for the business card of the lawyer she’d met at the tearoom six months ago. The pretty young lawyer had said to call her if she could help in any way. If Bella remembered correctly, the pretty lawyer said she worked for an all-female law firm. What was her name?
Five minutes later, Bella had the coveted card in her hand. Alexis Thorn. Quinn Law Firm in Georgetown. Without giving the matter a second thought, Bella had her phone in hand and was pressing in the digits to the main number of the law firm. When someone answered, she said, “I’d like to speak to Ms. Thorn, please. This is Bella Nolan. We met some months back and she gave me her card and said if I needed her to call. I need her. It’s urgent that I speak with her as soon as possible. Can I please speak with her?” A sob caught in Bella’s throat as she waited for the receptionist to reply.
“Hold, please. Let me see if Ms. Thorn is free.” Bella didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she heard Alexis Thorn’s voice. She let it loose with a wild swoosh of sound.
“Alexis Thorn.”
“Ms. Thorn, this is Bella Nolan. I’m not sure if you remember me or not, but we met at the tearoom a while back, and you were kind enough to speak with me. You gave me your card and said if I ever needed help, I should call you. I need your help. I really need your help.” Bella could feel herself start to choke up. Sheer willpower forced the tears back. “I’m sitting here right now at the Samaritan Fertility Clinic. I stored a dozen of my eggs here several years ago. It’s a little complicated. I’m going to be moving to North Carolina, so I came here to make arrangements to find out what I have to do to transfer . . . I don’t ever want to come back here . . . and they’re gone. They said I came here and took them about eight months ago. But I did no such thing. That’s around the time I found out that my husband had died, and at the time, I would have been hard-pressed to tell you what my name was. I did not take my property. Right now, there are three doctors who are supposedly looking at surveillance tapes to see if it really was me. They have a copy of my new driver’s license with my married name and a paper with my signature on it, releasing the clinic once I took my property. Everything is time stamped. But it wasn’t me, Ms. Thorn. Can you help me?”
“Of course. When can you come to the office? Do you know where we’re located?”
“Not exactly, but I’ll find it. Can I come by when I leave here, or would tomorrow be better? I know this is last minute.”
“No, no, today is fine. I’ll leave word at the desk. Would you have any objection if the managing partner of the firm sits in on our meeting? She’s a wonderful lawyer and has been practicing law longer than I have. It’s up to you.”
“I’m fine with that. What should I do or say?”
“Try not to say anything. Get copies of everything and have them make you a copy of the surveillance video. They have to give you that. If you have any problems, refer them to me. Again, Bella, I’m sorry for your loss. I guess I’ll see you when you get here. Try to stay calm. Easy for me to say, hard to do, but try.”
“I will. Thank you so much for agreeing to see me. I can’t believe this. How did someone get a copy of my driver’s license?”
“A hundred different ways, Bella. It’s done all the time. We’ll make this right. I’m glad you called me. You are in good hands now. Take a deep breath and wait for them to get back to you. Make sure they give you a copy of the tape.”
“I will. Thanks again.”
“You bet. That’s why I became a lawyer, to help people,” Alexis said.
Bella leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment. All of a sudden she did feel calm, and she also felt like she was in good hands.
Bella opened her eyes when the door opened. One look at the expression on the three doctors’ faces told her she wasn’t going to like whatever it was they were going to tell her. Dr. Donaldson had a tape in her hand. She walked over to the far end of the room and slid the tape into the slot. Bella sucked in her breath, wondering what she was going to see.
Chapter 5
Bella felt an icy chill, which had nothing to do with the temperature in the room or the October weather outside, race up her spine. She hunkered into her shearling jacket and waited for the huge television screen across the room from the fish tank to come alive. “You are going to give a copy of that tape to me, right?” She hated how tight and stressful her tone sounded.
Dr. Petre hit the Pause button on the remote control she was holding. She pursed her lips into a tight circle. Bella thought she looked like she had just sucked all the juice out of a lemon. “No, we will not be giving you a copy of this tape; it’s against company policy. Unless you have a warrant, and then of course we would obey the law and turn it over to you or make a copy for you. I have to check with our legal department, but, no, you will not be walking out of here today with this tape. You do, however, have a right to view this tape since you say it involves you. Excuse me, I should have said allegedly involves you.”
Bella’s facial muscles tightened, and her eyes narrowed to slits when she said, “I called my attorney while I was waiting for you to come back, and she said I was entitled to the tape. She said she would have to take whatever legal action is required to obtain a copy if you refuse to give it to me.”
Dr. Petre sucked in her breath, her eyes narrowing to slits. This woman was trouble; Bella could feel it in every bone of her body. The woman looked at her two colleagues and could tell by their expressions they were thinking the same thing she was. Still, she had no choice, policy was policy, and rules were rules. There was simply no way around that. She clicked Play on the remote. The sound was exceptionally loud, as well as irritating, Bella thought, too loud for this small box of a room.
Faster than greased lightning, Bella had her iPhone in hand and was recording what was playing out right in front of her. It was the next best thing to actually getting the tape, she told herself. Recording it herself was the only way to prove it wasn’t her image on the tape. And she would have something in hand, not just a bunch of words to show and to prove to Alexis Thorn she was telling the truth when she showed up at her office in the next few hours.
“Stop that right now! You cannot record this tape,” Dr. Petre said. Bella thought she looked like a marionette the way she was hopping about and waving her arms as she tried to block the big screen behind her. Her colleagues just stared, their jaws dropping.
“Yes, I can, and until you can show me one of your rules or something in your policy manual that says I can’t, I will continue. Whatever you do, do not try to stop me. We could call the police if you want to make an issue of this; then we all get to see ourselves on the evening news. And by all, I mean not just the four of us but all your clients who watch the evening newscasts. What do you think a police investigation of your clinic, playing out on the evening news will do to your continued existence as a functioning enterprise? Do you really want to test the loyalty of your clients like that? If so, be my guest.
“Look close now. Now, look, that woman is not me! Does that look like me? No, it does not! The woman on the screen has to be at least fifteen pounds heavier than I am. I am five foot three. That woman is at least five foot seven, and she’s wearing sneakers, not heels. You cannot dispute height. She has black hair. I have ash-blond hair. The facial shape is nothing like mine. Look! Look! She chews her fingernails!” Bella waved her own hands in front of the three doctors, with their acrylic nails and French manicure. “The last time I bit or chewed my fingernails, I was six years old. Do you hear me, that is not ME! You turned my property over to an imposter, and now it’s gone. Gone! How could you be a party to something like that? Just tell me how. You are evil people. What you did was evil. Every one of you is evil. Answer me, damn it! How?”
Suddenly, the silence in the room was deafening. No one would look at her. Suddenly, it seemed, the floor and the ceiling were where the action was
.
“Stop! Stop! Freeze the tape!” Bella shouted. Petre was so startled at Bella’s command, she actually obeyed the order. Bella made sure she got the full-face likeness of the person on the tape onto her phone. “That’s a pretty good shot of the woman. It’s a full-frontal face shot, almost as if she’s daring the camera to capture her. I can see defiance in her eyes. It’s clear as a bell. Open your eyes and look at her, then look at me! There is nothing similar about either one of us.
“Why aren’t you saying something? You damn well need to say something right now! When I’m done with this place, I will own it. Now I want to see the original of the release form I signed, and don’t give me any of your crap about your policy and the rules. If I signed my name, then it’s mine. Or at least a copy is mine. Like now would be good!” Bella thundered, as she felt her insides start to curdle. The time for being nice to these officious fools was long gone.
Dr. Peabody quickly opened the folder he had in his hand. He riffled through the papers, his hands trembling, until he found the one he wanted. He held out the paper to Bella, who immediately screeched, “That is not my signature! Even idiots like you would have known that if you had compared the signatures. You didn’t do that, did you? Hell no, you didn’t, I can see it written on your faces.”
Bella shook her head; she was losing it and knew it. She had to stop with the shouting, screeching, bellowing, and speak normally. She needed to stay in control. “Now I want you to compare my original signature on my original contract when I signed on here. See, see, that is not my signature!” Bella snapped a photo, and snapped and then snapped some more. She felt confident that she had enough material now for the Quinn Law Firm to start an all-out investigation of these doctors and the Samaritan Clinic.
Dr. Petre turned off the television and slipped the remote into the carton, along with the surveillance tape. Bella continued to video everyone’s movements. “You better not lose that tape. You might want to think about doing something about your security while you’re at it,” Bella warned.
“You can’t blame us for this insane debacle,” the fussy little doctor bleated. “Nothing like this has happened in the thirty years we’ve been in business. We have an exemplary reputation. There were no red flags. No warnings of any kind. Your account was dormant, as most are. We had no reason to think or believe that the person who showed up to collect the materials wasn’t you. Thousands of people come through this clinic on a weekly basis. Surely, you can’t expect us to remember someone from years ago. Obviously, as we can all see, the woman on the tape is not you. Mistakes happen. We, none of us, can unring the bell.
“Having said that, we will, nonetheless, help in any way we can. You said you contacted a lawyer, so I guess we should let the lawyers handle matters. I don’t know what else to tell you other than we’re sorry. I know sorry is just a word to you right now, but right this moment, it’s the best we can do. We will cooperate and do whatever we can to see this through to a satisfactory conclusion. I give you my personal word on that, and I’m sure that Dr. Petre and Dr. Donaldson will do the same.” Both doctors nodded in agreement.
Bella watched as Dr. Peabody’s shoulders slumped as he finally clamped his lips shut. For a few seconds, she almost felt sorry for him. She knew she was being unreasonable, but only to a point. These doctors had no way of knowing an imposter was stealing from them. Right now, the big question for Bella was, how did the imposter get a copy of her updated driver’s license?
* * *
Dr. Petre looked like she was sucking on another lemon. Her eyes sparked. She’d been challenged, her authority usurped by these two ninnies who called themselves doctors. It’s true, they were doctors, but not medical doctors like she was. This was all going to come back on her—now, when she’d just bought into the clinic as a partner. She had put in her ten years, saved up the buy-in money, and was now a full partner, which entitled her to a share of the profits, along with all the perks that went with a full partnership. If Bella Nolan was right, and Samaritan Clinic was sued, Bella Nolan could very well end up owning a controlling interest, if not the whole shooting match, and she’d be out in the cold. Suddenly, she wanted to slap the silly little twit for upsetting her world. She told herself to make nice, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that. Instead, holding the box with the tape in a death grip, she almost ran from the room to the safety of her newly refurbished office, refurbished at the clinic’s expense, where she could vent her frustration. After doing so, she had to call her new partners to apprise them of what was about to go down. She looked around at her pricey new digs and wanted to cry.
But if she cried, her makeup would be all over the place, and she would look like a raccoon. No, she had to stiffen up her lips, straighten her spine, and take a deep breath as the old ditty went. Which was just another way of saying pull on your big-girl panties and get on with it. She shivered when she remembered the name of the law firm that was representing Bella Nolan. The Quinn Law Firm. She knew all about that firm because dozens of the clinic’s clients used it. As one client said, they don’t come any better than the Quinn Law Firm, and then went on to say she knew for a fact that the members of the firm called in their lead hired gun for high-profile cases, the famous or infamous, as some put it, Lizzie Fox, also known as the Silver Fox, who mainly practiced in Las Vegas. Petre could feel her blood running cold. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that Lizzie Fox would be on the red-eye tonight, because no case could have a higher profile than this one was going to have. There would be no shoving this under the carpet anytime soon.
“Son of a bitch!” Dr. Candice Petre seethed. “What did I do to deserve this?”
* * *
Bella stepped out of the cab and onto the curb. The streets were busy for this time of day, but then again, tourists didn’t really care what time it was when they were on vacation. The Quinn Law Firm was just five blocks from the White House, which was all the more reason for the amount of pedestrian traffic as well as road traffic.
Bella recognized the building that housed the Quinn Law Firm immediately. She’d walked by here almost daily when she lived in her old apartment, the same apartment she’d returned to after honeymooning with Andy. Her eyes welled up just as a strong, gusty October wind pushed her forward. Damn, her hair was going to look like a haystack. Like she cared.
Bella entered the pleasant lobby, made her way to the reception area, and asked for directions to Alexis Thorn’s office. A Georgetown University student with three open textbooks in front of her offered up directions along with a smile and a badge on a lanyard. Bella draped it around her neck as she made her way to the elevators. Her insides felt like a quivering mass of Jell-O.
Seven minutes later, Alexis Thorn was guiding Bella to a private suite of offices and introduced her to Nikki Quinn; then they all settled down in the seating area, where a fire was blazing in a real fireplace. Bella loved the space on sight. Everything was earth tones with splashes of color. Comfortable was the key word here. A silver tray with a coffee service appeared as if by magic.
Nikki spoke first after the introductions. “We’re big coffee drinkers here, Bella. Our pot goes all day long. Since opening the firm years ago, we’ve gone through three units, and they’re the big industrial coffeepots. I guess you could say we’re all coffee junkies. You okay now, Bella? I tend to babble with new clients to try to get them to feel at ease. You do look particularly tense right now. It’s just my way of saying you made the right decision to seek help, and you came to the right place to get it. We won’t let you down. When we take on a client and a case, we work it till it is resolved to our, and our client’s, satisfaction.” Nikki’s voice was light and cheerful, a best-friend kind of voice, as she poured coffee into three delicate china cups.
Bella struggled to smile and failed miserably. “Here,” she blurted as she handed her smartphone with the video from the clinic over to Alexis. “They wouldn’t give me the tape. I don’t think the three of them, and by t
hem, I mean the three doctors I spoke with, are deliberately hiding anything. The truth is, I think they were scared out of their wits. If my opinion counts, I think they made a mistake, but it wasn’t anything deliberate. At least that was my initial thought. I hate saying this, but when it comes to doctors, you expect a certain . . . I don’t know, kindness, compassion, something. I had three zombies. There was nothing warm and fuzzy about any one of them. I was expecting a little compassion, for want of a better word . . . something that showed they cared. What I saw . . . what I got . . . was three people who could have worked in the Budweiser lab. It was like they had no feelings. I wasn’t a person to them. I was a file folder.” Bella shrugged. “Maybe you have to be that way in that kind of a business.”
The two lawyers and Bella talked for a full ninety minutes, with Bella doing most of the talking. The lawyers made notes, asked questions, made several copies of the video that Bella had on her phone. And then they had Bella sign a batch of papers. Bella questioned the cost. Both women shook their heads. “Right now, you just give us a dollar bill as a retainer, and that will do it for now. We don’t want you worrying about money. What we are worried about, however, is the fact that you said you are moving to North Carolina. Is it possible for you to delay the move? Do you have a job, an apartment lease there, anything to prevent you from leaving here? Are you on a timetable of any kind? We’re pretty good at taking care of details like that if you are prepared to stay on here a bit longer.”
“Sure. Okay. I can do that. But why?” Bella asked.
Nikki got up and added another log to the fire. Bella noticed it was a white-birch log, the bark peeling. She loved birch logs. Andy had said he loved burning cherrywood. “Do you want to tell her, or should I?” Nikki asked Alexis.
Alexis grinned. “Settle back, Bella, I have a story to tell you. Yes, this is a legal firm. Yes, Nikki and I are lawyers. We fight for our clients in a court of law. But we also fight for them in other ways. Your case as it stands is going to be a tough one to bring to court, but we can go to plan B and incorporate it with plan A, which is going to court and having a full-blown trial. When I finish, all you have to do is say yes or no, and we’ll go from there. Do you understand, and do you agree?”
Truth and Justice Page 5
