Bad Medicine (24 page)

"I thought I saw your car in the lot," she heard from behind her. "What are you doing here?"

Molly spun around to see Winnie standing dead center in the doorway, a stack of mail in her hands and her hair twisted into some kind of elaborate figure eight with what looked like decorative chopsticks through it. Only Winnie could wear it and get away with it. Besides the hair, she was dressed to the nines in what could only be described as a tailored dashiki and Ferragamos.

"Hi, Winnie. You look great. Going out?"

The ME straightened as if she'd been mortally insulted. "I ask you about your private business?"

"All the time," Molly retorted with a grin. "Does he know what he's in for?"

For a second there was silence. Then, grudgingly, Winnie grinned. "We were in med school together. I haven't seen him in five years."

"And Phillip?"

Phillip LaGrange, Winnie's lover and the father of her eight-year-old son.

"Phillip is in Antigua on business," the boss said acerbically. "Now, what are you doing here?"

Molly had no problems switching gears. "Oh, I gave in and decided to just go over my stuff on this Peg Ryan case."

"Peg..."

"Mary Margaret. Family calls her Peg."

Winnie's expression tightened a little. Closed off. "And what did you find?"

"Nothing. But maybe if I tell her brother that I looked again, he'll feel better. I'm gonna go to the house for one more look at her private stuff, and then I'll take a walk down by the river and let him know."

"And while you're doing all this running around, do you have all the forensics reports back on Rhett's friend the cop? We're going to prelims for his shooter this week."

"Bill Myers?" Molly answered, knowing perfectly well that Winnie wasn't struggling with her memory. Winnie knew the name of every one of her cases. She just didn't believe in bandying them about, kind of a medical examiner's version of the Navajo belief that the dead can infect you by speaking of them.

"Results should all be on the file," Molly said. "Tox lab even got us a quick screen for alcohol and toxins, just to prevent any defense grandstanding. All negative."

Winnie snorted in outrage. "Of course it was. Good thought, though. They get ballistics info back to you?"

"In the file."

The ME nodded, looked out the same window Molly had. "Good. I don't want to be caught unprepared."

"It's a slam-dunk, Winnie."

A slam-dunk. No sweat. A skate, a zippo, a slider. A sure win without work. No questions, no problems. The ultimate goal in police work, the ultimate prize. Case closed with no mess, no fuss, no questions.

Just like the suicides Kevin had handled. Like Pearl.

"Winnie?"

"Yeah."

"Did you catch that latest lawyer suicide?"

"The one who did the Greg Louganis from the Wainright?"

"That's him. What was his name?"

The ME squinted at her. "You gonna bring me problems?"

"No. I promise." If Winnie bought that, Molly also had some land under the Arch to sell her.

"McGivers, Harold. Why?"

"I don't know. I still think it's a little funny. Too much of a good thing, ya know?"

"Well, don't. I don't have time for it."

Even so, right after Winnie left, Molly went looking in the computer files for the names of those other two slam-dunks. She'd heard them once, but since they hadn't been her cases, she'd shoved them aside for more important things.

VanAck, Peter, thirty-five years old.

Goldman, Aaron, fifty-four years old.

Those added to Harold McGivers, Pearl Johnson, and Peg Ryan. Molly wasn't sure why she wanted to take those names along with her. Maybe she was just getting superstitious. More superstitious. As in, five lawyers becoming suddenly overwhelmed by the guilt of screwing the general population seeming to be too good to be true. As in, why should she be the only one to have people questioning her suicides?

Molly wondered whether Peter VanAck's family had protested when Kevin had told them. She wondered whether they believed him yet that Peter had decided to die.

Not her problem, though. Not today. Today she had to go back and repaint herself with the grief of a family that still didn't know how bad it was.

That was if she got out the damn door.

Molly was just reaching into her purse for her car keys when she heard a scruffling sound in the doorway. She looked up to find that she had another visitor.

"You looking for somebody, Mr. McGuire?" she asked.

Molly hadn't seen the councilman since the night of Pearl's death. Even so, he looked no different. Suited and tied this time, for sure. But still florid and unhealthy-looking, the top of his head suspiciously moist, and his eyes unable to settle in one direction at a time.

"Oh," he said, sounding unaccountably surprised. "You're early."

"For what?"

"Uh, well, isn't your shift midnights? I mean, I thought... uh, Kevin was on now."

"Kevin's office is down the hall," she said meaningfully.

McGuire still seemed to be searching for something behind Molly. "Oh, yes. Of course. Everything going all right, Molly?"

Considering how surreal the conversation was getting, Molly wasn't quite sure how she wanted to answer. "Just fine," she said anyway. "You?"

That seemed to startle him. "Oh, I guess it's going all right. City hall is trying its best to recover from losing Pearl, of course."

"Of course. Has the mayor named a new comptroller yet?"

"Well, just temporarily, of course. Till elections."

"Of course. Who?"

"Me."

Molly was sure her jaw dropped. Mayor Williamson, while a savvy political player, had never been known for holding out the olive branch to his enemies, or appointing them to potentially dangerous positions.

But then, it was only Tim McGuire. How dangerous could he be?

"Congratulations. Want me to show you Kevin's office?"

"Yes. Yes, please."

When Molly dropped Tim off at the appropriate door, she had the distinct feeling he had absolutely nothing of importance to say to the senior death investigator. It didn't keep her there to find out why, though. She had a lot to do before she went to work at eleven.

* * *

If only the heat would break. If only the afternoon rains that slammed through every day at five with the predictability of freight trains would suck some of the humidity from the air. Molly drove with the windows down and the sun roof open, because her air conditioner hadn't worked since the day some kids had tried to break into her car with a rock and only succeeded in crippling her dashboard. She had sunglasses on to cut the flat, metallic glare of the sun as it sagged past its zenith, and she had the radio on rather than listen to the whine and squeal of traffic around her.

She was heading out Highway 40 toward Richmond Heights with its tidy, rolling streets of red-bud and pin oak, its brick track housing and mixing population. One of the older bedroom communities, Richmond Heights straddled the highway like a lopsided saddle, all the money at one end and all the hard work at the other. Older neighborhoods in flux, loyalties bound by Little Flower parish and St. Mary's Health Center and now split by the very upscale Galleria shopping mall, Richmond Heights boasted the very ritzy community of Ladue at its one end and apologized for the very struggling streets of Maplewood at the other.

The Ryans lived somewhere in the middle, just off Big Bend Boulevard. Their house was small, tidy, and brick, just like its neighbors, with a big front porch nobody thought to use anymore and a detached one-car garage that would keep the price down. A comfortable home in a friendly neighborhood with slow streets and the kind of curtains that lifted when strangers pulled up to driveways.

Molly cut her engine in the Ryans' driveway and built up her courage to go in. She imagined Mrs. Ryan, still sitting on that couch, the progression of pictures featuring Mary Margaret abruptly ending alongside Joseph's on that wall of memories.

Suddenly Molly couldn't think for the life of her what she was doing here. Did she really want to torture these people again just so she could appease a ghost? Did she want to torture herself by stepping back into that steam bath of grief?

She didn't have a choice. She hadn't since Joseph Ryan had leveled his accusation on her.

Mrs. Ryan answered the door, a little more stooped, a little older. Molly wanted to step back, afraid of being contaminated.

"Mrs. Ryan, I'm Molly Burke from the Medical Examiner's Office, remember? I wondered if I could have a few more words with you about Mar... Peg."

It took Mrs. Ryan a second to react. Molly just waited.

"You have more questions? Is there a problem?"

"No, ma'am. We're just doing some... uh, follow-ups."

The little woman stepped back, her hand still on the door, to let Molly through.

The first thing she noticed was the smell. Before it had been briskly clean. Air freshener and Pine-Sol and coffee. Today it seemed stale, old food and new mold and dust. As if the life had been drained out of it with Peg's death.

Without turning around, Mrs. Ryan led the way back to the couch. Back to that wall of photos. Without meaning to, Molly looked back at Joseph. At Joey. Fierce and hard and proud. That hurt worse than Peg, because Molly hadn't known Peg. She hadn't known what Peg had been through. She knew just what road Joey Ryan had taken to those caves of his.

"What is it you need?" Mrs. Ryan asked.

And Molly told her. Not the truth, not really. A version of it, which Mrs. Ryan accepted without comment. Molly revisited all the questions on the suicide poll and added a few more. Questions about friends, family, connections. But Mrs. Ryan didn't really know any of Peg's friends, except, of course, Frankie Patterson, who had known her son Joey.

She understood that Peg's effects from the office had been returned home, Molly said to the little woman, her own hands carefully in her lap, her posture comforting and close. Would Mrs. Ryan still have them?

Mrs. Ryan would. She wouldn't even mind if Molly went through them.

The cardboard box was still sitting unopened on top of the girl's vanity in Peg's room. Molly took a second to take in the room, with the Anne Klein and Ann Taylor suits in the closet and the stuffed teddy bears on the old white bed. A PC and a bookcase full of original Nancy Drews. Jelly beans on the night-stand and birth control pills in the drawer.

The contents of the box were easier to figure out. Diplomas from St. Louis University, undergraduate and law school. Law degree and certificate. A clutch of family pictures and a paperweight awarded by the Professional Women's Association. A scaled-down replica of a Calder sculpture and two framed and matted stick drawings signed
To Aunt Peg, love forever Cissie.

Molly hated this. She wanted to get the hell out of here before she couldn't. She wanted to get out into the yard and suck in some air. Instead, she reached into the bottom of the box and drew out Peg Ryan's personal daykeeper. There must, she figured, be something to go on in here, whether positive or not.

When she unzipped the leather cover, the book automatically fell open to the most current month, August. Molly scanned the notations in its tidy squares and caught her breath.

She'd struck gold on the first page.

Chapter 13

August 2
^nd
, Pearl and Harry dinner MAC.

Molly's heart suddenly started hammering. She began flipping through the book, looking for names, addresses, times, anything. The first thing she noticed was that Peg had indeed been a busy girl. Client meetings, workout schedule, court dates, even a regular meeting with a masseuse. And something referred to as the Shitkicker's Club, which met regularly at lunch. No mention of where, what for, or who was involved.

Then she got lucky again.

August 5th. Funeral St. Clements. Peter.

Peter, Harry, Pearl. Molly was probably jumping to a conclusion or two. After all, she only had first names. Peg could have been referring to Pearl Smith, Harry Jones, and Peter Browne. All the same, the coincidence seemed too strong. And if there was one thing Molly had lost faith in over the years, it was coincidence. Molly felt sure Peg had known at least three of the other suicides.