“Senator Vanderstein . . . was he a bigwig?”
“That head injury of yours must’ve been a dozy if you don’t remember the man. Head of the Senate Ethics Committee for four years. A big law-and-order, family-values guy.”
The fork fell from my grasp, making a muffled clatter on the deep-pile carpet. In seconds, the waiter brought me another. My heart pounded. The scratches on my chest throbbed.
“Did you ever interview him?”
Sam shook his head. “Politics was never my beat. If you want to look at our files, it’ll cost you another lunch.”
“Burger King.” I pushed my plate away, too rattled to eat any more. Instead, I gulped my wine.
“Are you okay?” Sam asked. “Your face has gone kind of pale.”
I forced a smile. “I’m fine. Uh . . . when?”
He looked puzzled.
“When can I look at the files?” I clarified.
“How about tomorrow?”
I nodded, taking another mouth full of wine.
“Any time after one,” Sam said, and took his last bite of grouse.
As the waiter cleared the table, I wondered what I could do with information on Grace’s father. It wouldn’t tell me more about Grace. It couldn’t help me get rid of Krista. But knowledge is power they say, and I needed to fortify myself with something.
Sam decided on Bananas Foster for dessert. I had nothing more. My gut was already churning.
It was
5:06 pm—happy hour—and Richard reluctantly ignored the call of the bottle of Lagavulin back in his study. From his seat in the sunroom, he watched the shadows creep across the back yard toward the tulip stalks that swayed in the gentle breeze.
Two more days, he thought. Two more days and he’d have the capital campaign chairmanship to fill his restless days. Lately life had become a waiting game. Brenda had waiting down to a science. With a focused goal—to have their child—she was forever finding new ways to delight in the anticipation.
Why wasn’t Richard so lucky? Oh, he looked forward to the birth—but he struggled every day to fill the hours. The chairmanship wouldn’t fill them all, but at least it was meaningful work that he hoped would keep him from thinking about his deepest failure, the one thing he didn’t want Wes Timberly to know about—more than Jeff’s psychic ability, or their mother’s alcoholism.
There were people, maybe even in this neighborhood, who could benefit from his medical training, his experience, but Richard couldn’t take the day-to-day build-up of death and misery that went with the territory. Every day it ate at him that he couldn’t hack patient care more than a few hours at a stretch, with time off in between.
The cordless phone on the coffee table rang. Thinking Brenda might get it, he let it go two more times before he picked it up. “Hello?”
“Dr. Alpert? This is Wally Moses from the university’s Records Department. Are you busy this evening? There’s something I’d like to show you.”
“Can you tell me—”
“No,” Wally interrupted. “At least, not over the phone.”
“Does it have to do with what we discussed the other day?”
“Yes. And . . . there’s more. But I can’t get into it now. Can you come to the hospital tonight? Say, 7:30?”
Richard glanced at his watch. “I could be there.”
“Meet me at my office. I think you’ll be glad you did.”
The line went dead. Richard hung up.
Brenda appeared in the doorway. “Who was that?”
Richard briefly explained.
“Whatever could he want?” she asked.
“Maybe to tell me just who’s been in Jeff’s files. But he hinted there was more.”
“Curiouser and curiouser. You’re going, of course.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t like it,” Brenda said, a frown creasing her lips. “Why doesn’t he just go to hospital security? Isn’t that proper procedure?”
“Yes. But—” There really was no good explanation for Wally calling. “Do you think he’s setting me up?”
Brenda’s frown deepened. “No. But . . . I wish you wouldn’t go—at least not alone. Why don’t you take Jeffy with you?”
“He works Thursday—she’s probably already left. Besides, I still haven’t caught up with him to tell him about this whole situation. Springing it on him while asking for back-up wouldn’t be a good move, either.”
“I could go with you.”
“No.”
“I’ll wait in the lobby. And if you don’t come down in a reasonable time, I’ll send a posse after you.”
Richard thought it over. “It could take an hour or so. What’ll you do?”
“Read. Needlepoint. I can amuse myself.”
“Okay,” he agreed, getting up from the chair. “In the meantime, what about dinner?”
“I could sure go for Italian. I’ve got a craving for garlic.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be past craving at this point in your pregnancy?”
“Ain’t nobody gonna tell me when I can or can’t have a craving, and I want garlic now!” she demanded, her eyes shining with mirth.
Richard took her in his arms. “Okay, but I guess I’d better kiss you good-night now. I may not want to later.”
Their lips met, then she pulled him into a joy-filled hug. He savored the feeling, but the niggling restlessness still waited to swoop down on him.
Two more days, he thought, two more days.
“So the
priest says, ‘That’ll send you straight to hell.’”
The crowd around the bar broke into raucous laughter. I’d heard that one the last three nights I’d worked. Joe—nobody seemed to know his last name—one of the regulars, delighted in telling and retelling his limited repertoire of jokes gleaned from the Internet.
A new face in the crowd caught my attention. A chubby guy of about thirty, with a beard. Damn. Where had I seen him? Something told me it had something to do with Grace. I’d like to say the proverbial light bulb went on over my head, but it was the Erie Medivan logo on his jacket that tipped me off. He drove the van that brought Grace to Krista’s office. That meant he knew where she lived—maybe more.
Now to get him to tell me.
I sidled down the bar. “Can I get you guys another round?” I asked. Nobody said no.
I drew beers and set out a fresh bowl of popcorn. The chubby guy gravitated toward it, just as I’d hoped he would.
“So, you work for Erie Medivan.”
He nodded, stuffing a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “It’s an okay job. I used to drive a cab—this is a lot safer, although I do miss the tips.”
“And the stiffers?” I asked.
He laughed. “No, not them. But livery’s livery in my book. I’ve carted a few famous people around in my day. Once drove Tony Bennett to the airport. Got him to sing a line of Chicago, too.”
“I don’t suppose you get any famous people nowadays.”
“Drove Senator Vanderstein’s crippled daughter to her shrink yesterday. Do it a couple times a week, in fact.”
Bingo! But didn’t anybody use the socially acceptable term ‘disabled’ these days?
“I heard her old man had bucks,” I said. “She’s gotta live in some fancy digs.”
He shook his head. “Nah, just a house on Rembrandt Ave. Nothing special. A group home or something. They have lots of gimps in wheelchairs. I’m carting them around all the time.”
Rembrandt Avenue. I’d have to check a map to see where that was. I could take a drive after I got off work. If there were only one house with wheelchair ramps, I’d have my answer to where Grace lived.
But what good would that do? If I showed up unannounced, would her keepers let me in to talk to her? Would Grace refuse to see me? If she didn’t, could we talk undisturbed? That wasn’t likely. And what would I say, anyway? That I had vague feelings of uneasiness about her treatment? That I didn’t know what Krista was doing with us—to us.
Would she be willing to compare notes? Did she come away from those sessions feeling as frustrated and groggy as I did? Her mind muddled, and the growing fear of—of . . . .
I couldn’t even bear to think about the unsavory ideas that had been flitting around the back of my consciousness. But the growing dread that something awful was about to happen, something permanent and evil and . . . .
God, was I paranoid. Where was this all this shit coming from?
“Hey,” Joe said from the other end of the bar. “What’s it take to get some service around here?”
“Sorry.”
He ordered another Coors Lite and I moved behind the sink to wash the backlog of dirty glasses. I hated that job. Sometimes each piece of glassware held the patrons’ feelings, frustrations and baggage. Tonight they were benign. Good. I didn’t think I could handle any more.
I glanced at the clock. At least five more hours until I could leave. Five hours to think about my next move.
Five hours to torture myself with unwelcome thoughts.
Joe regaled his audience with another Internet story.
God, I wished I were . . . .
Dead.
“
I’m sorry
the service at the restaurant was so slow,” Brenda apologized again, and tried to keep pace with Richard’s longer strides. “You’re only ten minutes late.”
“It’s okay,” he said for at least the tenth time. Wally had asked him to come. Whatever had prompted that call would keep him there until Richard showed up. Wally hadn’t tried to call the house again, because Richard had forwarded all calls to his cell phone, and it hadn’t beeped all evening.
The automatic door slid open and Richard and Brenda entered the hospital lobby. “Now wait here,” he said. “You’ve got your phone, right?”
She nodded.
“If it looks like it’ll be longer than half an hour, I’ll give you a call.”
“Take your time,” she said, already looking over the seating area to choose her territory. “I’ll be fine.”
Richard gave her hand a quick squeeze. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He strode down the corridor and looked back to see she’d found a seat and was already taking a paperback out of her purse.
The elevator seemed interminably long in reaching the ground floor. When the doors finally hissed open, Richard stepped into the empty car, pressing the button for four.
What was he so uptight about anyway? Wally had information he wanted. If Wally wanted a bribe to give out that information . . . well, he might be willing to pay it. Depending on what Wally had to say. Maybe that’s what had been bothering Richard all evening.
“There’s more,” Wally had said, meaning more than just Jeff’s records had been tampered with? Not that Richard didn’t care if other people’s records were illegally accessed, but what would Wally think he could do about it? Hospital security had been concerned with Mona’s computer after the break-in. Wally might’ve known Richard had ties to the Hospital Foundation and her. Maybe Wally had connected the two events.
The elevator door opened and deposited Richard on the empty floor. He hadn’t expected the place to be quite so deserted. Of course, most of the office staff left between five and six, but he thought he’d see a few more employees wandering the halls.
Richard headed down the corridor and turned the corner just as the fire door to the stairs clicked shut. Thinking nothing of it, he continued toward Wally’s office.
The office lights were off, but the door was ajar.
“Wally?” Richard called. Had he just missed the man? Then why leave the door open?
He reached for the handle to push the door open wider and hesitated, staring at his outstretched hand. His nerves seemed to vibrate in warning. Was that what Jeff would’ve called one of his funny feelings? Instead, Richard nudged the door open with his shoe.
“Wally?”
Still no answer.
Fumbling for the light switch, he found it, flicked it on with his elbow.
Desk and file cabinet drawers hung open; computer printouts and manila folders lay strewn around the floor. A pair of brown, scuffed shoes stuck out from behind the edge of the gray steel desk.
Richard hurried across the paper-littered carpet, knelt by the prone man, feeling for a pulse at his neck. There was none. The body was starting to cool. Wally had been dead for longer than a couple of minutes.
The door to the stairwell—had Richard just missed the killer?
He got to his feet, burst from the office, sprinted down the hall, and yanked the door open, too late thinking about smudging possible fingerprint evidence. He gazed down the stairs, but there was no one in sight—no sound of footfalls. Damn!
Snatching his cell phone from his jacket pocket, Richard punched in 911.
“I want to report a murder.”
My insides thrummed like a cell phone on vibrate. The closer I got to Rembrandt Avenue, the stronger the feeling became.
It was Grace, of course. Or at least my proximity to her.
I turned onto her street and pulled the car to a stop along the curb. The map spread out on the passenger seat would be my cover if anyone questioned why I was there. But why would anyone? And how long did I think I was going to be there, anyway?