J
uliet had slept for a few hours while the boys played video games. Jay had taken Jackson to school, but she had let her own boys stay home. She didn’t want them out in public with some lunatic threatening their lives. Besides, they were both still in mourning, and kids could be insensitive. Sending them back to fourth and seventh grades before they were ready could be like throwing them to the wolves.
Jay was working at home today so they didn’t have to be alone. When the doorbell rang, she sprang up and ran to the staircase. “Don’t answer that!” she yelled down to Zach, who was already in the foyer.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Just . . . let me.”
She looked out the peephole and saw Cathy and Holly. Relieved, she opened the door. “Thank goodness it’s you.”
“We had a key, but I didn’t want to scare you,” Cathy said as they came in. “I tried texting, but you didn’t answer.”
“I was sleeping.” Juliet raked her fingers through her short cropped hair, smoothing it down.
“Can we talk to you?” Holly asked.
Juliet tried to read her sister’s expression. Something was wrong. She turned to Zach. “Zach, go play with your brother.”
“Abe fell asleep on the couch,” he said.
“You could probably use a nap too.”
“I’m not tired.”
Juliet blew out her frustration. “Then go take advantage of having the PlayStation all to yourself.”
Muttering something under his breath, Zach headed back into the family room.
Juliet nodded toward the stairs. “Let’s talk in the bedroom.”
Her sisters followed her up the stairs and into the guest room where she’d been sleeping. She climbed back onto the bed and hugged her pillow to her chest, as if that would protect her from what she was about to hear.
Cathy sat on one corner, legs pulled beneath her. Holly took the other corner. Juliet wondered how long it had been since the three of them had sat like this on the same bed, telling secrets. Only this time she didn’t want to know the secrets. “What did you find out?”
Holly told her of her conversation at the diner. When she finished, Juliet slid off the bed, went to the window, and looked out. The day was growing tired, but she didn’t even know what time it was.
She fantasized about grabbing her purse and the kids, getting in the car, and driving as far as her gas would take her, never looking back. If she could just ignore all these revelations, she could grieve like an ordinary widow.
“We have to search his office,” Cathy said. “We need to
call his secretary. His nurse. See what they can tell us. I’ll do it if you want.”
Juliet dragged her thoughts back and turned from the window. “No, I need to hear it for myself. And they’re more likely to tell me things than you. They know me.”
“Can you do it now?” Holly asked. “Because the sooner we figure all this out, the sooner we can track down the people making these threats.”
Juliet stood there for a moment, her head swimming. She couldn’t breathe, and she thought she might faint. She bent over, hands on her knees, and tried to draw in a long breath. Then she forced herself to straighten. “Okay. Yes, you’re right. The sooner the better.”
She sat back down on the bed and grabbed her phone. Did she still have the numbers of Bob’s employees? She had entered them years ago when she’d planned a surprise birthday party for him and had to contact them at home. Her underarms felt wet as she found the name of his nurse, Tracy. Perspiration beaded on her lip.
The phone rang once, then someone picked up. “Hello?” Tracy sounded out of breath.
“Tracy? This is Juliet Cole.”
Tracy let out a hard breath. “It said Bob Cole on the caller ID. Freaked me out.”
Juliet glanced up at her sisters. “Yeah, our phones are under his name. I’m sorry.”
“No,
I’m
sorry. Juliet, how are you?”
Juliet put it on speaker so Cathy and Holly could hear. “I’m doing okay. Thanks for asking. How about you and the rest of the staff?”
“We’re all so upset. We don’t know what to do. We realize
we can’t go to work. But if you need us to wrap things up, box up the files, refer the patients to someone else, we’re all happy to do that. We weren’t expecting to have our jobs end so suddenly.”
Juliet hadn’t even considered that. “I . . . I don’t really know how to handle that. But if I can, I’ll try to make sure you get paychecks at least through the rest of the month. But I need to ask you some things about the office.”
“Sure.”
“I know Bob did surgery on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. He saw patients the rest of the time, right?”
“Yes.”
“Were they referrals from other doctors?”
“Sometimes, but not always. We kept Wednesdays for Medicaid patients, and a lot of them didn’t have referrals.”
“So how did he know they weren’t drug seekers?”
“They brought their records. Why do you ask?”
“I’m just wondering if he . . . if he ever did things that didn’t seem right . . . like prescribing drugs to people who didn’t really have back problems?”
Tracy hesitated. “Do you think that had something to do with his murder?”
Juliet looked at her sisters. “We’re just trying to consider everything.”
“But I thought they arrested the guy.”
“They did. We just aren’t sure he was acting alone.”
Tracy seemed to be processing that. Her voice wobbled as she answered. “Juliet, we were a very busy office. But Bob was a good doctor. I don’t think he’d ever do anything illegal.”
Juliet touched her chest, and tears rimmed her eyes. “Thank you, Tracy. I needed to hear that.”
When Juliet hung up, she stared at her sisters, her mouth trembling. “It’s
something.
”
Cathy came across the bed and pulled her into a hug. Holly joined them, and they sat in the middle of the bed. Juliet clung to them, unable to stand what she knew was coming.
Finally, Juliet said, “We should go look through his office.”
“Won’t the police do that?” Holly asked.
“Probably, but I don’t want to wait until they do. I need to go now. They haven’t told me it’s off limits.”
“I’ll call Michael and ask him to meet us there,” Cathy said.
J
uliet’s hands trembled as she tried to use Bob’s key to open the door of his medical clinic. Michael, who had met them there, took the keys from her hand. “Here, let me.” He turned the key easily and the door opened.
Juliet stepped into the waiting room. It was clean, chairs lined up neatly, magazines stacked. She had helped decorate the room in a soft, pale gray, with black chairs and couches, art on the walls. She turned to the keypad on the wall. “Something’s wrong. The security system isn’t armed. It should beep when we come in until we type in the code.”
“Maybe the staff forgot to arm it,” Cathy said.
Frowning, Juliet crossed the room to the receptionist’s desk.
She gasped. The office behind the desk looked like a tornado had hit it. File drawers were open, papers on the floor. The computer that had been on the receptionist’s desk was missing, leaving only a tangle of cords.
“Someone beat us here,” Michael said. “Stay back.”
Juliet and her sisters waited, holding each other’s hands as Michael went through the office, making sure that the thieves weren’t still there.
After a moment, he came back. “It looks clear. But they’ve been all through the place.”
Juliet felt sick. Of course the people who’d killed her husband had been here. They had invaded her home. She should have expected this.
Cathy pointed. “What was there, in the wall?”
Juliet looked and saw a large rectangular hole in the wall. “There was a safe there, hidden behind a picture. They gutted it right out.”
“What did he keep in there?”
She shrugged. “The proceeds from each day, if they couldn’t get to the bank.”
“Where was his drug supply closet?”
Juliet headed down the hall to the closet she knew was there. “He kept samples from the pharmaceutical reps here.”
She opened the walk-in closet. The shelves were empty. “They got everything. I haven’t been this far into the office in a few months. When I’ve come here, I never go past his office.” She stepped into Bob’s office and saw that it had been ransacked too. Drawers open, files strewn on the desk, others left on the floor.
She took each blow calmly, like an abuse victim who expected nothing less.
They went through each examining room until they reached the last two on the left. Juliet opened one of the doors and saw that the room had been turned into someone’s office. A picture of a woman and child sat on the credenza. “Whose office is this?” Cathy asked.
The woman was pretty and blonde, and the child . . .
“Why does she have a picture of Abe?” Everyone turned to the picture Holly was studying.
Juliet took the picture off the shelf. “Wait. That’s not Abe. That must be her baby.”
“Looks a lot like him, though, right? Spitting image.” Holly’s voice trailed off as she realized what she was saying.
Juliet turned to her, stricken. Her heart raced, and she put the picture back.
“Her name’s Amber Williams,” Cathy said, pointing to a nameplate on a file cabinet.
Juliet tried to think. “I know he hired a new financial secretary about a year ago. He never talked about her.”
Michael picked up a framed picture of the woman from her file cabinet. She was on a sailboat in a bikini, posing in front of a sign that said “Nassau Marina.”
“The Bahamas,” Cathy whispered.
Juliet took the picture, then turned back to the one with the baby. Her stomach plunged, and her heart slammed.
“What did they take in here?” Michael asked, as though to shift her attention. “Looks like another computer,” he said, pointing to unplugged cords. “Possibly more files. Did Bob have security cameras?”
“I think so,” Juliet whispered, putting the pictures back.
Michael disappeared up the hall and quickly returned. “They got the hard drive of the security system. Whoever came in here knew how to disarm it. They covered their tracks, but maybe we’ll get lucky. They might have left prints or other evidence.”
“How would you be able to tell the intruders’ prints from the patients’?” Holly asked.
Michael shook his head. “The police can run prints on the security keypad or the computer cords or the areas around the safe and the security system.”
“I’ll call,” Cathy said.
They all seemed to turn to Juliet, waiting. But she couldn’t think. Bob may have taken this woman to the Bahamas . . . He may have had an affair that lasted months. The baby . . .
She couldn’t let her mind follow that path. Not yet.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Yes, call the police.”
T
he more Juliet knew, the darker she felt. She had always been one to find joy in every situation. Depression didn’t often find a resting place in her heart. Even when tragedy struck their family and grief wound its way around her soul, her brain’s need for happiness quickly moved her along. Whether it was wiring or faith, she didn’t know. But that trait that others found so admirable in her had now fled. She wondered if she’d ever feel joy again.
The boys were brooding when they arrived back at Jay’s house. Juliet went inside, keenly aware that, at a time when they needed her most, she had been pulled away to deal with her dead husband’s mess. It seemed like betrayal. They needed to remember their father’s goodness, and here she was helping dismantle his reputation.
She was thankful Jay had taken another day off work, so at least they weren’t really alone. Both boys slouched on the
couch, looking utterly miserable as
Karate
Kid
played on TV
.
Abe clung to her after she hugged him, but Zach recoiled from her touch.
“I’m sorry I’ve been gone for so long.” Her voice sounded distant, foreign, inadequate. “We had to go to your dad’s office to get some things. Then we had to talk to the police again.”
“Will you stay now?” Abe asked.
“Yes, honey. I don’t expect to have to go out again today. But I’m going to be in Uncle Jay’s study talking to Michael about some things.”
Abe whined and asked to come with her, but she put him off. When she, Michael, and her siblings were closed into Jay’s study, she set her hands on her hips. “Michael, I need to look at Bob’s e-mail. Can you access his computer hard drive from here?”
“No,” he said. “I have it at the office. I’ve already gone through a lot of his office e-mails, but he had a Gmail account for other e-mail. I haven’t made it through those yet. You could get that from here.”
Juliet sat down at Jay’s computer and opened the Google home page. “Yeah, I know that account. I used it sometimes to send him personal e-mails.”
She typed in Bob’s e-mail address, and the log-in screen popped up. “If he used the password he used to use . . .” She typed it in, but an “invalid password” message came up. She tried another of his old favorites, but it didn’t work either. She tried to think. Bob didn’t like remembering passwords, so he tended to use the same ones over and over. He’d once used Two2kids, but that was years ago. She tried that one. The ball began spinning, and the messages came up.
“You got it,” Cathy said, standing beside her.
“Let’s see what he has from Amber.” She typed the name into the search box. After a few seconds, dozens of e-mails came up in a list. Her throat grew dry. She paused to prepare herself, then scrolled down to the e-mails in May and opened one from Amber after the dates he’d been in the Bahamas.
Her heart stopped as she read.
Had a wonderful time last week. You’re spoiling me. Sure you can’t see us this weekend? Robbie misses his daddy.
Juliet sprang up, knocking over Jay’s penholder.
Cathy leaned closer and read it out loud.
Holly’s chin set. “That dirty cheating skunk.”
Juliet’s heart pounded in her ears. The veins in her temples felt as though they would burst. “ ‘Robbie misses his daddy’?” she rasped out. “He had another child! No wonder that baby looked like Abe. And she named him after Bob!”