Family Practice (7 page)

Vicky stepped back from the door and looked over her shoulder uncertainly. “I'll get Willis.” She tapped away in beige high-heeled sandals, leaving Susan standing on a bronze and apricot Oriental rug in the pale, parquet-floored entryway. On one side was a living room, on the other the dining room, the table still cluttered with dishes and glasses from dinner. Or maybe supper here; Susan never got that right. Whichever it was, the thought made her hungry. She hadn't eaten since the doughnuts shared with Jen for breakfast. Jen was lying in a railed bed being kept alive by a machine pumping air in and out of her lungs.

She took a few steps into the living room, and the overall impression was that nobody actually lived here. As in the entryway, the floor was parquet, covered by another, larger Oriental rug. The couch and two chairs were pale gray; the tables had marble pedestal bases and glass tops. There were no lamps anywhere; instead, recessed lights in the ceiling. Two watercolors hung above the couch, apparently chosen to blend with the color scheme: a bronze bowl of apricots, and orange poppies in a gray vase. It looked like a model home for some classy housing development. The only item even remotely personal was a framed photo on one of the glass-topped tables. She walked over and picked it up: a wedding picture, radiant Vicky in clouds of lace and smiling Willis. She was quite a bit younger than her husband.

“Chief Wren?”

She turned as Willis Barrington came into the room. From running backgrounds on all the Barringtons, she knew he was forty-four, but he looked years older and walked carefully, as though unsure of his footing. “Please sit down.”

“Shall I make some coffee?” Vicky hesitated in the doorway.

“No thank you,” Susan said.

“I wouldn't care for any either.” He showed obvious signs of grief: his grayish-blue eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. His hands, square and blunt-fingered, shook slightly when he gestured toward a chair; his mouth was set in a tight line.

Approaching middle age had thickened his waist a little, put streaks of gray in his blond hair, and added lines to his forehead and around his eyes. Even dressed as he was, in a suit, white shirt, and tie, he seemed out of place in the carefully arranged room. Anybody—everybody—would seem out of place; the room was totally sterile.

“How can we help you?” His voice was slightly unsteady. “Tell me what we can do. He has to be found. I'll do whatever I can. To come in and just shoot her down—”

Susan sat in one of the gray chairs. He sat on the couch and held out a hand for Vicky to join him.

With his fingertips, he rubbed his eyes. “I can't believe she's dead.”

Susan dropped her bag at her feet and settled further back in the chair. No matter how many times she'd seen the pain in the wake of a homicide, she always felt helpless in the face of naked grief. That's what she was seeing here. In her first homicide investigation, she'd stood before a woman whose daughter had been beaten to death by an abusive husband. Practice didn't make it easier.

“We're a very close family,” Willis said.

Vicky folded her hands in her lap and studied them.

“But Dorothy and I—” He shook his head. “From the time we were children. Always the two of us.” He seemed to be talking to the mantel clock. “I feel like half of me is missing. She was always so strong, so determined. Nothing could stop her. I can't believe it.” He reached out blindly and grasped one of Vicky's hands.

She didn't move except to raise her eyes and look at Susan, then quickly away.

“I understand that Dorothy was almost a parent to the rest of you.” Susan included Vicky in the comment.

“That's exactly what she was,” Vicky said. “She was in charge. Always—” Vicky glanced uneasily at her husband.

“Did that cause you to feel resentment?”

“Why would I feel resentment?” Willis said.

“In your medical practice?”

“Of course not.”

Vicky didn't seem to agree altogether, but all she did was take in a breath like a sigh.

Susan nodded as though she accepted his statement. “You were asked to check the supply of drugs and medications at the medical office a while earlier. Could you tell if anything was missing?”

“Nothing. As I told Osey. I can even say nothing looked disturbed. I can only conclude that whoever it was didn't have the opportunity to get that far.”

Or Dorothy's death had nothing to do with the theft of drugs. It would be a pretty stupid druggie who tried to steal from an office where people were present. Stupid was possible—druggies often were—but she didn't think that's what had gone down here. Doctor's offices in general didn't have all that many drugs on the premises. Here again, a stupid thief might not have known.

“Have you had trouble with a patient? Someone who was upset about a treatment, perhaps, or felt it was incorrect or unnecessary? Dissatisfied with the results?” Patients had been known to hold a physician responsible for the death of a loved one.

“That is something I cannot discuss.”

Vicky flicked her eyes at him. He didn't notice, but Susan did.

“We'll need to look at patient records. Especially those with appointments today.”

“Not without a subpoena,” he said firmly.

She had expected as much, and let it go. So far, they had no evidence needed to obtain court permission to peruse confidential files. She directed a question at Vicky. “Where were you between twelve and two this afternoon?”

“Shopping,” Vicky blurted, a frightened look on her face.

What's this? Till now she'd been nearly impassive.

“Dr. Barrington?”

He puffed up like a snake. His face sharpened from sorrow to disbelief, and then anger, so quickly Susan wondered if the grief had been a convincing performance.

“What are you suggesting? You have the bald insensitivity to come in here and accuse—”

“I'm sorry, Dr. Barrington. I understand this is a difficult time. My job is to find out what happened. To do that, I need to ask questions. Some of which you'd rather not hear.”

He stared at her a long moment, then slowly deflated. “Yes, of course. I apologize. This has been a dreadful shock. I'm having trouble accepting it. There are stages one goes through. Disbelief. Denial.” He rubbed the tips of his fingers up and down his forehead. “I was here.”

He was by himself, had made or received no phone calls beyond the one call from Dorothy. He had no idea why she had asked him over this evening and wouldn't speculate. She frequently called. The family frequently got together.

Throughout his discourse Vicky maintained a watchful quiet. Susan wished she knew what thoughts were going on behind the pretty, painted face. “Did Dorothy have any enemies?”

“Of course not. The very idea is absurd.”

“There was the shelter,” Vicky said.

“Shelter?”

“For battered women.” Willis said, his voice as thin as winter light. “It was an interest of Dorothy's.”

“Had that caused any problems?”

“Problems? Certainly not.”

“No resentful husband ever threatened her?”

He got a worried expression as he tried to pick through a cluttered mind for something important. “Not to my knowledge. I suppose it's possible. None of them would have reason to harm her. It wasn't as though she were hiding these women, simply patching them up when the occasion made it necessary.”

Susan asked Vicky, “You got along well with Dorothy?”

Before she could reply, Willis patted her hand and said, “Of course she did. I told you we were all very close. That includes Vicky.”

One big, happy family, Susan thought, and made a mental note to question Vicky without her husband present. She kept an inquiring expression on her face and waited for an answer.

“We didn't have a whole lot in common,” Vicky finally admitted.

“Nonsense.” Willis patted her hand again. “Dorothy loved you.”

A shadow flashed across Vicky's smooth face, gone too quickly to read, but it definitely wasn't loving.

*   *   *

Vicky stood in the entryway as Willis opened the door for Chief Wren. After he closed it, he put his arms around her. She ought to feel sympathy or grief, or something. All she felt was sorry. Even in death, Dorothy was running their lives. She didn't know how to comfort Willis.

He gently kissed her forehead. “I think we'd better get ready to go. We're supposed to be there at eight.”

She gave him a smile and a little push. Anybody but Willis would think they were already ready. “I'll be right along. Soon as I clear away the supper things.”

She gathered dishes from the dining room table and carefully wiped crumbs from its perfect polished surface. She stacked the dishwasher, wiped down the cabinets, scrubbed the sink, and made sure everything was tucked away, swept up, smudges erased. As though wiping out any trace of her presence. A lump formed in her throat as she looked around the spotless kitchen: white appliances, dark wood cabinets, peach-veined tile flooring. Everybody thought it was her who wanted everything so neat, so clean, so untouched. She knew they sneered behind her back, felt superior and snide about her fluffy life. It wasn't her at all, it was Willis. He was the one who wanted everything so clean it had no life.

Tears came to her eyes as she compared this kitchen with the messy, disorganized one at home. Her mother cheerfully cooked huge meals, the washing-up often left until later if something more important needed tending to. The coffeepot was always hot on the stove, the sink filled with plates and cups from two brothers with appetites not satisfied by only three hefty meals a day.

Dust and mud got tracked in on the worn linoleum from working in the fields, tending the livestock. As often as not, there was a bunch of chicks or an orphaned kitten in a box by the stove.

For a moment, she wished she were back there, with her family, on the farm, in the kitchen. Except her parents had moved to Arizona to be near one of her brothers, and the farm had been sold. She knew there had been hard times, worry about money, anxiety about weather, and crops that were ruined, as they probably would be this year for anybody foolhardy enough to farm, but there'd been so many good times. Joyous times. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt joy.

Her wedding day maybe. That had been joyous, all right. And she'd looked beautiful in the yards and yards of lace.

She'd met Willis one rainy night when she'd backed the old family station wagon into his fancy sports car in the parking lot of Erle's Market. It was all her fault; she'd been in a hurry, and with the rain so hard, she couldn't see clearly. So scared she was, when she realized whose car she'd hit: Dr. Willis Barrington. But he was so nice, so sweet. She was crying and saying how sorry. He tried to comfort her, saying only a dent, nothing to worry about, nobody hurt.

He'd taken her for coffee. And he'd talked. After that he'd started taking her out. He had a sweet smile and a sweet voice, and he'd talked and talked. It wasn't until sometime after their marriage that she realized he never said anything.

All her girlfriends had been ripe with envy. He was so handsome, an older man, and a Barrington. Her parents were so pleased when he asked her to marry him. “You can have pretty things,” her mother said. Her mother had longed for pretty things all her life, but there was never money to buy them. “He's a good catch,” her father said. Both her parents had beamed with pride at the wedding.

Not so any of the Barringtons. None of them thought she was good enough; they all thought she was stupid because she had no education and had this dumb idea that she could be a singer. Dorothy thoroughly disapproved and tried to talk Willis out of the marriage. It was probably the only time he had ever gone against her wishes.

Looking back, Vicky sometimes felt the wedding was the high point of her life and everything was downhill from there. Willis always wanted her to look perfect. Never a spot, never a wrinkle. Makeup from the moment she woke.

She sighed as she rinsed the dishcloth and hung it over the towel bar. Sometimes she felt so awful she just wanted to cry. Or scream. Or find a pen full of pigs and roll around in the mud. She knew what they thought about her, all those Barringtons, how they felt.

When she'd heard about Dorothy's death, she'd felt relieved, and then glad, and then hopeful. It was very un-Christian of her. She could hear her mother's disapproving voice. She felt guilty for not feeling what she ought to feel, but with Dorothy gone, Vicky thought, maybe now we can have a life. Dorothy had always told them what to do. Willis had always done what she said. And the money Willis would get meant they could move away, far away from here.

She had a secret. She didn't know how Willis would feel if he knew.

And she was afraid. She really was.

7

A
T THE POLICE
department, Susan sat at her desk reading through the reports in thus far on the Barrington shooting. Paperwork: everybody hated it, grumbled about it. She'd done her share of grumbling, but now she was on the receiving end, she had more appreciation. Nobody yet found who'd seen anything suspicious in or around the medical building. She thought of the general rule of twenty-four and twenty-four, the basic principle that the last twenty-four hours of a homicide victim's life and the first twenty-four hours of the investigation were crucial to nailing the perpetrator.

The department was quiet. Hazel had gone home, and Marilee Beaumont was working as dispatcher. Eight-thirty. Too early for Saturday night activities: the usual disorderly, driving under the influence, traffic offenses, disturbances. Not that there would be an abundance. Back in her rookie days in San Francisco, Saturday nights were known as spot 'em, scoop 'em, run 'em nights: get the injured party into an emergency vehicle and to a hospital.