Ill Will (34 page)

I was careful, checking the street from one of the stair landings, my hand on my gun as I opened the downstairs door.

But all was quiet, no cars, no trucks, no maniacs trying to kill me.

I ate at the restaurant, not wanting to bring the hot oil smell back to my office. Cordelia didn’t go there often, but in case she did, I wanted it smelling of apples and arugula.

The trip back was just as uneventful and I was soon safely behind two locked doors.

I’d carried the hot pink cell phone with me, but it hadn’t rung. The wait made me glad I wasn’t really Debbie, caught between hope and desperation. Instead, I used the time to do due diligence and run a background check on Rafe Gautier. He was a private eye out of Dallas, part of a large organization. His picture matched the man I’d met. Basically, he checked out as much as I needed him to check out.

Time to call him—he was the only way I’d get a couple of thousand dollars anytime soon. I’d done some quick calculations. At twenty dollars apiece and selling over half of what she’d taken, Debbie would have taken in close to three thousand dollars. That meant handing Grant Walters over two thousand.

The games were over—Rafe answered on the second ring. I gave him a quick rundown of my phone call with Grant Walters. His response to the money was, “Not a problem.”

“I need it by three thirty,” I reminded him.

“Still not a problem.” We agreed to meet in front of his hotel. He’d hand me an envelope and I wouldn’t even need to get out of my car.

I passed the afternoon by checking e-mail, reading the news online, the weather, celebrity gossip. I’d made it to pork belly futures, by which time Dudley had to be well over the pain threshold and therefore presumably in search of drugs and not me.

At around 3, I prowled in my costume closet. Debbie couldn’t wear pink every day—mostly because Micky Knight didn’t own that much pink. I found a frilly aqua shirt and a knock-off version of designer jeans for her. In the bare nick of time, I remembered to shift all the putatively sold product out of my trunk and added it to the obstacle course that led to the back door of my building.

As promised, Rafe was standing a little down the block from the entrance to his hotel.

“Be careful out there,” he told me as he leaned in to hand me a thick envelope. “It’s a mix of bills, a couple of fifties just to keep it from being too bulky, but mostly twenties and tens.”

“Just like someone would get from selling things at twenty bucks each.” I tossed the envelope on the passenger seat and headed off.

Traffic was a snarl, early rush hour going out to the suburbs. I avoided the interstate for my sanity and the safety of others—if one more big SUV cut me off, the gun in my glove box might prove too tempting.

It was just a little after four when I got to the place in Metairie. I scanned the parking lot. It seemed pretty empty, only a few cars by the pizza place. Maybe Grant gave up on Debbie because she was a few minutes late. I didn’t see any car that looked expensive enough for him.

I took the money out of the envelope and stuffed them into my purse, making sure the bills were in a different compartment from my gun.

Show time.

I hurriedly traipsed up the stairs, as if Debbie would be concerned about being late.

When I got to the second floor, the door was ajar, not welcome open like it had been the last time.

I rapped softly on the door. “Mr. Walters? I mean, Grant?” I pushed the door open a few more inches and stuck my head in.

“Ah, Debbie, I’m glad you could make it.”

It was just the two of us. He was sitting at the far end of the room at the big table he had used before.

“Yes, sir—Grant. I’m happy to do it. So far everyone I’ve told about Nature’s Beautiful Gift has been interested and willing to buy at least a bottle or two.” Much as my feet wanted to stay near the door and freedom, I forced myself into an easy saunter across the room to him.

“Good, I’m glad to hear it.”

I pulled up a chair so I was sitting opposite from him. Just far enough away he couldn’t easily grab me.

I reached into my purse and pulled out the money. I wanted to keep this meeting focused on business. “This is all the money I’ve made so far,” I said, as if wide-eyed, naïve Debbie would so willingly reveal everything.

He nodded, picking up a stack and proceeded to count it. I counted another stack and pile by pile we both went through and counted the entire amount.

“Two thousand, eight hundred and seventy-two dollars,” he announced.

“Exactly what I got,” I said, although I’d counted ten dollars more. I did not want to quibble and have to sit here and count again. It was Rafe’s money anyway.

“So three quarters of that is two thousand, one hundred and fifty-four.” He quickly separated that from the stack.

“Oh, well, easy come, easy go,” I said, looking at the small amount left for me.

“The start-up phase is always hard,” he assured me. “You’re doing quite well. Several of the others are still struggling to sell their first bottle.”

“I may not be great with math,” I said, doing my best to actually giggle, “but I’m pretty good at talking to people.”

“You are good at talking to people,” he echoed. “I could see you wanted to succeed at that first meeting.” He reached out and covered my hand with his. Then he gave me the kind of smile a man gives a woman to show he’s interested.

Holy fuck balls, what now? I kept a smile plastered on my face. “Thank you, Grant. I hope I never disappoint you.” I lifted my thumb slightly as if responding to his touch.

He again smiled at me.

I desperately tried to think of a lie that would require me to have to be on the other side of the city in fifteen minutes.

Then he glanced at his watch and his smile changed to annoyance. “I’m sorry, I have to be somewhere. It was great to see you. I hope you continue to sell very well and we can see each other again soon. I’ll walk you out and give you your inventory.”

“I’m sure you’ll see me again soon,” I told him. I hastily stuffed seven hundred and eighteen dollars in my purse and followed him out of the room.

He didn’t bother locking the door.

When we got to the parking lot, the truck—driven by Vincent—was parked in front.

“Hello, Vincent,” Grant greeted him. He handed Vincent a sheet of paper—my order. “Please fill this for Debbie.”

“Hi, Vincent,” I greeted him.

“Ah, hi, Debbie,” he said, looking at me then at Grant.

I pulled my car around, facing my trunk to the back of the truck.

Vincent quickly tossed the boxes out of the truck. I started to grab them, but Grant insisted on helping me.

“Can’t have a beautiful woman like you doing grubby work.” He smiled at me.

When we were done, Grant put an arm around my shoulder in a possessive way and kissed me on the cheek.

I leaned into him, playing along. He wasn’t really interested in Debbie, I had figured out. This show was mostly for Vincent, partly for the woman he assumed to be Debbie. Grant Walters, with his money, smooth talk, and distinguished looks, could easily get young blond women with perfect hair and teeth, breasts skillfully enhanced.

I didn’t break mirrors, but I was over forty, wearing cheap knock-off clothes and, even as fake Debbie, at least one divorce past doing anything to get a man.

He only did it to see the hurt puppy dog look in Vincent’s eyes—a reminder that no one could compete with the alpha wolf.

Grant got in the truck with Vincent, clearly his designated driver. I could almost see the satisfied smile he’d give to Vincent, all the little ways he’d play that he and Debbie had been doing more than counting money.

Moments like this make me glad I’m a lesbian. I waved cheerfully—my happiness genuine that Grant was as interested in having sex with me as I was with him—and drove away.

Rush hour driving prevented me from thinking about much on my way home.

I detoured by my office to change back into Micky Knight garb.

I still had to meet Lydia, so I decided to do what a good detective with a maniac trying to kill her should do—vary my hours. Cordelia wouldn’t be home. The support group was near her office, so she was staying Uptown. I went home, fed the cats, and had an apple and some nuts for myself. My late lunch was still working its way through my digestive tract.

I left at a quarter to seven, heading up Elysian Fields toward the lake. At least the days were getting longer and it was still light out.

I got there right at seven, but didn’t see Lydia. I parked on the far side of the lot, got out, then stood by my car fiddling with my cell phone. I had run through about every function except the ones I didn’t know what they would do and had never tried because I was afraid they might cause the phone to go into the fetal position, when I saw her come out of the drugstore.

Like she’d come here to do shopping and just happened to meet me in the parking lot.

At a major intersection where anyone could drive by and see us. Amateur. Not that I intended to tell her that. I wasn’t a double agent and she wasn’t the KGB. In the unlikely event that anyone asked, we could say we ran into each other. She asked about Cordelia and I engaged her in a lengthy conversation about colon health.

She spotted me, did a passable—for someone driving by at a high rate of speed—acting job of being surprised to see someone she knew here. She trotted over to me, looking over her shoulder as she did.

“Hey, thanks for meeting me,” she said, with another glance behind her.

“Let me watch behind you,” I said. “It’s more natural that way.”

She blushed, actually blushed. “I’m not sure what I’m doing.”

I agreed with that, but didn’t express it. “So tell me, what made you want to see me?”

“I looked through some of the charts and there are…irregularities.”

“Like what?”

“I mean, no one is perfect. We’re in a hurry, we jot down something wrong. If you search everything you’re going to find something.”

“You didn’t want to meet with me because someone mixed up a blood pressure reading.”

“No, but now I feel stupid, like I’m adding two and two together and somehow came up with ten.”

“Were other people billed for appointments they didn’t make?”

“Maybe. I thought so, now I’m not so sure.”

Denial. It’s hard to think that someone you work with every day, chat with at the water cooler, eat lunch with, is a criminal, taking advantage of you and your patients. Lydia was obviously struggling.

“What did you see?”

“A few of the charts indicated appointments that weren’t on the books. But maybe the chart is right and the appointment book is wrong. Maybe someone canceled the wrong appointment, so it disappeared.”

“But the person still showed up and was seen?”

“If we messed up we would have seen them.”

“If the appointment was erased, how would you know that you messed up and that the patient hadn’t come on the wrong day? And how often could something like this happen?”

She again looked behind her, but this time it seemed more as a way to avoid the implications of my question than worry about being followed. She finally shook her head and replied, “I don’t know. When I was there looking at them it seemed wrong, but now that I’m away, I keep thinking maybe I should have checked this, or looked there. I have to be wrong about this, I just have to be.”

“It’s hard to think that someone might be fudging the system. It’s someone you know, isn’t it? And that’s even harder.”

She looked down at the ground. “I have to be wrong. We’re doctors, nurses, not the kind of people who would cheat the system.”

“All kinds of people cheat. Including doctors and nurses. There are probably even a few bad nuns. Tell me what you found.”

She again shook her head, clearly upset. “It’s all so jumbled now; it doesn’t seem to make sense. I’d need to show you.”

“Then show me. Can we go there now?”

“No! The support group is meeting on the next floor and both Ron and Brandon are doing rounds late and might come back. It has to be at a time when no one will be around.”

“You work there; you have a right to be there.”

“But you don’t.”

“Cordelia does. I could say she left something and asked me to get it.”

“And why wouldn’t she come for it?”

“She was feeling too sick.”

Lydia looked stricken—lost in her own dilemma, she’d forgotten about Cordelia. “Oh, I’m sorry, of course. But it’ll be better if we don’t run into anyone and we don’t need to tell anyone any stories.”

“It might be helpful to tell Cordelia.”

“No!” She looked around, worried someone might have overheard her vehemence. “Not yet. I want to be sure before I involve anyone else.”

“You might want to talk to an insurance person; that’s not my specialty.”

“Look, I’m trying to do the right thing. For everyone. If we’re wrong, we could ruin someone’s career, a medical education down the drain. I have to be sure I’m right before I let anyone else know besides you. And only you because you already know.”