Notorious D.O.C. (Hope Sze medical mystery) (19 page)

Reena burst into tears and locked herself in the bathroom to do
some serious slashing.

I knocked on the door. I told her what she wanted to hear. But all
the while, I was thinking about how to make this soap opera work for me. I
couldn't figure it out then, but it would come to me.

***

Mrs. Lee's dumplings were not quite as
good as my mother's, but I wasn't about to complain. I just added more hot
chili-garlic sauce and said, "I read some of Laura's files, but I'll have
to think about them. Could you tell me a little about her?" I wanted to
know what she was really like, warts and all.

First, I got all the saintly stuff. Laura
went to church regularly (big smile from Ryan, carefully neutral expression
from me). Laura volunteered for the local food bank. Laura went rollerblading
almost every day, barring ice and on-call duties, even if she had to get up at
four a.m. on surgical rotations. Laura'd had a grand total of three boyfriends
in twenty-seven years, all of them serious, one of them a fiancé named Brendan
Ho, but supposedly they all ended as friends.

"So why did they break up?" I
asked.

Mrs. Lee pursed her lips. "None of
them were good enough for her."

I had to laugh.

Mrs. Lee didn't. "She was too picky,
even when she was a little girl. She would practice the piano again and again
until she had it right, even when her teacher said it was good enough. She
graduated from high school with the highest marks. She was the class
valedictorian, but she was angry because another boy had higher grades at
another school."

I made a face. Another guy edged me out for
valedictorian, but otherwise, I could relate.

"She loved Brendan, but she was
always complaining that he didn't work hard enough. I told her, 'he is good, he
loves you, he has a good job'." Mrs. Lee shook her head. "Nothing was
good enough. Her father said she got that from me."

"If she did, I know she got other,
good qualities from you," I said.

She laughed. "Hope, you're too good
to me."

That surprised me. "I haven't done
anything."

She patted my hand. "Don't you
understand yet? You believe in me." She turned to Ryan. "You, too.
Thank you for coming. Eat more."

Obediently, I picked up another
she jau
and swirled it in the sauce.
Nothing beats homemade cooking.

"No problem," said Ryan,
sipping his tea. He paused. "I don't suppose those ex-boyfriends...there
might be a link there?"

We both looked at him. He grinned and
shook his head. "Maybe I've been watching too much
CSI
or whatever, but you know the whole 'If I can't have you, no
one's going to' angle?"

"That's true." It had flitted
across my mind, but I wasn't sure if I should bring it up to her mom. Ryan
probably already knew her better than I did.

Mrs. Lee said slowly, "Brendan
married another girl. They have twin boys. I know his mother. I would be very
surprised if he had ever hurt Laura."

"Maybe I can look into it. Do you
have contact information for her other boyfriends?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I only know
their names."

"I have her day planner," I
said. "And her old computer might have some contact information, if we get
into it next time."

"We can try and track them
down," said Ryan with a firmness that surprised and gratified me. He took
my hand.

"I wish she had found a good man
like you," Mrs. Lee told him.

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, but
Ryan's hand tightened on mine. I knew he was warning me to keep mum about our
status. It was true, Ryan was a good man. Just not officially mine.

Ryan kissed the back of my hand before
letting it dangle back down between us. I glanced up under my eyelashes, afraid
Mrs. Lee would disapprove at his public display of affection, but if anything,
she looked wistful. To change the subject, I said, "Did you get any leads
from running an ad in the paper, asking for witnesses to the accident?"

"I've run them every year since she
died."

Ryan and I exchanged a look. No fooling
around with Mrs. Lee.

I took a deep breath. "Any
leads?"

She shook her head. "I turned
everything over to the police. Of course, who knows if they actually bother to
do anything about it." She snorted and swirled her tea in her cup. She'd
eaten the least of the three of us.

"Did you do it this year?"

She nodded and gestured for me to have
more. As I obediently picked up another dumpling with my chopsticks, she said,
"Yes. No answer so far."

"Maybe we could try on Craigslist or
something." My last word got cut off when Ryan rubbed his thumb over the
skin of my wrist. It felt so good, I sucked my breath in.

Mrs. Lee cast me a sharp glance.

I tried to wriggle my hand away, but Ryan
held firm while he asked in a perfectly normal voice, "Do you have any
ideas what might have happened?"

"Of course." Mrs. Lee's
eyebrows lifted. "She didn't want to worry me, but I think maybe she was
getting threatening letters or telephone calls."

I tensed, thinking of my own graveyard
letter. "Why do you say that?"

"She was jumpy when she answered the
phone. She started using her answering machine all the time. She started paying
for Call Display. She said it was because she was so busy, but I knew she
wasn't telling the whole truth."

Okay, now maybe we were getting
somewhere. I shoved aside my own uneasiness. "Did you ever overhear any
calls or intercept any letters?"

She shook her head. "I was hoping
she gave them to the police, but they said they never received anything."

Damn. Dead end. "Did you check her
phone records?"

"Yes. I only have records of her
long-distance calls. She was a good girl. She called her grandmothers every
weekend and a few friends once a month. There was nothing suspicious."

I sat forward in my chair, squeezing
Ryan's hand. "If you think someone was after her, do you have any idea who
it might be? Through work, or socially—"

"Work." Her chin swung
downward.

"Why do you say that?"

"My daughter was a good girl."

I'm sure there are perfectly angelic
girls around, but most of them aren't twenty-seven. Your halo gets at least a
teensy bit tarnished by then.

"We didn't want her to go into
medicine. I told her to become a dentist. You have a nice private office, an
assistant for you, start work at nine, out at five so you can have babies. But
no." Mrs. Lee shook her head and tightened her lips.

"Why did she want to do
medicine?"

"She said she didn't like
teeth!"

Ryan and I both laughed. Traditionally,
all parents want doctor kids. Dentistry is kind of an also-ran. Laura Lee may
have been one of two kids in history, rebelling against her parents by donning
the other kind of white coat.

Mrs. Lee rubbed her forehead. "I
told her, if you want to do medicine, you specialize. But she wanted to do
general practice. I said, okay, you can still have a clinic, you can still have
nice hours, but then she did emergency medicine."

I suddenly wanted to laugh, even though I
understood her anxiety. Emerg means working around the clock, taking on all the
drunks and druggies, the bloody traumas, the screaming children and broken
limbs. It's not very glamorous or well-paying or just plain tidy, the way Mrs.
Lee would like it.

I wondered if my parents felt the same
way. Probably. The difference was, they didn't know enough about it to object.

"And the psychiatry!" Mrs. Lee
threw up her hands.

I understood that, too. Asian people
don't believe in talking about their problems. But I was starting to like
Laura, that crazy revolutionary. I could see how she'd thwarted her mother by
becoming a doctor and picking disciplines her mother didn't understand or
value. But that didn't mean she'd been murdered because of it.

Mrs. Sze rapped her teacup down on the
table. "I bet it was a psychiatric patient. So unstable."

I sighed. Psych patients are always
fighting such a bad rap.

She bristled. I actually imagined little
bristles popping out of her skin, like porcupine quills.

For the first time, I found myself
disliking her, or at least her prejudices. "Do you have any
evidence?"

"If I did, do you think I would be
asking you?"

I bit my lip. No pay, no respect. Why was
I doing this again?

She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry,
Hope. Sometimes you remind me of my daughter."

From the way she said it, I knew it
wasn't the Hallmark version.

Ryan stayed silent, but he swung our
clasped hands back and forth, soothing me.

I opened my mouth, glanced at Ryan, and
shut it again. I was committed to Mrs. Lee, and to Laura's memory. As soon as I
had a chance, I would call Tucker and arrange our excursion to Île-Ste-Hélène
to keep investigating.

But before that, it was Ryan's last night
here and he was outlining the delicate skin between each of my fingers.

***

It was a bit awkward, opening the
apartment door one-handed, but I didn't want to let go of Ryan. From his
crooked grin, he didn't, either. He slid his arm around me and bent his lips to
the back of my neck. I jerked to attention and he laughed, low and deep, as his
lips parted.

I pressed my back against the wooden door
and squeaked just as his mouth made contact. Part of me couldn't believe he'd
make a scene in my own hallway, seconds away from privacy.

The other part of me said bring it on,
big boy.

Inside the apartment, my phone rang.

We both stiffened.

Damn
you, hospital
.

Ryan spoke first, slowly raising his warm
lips off my skin. "You're not on call, right?"

"Not for psych. But my pregnant
patient..."

He pretended to bang his head against the
door.

"I know." But I didn't know
what to do except twist the key and push open the door. By the time I picked up
the phone, it had switched over to voice mail, but the person hung up.

I checked my pager. Still blank.

Ryan exhaled, lower lip curled upward as
if to ruffle his bangs, only he didn't have bangs anymore. His crew cut didn't
stir.

I tried to pretend the mood was
salvageable. "Usually the hospital would page first and leave a message,
instead of calling my house. So I don't think it's them."

He just looked at me.

On cue, the phone rang again. It was
easier to pick it up than to talk to Ryan. "Hello?"

No answer.

For some reason, my Caller ID was blank.
Shouldn't it have kicked in by now? I drummed my fingers on the desk, waiting
in case it was a telemarketing company with a long pause before it clicked on
to a person. I always let them spiel away for a minute before I ask them to
remove my name from their calling list. It was awfully late for telemarketing,
but with my luck, I might have attracted an extra-devoted employee. Plus it was
another delaying tactic. Ryan just watched me with his arms crossed.

"Hello?" I repeated, but only
got silence. I hung up.

"Why don't you have Caller ID?"
he asked.

"I signed up for it. They must have
lost my order. Or maybe they didn't have time to process it? I'm not
sure."

"You need to check on that.
Now."

"I thought there was other stuff
you'd rather do." I'm not good at being a femme fatale, but I tried for
coy.

He didn't smile or reach for me.
"Look. If nothing else, I want you to be safe. You're getting weird
letters and phone calls—"

"I know." I'd rushed home to
Ryan and Mrs. Lee instead of stopping at the police station with my graveyard
pic, so as penance, I dropped into my desk chair and logged on to bell.ca.
While I clicked, I said, "Did you come to Montreal looking for me?"

He started before his lips thinned.
"Yes. Well, not completely."

I waited. He didn't explain, so I
prompted. "You mean Lisa, right?"

He rubbed his hand across his forehead, a
gesture of irritation I knew so well. "What does this have to do with
Caller ID? Or are you just changing the subject again?"

I scooped up my Bell bill and entered my
account number while still trying to maintain some eye contact. "Humor
me."

He shrugged. "I was going to take a
few days off anyway. She invited me, said Montreal's a great city. Which it is.
So we took the train down—"

I figured that was so all of them could
drink. Ryan doesn't hang out with other teetotalers at work. I always liked
that he could be friends with everyone, instead of just sticking to his church
group.