Of Flesh and Blood (41 page)

Knives tore through her stomach as she fought off a scowl. “Well, I did. And guess what?”

Pinter’s cheeks had flushed red. “The results changed,” he grunted.

“The variance between control and treatment groups dropped substantially. It sank the P value, Andrew. We lost the statistical significance of the original results.”

“I see that all the time in statistics.” His tone warmed as he mustered a contrite grin. “We go back, add a few raw scores that weren’t there in the first go-round, and presto—you get a whole new playing field.” He reached out and laid his hand on her shoulder. His thumb and fingers dug into her skin and began to massage the ball of her shoulder.

Jill recoiled from his touch. The nausea intensified. She backed away, concerned she might vomit on the spot.

“Those patients were excluded for a reason,” he soothed. “You can’t just go and plug them back in. It screws up everything.”

“Which is exactly why I think they were excluded!”

His smile vanished and his eyes narrowed to slits. “Are you accusing me of doctoring the data?”

She could feel her intestines coiling. “Yes.”

“This is so fucked up.” He shook his head and sighed again. “Okay. Yes. I knew what happened to the graphs if you plugged that exclusion data back in. That’s why I didn’t want to show you those raw scores.” Then he hurried to add, “I’m a statistician. All I do is run and rerun the permutations. It doesn’t mean I cooked anything.”

“It means you lied to me, Andrew.”

“No. It means I withheld a hypothetical outcome from you. There’s a big difference. Besides, I don’t know why we’re arguing about this.” He held out his palm as if offering an olive branch. “Aside from you and me, no one is ever going to see how the exclusions affect the results. We’re not obligated to
publish the subjects’ scores after they’ve been excluded, right? For all anyone else knows, we don’t even have follow-up data on those people.”

Jill understood Pinter’s point. They probably could bury the data so that even the study’s auditors never knew how the exclusions might have altered the results. But it didn’t change anything for her. “Problem is, I know, Andrew,” she said.

“And guess what? I’m relieved you do. I didn’t like hiding it from you.” He ran a finger along his goatee, and showed her another small smile. “At the end of the day, it’s just a statistical anomaly. It doesn’t invalidate all the mind-blowing work you’ve done so far. Now, if you were to go public with this . . .”

A series of spasms twisted Jill’s intestines. She was having trouble focusing on Pinter’s words. A new fear was beginning to take root in her head.

“Look how far we’ve come. You, especially!” He pinched his fingers together. “You’re this far from stardom. The
Prize
, Jill!”

“I’ve never been further,” she choked out through her pain.

“Don’t you get it? If this gets out, people will assume your whole treatment protocol was a giant fraud. Think about
that
, Jill. All your work. All the potential benefit to those poor sons of bitches with advanced multiple sclerosis. Your whole future . . .” He snapped his finger crisply. “Up in smoke! All for the sake of a stupid little statistical anomaly?”

“It’s bad enough that I unintentionally abetted research fraud,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’m sure as hell not going to cover up your crime to try to save my ass.”

He lunged toward her. Jill shot her arms up to protect herself, but he stopped a foot away from her. His lip curled in a malicious sneer. His eyes burned with hostility. “You fucking self-righteous bitch. I’m not letting you make me your scapegoat.”

Despite the cramps and Pinter’s threatening stance, Jill stood her ground. “
Scapegoat?
You did this to yourself. To all of us! You doctored the data! You gambled with the future of everyone involved in this lab.”

“I
saved
your fucking study! Your career!” he spat. “And this is how you thank me?”

His stale breath turned her stomach yet again. “All you’ve done is disgrace me and the rest of our team,” she cried. “The whole damn Alfredson.”

“You’ll be just fine, princess.” He shook a finger at the end of her nose.
“Unlike you, I didn’t marry into the Alfredson royalty. My future’s not guaranteed. I’ve had to work for every inch I’ve ever . . .”

His words faded away. Jill shot her hand to her mouth, but it was too late. The bilious green vomit sprayed between her fingers. At the same time, she felt as though she were going to explode from the other end.

Oh my God, it’s not the pregnancy, is it? I’ve got it, don’t I?
Her insides turned to ice.
I have
C. diff!

Lorna reached for the coffee cup that rested inches from a phallic African carving. She didn’t notice how close her fingers came to brushing against the sizable upright sculpture. The erotic artwork surrounding her no longer registered; neither did the oppressive darkness or the room’s heavy woodwork. She wasn’t even conscious of how the stale air, trapped inside by the permanently closed windows, irritated her dry throat. She was focused exclusively on 1897, desperate to find out what happened in the wake of Olivia and Arthur Grovenor’s drowning.

Coffee was Lorna’s idea. She was running out of time. Extending her stay at the Alfredson manor was not an option, even if she could stomach more nights in the stuffy room where Dot had romped with her Beat poets. Lorna hoped to keep her great-aunt alert and on track well into the evening to finish the tale.

After a while, Lorna wondered if the caffeine was even necessary. The old crone showed no signs of slowing. And the bottle and a half of red wine that Dot had almost single-handedly drained over dinner had no noticeable impact on her speech or manner.

“Their bodies didn’t wash ashore for two days,” Dot said matter-of-factly about the morbid aftermath of the boating accident. “No one—not even I—will care when
I
finally go, but it’s
tragic
when people die in their prime. Imagine the grief, darling.”

“Marshall’s?”

“Marshall. Evan. The Grovenors. Theodora.” She shook her head. “Only my father—still a baby—was oblivious to his parents’ death.”

“So Marshall adopted Junior right after the accident?”

“Arthur’s parents didn’t try to stop him. Arthur had several older siblings,
and the Grovenors already had a brood of grandchildren.” Dot fingered her cup without raising it. “My grandfather—technically, of course, he really was my great-grandfather—finally had the Alfredson heir he always wanted.” She sighed heavily. “Though I don’t think even vain old Marshall would have made that trade-off. Those who knew him from before said he never recovered from Olivia’s death.”

“And Evan?”

“I doubt he fared much better,” Dot said. “Of course, McGrath had more than a few preoccupations in the spring of 1897. The Alfredson was still in its infancy, and suffering from all nature of growing pains. And speaking of infants, Evan’s first son, George, was born the very same day Olivia was laid to rest. Otherwise Evan might have been among the more than four hundred people who did show up for her funeral.” She wagged her finger toward the ceiling. “I still have all the clippings upstairs of the newspaper stories and obituaries. Marshall kept every word relating to the tragedy—right down to the invoice from the funeral parlor—in a lovely hand-crafted teak box with her photograph inlaid on the cover.”

“Could I see it?” Lorna asked, trying not to appear too eager.

“Tomorrow, perhaps.” Dot sighed as she patted the armrest beside her. “I’m
absolutely
planted for the evening. It would take several well-placed sticks of dynamite to move me.”

Lorna knew there was no point in arguing. If necessary, she could always find the same articles in the archives of the Seattle library. Instead, she said, “Dot, the Alfredson came into being as a payoff—of sorts—from Marshall to Olivia so she would marry a man she didn’t love.”

Dot tilted her head from side to side. “I suppose.”

“So with Olivia gone, how did Marshall view his ongoing commitment to the hospital?”

“Clearly,
darling
, history tells us that he didn’t just up and walk away from it.”

I guess not, you old bitch!
Lorna thought, but she merely nodded. “Of course.”

Dot took a quick sip of her coffee that Lorna had seen her spike with a healthy shot of whisky. “In many ways, Olivia’s death only solidified Marshall’s connection to the Alfredson.”

“
Solidified?
Why?”

“To begin with, Junior now carried
his
surname,” Dot said. “Suddenly, Marshall could look forward to the prospect of a continued Alfredson lineage in the Pacific Northwest. He saw a new relevance, in terms of posterity, to the family-named hospital.” She ran her hand absently down the back of the copulating ceramic samurai on the table beside her. “Though I believe the real reason Marshall threw himself more fully behind the clinic was because he knew what it had meant to his daughter.”

Lorna nodded. “Olivia sacrificed a lot for that hospital, didn’t she?”

“She sacrificed
everything
for the place, darling.” Dot sighed a slight whistle. “Olivia had no interest in sailing. If not for her foolish husband, she would have never been caught at sea in the middle of a squall. In effect, by striking that bargain with her father—agreeing to marry Arthur Grovenor—Olivia forfeited her life for the Alfredson. My grandfather must have realized it, too.”

Lorna nodded, trying to decide if this information was helpful to her cause. “Did Olivia’s death affect Marshall and Evan’s relationship?”

“Only for the worse, darling.” Dot chortled. “Marshall blamed Evan as much as Arthur for everything that happened to his daughter.”

“Did he try to push Evan out of the Alfredson?”

Dot ran a hand over her shorn white hair. “They continued to butt heads as much as, or perhaps more than, before. Marshall still insisted that the clinic was being run far too much like a charity hospital. ‘Like something the Catholics might operate,’ he would rail in disgust. However, Marshall didn’t try to wrestle control of the hospital away from McGrath—at least not right away. Perhaps out of respect for his daughter’s memory.”

How do you know all this?
Lorna wondered again. For days, she had tried to work out who might have been her great-aunt’s source for the intimate historical detail. Curiosity finally got the better of her. “Dot, the way you recount these stories . . . it’s as though you were there.”

“Darling, I might be an absolute
dinosaur
, but even I am not
that
old.”

Lorna held her palms up. “Then how do you know the specifics so well?”

“To begin with, I read Olivia’s journal.”

Lorna’s heart sped at the prospect. “Olivia kept a journal?”

Dot nodded. “As a child, I used to love exploring this old mansion. One day, I found it hidden under the wood beams in the attic. Of course, we are talking about the
nineteenth
century. Her writing was far more like
self-indulgent teen poetry than a proper diary. But Olivia had a gift for prose. At the time, I wasn’t much younger than Olivia would have been when she wrote it. Once I read about the mysterious doctor she had fallen in love with, I just had to learn more.”

“But how did you?”

Dot’s eyes twinkled again. “I had someone on the inside, you see. Someone who lived through it all.”

“Who?”

“You’re the historian, darling.” Dot winked. “I am sure you can figure it out.”

Lorna’s mind raced through the list of candidates. She imagined her great-aunt would have been too young to have known Evan McGrath well enough to discuss Olivia with him, let alone be privy to his most private thoughts and memories. And even though Marshall had lived through part of Dot’s childhood, Lorna was beyond certain that the fiercely proud man would never have told his granddaughter about the scandal involving his only daughter. Only one possible name popped to mind. “Theodora Douglas.”

Dot clapped her hands together. “Well done, darling.”

“You knew her, then?”

“Very well,” Dot said. “Mother died of cervical cancer when I was only seven. My father, Junior, always wanted to conquer the world and make a name for himself bigger than even Marshall’s. Growing up, I spent as much time with Theodora as anyone. She worked for our family until the day she died, you know. She helped raise three generations of Alfredsons—Olivia, Junior, and then me. Of course, she was already positively
ancient
when I was a child.” She waved her hand around the room. “Despite her age, Marshall, and then later Junior, always found some small role for her. To be honest, I think the men were too terrified of her to ever try to get rid of her.”

Lorna reached for her cup and took a sip. The coffee was cold, but she had no intention of interrupting Dot to get it heated up. “Still, it seems odd to me that in the twenties, a maid would share such . . . explicit details . . . with her employer’s daughter.”

“Not the twenties, darling,” Dot said. “The thirties. I was already a teenager, and pestered Theodora relentlessly for the details. Eventually, I
wore the old relic down.” Dot glanced sidelong at Lorna. “Much in the same way you’ve done to me, darling.”

Lorna laughed uncomfortably, again sensing insight in Dot’s catty remark. She shifted in her seat. “Dot, you were meant to tell this story.”

Her great-aunt smiled enigmatically before continuing. “Old as she was—in her nineties at the time—Theodora’s memory was ironclad.”

Lorna put her cup down. “Okay, but how about Evan McGrath? How did Theodora know so much about his side of the story?”

Dot flashed another sly grin. “Theodora might have worked for us
forever
, but she did have a life outside the Alfredsons, you know.”

Lorna suddenly made the connection. “Moses Brown!”

“Though they lived apart—Theodora continuing to work for the Alfred-sons in Seattle, and Moses for Evan in Oakdale—they stayed together until Moses died in 1918.”

Lorna nodded. It all made sense. “And Moses had been Evan’s confidant throughout his affair with Olivia.”