Sing It to Her Bones (16 page)

Dr. Chase’s first appointment was not until eight o’clock, but already the waiting room had begun to fill up and three people had autographed the sign-in sheet. He asked me to stay near the reception desk unless he called for me, so I busied myself answering the phone and making appointments for equally packed days in the future. When the phone wasn’t ringing off the hook, I filed patient charts away.

By nine I had booked the doctor solid for the next three weeks. Five people sat in the waiting room, and he had patients in both examining rooms. Eventually Dr. Chase took a bathroom break. I used the opportunity to revisit the Dunbar files, pawing meticulously through Katie’s parents’ charts, riffling through each page just to make sure her chart wasn’t misfiled. No luck.

At eleven, two miracles occurred: Emeline Potter didn’t show up for her vitamin B
₁₂
shot, and Scott Waldron broke his arm playing softball. At first I didn’t see the potential of these two seemingly unrelated
events because I was busy hustling the whimpering ten-year-old and his father into an examining room. As I helped the little guy onto the examining table, my heart ached for him. He sat on the end of the table, back rigid, legs dangling, bravely holding his injured arm to his chest and trying desperately not to cry, but the pain must have been terrible. Tears streaked his dirt-stained face, and his lower lip trembled.

I soaked a disposable cloth in warm water, wrung it out, and gently wiped Scott’s cheeks clean while Dr. Chase bent over the boy. He carefully cut the child’s uniform away from his damaged arm and examined the injury. Without looking at me, he said, “Hannah, grab that tray over there, will you, please?” I stood by as the doctor worked, nodding and listening to Scott’s father natter on, wishing I could stuff the roll of gauze from the tray I held down the big windbag’s throat.

“That was some home run, wasn’t it Scotty?” He turned to me. “You should have seen the little bugger! Hit it clean over the fence.” His son, tears still glistening on his pale eyelashes, managed a weak smile.

“How did he break the arm, Mr. Waldron?”

“Sliding into home, Mrs. Ives. Collided with the catcher right over home plate. Damn, the kid’s good!” Scott squirmed in embarrassment.

Mr. Waldron had launched into a play-by-play description of the ninth incredible inning and Scotty’s starring role therein when I thought I heard the phone at the reception desk ring. I looked at Dr. Chase for guidance. “Go ahead, Hannah. We can manage fine here. I’ll need to take a few X rays anyway.” I thrust
the tray into the hands of the startled father in mid two-out-and-two-on-with-Boogie-at-the plate and hurried to answer the telephone.

A pharmaceutical salesman was spending time stuck in traffic by checking in with his customers via cell phone. I thanked him for his thoughtfulness, then stared, unbelieving, at an empty waiting room. I’d already searched the file room and all the cabinets in the reception area for Katie’s chart; perhaps it was time to check out the second floor. Bill had suggested that Dr. Chase used the upstairs for storage. I knew one way to find out.

With a furtive glance over my shoulder, I eased through the swinging doors and into the entrance hall. To my right, a single flight of stairs led straight up to the second floor. Paneled in walnut, it stood in dark contrast with the unrelieved off-white of the first-floor suite. I stood with my hand on the banister, squinting up at a door barely visible in the dim light. I took the carpeted stairs two at a time and tried the door. It was locked.
Damn!
On the off chance that it might work, I pulled the front door key out of my pocket and slipped it into the lock. It fitted easily but wouldn’t turn.
Double damn!

I sat down on the top step to consider my options, feeling a bit like Bluebeard’s last wife. I knew the doctor kept the narcotics in a locked cabinet in his combination kitchen/laboratory, so what could be on the other side of this door that was worth so much protection? I pushed on the door in frustration, then studied the lock.

Back in college I used to be good at picking locks. I’m not as proud of that as I am of my degree in French, but I have to admit that it’s a skill that has come in a lot handier than being able to recite the whole of
Las de l’Amer Repos
. At Oberlin, I’d used hairpins, but hairpins weren’t something I had sitting around in the bottom of my purse these days. I hurried downstairs to my desk and rummaged through its drawers. Maybe I could use paper clips. I pawed through an assortment of items in the pencil tray until I located what I needed. Nora Wishart’s metal nail file would also come in handy. I tucked it into my pocket.

Amazingly, the waiting room was still empty. If people came in while I was upstairs, I knew they’d just sign in, sit and wait, but what would I do about the phones?

Dr. Chase’s phone was one of those old-fashioned beige models with a row of clear plastic buttons across the bottom labeled “01,” “02,” “03,” and “04.” A fifth button was red and labeled “hold.” I picked up the receiver, got a dial tone on line one, and put the dial tone on hold. Then I punched down the remaining buttons and put them on hold, too. Until I returned, anybody calling Dr. Chase’s office would get a busy signal.

Back in the hallway I stopped to listen; Mr. Waldron droned on and on. His voice behind the door of the examining room rose and fell, punctuated by laughter. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what
was so funny, but as long as he kept it up, the coast would be clear.

I hurried up the stairs, bending one paper clip at a ninety-degree angle as I climbed. At the locked door I knelt and inserted the short end of the bent paper clip into the bottom of the lock and held it there while maintaining a steady sideways pressure. With the straightened end of the second paper clip, I jiggled the tumblers inside the lock up and down, gently coaxing them into position. After a few tense minutes I feared I had lost my touch. My mind wandered, plotting a late-night return engagement wearing gloves and dressed in black clothes when the tumblers fell suddenly into place and the lock turned.
Ta-dah!
I fell back against the wall, dizzy with relief. Using Nora’s nail file, I eased the lock all the way around, heard a satisfying click, and slowly opened the door.

Before me a corridor ran the entire length of the house. An uncurtained window at the far end filtered pale light into the hallway. On my right was a large bedroom, dominated by a double bed with cannonball posts centered on a richly colored oriental carpet. A white chenille spread covered the mattress and plump pillows were propped up against the headboard. A hand sink stood in the corner, like a European B&B. What on earth did Dr. Chase need a bedroom up here for? I wandered down the hall to check out the bathroom and poked my nose into the medicine cabinet. If he’d entertained any ladies recently, I observed, they’d taken all their personal effects with them. I stood for
a moment at the bathroom sink and stared at my face in the mirror. Why would he bring female guests here anyway? He was a bachelor, after all, and had his own apartment. Unless—unless it was a relationship he wanted to hide! Maybe the good doctor was in the habit of having extracurricular affairs. I pulled aside the lace curtain at the bathroom window and peered out toward the water. Frank Chase had been in medical school at the time of Katie’s death, I remembered. Could he have been the college guy Chip suspected of souring his relationship with Katie?

From downstairs came a piercing wail. Dr. Chase must have reset the bone. He’d be putting a cast on Scott’s arm any minute now. I crossed the hallway above them on tiptoe, hoping the floors wouldn’t creak and give me away.

The room at the front of the house was uncarpeted, its hardwood floors spotless. A long wooden table ran the length of the far wall, and bookshelves framed both windows. Clean jars with ground glass stoppers were grouped together on the shelves, their labels missing or peeling. I picked one up and examined it closely. If anything had ever been written on the label, it had long ago faded into illegibility. Everything in the room was neatly arranged and impeccably clean, like a museum. I wondered if this had been old Dr. Chase’s laboratory, where he prepared his herbal and homeopathic cures. But whatever it was, there was no place to store even so small a thing as a medical folder in this austere environment.

The back bedroom also promised to be a major
disappointment. Oversize warehouse-style shelves of tubular steel held boxes of paper towels, toilet paper, disinfectant soap, plastic garbage bags, and, as Bill had predicted, paper robes, all purchased in bulk sizes like the kind I brought home from Sam’s Club. Smaller boxes and cartons contained medical supplies. Near the window that overlooked the parking lot, four plastic chairs in the same style as those in the waiting room below were stacked, seat on seat.

I had turned to leave when I thought I’d hit the mother lode. After all those years in Washington, D.C., if there’s one thing I know, it’s archival boxes. And there they were, box after cardboard box of them, labeled “A-B” and “C-D” et glorious cetera, neatly piled in an alcove. I prayed these were the old doctor’s files. Maybe they hadn’t been shredded after all but were just on their way to the shredder. I lifted the lid from the box nearest me. It was empty. So was the box next to it. I pulled the lids of nearly a dozen boxes, but every damn one of them was empty.

My heart sank. Until that moment I’d never really understood that expression. But my heart sank, right down to the floor, and lay there. I chided myself for spinning my wheels on what was turning out to be a wild-goose chase. Yet I had discovered many theoretically inactive folders, like Liz’s, among the files downstairs. Futile or not, I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied until I had searched every last inch of Dr. Chase’s office, and maybe his condominium, too.

As I stood in the alcove, woolgathering, I was startled by the thunk of a car door closing. I rushed to the
window just in time to see Mr. Waldron get into his car. Scott was already installed in the passenger seat, a clean white cast on his arm, cradled in a blue sling.
Holy shit!
I needed to get back downstairs, pronto!

But then I heard the footsteps behind me and knew it was too late.

“Hannah? What are you doing up here?”

I pasted a smile on my face and turned. “I noticed we were low on paper towels, Doctor. I couldn’t find any downstairs, so I thought I’d take a look up here.”

Chase’s eyes were wary slits. “I’m surprised you could get in. I usually keep the door locked.”

I shrugged. “I just turned the knob.” That wasn’t a lie, not exactly.

I crossed the room to a shelf and selected a four-pack of toilet paper and several rolls of paper towels. “Here, could you help me?” I handed a roll of towels to the doctor. He opened his mouth as if to object but apparently changed his mind. His lips clamped shut, and he sucked them in between his teeth, giving him an odd, lipless look. I prayed he didn’t suspect me of snooping. My spur-of-the-moment explanation had been brilliantly plausible, after all, but I noticed as I preceded him down the steps that he locked the door securely behind him.

As we reached the entrance hall, an elderly woman was just hobbling up the walk, saving me the trouble of making idle conversation with the doctor when my mind was racing off in all directions. Dr. Chase greeted the woman like a long-lost relative, then escorted her back to his private office.

I put the spare toilet paper in the bathroom, then dumped the paper towels on the counter in the kitchen, where I stood for a few moments at the sink and tried to control my shaking hands. I splashed some cold water on my face, dried it with a paper towel from a roll that was, I noticed, nearly new, then hurried to take the telephone lines off hold. But before I went back to work, I returned to the kitchen and spun yards of paper towel off the roll and stuffed them in the bottom of the wastepaper can, underneath the soiled paper robes.

Two patients arrived at noon, but by one o’clock there was a brief hiatus, and Dr. Chase suggested he could handle things on his own while I picked up sandwiches. I called Ellie’s Country Store and ordered a chicken salad for me and a tuna on rye for the doctor.

After my narrow escape I welcomed the lunch break and took my time getting to Ellie’s by walking around the block the long way, turning left down Princess Anne and left again at the old library. I strolled along Ferry Point Road and paused at the old pier across from the Tidewater Pub. I watched the khaki-colored water of the Truxton gently lick the pilings and tried to think of a way to get Dr. Chase out of his private office long enough to search it, too. So far, he’d kept me so busy I’d hardly had time to go to the bathroom, let alone give the place a thorough going-over. That business this morning was just a fluke; I couldn’t count on another broken arm materializing
out of the blue. Didn’t the man have rounds to make at the local hospital? Medical meetings to attend? By the time I reached Ellie’s store, I was wishing emergency appendectomies on total strangers and pining for the good old days when doctors made house calls.

Angie already had the order made up and ready for me at the counter. “I put in two iced teas. Hope you don’t mind. That’s what the doctor always orders.” She looked cheerful and well rested and smiled at me in a conspiratorial way because, I supposed, we shared a secret. She must have read my mind. “You won’t tell anybody about Katie’s baby, will you, Hannah?” she whispered.

“No,” I promised again. “No one will find out about it from me.”

“I went to see Lieutenant Rutherford, just like you told me to.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Angie.”

“He was really nice. Brought me a Coke. Thanked me for coming in.”

“He’s only interested in the truth.” I added two Milky Way Darks to the bag feeling just a wee bit guilty about it, paying for it all, including my sweet tooth, out of money the doctor had given me from the petty cash.

“Did Lieutenant Rutherford say anything to you about reopening the case?”