Malpractice in Maggody (22 page)

There were four doors on each side, some closed, some ajar. I crisscrossed the hall, checking each room. Most of the spartan furniture had been removed, but a few cast-iron bed frames and chairs were draped with tarps. Fixtures had been pulled from the small bathrooms, exposing rusty pipes and moldy plaster. Bluish-gray mildew was the predominate color scheme. I found nothing of interest until I reached the last room on the left. I’d been hoping for Senator Alexandra Swayze, hunched over and making guttural noises as she stared blindly at her toes, but my discovery was less rewarding. A few chairs had been salvaged and were arranged around a crude table made of a piece of wallboard, with paint cans serving as a base. On the table were half-eaten packages of crackers, dates, and figs; boxes of pricey chocolates and cookies; and empty tins of smoked oysters and caviar. Cigarettes and cigars had been stubbed out on a paint can lid. The magazines had Spanish words and depictions of dusky women in bikinis on the covers. I picked up one and flipped through it, noting with a grimace that the activities portrayed were not of windsurfing and beach volleyball.

At one end of the table was a collection of more than a dozen little liquor bottles, identical in size to the one that had been found on Randall’s desk, along with a couple of undersized wine bottles. I couldn’t imagine where the employees had gotten them, unless Stonebridge had flown his recruits to the Farberville airport. Bus tickets seemed more in keeping with his regard for their well-being and comfort—unless he’d had them smuggled into the country in the trunk of his limo.

I left the bottles where they were and went back into the corridor. As I headed for the reception room, I tried to conceive of a scenario in which one or more of the orderlies or maids had doped a bottle and left it in Randall’s apartment. It was not to their advantage to sabotage the Stonebridge Foundation and lose their jobs. Unlike Brenda, Randall did not strike me as the sort to bully and harangue them. From what I’d seen in the surgical suite, none of them could have taken drugs from the cabinet. And I wasn’t about to get any of them fired for eating gourmet treats and nipping at the little bottles. If I’d had to deal with the celebrity patients all day, I would have done the same thing, although with a gallon of cheap wine.

The orderly looked panicky as I emerged from the dusty tunnel and paused to brush dust off my shirt.
“¿Es todo aceptable, señorita?”
he asked, his voice quavering.

No doubt visions of deportation were flashing before his eyes. I nodded and said, “Everything’s okay, thank you.” I continued across the room in the direction of the suites. Here the hallway was bright, well-lit, and squeaky clean. I tapped on Dr. Dibbins’s door, then eased it open.

He was standing in front the window, gazing at the driveway and the gate. Without turning, he said, “To what do I owe this honor, my lovely handmaiden of law and order? Are you here to read me my rights and haul me to your local jail? Does it have a cash bar, along with the iron ones? Or better yet, a piano bar?”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“Merely a process of elimination.” Dibbins sat down on the sofa and gestured at the easy chair. Once I was seated, he continued with the pomposity of a professor at a lectern. “Shortly after ten o’clock this morning, Dr. Zumi left the premises in a body bag, and Dr. Stonebridge is in too much of a dither to come by for a visit. The boorish Brenda Skiller barges into the room without considering the possibility she might catch me in a moment of indiscretion. No, I retract that. She dearly hopes to catch me in such a moment, but I rarely comply. Walter’s sandals flap when he walks. Whenever Dawn drops by, she doesn’t hesitate to launch into a litany of her woes, as if she alone is subjected to injections of vitamins and a few green morsels for meals. She is very disturbed. If I were a compassionate man, which I am not, I might feel an occasional pang of sympathy for her.”

“And your other fellow inmates?”

“Toby Mann has never knocked on a door in his life. Although I do not believe in the paranormal, the boy’s ego seems to suck in all the oxygen wherever he goes. I find myself gasping whenever I’m in proximity to him. Furthermore, he continually curses under his breath.” He arched his eyebrows and smirked unpleasantly. “Senator Swayze is no longer here, but I believe you already know that.”

“Just how the hell do you know about Randall Zumi and the senator?” I demanded, exasperated. “Where are you getting the information? Why do you think I’m a cop, for that matter?”

“We’ve already had this conversation, if my memory serves me. It certainly should; I’ve been sober for eight days, which is an impressive feat in itself. When I had gallbladder surgery two years ago, I was sipping brandy in the recovery room.” His lips puckered as he regarded me, clearly enjoying himself. He allowed me to fume for a minute, then said, “It’s amazing what one can learn by judiciously analyzing human behavior. My diet books were not written without careful consideration. I observed the hostesses in West Palm Beach as they nibbled lettuce for lunch. Their bright smiles were forced and their eyes despairing with each measured dollop of fat-free dressing. I knew they were dreaming of lasagna and creamy risotto, of flaky croissants and pastries. I simply forbade them to eat the foods they’d grown to despise and gave them license to indulge in what they craved.”

“Even at the risk of their health?”

“I feel their pain each time my broker parks in front of my seaside mansion to discuss mutual funds. I really do.”

“And what means of judicious analysis led to your conclusion that I’m a cop?”

Dibbins chuckled. “You drove up the driveway this morning in a cop car. As for my other sources, I stand by my position of yesterday. If you make it worth my while, I’ll reciprocate. Until then, you really should run along and pester someone else. I’m planning to listen to Antonio Salieri’s
Europa Riconosciuta,
which I’m sure you know was performed at La Scala’s opening night in 1778. You’re welcome to join me, but I regret to say that champagne will not be served during intermission.”

I was too pissed to be dismissed. “I’m surprised you didn’t bring a three-month supply of forbidden fruit.”

“Let me assure you that I did, and I was not alone. Brenda not only had a maid unpack my things, but she personally inspected each potential hiding place and confiscated the contraband. Our little Hollywood princess was livid, since she’d brought an expensive cache of cocaine. Alexandra hid her prescription pills in the toes of her shoes with wadded tissues to keep them in place. I’m not sure about Toby, but he’s so profoundly stupid that he probably just tossed his drugs in the bottom of his bag. I shudder at the thought that he was accepted at any college. His SAT scores must have rivaled his IQ.”

“He makes a lot more money than you do,” I pointed out.

“Yes, I must admit he does, but only so long as he doesn’t sustain an injury that ends his career. And even if he avoids injuries, he’ll reach mandatory retirement within a decade. I invest prudently and diversify my portfolio with long-term, reliable investments. He has a reputation for spending his money in a reckless and carefree manner. By age thirty-five, if he’s lucky to survive that long, he’ll end up peddling time shares to retired couples from Iowa and Nebraska.”

I vowed to diversify my portfolio as soon as I had one. At the moment, I had a few hundred dollars in a savings account and no foreseeable windfalls. I’d been so frantic to get the divorce over with that I’d literally packed my bags and walked away. Well, taken a cab to the airport, anyway.

“Listen, Dr. Dibbins,” I began, making no effort to disguise my dislike of him, “this is not some little stage play performed for your enjoyment. Molly Foss was murdered two nights ago. I am not going to bribe you with chocolate. What I will do is have you transported to the county jail as a material witness. You will not be detained in a suite with a private bathroom and a CD player. The mattresses are an inch thick and reek of urine and vomit. You’ll be fingerprinted and booked, and your mug shots won’t be airbrushed. The media will pick up on it, so you’ll be getting some unwanted publicity. The good news is that there are vending machines in the break room. How badly do you want a candy bar?”

His face turned red and he began to wheeze. “I shall sue you for false imprisonment.”

“And you’ll most likely win.”

“Get out of my sight, you contemptible fascist! I must consider my options. You may return later if you wish, but do not allow yourself to be too confident that I’ll meekly acquiesce because of these threats. You are not dealing with some illiterate redneck whose knowledge of the law is limited to DWIs and brawls.”

“I’ll be back,” I said grimly, then returned to the hallway. Dibbins was worse than a meth addict going through cold-turkey withdrawal in a corner of his cell. The medications he was receiving seemed to prevent any overt physical symptoms, but I’d never encountered anyone quite so desperate for a sugar fix. If Molly had tucked a roll of hard candies in her purse, I could easily imagine Dibbins stalking her in the garden, his mouth salivating with anticipation.

Shuddering, I put aside the idea, at least for the moment. I went into the suite with a card on the door that read “Mrs. S.” The sitting area and bedroom were immaculate. A biography of John Adams was on the table next to the bed, along with a pair of reading glasses and a box of tissues. The towels in the bathroom were dry, which meant she had not come back to her suite for a shower—unless a maid had already replaced them. Unfortunately, that minor question could not be resolved until the translator arrived. I opened all the drawers in the dresser and looked through the few clothes in the closet. Nothing caught my attention until I opened the bedside table drawer and found a spiral notebook.

I sat on the edge of the bed and opened it. The first entry had been written on the day of her arrival at the Stonebridge Foundation. It had an undertone of bitterness, but a certain air of resignation. The next few entries described her sessions with the various doctors, her aversion to the food, her sense of isolation without access to a newspaper or cable news channels. She maintained in each entry that she was not addicted to the prescription pills and could stop whenever she chose. However, with each day, the entries seemed more disjointed and fragmented. She railed against Randall for his sly attempts to trick her into an admission of weakness. She loathed Brenda for installing hidden cameras in her suite. Molly was a spy for the ACLU. The employees were Marxists. The chef was poisoning her food. Dr. Stonebridge was determined to subject her to shock treatments. The last entry, written the previous night, was chilling:

“Oh dear,” I murmured to myself. I’d been telling myself Senator Swayze was currently attempting to buy a copy of the
Washington Post
at the supermarket. Idalupino would have a hard time trying to explain why they didn’t sell such highfalutin newspapers and suggesting she might prefer the current edition of
TV Guide.

Now it seemed I had a full-blown case of paranoia on the loose in a town that was ankle deep in illegal handguns. The ramblings in Senator Swayze’s notebook made her seem more disturbed than the beady-eyed survivalists who live in remote compounds in the mountains. I replaced the notebook and went out to the hallway, unsure what to do. If I called Harve and clued him in, he might be able to send out a deputy with a dog to try to pick up her scent. I didn’t know enough about abnormal psychology to predict her behavior. If her delusions came and went, she could be sitting on a gravel bar alongside Boone Creek, dangling her bare feet in the water. But if with each day that she failed to take the meds that Randall had prescribed, her paranoia deepened, she could be taking hostages by now. The entire membership of the Missionary Society could be in the back room of the Assembly Hall, bound with duct tape.