Malpractice in Maggody (30 page)

“Put that down, you infidel!” he thundered.

“Would you druther I borrowed it from you? I’ll take real good care of it, unless’n my blue tick hounds get ahold of it.”

Dr. Dibbins began to wheeze. “Just put down the CD and step away.”

I dangled it in front of him. “I will—as soon as we’ve had a little chat. Otherwise, you can kiss your tutti-frutti CD good-bye.” I hung on to it as I sat down on the easy chair. “So, do you speak Spanish?”

“Of course not. It is the language of dusty peons and petty dictators in ill-fitting uniforms adorned with medals stolen from corpses. I speak adequate French and exquisite Italian. Does that satisfy your curiosity? Would you like my shoe size or preference in toothpaste? No, wait, you want the name and address of my editor. All small minds aspire to write great novels. Luckily, very few of them can type. Are you a thwarted Anaïs Nin or Maya Angelou? Gertrude Stein? Or better yet, Mary Shelley?”

“Don’t push your luck,” I said. “I can make it all the way to my car before you can make it to your feet, Dr. Dibbins, and I’ll be taking this”—I flapped the CD at him—“when I go. Will you swear on Wolfgang here that you don’t speak Spanish?”

“I do not speak Spanish. However, it is very similar to Italian, so I do understand it to a limited extent. When the maids and orderlies jabber in the hall or come in here to clean, I can decipher the gist of their conversation. They are not happy campers. The pay is much better than they could ever make in their village, but they resent their shabby living quarters and erratic schedules. Any other questions?”

“Do you wander around at night?”

His lips puckered as he stared at me for a long moment. “Miss Foss was kind enough to bring me a box of cigars after I’d offered her a not insignificant amount of money. Since that blood-sucking harridan would notice even a lingering vestige of smoke and demand I submit to a full-body search, I go out to the garden after everyone’s tucked in bed for the night. There is a bench in the farthest corner, away from the exterior lights.”

“Isn’t there a guard with a dog?” I asked. Brenda had told me that only two orderlies were on duty that night, and since her information came from her clipboard, it was more reliable than the June flashfloods and August droughts.

“Only for the first few nights. It seems the dog is prone to bark loudly at anything that dares to twitch. I complained, as did the others. Now Rodolfo, who sits at the desk all night, takes the dog from the kennel once every two hours and they walk around the building. The dog is then locked up until the next foray. Rodolfo lacks the initiative to vary the routine. If I were inclined, I could set my watch by him.”

“Were you in the garden Thursday night?”

“Yes, but I was delayed by activity in the hall. I do not wish my nocturnal meanderings to become topics of speculation and gossip. It is not easy for a person of my circumference to be inconspicuous. I prefer to be dismissed as reclusive, but in a charmingly eccentric manner, naturally.”

I doubted any of the others would describe him as charmingly anything. “Describe this activity, please,” I said.

“Oh, just a bit of bother, as far as I could hear. Libidinous chitchat between Molly and Toby before they retreated to his room for what one suspects was a logical progression into carnal intimacy. Dawn came out into the hall, as did Alexandra. If I may digress briefly, I am concerned about Alexandra’s state of mind. As the week progressed, she seemed increasingly irrational during our conversations, and hinted darkly of some sort of catastrophe. She really should not be out on her own.”

“Did you overhear the maids talking about her departure?”

“Heavens, no. I watched her slip out the gate this morning. It reminded me of that movie with Steve McQueen riding a motorcycle into a barbed-wire fence while pursued by Nazis. One could hardly help rooting for her to escape.”

“Even though you thought that she was irrational?” I asked. “Weren’t you a tad worried about her?”

Dibbins gave me a contemptuous look. “Why in god’s name would I care about anyone but myself? Here I am, confined to a claustrophobic cell, deprived of the essentials of a cultivated lifestyle, badgered and bullied incessantly, forced to undergo humiliating procedures. I would have been delighted if Alexandra had returned with an assault weapon and assassinated the sorry excuse for a chef, the butcher of Hollywood, the Freudian slip, and the Mistress of Evil.”

“I assume you’re kidding.”

“Assume whatever pleases you. Are we finished now?”

“No, Dr. Dibbins, we are not,” I said. “Let’s go back to Thursday evening. You said you heard Dawn and Alexandra in the hall. Could you hear what was said?”

“Dawn told Alexandra what was going on in Toby’s suite. Alexandra, who does not approve of premarital sex or quite possibly any sex at all, was outraged. She hissed for a long while, then went back into her suite. I was about to make my move when Molly came out into the hall, obliging me to again wait. I was most irate by this time. Eventually she went into Dawn’s suite, again sabotaging my intentions. After that, there was a period in which doors were opened and closed, and I heard footsteps. The door at the end of the hall became very popular. After fifteen minutes of relative placidity, I myself took the opportunity to exit through the same door. And before you interrupt with another inane question, I saw no one. I stayed next to the fence until I reached my sanctuary, and remained there for half an hour. After that, I returned here, put in my earplugs, and went to bed.”

What he’d described pretty well matched Dawn’s version of the events, although she’d failed to mention Alexandra’s inclusion in the scenario. I put the CD on the coffee table in front of him, nodded, and left before he could return to his dying divas, all of whom were considerate enough to do so in front of an audience.

I needed a libretto.

I
wanted to call Harve and hash all this over with him. Instead of driving back to the PD or ousting Rodolfo from his post in the reception room, I went down the sidewalk to Randall’s office. The door was locked, but I used the master key to let myself inside. The blinds were closed, and the room was dim. I continued into the apartment.

The deputies had disturbed very little, but they hadn’t been looking for anything in particular, since Randall’s death had been attributed to suicide. The bed was made, the cushions on the sofa aligned. A desk, much smaller than the one in the office, was set under a window. On it rested a computer, a printer, and a short stack of medical tomes. The single drawer contained only the expected collection of paper clips, pens, pencils, and unused notepads. A wastebasket nearby was empty.

I moved on to the kitchenette, which could be hidden by louvered doors. In the cabinet I found a few plates, cups, glasses, a box of crackers, and a jar filled with tea bags. The pint-sized refrigerator was no better stocked; it held a plastic bag of mushy grapes, a lemon, a container of yogurt, and a carton of grapefruit juice. Randall must have been at the mercy of Brenda’s menus and the chef’s incompetence.

Brenda had given Randall six bottles of gin on Sunday. On Friday night, he’d been down to his last one. He’d needed it in the aftermath of Molly’s brutal murder. Maybe that had been the final impetus to compel him to commit suicide. Brenda had mentioned more than once that he’d been depressed and under stress from his divorce and financial crisis. He’d told me that someone had searched through his private papers. Although it didn’t seem probable, he might have had a secret as unsavory as Brenda’s. Could he have anticipated being blackmailed? But if that were the case, then why would he have mentioned it to me?

I was suddenly overwhelmed by exhaustion. Yawning, I sat down on the sofa and rested my head against the back cushion. Granted, I hadn’t gotten much sleep the previous night, but I’d never faded like this before—especially in the middle of a murder investigation. And a suicide investigation. And a missing person investigation.

When I opened my eyes, sunlight was still filtering through the blinds. I looked at my watch. My nap had lasted only thirty minutes, which meant I still had time to catch Harve in his office. I went into Randall’s office and sat down behind the desk.

I was surprised when Harve answered with a surly, “Yeah?”

“You demote yourself to dispatcher?”

“That damned woman, whatever her name is, has a hide no thicker than onion skin. She’s bawling in the bathroom. As much as I hate to say this, LaBelle’s a sight easier to work with. So what’s going on? You found that loony senator?”

I sighed. “No, she’s still on the loose in Maggody. Somebody will spot her before too long, and I’ll go collect her with a butterfly net. Have you made any progress with the suicide note?”

“Unlike those dumbass shows on TV, we don’t have a handwriting expert on hand, any more than we have a lab with microscopes and tests tubes and all that crap. I sent the note to McBeen over at the hospital and asked him to show it to some of the doctors. He called back, said the best they could tell, it was really bad poetry, comparing her to a rosebud on a spring morning. McBeen said if he’d written it himself, he would have committed suicide to save himself from humiliation.”

“McBeen’s such a kindhearted guy.”

“Yeah, and by the way, Zumi took a heavy dose of some barbiturate. McBeen estimated in the range of two hundred milligrams. Taken with alcohol and on an empty stomach, it was more than enough to kill a scrawny fellow like Zumi. He was a doctor, so he’d have known what he was doing.”

“What about fingerprints on the bottle and glass?”

“Only his on the bottle. They were on the glass as well, along with a couple that belonged to the maid who cleaned his quarters every evening. She must have washed the glass earlier and put it away. You need to stop stewin’ about it, Arly, and find out if Zumi was in the garden with the girl.”

“I suppose so,” I muttered. I brought him up to date on what I’d learned, gave him a minute to chew on it, then added, “So Toby and Dibbins have admitted they were outside the building, and according to one of the orderlies, so was Walter. I wouldn’t begin to guess what Alexandra Swayze was doing. For all I know, she might have been crawling around the air ducts in the ceiling, trying to overhear Stonebridge and Brenda discussing when best to implant the chip. Both of them could have gone outside, too.”

“You’re leaving out Dawn Dartmouth,” Harve said. “Sounds like she might have gotten lonely in there by herself.”

“I’ll ask her. Did you ever see her in the sitcom?”

“I don’t go in for that kind of syrupy nonsense, but—” He stopped abruptly, as if he’d had some great revelation. To my regret, he said, “That damned woman has gone and gotten herself locked in the bathroom. She’s pounding on the door and carryin’ on like the toilet backed up and she’s gonna drown. I’d better go see to it. Keep me posted, ya hear.” He banged down the receiver, but not before I heard him yell, “Lordy, woman, you’re gonna set off a riot in the cell block!”

I sat and gazed at a watercolor on the wall next to the front door. It depicted a bending river flanked by trees with autumn leaves, no doubt chosen to soothe a restless patient. It made me want to pee. After I’d availed myself of Randall’s bathroom facilities, I did a quick inventory of the contents of the medicine cabinet. The only incriminating evidence was a tube of hair gel guaranteed to cover gray. I could sympathize, since I’d sprouted a few of them during my divorce.

I returned to Randall’s desk and opened drawers until I found his personal files. One held legal documents and copies of correspondence between his attorney and that of his wife, all in chronological order. At the back of the files were letters from his wife, shrill and acrimonious, describing in venomous detail his failure as a provider, a father, and a husband. I would have burned them.

Another file had legal documents concerning a second mortgage on his house, notes for personal loans adding up to more than a hundred thousand dollars from a Mr. Rajiv Singh (most likely his father-in-law), a statement from an insurance company establishing that he had withdrawn the maximum against his life insurance policy, and a receipt for a Mercedes-Benz he’d sold to a private individual. I would have burned those, too.

At the bottom, I found a file with his college and med school transcripts, evaluations from his internships and residency, a copy of his board certification in psychiatry, and a résumé. He’d worked at a hospital in Virginia for two years, then been in private practice in Little Rock for three years before joining the staff at the state hospital. He’d attended the requisite number of seminars each year to maintain his certification.

It was boring enough to send me back to the sofa for another nap, but I replaced the files, stretched, and stood up. I needed to ask Dawn about the senator, who’d been out in the hall while Molly was in Toby’s suite. Brenda had mentioned earlier that Dawn was in the day room. It was as good as any place to look for her.

I went outside, locked the door behind me, and had taken a couple of steps when Brenda called my name from the French doors.

“Come quickly,” she said, visibly shaking. “I don’t know what to do! I’m not a doctor, or even a nurse. I know I should do something—” she sucked in a deep breath—“but Vincent’s…well, indisposed in his apartment. Hurry, for pity’s sake!”

I caught her arm before she lapsed into hysteria. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Dr. Dibbins! I can’t wake him up! Don’t just stand there and gawk. You have to do something!”

I tried to keep up with her as she dashed through the reception room and turned toward the suites. “Are you sure he isn’t playing possum to alarm you?” I said to her back. “He has a twisted sense of humor.”

“Well, if that’s the case, he’s gone too far.” She turned and went into his suite. “Dr. Dibbins, this had better be some kind of sick joke!”

I looked over her shoulder at the supine figure on the bed. His face was gray; saliva bubbled at the corners of his mouth. He was breathing, but the sound was abrasive, as if his lungs were coated with sandpaper. “You need to call nine-one-one right now,” I said.

Brenda sank down on the end of his bed. “But what about the notoriety, the publicity? Even if we use a false name, someone will recognize him from his photo on the back of his books. Can’t you do something?”

I stared at her for a second, then said, “Okay, I’ll call nine-one-one, but it’ll take them at least half an hour. You need to wake up Dr. Stonebridge.”

“I tried,” she wailed, tears rolling down the furrows in her cheeks. “He’s sound asleep, with a bottle tucked under his arm. I did everything but bounce up and down on his stomach to rouse him. Even if I could get him to his feet, he’s too drunk to help.”

I left her to drip tears on Dibbins’s feet and went to the front desk. The orderly’s eyes were wide with alarm, but there was no way to explain. I called 911, told the dispatcher who I was, described Dibbins’s symptoms, then gave precise directions to the foundation. I pushed the button to open the gate and was poised to go back to Dibbins’s suite when Toby and Dawn came up the hall.

“Is something going on?” demanded Toby. “I heard Brenda shrieking.”

Dawn smirked. “Her only two modes of communication are shrieking and snarling. Well, I guess you could add glowering. She doesn’t need to wear a mask at Halloween to frighten away children.”

“Dr. Dibbins is ill,” I said, unamused. “I’ve called for an ambulance. The two of you need to wait in the day room.”

“What’s the matter with him?” asked Toby.

“It might be a heart attack. Please, just stay out of the way.”

“No way,” said Dawn. “I want to see him in agony after all the rude things he’s said to me since the minute he got here. So I didn’t go to college, or appreciate his stupid operas. That doesn’t make me an idiot.”

“Something does,” Toby said. “Maybe you inherited it from your parents.”

I jumped in before she could come up with a retort. “Enough of this. Toby, you go back to the gym. Dawn, you stay in the day room. If I see either of you again, I’ll have the deputy on duty transport you to the county jail.”

“I am so sick of being treated like a child!” said Dawn.

“Then stop behaving like one. You’re not the star of this show.” I left them bickering and went back to Dibbins’s suite. His condition did not appear to have improved, but he was still alive. Brenda was dabbing his forehead with a wet washcloth and moaning under her breath. I left her to it and looked around the room. On the coffee table was a glass and a wine bottle that had once held perhaps two servings. “Where could this have come from?” I asked Brenda.

She looked back. “I don’t know. Dr. Dibbins is allowed a glass of wine with dinner, but Vincent uses his private stock. I feel like I’ve seen that bottle, though.”

“Could it have come from the stash in his suitcase?”

“Yes, that must be it. There were two or three of them. I asked Vincent if he wanted them, but he said he never drank domestic wine. I put them with the other items in the box. How could Dr. Dibbins have gotten one? Oh, dear, this is very much like what happened to Randall, isn’t it?”

Indeed it was. “Was Dibbins taking any kind of barbiturate for pain or to help him sleep?”

She unconsciously swiped her forehead with the washcloth. “I don’t think so. Randall had him on a metabolic accelerator and a very mild sedative. I didn’t approve, of course. Herbal remedies are safer and more natural. They’re the product of generations of simple folk seeking relief. Even today, many—”

“Right,” I said. “Who wouldn’t prefer to suck a berry than swallow an aspirin?” Before she could respond—and she clearly intended to—I returned to the reception desk and called Harve.

This time a squeaky female voice answered. When I politely asked her to put me through to the sheriff, she did so without any of LaBelle’s typical chattiness. Harve was not pleased with my report.

“What the hell’s going on out there?” he roared. “Jesus H. Christ, is everybody gonna be deader than a doornail before morning? And how am I supposed to keep this away from the reporters? My ass is grass, and it’s all your fault! All you had to do was figure out who strangled that girl. You should have had this wrapped up and tied with a pink bow twenty-four hours ago. Then I’d have gone fishing all day, and be at home by now, grilling steaks and having a cold beer. Just the other day Mrs. Dorfer had the butcher cut T-bones two inches thick. They’re in the refrigerator, begging to be charred.”

“It’s good to know I’ve got your support, Harve. I’m going to send the deputy in with the wine bottle. Have it tested for fingerprints and call me back.” This time I had the pleasure of hanging up on him.

I gestured to the orderly, who was cowering in a corner, to come back and sit down. “Everything is okay,” I said. “It’s okay. Do you understand?”

“O-kay,” he whispered.

Brenda had abandoned her pose as a nurse and was sitting on the chair, her face buried in her hands. Dibbins was still breathing, but his complexion seemed even grayer. I told Brenda to watch out the window for the ambulance, then went into the bathroom and found a dry washcloth. I wrapped the wine bottle in it as carefully as I could, hoping I hadn’t smudged any fingerprints beyond identification. Brenda was still huddled on the chair as I left. The siren would startle her into action.