Midnight Voices (13 page)

Every chair and sofa in the lobby seemed to be occupied, and half-a-dozen or so more people were standing. At first Caroline recognized no one, but then she spotted Irene Delamond. Next to Irene was her sister Lavinia, seated in a wheelchair, with a shawl wrapped around her stooped shoulders.

There were two other people in wheelchairs, and as Caroline stepped out of the elevator cage, one of them haltingly propelled himself forward. The man in the chair looked as if he must be in his nineties, and as he rolled to a stop in front of Ryan he spoke in a voice that trembled almost as badly as the hand he held out to the boy, a candy bar clutched in his twisted and swollen fingers. “So here you are! And just as sturdy as Irene said you were, too!” His rheumy eyes, sunk deep in their sockets, fixed on Ryan. “You like chocolate, boy?”

Ryan shrank away from the strange apparition.

“For heaven’s sake, George, you’re frightening him,” Irene Delamond said, quickly moving forward and inserting herself between the old man and the boy. She clucked disapprovingly as she surveyed the collection of people in the lobby, then smiled ruefully at Caroline. “I told them all to just stay at home and leave you alone, but in this building, you can’t tell anyone anything.”

Caroline, still not sure what was happening, glanced uncertainly at the group of people who were now all moving closer, smiling, and reaching out with their hands.

“They just want to meet you and the children, that’s all,” Irene said.

“If we left it up to Irene, she wouldn’t have let us meet you at all,” an old woman clad in several layers of woolens interjected. “Just because she met you first, she thinks she owns you.”

“Owns us?” Caroline repeated. What was the woman talking about? What on earth was happening?

“Now just calm down, Tildie,” Irene retorted. “No one owns anyone.” She turned back to Caroline. “It’s just that they’ve all been worried about Anthony, and ever since they heard he’d gotten married again, it’s all they’ve been able to talk about.” She shook her head. “So many of them can hardly get out any more, and to have more young people in the building—well, you can’t really blame them, can you?” One by one, Irene began introducing her neighbors to Caroline, Laurie, and Ryan, and every one of them seemed to have brought some kind of treat for the children.

Treats, Caroline noted unhappily, that would not only make them sick to their stomachs if they consumed them all, but rot their teeth on the way through their mouths. “It will only happen this once, I promise,” a tall man with piercing blue eyes and thick gray hair said. “I’m a doctor, so I know these things.”

“Dr. Humphries,” Irene Delamond supplied. “I don’t know what we’d do without him.”

“You’d all get by just fine,” the doctor replied, then turned his attention back to Caroline. “Children are resilient,” he said. “Far more so than the rest of us. So let them enjoy their candy.” His gaze shifted from Caroline to Laurie and Ryan. “Strong, healthy children, both of them. They’ll be good for us all—we get old, we need some new energy around us, you know what I mean?” His hand dropped to Ryan’s upper arm, squeezing it not quite hard enough to make the boy wince. “Good strong muscles—a boy who doesn’t spend all his time in front of the TV.” He gave Caroline a slight bow. “I approve. And now I shall leave you to the mercies of our neighbors.”

Besides the doctor, Tildie Parnova, and George Burton, there was Helena Kensington, who was carrying a white cane, wore dark glasses, and asked if she could touch the children’s faces.

“You’ll frighten them, Helena,” Irene told her. “I can tell you what they look like.”

Laurie glanced nervously toward her mother, uncertain what to do, but when she saw Ryan edging around to put their mother between himself and the blind woman, she made up her mind. “It’s all right,” she said, trying not to let her voice reveal how frightened she was. She reached out and took Helena’s wrinkled hand in her own, then placed it on her face. She struggled to keep from shuddering as the old woman’s fingers began to trace the contour of her lower jaw.

“Such a pretty girl,” Helena said. “Good, strong bones.” Her fingers moved higher, and Laurie felt her skin crawl as the old woman touched her hair, then moved on to her forehead, and eyebrows. Finally Helena’s thumb and forefinger closed on the flesh of Laurie’s cheek. “So young,” she said, sighing. “Such nice firm—”

“Helena!” Irene Delamond’s voice was so sharp that Laurie jumped, and Helena Kensington’s hand dropped away from her face. But a moment later the old woman began groping the air around her once again.

“Where is the boy?” she asked, her voice almost plaintive now. “Can’t I see the boy, too?” Ryan shrank back, pressing close to his mother. “Is he like the girl?” Helena went on, still searching for Ryan with her hand. Failing to find him, she finally let her hand fall back to her side. “What a lovely daughter you have. You must be very proud.”

“I am,” Caroline agreed, slipping a protective arm around Ryan, who was now clinging to her. As Irene kept introducing people Laurie, too, edged closer and closer to her mother, and suddenly claustrophobia began to close over Caroline. With the children and neighbors pressing in on her and the air in the lobby growing heavier and heavier with the strong scent of the heavy cologne so many of the old people seemed to favor, she began to feel as if she could hardly breathe, and when at last they escaped from the lobby—leaving everything the neighbors had given the children with Rodney—Caroline found herself sucking deep breaths of fresh air into her lungs.

“Well!” she said as the closed-in feeling finally lifted. “I certainly wasn’t expecting that. Apparently you two are the most exciting thing that’s come along in years!”

“They’re weird,” Ryan pronounced. “What did they want?”

“They didn’t want anything—they just wanted to meet you.”

“They all kept poking at me,” Ryan grumbled, shuddering at the memory of the fingers that had pinched his arm and prodded his ribs.

“They’re just old and lonely,” Caroline told him. “Some people get that way.”

But as his mother started down the street, Ryan suddenly looked back at the building they had just left. The great front doors were ajar, and he could see Dr. Humphries looking out.

Looking at
him
.

As the doors slowly shut and Dr. Humphries disappeared, Ryan felt a chill run through him.

CHAPTER 15

“Nate?”

Nathan Rosenberg looked up to see Andrea Costanza at the door to his cubicle, which wasn’t surprising considering he had been doing his best to tune out the drumming of her fingers that had been beating steadily on her desk for the last hour. Three times he’d resisted the temptation to peer over the divider and ask her what was wrong, but all three times he’d decided that if she wanted his advice, she could come around and ask for it directly. Now that she was here, he grinned at her, and drummed his own fingers loudly on his desk top. “I’ve been expecting you.”

“Sometimes I think I really hate you,” Andrea replied, though there was nothing in her tone that would lend much credence to her words. “So tell me more about these osteopaths and homeopaths you’re so hot for.”

Nate’s drumming faded away. “The Mayhew girl again?”

Andrea nodded. “I dropped in on my friend who lives at The Rockwell yesterday, and Rebecca came down with the Albions. She looks like she’s lost more weight, and her skin is so thin and pale I thought I could see right through it.”

“But obviously she was out of bed. Doesn’t that mean she’s getting better?”

“All it means to me is that her doctor isn’t doing much for her,” Andrea countered. “And I can’t find him.”

Rosenberg frowned. “What do you mean, you can’t find him?”

“All I can find is his address at The Rockwell.”

“So you found him. What’s the big deal?”

“I mean I can’t find his office.”

“Why does he have to have an office?”

Andrea gave him a look that clearly said she thought he was being deliberately obtuse. “It’s where doctors see patients. Or are you living in some parallel universe where everything is different?”

Nate Rosenberg leaned back in his chair, propped his feet up on his desk, and clasped his hands behind his neck. “Let me tell you about my old family doctor out on Long Island. She’s almost ninety, and wants to retire, but her patients won’t let her. She quit her office forty years ago, and has worked out of her house ever since. She doesn’t have a nurse, doesn’t have an assistant, doesn’t have anything. But the patients pour in, because she’s a genius at healing. So before you jump to any conclusions about—what’s his name again?”

“Humphries. Theodore Humphries.”

“Right. Well, before you decide there’s something wrong, why don’t you go see him?” Dropping his feet back to the floor, he turned to his computer, tapped rapidly at the keyboard, then picked up the phone, dialed, and handed the receiver to Andrea.

Before she could even think about it, a deep voice answered the phone at the other end. “This is Dr. Humphries. How may I help you?”

There is something wrong,
Andrea told herself late that afternoon as she pulled open the heavy outer door of The Rockwell and stepped into the vestibule.
Nobody gets an appointment with any doctor on the same day. Especially not on a Friday. And no doctor answers his own phone.
A moment later the concierge—or doorman, or whatever he was—opened the glass inner door and let her into the lobby. For a moment Andrea felt slightly disconcerted; something had changed, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was. She glanced around, but nothing seemed different. And yet— Then it came to her. The lights seemed to have been turned up, making the whole lobby seem slightly more cheerful. But when the concierge spoke, it was in the same hushed, almost funereal whisper he always used. “Dr. Humphries is expecting you. Fifth floor, around to the left and all the way back.”

Fifth floor. The same floor Caroline was living on now. The elevator ground slowly up, finally clanking to a halt, and Andrea opened the door and stepped out onto the landing. She turned left, and walked around the great stairwell that wound around the elevator shaft. In the back corner diagonally across the building from Caroline and Tony Fleming’s apartment, she found what she was looking for: a mahogany door, ornately paneled, with a discreet brass plaque whose green patina almost obscured the engraving: theodore humphries, d.o.

A brass button, only slightly less tarnished than the plaque on the door, was set into the wall, but as Andrea reached for it, she suddenly hesitated.

Maybe she should just go around the stairs, ring Caroline’s bell, and forget all about this.
Stupid,
she told herself as soon as the thought formed.
You’re here to do a job, so just go ahead and do it.
Still she hesitated.

Why?

Then she knew. It was the silence. There were no voices around her, no doors opening or closing, no movement in the halls. Even the elevator was silent.

She found herself shivering as the silence gathered around her like a shroud of fog.
Stupid,
she told herself again.
You’re just used to noisy buildings jammed with kids where you can hardly hear yourself think.
But had it been like this when she came to visit Rebecca at the Albions? She tried to think, tried to remember.

What did it matter anyway? So the building was quiet? So what? Reaching out, she stabbed at the button, then forced herself to stand perfectly still, facing the door, not looking over her shoulder, not giving in to the sudden urge she felt to dash down the stairs before Dr. Humphries could answer his door.

And then the door opened, and she was facing the man she’d seen once before, going into the Albions’ apartment upstairs.

And he, apparently, recognized her as well, for he opened the door wide, stepped back, and waved her in with a smile. “Now I remember,” he said, his resonant voice filling the spacious entry hall to his apartment. “You’re the woman from the city who checks on Rebecca! I thought I recognized the name when you called.” Suddenly his smile faded slightly, his expression clouding with worry. “This isn’t about Rebecca, I hope?” Before she answered, Andrea glanced around. The apartment seemed very much like the Albions’: a collection of large rooms opening off the entry hall, the doors to most of which were closed. Dr. Humphries, seeing her scanning the doors, moved to the one nearest the front door and pulled it open. “My office and treatment room,” he explained, ushering her into a room that looked far more like an elegant study than a doctor’s office. Bookshelves lined the walls, Tiffany lamps stood on tables at either end of a large Chesterfield sofa that faced a fireplace and was flanked by a pair of wing chairs upholstered in the same deep red leather as the sofa. At the other end of the room was a large desk, with comfortable-looking chairs on both sides of it. “So, is it you I’m seeing, or are you seeing me about Rebecca?”

“It’s Rebecca,” Andrea replied. “I saw her yesterday, and I’m worried.”

“But she’s much better,” Humphries said, waving her into the chair in front of the desk as he settled himself into the one behind it. “Unless something’s happened since I saw her last week.”

“She just seems . . .” Andrea’s voice trailed off as she searched for the right word. “I don’t know—she just seems sickly, I guess.”

Humphries’ lips curved into a thin smile. “Well, I’m glad to see you noticed.”

“Can you tell me what’s wrong with her?”

“I can, of course,” Humphries agreed. “But I don’t think that I shall. My patients’ records are confidential.”

“But you’re not an M.D.”

Humphries’ smile faded, and his voice turned cold. “Is that what this is about? My credentials?”

“Rebecca Mayhew is my responsibility,” Andrea replied, not quite answering his question.

“As she is mine.” Humphries stood up. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Suddenly Andrea felt a surge of anger. Who did Humphries think he was? Just because he obviously had a lot of money certainly didn’t give him the right to interfere with her doing her job. “If I have to, I can subpoena her medical records,” she said, not getting up. “Don’t you think it would be easier just to tell me what’s wrong with her?”

Humphries was looming over her now, his eyes glittering darkly as he gazed down at her. “Of course it would be ‘easier.’ But because it would be easy does not mean that I am going to do it, Miss Costanza. And I seriously doubt that you will be able to subpoena anything on the basis that you think Rebecca looks ‘sickly.’ Now, if there is nothing else, I have other patients to see.”

“Really?” Andrea said, finally rising to her feet. “Who? Who else ever comes to this office?” She glanced around at the office that looked more like a study. “How do I know this is really a doctor’s office? How do I even know you’re a doctor?”

“You don’t,” Humphries said, his voice ice cold now. He moved to the door and held it open for her. “Though I’m sure you’ll do your best to find out. But if I were you, I would leave it alone. Rebecca will be fine.”

Andrea’s eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening me?”

Humphries’s eyes bored into her. “Don’t be ridiculous. I have no need to threaten you or anyone else. I’m simply telling you what I would do if I were you.” Suddenly they were at the front door, and it was open, and Andrea was back out in the hall. “Good afternoon, Miss Costanza,” Humphries said. “I wish I could say I look forward to seeing you again, but I don’t.”

The door closed.

Too angry even to stop and see if Caroline was home, Andrea Costanza stormed past the open elevator door, down the five flights to the lobby, and out onto the street.

Monday morning, first thing, she would start working on a subpoena for Rebecca Mayhew’s medical records.