Mortal Remains (26 page)

As she drove the car out of the driveway, Lucy asked, “Is Victor a friend?”

“Actually, he’s a patient.”

“Really? I took you for friends. But around you it’s hard to tell the difference.”

“How do you mean?”

“You have a really nice way with patients. A lot of the people who were in your office today consider you both friend and physician.”

“And how do you know that?”

“They told me so. It was neat to hear.”

“Sometimes it makes the job harder.”

“You mean staying objective-”

“That’s difficult enough. What I’m talking about makes being friends impossible.”

“Oh?”

“People tell me almost everything that’s personal and private, as they do most doctors. But in a place like Hampton Junction, I end up knowing both who’s got the secrets and who the secrets are kept from.”

“What?”

“Just the other day I was sitting in my office with a woman who sees me regularly for stress and a nervous stomach. The reason for her problems – she’s afraid her husband is running around on her. We were interrupted by a phone call from a woman whom I’m treating for depression because the man she loves, that very same husband, won’t leave his wife. They don’t teach you how to manage that kind of situation in New York.”

She gave an appreciative whistle. “Does it happen a lot?”

“Often enough. You’ll probably go through a variation of it while you’re here. After all, you’re a fresh audience, so people will definitely let you in on the seamier sides of life in Hampton Junction.”

She glanced sideways at him.

“Relax,” he added. “It won’t be that bad.”

She smiled, but drove without saying anything. A few minutes later, she asked, “Show me Kelly’s house?”

“Her old family home? It’s long gone. Her parents sold off and moved back to New York after she disappeared.”

“No. I meant where she lived with Chaz Braden.”

“Sure. It’s not far from here.”

She followed his instructions, heading in the direction of Saratoga Springs. After a few miles the thick forest gave way to a floodlit, rolling, snow-covered lawn surrounded by white fences adjacent to a lake. Ablaze with light and well back from the road stood a layered house with several wings emanating from a peaked center, the whole structure wrapped in a veranda. As a young boy passing by with his parents, it had always reminded him of a gilded bird trying to take flight. “Here it is. Rural chic of the pretend horsy set. Paddock style on the front yard, but nary a nag in sight.”

She said nothing, but slowed as they passed the large wrought-iron gate that guarded the entrance. In the parking lot at the end of a quarter-mile driveway, a dozen limousines glittered like a nest of black beetles.

“That’s odd,” Mark said. “Old man Braden must be up for Thanksgiving this year. He usually doesn’t show until Christmas.”

“He’s brought a lot of friends.”

“When here, he’s always having parties. Not that I’m on his guest list. Was, when I was a kid. My father used to get invited. I think that was Kelly’s doing. I learned much later from my aunt that Mom hated going and thought the rest of them acted superior to Dad. But after my mother died, he and I continued to attend, ‘for Kelly’s sake’ I heard him say more than once. Crazy, their looking down on him. Dad was more doctor than both Bradens put together.”

When they got back to Mark’s house, a shiny red Jeep almost identical to his own stood parked in the driveway. The keys and a note from his insurance company advising him that it was only a loaner until they settled his claim had been dropped through the mail slot in his front door.
Ride ‘em cowboy,
he thought, pocketing the keys.

“Could I take a look at your father’s file on Kelly?” Lucy asked after supper.

“Sure.” He got it out for her.

Having leafed through the contents at the kitchen table, she came to the newspaper clippings on the Braden’s charitable works. “What are these doing here?”

“I’ve no idea. My father kept them there. He also collected a pile of statistics on those two places, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what he was after.”

“Could I see them as well?”

Two hours later, papers spread out in front of her, on chairs, even over the countertops, she continued to pore over the data that had defeated him.

“Any luck?” he asked, standing in the doorway watching her.

“Oh?” she started, obviously surprised by his voice. “No, I mean I can’t see anything glaringly wrong.”

“Well, I’m heading up to bed. It’ll be a big day tomorrow, everybody calling in to get tuned up for Thanksgiving.”

“I’m going to work a while longer.”

“Good night.”

“Good night, Mark.”

Wednesday, November 21,

10:07 A.M.

The Midtown Arms, New York City

“W
e only agreed to see you after checking your credentials, Dr. Garnet. I must admit, it appears you’ve had a very distinguished career,” Samantha McShane said. “Surprisingly so.”

For a guy working in Buffalo, Earl added, the unspoken qualification having practically leapt off her pinched lips. She sat on a round-backed, antique chair of a kind he’d seen in photos of Queen Victoria. Looking over the ornately furnished room, he figured Samantha must have gotten the rest of the old girl’s movables as well. Walter McShane stood behind her, scowling, as still as a stuffed ornament. Clearly it was Samantha’s idea that Earl be tolerated here at all.

“So what can we do to help you prove who murdered our Kelly?” she asked.

“Mark Roper has already let me look over copies of the police records, so I don’t need anything there. I’m interested instead in what you learned from the private detectives you hired. Is there any chance we could look through their reports, maybe even talk to one of them? Do you know if they’re still alive?”

Samantha looked up at Walter.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he muttered.

“Perhaps you could forward whatever you come up with to Dr. Roper. I don’t plan to be in New York much longer-”

“No!” Samantha said, sitting even more bolt upright than Earl would have thought possible. “That man has his own agenda in all this.”

Walter left his perch and wandered over to a large bay window overlooking Central Park West and gazed out at the green space beyond, his jaw a study in tension.

Earl focused on Samantha. “Why would you say that, Mrs. McShane? Dr. Mark Roper has demonstrated an ironclad objectivity in pursuing what happened to Kelly-”

“Tell him, Walter,” Samantha said, swinging around to confront her husband’s back.

“I don’t think it’s anybody’s business, Samantha.” He spoke without looking at her.

“I want him to know, Walter.”

He simply shrugged.

She returned her gaze to Earl. “A mother feels these things so much more acutely, Dr. Garnet. I’m sure you understand this, as a medical man. The loss of a child is the worst possible pain…” Her eyes watered over, and tears careened down wrinkled cheeks that seemed parched as washed-out gullies. Pulling out a hanky from the sleeve of her dress, she dabbed at her face, all the time slipping glances over at Walter as if checking whether he was watching.

He wasn’t.

The waterworks stopped. “Would you like to see Kelly’s room?”

Now the man pivoted to face her. “Really, Samantha-”

“If he wishes to see it, Walter, he can.”

“Yes, I would like to, Mrs. McShane.” Earl tried not to sound too eager, but the caustic exchange between the couple was not only unpleasant, it put a damper on what Samantha could say. If he maneuvered her out of Walter’s earshot, she might let something useful slip.

“Come, Dr. Garnet” She got to her feet, then led him along a dingy hallway to a closed door. Opening it, she stepped inside.

Earl followed, and had to stifle a gasp.

Brightly lit and painted yellow, it still resembled a little girl’s room. Stuffed animals lined the bookshelves. A frilly gold-colored duvet covered the bed. Porcelain figurines of soulful-eyed children, kittens, and puppies filled a corner display case. But what most took Earl’s breath away were the photographs of Kelly and her mother. None of the images were unusual in themselves, but hung all together they overwhelmed him.

To his right were pictures of a much younger Samantha holding her infant daughter, rows and rows of them. They progressed through the usual moments that parents capture – Kelly as a baby sucking a bottle, sitting with a hand of support at her back, eating with a spoon, toddling between Samantha’s legs. Then came Kelly the little girl – walking without support, running with a ball, posing in a party dress, diving off a dock, riding a tricycle. In these she wore the same goofy, self-conscious grin he’d sometimes seen in Brendan when he got in front of a camera. In others she seemed more sullen. The shots evolved into Kelly riding a two-wheeler, swinging a tennis racket, standing on skis, and participating in the innumerable other activities of an older girl. In these photos she wore a frown more frequently, as if she preferred not having her picture taken at all.

He stepped closer and noticed other details. In an inordinate number of them where Samantha appeared, the woman stood front and center, beaming a smile that commanded the viewer to pay attention in a way that thrust Kelly into the background.

And in shot after shot, Kelly seemed to be eyeing her mother, not showing fear necessarily, but a sadness in her gaze and with her mouth taut with strain. In some, she even appeared to be leaning away from her.

Prophetic,
he thought.

“You can see we were very close,” Samantha said from behind.

He couldn’t believe she could be so oblivious to how Kelly’s expressions in the later pictures said the opposite.

“Inseparable, in fact,” she continued. “It’s hard to tell from these, but she was a very sick child.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I hadn’t any idea what to do with her. She was forever complaining of stomach-aches and bowel problems. I took her to no end of doctors, but no one ever figured out what was wrong. And Walter couldn’t be there to help, his being away on business all the time. Not that I blame him for leaving her illness all on my shoulders. He had to take care of his firm, so I soldiered on alone, a full-time mother, of course. There was no paying strangers to take care of Kelly in this home, the way women do all the time with their children today.”

He swallowed so as not to show how repugnant he found her performance. “What sort of illnesses did Kelly have?”

“As I said, no one ever diagnosed her. The best attempt came from an old general surgeon in Saratoga who agreed to operate on her, twice. But even he couldn’t diagnose what was wrong. Do you have any idea what kind of ordeal that can be for a parent?”

Oh, brother,
he thought, scars the size of ropes flashing to mind. Making as if he were still studying the gallery, he asked. “What about Dr. Cam Roper? He saw Kelly once. Didn’t he say she was fine? At least that’s what his files indicate.”

“That quack? He was the worst of them all. Made the most terrible allegation that a mother should ever have to hear. He’s the reason I won’t deal with Mark Roper. Like father, like son, I always say.”

He continued to peer at the stills, not wanting to risk charging in too directly. “Oh? What did Cam Roper say?”

“Why, he practically accused me of being the cause of Kelly’s troubles. Claimed I was making her sick-”

“That’s enough, Samantha!” Walter said, standing at the doorway.

“Oh, Walter.” She spoke his name as if uttering a groan of long-endured pain. “I want Dr. Garnet to know how much that man hurt me, so he’ll understand what I’ve been through-”

“It’s none of Dr. Garnet’s business! Don’t you realize he’ll do the same with what you tell him.” He looked directly at Earl, his elderly face chiseled with anger. “It’s disgusting, what so-called physicians get away with saying, all in the cause of making a diagnosis. Well, I nearly sued then rather than let anyone besmirch us. Lucky for him I backed off, but I won’t let you or anyone else stain our reputation now-”

“And I won’t bottle up my agony, Walter, no matter what you say…”

Their accusations and innuendoes flew between them, filling the air with acid rancor.

As he watched and listened, Earl’s thoughts on the couple congealed into specific clinical labels: narcissism, ego, denial – traits common in everyone, but here they presented themselves in pathological proportions, while under them all loomed a terrible diagnosis, just as Walter said.

10:45 A.M.

New York City Hospital

Tommy Leannis eased himself into a floral-patterned settee opposite Melanie Collins. She sat at a small glass table, pouring coffee from a sterling silver pot into delicate porcelain cups with matching saucers – not the freebie mugs sporting drug company logos that he and the other doctors in his clinic used. He glanced around the plush office, eyeing the thick mauve carpet, the oversize mahogany desk, and the matching wall-to-wall bookcase behind it. “You’re sittin’ at the top o’ the world here, aren’t you, Melanie?” he said, cheerily hiding the bitterness he felt at her good fortune. His own career had been a never-ending, sweaty scramble just to end up a mediocre plastic surgeon, competent enough to avoid getting sued, but no star. He’d never shaken off the insecurity that plagued him in medical school, and he incessantly second-guessed himself, going through life with constantly clammy palms. Melanie didn’t have one damn bit more talent at medicine than he. How the hell did she manage to pull all this off?

“Sugar, Tommy?”

“One would be perfect, and just a drop of cream. I’m trying to keep my lean-and-hungry look.”

She smiled, handed him his cup, then settled back in her chair. “I asked you here as an old pal to help me with a problem.”

“Oh?” Old pal, his ass. What did she want? The woman hadn’t once invited him here since she took over as Chief of Internal Medicine five years ago. He sipped the coffee; it was delicious, of course.

“It’s about Earl Garnet. I’ve been beside myself, and maybe it’s nothing, but the strangest thing happened last night.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, we were talking about Kelly – he’s helping Mark Roper investigate her death – and I’d told Mark at the memorial service that Kelly was in love with someone at the time of her disappearance-”

“You did? My God, Melanie, if Chaz Braden hears you said that, he’ll blow a fuse.”

“I know, Tommy, but even he had to suspect. She was practically glowing before she disappeared.”

“Well I never noticed.” Neither did he want her to engage him in any talk of that sort. Maybe she felt immune to Chaz, because of her position, but he sure as hell didn’t.

“Here’s what’s strange, Tommy. I figure Mark briefed Earl about what I said. Yet Earl never once asked who I thought her lover was.”

“So?”

She hesitated, as if reluctant to speak.

He didn’t say anything to encourage her, taking another sip of his coffee instead.

“So do you think it might possibly have been Earl?”

He nearly choked. “Goody Two-shoes Garnet? You’ve got to be joking.”

“They spent a lot of time together, and were always talking-”

“I know, but he was so straitlaced.” You ought to know, he nearly added, remembering that Melanie had made several obvious plays for Earl and gotten nowhere.

“I thought so, too, but maybe we were wrong. I mean, what do you think? Could it be that he didn’t ask about Kelly’s lover because…” She looked questionably at Tommy.

“It was him all along?” He digested the notion a few seconds, rubbing the palm of his hand through the bristly top of his hair, then chuckled, finding the idea not so crazy once he thought about it a bit. Chaz could be such a mean son of a bitch, why wouldn’t Kelly have tried to sneak around on him? Tommy rather liked the possibility that she and Garnet had been fucking each other with no one the wiser. People who misbehaved, broke the rules, and didn’t get found out always pleased him, especially ones who were so outwardly on the up-and-up. It gave sneakiness a touch of class. Maybe he, too, could slip through the cracks and beat the odds – a loser’s lullaby, he knew, yet seductive enough to make him believe even a guy like him might take a chance and come up a winner.

“Tommy?”

She snapped him out of his reverie. “Sorry. The thought of them doing it, under our noses so to speak, took me a bit by surprise.”

“Do you think I’m right?”

“Maybe.”

“I was hoping you’d tell me that I was crazy.”

He flashed a grin and toasted her with his cup. “Then my verdict, dear Melanie, is you’re crazy.”

“What do you think I should do?”

He ignored the question, too busy wondering if there might be a way to use this information to benefit himself.

11:20 A.M.

Central Park, New York City

Earl hurried along the Central Park side of Fifth Avenue. A north wind sent fallen leaves flying in front of him and whipped up the flaps of his coat in bullying gusts. Cellular in his hand, he punched the redial button for Mark’s number. Still busy.

He walked a few blocks more, punched redial again, and got Mark’s answering machine. “Mark, it’s Earl. I just got out of the McShanes’ apartment. Nothing like a home visit to get at the truth in a family. Call me back as soon as you can. I think I figured out what your father really meant in his notes about Kelly. I need you to tell me if you think I’m crazy.”

He shoved the phone back in his pocket and increased his pace, as much to work off his excitement as to combat the damp and cold insinuating itself through his clothing.

Minutes later he felt the receiver vibrate. He had it to his ear halfway through the second ring. “Mark?’

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Get out your father’s files and take another look at that medical report of Kelly’s first visit. You know how certain symptoms and signs sometimes fit together to remind us, as doctors, of certain syndromes.”

“Of course.”

“I want you to read it over with a question in mind. If you saw that little girl in an ER today, what might you at least think of?”

“Why? I thought we already agreed that the problem was functional.”

“Just humor me.”

“Okay. Hang on a sec.”

It seemed forever before he picked up again.

“I’ve got it in front of me.”

“Give me the differential you went through to rule out organic causes for her complaints.”

“That’s easy. I first thought of chronic disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease or malabsorption syndromes. But my father said that she’d no history of fever, and her blood tests were repeatedly normal. Presumably that meant they showed no history of anemia, elevated sed rates, or protein deficiencies. Without those changes, I wouldn’t even consider the diagnoses.”