Natural Causes (25 page)

Afterward, she curled up against me beneath the cold
sheets, burying her head in my chest and draping her arms around my
neck. She stayed huddled against me for a long while not saying a
word, sheltering herself against my body. I looked around the dim
room at the shuttered, off-white closets and the creamy enameled
furniture, and knew that she was thinking of Quentin--that she'd been
thinking of him all along, as if he were still with us, hidden
somewhere in that shuttered room. It was an unsettling
thought--enough to make me close my eyes, too.

"You've got to get out of here, Marsha," I
said. "Take a couple of weeks and go somewhere."
She didn't say anything for a moment. "I don't
know if I could leave."

"Sure you could."

"Sure," she said weakly. "It isn't
that simple. If it was that simple ... I would have gone." She
raised her head and peeked out at the room. "You know, sometimes
I still think he's out there. Sitting like he used to sit."

She swallowed hard and dropped her head back on my
chest.

"The only way to get away from him is to get
away from this room. You know that. Away from this room and
everything else that reminds you of him."

"Fucking reminds me of him," she whispered.

I guess so, I said to myself. I stroked her hair and
she looked up at me.

"You're very beautiful," I said.

She bit her lip. "You still think so."

"I know so."

She started to smile.

"You think you're going to be able to get some
sleep now?"

"I can try," she said. "There are some
Nembutols in the medicine chest."

"You take a lot of them?"

"Only when I'm worn out and can't sleep. It's
them or booze or fucking."

"Stick to booze and fucking," I said.

She pulled herself up to my face and kissed me. "I
like you," she said. "You're like him--only different."

"I'm not like him at all," I said.

"I know one way you're not like him. She ran her
hand down my belly.

"Marsha," I said with a laugh. "I
gotta go."

"I just want to hold it for a minute," she
said.

We ended up fucking again. I didn't watch her this
time. This time, I kept my eyes shut, too.
 

29

By the time I'd tucked Marsha in for the afternoon,
it was three-thirty. She promised to stay in bed until I came back
later that night. But I had my doubts whether she'd be able to keep
that promise. She didn't look too confident herself about braving the
day alone, in that house, without booze or drugs or a man to protect
her from her bad dreams. As I was leaving the bedroom, I could feel
her watching me-clinging to me with her eyes. It wasn't a feeling I
liked.

I found myself hurrying down the stairs and out into
the sunlight, where the smell of freshly cut grass smacked me like a
sea breeze. It felt good to be outside. I walked quickly to the car
and drove off.

It took me about fifteen minutes to get back to
Clifton on 71. I exited on Taft Road and coasted up to Burnett.
Philip Feldman's office was located at the corner in a converted
brownstone--one block north of the Delores. I'd passed it a thousand
times without giving it a second look.

There was a tar lot on the south side of the
building. I parked in it and walked up a short flight of concrete
stairs, past a big bed of peonies, to the front door. A sign on the
door said "Ring Before Entering." I pressed the doorbell
and went in. A pretty nurse with teased brown hair was sitting behind
a white counter to the right of the door. There was a waiting room to
the left, half-filled with patients.

"Can I help you?" the nurse said.

"I'd like to speak to Dr. Feldman. About Quentin
Dover."

The nurse gave me a funny look. "I thought Mr.
Dover had died?"

"He did. I'm a private investigator, looking
into his death. I don't need much of the doctor's time. Just a few
minutes."

"I'll see if I can fit you in," she said.

I went into the waiting room and sat down. It was not
a happy place--most of the people waiting with me looked very ill. I
sat there for about fifteen minutes, then the nurse came out from
behind the counter and called my name.

"This way," she said.

She directed me down a tiled corridor, lined with
examination rooms, to a small, paneled office at the back of the
building. It was an unprepossessing place compared to some of the
doctors' offices I'd visited--a tiny desk in one corner, a desk chair
behind it, a green vinyl couch on the opposite wall, and a few
bookshelves above the couch filled with numbers of the Journal of the
American Surgical Society.

I sat down on the couch and waited about ten more
minutes. I wanted to smoke, but there weren't any ashtrays in the
room. There was nothing to do, except to read Phil Feldman's
diplomas. He had an impressive array of them on the walls. I was
examining one of them--an honorary certificate from a surgical
association--when he stepped into the room.

He was a tall, burly, rugged-looking man in his
mid-forties, with crinkly brown hair, receding in narrow horns at
either temple, and five o'clock shadow on his cheeks.

He had on a shirt and tie, but the shirt sleeves were
rolled and the collar unbuttoned and the tie had been pulled loose at
the knot. Perhaps it was his size and rugged face, but Feldman didn't
look like a doctor.

"I'm Phil Feldman," he said, sitting down
behind his small desk.

"Harry Stoner."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of
hornrim glasses. "I've never met a private detective," he
said, slipping the glasses on his nose. They made him look a lot more
professional.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Stoner?"

"Quentin Dover was a patient of yours, wasn't
he?"

"Of mine and of half a dozen other specialists.
I was his cardiologist, yes. I was also his friend."

"You knew him a long time?"

Feldman took his glasses off and tucked them back in
his pocket, as if he'd seen all of me that he'd wanted to see. "For
ten years."

"You were close, then?"

"As close as Quentin ever let anyone get."
Feldman leaned back in his chair. "Why all the questions?"

"I've been looking into his death."

"I was told that it was accidental,"
Feldman said.

"I think it might have been a suicide."

He looked sadly off into space. "I guess that
doesn't surprise me. His father killed himself, you know."

"I know," I said.

"Quentin was always afraid that he'd end up
doing the same thing. All the pills in the world couldn't protect him
from that fear."

I thought of the coroner's verdict of death by
natural causes and of all those pills. Fourteen a day, Jack had said.

"Were any of the medications he took for his
heart potentially lethal?"

"Almost all medications are potentially lethal,"
Feldman said, "if taken in sufficient quantity."

"If he'd overdosed himself with some of them,
wouldn't it have shown up in the autopsy?"

"It depends on the condition of his body,"
Feldman said. "He took so many different potent drugs that there
would have been large traces of a number of them. That makes a
confusing picture for a coroner, especially if the body has
decomposed."

"But he could have poisoned himself with the
medicines that he carried with him?"

"Easily," Feldman said.

I turned to the phone call. "When was the last
time you talked to Dover?"

"On Saturday morning."

I edged forward on the couch. "And do you know
where he was when you talked to him?"

Feldman smiled. "I'm not sure. I thought he was
in Cincinnati, but that apparently wasn't the case. You see, he
always left a number with my answering service where he could be
reached, especially when he went out of town. It was a habit with
him--more than a habit, an obsession. He wanted me to know where he
was in case he needed emergency medical attention. This past Friday
he left his private home phone number."

"Had he ever done that before when he went out
of the city?"

Feldman shook his head. "No. Usually he left me
the number of the Belle Vista in Los Angeles or of the Plaza in New
York--his regular stops. That's why I assumed he was still in town
when I talked to him on Saturday. He'd told me on Thursday morning
that he was going to the coast for some new project."

"Did he happen to mention what the project was?"

"No," Feldman said. "But I had the
feeling that he wasn't looking forward to the trip. He seemed rather
melancholy about it. When I got the number that he'd left with the
answering service, I assumed he'd changed his mind about going. So I
called to find out what had happened. It wasn't a professional call."

"What did he say?"

"He said that he was feeling fine and that he
hadn't changed his mind about the project, he'd just postponed it. I
thought I was talking to him at his home in Indian Hill."

"He gave you no indication of where he really
was?"

"No," Feldman said. "Quentin didn't
always tell the truth, Mr. Stoner."

"So I've learned," I said.

"He sounded a little edgy. That's why I tried
calling him again on Saturday night at the same number. But there
wasn't any answer. I tried several times on Sunday. On Monday morning
I finally got through to someone. But it was a weird conversation."

"How so?"

"The man I talked to spoke with a Spanish accent
and hung up on me abruptly when I mentioned Quentin's name. So I
decided to call Marsha to find out what was going on--whether they'd
hired a Mexican houseman, or what. Of course, she wasn't home either.
She was in L.A., identifying the body. I didn't get through to her
until late that night. That's when she told me that Quentin had died
in L.A. and that he'd been there the entire weekend. It was only then
that I realized that that was where I must have been talking to him
on Saturday. With some help from the phone company, we eventually
figured out that he'd forwarded his calls from the number here in
Cincinnati out to the coast."

"Yeah, but to where exactly in L.A.?"

"You're asking the wrong man," Feldman
said. "It's pretty clear that Quentin didn't want me to know
where he was. I wish I knew why."

It was pretty clear that Quentin hadn't wanted anyone
to know where he was. And if Feldman hadn't acted like a friend on
Saturday morning, no one probably ever would have known.

Feldman looked at me for a moment. "I can accept
the fact that Quentin killed himself. But I'd like to know why. I
mean, why on Sunday rather than on some other day."

"He was in deep trouble in just about every
aspect of his life. I guess you're aware of that."

He shook his head. "For a frightened man,
Quentin had a lot of courage. He put up a brave front, most of the
time. The only trouble I knew about was his medical problems. And, of
course, Marsha's problems. I've had to make several late-night trips
to their home."

"She's tried to kill herself?" I said.

He nodded. "I wonder what she's going to do
without him. They were suited to each other in a way."

"What makes you say that?"

"They were both pretty badly wounded by their
childhoods. Quentin by his father's suicide. Marsha by her
fundamentalist upbringing. Being as pretty as she is was not an
advantage in her family. Her parents gave her a hard time, and she's
never gotten over it. Quentin protected her from her fears to a
degree--mostly by allowing her to indulge herself. With him gone . .
. " He sighed. "I don't know what's going to happen to
her."

"I don't think her marriage was as healthy as
you think. "

"I didn't say it was healthy. I just said they
suited each other. Marsha's problems predate her marriage, anyway.
She was institutionalized rightly or wrongly by her family several
times before she met Quentin."

"For what?"

"For being herself, I think. For being
promiscuous. They claimed she was mentally ill. By the time they'd
finished with her, she undoubtedly was. I think that's partly why
Quentin was attracted to her--not just because she was so beautiful
but because she was so unhappy with her life, like him."

"Is that what he said?"

Feldman nodded. "He said they might have been
made for each other."
 

30

After leaving Feldman's office, I pulled the car down
one block and parked in front of the Delores. Then I went upstairs
and called Frank Glendora from the bedroom phone. It was Sunday, so I
called him at home.

"I need some help," I said to him. "Who
do you know at the phone company?"