Blinker mewed in protest as Ellie tried to shift position on the couch, and finally hopped down and skittered away, her tail swishing. Ellie wished she had a tail to swish. Cats allowed their feelings to show. Humans had a more difficult time. More rules. More agendas.
Her wineglass was empty now, and the pitiful string cheese and crackers only a memory. This Gabe had promised to call her again. Insisted his offer of assistance was authentic and without ulterior motive.
Ellie didn’t buy it.
Still. If he had real inside information, as he promised, then why not see what he could provide? She could handle it, either way.
Something poked her in the side as she stood. The Channel 11 envelope, the one Meg had taped to the door. Ellie pulled it from her waistband. On the front, her name was written in determined block letters in black marker.
She tucked a fingernail under the flap and ripped open the envelope. Pulled out a white piece of paper, the kind Channel 11 used in its copiers. The typed note was signed M.
Hey El. For our P-X story? After you left this morning, I may have found a victim of what you’re talking about.
Ellie rolled her eyes. El. Our story. As if. But if Meg had found a victim? She read on.
I don’t want to put the deets in email or text, you know how discoverable that is, and I really want to stay out of this. Super-confidential, my person says. But Abigail says she’ll talk to you, only you, on the phone. I have to be with her, though. Want me to set it up?
CHAPTER 13
NORA
Nora didn’t welcome any memories from high school, but this morning the row of pale neutral metal lockers–each with a built-in combination lock—in the high-security ninth-floor storage area of the Pharminex building reminded her of exactly that. High school hadn’t been her happiest time, Nora thought, and beeped her laminated ID through the metal card reader that opened the entry door.
In fact, if she had to pick a happiest time in her life—she pushed open the heavy door into the storage section and found her locker—she might not be able to. Such a time might never have existed. Happiness that lasted, at least. She’d hoped this job would be her path to that.
Footsteps behind her made her drop the combination lock midturn. She whirled to confront whoever it was.
“Oh, sorry to freak you out!” The woman laughed. Blond waves, curvy black jacket, bright blue suede heels, little black cross-body bag. Gold and maybe-diamond earrings. And a sample case just like Nora’s. “It’s just me, Lydia. Another worker bee.”
Lydia Frost, Nora remembered, even though she no longer wore her newbie name tag. One of her colleagues from training class. She’d seemed smart. Confident. And maybe not a zealous rule-follower.
“More like an early bird than a bee,” Nora said. “It’s only seven thirty. But how’re you doing?”
“Sell sell sell.” Lydia spun a forefinger. “I’ve gotta say, I’m not lovin’ this. So far those doctors either come on to me like all-hands maniacs, or else they act like I’m the scourge, there to take up their oh so valuable time.”
“You got that right.” Nora clicked open her locker, then lifted the latch on the louvered door. Every day she removed the number of samples she’d need, then logged that number on the grid. Pharminex security also had access. At any time, they could open her locker to confirm that her supplies matched her inventory numbers. To prevent under-the-table drug dealing or use or bribing doctors with extra samples, any discrepancies were grounds for instant dismissal.
Lydia had her locker open too. “And you know what else?” she said. “I hate sitting in those doctors’ waiting rooms. The women are all sad, and so needy and incredibly desperate. Sometimes I see the same people in different offices. You know? How much can that cost?”
Nora’s eyes filled with tears, and for a moment she couldn’t remember why. “Yeah,” she finally said. “The other day? I talked to one of the women I met at a clinic, I don’t know, a random thing. She seemed so unhappy. And—”
“You did?” Lydia kept one hand on the door of her locker and looked at Nora, eyebrows raised in disbelief. “You talked to a patient? We’re not supposed to, you know, chitchat or elicit information. Privacy laws, like they said in class.”
“She didn’t know why I was there.” Nora shook her head. “We were two women in a doctor’s office. What was I supposed to do, ignore her? She wanted to talk, and I was there, and she seemed so despondent. We talked about our red hair and playing with dolls. Hardly consorting with the enemy.”
Lydia pursed her lips. “It’s your future, Nora. Be careful. You never know who’s out there. Who’s reporting on us, even. Who knows?”
“Then the next day, she was in a bad car accident.”
“What?”
“Yeah.” Nora now regretted bringing this up, knew she shouldn’t have, but the memory of the crash was still raw. She would never know what had happened to that poor woman. “Never mind.”
“No, really, what happened?”
“Let’s drop it. Okay?” Nora tried to stay pleasant, pretended to count her boxes of samples, hating that Lydia seemed fascinated by the accident. “Three, four, five…”
Guy had called her last night, effusive and affectionate as ever. From wherever he was. And she’d simply listened, oh so supportive and enthusiastic. She hadn’t mentioned Kaitlyn, even when he’d asked her what was new. Now she needed to change the subject here too, before Lydia tried to push her any further.
“Wait,” Nora said. “You saw the same patients in different offices?”
Lydia’s face changed. “I know. That’s why I’m worried someone from P-X is spying on us. On me, especially. Maybe I’m wrong. Still. Why would the same women be in different offices?”
“Maybe they’re doctor shopping?” Nora said. “Right? Having consults?”
Lydia smoothed an eyebrow, examining herself in a circular mirror she’d hung inside her locker. She turned back to Nora.
“Okay, maybe. Yeah. But I do know, for sure, once I saw a guy in a white lab coat hanging around a doctor’s waiting room. Then I saw the same guy in another waiting room. He walked in and kind of stood there, pretending to be all busy on his phone, but I know he was really looking at the patients. Like, checking them out. Or checking me out.”
“Why is that strange? Maybe he was, you know, a doctor.”
“Maybe.” Lydia shook her head. “Doubtful. But I noticed him because he was…” She batted her eyelashes, confessing. “Pretty hot. And frankly, I’m on the hunt. I know it’s only been a week or so, but the moment I snag a marriage possibility, I’m so out of this place. We all deserve to be happy, don’t we? With families? And now, it’s like—we’re in an ideal dating pool. The only people we meet are doctors and women who can’t have kids.”
“That’s harsh.” But Nora remembered to laugh, showing she wasn’t being critical. “But kinda true. But this guy—did you talk to him?”
“Eight, nine, ten,” Lydia was counting out loud, stacking samples into her case.
“Lydia?” Nora persisted.
Lydia closed her locker door and spun the combination lock. They both turned as more footsteps padded down the carpeted hall. Chic suit, perfect heels, earrings. Jenn Wahl, Nora remembered her name too. Another classmate, one she’d considered a potential ally.
“Hey, Jenn,” Nora said. “We’re just discussing a mysterious cute doctor Lydia’s curious about.”
“He wasn’t a doctor.” Lydia told Jenn the whole story—handsome, white coat, several offices. “And his hands were clean, but not doctor-clean. And he kept fiddling with his stethoscope, as if he wasn’t used to it. I don’t know. I might be nuts.”
“Think he’s like…” Jenn tilted her head, and a lock of highlighted hair fell over one eye. As she tucked it away, she looked at the ceiling, then scanned the room as if searching for surveillance. “A spy?” she whispered.
“That’s what I wondered too. Seriously. Like—watching us?” Lydia
’s voice lowered to a whisper. “Seeing if we say or do anything wrong. Or talk to patients. I know companies do that. It’s SOP.”
Nora decided to whisper too. “Wavy dark hair, tortoiseshell glasses?” She pushed back imaginary hair, used two forefingers to pantomime glasses. “Because now that you mention it, I think I’ve seen a person like that too.”
“Yes,” Lydia said. “Glasses.”
“Uh-huh,” Jenn agreed, nodding. “Glasses.”
The three of them exchanged speculative glances, silent in the otherwise empty hallway.
Then Nora burst out laughing. “Come on, you guys,” she said, using her regular voice. “There are no spies.”
Jenn shook her head. “You never know.”
“Yeah, you do.” Nora picked up her case. Her agenda would have to wait for another day. “Let’s get out there, ladies. I’ve got three appointments before lunch.” She tried to look elaborately conspiratorial. “But listen. If any of us sees the spy, let’s text each other. Let’s keep on this. Together. Maybe we can expose him.”
“Perfect. Make him buy us jewelry.” Lydia snapped her sample case closed, then pursed her lips, scheming. “Or we’ll reveal his true identity.”
“Or maybe.” Jenn held up a forefinger. “We’ll demand Hermès bags for everyone. Or else.”
“You two are terrible.” Nora played along, as she pictured this “totally hot” guy and his stethoscope. “Maybe we’ll make him take us out to dinner. And then we’ll convince him to tell us the truth. But for now? I’ve gotta go.”
* * *
Nora slammed her car door shut and slid on her sunglasses against the afternoon glare. The cops had told her on the phone they were talking to everyone on Kaitlyn’s contact list, she reminded herself. She clicked her car locked, the sound echoing through the half-full parking lot of state police headquarters. At least she wouldn’t be the only one called here.
She wondered if Kaitlyn’s overbearing and judgmental husband would be inside, the one who’d made his wife so miserable. The one she’d worried would dump her if she failed again in her attempts to have a child. Because of him, his poor wife had been disconsolate, even considered herself a failure as a woman. Wonder how he felt now. Nora’s heart had broken when they’d talked in the doctor’s office, broken at Kaitlyn’s melancholy and defeat. She’d confided in Nora, sobbing to a stranger. And now she was dead.
Nora could not get that final picture out of her head. After an unbearable eternity of stopped traffic, and the taunting sirens wailing in the distance, she’d managed to inch forward, closer. And closer. And then she saw it. A small white car. A telephone pole. The wash of blue police lights on the snow, the spinning red lights as the ambulance screamed away. The police officer who’d ordered her to leave, no matter what she said.
She stood now, silently, leaning against her car door feeling the frigid metal through her winter coat. Wondered if she’d ever forget the sounds she’d heard over her phone: the wrong sounds, the twisted sounds, a whoosh, a gasp.
You warned her. You told her to pull over, Nora tried to reassure herself yet again as she second-guessed and replayed and wondered if—if she’d just driven faster, or known a shortcut, or been more persuasive. You got there as fast as you could. There was nothing more you could have done.
That’s how it was with memories, devastating ones like this, of the disaster you did not create and could not prevent, no matter what you did, and images of darkness and the sound of sirens. There you were, in the middle of it forever.
She closed her eyes for a beat, in memory, thinking of loss, and all that Kaitlyn had wanted, and all she’d lost.
Hey! Watch it! Kaitlyn’s last words on this earth.
The snow had vanished now, Mother Nature practicing her magic act. Nora picked her way through slush puddles in the state police headquarters parking lot, a patch of asphalt beside the boxy redbrick structure that looked more like an insurance company than where state troopers interrogated suspects and administered Breathalyzers and stored ever-growing amounts of illegal drugs and seized weapons. She’d been told to ask for Detective Lieutenant Monteiro, assigned to accident reconstruction.
As she made her way through the white-linteled double doors, Nora remembered she’d tried to convince the officer on the phone that she couldn’t help reconstruct anything. But he’d corrected her. Kaitlyn Armistead had spun out on the snow-slick street, he’d said, and smashed her car into a telephone pole. Nora’s number was the last Kaitlyn had called. So you’re a possible earwitness, he’d told her, to a fatal crash,
“Earwitness.” She tried the weird word out loud as she entered the bleak redbrick lobby.
Did the police know Nora had been at the scene? Her shoulders sagged with the weight of the memory. Would Dr. McGinty feel guilty about poor Kaitlyn? Would Pharminex?
By the time Nora was signed in, wanded, buzzed through, handed a paper cup of murky coffee and seated in a mustard-brown conference room, she’d figured out what to say to the trooper who’d escorted her in. Detective Lieutenant Rafael Monteiro, he’d introduced himself, holding out a hand and looking her square in the eyes. “Lieutenant’s fine.”
Maybe they sent the handsome ones to deal with women, she figured, trying to look back at Monteiro without him noticing. Maybe they thought she’d be smitten with his square shoulders, the crinkles around his dark eyes. His perfectly battered leather jacket. His pressed jeans. But she wasn’t smitten. She was suspicious.
He’d unflapped a brown metal folding chair like the one she now sat in, and with one hand opened it and spun it to face her. He sat, almost close enough so they were knee to knee. Behind him, a pitted wooden desk piled with manila folders. Framed photos—if they were photos—were turned so Nora could only see their black felt backs.
Fifteen minutes later, Rafael Monteiro—those dark eyes gauging her secrets—was apparently not satisfied. He stood, snapped his chair closed and, with a clatter, slapped it back against its two mates leaning against a scarred wall. He crossed his arms in front of his leather jacket, narrowed his eyes at her.
“Ms. Quinn? One more time. You just met Ms. Armistead Monday morning?”
Nora felt him evaluating her, judging, as if he was trying to catch her in some deception or make her feel guilty.
Because Nora-the-Pharminex-rep was not supposed to be chatting up patients in doctors’ waiting rooms. Definitely forbidden. Let alone hand out business cards, even generic ones. Had they found hers in Kaitlyn’s wallet? And she was definitely not allowed to encourage continued communications. Nora could not afford for Pharminex to discover this indiscretion. And as far as the accident was concerned, it was a trivial omission. It wouldn’t help the police uncover what happened to Kaitlyn.
It might, her conscience taunted her. But she had to ignore it.
“Yes, Lieutenant. We’d struck up a brief conversation in a doctor’s office. We…” She tried to decide how to explain it in a benign way. “Just a woman thing, I suppose.”
“A woman thing,” Monteiro said. “You had a doctor’s appointment too?”
“Yes.” Nora put her cup of lukewarm coffee on the floor, then picked it up again. “I was—well, she was upset with some test results and it seemed she wanted someone to talk to. Then I was called in to the doctor, and when I came out, she was gone.”
“And then what?”
“Well, nothing. But the next day, she called me.”
“What did she want to talk to you about, Ms. Quinn?” Behind him, a rackety heater clicked on, giving off more noise than heat. He sat on the edge of the desk, his movement toppling two photos to the desktop. “On that last phone call?”
“Like I said. She was disappointed that some medical tests had—I mean, I don’t know if it’s true.” She realized this as she said it. “Wouldn’t it be better to ask her doctor? Or her family?” Nora nodded, agreeing with herself about privacy, but wanting to help, if she could. “It was a chance encounter in a doctor’s offic
e, you know? She was … on medication.”
Monteiro nodded, pulled out a notebook from a jacket pocket.
“Was she happy with her medication?”
“No. She said she wasn’t.”
“And was she happy at home?”
“Um.…” Nora stalled. This felt wrong, but Kaitlyn was dead, and something had caused her death. Monteiro was simply trying to find out what. Doing his job. “I don’t think so. She told me her husband—James?—was frustrated they couldn’t have children.”
“James,” he said. “Yes, we’ve contacted him. But you’re the one she called, right before her accident. Was she angry with you? For some reason?”
“Me? No. What would she be angry with me about?”
“Just doing my job, Ms. Quinn.”
“No, she wasn’t angry. I mean, we’d hardly—I didn’t expect her to call me.”
Monteiro leaned forward. “But you gave her your phone number, didn’t you? Why do that if you didn’t expect her to call? Want her to call? And in fact, you were with her, weren’t you? When she crashed?”
“On the phone!” Nora saw the seam of the coffee cup turn brown, worried the whole thing was about to collapse into her lap, murky coffee and curdling milk. She put it on the floor again. “Lieutenant? Do you think something happened?”
“Like what?”
“Like she was so despondent and depressed, she did it on purpose?”
“Did she tell you that?” Monteiro straightened. “You might have mentioned that, Ms. Quinn, preferably around moment one.”
“No, no.” Nora put up her hands, stop. “Not at all. I’m just—thinking. But it was miserable out, the roads were terrible, she was talking on her cell and maybe not focused on the road. It was snowing and she probably hit a slick spot.”
“You in accident recon now, Ms. Quinn?” Lieutenant Monteiro raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Know all about collision analysis and vehicle dynamics? Wanna give me more of the benefit of your expertise?”
The First to Lie Page 7