The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries

by Fiona Snyckers

  Eulalie took out her iPad and showed him photographs of the pill bottles she had taken at the scene. He flicked from one to the other, using his fingers to enlarge the images. When he looked up, his eyes had lost some of their mildness.

  “You think I prescribed these to her?”

  “No, I’m almost sure you didn’t. The family tells me you are extremely conservative when it comes to prescribing drugs.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Did Mrs. Egger ever ask you to prescribe her any of these?”

  “My dear young lady, Emma Egger only joined this practice six months ago. She refused to supply the name of her previous family doctor, referring us only to the obstetrician who had delivered her sons. I believe he has now retired. So, my knowledge of this patient is far from extensive. She certainly never asked me to prescribe anything for her.”

  “Okay. But you and I know there are different ways of doing this. She could have come in complaining of backache, or anxiety, or insomnia. Then she would have left it up to your discretion to prescribe a short course of Ambien, or Valium, or Pethidine, or whatever. What I’m asking is whether she ever did anything like that. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that patient confidentiality does not extend beyond death on Prince William Island.”

  Dr. Jaspan was silent for a long time. He seemed to be struggling with himself. Eulalie could see that his desire to protect his patient’s privacy did extend beyond death, even though the law didn’t require it. Then he seemed to make up his mind.

  “Very well. Yes. She came to me a few times complaining of precisely those ailments. At first, I thought she was depressed, but the symptoms didn’t fit. Then I thought she might be bored, but she seemed to have a busy and full life. As soon as I suggested referring her to a specialist for further examination of her various complaints, she backed off and said it would probably go away by itself. So, of course I started to suspect that she was hoping for pills. It’s a situation most doctors have had to deal with. Especially after she let slip that she had been given Pethidine after her second Caesarean section. There are some people who need only one dose of that drug to become hooked on it. I suspect she might have been one of them.”

  “Did you say anything to her about your suspicions?”

  “Oh, yes. I gave her the standard lecture about the evils of abusing prescription medication. I warned her of all sorts of dire consequences. I could see I wasn’t getting through to her. She just waited me out - waited for me to stop talking so she could leave.”

  “Did the situation change when she became pregnant?”

  “She told me Mark reacted badly to the pregnancy, which re-awoke her depression and anxiety. She wanted to know if there was anything she could safely take during pregnancy to help tide her over this difficult time, even if I wasn’t prepared to prescribe it for her. So yes, I suppose she has asked me directly for prescription medication. I offered to refer her to a marriage counsellor or an individual counsellor, but she immediately lost interest.”

  “These photographs prove that she managed to get hold of the pills she wanted from somewhere. She doesn’t seem to have ordered them from the internet. Do you have any idea who she went to after drawing a blank with you?”

  “None whatsoever,” he said. “She didn’t give me so much as a hint. I referred her to my colleague Dr. Piedmont for the pregnancy, but she was only due to see him in a couple of weeks.”

  “Let me put it another way. If you were a middle-class woman with a certain reputation to maintain in Queen’s Town, where would you go if you were absolutely determined to get the pills you wanted?”

  There was another silence while Dr. Jaspan gave this some thought.

  “I’d either hire someone to get the pills for me from the black market, or I’d go doctor shopping. Every few weeks I’d register at a new doctor’s practice, and have a first consultation in which I complained of chronic pain and insomnia and anxiety. At least some of those would net me a prescription. I’d be careful to fill them out at different drugstores around town. The trouble with Queen’s Town is that it’s a small place. You can’t keep up that routine indefinitely like you could in a big city.”

  Eulalie nodded. She was in for a lot of legwork, but he had given her some good leads.

  Chapter 12

  “Remember that clause in your contract about how there would be times when you’d need to be flexible about the nature of your work?”

  Mrs. Belfast looked up from her computer. “Yes?”

  “This is one of those times.”

  The secretary pushed back her chair and stood to attention. “What do you want me to do?”

  “We need to go to all the doctors in Queen’s Town – not the specialists, just the general practitioners. We need to show them a photo of Emma Egger, and ask if she ever came to their practice complaining of pain or sleeplessness and asking for prescription medication. I’m not sure how many doctors there are on this island, but I have a feeling it’s going to be more than I expect. And if you factor in the two hospitals as well, Queen’s Town General and Medic-Health Private, it will be even more. It will go much faster if we split up the list and do it separately.”

  “But what about leaving the office unattended?”

  Eulalie just shrugged. “This is Prince William Island. The price you pay for living in a tropical paradise is that sometimes things are closed.”

  She went to her computer to print out two high-resolution pictures of Emma, while Mrs. Belfast obtained a list of all the general practitioners on the island, along with their addresses.

  “Right,” said Eulalie. “It’s three o’clock. Most of them will start closing their doors between five and six. Let’s see how many we can hit before then. Stay in touch by text, and we’ll reconvene here this evening to see what we’ve got. Oh, wait a minute,” she interrupted herself. “Have you got your car here today?”

  Eulalie knew that Mrs. Belfast lived in the suburb known as Sea View, which was not within walking distance of central Queen’s Town. She either took the bus in or drove herself, depending on whether she had somewhere to be after work.

  “I do have my car. I wanted to go grocery shopping after work.”

  “Great. Now, how should we split these up?”

  Mrs. Belfast handed Eulalie a printed sheet of paper and kept one for herself. “I already took care of that. I split the list geographically. Everything north of City Hall is yours, and everything south of it is mine.”

  “And that splits the two hospitals up as well. Perfect. Now remember, nobody is obliged to answer our questions. When the police come knocking, you have to answer. When private detectives come knocking, you don’t. But the funny thing about people is that when you ask them questions they will very often answer you. Humans are social animals. We are hard-wired to co-operate with each other. Politeness is the key.”

  “Politeness.” Mrs. Belfast squared her shoulders. “Right. This almost makes me an assistant private detective, doesn’t it?”

  “Well… private detectives have to be licensed on this island, so let’s rather say you’re an assistant to the private detective.”

  Mrs. Belfast nodded. “Yes. Good.”

  “Remember not to ask for her by name only. She could have come in as Emma Egger, Emma Hagan, or any other name she chose. Show them the photograph as well. And emphasize that this person is deceased, so doctor-patient privilege no longer applies. Good luck.”

  Mrs. Belfast got into her car, and Eulalie hopped onto the back of the Vespa. They went their separate ways.

  By five-thirty, Eulalie had little to go on. Most of the practices she had visited denied all knowledge of Emma. Three of them thought that she might have come in for a single consultation. None of them were able to match her up with the names Emma Egger or Emma Hagan. The doctors at the public hospital, Queen’s Town General, had clearly never encountered her.

  Eulalie was not surprised by this. A woman like Emma Egger was unlikely to s
ubmit her delicate self to the public health system.

  She wondered if Mrs. Belfast had had more luck. The fact that she was taking a while to return to the office might be a promising sign. On the other hand, she was sixty. She couldn’t be expected to move as fast as a twenty-eight-year-old on the back of a scooter.

  It was nearly six by the time Mrs. Belfast returned. She looked rosy and invigorated from the afternoon, but also had nothing definite to report.

  “The doctors’ practices I visited didn’t know her at all, but she seems to have done some doctor shopping at Medic-Health Private. Four of the practices thought she had been in during the last month. She didn’t register under Egger or Hagan, so they weren’t able to draw the file for me. She came in complaining of something vague, and then never returned when she was given nothing stronger than paracetamol or anti-inflammatories. Two practices admitted to having prescribed her a short course of Ambien, but that was all.”

  Eulalie sat down at her desk and thought.

  “Would a woman like that have gone to a street dealer?” she said. “It doesn’t seem likely. Plus, they don’t seem to have heard of her on the street. Of course, drug dealers move in very different circles to my contacts, so there’s that.”

  “You don’t have to find dealers on the street,” said Mrs. Belfast. “If there’s one thing I learned from working at a school and then at the police station, it’s that the dealers will find you. Whether it’s high school students looking to bulk up for sport, or housewives looking for something to take the edge off, you don’t have to go to the street. The street will come to you.”

  “Interesting. So, in the case of the high school student wanting to bulk up, it might be his coach or trainer who suggests steroids to him. Or perhaps someone would approach him at the gym.”

  “Yes, exactly. We had cases like that at Queen’s Town High. After your time, as I recall, but before I left to go to the police station.”

  “I’m trying to imagine how a dealer might get to hear about someone like Emma Egger. Maybe from one of the receptionists at the various doctors’ offices she tried?”

  “Yes, that also occurred to me,” said Mrs. Belfast. “Or perhaps one of her friends might have put her in touch with someone.”

  “Altogether a more genteel arrangement than going up to someone on a street corner, or in a dive bar on Finger Alley. Yes, that makes sense. Thanks for your help today, Mrs. B. Don’t forget to invoice me for your overtime. Yes, I insist,” she added as Mrs. Belfast began to protest. “I know you worked long hours at the police station, but that’s not okay with me. Besides, I can claim it as a tax break, so you’ll be doing me a favor.”

  Mrs. Belfast grudgingly agreed.

  “In the spirit of invoicing people for overtime work, I’m going down to Finger Alley this evening.” Eulalie shrugged herself into her jacket. “And you can bet I’ll be sending the bill to Mark Egger. He’s one of those clients that you want to charge for every second of your time.”

  “Finger Alley, dear? Why would you go to such a dangerous place, especially at night? You’ll get mugged.”

  “No, I won’t. They know me well enough there to leave me alone. Finger Alley is where my sources hang out. Just because we think it’s unlikely that Mrs. Egger was getting her pills from the street, doesn’t mean it was impossible. It might even have been done through an intermediary.”

  Mrs. Belfast folded her arms. “If I don’t find you right here tomorrow morning, I’m calling Chief Macgregor.”

  The advantage of having dinner at a place like Mo’s Bar was that you could order whatever you liked, and it would arrive without question. This made a refreshing change for Eulalie whose culinary choices were guided, circumscribed, and interfered with by friends and family. Angel, Fleur, and Chief Macgregor all conspired to judge her food choices. The only meal of the day where she had free rein was breakfast, hence her giant bowls of sugary cereal.

  The disadvantage of having dinner at a place like Mo’s was that you wouldn’t be entirely shocked to find a dead cockroach on your plate. If Mo had been French, she would have had much more faith in his skill, but he wasn’t. He was of English descent, which made her very nervous indeed. Still, the one thing the English did well was a fried breakfast, so she ordered the all-day breakfast and hoped for the best.

  “You do change the oil in your fryer occasionally?” she asked, prodding the bacon with a fork when her food was put in front of her.

  Mo was insulted. “Of course, we do. We changed it only this morning. Last night you might have got a bellyache, but today you’ll be fine.”

  “Good to know. And what might this be?” She pointed to a wedge of something dark and triangular on her plate.

  “That’s black pudding, that is. It’s the house specialty. Try it, you’ll love it.”

  “That’s the one that’s made from congealed blood?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Yeah, I’ll give that a skip. Thanks all the same.”

  “Suit yourself.” He slid a beer along the counter for one of his regulars to catch.

  “You’re sure Jimmy’s coming in here later?”

  “I’m sure he said he would,” said Mo. “You never really know with Jimmy.”

  By the time Eulalie had finished her meal and washed it down with a shot of bourbon, her stomach was protesting at the onslaught of grease. Every time she ate like this, she was reminded of the fact that she didn’t really enjoy it. But the rebellious child in her still wanted to go against the grain.

  Mo paused in the act of pouring out yet another beer and pointed with his chin. “There’s Jimmy now.”

  Eulalie sat back so her face was in shadow and watched Jimmy walk into the bar. He went to the usual corner table that he liked to refer to as his office, and sat down. She waited for him to get comfortable with a beer. If he spotted her too early, he might decide to rabbit, and she didn’t feel like chasing him down – not after that meal.

  Only when he had taken the first sip of his beer, and sat back with a contented sigh, ready to receive clients, did Eulalie slip off her bar stool and slide into the chair opposite him. He jumped at the sight of her, slopping beer onto the table.

  “Now look what you made me do!” He signaled to Mo. “You owe me another beer.”

  Eulalie understood that this would be the price of whatever information she wanted from him. She nodded at Mo.

  “That two-hundred-dollar retainer is still running,” she reminded Jimmy. “But I’ll buy you a beer. Sure, why not?”

  “Make it snappy, girlie. You’re bad for business. What do you want to know?”

  “Where would a middle-class lady from Edward Heights with access to serious money go to get prescription drugs like Oxycontin and Pethidine?”

  “You want me to hook someone up?” Jimmy was indignant. “You know I don’t get involved in drugs. Never have, never will. I can’t believe you’d ask me something like that – it’s like you don’t even know me.”

  “Calm down, Greta Garbo. I’m not asking you to hook anyone up. I just want to know where someone like that would have gone to get her pills. She didn’t order them off the internet and she didn’t have a local doctor prescribing them for her. That leaves a street connection. Or someone who acted as an intermediary between her and a street connection. I know you’re not involved in drugs. Even Antoine stays clear. Murder yes, drugs no. But you have your ear to the ground. You must be able to point me in the right direction.”

  Jimmy thought hard.

  “I did hear something recently. Now, what was it? There’s a restaurant in Little Taiwan that supposedly deals in opioids. They don’t keep the merchandise on the premises, but they take orders. I heard they can spot a cop from a mile away, though.”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  “You’re working for the cops.”

  “I’m working for my client. But thanks for the warning.”

  “If someone connected with the restaurant murdered a
society lady like Emma Egger, they’re not going to want you snooping around.”

  “I know.” Eulalie stood up and gave Jimmy a pat on the shoulder. “I’ll be careful.”

  In downtown Queen’s Town, there was a road that led off from Lafayette Drive in the direction of the funicular station. It was called the Road of the Emperors, and it led to Queen’s Town’s small China Town. Next to China Town, and consisting no more than a single city block, was Little Taiwan. While relations between mainland China and the real Taiwan might have been strained, China Town and Little Taiwan coexisted in harmony.

  The restaurant Jimmy the Knife had directed Eulalie to was called the Red Dragon. It was on the corner of Little Taiwan, right on the border of China Town. Tourists would have seen no difference between the two neighborhoods, but they were there all the same.

  Eulalie had always been welcome in China Town, thanks to her grandmother’s decades-long friendship with a senior member of the Chinese community called Mr. Ling. She didn’t want to do anything to endanger that status, but she had to be thorough in her investigation.

  Eulalie was well aware that Queen’s Town had watched her budding friendship with the chief of police with varying degrees of alarm and suspicion. She had always been seen as an independent agent, but now she was in danger of becoming too close to the police department.

  She wasn’t sure what to do about this. She wasn’t about to give up her friendship with Chief Macgregor. On the contrary, she had plans to take it to a much more intimate level.

  Queen’s Town would just have to deal with it. If it affected the way people saw her, she would work to regain their trust. The status of her grandmother would protect her, and her own reputation would sustain her.

  Eulalie was ushered into the Red Dragon and shown to a table for one. When she saw all the delicious dishes going past on their way to different tables, she regretted the all-day breakfast at Mo’s. This would have been a much more rewarding dinner. She ordered a portion of egg rolls and a pot of jasmine tea to be polite. Then she sat back and observed the clientele.