Dead Last

by Amanda Lamb

  “Suzanne, there is one thing I need to tell you that may, or may not, be important. Remember I told you I had a cop friend who was helping me figure out who the woman was who texted Tanner, G6? Well I found her. Her name is Maria Lopez. She and her family own a restaurant in town. She works there. And honestly, other than that text you showed me, I have no indication that they’re involved. I’ve not talked to her directly.”

  Suzanne’s face went slack. She went from looking dazzling and cheerful to looking like someone who had been kicked in the stomach. Her downturned lips and sad eyes brought out fine wrinkles in her face.

  “And?” She, turned her dark gaze to meet mine. “I know there’s more. I can tell by the way you’re talking about her, like you know something else you’re not telling me.”

  “She’s pregnant,” I blurted out without taking a moment to carefully choose my words. “That’s what I know. No idea who the father is, but she’s definitely pregnant.”

  Suzanne started crying, burying her face in her napkin. Lobe-extender waiter walked by uncomfortably, looking like he wanted to stop and ask if there was something he could do, but he didn’t stop. Instead, he breezed past us awkwardly, trying not to make eye contact.

  “Sonofabitch,” she murmured, from inside the napkin. “I guess I do need a better plan. This complicates everything. How could that asshole do this to me? I put him through medical school. He wouldn’t be anywhere without me.” She spit the words out, her head now out of the napkin. Mascara smudges beneath her eyes made her look a little crazy.

  “Like I said, Suzanne, I have no idea if he was really involved with this woman, or if it’s his baby or not. I just wanted you to know in case she is involved with Tanner. You know, if it is his baby, it has nothing to do with you. People have affairs for all types of reasons, usually based on their own insecurities. It is not a reflection of you as a person.”

  We both agreed that she would think the situation through longer before she made any quick decisions, that she would re-group with her attorney on the Maria issue, and maybe call the local domestic violence victims’ support organization for advice on how to leave the relationship safely. The last thing I wanted was for her to put herself in more danger by leaving. Even though she was now downplaying Tanner’s abusive nature, chalking it up to her overreaction, I couldn’t get past the possibility that he might be like Roger.

  O

  As I walked to my car, I passed the usual homeless people who begged on local street corners. They had always been part of the landscape of downtown Oak City as long as I had lived here, but as downtown became fancier and trendier with the addition of new restaurants, hip boutiques, and luxury high-rise condominiums, they stood out more. It was hard to see them lying in doorways on weathered sleeping bags or cardboard pallets next to shopping carts full of their belongings stuffed haphazardly into plastic bags.

  “I just need a dollar for bus money to get home,” a man said to me, his dirty palm outstretched in a tattered blue glove that was cut to expose his fingers.

  I encountered him about a block from the restaurant. He was one of the regular panhandlers that I recognized. One winter day, I saw him walking around in the cold without shoes. He told me he needed size fourteen sneakers. I went to Walmart that night and bought him some. They sat on the front seat of my car for a month as I drove around every morning looking for him, but he was nowhere to be found. I finally gave up and donated them to Goodwill. And now, here he was again, right in front of me, asking for my help. I looked down and noticed he had on new-looking tennis shoes, which made me feel a little less guilty about not being able to follow through on getting him shoes. I had beaten myself up over not being able to find him, imagining him walking the ice-covered streets with his bare feet all winter long. Now, I felt like I was being given a second chance to help.

  I reached into my wallet and took out a five-dollar bill and a handful of change. The man motioned for me to put it in the coffee cup at his feet. It was tucked just behind a metal trashcan.

  As I poured the money into the cup, I thought about my sweet Blake. He had such a tender heart that he always asked me for money when he saw a homeless person, whether they were panhandling or not. Sometimes I saw tears welling up in his eyes as he rummaged in my purse for loose change to give them. I couldn’t say no. Before Blake, I used to walk right past homeless people on the street, not seeing them, too distracted by my busy life. Now, thanks to him, I saw them everywhere.

  My phone rang just as I was putting my wallet away.

  “So get this,” Kojak jumped in, as usual.

  “What? Nothing can possibly surprise me, you know that.”

  “It’s Maria. She had her baby the other night. Tuesday, I think.”

  “Wow, I didn’t realize she was that pregnant. How did you find out?”

  “Overheard some of the patrol guys talking about it over lunch, taking bets on who the father is.”

  “Did Tanner’s name come up?”

  “Nope, not that I could tell.”

  Part of my conversation with Suzanne came rushing back to me, Tanner had left in the middle of the night for a medical emergency. It was all making sense now. He must have left to be with Maria at the hospital while she delivered her child. Their child?

  “Kojak, this is all adding up. Tanner may have been with Maria the other night. He told Suzanne he had a medical emergency at the hospital, and left in the middle of the night. We need to find out if he was with her at the hospital.”

  Suzanne was making plans to leave Tanner, mistress or not. News of the baby’s arrival would only add to her pain, but it could also possibly get her a better settlement and make her custody of Winston more secure.

  “I’m on it. Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.”

  “You’re the best.”

  “I know. Don’t forget…” Kojak hung up before he finished his sentence.

  His brain worked too fast for cell phones. Maybe someday the technology would catch up.

  O

  It wouldn’t be completely crazy to want your dead husband’s medical records, would it? I decided this was my in to see Tanner Pope again, to find out if he was the sweet, affable guy I remembered him to be or the monster that Suzanne had described.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” I said to Buster, as I hopped out of the news car in the parking lot of the orthopedic clinic where Tanner worked. I thought Buster was so preoccupied with a fight he and Hugh had the night before, about Hugh not spending enough time with Noah, that he wouldn’t ask any questions about my little errand.

  “Heard that before,” Buster said, suddenly paying attention to me as he twirled a toothpick between his lips, a habit he knew I despised. “Your minute always has a way of turning into fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, an hour.”

  “Touché. If I’m not back in twenty, call 911.”

  “Okay, well I’ll be right here answering this litany of ridiculous texts from my husband, who is living it up in a five-star hotel in Dallas right now, while I’m working out of a cramped news car on a sweltering May afternoon, deciding what greasy fast food to have for lunch.”

  “How do you really feel?” I winked and jumped out of the car. I had made an appointment with Dr. Pope that morning, but I didn’t tell the receptionist the real reason I wanted to see him. I figured if I did, she might just give me the records herself and I would never get a chance to see Tanner in person. Luckily someone had just canceled, and there happened to be a rare opening in his schedule. So I told her I was having pain in my hip flexor possibly from running too much. This wasn’t too far from the truth.

  When I got there, the receptionist asked me to fill out new patient paperwork. I took the clipboard and pen and sat in a large chair with scratchy fabric in the waiting room across from her. At the top of the first page it said: Describe why you are here to see the doctor today. Give details about where the pain is, the amount of time you have had it and rate the intensity on a scale of one to t
en.

  I had never been a very good liar. I immediately brought the clipboard and the blank paperwork back up and slid the pages across the desk to her.

  “I’m actually here to see Dr. Pope about a private matter. He treated my husband a few years ago, and my husband passed away.” After saying it out loud, I realized how that must sound. “Of a totally unrelated condition obviously, nothing to do with Dr. Pope. But I did have some questions about my husband’s medical history, and wondered if I might have a few minutes with the doctor.”

  “You’re that lady from the news.” She peered over the top of her red glasses perched on the end of her nose, held around her neck by a thick gold chain.

  Her gray hair was pulled back in a bun, and she wore scrubs with tiny colorful cats on them, a sharp contrast to her serious demeanor.

  “This is an unusual request. You’re telling me the truth right. You’re not here for a news story?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m not. I promise you. You can look up my husband’s name, Adam Arnette.”

  She clicked around her computer keyboard for a moment, like an airline employee looking for a new flight for a bumped passenger, her gaze darting across the screen. Then she stood without a word and walked into the back of the office through a doorway.

  I sat back down in the scratchy fabric chair again to wait. When the woman returned, I watched as she whispered behind the counter with a nurse, most likely about me. After about fifteen minutes, the same nurse appeared at the waiting room door.

  “Maddie Arnette,” she called too loudly looking over my head to the empty waiting area behind me as if there might be someone else there named Maddie who had stepped out to go to the bathroom.

  “Coming,” I said eagerly, lest she change her mind and make me lose my one shot at Tanner. I gathered up my purse, phone, and glasses and hurried through the door behind her.

  When Tanner entered the room, he was exactly like I remembered him, with the exception of a few more lines around his eyes and mouth. He was wearing skinny, tailored tan dress pants, a yellow tie peeking out of the top of his white lab coat, and a professional expression. He obviously didn’t remember me. He reached out to shake my hand with the same gentle, slender fingers I recalled. As he did so I noticed the glint of the matching wedding ring Suzanne had told me about. It was brushed silver with a subtle diamond crisscross pattern that was hard to see unless you looked very closely.

  “What can I do for you, Miss Arnette? I understand I treated your husband.” He looked at me with a blank stare. “I’m sorry I don’t remember him off-hand. I have a lot of patients. But maybe you can refresh my memory.”

  I was uncharacteristically flustered by his handsome features—his chiseled jawline and tanned face framed by dark slicked back, hair. He looked at me with his twinkling green eyes, giving me an open and engaging smile. I told myself not to be seduced by his outward appearance. I needed to be objective.

  “Yes, he had a torn tendon in his middle finger about five years ago. No reason you would remember it,” I rambled, realizing I hadn’t really thought this through. “Anyway, he died from brain cancer, late last year.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that,” Tanner replied, his voice and initial hurried demeanor softening.

  He leaned back against the exam table and set down his clipboard.

  “Yes, thanks. I appreciate it. I am interested in getting his medical records from every doctor he had any contact with over the past ten years. He was part of a study, you know, to try and figure out why people get this horrible disease. And nothing is too insignificant to look at former surgeries, any drugs he may have taken.”

  This part was true. Adam had been enrolled in a study. He signed the paperwork before he died to allow them to look at his brain tissue and his medical records after he passed. When I didn’t hear from the researchers for a month after he died, I called them. They told me their grant money had run out. The study was over.

  Tanner, perched on the edge of the exam table, crossed his hands in front of him, nodding at my nervous monologue.

  “I wasn’t sure if your receptionist would just give them to me, or what, so I made an appointment.”

  “It’s not a problem.” His bright green eyes now focused on me with what appeared to be honest concern.

  His gaze was so intense I had to look away for a moment.

  “You just need to fill out some paperwork to show that you are his spouse requesting the records, and provide the death certificate. As long as he signed a HIPPA waiver allowing you access, it shouldn’t be a problem. Again, I am so sorry for your loss. One of my colleagues died from brain cancer several years ago, and I know it’s a tough diagnosis. How are you doing?”

  I was so taken aback by his seemingly genuine compassion that I stammered again, shaking my hand and standing up to signal that I was ready to leave. Nothing about this man was as Suzanne described. Of course, I knew that people were not always as they seemed, but I was usually a pretty good judge of character, of reading people’s nuances, and nothing about this man was giving me bad vibes. In fact, just the opposite.

  “Mrs. Arnette, I do remember him now—Adam, your husband,” he said, as I was going for the door. He stood up from the edge of the exam table as if he were deep in thought. “He had a terrific sense of humor, told me when I took the pin out of his finger, with the plier-like tool and the blood started spurting everywhere, that I must be a soap opera doctor who snuck into the building, not a real doctor. When I asked him if he wanted a painkiller afterwards, he asked me if I was planning on coming to work with him to handle all his projects for the day since he would be so out of it. A real comedian. Great guy. Really sorry for your loss. I truly am.”

  My eyes started welling up with tears as soon as I heard Tanner mention Adam’s sense of humor. It was a special brand of sarcasm that we had cultivated together. Just picturing Adam joking around made me sad to my core, remembering I no longer had him to share my jokes with.

  Tanner pulled out a business card and a pen from the breast coat pocket of his white doctor’s coat. With his left hand he wrote a number on the back of the card while his wedding ring glinted as it caught the beam of fluorescent overhead light. I noticed he was a lefty because Adam had been one too.

  “Here’s my cell number.,” He handed me the card. “My nurse will locate those records, and if I can do anything else to help, please don’t hesitate to give me a call. I know some pretty good grief counselors.”

  I grabbed the card and turned without a word and ran out of the exam room. I was trying so hard not to let him see me cry as I hurried down the sterile hallway toward the exit sign. The lights in the waiting room seemed so much brighter than they had been when I first entered the office that I had to shield my eyes. I didn’t even stop at the reception desk to continue the ruse of getting the medical records. I ran straight through the double glass doors that led outside.

  When I got to Buster’s car it was running, but empty. I assumed he must have run inside the building to use the restroom. He always left it running, with the air condition on, and, to my amazement, it never got stolen.

  I slipped into the passenger seat, sobbing, and turned up NPR on as loud as it would go so no one could hear me in the parking lot. I was praying Buster wouldn’t come back and find me this way. I didn’t want to have to explain anything to him. That’s when I heard the knock on my window. I looked up and saw Tanner looking down at me with concern.

  “Mrs. Arnette, I am so sorry I upset you. It was very insensitive of me to talk about your husband like that so soon after his death. I followed you to give you this.” He made a roll down the window motion, which in the middle of my sobs made me laugh because no one rolls down a window by hand anymore, but for some reason we still make the motion anyway. It was a funny moment that Adam and I would have shared if he was still alive, dissecting the off-beat humor and reliving the confused look on Tanner’s face.

  “It’s not your fault.” I pulled
myself together and pushed the button to lower the window. I reached out and took the file from his hand. “Really, it’s not.” I reached for a tissue with my other hand from the center console and dabbed my swollen eyes. “It just hits me sometimes. I never know what will trigger it.”

  “Very true, grief can be a long process.” He was now leaning over my window and shielding the sun from his eyes with his right hand. “Hang in there. I wish you the best of luck in getting information on brain cancer. Awful disease that needs to be figured out. And by the way, I’m technically not supposed to give you this without the death certificate, but I don’t see any reason to make you jump through hoops. I had my nurse go ahead and copy it while we were talking.”

  He tapped the roof of my car and held up left hand in a goodbye gesture and walked away. In my side mirror, I watched him cross the parking lot and head back through the glass double doors, into his office building. His shoulders were slumped in his white lab coat, as if he were literally carrying the guilt on his shoulders of having upset me. Nothing about this version of Tanner Pope lined up with Suzanne’s version.

  I blew my nose with a tissue from Buster’s center console, and when I looked back again, Tanner had stopped in the hallway of the building. I could see him through the glass doors. He was standing up straight now, with his cell phone to his ear, laughing, as if our sad encounter had never happened. He turned in my direction and smiled at something he must have heard over the phone, but I was sure he couldn’t see me looking at him because of the sunlight pouring in through the glass doors. I wondered if Suzanne was right. Maybe Tanner Pope was not the perfect man he seemed to be.

  10

  Revelations

  “Seriously, it’s crazy this woman survived,” Janie rambled on, as I half-listened on the other end of the line.

  I had her on speakerphone while I sat in the carpool line waiting to pick up the kids because my sitter, Candace, had come down with the flu. I told her to stay home and get well, that we would manage without her. It wasn’t true. I didn’t have a contingency plan for when Candace got sick. I had no family around, and while I did have a few other school moms I could call on, I hated to do that. I didn’t want to be the helpless widow who was always looking for people to bail me out. So I left work early and told Janie to call me in the car and we would talk about story ideas.