To Have Vs. To Hold

by MJ Rodgers

  “And mine, too,” Whitney said, following Adam’s lead.

  McGrory unfolded his arms and leaned forward. He stared at his hands as he picked at the short, stubby nails on the ends of his short stubby fingers. He cleared his throat twice before he began.

  “Lydon and I went way back. We met at one of these scientific conventions nearly three decades ago and hit it off right away. He was a hell of a scientist and a damn good guy—far too good for the likes of Crowe-Cromwell. He should have quit those freezer-burned brain-suckers. He wanted to, too.”

  “He told you that?” Adam asked.

  “All the time. Oh, the company was great to him when he first joined it. But those last few years the management got it into their heads that youth was the answer and started replacing everyone with kids right out of college. They treated Lydon like he was some old fogey. In his forties, with one of the greatest brains in research, and they considered him washedup! They kept slashing his budget, reducing his staff, trying to force him to resign. If he hadn’t had another three years on his contract, the damn yuppie management would have thrown him out.”

  “If they wanted him out, and he wanted to leave, why didn’t both sides just agree to terminate their contract?” Adam asked.

  “Because Lydon had to hold on to his employee health plan. With his wife, Maria, being so ill from the cancer and needing all those expensive treatments, Lydon had no choice but to stay. He could never have afforded her care on his own.”

  “Did he talk to you about this fertility process he was supposed to have been working on at the time of his death?” Whitney asked.

  “All the time. He was very excited about its potential, although the company didn’t share that enthusiasm. Lydon’s requests for additional assistants, equipment, supplies and test subjects all fell on deaf ears. He finally had to build an openair habitat at the back of his own home to house the test animals. At that time all he had was his son and one lab assistant to help him.”

  “His son?”

  “Peter. A foster kid he raised. He raised a daughter, too. I never met her, but he told me once she was his lab assistant. He never told Crowe-Cromwell she was his foster kid, though.”

  “Why not?” Whitney asked.

  “They had this thing against family members working together. Anyway, without Peter’s help in building the habitat, and his foster daughter’s willingness to work all those extra unpaid hours, it would never have happened. As it was, Lydon had to come to me for the test animals. I arranged for several zoos to loan us infertile female chimpanzees. I promised them that they would be well cared for, and any offspring would be returned along with their mothers. My reputation as an animal-rights activist was sufficient to reassure them. They loaned us six chimps. We returned twelve.”

  “Each one conceived and carried to term?” Whitney asked.

  “Without a single negative side effect. Lydon’s fertility process was a great success—the crown of his career. And then, suddenly, Maria died and Lydon was blown up along with his boat on the small lake in back of his house.”

  McGrory picked up the empty beer bottle and looked at it as though he wished it were a can he could crush.

  “It must have been an unbelievable shock for you to learn of his suicide,” Whitney said, her voice turning soft with understanding.

  McGrory’s eyes rose to her face. “’Unbelievable’ is right, Ms. West, particularly in light of the conversation we had the day before.”

  “What conversation?” Whitney asked.

  “It was at Maria’s funeral. Lydon pulled me aside. He was so scared, he was shaking. He told me the management at Crowe-Cromwell had threatened him, and someone in a truck had run him off the road on the way to the services.”

  “Did he tell you why Crowe-Cromwell had threatened him?” Adam asked.

  “No, we got interrupted by a couple of people offering their condolences. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him privately anymore that day. When I dropped by his place the next morning to find out what it was all about, I saw him getting on his boat out on the pier. I called out to him. He must not have heard me over the engine. I was just about to turn away when I saw the explosion.”

  McGrory dropped his eyes and took a long pause before he went on. “It was awful, terrible—the bolting flames, the billowing smoke and then the steady rain of nothing but ashes. The police wouldn’t even have known Lydon had gotten on that boat if I hadn’t seen him. They found a suicide note inside the house that said he was too despondent over his wife’s death to go on. I never believed it.”

  “What do you believe, Dr. McGrory?” Adam asked.

  “Believe? It’s what I know. Lydon had mourned Maria’s passing quietly and gradually over the many years of her illness. He’d prepared himself. He would never have committed suicide over it.”

  “Are you saying that you think—” Whitney began.

  “I’m saying that those bastards at Crowe-Cromwell killed him,” McGrory finished. “They rigged his boat to blow. I know it. You can’t quote me, though. I’m not eager to end up as a short paragraph in the obituary column, the victim of yet another convenient suicide.”

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK, Adam?” Whitney asked as they walked back to their cars in the restaurant parking lot.

  “I think Dr. McGrory’s dramatic flair has been overfed from watching too many nice people turning into monsters on made-for-TV movies.”

  “Sorry, Adam, but not in my kindest moment would I ever describe Carver as ‘nice people,’“ Whitney said. “Besides, I think McGrory’s allegations bring an entirely different perspective to the events of nine years ago.”

  “You’re taking his suspicions seriously?”

  “Oh, I recognize the fact that McGrory didn’t like what Crowe-Cromwell had done to his friend and may have an ax to grind. But Patrice did tell Emery Pharmaceuticals that her father had developed his formula in a home lab and, at least for part of the process, McGrory seems to bear that story out.”

  “Still, Miller was an employee of Crowe-Cromwell, and any discovery he produced—even one he worked on partially at home—was still their property.”

  “What if Miller was angry about that? What if he told the management to go suck eggs when they wanted him to turn over the formula? What if that’s why they threatened him?”

  “Whitney, they had the law on their side. As long as he was under contract to them, they called the shots. They had no reason to threaten him. And in those memos from Dr. Miller that Carver showed us, he expressed eagerness—not reluctance—to share the fruits of his discovery, despite his having had to shoulder some of the expense to produce it.”

  “True, but I can’t shake the feeling that there is something odd about Dr. Miller’s suicide following so soon after his being threatened by them and nearly run off the road.”

  “Still, what McGrory proposes is not logical. When an employee proves a problem for a corporation, they find a way to terminate him legally—they don’t physically rub him out like some 1920s gangster,” Adam said.

  “A 1920s gangster would have dropped him in the lake with cement shoes. These 1990s corporate types blew him up so nothing but his ashes reached the water.”

  “Whitney, there was no reason for Crowe-Cromwell to have gotten rid of Dr. Miller. He had just developed a new fertility process that would make them a lot of money, remember?”

  “Well, maybe it’s just the criminal bent to my mind, but I can’t discount McGrory’s version as easily as you,” Whitney said. “Oh, look. There’s that damn Chevy again. Do you see who the police have behind the wheel? What is this, some kind of sick joke?”

  Adam swung around at Whitney’s words to see where she was pointing. Sure enough, the brown Chevy was pulling up to the curb, not thirty feet in front of them. And behind the wheel was a woman in a black veil.

  Adam felt a jolt of familiarity.

  The veil was moving as though the shadowed eyes behind it were searching for something—or som
eone. Adam knew it was him.

  “She’s not with the police,” he said, coming to that conclusion quickly and surely.

  “Then who—?” Whitney began.

  “I don’t know who she is, but I intend to find out.”

  Adam started at a run for the Chevy. The motion must have caught her eye. The veil flipped in his direction. Then she gunned the engine, and the Chevy took off with a roar and a screech of tires, with Adam just inches from its bumper.

  Adam quickly changed direction and raced to his car. He found Whitney had anticipated the move and was there waiting. They jumped inside, and he took off after the Chevy.

  The woman with the black veil had a good head start. But Adam pressed the Jaguar into some tight turns, and after a dozen blocks, they had closed the distance considerably. The Chevy was two cars ahead. Just as Adam was making his move to pass and get alongside, the light went against them and the cars in both lanes before them braked.

  Adam screeched to a halt, watching the brown Chevy speed away.

  “What’s wrong with these damn drivers?” Whitney said beside him. “The light was barely yellow. They could have gone through.”

  Adam tried not to smile as he picked up the phone and punched in A.J.’s number. The second she answered, he told her he needed the registered owner’s name and gave her the license-plate number. She told him to hang on.

  Adam didn’t bother trying to pursue the Chevy. It was long gone. He headed back to the restaurant parking lot where they had left Whitney’s car. He was just pulling behind it when A.J. came back on the line.

  “The Chevy is registered to a Eugenia Miller of 222 Woodlawn Place, Seattle.”

  “Miller,” Adam repeated. “A relative of Dr. Lydon Miller?”

  “His mother,” A.J. answered.

  “What is Lydon Miller’s mother doing following me?” Adam asked aloud, already pulling away from the parking lot and heading for Woodlawn Place.

  “It would be some trick if she were,” A.J. said. “Eugenia Miller died four years ago.”

  WHITNEY STOOD next to Adam as he rang the doorbell of the small clapboard home at 222 Woodlawn Place for the third time. The Chevy was in the driveway. The heavy drapes at the front window had quivered after the first ring. It was clear that the woman in the veil was inside watching them. But no one was answering the ringing summons.

  “Let’s go call the police from the car phone,” Adam said in what was obviously a purposely loud voice.

  Whitney understood the real message in his words and turned with him to step off the porch and head back to his Jaguar at the curb. They were halfway there when she heard the front door open behind them and then the squeak of the screen door.

  “Wait. Please,” a high, pleading voice called out to them.

  Whitney and Adam turned to see a small, frail-looking figure clad in a black dress standing in the doorway, a veil completely covering her head.

  They walked back to the porch. “Who are you?” Adam asked.

  “Not out here,” she said. She stepped back from the doorway, leaning heavily on her cane.

  Whitney and Adam ascended the porch again and accepted the invitation to go inside.

  She led them into a dark, cool living room, where no lamps were lit. The only light was the little sun shining through the slit in the drapes.

  Whitney bumped into a chair arm and wondered how the woman saw her way with that black veil over her face. Whitney’s own mother constantly complained about needing more light for her older eyes.

  “Sit down,” the woman said, gesturing toward a couch.

  “First I’ll have to see the couch,” Adam said, moving over to the window to pull the heavy drape back and let in more light.

  “Please, not too much,” the woman pleaded. “I have sensitive eyes.”

  Sensitive to too much light? Whitney decided that was the first time she’d heard someone over fifty complain of that.

  Adam obligingly only opened the drape halfway.

  Whitney could now make out the doilies lining the arms of the old-fashioned furniture. It was a little-old-lady’s home, all right. And the extra light shining in from the window picked up the outline of the silver strands of hair beneath the black lace of the woman before them.

  “Who are you?” Adam asked.

  “I’m Eugenia Miller.”

  “Eugenia Miller?” Adam repeated in a voice that Whitney found remarkably noncommittal, considering they both knew the woman was lying.

  “Lydon Miller was my son.”

  “You were at the funeral of Patrice and Peter,” Adam said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you following me?”

  The woman calling herself Eugenia Miller leaned heavily on her cane. She appeared to be staring up at Adam while she considered his question. Whitney unobtrusively edged a little closer to her side.

  “All right, Mr. Justice,” she said. “I’ll tell you. I believe Crowe-Cromwell killed my son. I also believe they may have been responsible for the deaths of Patrice and Peter.”

  “Those are rather amazing statements. And neither explains why you’ve been following me.”

  Whitney moved even closer, as the veiled woman’s attention remained focused on Adam.

  “I know you loved Patrice, Mr. Justice. When the police found their bodies, I knew you’d investigate her death until you found out the truth. That’s why I’ve been following you. You see, all I want to know is the truth.”

  “That’s all Ms. West and I want to know, too,” Adam said.

  Whitney lunged for the veil. “Let’s start by finding out who you really are,” she said.

  She grabbed the top of the lace and gave it a yank. She got an uncomfortable jolt when both the veil and a silver wig ended up in her hand.

  Whitney had prepared herself for a surprise. But that didn’t keep her from staring in astonishment at the person she had just unveiled.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “You had no right to do that!”

  Adam watched Whitney step back from the harsh words and the person shouting them.

  And no wonder. Gone was the high, frail-sounding voice. And gone, too, was the frail-appearing woman who had needed to walk with a cane. In her place Adam found himself confronted with a short and very angry bald man.

  “Who are you?” Adam demanded.

  “I don’t have to tell you,” he said, holding the cane up as though he might use it if Adam came any closer.

  “No, maybe you don’t have to tell us,” Adam said, as a growing suspicion took hold. “You’re Dr. Lydon Miller, aren’t you?”

  All the umbrage seemed to deflate from the short, bald man as an unhappy groan escaped his lips. He dropped the cane, sank into the nearest chair and put his head in his hands.

  “You’re Lydon Miller?” Whitney asked, stepping closer. “But you’re supposed to be dead!”

  “I am dead,” the bald man grumbled unhappily. “Now for sure. How did you know who I was?”

  “I didn’t for certain, Dr. Miller,” Adam said. “Until Ms. West unveiled you just now.”

  “You recognized me?”

  “Let’s just say I recognized, from the dramatic act McGrory put on for us at lunch today, that it was just his word alone that put you on that blown-up boat. If he hadn’t told the police he had seen you get on it, they might have looked more closely at the debris and found it didn’t include a body.”

  “This is incredible,” Whitney said. “You and McGrory faked your death nine years ago. Why, Dr. Miller?”

  Lydon dropped his hands and looked up at Whitney. “You’d better sit down, Ms. West. You, too, Mr. Justice. There are no abbreviated versions to this story.”

  Adam waited for Whitney to sit on the couch across from Miller. Then he sat beside her and gave his attention to the little bald man dressed in women’s clothing.

  “Most of what McGrory told you is true,” Miller said. “My relationship with Crowe-Cromwell had gone downhill fast duri
ng those last years when Maria was so ill. They had shoved me into the smallest, least-equipped lab and had saddled me with one inept assistant after another.

  “The only saving grace was they left me alone. I was working on this fertility drug, synthesized from natural substances. The first few experiments had looked very promising, but for reasons I couldn’t fathom, I was having difficulty replicating the earlier results.

  “Then, when Patrice graduated from college, I got a friend in personnel to hire and assign her to me. It was while I was training Patrice on how to enter the data from the lab charts into the computer that I discovered all the mistakes the other lab assistants had made. By the time we corrected the entries for the last couple of years, I realized that my formula wasn’t flawed. It was just that the data had been improperly entered and analyzed. The process was working!

  “I was so excited I immediately sent a covering memo with a summary of the results to my supervisor, telling him I needed a larger budget for more experiments. He scribbled a note on the top of my memo instructing me to submit the proper forms and sent everything back. I could tell he never even looked at the results of my work.

  “I submitted all the required paperwork to him and waited. And waited some more. I wrote two more memos asking about the status. When I still got no reply, I stopped writing memos and built my own habitat for my primate subjects. Dr. Mc-Grory supplied them. Patrice helped me with the embryo transplants. The results surpassed even my expectations. Two years later I walked into my supervisor’s office and told him I had developed a new, foolproof, perfectly safe fertility method. I demanded he tell top management about it or I would.

  “My supervisor finally looked over my data and called a meeting of the board of directors. The next morning I proudly presented the results of my work and submitted an IND to be filed with the FDA to begin to test the process with people.”

  “What’s an IND?” Adam asked.

  “Investigation new drug application. It’s the next step after preclinical testing. But they didn’t file my IND. Instead, the board of directors sent me a memo ordering me to stop all further experimentation and shelve my fertility process.”