Granddad smiled. “You’re catching on, Becca. Hormones have caused some rational people to make the mistakes of their lives.” He continued to sip the warm milk.
I thought of Max Chernov and the way he had kissed my cheek when he brought me home. Hormones. Max could definitely stir up mine.
“You were saying,” Granddad prompted.
“Yes.” I cleared my throat. “It’s possible that Anna Blake found out that Robert wasn’t going to leave Edna. And Anna may have thought she would always be just his mistress. In the heat of anger, she could have plunged the letter opener into him.”
“Possible. Who else is on your list of suspects?”
I didn’t want to admit that while I’d been sitting on the couch I had reached a horrible conclusion, but I had to bring it out into the light. “Dr. Daley.”
“Your employer?” Granddad almost spilled his milk.
“Afraid so. He knew Robert and Edna’s problems almost as well as they did. Edna’s family admitted that Dr. Dick had been in love with Edna once. He’s never married. Maybe she’s the reason. Maybe he’s been in love with her all of these years. Maybe he couldn’t stand to see her hurt and embarrassed by that creep of a husband of hers. Maybe he decided to kill the competition.”
“And let Edna take the blame?”
“No.” I shook my head vigorously. “He didn’t know Edna had been in the office that morning. He kills Robert. And Edna, the woman he’s trying to protect, is arrested for the murder. Don’t you see the irony of it?”
Granddad peered over the top of his reading glasses. “It’s a nice theory, honey, but isn’t there something about ‘first, do no harm’ in that oath a doctor takes?”
“Oh, and you think all of them abide by that? C’mon, Granddad. Who’s being naïve now?” I paced the kitchen. Could I actually work for a murderer? Dr. Dick could have come up with the perfect crime. Kill a patient in your office with your own letter opener. No one would be stupid enough to do that. It was so simple it was brilliant.
“Okay, although I think you’re totally off base, let’s leave Dr. Daley on your suspect list for now. That’s three possibilities other than Edna. Have you mentioned this to the police?”
“No, of course not,” I replied.
Granddad set his mug down and stared at me. “What I mean is that I pulled all of this together tonight, while I had some time to sit and think it all through. But there is something else. I’ll tell you, but you’ve got to promise me you won’t tell anyone. It’s confidential information.”
Granddad gestured for me to continue. Not quite a promise, but close enough.
“Robert O’Malley was addicted to gambling, and he owed the mob money.”
Granddad burst out laughing, then choked on his mouthful of warm milk.
“It’s not funny.” I patted his back with quick, sharp slaps with the palm of my hand.
“Stop! You didn’t need to beat it out of me.” He steadied himself on the kitchen table while he got his second wind.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. Try to help a person and all you get is grief.
But maybe I had hit him a bit too hard in my zeal to do good.
“It’s okay. When I swim down at the Tuckahoe YMCA, and people ask about the bruises on my back, I’ll educate them about eldercare abuse.”
“Very funny, Granddad. You are the least abused person I know. Next time I’ll let you choke.” I raised my left eyebrow at him – a taste of his own medicine. I could tell by his expression he didn’t like it one bit.
“I hate to disillusion you, but there is no mob in town,” he informed me.
“I thought the same thing. Turns out we’re wrong. There’s a Russian mafia right here in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the South. Can you believe it?”
“No.” He meandered back to the living room with me hot on his heels.
“Well, it’s true. I have it on very good authority. And I’m trying to get a meeting set up between me and one of the leaders of this mafia.”
Granddad stopped so quickly, I plowed into him. “You’re doing what?” he bellowed, turning to face me.
I stepped back from him and didn’t answer.
“Rebecca May Reynolds.”
There he went, changing my middle name again. May was a new one. I’d have to try to remember to ask him who she was.
“What?” I asked.
“Don’t you have the common sense the Lord gave a gnat?” He stared me down until I surveyed my shoes. “I guess not. You cannot seriously be thinking of doing something so foolish, so dangerous.” Now it was Granddad who paced the floor.
“Why are you getting so upset? You just said you didn’t believe the mafia existed. At least not here in River City.”
He stopped and pointed his finger in my face. His cheeks were flushed with anger and concern. “I forbid you to do anything involving organized crime.”
I blinked once. He forbade me? “Granddad, you can’t treat me like a child.”
“The heck I can’t. I’m not saying I believe there is a mob, but just in case, you, young lady, are not meeting them or getting involved with them in any way, shape or form. Do I make myself clear?”
I knew better than to continue to argue with him. His face had turned an unhealthy shade of red, and I could only guess how high his blood pressure must be. I’d agree with him for now and simply do what I was going to do anyway. He just didn’t have to know about it.
“Yes, Granddad. You’re clear.”
He shook his head up and down once for emphasis. “Good. Glad to hear it.”
He picked up Higgins and sat on the sofa in silence for several minutes rubbing the purring animal, trying to settle his temper and restore his inner calm. “I mean it, Rebecca Christina. Stay away from the mob. In fact, stay away from all Russians. They’re not to be trusted.”
Great. Granddad was reverting to a cold war mentality. “Don’t you remember our president saying ‘tear down that wall, Mr. Gorbachev’?”
“Don’t go making fun of one of the greatest presidents of the twentieth century, Becca. That man was beloved by millions of people.”
Granddad went on for several minutes extolling the virtues of Ronald Reagan (or Lecture 1981-89 as I’d dubbed it) and all that he’d done for the country, the economy, global peace, etc.
I’d heard it a ton of times before. It was one of his favorite topics. And one that I could count on to restore his inner calm despite his argumentative tone.
Meanwhile, I gave some thought not only to the Russian mafia in general but to one Russian in particular.
I had to find a way to convince Max to help me. He’d come tonight when I’d called him for help. Maybe I could somehow persuade him to set up a meeting with one of his countrymen.
One who operated outside of the law.
Chapter 16
The next morning Granddad dropped me off at the office, promising he’d come back for me at the end of the workday.
While I ate my sausage biscuit, I glanced over the daily schedule. Anna Blake’s name was prominent on the list. 10:00 with Marcy Palmer. Since Marcy’s 9:00 tended to run past the scheduled time, I should have another opportunity to chat with the patient again. Before I could forget all the questions that whirled through my mind, I whipped out a fresh sheet of paper.
“Miss Reynolds, haven’t we discussed food in the office before?” Dressed in a three-piece black suit, with a crisp white shirt and red tie, his dark hair freshly cut, Dr. Daley glared at me.
“I’m not even supposed to be here, yet. I left home so early I didn’t have time to eat.” I held out his phone messages and noticed the grease from my fingers had transferred to some of the sheets of paper. He eyed them with a less than happy expression.
“Let me say it again since it isn’t sinking in. Food is not appropriate for the office. If you must eat, go into the conference room.” He pointed to the interior room and quickly added, “Make sure you clean up any mess you might make in there.
” And I thought Granddad was anal-retentive. Dr. Dick was making a federal case out of a little grease.
I picked up the wrapper and my plastic cup of OJ and headed off to the conference room. Almost there, I turned around and watched Dr. Dick unlock the door to his private office.
Could he have murdered his patient?
True, he was gruff and angry with me. But to be honest, I’d never seen him harsh with a client. In fact, they adored him. Even though he was on my list of suspects, I found it hard to believe the psychiatrist had killed anybody. The only person he ever gave murderous looks to was me. And on most days, I probably deserved them – at least from his perspective.
As soon as we were officially open for business, the phone began ringing. And it rang off the hook all morning long. Some were patients calling for appointments and others were cancellations. I wished people would make up their minds. But I guess part of the reason some people were in therapy in the first place was their inability to make good choices. Or to even make a decision, right or wrong. I tried to use that as leverage on several of the patients who called to cancel, without much success. Thank goodness there’d been no call from Anna Blake.
I peered at the clock above the door. Ten to ten.
Come on Anna. Be early for your session. That would give me more time to interrogate her. I mean, chat with her. At the sound of footsteps in the hall, I studied the doorway expecting Anna to be there, instead, it was Ryder looking more than a little bit dangerous with a five o’clock shadow. Odd, considering it was early in the day. He wore dark jeans and another tight black t-shirt. His eyes appeared bloodshot. Someone had pulled an all-nighter, and it was a no-brainer who he’d spent it with. Mrs. Sunglasses with the here-one-minute-gone-the-next wedding rings.
Probably in the no-tell motel out on Route 1 where they rented rooms by the hour. Nah, on second thought that wasn’t his style. Nor was it Mrs. Sunglasses. And there was the crux of my problem.
I wanted to be Mrs. Sunglasses, minus the Mrs., I realized in a fit of painful honesty. I wanted to be the sort of woman who attracted someone like Ryder. But I wasn’t and didn’t have a hope in hell of ever competing with someone like that. I was a greasy biscuit-eating klutz with far too much curiosity. I’d never be the sophisticated type.
“Morning, Becca.” Ryder leaned against the doorjamb, watching me with nerve-racking intensity. Please, please, please, don’t let him have read my thoughts.
“I’m busy.” There. I might not be sophisticated, but I could act cool, calm, and professional. I sat up straighter at my desk and shuffled a few papers around, somehow smudged with some sausage biscuit grease my breakfast had left behind.
Ryder surveyed the waiting room, the very empty waiting room. “I see that.”
“Very funny. Just because we don’t currently have any patients doesn’t mean I’m not busy.” I tried to appear as unapproachable as he’d been last night, but it didn’t seem to work on Ryder because he advanced toward me.
What was I so antsy about? He was out of my reach, remember?
He leaned forward and put both hands flat on my desk and made eye contact. “I want to talk about last night. I know what you were up to.”
Did he mean Max? He had some nerve. At least Max wasn’t married. I frowned. Was he? Damn. I’d never thought to ask. “Yes, and I have a pretty good idea what you were up to, too,” I retorted.
“Now we’re even. If you don’t mind, I’ve got things to do before the next patient arrives.”
“You’re playing with fire, and you will get burned.”
He had to be joking. Righteous indignation flowed through me.
“Excuse me, what I do with Max is my own business. Besides, I’m not the one dating a married woman.” Oops. Maybe I shouldn’t have tacked on that part. After all, it was none of my business who he dated. I stood, clenching a stack of claim copies in my fist.
“What?” He straightened up. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him look confused.
It was kind of adorable. Then I remembered the Mrs.
“You heard me. Floppy hat, big sunglasses, non-descript clothes. Married. At least, she wore rings the first time I saw her.”
I took no pleasure in busting his affair. Ryder remained silent and I could see him thinking, sorting through what I’d said.
It took most people a while to do that.
To give the devil his due, Ryder handled the sorting process a lot faster. Pivoting on my heel, I strode to the file cabinet and opened and closed drawers as I filed the first few wrinkled forms in the patient billing charts.
My hands trembled slightly and the rest of the forms fell to the carpet. I bent down to retrieve them the same instant Ryder did.
“First, I’m not having an affair with anyone.” His voice came, low and dark, close to my ear. My gut clenched and it wasn’t from my greasy breakfast. “I don’t have the time. And second of all, it’s not my style. The woman you saw was a special client of mine. One that required the utmost discretion.”
Could I have misjudged Ryder so completely? Or was I falling for a line? I examined those damnable blue eyes of his. I was such a sucker for pretty eyes, and Ryder had a set that could draw me deep into them.
Now it was my turn to think while we gathered up the scattered claim forms. “Okay, so say I believe you. That she is just a client.” He raised an eyebrow at me as if to ask who was I to question him, but I plowed on. “Why did she need the disguise?”
“I can’t discuss my clients. You either believe me or you don’t. It’s that simple.”
I saw something flash in his eyes before he made his face go impassive. It was innocence, or so I wanted to believe. It also seemed important that I believe him, and my resistance crumbled.
“Okay, fine.” I jammed the last of the claim forms in their respective folders and stood. “Now what?”
Ryder shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. “Wait a minute. I came in here to make sure you’d given up investigating the O’Malley murder. But you must have misunderstood what I meant, because you said, ‘what I do with Max is my own business.’” His eyes narrowed. “Tell me you weren’t with Chernov last night.”
“Okay, I wasn’t with Chernov.”
I don’t think he believed me.
Maybe it had something to do with my face turning brick red at the lie. Why, oh why couldn’t I be a better liar? “Okay, fine. I was with him. When no one else was available to help me, he came.”
That caught him by surprise.
“Help you? What are you talking about?”
“My car wouldn’t start last night. That’s why I ran into you and your client coming out of the building. I was on my way back inside to call my grandfather. You were way too busy with your own agenda to even notice I was upset or having a problem. But Granddad wasn’t home, so I called Max. He came to my rescue. And saw me home safely.” I folded my arms across my chest with a there, take that attitude.
To my surprise, Ryder didn’t offer a rebuttal. Instead, he wrapped his arms around me, more a friendship kind of thing than a romantic hug.
“Sorry, Becca. My mind was completely on what I was doing. If I’d realized you had a problem, I never would have left you stranded here. Why didn’t you speak up?” He held me gently against him, and I breathed in deep, absorbing the scent that was uniquely his, a clean soap and water smell with a trace of a light woodsy cologne.
I wanted to believe him, I really did.
“Well, isn’t this cozy?”
At the snarly tone, I jumped like someone had shot me and spun to face the doorway. “Anna? I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you come in.” I pushed free of Ryder’s embrace. “How are you?”
“Not good. Is Marcy here yet?” The agitation in Anna’s voice was clear.
“Sure is. She’s with her 9:00. Why don’t you have a seat until she’s ready to see you? May I get you something to drink?” I fussed over her and mouthed to Ryder the word “later.” He nodded and left
the suite without another word.
I went to the cooler and poured Anna a large cup of water. I held it out to her, but she chose that moment to jump up from the couch and struck my arm with her sudden movement. Water spilled all over the carpet and my sleeve. She never even noticed. Her pacing struck me as almost manic.
I set the half-empty cup down on an end table and followed her across the room. “Is there something I can do for you?” I asked in concern.
She stopped her pacing and began to laugh hysterically. “Do? Yes, you can bring Robert back.”
I stepped back from her.
Her eyes held a trace of madness that I hadn’t noticed before. I wondered if seeing Ryder and me hugging, even though it was certainly not romantic, had pushed Anna Blake over the edge. “I wish I could help you.”
Her laugh deepened, and she reached into her purse and pulled out a cigarette and lighter.
Crap. “I’m sorry, there’s a no smoking policy in the office,” I offered tentatively.
She threw the items back into her purse. “Of course there is. A person dealing with crises certainly wouldn’t need a smoke, now would they? No, their nerves would be made of steel. What an idiotic rule. Better tell that one to Marcy and the members of her addiction group. I’m surprised you haven’t smelled the smoke the next day after the meetings. Or on Marcy, for that matter.” She shot me an impatient glare. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. Your boss smokes with the best of them. And I’m not just talking about cigarettes. Why do you think she’s running the addiction group? It takes one to know one. Do you think my Robert had problems with the ponies? You should see where your boss spends some of her weekends.”
I’ll admit, she gave me pause.
All of the questions I’d planned to ask her flew out of my head. With her moving around so fast, it was like watching one of those ducks in a shooting gallery. Plus, she paced between my desk and me. And my desk was where I’d left the paper with my notes.
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