by Leslie Glass
It was a cultural thing, though. Where April came from, women were not supposed to go both ways on that. She was absolutely certain that if a person went the wrong way, only bad things—no good things—could happen. She could cite a hundred—no, a thousand—cases of disaster brought on by going the wrong way on this monkey-business issue.
“You know what I’d say?” Mike said.
No point in saying she didn’t want to hear it. April was silent as they drove through a neighborhood of big houses with big front lawns that were free of dead leaves and still deep green in color. She hoped he wouldn’t tell her and thought she might be spared when he pulled up fast and close to the curb in front of a white stucco place with a red-tiled roof, then cut the Camaro’s engine.
He turned to her, his features serious as if he’d moved into another compartment in his mind, was about to be arrogant and advise her on how to do the interview with Dickey’s wife. Unfortunately, there was no other compartment in his mind at the moment.
“I’d say you’re prejudiced about Latinos because we’re so sexy and you’re pissed off about missing out.… Maybe you’re afraid you can’t compete.”
Asshole. April smiled benignly, wishing him dead, and grabbed her bag. “That must be it.”
She saw his chest puff out under the leather jacket with the certainty that he’d nailed her, so now she’d have to relent and meet his mother. This victory freed him up to move into a different compartment in his mind. He noticed his surroundings were not like Queens or the Bronx and got out of the car, shaking out his pant legs and breathing in the air of wealth.
“Nice,” he murmured. “Be nice to live in a place like this. What do you say, querida?”
April shrugged and headed up the walk.
forty-two
Sally Ann Dickey looked like an aged Doris Day. Her eyes were cornflower blue, her cheeks pink, her hair a shade that used to be called strawberry. It was exactly the color of Doris Day’s hair in the fifties. She wore a pearl-gray wool dress and served tea to the two detectives as if it were a social occasion. If they didn’t exactly fit in in her fussy Westchester living room, Mrs. Dickey was the last person to let them know. She patted the pillow on the settee with its back to the window and cocked her head at them politely.
She had placed April and Mike in the delicate chairs that faced her and the very few cars that passed on the street. April cleared her throat. “Thank you for taking the time to see us,” she murmured. “We know this must be difficult for you.”
“Not at all.” Sally Ann Dickey poured tea and turned to Mike. “Sugar?”
“Ah, yes, please.”
“Milk?”
He glanced at April. She was too busy watching Mrs. Dickey’s pouring technique to help him. He shrugged. “Sure.”
Mrs. Dickey put the silver strainer in its silver holder, set down the teapot, picked up a silver creamer, clouded the tea, and handed Mike his porcelain cup.
“Thank you,” he said.
Then Mrs. Dickey picked up the teapot again.
“It’s a delicate situation …” April began.
“So I understand. Sugar?”
“No. Thank you. Plain is fine.” April took the cup and set it on the table in front of her without tasting it.
The new widow had fine white skin meshed with a thousand tiny wrinkles. Her hard blue eyes held April in an unblinking stare until April understood she was expected to sample the tea. She took a sip. As she did so, she was distracted by the sight of a dark blue Ford that looked a lot like some agency’s unit passing slowly in front of the house. Nah. Lots of people drove Fords.
“I’m sorry we’re going to have to ask you some difficult questions,” April said softly.
Mrs. Dickey bent her torso graciously toward Mike. “More tea, Sergeant?”
“Not yet, thank you.”
April could feel some tension developing in Mike. She followed his gaze to the street, where the dark blue Ford cruised by in the opposite direction. Now his antennae were up.
“What would you like to know?” Mrs. Dickey inquired.
“Was your husband taking any kind of medication?”
“Oh, my, what kind of question is that?”
“It’s a background question only someone who knew your husband very well could answer. We need to establish what kinds of medication he normally took.”
The blue eyes regarded her. “Harold was a healthy man. I’m not aware of any.”
Not aware of any. Interesting way to put it. April inhaled. “If it would make you more comfortable, why don’t you tell us in your own words a little about your husband and his habits the last few weeks?”
“Harold was a great doctor, a great teacher, a wonderful man.” Mrs. Dickey poured herself some more tea.
“What about his personality? His moods?”
“Oh. Well. Of course he was preoccupied. He was always preoccupied.”
“Would you say he was depressed?” Mike threw in.
“Depressed? My husband? Never. He had too much to do. More tea?”
“No, thanks. I’m fine.” Mike smiled at April. Be direct and let’s get the hell out of here.
All right, all right. April nodded. “Mrs. Dickey, did your husband take antidepressants?”
“Of course not. Harold didn’t take anything, wouldn’t even touch an aspirin.”
“What about alcohol?” Mike murmured.
The widow sniffed. “Occasionally he had a drop. To relax.”
“How would you describe his mood lately?” April asked.
Mrs. Dickey looked from one to the other as if she’d suddenly thought of something. “Which one of you is the good one and which one the bad?”
“Excuse me?” April said.
“One of you is the good cop and one is the bad. He must be the bad one. Are you Mexican?” The cornflower-blue eyes were on Mike.
Mike was startled. “How can you tell?”
“I come from Texas, honey. Lubbock. My husband, too. We’ve been here a long time. So have you.”
“Since I was four,” Mike said.
“Still, some things don’t change.” Mrs. Dickey sighed. “We married when we were twenty-one. Harold was going to be a great doctor and help his fellowman. And he did.” A ghost of a young smile passed over the frozen features. “What is it you really want to know?”
“Your husband was in his office most of Sunday.”
“He left around nine in the morning and I knew he was going to the office.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“He didn’t tell me anything.”
“Then how did you know where he was going?”
“He wasn’t dressed for tennis and he took his briefcase and laptop computer with him. He’d gone to the office on Saturday, too. I assumed he was working on something.”
“Do you know what?”
“I heard him talking on the phone. There had been a death, a patient, I believe.”
“Raymond Cowles.”
“Who?”
“Raymond Cowles was the patient who died.”
Mrs. Dickey shook her strawberry-colored head. “No, I don’t believe that’s the one he was concerned about.”
“Another patient died?”
“Well, I just guess so. Overdosed on Elavil.” Mrs. Dickey touched her hair. It was as rigid as cotton candy, molded into a single piece.
“Do you know the patient’s name?” April asked.
“It was very unpleasant, I seem to recall.”
“The death was unpleasant?”
“Yes. It was very unsettling at the time.”
“So it was not a recent death.”
“Oh, no. It happened last year, I think.”
So there had been another death a year ago. “What was unsettling about it?” April pressed on.
Mrs. Dickey looked confused. “I really couldn’t say. Harold was a very private man. More tea?”
“Ah, no, thank you. Your husband had a phone call about a dead patient. W
hen was that?”
“No, he had a phone call about something else. It reminded him of the dead patient.”
“I see,” April murmured.
“You’re the good cop, I can tell. You have a sweet face. Do you have children?”
April moved her chin to the no position. She saw Mike tense as the blue Ford passed the house a third time. Inside, a man in a slate-gray suit was talking on a cellular. His face was hidden by the appliance. He didn’t look their way as he slowed, then sped up at the next house. He wasn’t a cop. Cops didn’t have cellular phones.
April tried one more time. “Other than the phone call on Sunday morning, Mrs. Dickey, can you tell me if there was anything different in your husband’s life in the last few months, anything at all? Did he seem worried, anxious? Was he more withdrawn than usual?”
Mrs. Dickey thought for a moment. “Harold was very worried about the snake. Is that what you mean?”
“The snake?”
“I call her the snake. She’s like a rattlesnake except you can’t hear her coming. She came back, you know, just to tease him after all those years. That’s the kind of woman she is. Well, no more about that. I’m not a gossip.”
“You can say whatever you like to us,” Mike said softly.
“You’re the bad cop. I’ll tell her.”
“Go ahead, I’m listening.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she killed him. That’s what you’re here about, isn’t it? You think Clara Treadwell killed Harold.”
“Ah, Mrs. Dickey, at this time, we’re just trying to establish how your husband might have ingested enough Elavil and scotch to kill him. Whether it was an accident … or he was depressed and did it—”
“She put it in the scotch.”
“Dr. Treadwell?” April asked.
“Yes. She hated Harold. She was trying to get rid of him, and he didn’t want to go.” Mrs. Dickey crossed her arms over her chest. “And that’s what happened. She took my husband. And then she killed him when she didn’t want him anymore.”
And then Clara came and took away the scotch bottle when she returned to lock Dickey’s office after he was dead. April glanced at Mike. She could see he had a few problems with Sally Ann Dickey’s theory. If the head of the Centre had poisoned her former lover’s scotch, why risk being on the scene when he died? April shrugged. Well, maybe Clara hadn’t known Harold would die. But there was another Elavil-related death. Maybe an investigation of that death would lead them in another direction.
April stood. “Thank you for your help, Mrs. Dickey. It’s been very useful.” She put her empty cup on the tray. “Oh, by the way, did your husband have an office in the house?”
“Of course. Would you like to see it?”
Now it was three offices. The man had three offices and a wife who may have watched too much television over the years.
“Yes, thank you, we would. But I’d like to use the bathroom first.”
“That door on the right.” Mrs. Dickey pointed to a door under the stairs. She put the rest of the tea things on the silver tray.
“I’d be happy to carry that tray for you.” Sanchez winked at April and picked up the tray.
“Oh, my, are you sure?”
“Of course. I do this at home all the time.”
“I don’t believe that, Sergeant. But thank you anyway. That old thing is getting heavier every day.”
“It happens.” Mike was suddenly being very nice.
April figured he didn’t like being identified as Mexican and the bad cop within minutes of an introduction. As soon as they passed into the kitchen, she ignored the door on the right and headed up the stairs.
forty-three
After April Woo’s visit to her office on Wednesday, Clara Treadwell had swung her chair around and stared out at the Palisades across the river in New Jersey. She needed to calm down and get things straight in her mind. In less than an hour she’d be meeting with Daveys, the FBI agent Arch Candel had assigned to her case on Monday but who hadn’t been able to schedule an appointment until today. Monday the situation had been complicated enough. Now with Hal’s death under investigation, it was a lot worse. Clara was disturbed, annoyed at the wasted time and further possibility of scandal. Still, she didn’t believe there was anything she couldn’t handle.
She shook her head wearily at the rippling expanse of Hudson River. For four days she’d been on the phone talking endlessly about Hal’s tragic, sudden, fatal heart attack. She’d spoken to the Dean of the medical school, the Vice President of Medical Affairs of the university, the Chancellor of the university, the trustees of the Psychiatric Centre, the chief psychiatrist of the state of New York, so vital to the Centre’s funding, who reported to the Commissioner of Mental Health. The Vice President of Medical Affairs called the Dean of the medical school, who called the Commissioner of Mental Health, who called her while she was on the phone with the Chancellor. They all knew one another well, worked together on the committees that funded and regulated the academic and medical services the university and Centre provided, both to their students and the patients they served.
There was a great deal of interest in the case because Harold Dickey had been a well-known figure at the Centre for over thirty years. A lot of people had liked him. People’s liking and respecting Harold had been one of the many problems Clara had had with him. People had been foolishly loyal to all of Harold’s outdated views. Clara thought bitterly of Harold’s influence on the Ray Cowles case. Dickey had killed Ray.
And not only had Harold been genuinely liked, he had been the head of the Quality Assurance Committee and had died under suspicious circumstances right here in the Centre. During her many talks with all of her colleagues, Clara hadn’t exactly prepared for big trouble. Never, in her wildest dreams, would it have occurred to her that there would be any. She had talked to everyone and thought she had the Harold’s-death piece of her nasty situation all nailed down. Arch had assured her that the FBI person would take care of the other piece. Boudreau.
All Clara had needed today was the Chinese policewoman, who had bungled the Cowles case, suddenly back in her life to cast suspicions on Harold’s death. It was infuriating, outrageous. Clara could feel the tic jumping in her cheek as she tried to process the information April Woo had given her, make sense of what she’d heard and not have a seizure herself. For a moment she was possessed by the fear that, like Hal’s, her heart might run amok, too.
Ray was a suicide. Did that make sense after what he told her that night? No, it didn’t make sense. Now it seemed Hal was killed by a combination of Elavil and alcohol. But everyone knew Harold didn’t like to take medicines. Clara made a steeple of her index fingers and tapped them together. Ray wasn’t depressed and Hal wasn’t depressed. Ray never talked about suicide in any real way, and Hal was much less interested in his mood than his mental processes. Hal would never have taken anything to jeopardize the way he thought. The chemical uplift was for other people, Hal’s wife, maybe. His daughter. Not for him. He was a purist.
Clara stared through the triangle of her fingers, seeing Hal so clearly even after all these years, even after his ugly death. She saw him sitting in his underwear in the old easy chair in the bedroom of her apartment, the faded quilt thrown over the chair, always the jubilant peacock after sex, a glass of Johnnie Walker in his hand. For the sex he had no apology, but the scotch he had to analyze and explain.
“Every man has his weakness and his poison. Scotch is my poison,” he’d say, holding the amber liquid to the light.
He didn’t admit to his other weakness, which was women—most particularly her. Wouldn’t acknowledge the appetite because he never had any intention of paying the bill. A little knot of bitterness still remained deep inside Clara because of that. It was like a painful lump of otherwise benign tissue that became sensitized only with strenuous exercise. Occasionally the feeling had resurfaced with Hal’s pedantry in meetings when he pretended compliance and helpfulne
ss to some innovation of hers, then stopped the progress cold with a few modest questions that generated endless debate. Now even his death had to raise questions.
Hal was a drinker, plain and simple, an old-fashioned lush. The steeple fell apart as Clara’s fingers stopped tapping. One hand gripped the arm of the chair. The other rose to her mouth and began stroking her lips and her chin.
Someone you love is going to die. If Hal had written that note, he most certainly hadn’t meant himself. For one thing, she didn’t love him anymore, hadn’t loved him for years and years, and he had known that. Not only that, for him the cold fact of the death of her love was old news. Hal had considered her loving someone else a challenge, a hurdle he could get over. He’d been arrogant. He would manipulate her, torment her any way he could. She could see him getting a little crazy and finding ways to scare her. But she didn’t see him hurting himself. And no one else would, either. Hal’s death would simply not be written off as a suicide.
Her agitated fingers moved back and forth across her lips, rubbing the soft skin as if it were a rough surface that needed abrasion. She hadn’t loved Ray Cowles, either. And now he was dead, too. What did the story tell? Suicide and suicide? Ray because he couldn’t face coming out of the closet and Hal not because she wouldn’t love him but because he couldn’t accept her accusation of harassment, the threat of being thrown off the Centre staff.
What about accident and accident? That sounded better in both cases. Neither had left a note. Maybe neither had meant to die. It didn’t sound good enough, though. Hal had been very busy when he died. He had wanted to clear himself, keep his job. He wouldn’t have taken Amitriptyline. If he hadn’t taken the medication on purpose, could he have taken it by accident? Clara thought of Bobbie Boudreau leaning against a tree, smoking, as she returned to the Centre after Hal’s death. Boudreau knew the building well. Boudreau was a mischief-maker, a poisoner. Boudreau had killed that way before. He’d been fired under extremely unpleasant circumstances. The pieces fit. Boudreau had killed Hal because Hal had found out Boudreau was the one who was harassing her.
Clara decided it was time to take the used condom out of her freezer, where she’d put it last Friday before leaving for her meeting in Washington. She was going to nail Boudreau with his own nasty little gift. Clara leaned back and checked her watch. She had ten minutes to relax before Special Agent Daveys arrived.