Dr. Chase’s phone was one of those old-fashioned beige models with a row of clear plastic buttons across the bottom labeled “01,” “02,” “03,” and “04.” A fifth button was red and labeled “hold.” I picked up the receiver, got a dial tone on line one, and put the dial tone on hold. Then I punched down the remaining buttons and put them on hold, too. Until I returned, anybody calling Dr. Chase’s office would get a busy signal.
Back in the hallway I stopped to listen; Mr. Waldron droned on and on. His voice behind the door of the examining room rose and fell, punctuated by laughter. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was so funny, but as long as he kept it up, the coast would be clear.
I hurried up the stairs, bending one paper clip at a ninety-degree angle as I climbed. At the locked door I knelt and inserted the short end of the bent paper clip into the bottom of the lock and held it there while maintaining a steady sideways pressure. With the straightened end of the second paper clip, I jiggled the tumblers inside the lock up and down, gently coaxing them into position. After a few tense minutes I feared I had lost my touch. My mind wandered, plotting a late-night return engagement wearing gloves and dressed in black clothes when the tumblers fell suddenly into place and the lock turned. Ta-dah! I fell back against the wall, dizzy with relief. Using Nora’s nail file, I eased the lock all the way around, heard a satisfying click, and slowly opened the door.
Before me a corridor ran the entire length of the house. An uncurtained window at the far end filtered pale light into the hallway. On my right was a large bedroom, dominated by a double bed with cannonball posts centered on a richly colored oriental carpet. A white chenille spread covered the mattress and plump pillows were propped up against the headboard. A hand sink stood in the corner, like a European B&B. What on earth did Dr. Chase need a bedroom up here for? I wandered down the hall to check out the bathroom and poked my nose into the medicine cabinet. If he’d entertained any ladies recently, I observed, they’d taken all their personal effects with them. I stood for a moment at the bathroom sink and stared at my face in the mirror. Why would he bring female guests here anyway? He was a bachelor, after all, and had his own apartment. Unless—unless it was a relationship he wanted to hide! Maybe the good doctor was in the habit of having extracurricular affairs. I pulled aside the lace curtain at the bathroom window and peered out toward the water. Frank Chase had been in medical school at the time of Katie’s death, I remembered. Could he have been the college guy Chip suspected of souring his relationship with Katie?
From downstairs came a piercing wail. Dr. Chase must have reset the bone. He’d be putting a cast on Scott’s arm any minute now. I crossed the hallway above them on tiptoe, hoping the floors wouldn’t creak and give me away.
The room at the front of the house was uncarpeted, its hardwood floors spotless. A long wooden table ran the length of the far wall, and bookshelves framed both windows. Clean jars with ground glass stoppers were grouped together on the shelves, their labels missing or peeling. I picked one up and examined it closely. If anything had ever been written on the label, it had long ago faded into illegibility. Everything in the room was neatly arranged and impeccably clean, like a museum. I wondered if this had been old Dr. Chase’s laboratory, where he prepared his herbal and homeopathic cures. But whatever it was, there was no place to store even so small a thing as a medical folder in this austere environment.
The back bedroom also promised to be a major disappointment. Oversize warehouse-style shelves of tubular steel held boxes of paper towels, toilet paper, disinfectant soap, plastic garbage bags, and, as Bill had predicted, paper robes, all purchased in bulk sizes like the kind I brought home from Sam’s Club. Smaller boxes and cartons contained medical supplies. Near the window that overlooked the parking lot, four plastic chairs in the same style as those in the waiting room below were stacked, seat on seat.
I had turned to leave when I thought I’d hit the mother lode. After all those years in Washington, D.C., if there’s one thing I know, it’s archival boxes. And there they were, box after cardboard box of them, labeled “A-B” and “C-D” et glorious cetera, neatly piled in an alcove. I prayed these were the old doctor’s files. Maybe they hadn’t been shredded after all but were just on their way to the shredder. I lifted the lid from the box nearest me. It was empty. So was the box next to it. I pulled the lids of nearly a dozen boxes, but every damn one of them was empty.
My heart sank. Until that moment I’d never really understood that expression. But my heart sank, right down to the floor, and lay there. I chided myself for spinning my wheels on what was turning out to be a wild-goose chase. Yet I had discovered many theoretically inactive folders, like Liz’s, among the files downstairs. Futile or not, I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied until I had searched every last inch of Dr. Chase’s office, and maybe his condominium, too.
As I stood in the alcove, woolgathering, I was startled by the thunk of a car door closing. I rushed to the window just in time to see Mr. Waldron get into his car. Scott was already installed in the passenger seat, a clean white cast on his arm, cradled in a blue sling. Holy shit! I needed to get back downstairs, pronto!
But then I heard the footsteps behind me and knew it was too late.
“Hannah? What are you doing up here?”
I pasted a smile on my face and turned. “I noticed we were low on paper towels, Doctor. I couldn’t find any downstairs, so I thought I’d take a look up here.”
Chase’s eyes were wary slits. “I’m surprised you could get in. I usually keep the door locked.”
I shrugged. “I just turned the knob.” That wasn’t a lie, not exactly.
I crossed the room to a shelf and selected a four-pack of toilet paper and several rolls of paper towels. “Here, could you help me?” I handed a roll of towels to the doctor. He opened his mouth as if to object but apparently changed his mind. His lips clamped shut, and he sucked them in between his teeth, giving him an odd, lipless look. I prayed he didn’t suspect me of snooping. My spur-of-the-moment explanation had been brilliantly plausible, after all, but I noticed as I preceded him down the steps that he locked the door securely behind him.
As we reached the entrance hall, an elderly woman was just hobbling up the walk, saving me the trouble of making idle conversation with the doctor when my mind was racing off in all directions. Dr. Chase greeted the woman like a long-lost relative, then escorted her back to his private office.
I put the spare toilet paper in the bathroom, then dumped the paper towels on the counter in the kitchen, where I stood for a few moments at the sink and tried to control my shaking hands. I splashed some cold water on my face, dried it with a paper towel from a roll that was, I noticed, nearly new, then hurried to take the telephone lines off hold. But before I went back to work, I returned to the kitchen and spun yards of paper towel off the roll and stuffed them in the bottom of the wastepaper can, underneath the soiled paper robes.
Two patients arrived at noon, but by one o’clock there was a brief hiatus, and Dr. Chase suggested he could handle things on his own while I picked up sandwiches. I called Ellie’s Country Store and ordered a chicken salad for me and a tuna on rye for the doctor.
After my narrow escape I welcomed the lunch break and took my time getting to Ellie’s by walking around the block the long way, turning left down Princess Anne and left again at the old library. I strolled along Ferry Point Road and paused at the old pier across from the Tidewater Pub. I watched the khaki-colored water of the Truxton gently lick the pilings and tried to think of a way to get Dr. Chase out of his private office long enough to search it, too. So far, he’d kept me so busy I’d hardly had time to go to the bathroom, let alone give the place a thorough going-over. That business this morning was just a fluke; I couldn’t count on another broken arm materializing out of the blue. Didn’t the man have rounds to make at the local hospital? Medical meetings to attend? By the time I reached Ellie’s store, I was wishing emergency appendectomies on total st
rangers and pining for the good old days when doctors made house calls.
Angie already had the order made up and ready for me at the counter. “I put in two iced teas. Hope you don’t mind. That’s what the doctor always orders.” She looked cheerful and well rested and smiled at me in a conspiratorial way because, I supposed, we shared a secret. She must have read my mind. “You won’t tell anybody about Katie’s baby, will you, Hannah?” she whispered.
“No,” I promised again. “No one will find out about it from me.”
“I went to see Lieutenant Rutherford, just like you told me to.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Angie.”
“He was really nice. Brought me a Coke. Thanked me for coming in.”
“He’s only interested in the truth.” I added two Milky Way Darks to the bag feeling just a wee bit guilty about it, paying for it all, including my sweet tooth, out of money the doctor had given me from the petty cash.
“Did Lieutenant Rutherford say anything to you about reopening the case?”
Angie dropped the change into my outstretched hand and shook her head. “Not to me. But they’ll have to now, won’t they? Now that they know Katie was murdered?”
I said good-bye and left her busily wiping the countertop with a damp rag. On Ellie’s front porch, I fished one of the Milky Ways out of the bag, tore off the wrapper, and took what I reasoned was a well-deserved bite. I chewed thoughtfully and watched while an armored truck made a pickup at the bank across the street. Next door S&N Antiques was just opening for business; its door stood open, and the proprietor had dragged a Victorian high chair, a wagon, and two end tables onto the porch. I sucked the caramel off my teeth and studied the back of the Chase house. A huge magnolia tree dominated the backyard, shading what remained of the old doctor’s garden. I remembered what Connie had told me about it and decided to cut through the parking lot and take a closer look.
The garden was a tangle of overgrown shrubs, wayward vines, desultory weeds, and dried, drooping stalks still tied to redwood stakes, but I could tell that the plot had once been extensive and well planned. My experience with herb gardens was limited to what I had read in the Brother Cadfael mystery series. The good twelfth-century monk grew things in his garden at St. Giles with interesting-sounding names like betony, coltsfoot, hyssop, and dock that were used to treat wounds, skin irritations, and stomach ailments. Except for unruly clumps of dill, mustard, fennel, and mint, however, and a scrawny lemon thyme bush, there wasn’t much in Dr. Chase’s garden that I recognized.
I stripped some thyme from a spindly stalk and rolled the leaves between my fingers until the sweet, sharp aroma reached my nose. It would have taken days of major-league weeding, hoeing, and pruning to get that garden looking even halfway presentable. A breeze rippled through a clump of pampas grass, suddenly reminding me of the weeds growing wild about the cistern where I had found poor Katie’s body. Where had she spent the last hours of her young life, I wondered, and, more important, with whom?
I shuddered and reminded myself that the answer might very well lie somewhere inside this house. Using my key, I let myself in through the back door.
When I returned to reception, only one patient remained in the waiting room, an overlarge woman in a loose cotton dress whose broad bottom encroached on the nearby chairs. “Have you signed in?” I asked. She nodded. I pushed through the swinging doors into the medical records room and stood there for a few seconds wondering what to do with lunch when Dr. Chase emerged from Examining Room A. He stripped off his latex gloves with a snap like a rubber band and tossed them into an oversize trash can next to the door.
I cradled the bag in my hand. “If I don’t do something with this soon, Doctor, the bag’s going to break.” I showed him where the condensation from the iced tea bottles was beginning to soak through the bottom of the paper bag. I nodded toward his private office down the hall. “Should I take it in there?”
“Oh, thanks, Hannah.” He nodded. “Just put it on my desk, will you?” He lifted the chart I had placed in the wall pocket outside Examining Room B, consulted it briefly, then tucked it under his arm. “And put Mrs. Logan in A. As soon as I finish with her, I’ll be able to take a break for lunch.”
Dr. Chase disappeared into the examining room and shut the door.
Patting myself on the back for how neatly I’d just engineered an excuse to spend a little legitimate time in Dr. Chase’s office, I hurried in. It wasn’t any neater than the first time I had seen it yesterday. Bookcases, full to overflowing with books, medical journals, framed photographs, and carved duck decoys covered the chocolate brown walls. A large wooden desk stood in the center of the room, the two legs nearest me planted firmly on the fringe of an antique oriental carpet.
I set the bag down on the desk, first clearing a space by shoving a few charts aside. I withdrew the plastic-wrapped plate holding his tuna on rye and one of the bottles of iced tea. Out of habit, I set the damp bottle down on a folded napkin to keep it from ringing the desk, although a new blemish would hardly have been noticed among the many others that marred the once highly polished walnut. Intersecting circles decorated the surface, like those on the Olympic flag. A nice ring was forming now around the perimeter of a coffee mug, half full of a viscous brown liquid that even a good nuking in the microwave couldn’t have made drinkable. I picked up the mug and used another napkin to wipe up the spill and, to be thorough, followed the liquid trail to where it disappeared under a corner of the desk blotter.
I was straightening the blotter when I realized that there was something stuck underneath it. Since I had recently spent long minutes nosing around in the good doctor’s records without a second thought, it surprised me that I now felt like a cat burglar. I glanced over my shoulder toward the door, lifted the corner of the blotter, stooped, cocked my head, and peered under it. Green, yellow, and orange tabs. Ohmagawd! I had my finger on the chart and was just beginning to slide it toward me when I heard Dr. Chase’s voice behind me in the hall.
By the time the doctor appeared in his office doorway, I had dropped the corner of the blotter, twisted the cap off a bottle of iced tea, and was busily stripping the paper wrapper from a straw. My heart was pounding so loudly in my ears that I thought he’d hear it from where he stood—without a stethoscope.
“Lunch is served.” I popped the straw into the bottle and tapped it down where it sat for a moment as if thinking about something, then floated up lazily. “Would Monsieur like the see the dessert menu?”
Dr. Chase chuckled and rubbed his hands together briskly. “Tira misu? Crême brulée?”
I pulled the remaining Milky Way out of the bag. “Will this do?”
He settled comfortably into his desk chair. “Thanks, Hannah, but I’m afraid I don’t eat chocolate.”
“Doctor, I am shocked. Deeply shocked.” I pocketed the candy. “All the more for the rest of us, as my mother used to say.” With a show of nonchalance that I didn’t feel, I backed toward the door, certain that the letters G-U-I-L-T must be emblazoned across my forehead. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the blotter. As I waited for it to rise up, point, and accuse me of snooping, I noticed that Dr. Chase probably hadn’t been in his office all morning. The Post-It messages I had taken for him were stuck all over his telephone and lampshade. He picked up one of the messages now, took a bite of his sandwich, and began to dial.
“Anything else you need?” I asked.
“No, thanks, Hannah. Eat your lunch, but stay by the phone. After lunch you’ll probably have time to pull charts for the afternoon.”
I negotiated the hallway in a daze, then sat down at the reception desk. I unwrapped my sandwich and stared at it, but my stomach was tied in such nervous knots that I didn’t feel very hungry. Please don’t move that chart! Not until after I’ve had a chance to check it out.
I drank some tea and found myself wondering why Katie’s chart had been hidden. Maybe it had been in the file room all along and Dr. Chase hadn’t given it a though
t until I mentioned it yesterday. Maybe he’d found it in the files and put it under his blotter for safekeeping so it wouldn’t get lost in all the clutter. But then again, maybe he was involved in Katie’s murder right up to his scrawny little neck. I nibbled my sandwich in silence, watching as the buttons on the telephone blinked on and off as the doctor returned his calls.
Maybe it isn’t Katie’s chart at all. Lots of names start with DUN, I reasoned. Duncan, for example, or Dunnet or Dunstable. Angie had put an extra pickle on my plate, and I ate it slowly. I’d have to make my opportunity. I checked the appointment book. Beginning at two o’clock, there were six appointments plus two folks who had called in: eight patients in all. I polished off the last potato chip, washed the salt off my hands at the kitchen sink, and pulled the charts. Eight patients would certainly be sufficient to keep the doctor busy long enough for me to get back into his office and take a second look under his blotter.
As I stood behind the reception desk, lost in thought, the intercom on the telephone buzzed so loudly that I nearly jumped out of my pantyhose. “Hannah,” Dr. Chase said when I picked up, “if you’re finished with lunch, I’ve got a few prescriptions for you to call in.”
I tossed the remains of my lunch in the trash and hurried back to his office. As I reached for the prescriptions, I noticed that the blotter had been moved a few inches closer to the lamp. Blast! I flashed what I hoped was a disarming smile, told him I’d take care of the prescriptions right away, and turned to go.
“Hannah?”
Oh-oh. I held my breath.
“How are you feeling? I’ve been so busy I forgot to ask.”
I had to think for a minute before I realized what on earth he was talking about. I’d nearly forgotten about my tumble off the sailboat. “Much better, thanks. The medication really helped.”
The doctor balled up his sandwich wrapper and, with a flip of his wrist, made a perfect rim shot to the trash can. “Good. Just make sure you don’t overdo it, okay?”
Sing It to Her Bones Page 13