Dying for a Clue

by Judy Fitzwater

  “No no no. Absolutely not,” Dr. Paul Collier told Michelle Potter, cohost of Macon in the Morning. “The death of Mrs. Beverly Hoffman was not related in any way to the clinic’s operation. Our best guess is that she interrupted an attempted drug theft. We do, after all, have a supply of various narcotics on the premises, as does every medical facility.”

  “I understand Mrs. Hoffman was working late that night?”

  “We don’t know why Mrs. Hoffman was at the facility. We can only speculate she’d forgotten something, probably of a personal nature, and had gone back to retrieve it.”

  “So you believe she surprised her murderers, then they panicked and shot her?”

  Collier nodded his head as if he’d been there that night. Hah! What did he know?

  “Yes. That seems to be the situation. It was a Sunday night. No one should have been there.”

  Including delivery men.

  “What about the man who was in the alley that night, a private investigator by the name of Johnny Zeeman? I believe he was injured.” Michelle smiled into the camera.

  “I have no idea what Mr. Zeeman was doing that night, but I do know it had nothing to do with the East Lake Fertility Clinic. I can only suppose he was behind the building on some other business, surprised the hoodlums in their attempts to get away, and got himself shot in the process. It’s conceivable his presence may have been the catalyst that caused the thieves to panic and kill Mrs. Hoffman.”

  Jennifer stopped curling carrots. Now that was a slanderous statement if she’d ever heard one. The shot that killed Hoffman was what caused her to bump the boxes and Johnny to drop his pocketknife. No way Collier was going to blame that nurse’s death on them!

  He looked directly into the camera. “I want to assure all of our clients and future clients that we are running at full operation and that their safety is our utmost concern. Unfortunately, drug crimes can strike anywhere, anytime.”

  She stared at Collier’s face. Dee Dee’s under-the-counter TV was not particularly kind to him. His full, salt-and-pepper beard lent an air of dignity, but he wasn’t someone she’d want to entrust with her progeny, regardless of how many degrees followed his name. His eyes were too narrow, his lips a little too fleshy, and that twitch that tugged at the corner of his mouth a little too suspicious. And she certainly didn’t like that turtleneck under his sports jacket, at least not on him.

  She popped a carrot into her mouth. It crunched louder than she had expected.

  “I could fix you something to eat,” Dee Dee offered, not once looking up while she continued to spread the rolled-out biscuit dough with raw sausage.

  Jennifer averted her eyes. As a vegetarian, she tried to be tolerant of the protein needs of the human species, especially those too lazy to go the bean-and-rice route and who, instead, opted for the meat-eating easy way out. But raw sausage on beautifully kneaded dough... It almost seemed like sacrilege, and quite sufficient to dull her appetite.

  “That’s all right. I’m fine,” she told Dee Dee, taking to heart the tacit reprimand against eating up the food for that night’s party.

  “Is he talking about that clinic you were at last night?” Dee Dee asked ever so casually, gesturing toward the TV.

  Dee Dee. So calm, so collected. She hadn’t even let on she knew what had happened when Jennifer had come to her house to work that morning. She’d hugged her a little tighter and longer than usual, but Jennifer thought that was because they hadn’t seen each other for a while. The catering business was into the after-summer lull before the fall holidays kicked off. They had three Halloween parties scheduled, but they wouldn’t be for several weeks yet. Dee Dee had shown her the witches’ costumes she bought for them to wear, complete with little black aprons. Oh, the joys of this business.

  Tonight’s shindig was a birthday party. She would have loved to have stayed at Sam’s that morning, but Dee Dee really needed her help. Making carrot curls and turnip daisies were talents not everyone possessed. And she could certainly use the money. Her meager trust fund from her parents’ estate didn’t do much more than cover her rent and utilities. Food was once again falling into the category of luxuries, and would most likely stay there until she finally sold a book—or the Christmas catering season started up—whichever came first.

  At least she wouldn’t have to serve tonight. Fortunately, it was a drop-off. She had her writers’ group.

  Dee Dee rolled up the dough. If only she’d substituted cinnamon, sugar, and a little butter for that sausage...

  “I know his wife,” Dee Dee said, pinching the edges of the dough together and pointing at the TV screen.

  “Yeah?” That Dee Dee might know the Colliers shouldn’t have surprised her. In many ways, despite its size, Macon was still a small town.

  Dee Dee nodded. “She goes to church with my mother. You know how Mom’s in charge of the Wednesday night suppers?”

  Jennifer nodded.

  “Well, the church ladies take turns helping out, and whether she’s working that night or not, the whole Collier brood is there at six o’clock to eat.”

  “Really?” Jennifer asked casually.

  “Yeah, really. Except for her husband. He never shows. I don’t think he even goes to the Sunday morning service.”

  Dee Dee stared at Jennifer’s hands. “If you rest your hands in ice water like that you’ll be cracked and bleeding before morning.”

  Jennifer jerked her hands out and dried them. She wouldn’t dare let onto Dee Dee that she might just volunteer to help at one of the Wednesday suppers. She’d never hear the end of it. But what better way to get an idea of what the clinic was like if not from the woman who was married to the director?

  Dee Dee sliced another sausage twirl and laid it on the baking sheet. “So tell me,” she said, looking up and smiling, “what’s going on with you and Sam?”

  Dee Dee had been trying to get her married for as long as they’d known each other. Dating Sam had taken some of the pressure off, but it looked like Mama Dee Dee thought now was the time for the relationship to progress.

  She couldn’t tell Dee Dee they were living together, even if only technically. Dee Dee would make a whole lot more out of it than was there. Worse yet, she’d have to broach what had happened at her apartment last night, a subject she had no intention of opening.

  Jennifer took up a minicleaver and destroyed a bunch of broccoli florets. “Not much,” she fibbed.

  “You know, you really ought to decide what you want out of life, Jen.”

  Somehow Dee Dee had trouble separating what she herself wanted and what Dee Dee wanted for her.

  “Wait too long and you just might be needing the services of that Dr. Paul Collier yourself someday to have Jaimie. You’re born with every egg you’ll ever have, you know. Every year you get older, so do they. We’re not like chickens, always popping up with new ones.”

  Keep this up, and Jennifer could be talked into taking eggs out of her diet, too. It was at times like these that she had to remind herself how much she loved this woman.

  “Mrs. Collier”—Dee Dee nodded toward the TV—“she was the reason he opened that clinic. Did you know that?” Dee Dee popped the tray of sausage twirls into the oven, set the timer for ten minutes, and rubbed her hands on her apron. “She wanted kids, and they couldn’t have them the old-fashioned way.”

  “She told you this?”

  “She tells everybody, everybody who will listen. She’s got six. She’s like this living, breathing advertisement for his clinic. I think she and her husband have used just about every fertility technique ever developed. As the science improved, they’d simply move onto another method. The clinic’s success rate is supposed to be phenomenal. If you believe what she says, almost everyone who goes into that place comes out with a baby.”

  Chapter 9

  Maybe, at last, Jennifer could steal a few moments for a nap before she collapsed from sleep deprivation. No one except Sam knew she’d be at his apartment, not
even Dee Dee, whom she’d left with enough food to celebrate two birthdays. Of course, Dee Dee, as usual, had insisted she take some food home with her. She’d been nibbling in the car all the way over to Vineville.

  As she walked across the brick parking lot toward Sam’s apartment, she heard footsteps fall into rhythm behind her. She froze, bringing the rape whistle on her key ring to her lips. She drew in a lungful of air and whirled to find herself nose-to-nose with Johnny Z.

  “Put that thing away, will ya?” He nodded at the whistle. “The last thing we want is to attract attention.”

  Startled, she let the whistle fall from her mouth and looked the man up and down. He couldn’t have been much taller than her own five and a half feet. He lacked that slight droop of the eyelid, almost unnoticeable cleft of the chin, and pout of the lips. But Bogie’s stare, that hint of little-boy-lost, was definitely there behind those hard features.

  Johnny Z was wearing a loose cloth windbreaker that hid the bandage around his shoulder. Everything he had on looked like it’d been slept in more than once.

  “What are you doing out of the hospital?” she asked. He didn’t look like he was fit to drive, let alone go visiting.

  “I wanted to make sure you were all right. Schaeffer give you a hard time?”

  “I can hold my own,” she assured him, remembering the grin on his face when Schaeffer had hauled her out of his hospital room.

  He snickered. “Helps if you don’t know anything to tell. Did Robbins find you?” he asked as he furtively scanned the street and the parking lot.

  “Yeah,” she said, still angry he’d had the nerve to send Diane to her in the first place. “Just what the heck did you think—”

  “Good. She tell you what’s going on?”

  “How did you find me?” she demanded.

  He shrugged, wincing, the shoulder obviously still tender, and drew hard on a cigarette. Smoke curled out of his not-so-pretty mouth. “I’m paid to find people.”

  “Well, good for you. Go find somebody else.” She turned her back on him and started toward the steps.

  “This boyfriend you got, this Culpepper, you trust him?”

  That stopped her cold. What kind of question was that?

  “He willing to go to the mat for you?” Zeeman continued.

  She could go to the mat on her own, thank you very much.

  “You’re not so out of the way as I’d like here,” he called after her. “I’d offer you my place, but I don’t suppose you’d be interested.”

  She turned back and gave him one of those looks. Besides, it wasn’t like he’d be much protection in his current state.

  He shrugged. “Okay. Just watch your back. It’s time you wised up, Marsh. Those people who broke into your place last night—what makes you think they can’t find you as easily as I did? It’s not like the boyfriend’s wouldn’t be the first place to look, you know.”

  She’d had just about all she cared to handle. Shots in alleys, late night drop-ins from strange females, uninvited visitors ransacking her apartment, overbearing friends, no food (cookies and carrots didn’t count), little sleep, and seedy private eyes.

  She crossed to him. “I don’t need this. I’m finished. You hear me?”

  He shook his head at her, an irritatingly amused smile on his lips. “You sure you’re talking to the right guy? Wasn’t me jimmying your lock last night.” He took a final drag on the cigarette, dropped it, and stomped it out.

  “That’s littering,” she informed him.

  “So you want none of it, huh? Maybe you can send the guys who dropped by your place last night a little note to that effect, just so they don’t come back and inconvenience you.”

  “Fine. You tell me who they are, and I’ll do just that.”

  “Ain’t that easy, doll. That’s the part we gotta work on. What I’m worried about right now is what we do between the here and the there, the time when they know who we are and we figure out who they are.”

  Jennifer was becoming sorrier by the minute that she’d ever pulled out those yellow pages.

  He leaned closer and lowered his voice. She could smell the smoke on his breath. “There’re things you need to know.”

  “So clue me in,” she demanded.

  He stopped her cold with his stare.

  “I think you’d better come with me,” he told her. “Talking out here ain’t such a good idea.”

  “But I—” she started, and then stopped. Clearly, Johnny wasn’t going to take no for an answer. And what the heck! What she did or did not want seemed irrelevant. Somehow or other, she’d unwittingly become entangled with Diane Robbins and Johnny Zeeman in a way that required more than walking away to undo.

  “Okay,” she said, “but I have to be back before too late. I have group tonight.”

  “What’s that? A therapy session?”

  “It might as well be.”

  Chapter 10

  Johnny’s office was an upstairs hole-in-the-wall with his name printed on the window overhanging the street a la Sam Spade. Bleak, unkempt, and musty. She didn’t even know they had places like that in Macon. To make the scene complete, all Johnny needed were spastic neon lights flashing through the dingy glass and a fifth of whiskey in the desk drawer.

  He ushered her over to a metal chair with a padded vinyl seat. She swatted at it with a tissue from her purse and sat down. Johnny leaned back against his desk and gave her a good once-over.

  “Okay, I’m here. So what was so important that you couldn’t tell me in the parking lot?” she demanded.

  She hoped she hadn’t made a big mistake coming up here with him. But surely he was too weak to try anything, even if the thought crossed his mind.

  “You know, Marsh, people who face death together develop a certain bond...”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t even go there.”

  He shifted and crossed his ankles.

  “Robbins tell you about coming across the clinic and having an episode of déjà vu?” he asked.

  How about that? He knew French. “Yep.”

  He twisted, picked up a folder off the desk, and tossed it into her lap.

  “What’s this?”

  “Most of what there is to know about the East Lake Fertility Clinic.”

  She looked at him quizzically. “But I thought you told Schaeffer you didn’t know anything about the clinic.”

  “Did I say that? Must have been a misunderstanding. I thought he asked me what I was doing in the alley. You really think I’d go into a job without having checked the place out? I’m disappointed in you, Marsh.”

  Now it was her turn to be angry. “You took me into that situation knowing it was dangerous, knowing—”

  “Hey hey hey! Don’t go getting your tail all in a knot. There was no reason for me or Diane to think meeting Hoffman was going to go down like it did. It should have been a simple hand-off.”

  “A hand-off of what?”

  “I don’t know, honest.”

  Yeah, like she was going to believe him! She shook her finger at him. “You led Schaeffer to believe Diane was the one who had been killed.”

  He grunted. “Don’t kid yourself. Schaeffer knew who the victim was before he walked into my hospital room.” He straightened and shifted. The shoulder must have been kicking up. “Besides, I never saw the woman who was killed. Remember? You did.”

  He was doing it again, making her feel as though she’d somehow been dishonest.

  “The clinic’s been in operation close to twenty-five years,” he continued. “The head honcho is one Paul Collier.”

  “I saw him on Macon in the Morning.”

  Zeeman pursed his lips, dug in his pocket and came up with a cigarette. “So he’s already at it, putting his spin on things. Any of the rest of them show up with him?”

  He lifted the cigarette in her direction, but she shook her head.

  “The rest?” she asked.

  Johnny struck a match, put it to the cigarette, and dre
w hard as the fire worked itself into the tobacco. He let out a mouthful of smoke.

  Boy, he did like his nicotine. She could almost see the wave of calm spread through his body.

  “The other partners are his brother Donald and doctors McEvoy and Sullivan. The story goes that Collier—Paul—and wife were looking to start a family but with little success. They came upon McEvoy, who, with Sullivan, had perfected a procedure that was resulting in a good rate of pregnancies among infertile couples. They tried it, it worked for them. So they lured the doctor duo away from some facility up north to Macon with promises of wealth and the relative comfort of Southern life.”

  “Is the success rate at the clinic really that impressive?”

  “Apparently. My guess is they keep their numbers up through good screening. They only take on clients they’re pretty certain they can help.”

  “Sounds admirable. And brother Donald?”

  “He came along about eleven years after the clinic opened, after his stint through med school, residency, and a partnership in some fertility clinic somewhere along the mid-Atlantic. Some questions arose over his screening procedures after the deaths of a couple who were under his care—”

  “Deaths? Good grief! What’d he do to them?”

  Johnny shook his head. “Nothin’ like that. Some kind of domestic dispute between the husband and wife.”

  “Then why—”

  “The feeling was he shouldn’t be helping people who were unstable bring babies into this world.”

  “Was he sued?”

  “No, but you shake the public’s confidence in a business like that, and you don’t have no business. He went looking for more fertile ground.”

  She groaned. Cutesy didn’t go with Johnny. He couldn’t quite pull it off. “So what’s all this got to do with anything?”

  “Just giving you the lay of the land.”

  “Why’d you ask me up here, Johnny?”

  He stared at her a moment longer than he should have, and she blushed.

  “Marsh,” he said quietly, lighting another cigarette from the one in his mouth. “I didn’t come get you for your help. I came because I feel responsible for getting you involved. I should never have taken you with me that night.”