A Killer Kebab

by Susannah Hardy

  Dr. Vernon Phelps had been practicing medicine since approximately World War One. Well, perhaps that was an exaggeration. Probably more like the Korean War. His office was located in a long, low building attached to the back of the Bay’s small hospital. I dropped Dolly at the entrance to the offices, parked, and headed through the big glass doors.

  The familiar smell of antiseptic reached my nostrils as I sat down in a molded orange plastic chair and picked up a gossip magazine. Dolly was already at the sliding window, talking to the intake nurse and handing over her insurance card. She came and sat down beside me. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet on the ride here, and she didn’t appear to want to talk now. I patted her arm. “It’ll be all right.”

  She looked up at me, her big brown eyes locked on mine. Good golly, Miss Dolly. She was afraid. Never in the more than twenty years I’d known her had I seen this side of her. My gut clenched. If the bravest person you’d ever met was afraid of something, it stood to reason there was something to be afraid of.

  “What if they . . . find something?” she whispered.

  My heart flew up into my throat. This was no unreasonable fear that I could just shush away. Decades of smoking, given up only a few months ago, made it an undeniable possibility that something was seriously wrong. I cursed Russ Riley for causing his mother any more stress than she was already under. I swallowed my heart back down, then took her hand and looked into her eyes.

  “If they find something—and that’s a big, fat if—Sophie and I will take care of you. But there’s no sense borrowing trouble. One thing at a time. Do you want me to come in with you?”

  She hesitated, then nodded. It cost her.

  “Dolly?” A nurse stood in the door across from us, holding a clipboard. “Come on in, hon.”

  We stood together and went in to face whatever this was together.

  The nurse deposited us in an examination room, the walls of which were covered in sage green and peach wallpaper that clearly had not been updated since the years of New Wave music. “Undress from the waist up, and put this johnny on,” she instructed with practiced efficiency, turned on her heel, and left. I pretended to busy myself by studying the ceiling while Dolly changed, then gave her a hand up onto the examining table.

  A knock sounded at the door, then Dr. Phelps entered, clipboard in hand. I amended my prior assessment. This thin little man with the snowy comb-over and neatly trimmed mustache had probably been practicing since the Spanish-American War. He was, however, still sharp as a tack, a fact that was reinforced when he spoke.

  “Dolly Riley,” he said. “What brings you in to see me today? I don’t suppose you brought me lunch?” He chuckled.

  “Dolly’s not feeling so well,” I butted in.

  He eyed me shrewdly over the tops of his glasses. “People don’t usually call for same-day appointments if they’re in the pink,” he said. “How’s that mother-in-law of yours?” Doc’s wife was long dead, and he’d never remarried.

  “Back in Greece for the winter.”

  “Pity,” he said, and turned to Dolly. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  Dolly sat there, her arms folded across her chest. Finally, just before I was about to answer for her, she said in a small voice, “I’ve got a cough that won’t go away. And my chest hurts.” She hadn’t told me that part, and I squelched a fresh throb of worry.

  The doctor consulted something on his chart, then spoke matter-of-factly. “You quit smoking? Good. Very good.” His tone was nonjudgmental. He stuck the ends of his stethoscope into his slightly hairy ears. “Let’s have a listen.”

  He held the amplifier end in his hand for a moment, presumably to warm it up, then placed it inside Dolly’s gown and on her chest. “Breathe in, as deep as you can,” he said, listening intently. “And again.” Dolly’s chest rose and fell with the exertion, fatigue and worry written on her face. The doctor moved the stethoscope around to the back and listened for a few more breaths, then pulled out the chestpiece and let it drop over his own chest. He shined a light into her eyes, then peered intently down her throat.

  “I think,” he said, “you’ve got bronchitis.” Dolly visibly relaxed, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m going to put you on an antibiotic, and you’re to rest for at least a week, then come back and see me. If you’re feeling worse at any time, call again or just come in to the ER and I’ll come over and see you.”

  She nodded. He continued. “Before you go, we’re going to give you a chest x-ray. And I’m ordering some tests, which I expect you to have done next week when you’re feeling better.”

  Dolly’s face fell. “Chest x-ray? Why do I need tests?” Her voice was small, and I reached out to take her hand.

  He eyed her. “Just to rule out . . . pneumonia,” he finally said.

  Right. Pneumonia.

  An hour later Dolly had been x-rayed and we’d filled her prescription at the drugstore. I took her arm and walked her into the house, then sat her down in her recliner and covered her up while I fetched a glass of water. Her Adam’s apple bobbed as she swallowed her medication, then she settled back into the cushions.

  “You want me to make you some lunch?” A long, dull afternoon of television watching stretched out before us, until Harold got home, but I was prepared to do it for her.

  “Naw,” she said, yawning. “I’m going to take a nap. There’s homemade chicken noodle soup in the fridge and I’ll just heat up some of that later. You go on home now. You’ve done enough for me for today.” Her eyes drifted closed.

  I debated, then went out to the kitchen to make a phone call. Dolly’s daughter, Brandy, who cleaned for me at the Bonaparte House, both upstairs and down, thanked me for getting her mother to see a doctor, and said she was on her way over.

  Before I could put my phone away, a text came in. File copied. Pick up when ready. My heart leapt. Lydia must have gotten the locksmith there last night or early this morning, and had managed to copy it already. If the answers about my genealogy that I hoped for were contained in the file, Melanie, Liza, and I could all rest easier tonight.

  Finally. This was almost over and I’d know my family was safe.

  Once I verified that there was, indeed, homemade chicken noodle soup in the refrigerator, and Brandy arrived and assured me she was there for the duration, I wasted no time getting myself to the offices of MacNamara and MacNamara.

  Lydia was at her usual spot in the reception area, typing away. She stood up and stretched when she saw me, and gave me a smile. “Come on in,” she said. “I have the file all ready for you.”

  How big was a hundred-year-old file? Lydia handed me a manila envelope a couple of inches thick. “I took the liberty of only copying the important documents. There was a lot of extraneous stuff that you’re welcome to come back and look at, but I didn’t think you’d need.”

  The envelope weighed about five pounds. “I’m really only interested at this point in the financials, so I can report to my mother, and anything to do with genealogy and the heirs.”

  Lydia smiled. “All there. And if you need anything else, just let me know.”

  “Thanks for doing some of my work for me. Where’s Ben?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Like he tells me where he’s going. I know he was here late last night, after the locksmith left, going through that filing cabinet.”

  I didn’t have a growing reputation for sticking my nose in for nothing. “Did he find anything? If you can tell me, of course?”

  Lydia let out a giggle. “Well, I don’t know if Junior took anything, but when I looked—you know, for your file—I found one of the drawers filled with underwear, deodorant, cologne and, well, other things that make me want to never sit on the leather couch in that office again.”

  Ooh, interesting. So Jim might have used his office for his romantic trysts. My mind raced backward. Had I ever sat on that
couch?

  “Well, thanks again for this, Lydia. I’m sure we’ll talk again soon.”

  “Later, Georgie.”

  I tossed the envelope onto the passenger seat of my car. Were there any other errands I could run? Anyone else I just had to see? I sighed. It was ridiculous to be afraid. Time to put on my big girl undies and go home.

  The Bonaparte House was quiet as, well, the dead when I got there. Of course, if there’d been noise, I’d have been even more uncomfortable, since I knew I should be alone. The prep counter was still full of recipes, so I took the attorneys’ file to my office and sat down. The metal clasp on the mustard yellow envelope opened easily. Lydia hadn’t bothered to tape the opening.

  I pulled out a stack of papers. Lydia had thoughtfully put sheets of colored paper with labeled sticky note tabs in between the different sections. On top was “Trust Documents.” I knew more or less what was in there—or at least I thought I did—so I removed that section and set it aside.

  “Info re: Heirs.” Now this was more like it. I took a deep breath. Please let it say that all the heirs have been identified. I flipped over the divider page and began to read.

  A half hour later, I turned over the last page of genealogical charts and blew out a sigh. Damn. The lawyers had apparently lost track of my umpteenth-removed cousin Percy, the one who disappeared in the 1940s, so Sheldon knew more than they did. I wished I could get those thirty minutes back. This little exercise had netted me exactly nothing. Just in case I’d missed something an expert would have recognized, I put the whole stack into the document feeder of my scanner, and sent it off to Sheldon. I didn’t know what kind of office setup the genealogist had at his room at the River Rock, but he’d figure it out. On Melanie’s dime.

  I turned to the last section of papers. Maybe this would make this all worthwhile. The money.

  The oldest information was on top. It appeared to be a ledger, with monthly debits for attorneys’ fees and expenses, and in a separate column interest paid, all written in an old-fashioned hand. The starting balance was more than ten million dollars. Not too shabby, Grandpa Elihu.

  I thumbed through the pages until I hit 1929. The numbers, which had been steadily increasing up to that point, suddenly took a nosedive, then, as the years approached World War Two, started to creep back up. I eagerly turned more pages. How much money were we talking about here?

  As I flipped, my eagerness turned to confusion, then disbelief. Somewhere in the last twenty years or so, about the time the ledgers switched from typewritten to computer generated, the balance got lower, and lower, and lower.

  I stared at the bottom line, the one from the ledger dated a couple of months ago, closed my eyes, and opened them again. No change.

  Unless I was misreading the final document, the Elihu Bloodworth Trust, the one people had been killed over, was now worth the decidedly nonprincely sum of six thousand dollars.

  TWELVE

  No. It couldn’t be. This had to be wrong. Not that whatever was in this account was mine, but I was ripping angry. My family was in danger over this? People had been killed for this? Just a few thousand bucks? I threw the paper down in disgust. How had the lawyers blown millions of dollars that had been entrusted to them for other people?

  Had it been bad investments on the part of the Attorneys MacNamara, past and present? I looked at a random page. The debits for legal fees and expenses seemed reasonable, so poor investment strategy had to be the answer. If this was an example of the care with which the MacNamaras handled their clients’ cases, it was time for me to find another lawyer for my divorce, no matter how close it was to being finalized.

  I dialed my accountant. “Kim? It’s Georgie. Hey, can I hire you to take a look at something for me?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Send it over.”

  “Thanks. I’ll e-mail it to you in a few minutes. And Kim? Keep this between us, will you?”

  “My lips are sealed.” She rang off.

  It was quick work to scan and send the information. I wasn’t quite sure how to break this news to Melanie and Liza. Hello? You know those millions of dollars you thought you were inheriting? Fuhgeddaboutit! Not that Melanie or Liza was ostensibly hurting for money. But, though she’d assured me the rumors were untrue, Melanie was in one gossip magazine or another—I knew, because I read them—every few weeks under suspicion of being almost bankrupt. And Liza, well, as far as I knew, she was well off due to shrewd financial management of her business, despite having some very expensive castle repair bills coming up next spring. Still, they must have had plans for that money, and I was willing to bet that some charities were the intended recipients of some of it. The charities were probably the biggest losers here.

  The bubble of anger grew in my stomach. Jim MacNamara had managed to lose almost all the money, either through ineptitude or maybe even willful misconduct, then got himself killed. Before I could go after him myself. There was a special place in hell reserved for people like him. Suddenly, I felt relieved for Old Lady Turnbull out at Silver Lake, who’d never sealed the land development deal with him. She probably didn’t know how close a call she’d had. Her granddaughter would get herself through medical school, one way or the other.

  Russ Riley was sitting in jail on suspicion of murdering MacNamara. And what about Steve Murdoch? Just how many times had MacNamara screwed him over? It begged the question, of course: how many other people had MacNamara taken advantage of? People who might have wanted him dead. Even his own son didn’t seem that broken up about his father’s death.

  I sat there stewing, and was just about to get up and go see if I could find something to cook to take my mind off it, when my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. The display read Liza. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Georgie. I just called to give you an update on Melanie and Caitlyn.”

  Call me the World’s Worst Daughter. I’d meant to call earlier, but had gotten caught up with making sure Dolly got to the doctor and now this stupid trust. “How are they?”

  “I’ve been keeping an eye on them, like I told you I would, and there’s nothing you could do, so stop feeling bad.” She must have heard the guilt in my voice.

  “Are they any better?” Please let them be on the mend.

  There was a slight pause on the other end of the receiver. “Not better. But not worse either. I’ve called Dr. Phelps. He’s having one of the other doctors take over his afternoon patients, and coming over here.”

  Relief washed over me. Doc Phelps would take care of them. “He’s making a castle call?”

  Liza laughed. “Yes, and I’m making a rather sizable donation to his favorite charity, Doctors Without Borders.”

  The charities. I felt awful and angry again. Should I tell Liza about the trust accounting so she could adjust her expectations? No, better to let Kim Galbraith corroborate my interpretation of the numbers, then break the news to her and Melanie together, once Melanie felt better.

  “Should I come over?”

  “As I said, nothing you can do here, and they’re both sleeping. Let’s wait to hear what Dr. Phelps has to say, then you can decide.”

  “Okay,” I said tentatively. Of course she was right, but it felt . . . wrong.

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure they just have the flu or something.”

  That didn’t look like any flu I’d ever seen, but I didn’t comment. “I’ll talk to you later. Call me when he gets there.”

  “I will. Bye-bye.” She rang off.

  Now to keep myself busy for the next few hours. The recipes. That ought to do it.

  I fixed myself a cup of coffee using the single-serving machine Cal had given me for my birthday last spring. When the restaurant was open, the machine wasn’t practical, since we needed full pots of coffee going all the time. Of course, there was the Bean, but it was cold outside, and it just seemed like too much trouble to get bundled u
p and walk down there. So today I was grateful for my little plastic cup of cinnamon-hazelnut-vanilla.

  The recipes were still spread out on the prep counter, where Dolly and I would be chopping meat and vegetables and assembling Greek and other dishes come spring. But for now, it was the perfect big, flat surface to sort. I had placed a spoon over each of the piles already started, to keep the contents from shifting or blowing away. The Bonaparte House was old, and sometimes drafty, even the newer addition that housed the kitchen.

  I took a moment to review the categories I’d already sorted recipes into, then reached into the shoe box for a handful. The work went quickly as long as I didn’t stop to read more than the titles. Next to the pile of cream soup casseroles I started a new one for molded gelatin salads. The definition of the word “salad” had definitely changed in the last few decades.

  That got me thinking. Thousand Island dressing. Why wasn’t it Thousand Islands dressing, with an s, which would have made more sense grammatically? I stuck my hand into the pocket of my jeans and pulled out Franco’s recipe, the one his waitress had delivered, then opened it up and smoothed out the creases. Good thing it was a copy, because those creases were permanent.

  Sophia’s Sauce. Written in different script at the bottom was a notation: Received from Sophia LaLonde at July 4th celebration, 1910.

  I reviewed what I knew—or thought I knew—about the dressing. The most widely held belief, perpetuated from close to a century of tour boat operators, was that the recipe had been cobbled together a century ago from ingredients aboard a St. Lawrence River yacht. The owner of the yacht was George Boldt, wealthy manager of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City, and the builder of the destined-to-be-unfinished Boldt Castle, which was located farther downriver across from the town of Alexandria Bay, and which remained the most popular tourist destination in the Thousand Islands. The story went that the dressing was created for Boldt, his boss, by the famous chef Oscar of the Waldorf, who also created the now-classic dishes Veal Oscar and Waldorf salad. The tourist industry along the St. Lawrence got a lot of mileage out of George Boldt, that was for sure.