by Mike Stewart
Susan said I was in denial.
I said, probably so.
She then suggested that maybe I had spent my life seeking out life-and-death battles to prove my worth to an overbearing and unforgiving father.
I suggested that maybe she’d been watching too much Oprah.
Now she had moved to Chicago, and her phone had rung fifteen times. Maybe she hadn’t found time to buy a machine or hire a service. Maybe it was easier to avoid calling me if I couldn’t leave a message. Maybe the world didn’t revolve around me, and Susan was just out having a life.
Fifteen minutes later, I was microwaving leftover chili when my phone rang. I walked into the living room, grabbed the mobile receiver, and said hello.
“Tom? This is Laurel Adderson.”
“Oh.”
“Did I catch you at a bad time?”
I shook my head, which wasn’t all that helpful to someone on the other end of a phone line. “No. Not at all. I just thought it was going to be someone else. What can I do for you?”
“Well, Tom, I’ve been thinking. And I’ve been talking to the hospital’s in-house lawyer.”
“I thought he might want a report on our meeting.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Dr. Adderson sounded unfazed. “Anyway, I convinced him that you and Sheri aren’t out for blood. And—don’t make me sorry I did this—but I also convinced him that it might help resolve the family’s concerns about the death if he let me go over some of Kate Baneberry’s records with you.”
This was unexpected. “From the night she died?”
“Yes. If you can get her husband to sign a waiver of doctor-patient confidentiality, then I can show you something that’s been bothering me about the progression of her illness.”
As the doctor talked, I had walked back into the kitchen. I pulled the chili out of the microwave and reached for an onion. “How about this? Sheri’s father, Jim, is …”
“Angry.”
“Well, yes, he is.” I grabbed a chef’s knife from a wooden block on the counter and began peeling the onion. “As I told you this afternoon, he’s got his own lawyers. If I ask him to sign a legal waiver, red flags are going to go up and we’ll be buried in pinstripe suits. So, how about if I ask Sheri to get her mother’s medical records from her father? He has the right to access those records, and he can’t very well object to letting his own daughter look at them.” I stepped on the trash can lever and dropped the crinkled-gold onion skin inside. “Since I’m her attorney, she can let me see the file without his permission.”
Dr. Adderson let a few seconds go unfilled. “But that doesn’t give me the all’s-clear to discuss her condition with you.”
I made horizontal cuts through the onion. “At the risk of sounding insensitive, Kate Baneberry no longer has any confidentiality to protect. She’s dead. And besides, we already discussed her this afternoon.”
The line went silent, and I thought I may have offended her. Then she said, “Do you shoot?”
“Yeah. I guess. I go bird hunting about twice a year.” I separated three thick slices of onion and chopped them up.
“Come to the club Wednesday at one. We’ll eat and go over the records. Two o’clock is my usual tee time at the clays range. We’ll shoot and talk.”
I thanked her for calling and got no response. “Dr. Adderson? This may sound crazy, but something’s been bothering me all afternoon. I got directions today from a guy in the bar at your club. He was … he was intimidating as hell is what he was.”
“Charlie? Charlie’s big but he’s not what I’d call intimidating, especially not to a man like you.”
I put the knife down and turned to lean my backside against the kitchen counter. “This guy was about my age or a little younger. Black hair. Gaunt cheeks. Build like a fighter, like somebody who works out for strength, not bulk.”
Laurel Adderson laughed. “That’s not Charlie. Our bartender’s tall and round, with a big red beard. The guy you described … if there is someone like that who works at the club, I don’t know him. And he doesn’t sound much like he’d be one of our members.”
“No. I’d say this guy would scare the living hell out of the membership committee. Thanks anyway.”
“Sure. See you Wednesday.”
I punched the off button on the phone, dropped it on the counter, and scooped chopped onions off the cutting board and dumped them on top of my dinner. The chili, a cold bottle of Guinness, and I went into the living room, where I parked my food on the coffee table and then walked to the front hallway.
I peered out at the driveway, where I could have sworn I caught a flicker of movement in the shadows, but then there was nothing there. I locked the door and set the alarm. And while I was doing each of those things, the muscular stranger at the Mandrake Club stood silent watch from the back shadows of my imagination.
As I plopped into a chair and reached for the remote control, I started to feel a little embarrassed by my reaction to the hollow-cheeked stranger. I glanced up at the blank stare of the big beachside window that now showed only night.
I examined my pale reflection, then shook my head at the two-dimensional ghost in the window. “What a wuss.”
Four
I could smell whisky on her breath.
Sheri Baneberry’s smiling features looked blurred, like a smudged photograph with a thumbprint over the face. Her blonde tresses poked and twisted this way and that, I guessed, from riding with her window down. Out in the driveway, over my client’s shoulder, I could see some kind of sea-green Japanese SUV. The motor was running, and I could see a dark human form inside the vehicle.
Two hours earlier, just before five o’clock Tuesday afternoon, Sheri had called my office to say she’d gotten her mother’s medical records from her dad. I’d offered to stay late and go over the records with her, but Sheri hadn’t wanted to deal with rush-hour traffic in Mobile. Instead, she had suggested that she could bring them to my house, and I had agreed.
Now I had a drunk blonde on my front porch.
“Come in. You must be cold.” My client was wearing shorts and a sleeveless turtleneck on November 30.
“I never get cold.” She brushed by and left me standing alone in the entry hall.
I thought, Half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s has that effect.
I followed and found Sheri standing in the living room. She held out a brown accordion file folder. “Here it is.”
I took the folder and thanked her.
Sheri said, “Swelcome,” then walked over and sat in an upholstered chair facing the beach windows. She waved her left hand at the folder. “Whatcha looking for?”
I sat on the sofa and dropped the folder on the coffee table. Sheri wasn’t in any shape to help me go through the file, and I wasn’t in any mood to try to make her. I lifted the edge of the folder and peeked inside at my bedtime reading. “I’m not sure yet. I just wanted to go over the records before I see Dr. Adderson tomorrow. See if anything jumps out at me.”
Sheri kicked off her sandals and put her bare feet up on the coffee table. “I can tell ya what Dad’s lawyers said.”
I waited while she looked around the room. “Okay.”
“You got anything to drink? I had a bourbon before I came over, and just one drink always gives me a headache.”
If she’d had one drink, it was in one hell of a big glass. I said, “I don’t drink.”
“You drank at B.J.’s on Thanksgiving.”
“I’m turning over a new leaf. What’d your father’s lawyers say about the medical records?”
Sheri Baneberry sighed. I, clearly, was an inadequate host. “They said Mom was doing good all afternoon, and then she just got sick and died.”
“That’s some kind of in-depth analysis. They must be very proud.”
Sheri shrugged. “They’ve got a paralegal who’s a nurse.”
“That would explain it.”
“Listen. You want me to hang around and go over the records with you? I got
a friend out in the car, but she’ll wait if you need me.”
“No, that’s fine. We can talk later. Just tell me this …”
Someone knocked on the front door, and Sheri said, “Must be Bobbi. Guess she got tired of waiting.”
I stood and walked to the foyer. Sheri followed.
When I opened the door, Bobbi stepped into the house and stopped in the entry hall halfway between Sheri and me. Bobbi was a tall, athletic brunette, who wouldn’t have looked out of place as a girls’ tennis coach at any high school in the country.
Sheri introduced us, and Bobbi Mactans said, “Hi.”
I motioned in the direction of the living room. “Would you like to come in? We’ll just be a couple more minutes.”
Bobbi peered into my eyes as though she was trying to see through them. Her irises were so dark that the pupils were indistinguishable from the surrounding color. “No, thank you. Sheri and I really need to get going.” And without taking her eyes from mine, Bobbi said, “Sheri, are you ready?”
“Sure.”
I held up my hand. “Sorry, Sheri. Just one more thing. Who was with your mother that Saturday? Did anyone stay with her?”
I was looking at Sheri, but I could see Bobbi trying to hold my eyes with hers. Sheri said, “I was there. Most of the time, anyway. Dad called around two Saturday afternoon to tell me they were headed for the emergency room. I got to the hospital around three-thirty and stayed until dinnertime. Mom was getting better when I left.”
“Was your father there the whole time?”
Sheri looked bored, like maybe she was losing her buzz. “I think so.”
“Was he there when you left?”
Bobbi cut in. “She said he was. Look, Sheri, we need to get …”
I interrupted, but tried my best to sound pleasant. “Bobbi, your friend’s paying me a lot of money to ask these questions.”
Bobbi’s hard black eyes narrowed, and she walked out onto the porch. I turned to Sheri. “Well, was your father with your mother in her hospital room when you got there and when you left?”
Sheri was growing blurrier by the second, but wasn’t the least bit irritated by my cutting off her friend. “Yeah, Dad was there when I got there. And he was still around when I left.”
“Still around the hospital or in your mother’s room?”
“Oh. Uh, he went to the cafeteria.”
“Did you see him come back?”
“Unh-uh. He was still gone when I left.”
I put my hand on the small of Sheri’s back. “You need to get your shoes.” Sheri walked into the living room and slipped painted toenails into her sandals. As we walked back toward the open front door, I said, “Okay, thanks, Sheri. I’ll call you tomorrow after I talk with Dr. Adderson.”
Just inside the door, she turned to face me. “I’m a little bit drunk.”
“I figured that out.”
Tears pooled in her blurry brown eyes. “I’m sorry, Tom. I really am serious about this, and I appreciate what you’re doing. It’s just … it’s funny how awful it is to lose your mother, even if, you know, you’re a grown-up.”
I glanced through the open door and met Bobbi’s black-eyed glare. She and Sheri were both in their twenties, but I wasn’t sure I was in the presence of any actual grown-ups.
Sheri stepped gingerly toward the open door and closed it between us and her friend. “Tom, can I tell you something about my mother?”
“Anything you want.”
She leaned against the door and rocked the back of her head against the painted wood. “I was in the fifth grade—I guess about ten years old—and I’d seen a Bela Lugosi movie or something ’cause I decided I wanted to be a vampire for Halloween.” Sheri squeezed her eyelids shut and tears rolled down her cheeks. She swallowed hard. “So anyway, I tell Mom that that’s what I wanna be. And I’ve got a pretty unrealistic picture in mind of the costume I want. I want a cape like Dracula’s. You know, black with red satin lining. One of those things cut in a half circle so it would hang in folds and I could hold it in front of my face and give people the evil eye.
“Anyway, I’m rambling on about all this, and Mom just listens. Later, when she couldn’t find a costume like I wanted, she went to the fabric store and bought black and red satin. She was still working with my father then—working as hard as he did—and she stayed up every night for a week after he went to bed. Mom designed and sewed a cape and a vest to go with some black pants and a shirt I’d picked out. She even went out and bought a three-dollar wig and cut it into a widow’s peak like Bela Lugosi had because I didn’t wanna run around acting like a demon in a little blonde pageboy.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you, Tom? I had this childish fantasy of what I was going to look like on Halloween, and my mother worked herself ragged to make the fantasy real for me.” Sheri still had her eyes closed tight, and her lips trembled as she spoke.
I reached out and took her hand. “I understand what you’re telling me, Sheri.”
She raised the back of her head off the door. She opened her eyes and nodded. “Well, guess what. On Halloween, at school that day, I found out all my friends were going to hang out at the carnival and make fun of the other kids. These three girls that I thought were so cool were already laughing about the losers in the class who were going to dress up like little kids that night.
“So,” she paused to take a deep breath, “when school let out at three o’clock, I ran home in tears and told Mom that I didn’t want her costume, that I was too old for it, and everybody would make fun of me.” She paused to wipe at her face. “You know what she did? She told me not to worry about it. She helped me pick out something else to wear, and that was it. She never even mentioned it again.”
I nodded. It was the kind of story that every kid, every lucky one, has about their mother or father. And, like all such stories, it was ordinary and maybe even trite—except that it wasn’t.
I squeezed her hand. “Are you going to be okay, Sheri? Do you need anything?”
My inebriated client smiled a little. “I’ll be fine.”
“Just one more thing. Do you know if your mother had any ownership interest in your dad’s construction company?”
Her eyes rolled back and seemed to scan the crown molding. “Maybe. I’m really not sure.” She paused and lost interest again. “Good night, Tom.”
“Good night.”
Sheri opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, and Bobbi slipped her arm around Sheri’s waist to help her down the stairs. And I thought, Well, she’s drunk. Then Bobbi kept her arm around Sheri all the way to the car. And I thought, She doesn’t want her tipsy friend to trip and fall in the dark. Then Bobbi opened the passenger door, helped Sheri inside, and reached across to fasten Sheri’s seatbelt.
Bobbi backed her Isuzu Trooper around, dropped the transmission into drive, and spun gravel down the length of my driveway.
I locked up and wandered into the kitchen, where I found a cold bottle of Foster’s in the refrigerator.
Kate Baneberry’s medical record was a two-beer file. And—as far as I could tell—Jim Baneberry’s lawyers were right. Kate Baneberry had been responding to treatment, getting better, even eating a little dinner. Then she just died.
I picked up the phone and punched in my investigator’s number. No answer. I briefly considered calling his pager but realized that what I wanted could wait. I punched in another number, and my secretary, Kelly, answered on the second ring.
“Sorry to bother you at home, Kelly.”
“No problem. I’m just sitting here watching NYPD Blue.”
“Whose butt are they featuring tonight?”
Kelly laughed. “No bare bottoms so far. What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to let you know I’m not coming in tomorrow. I’ve got to meet Kate Baneberry’s doctor in Daphne for lunch, so I’ll just work here until then. You can put any calls through. I’ll be here at home till around noon.”
�
��Okay.”
“Do me a favor. Joey’s not answering. Could you please call him in the morning and ask him to check out some people for me? And, Kelly, I don’t want these people to know they’re being checked out. You understand?”
“Absolutely. Who are they?”
“The first one is Dr. Laurel Adderson. I need to know about any malpractice claims filed against her in, say, the last five years or so. And tell him to do a general background check.”
“Okay. Got it. Who else?”
“The second is a woman named Bobbi Mactans.” I spelled the name, then gave Kelly the tag number of Bobbi’s Isuzu Trooper and hung up.
Five
“The biggest concern with food poisoning is dehydration.” Dr. Laurel Adderson and I had finished lunch and were lingering over coffee while we waited for our spot on the clays range. The club’s cavernous dining room was outfitted with a cathedral ceiling, distant waiters, and a linen-draped buffet table covered with really good, really fattening food.
Dr. Adderson went on with her explanation of Kate Baneberry’s condition. “Kate checked into emergency at Bayside just after two Saturday afternoon. She reported that she had awakened around four that morning with stomach cramps and that she had been experiencing severe diarrhea and vomiting since that time. When I saw Kate, she was seriously dehydrated. I immediately ordered her put on a glucose IV to replace fluids, and we administered meds to control the nausea and diarrhea. And Kate was responding. Her nausea and diarrhea had pretty well run their course anyhow, which is what you want. If someone has eaten tainted food, what you want is to let the body throw the poisons off before you interfere. But, like I said, the nausea had run its course, and we had medicated Kate to settle her stomach.” Dr. Adderson’s voice sounded normal, her speech professional and unhurried. But I noticed her hands gripping the armrests on her chair, twisting sticks of carved mahogany like twin screwdrivers locked into rusted screws. “Of course, we verified that salmonella was the culprit, and we ran other, standard tests that came back perfectly normal for someone battling food poisoning. Her electrolytes were elevated, but there was nothing to really concern us. So the treatment was to replace fluids, keep her comfortable, and monitor her condition. I called in from home at seven and was informed that Kate had improved enough to have a light supper.”