False Profits

by Patricia Smiley

  When I finally found the Boxster, I reached into my purse to get my keys, but they weren’t there. I checked my pockets. Nothing. I tried to remember where I’d last seen them, but with all the confusion, I couldn’t recall. I walked back to the cafeteria and looked around the table where Kleinman and I had been sitting. They weren’t there, either. Just what I needed—an eighty-buck round-trip cab ride home so I could search my desk drawer for spare keys I hadn’t seen since I got the car.

  The smell of onion rings from the cafeteria was making me so woozy, I actually thought about offering to buy Kleinman dinner in exchange for a ride home. I was reaching for my cell phone to call him when I remembered something. I hurried toward NeuroMed, knowing that everyone was gone for the day, but hoping to find a maintenance worker or someone with a key to let me in.

  The outside door was closed, but just as I always check the coin tray in a pay phone, knowing it will be empty, I turned the knob. To my surprise, it was unlocked. Maybe Francine had come back. Maybe it was the cleaning crew—or maybe someone else. That thought created a fluttering sensation in my stomach. I wondered if Kleinman had left the building yet.

  My breathing stopped as I listened for any sounds. There was nothing but silence. The broomlike weather stripping brushed against the floor as I quietly pushed open the door. The waiting room was dark and empty, but from what I could see, everything seemed just as we’d left it. The door leading to the front office was still propped open. I made my way past the receptionist’s desk, dragging my hand along the nubby wall to guide me in the dark. At the end of the hall, I saw a thin ray of light from Dr. Polk’s office, spiking out across the hallway floor. Then I heard the faint sound of rustling papers. To call out or to sneak? Well, what were rubber-soled shoes for anyway? I tiptoed back to the front office and picked up an electric pencil sharpener from one of the desks. I wrapped the cord around the thing and hoisted it to my shoulder like a shot, just in case. Pencil sharpeners aren’t exactly cutting-edge weaponry, so I gritted my teeth, hoping that it made me look scary. I wanted whoever was in Polk’s office to think I was a cyborg hit woman, not a Cro-Magnon cavegirl stalking woolly mammoths. Then I cautiously headed back toward the light.

  The door was open wide enough for me to see the back of a tall man wearing an impeccably cut gray suit. From the age spots on the back of his hands, and the roughness of the skin on his neck, I put him somewhere in his sixties, but fit and trim. His brown hair was well manicured, but the color looked too dark for his age, as if he’d dyed it one shade beyond believability. The evenness of the hue made it seem brittle under the fluorescent light.

  From a nearby filing cabinet he pulled out a manila folder, and thumbed through the papers inside. For the second time in as many days, someone had come to NeuroMed searching. For what? As he turned his head slightly, I recognized the profile and relaxed. He was no burglar.

  I’d met him several times. I’d never worked with him before, but Venus had, and so had Richard Hastings. Most of what I’d heard about him came from newspapers and gossip. Rich. Powerful. To some, a caring philanthropist, to others, a poster boy for all the bad isms. He, Gordon, and Hastings were all alumni of Luther Mann, a private college whose graduates made it their calling to network within the “club.” He was also the man who could guarantee our firm’s success with one stroke of his pen. What I didn’t know was how Wade Covington had gotten into this office, and why he was rifling through a dead man’s files.

  “Can I help you find something?” I said.

  He apparently hadn’t heard me enter, because he spun around, dropping the folder on the floor.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  I cleared my throat to conceal the tremor in my voice, and reached down to pick up the folder he’d dropped. Unfortunately, he had the same idea, and we nearly bumped heads. This wasn’t going well. I scooped up the file and handed it to him. “I promise not to do that again.” I extended my hand. “I’m Tucker Sinclair.” He didn’t take the bait. I hesitated, watching him, hoping he wouldn’t associate my name in a negative way with Gordon or the firm.

  “I know who you are.” His voice was deep and intimidating and echoed through the small room. I wondered what, if anything, Hastings had told him about me. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been good. Covington’s pale blue eyes glowered at the lethal-looking pencil sharpener I still held in my hand. Apparently, I wasn’t winning him over with my chirpy smile or my choice of weapons.

  “The door was open,” I said, putting the sharpener on the desk. “Francine locked it. I mean, I thought she locked it. Someone broke in earlier. Well, maybe not ‘broke in’ exactly. You must be looking for Dr. Polk? I guess you haven’t heard. Of course not. How could you have? He’s dead.”

  Even I knew I was babbling. We locked gazes for a moment as he assessed me. His face was taut, as if all the wrinkles had been stretched smooth by a surgeon’s hand. His expression was hard to read. His face seemed placid until the mouth widened and the lips parted. It was subtle, but still, it looked strangely like a smile.

  “Guess one of his bad habits caught up with him,” he said.

  He wasn’t exactly overcome with grief, and that made me feel defensive. “Which bad habit was that? Scuba diving without a tank? I’ll be sure to mention your theory to the cops.”

  As soon as the words slipped out, I realized I’d gone too far. The scowl on his face told me that he didn’t buy the idea that one flippant remark deserved another. His mouth set in a hard line as he roughly jammed the file back into the drawer. Luckily, I was spared having to construct another heartfelt apology. Without warning, the overhead fluorescent lights in the hallway flipped on, flooding the whole office with light. As I spun around to look, I heard a gasp and then a female voice.

  “Jeez, you scared the shit out of me!” she said.

  A young woman stood just outside Polk’s office door with her hand on her chest, staring at us. Her dark brown hair was twisted on top of her head and held with a butterfly clip that left an uncluttered view of a round, pretty face. It was Dolores Rodriguez, one of NeuroMed’s medical technicians.

  “What are you doing here?” I said to her.

  “The hospital called me for an emergency EEG. I came to pick up my machine.” Her brown eyes narrowed. “Who’s he? How’d you two get in here?”

  “If you ladies will excuse me,” Covington said, “I’ll leave you to discuss your security concerns in private.” He flashed a smile that held no mirth, and before I could ask him what he’d been looking for, he picked up a black textured briefcase from the floor and walked out. Wade Covington was everything I’d remembered: arrogant and just a little intimidating. He hadn’t asked one question about Milton Polk’s death. Maybe he didn’t care, or maybe he preferred to get the information from someone in his own socioeconomic group.

  Dolores mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “asshole” as a pager clipped to her uniform pocket went off. She checked the readout panel and then hurried toward the door.

  “ICU,” she said. “Catch that light. I’ll lock up.”

  “I have to find my car keys,” I said. “I left them when I was helping Francine this afternoon.”

  She paused for a moment as if to weigh priorities. “I thought you were done working here.”

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “Francine will explain. I’ll only be a minute.”

  She shrugged. “Lock up when you leave.”

  She quickly walked to an EEG cart parked in one of the testing rooms and adjusted some knobs. Despite the fact that she carried no more than ninety pounds on her five-foot frame and looked barely strong enough to push the contraption, she bent her upper body forty-five degrees and used the traction of her white nurse’s shoes to start the cart rolling down the hall.

  After Dolores left, I checked the cabinet in Polk’s office in the hopes of locating the file Covington had been looking at, but it was impossible to tell which one it had been. M
ost held testing protocols or reprints of journal articles. Not very enlightening. I turned off the lights in his office and went looking for my car keys. I found them on top of a file cabinet in the storage room, just where I’d left them. I put the keys in my pocket and doubled back to douse the rest of the lights.

  My finger was poised to flip the switch in Francine’s office when I noticed the corner of what looked like a blue patient chart poking out of a drawer in one of her filing cabinets. The more I stared at it, the more it looked untidy. Francine had just spent hours straightening up the place. It was almost like my duty to pop that puppy back inside the drawer. But more than that, the file looked out of place. Why was a patient chart filed in her office? It was supposed to be kept in the storage room where I’d left my car keys. That made me suspicious. Francine had been locked up alone in her office all afternoon. Maybe she’d been misfiling all sorts of things—maybe even the NeuroMed documents. I owed it to myself to find out.

  I wasn’t sure how long it would be before Dolores returned from the intensive care unit. I didn’t want her to find me here snooping around, but I was in curiosity overdrive. After locking the outer door to eliminate any more surprise visitors, I returned to Francine’s office and opened her file drawer. It was filled with patient medical charts. I pulled the one that had been sticking out of the drawer and thumbed through it. It seemed like standard stuff. No ahas! No alarm bells sounded, which made me wonder if I was missing something. I continued searching through the entire drawer, and then the one below, but found nothing but more patient records, detailing results of various neurological tests performed at the Center. Except for the fact that they were filed in Francine’s office and not with the others, the files were one big routine yawn. I was searching the last drawer, feeling I’d wasted my time, when I came across a chart toward the back that made the breath catch in my throat. I pulled it out, staring in disbelief.

  The file contained six separate reports detailing test results. Inside was a statement addressed to what looked like an apartment on Rexford Drive in the flats of Beverly Hills. A green sticker near the bottom read, Your insurance has been billed. This statement for your information only. The balance due was $3,987.00. My finger traced across the patient’s name, neatly typewritten on a white label along the side of the file. It read, Tucker Sinclair, 30-year-old right-handed woman. Okay, so lots of people had told me I needed my head examined, but I was sure I hadn’t had it done at NeuroMed, and not to the tune of four grand.

  I considered the odds of finding another thirty-year-old Tucker Sinclair in the Los Angeles area and came up with slim to none. Maybe it was just some bizarre coincidence, but if not, that meant only one thing: Someone at NeuroMed was using my name to commit insurance fraud. I wondered if Polk had been so desperate for money that he’d sucked me into not one but two white-collar crimes. With Mo Whitener’s threats hanging over my head, it would be a disaster if I had to fight off charges of insurance fraud as well.

  I knew that NeuroMed used an outside billing service to process insurance claims, but even so, Francine had to know about this. She managed the office. Maybe she was even involved, which would help explain why she hadn’t wanted the police at the Center and why she’d cleaned up before they got there. For all I knew, she was also Polk’s partner in the investor scam. She didn’t strike me as the girl-genius type, but she and the doctor together could probably have pulled it off. If so, I had to find out, because I’d worked too hard and given up too much to let Milton Polk or Francine Chalmers ruin my life. Tomorrow Francine and I were going to have another little chat.

  It was already five-thirty, but with Whitener’s deadline only a week away, I didn’t have any time to waste. I decided to check out my clone on Rexford Drive. Beverly Hills was less than eight miles away, but it was rush hour. It would take me a good twenty to thirty minutes to get there, just enough time to meet the other Tucker Sinclair before the end of happy hour.

  I stuffed the blue patient chart into my bag, turned out all the lights, and locked the door. The door felt secure, but I didn’t. Earlier, I’d discounted the theory that Whitener was involved in Polk’s murder, but what if the killer had been one of the investors or else someone tied to this insurance fraud? My name was connected to both scams now. I wondered if the creep had any other names on his hit list—like mine. That thought didn’t make me feel secure at all.

  6

  fifteen minutes later I was on the road, headed toward Beverly Hills. An enormous peach movie prop moon dominated the sky as I followed the great Milky Way of rush-hour taillights on Olympic Boulevard, crawling along until I got to Rexford Drive. The address listed on the insurance claim was located in an area lined with mature trees and even more mature apartment buildings. Most were six- or eight-unit two-story post-war transitional architecture with small, well-manicured front lawns. When I got near the address, I took one of the metered spots across from a Starbucks and set off on foot.

  I wandered up and down the block for at least five minutes before realizing I had passed the address, mainly because it wasn’t at all what I expected and because the number was jammed in with dozens of other signs plastering a large plate-glass window. Signs that read, Open 24 hours, UPS, FedEx, FAX, Copy, Western Union.

  The address on the statement belonged to Mail Companion, a commercial mailbox rental store. A poster with a cartoon Pilgrim, his arm around a Thanksgiving turkey, hung on a glass door that opened into a small lobby. Inside, the space was divided in half. On the left side, banks of mailboxes covered two walls. On the right side, partitioned off behind a wall and a second glass door, was a retail shop selling limited office supplies and packing boxes.

  The patient statement was addressed to number 218, so I went to the left side of the room and looked for the corresponding mailbox. Some of them had strips of black plastic label tape identifying the owners, but not 218. I peeked through the window. It looked as though there was mail inside, but the opening was too small and it was too dark inside for me to make out any names.

  I tried the door of the retail shop, but it was locked. I could see through the glass that the walls were covered with movie posters: Thelma & Louise, Legends of the Fall, Meet Joe Black, Seven Years in Tibet. It took me a minute or two to figure out the unifying theme: Brad Pitt.

  A woman in her late fifties was still inside the shop, doing whatever clerks do at the end of the day. She was a few pounds beyond voluptuous and had a florid complexion, made more dramatic set against long bleached-blond hair. She’d gathered a clump of hair into a skinny ponytail on the top of her head and harnessed it with a floppy grayish bow that looked like a dead pigeon. I knocked on the glass to get her attention. She looked up, annoyed by the intrusion, gesturing toward the Closed sign on the door. I gestured back with praying hands. She waved as if batting at a fly as she walked toward me. She wore a white ankle-length chiffon skirt and an oversize pink sweatshirt. The outfit was accessorized with white tights and tennies. A light from behind her exposed the outline of a pair of chunky thighs. It wasn’t a pretty sight. As she got closer, I noticed a plastic name tag pinned to her sweatshirt that identified her as the owner. Rosie Glenn. It sounded like some housing development in Calabasas.

  “Closed!” She shouted through the glass with an accent that sounded southern. Again she pointed to the sign.

  “I want to rent a mailbox,” I responded.

  “Come back tomorrow.” She turned to leave.

  “I need a specific box. Maybe you could save me a trip and tell me if it’s available? Number two-eighteen.”

  “I don’t keep all them numbers in my head,” she said, annoyed. “Come back tomorrow. I gotta be somewhere.”

  Where? I wondered. A chili cook-off? Well, too bad, sweetie, I thought, it’ll just have to start without you.

  “Oh, gosh, maybe you could just check for me quick before you go.” I aimed for an irresistible yet desperate tone in my voice.

  For a moment she looked as if she
were weighing the gross revenues of the rental against the throbbing of her swollen feet. Guess the revenues won out, because she unlocked the door and let me in. She sauntered over to the counter and pulled a ledger book from the drawer, thumbing through a list of numbers.

  “Two-eighteen’s taken,” she said, flipping through a couple more pages. “Give you four-twenty-three.”

  “Oh, wait,” I said. “Sorry. Not two-eighteen. That’s my friend’s box. Tucker Sinclair? We want to pick up each other’s mail, so I need to get a box close to hers.”

  She glared at me as if I was testing her patience.

  “Try again,” she said. “There’s no Tucker Sinclair in two-eighteen.”

  “Really? I’m sure that’s what she told me,” I said, searching for a way into her heart and her ledger book. “You sure? What does it say?” I leaned over and tried to read the entry.

  “That’s confidential.” She closed the book with a slap.

  “Oh, right.” I paused and then gestured toward the posters. “You a Brad Pitt fan?”

  She eyed me suspiciously. “Yeah.”

  I flashed my pearly whites and nodded. “Me, too.”

  The woman looked flushed as she glanced up at the Legends of the Fall poster.

  “Near wore that video out, looking at it,” she said.