Malpractice in Maggody

by Joan Hess

  “How are we today?” I chirped.

  “Good Lord, is it conceivable that there is yet another of you nattering ninnies? Let me guess—you’ve brought my midmorning snack. What can it be today? A sunflower seed? A bean sprout? I can hardly restrain my salivary glands.”

  “Nothing that exciting, I’m afraid. I’m filling in for Miss Foss for a few hours. She was called away for an emergency.”

  “Balderdash! She was murdered in the garden.”

  I set down the clipboard and moved closer to him, hoping he wasn’t the sort to spit—or at least that his range was limited. “How do you know that?”

  He pulled the blanket over his head, but after a moment, pulled it down a few inches. “Why should I tell you? What’s in it for me? Are you too dim-witted to grasp the essence of capitalism? Supply and demand, based on the fair market exchange of valuable consideration. I have information. What have you to offer?”

  “You want money?” I asked, mystified.

  “Please, Lord, save me from dunces and buffoons. I swear I’ll give all my book advances to an organization that provides free lobotomies to the terminally ignorant. I’ll give up caviar for Lent, or at least the beluga variety. Anything to rid myself of you meddlesome medical prevaricators!”

  “You’re a writer?”

  “I am Dr. Shelby Dibbins.”

  I thought for a moment, but nothing clicked. “Should I have heard of you?”

  “Yes, unless you live in a shack and read nothing more challenging than tabloids heralding the latest Elvis sighting. I feel as though I’ve been stranded on an island populated by sadistic scientists and their subnormal subordinates. I’m waiting to be measured for thumbscrews.”

  “If you’re suffering, why are you here? Court order?”

  He sat up, giving me a view of black satin pajamas. “I will not be insulted like this! Bring me my dressing gown and slippers. I shall march down the hall and lodge a complaint with Dr. Stonebridge, who shares many qualities with his mentor, Dr. Mengele.”

  “Get over it.” I tossed him the dressing gown. “If you’re not here involuntarily, who is?”

  Although he was puffing, Dibbins made it to the sofa in the sitting room with surprising agility for such a large man. “I’m quite sure the washed-up actress down the hall does not have the option of leaving. She complains incessantly about the food, the size of her suite, and her obligatory therapy sessions. Tantrums are unattractive in children, but repulsive in adults. In an effort to gain extra privileges, she’s attempted to seduce every man in this establishment. I’ve got my money on the orderly with the scar on his chin. He drives the van, so I suspect that she believes he’ll smuggle her out with the trash some evening. All she can hope to get from me is an evening of Puccini. Are you fond of opera?”

  “How do you know so much?” I asked, ignoring his question, since I’d never developed a taste for melodramatics. “I was told the maids and orderlies don’t speak any English.”

  His eyes glittered with amusement. “Bring me a twelve-ounce white chocolate bar with hazelnuts and raisins, and I shall spill my heart. Do be quick about it, since Dr. Skiller no doubt has me scheduled for leeches in hopes they can suck up a pound of flesh along with my sickly corpuscles.”

  “I’ll be back later,” I said. I picked up the clipboard and returned to the hall. Apparently Dr. Dibbins had a pretty good idea of what was going on inside the Stonebridge Foundation, although I couldn’t see him being included in any staff meetings. Either some of the maids and orderlies spoke more English than they’d admitted, or he spoke Spanish. Or he had access to the personal files, improbable as it seemed.

  I was considering my next move when Randall Zumi hurried down the hall and caught my arm. He looked no more in command of the situation than he had more than a week ago when he and Brenda had wandered into Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill.

  “Brenda told me you were here,” he said in a low voice. He glanced over his shoulder, then added, “I need to speak to you somewhere more private than this. Can you come to my office?”

  I followed him back through the reception room to the back of the building. As we went down the sidewalk, I said, “What are these rooms?”

  Randall was clearly not in the mood to give me a guided tour. “The surgical suite and recovery area, followed by Brenda’s rooms, Walter’s, mine, and Vince’s at the end. The living areas are behind each office. They’re basically efficiency apartments, with limited cooking facilities. Not as posh as the patients’ suites, but pleasant enough.”

  I suspected my roach-infested apartment with its stained linoleum floor and peeling walls would not compare well. Then again, the only way I’d ever have a six-figure income would be to erase the decimal point on my paycheck. “And on the other side of the pool?” I asked as he stopped to unlock a door.

  “Uh, the day room, which nobody much uses during the day. The patients eat in their sitting rooms, and the employees in a room behind the kitchen. The rest of us eat in our apartments. Next is the gym, and beyond that, the kitchen, pantry, laundry, and furnace room.” He opened the door and gestured for me to precede him. “I only have twenty minutes until my next session. If the schedule is disrupted, the patients become uneasy. They’re like small children; they do better with a consistent routine.”

  “All right, but after we’re done, I need to have a look at the day room and the gym,” I said.

  He nudged me into his office and closed the door. “I’ll give you a key. Please, sit down and let me tell you what happened. Would you like water or a glass of Brenda’s chilled herbal tea?”

  “No, thank you.” I sat down in a leather chair in front of his desk. The office was large, and decorated with the same thick gray carpet and elegant touches I’d seen in Dr. Dibbins’s suite. “Is this about Molly Foss’s death?”

  He sank down in a chair across from me. “I wish I knew. It might be, or I could just be going crazy. Funny, isn’t it? I’m the one who’s trained to diagnose delusions, not have them. Luckily, I don’t have much time to indulge myself, since I’m on call seven nights a week.”

  “In case someone freaks out?”

  “We prefer to use more precise terminology,” he said, wincing. “There have been moments when one of the patients has become unduly agitated and potentially violent. Only Dr. Stonebridge and I are licensed to administer narcotics.”

  “Not Brenda Skiller?” I asked.

  Randall shook his head. “She’s a psychologist. Once we add an RN to the staff, it’ll make things easier.” He picked up a pen and began to roll it in his hands. “It’s imperative that you do not repeat what I’m about to tell you. Can you agree to this?”

  “Of course.” I didn’t bother to add that I could also agree to invite Raz and Marjorie over for cocktails, run marathons, and buy beachfront property behind Perkin’s barn. Didn’t mean I would, though—especially if what he had to say involved the murder.

  “Someone broke in here yesterday or the day before,” he said. “I don’t mean with a chisel or pry bar. Whoever it was must have had a key.”

  “Was there damage? Is something missing?”

  He dropped the pen and stared at it as it rolled off the desk. “Nothing so obvious. Someone went through my personal papers. I might not have noticed for a long time, but this morning I needed to find my lawyer’s telephone number. I knew precisely where I’d put it. The papers in that particular folder had been taken out and then put back in the wrong order. Whoever it was searched everything, including my desk drawers and the books on the shelf over there. My apartment was also searched.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked. “Isn’t it possible that you might have unpacked hastily when you arrived last week?”

  “I am quite sure,” he said firmly. “I’m obsessive about keeping everything neat and in the proper place. My coworkers at the hospital used to tease me about it. They thought it was a big joke.”

  “Who has a key or access to one?”

  He
put his elbows on the desk and rested his head in his hands. “Vincent, Brenda, and I have master keys to all the rooms. There’s also one in the reception office for the maids. I have sessions here during the day, so my office and apartment are cleaned between six and seven each evening. I use that time to walk in the garden, work out, or visit patients in their suites. I wish I could say that I never leave the door unlocked when I’m not here, but I probably do when I’m preoccupied.”

  That narrowed down the suspects to everybody within the facility, patients and staff alike. “Why do you think someone would risk being caught to look through your personal papers?” I asked. “Is there something significant?”

  “No, nothing. I’m going through a divorce, but my wife’s lawyer is aware of all my assets. I don’t have an offshore account or a lockbox crammed with money. Hell, I don’t have more than a hundred dollars of ready cash. I invested every spare penny I had in the foundation. I don’t have anything left to hide.”

  “Somebody must think you do,” I pointed out.

  “If I did, don’t you think I would have destroyed it before I came here?” he said bitterly.

  I was startled by the change in his voice. “Tell me about yesterday. Could you have left the door unlocked?”

  He opened a notebook. “It was fairly normal. I had a nine o’clock session with…well, one of the patients, and then—”

  “Listen up,” I said, “I’m going to have to know the names of everybody on the premises. A young woman was murdered here last night. I don’t need to know the patients’ specific problems—I just need to know who they are. This coyness isn’t going to cut it. If I have to get a court order, I will.” I was proud of this final threat, which always worked in TV shows but was quite a bit dicier in reality. The judges in Stump County were a bunch of old white farts who spent their weekends fishing, playing golf, or fooling around with their nubile clerks in motels across the state line. And when the weather was nice, these weekends began at noon on Friday and continued until the inevitable Monday-morning hangover had abated. I couldn’t count on Harve for help unless the lake had dried up. However, I bared my teeth at Randall and waited silently.

  “I should run this by Vincent,” he said at last.

  I leaned back and crossed my arms. “Whatever you think is best. Just keep in mind there are reporters hanging around the courtrooms, hoping for something more sensational than rote arraignments for spousal abuse and hot checks.”

  Randall looked as though he wished he could swallow a handful of whatever he prescribed for his patients’ late-night anxiety attacks. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a passive-aggressive syndrome? It’s probably due to conflicts with your mother. Did you feel manipulated as an adolescent?”

  “Do you mind if I use your phone? I need to start the process for the warrant before noon.”

  “Oh, all right. Dr. Shelby Dibbins is an author from West Palm Beach. Dawn Dartmouth is a young actress from the L.A. area. Toby Mann is a professional athlete, and Alexandra Swayze is from D.C. and is involved in politics. Is that adequate?”

  I suddenly realized why I’d almost recognized the woman in the blue tracksuit, having seen her face in the newspaper (and hoped she’d be struck by lightning). None of the others were familiar, but that was my fault, not theirs. “Adequate for the time being,” I said as I wrote down the names. “Please continue with what you did yesterday, but use their names this time.”

  “Dawn came here at nine. At ten I saw Ms. Swayze, who then went to gym for a session there. Toby came here a few minutes later from acupuncture therapy with Brenda. At noon I went to Dr. Dibbins’s suite, since he refuses to leave it. Afterward, I took an apple and ate it by the pool. Vince joined me, and we discussed potential surgical procedures. That seems to be his solution to every problem, while Brenda argues that cures can be found only in the bowels.” He paused to give me a wry smile. “That leaves me with the brains and Walter with the biceps. We’re very thorough here at the Stonebridge Foundation. Our motto should be: Leave no tummy un-tucked and no feces unflushed.”

  I really didn’t want to hear any more. “After lunch?”

  “Dawn and Toby returned here for anger management. I’d hoped we were ready for role-playing, but both of them were, shall we say, too intense for objective analysis of their emotional reactions to minimal confrontation. I had to call an orderly to separate them. Toby went to work out with Walter. Dawn said she was returning to her suite. The orderly helped me put the furniture back in place and pick up the books and other projectiles. I took a few minutes to regain my composure, then went to Brenda’s office to review her dietary supplements to make sure the two weren’t receiving excessive stimulants. None of these herbal remedies has been properly studied, and their purported potencies aren’t regulated by the FDA. I prefer to know exactly what my patients are ingesting. Brenda would much rather don a robe and collect her roots and berries under a full moon.”

  “It sounds as though you were in and out all day,” I said to get him back on track.

  “It does, doesn’t it? I met with Vince in the surgical suite to make sure everything was ready for the tumescent liposuction he was planning to perform on Dr. Dibbins this afternoon. That, of course, has been put off because of what happened to Molly.” He took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “A truly terrible thing. She was so…so vibrant and happy. I can’t believe someone would do something like that to her.”

  I’d finally found someone who was plainly distressed by her death. “You liked her, I gather.”

  “If I’d met her fifteen years ago, I would have dropped out of medical school and dedicated myself to making her happy. We would have lived in a simple house, raised a few adorable children, and spent our evenings sipping cocoa in front of a cozy fire.” He closed the notebook and went to the window. His back to me, he added, “Brenda was very cruel to Molly. Envy is a dangerous emotion that can simmer beneath the surface like molten lava. Molly tried to ignore it, but I could see how deeply it wounded her. She wasn’t like the rest of us, especially these damned bloody patients who all believe that they deserve public adoration. She was pure.”

  “Do you think Brenda might have told Molly to meet her in the garden after the staff meeting?” I asked delicately, already imagining myself driving toward Springfield in time for a cold beer and a tantalizing greeting. And, of course, a warm-up game of Scrabble.

  He turned around. “Molly wouldn’t have agreed to that. She wasn’t quite the doormat everybody assumed she was, nor was she stupid. She married out of high school to escape her parents, but she chose a boy whose family owned a successful business. She was squirreling away money in a separate checking account and planning to get away as soon as she could.”

  “She told you this?”

  “People seem to think they can confide in a psychiatrist.” He attempted to smile. “We’re not supposed to have irrational emotions.”

  I would have sympathized with him had the clock not been ticking. “Do you think Brenda might have followed Molly outside?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You’re the one who brought up the simmering lava.”

  “That’s hardly a motive for murder. Killing Molly wasn’t going to make Brenda twenty years younger, forty pounds lighter, and afoot shorter.” He sat down behind his desk and stared at me. “Yesterday at five or so, I returned here to have a cup of tea, wrote some notes for the case file, and went to the meeting. Afterward, I came back to read, then went to bed. Vince woke me up to tell me about Molly.”

  “You weren’t in the garden when the sheriff and medical examiner arrived?”

  “I was too upset. Vince and Brenda were talking about her death as if it were nothing more than a nuisance. With Vince’s permission, I got a glass of brandy from his room and took a sleeping pill. I was oblivious to everything until a maid came in this morning at seven-thirty with my breakfast tray.”

  “When did you notice someone had been thro
ugh your personal papers?”

  “While I was reading through the mail that came yesterday, I realized I needed to make the call. That’s when I took out the folder.”

  “Is everybody’s schedule as hectic as yours?” I asked.

  “Brenda, Walter, and I stay busy. Vince will be once he starts doing surgery. He is intensely interested in the success of the program, since he invested as much capital as I did. I think he was stretched to his limit, too. He’s had some problems with malpractice suits. His license in California has been suspended by the state board—or maybe even revoked. I don’t know the details.”

  “But he can practice here in Arkansas?”

  Randall shrugged. “When a physician from another state applies for a license, it’s issued almost automatically as a courtesy. The petty bureaucrats don’t bother to check, and there’s no national registry to indicate a physician’s record of malpractice suits. Most of them are settled out of court, anyway, with nondisclosure clauses.”

  “So the AMA looks out for its members, I suppose. Too bad for the consumers.”

  “The AMA has a very powerful lobby in D.C.,” Randall said. The telephone on his desk rang before he could continue. He picked up the receiver, listened for a few seconds, said, “Yes, she’s here,” then handed it to me. “It’s Brenda. You have an outside call.”

  I assumed it was Harve, since he and Les were the only ones who knew where to find me. “Hello?”

  “Arly?” squawked Estelle. “It’s a good thing I knew where to find you. You have to get over here to your office right this minute. Ruby Bee’s gone and shot someone!”

  “Who?” I demanded.

  “Me, if you must know. Ruby Bee should be pulling up to the gate any second now. Get yourself out there so she can bring you back here right away!”

  “And what are you doing?”

  “Bleeding, of course. What else would I be doing?”

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