By now my apology for unscheduled visits followed by my explanation that I was contributing to a cover story for Wall Street Weekly was well practiced. She dismissed it with a gesture of her hand.
“I’ll be happy to answer your questions about Nicholas Spencer,” she said. “I admired him very much. As you can well understand, nothing would please us more than to have no need for hospices because cancer has been obliterated.”
“How long was Nicholas Spencer a volunteer here?” I asked.
“Since his wife Janet died over five years ago. Our staff could have taken care of her at home, but because she had a five-year-old child, she thought it better to come to us for those last ten days. Nick was very grateful for the help we were able to give, not only to Janet but to him, his son, and Janet’s parents as well. A few weeks later he came back and offered his services to us.”
“It must have been pretty hard to schedule him, given how much he had to travel,” I suggested.
“He gave us a list of his available dates a couple of weeks ahead of time. We were always able to work around it. People liked Nick very much.”
“Then he was still a volunteer at the time of the plane crash?”
She hesitated. “No. Actually he hadn’t been here for about a month.”
“Was there a reason for that?”
“I suggested that he needed to take time off. He seemed to be under tremendous pressure in the weeks before then.”
I could see that she was weighing her words carefully. “What kind of pressure?” I asked.
“He seemed nervous and high-strung. I told him that working on the vaccine all day and then coming here and working with patients who were begging him to try it on them was too heavy a psychological burden for him to carry.”
“Did he agree?”
“If he didn’t agree, I would say that at least he understood. He went home that night and I never saw him again.”
The implication of what she was not saying hit me like a ton of bricks. “Dr. Clintworth, did Nicholas Spencer ever test his vaccine on a patient?”
“That would have been illegal,” she replied firmly. “That’s not what I asked. Dr. Clintworth, I’m investigating the possibility that Nicholas Spencer may have met with foul play. Please be honest with me.”
She hesitated, then answered. “I am convinced that he gave the vaccine to one person here. In fact, I’m positive he did, even though that patient won’t admit it. There is someone else who I believe received it, but that, too, has been emphatically denied.”
“What happened to the person you’re certain received the vaccine?”
“He’s gone home.”
“He’s cured?”
“No, but I understand he has had a spontaneous remission. The progression of the disease has slowed dramatically, which does happen, but only rarely.”
“Are you following up on his progress or lack of it?”
“As I said, he has not admitted that he received the vaccine from Nicholas Spencer, if indeed he did.”
“Will you tell me who he is?”
“I can’t do that. It would be a violation of his privacy.”
I fished for another card and gave it to her. “Would you mind asking that patient to contact me?”
“I will, but I’m very sure you won’t hear from him.”
“What about the other patient?” I asked.
“That one is only a suspicion on my part, and I cannot confirm it. And now, Ms. DeCarlo, I have a meeting to attend. If you want something from me to quote about Nicholas Spencer, this is my statement: “He was a good man, and driven by a noble purpose. If he somehow got lost along the way, I am sure it was not for selfserving reasons.”
TWENTY-THREE
His hand was throbbing so much that Ned couldn’t think of anything but the pain. He tried soaking it in ice water and putting butter on it, but neither helped. Then, at ten of ten, Monday night, just before closing time, he went to the hole-in-the-wall drugstore near where he lived and headed to the section where over-the-counter burn medications were displayed. He picked out a couple that sounded as if they might do the job.
Old Mr. Brown, the owner, was just locking up the pharmacy. The only other employee there was Peg, the cashier, a nosy woman who loved to gossip. Ned didn’t want her to see how bad his hand looked, so he put the ointments in one of the little baskets that were stacked at the entrance, hooked it over his left arm, and had his money ready in his left hand. The right one he kept in his pocket. The bandage on it was messy even though he had already changed it twice that day.
There were a couple of people on line ahead of him, and as he waited, he shifted from one foot to the other. Damn hand, he thought. It wouldn’t have been burned, and Annie wouldn’t be dead, if he hadn’t sold the house in Greenwood Lake and put all their money in that phony Gen-stone company, he told himself. When he wasn’t thinking about Annie and picturing those last minutes—her crying and hitting his chest with her fists, then running from the house, followed by the sound of the car smashing into the garbage truck—he thought of the people he hated, and what he would do to them. The Harniks and Mrs. Schafley and Mrs. Morgan and Lynn Spencer and Carley DeCarlo.
His fingers hadn’t hurt much when the fire caught him, but now they were so swollen that the slightest pressure hurt them. Unless they got better, he wouldn’t be able to hold his rifle straight or even pull the trigger.
Ned watched as the man ahead of him picked up his package. As soon as the man moved, he put his basket and a twenty-dollar bill down on the counter and looked away as Peg totaled his items.
He thought about how he knew he should go to the emergency room and get a doctor to look at the burn, but he was afraid to do that. He could hear what the doctor might ask him: “What happened? Why did you let this go so long?” These were questions he didn’t want to deal with.
If he told them Dr. Ryan at St. Ann’s had treated it, they might ask why he hadn’t gone to have him look at it again when it wasn’t getting better. Maybe he should go to an urgent care place somewhere, like in Queens or New Jersey or Connecticut, he decided.
“Hey, Ned, wake up.”
He looked back at the cashier. He had never liked Peg. Her eyes were too close together; she had heavy black brows and black hair with gray roots—she made him think of a squirrel. She was annoyed just because he hadn’t noticed that she’d taken his ointments and put them in a bag and had his change ready. She was holding out his change in one hand and the bag in the other, and she was frowning.
He reached for the bag with his left hand and, without thinking, pulled his right hand out of his pocket and held it out for the change, then watched as Peg stared at the bandage.
“My God, Ned. What were you doing, playing with matches? That hand’s a mess,” she said. “You should see a doctor.”
Ned cursed himself for letting her see it. “I burned it cooking,” he said, sullenly. “I never had to cook before Annie died. I went to the doctor in the hospital where Annie used to work. He said to come back in a week. It’s gonna be a week tomorrow.”
Immediately he realized what he had done. He had told Peg that he saw a doctor last Tuesday, and that was something he hadn’t meant to say. He knew that Annie used to talk to Peg when she bought stuff at the drugstore. She said Peg wasn’t really nosy; she was just curious in a friendly kind of way. Annie, who had been raised in a small town near Albany, said that there was a lady in the drugstore there who knew everybody’s business and that Peg reminded her of that woman.
What else had Annie told Peg? About losing the Greenwood Lake house? About all the money he’d put in Gen-stone? About how he would drive Annie past Spencer’s mansion in Bedford and promise her that she would have a home like that someday?
Peg was staring at him. “Why don’t you show your hand to Mr. Brown?” she asked. “He might have something better than this stuff to give you.”
He stared back at her. “I said I’m seeing the doctor in t
he morning.”
Peg had a funny look on her face. It reminded him of the way the Harniks and Mrs. Schafley had looked at him. It was a look of fear. Peg was afraid of him. Was she afraid of him because she was thinking about all the things that Annie had told her about the house and the money and driving past the Spencer mansion, and because she had put it all together and figured out that he was the one who set the fire?
She looked flustered. “Oh, that’s good that you’re seeing a doctor tomorrow.” Then she said, “I miss Annie coming in, Ned. I know how much you must miss her.” She looked past him. “Ned, sorry, but I have to take care of Garret.”
Ned realized there was a young fellow standing behind him. “Sure, sure you do, Peg,” he said, and moved aside.
He had to go. He couldn’t just stand there. But something had to be done.
He went outside and got into the car, immediately reaching into the backseat and taking the rifle from under the blanket on the floor. Then he waited. From where he was parked he had a clear view of the interior of the store. As soon as that guy Garret left, Peg emptied the cash register and gave the receipts to Mr. Brown. Then she rushed around, turning out the lights in the rest of the store.
If she was going to call the cops, she apparently was going to wait until she got home to do it. Maybe she’d talk it over with her husband first, he thought.
Mr. Brown and Peg came out of the store together. Mr. Brown said good night and walked around the corner. Peg started walking quickly the other way, toward the bus stop down the block. Ned saw that the bus was coming. He watched her run to catch it, but she reached it too late. She was standing alone at the bus stop when he drove up, stopped, and opened the door. “I’ll drive you home, Peg,” he offered.
He saw the look on her face again, only this time she was really scared. “Oh, that’s all right, Ned. I’ll just wait. It won’t be long.” She looked around, but there was no one nearby.
He threw open the door, jumped out of the car, and grabbed her. His hand hurt when he slapped it on her mouth to keep her from screaming, but he managed to hold on. With his left hand he twisted her arm, dragged her into the car, and shoved her on the floor of the front seat. He locked the car doors as he took off.
“Ned, what’s the matter? Please, Ned, what are you doing?” she wailed. She was on the floor of the car, holding her head where it had hit the dashboard.
He held the rifle in one hand, pointing it down at her.
“I don’t want you to tell anyone that I was playing with matches.”
“Ned, why would I tell anyone?” She was starting to cry.
He headed toward the picnic area in the county park.
Forty minutes later he was home. It had hurt his finger and hand when he pulled the trigger, but he hadn’t missed. He’d been right. It was just like shooting squirrels.
TWENTY-FOUR
I’d stopped at the office after leaving the hospice, but both Don and Ken were out. I made some notes of things to discuss with them in the morning. Two heads are better than one, and three are better than two—not always true, of course, but it’s definitely applicable when you include these two knowledgeable guys in the equation.
There were a number of questions I wanted to discuss with them. Was Vivian Powers planning to join Nicholas Spencer somewhere? Were Dr. Spencer’s early records really missing, or were they mentioned merely as a smoke screen to cast doubt on Spencer’s guilt? Was someone else in the mansion that night, only minutes before it was set on fire? And finally, and breathtaking in significance, did Nick Spencer test the vaccine on a terminally ill patient who later was able to leave the hospice?
I was determined to learn the name of that patient.
Why would he not shout to the skies that he was in remission? I wondered. Was it because the patient wanted to see if the remission would last or because he didn’t want to be the subject of an intense media frenzy? I could only imagine the headlines if news leaked out that the Gen-stone vaccine worked after all.
And who was the other patient Dr. Clintworth was sure had been given the vaccine? Was there some way I could persuade her to give me that patient’s name?
Nicholas Spencer had been on a championship swim team in high school. His son was clinging to the hope that he was alive because he had been a stunt flyer while he was in college. It wasn’t too great a leap to imagine that with that kind of background he might have been able to stage his own death a few miles from shore and then swim to safety.
I longed to be able to talk over all these points with the guys while they were still fresh in my head. But I made copious notes, and then, since it was nearly six o’clock and it certainly had been an eventful day, I went home.
There were a half-dozen messages on my answering machine—friends suggesting we get together, a call from Casey instructing me to call back by seven if I was in the mood for pasta at Il Tinello. I was, I decided, and tried to figure out if I should be flattered to be called twice for dinner within seven days or if I should consider myself a “she’ll-do-in-a-pinch” date because he had run through the people who required more notice.
Be that as it may, I stopped the answering machine and called Casey on his cell phone. We had our usual brief telephone conversation.
His abrupt “Dr. Dillon.”
“Casey, it’s me.”
“Pasta tonight good for you?”
“Fine.”
“Eight o’clock at Il Tinello?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Great.” Click.
I asked him once if his bedside manner was as rapid-fire as his phone personality, but he assured me that wasn’t the case. “Do you know how much time people can waste on the phone?” he’d asked. “I’ve made a study of it.”
I was curious. “Where did you do the study?”
“At home, twenty years ago. My sister, Trish. A couple of times when we were in high school, I clocked her on the phone. One time she spent an hour and fifteen minutes telling her best friend how worried she was that she wasn’t prepared for the test she was having the next day. Another time she spent fifty minutes telling another friend that she wasn’t half finished with a science project that was due in two days.”
“Nonetheless, she managed to muddle through reasonably well,” I’d reminded him during that conversation. Trish had become a pediatric surgeon and now lived in Virginia.
Smiling at the memory, and slightly concerned that I was so ready to fall in with Casey’s plans, I pushed the button on the answering machine to hear the final message.
The caller’s voice was low and distressed. She did not identify herself, but I recognized her—Vivian Powers. “Carley, it’s four o’clock. Sometimes I brought work home. I was clearing out my desk. I think I know who took the records from Dr. Broderick. Call me, please.”
I had written my home number on the back of my card, but my cell phone was printed on the card. I wish she had tried to reach me on that. By four o’clock I had been on my way back to the city. I’d have turned around and gone straight to see her. I grabbed my notebook out of my purse, found her phone number, and called.
The answering machine picked up on the fifth ring, which said to me that Vivian had been home until fairly recently. The way most answering machines work is that they give you four or five rings to get to the phone if you’re home, but after one message is recorded, they pick up on the second ring.
I carefully worded my response to her: “I was glad to hear from you, Vivian. It’s a quarter of seven. I’ll be here until seven-thirty and then back around nine-thirty. Call me, please.”
I wasn’t even sure myself why I didn’t leave my name. If Vivian had caller ID, my number would have been recorded on her phone screen. But just in case she happened to check the machine while someone else was with her, it seemed a more discreet way to go.
A quick shower before going out for the evening always helps to relieve the tensions that build up when I’m working. The shower I have in my minuscule
bathroom is a combination tub-shower setup, a little cramped, but it does the job. As I played games with the hot and cold knobs, I thought of something I’d read about Queen Elizabeth I: “The queen takes a bath once a month whether she needs it or not.” She might not have had so many people beheaded if she’d been able to relax in a hot shower at the end of the day, I decided.
I prefer pantsuits for daytime wear, but at night it does feel good to put on a silk blouse, slacks, and heels. I feel satisfyingly taller when I’m dressed like that. The temperature outside had started to drop by the time I came in, but instead of a coat, I grabbed a woolen scarf my mother had bought me on a trip to Ireland. It is a deep cranberry shade, and I love it.
I glanced in the mirror and decided I didn’t look half bad. My grin turned into a frown, though, as I thought how I didn’t like the fact that I was dressing up so carefully for Casey, and that I was so pleased he’d called me so soon after the last date.
I left the apartment in plenty of time but absolutely could not get a cab. Sometimes I think that all the cabdrivers in New York City send a signal out to each other and put their “out of service” signs on simultaneously when they see me standing out in the street looking for one of them.
As a result, I was late—fifteen minutes late. Mario, the owner, took me to the table where Casey was settled and held out my chair. Casey looked serious, and I thought, Good God, he’s not going to make a big deal of this, is he? He stood up, brushed a kiss against the side of my cheek, and asked, “Are you okay?”
I realized that he was so used to my being on time that he’d been worried about me, which pleased me too much. A good-looking, smart, successful, unattached doctor like Dr. Kevin Curtis Dillon is bound to be in great demand among the many unattached women in New York City, and I worry that my role is to be the comfortable friend. It’s a bittersweet situation. I kept a diary when I was in high school. Six months ago, when I bumped into Casey in the theater, I dug it out. It was embarrassing to read how rapturous I’d been about going to the prom with him, but it was worse to read the subsequent entries of bitter disappointment when he never called after that.
The Second Time Around Page 12