“This from that shark case?” Franks asked, his eyes fixed to his microscope eyepieces.
“Yeah.”
“I guess we’re talking about these nuclear inclusions?”
“I have the feelin’ I’ve seen somethin’ like that before, but I can’t remember where.”
Franks looked at Broussard. “If you’ve seen it before, you’re one up on me.” He dropped back to 40x and scanned other areas. “Everything looks clean… no lymphocytic infiltration. So whatever it is, doesn’t seem to have done any damage. Think it’s viral?”
“Maybe. I’ll have the lab run some EM sections and we’ll see if they’re any virions in it.”
“Where’s it from?”
“Rostral poles of the frontal lobes.”
“Prefrontal cortex… any other areas have them?”
“No.”
“Even here, there aren’t many inclusion-positive cells. Probably nothing of any consequence.”
“Probably not. You’re on call tonight, right? ’Cause I’m gonna be tied up.”
“It’s covered.”
*
* *
Gatlin called at four o’clock wanting a meeting with Kit and Broussard. Thirty minutes later, they were all gathered in Broussard’s office, Gatlin sharing the green vinyl sofa with a stack of journals, Kit in one of the chairs in front of Broussard’s desk. Broussard was behind the desk, rocked back in his chair, hands folded over his belly, saying, “And that’s all I have.”
Gatlin lapsed into thought, his index finger working at the corner of Kit’s report, which lay unread in his lap. He motioned at Kit with his chin. “What’d you get from Jarrell’s wife?”
“A lot,” Kit said. “First, he was in good health, so we can rule out suicide over a health problem. But he was moody. His wife said one of his moods began last Thursday, which is when we ran the picture of Francie O’Connor in the paper. And he didn’t drink—not even wine at dinner. So something very significant must have caused him to drink those two bottles of scotch you found in his office. Obviously, he was fortifying himself for our meeting.
“Also, his wife said he didn’t have any close friends—that he’d once told her friends are a liability. That could go back to the O’Connor murder if he felt he’d been drawn into it by some friends. He certainly was the right age to have been there. I had hoped his wife might have known him at the time of the murder, but they didn’t meet until much later, so I couldn’t get any more from her. I called the phone company to see if they had any record of a call coming to my phone from the aquarium, but they don’t keep track of local calls…. I guess you knew that.”
Gatlin sucked at his teeth and picked at the file folder with his finger.
“What do you think?” Kit prodded.
“Pretty weak case for a murder.”
“Weak?” Kit said. “With all that I just told you? And what about Bobby Poag, that guy who was working with Jarrell? Why do you suppose Jarrell sent him home early? I’ll tell you why… so he wouldn’t be around when I showed up.”
“I dunno,” Gatlin said.
“Did you find Poag?” Kit asked.
“He doesn’t know anything.”
With her experience at the shark tank fresh in her mind, Kit brought up a point not mentioned previously. “What about the main entrance to the aquarium being open when I got there? Doesn’t that show it was Jarrell who called me?”
Gatlin sucked his teeth in thought, then said, “I guess you’re interested in pursuing this….”
“Definitely.”
“All right. Stay after it then. But I want a daily report.”
After Gatlin and Kit left, Broussard tried again to think where he’d run across dumbbell-shaped nuclear inclusions before. As Franks had said, it probably wasn’t important, but it was something he didn’t understand, and that made him uneasy.
13
Kit looked at herself in the mirror. Having decided on her black silk suit with the full-length sleeves and fitted waist, the question now was how much décolleté to show. She unfastened the top button and bent over. Thinking that the sight might be too stimulating for the other guests, who, from Broussard’s comment about being in tuxedos, would all be male, she redid the button. Besides, that would make the back all the more surprising. She turned and looked at herself over her shoulder, gauging the effect of the suit’s lattice panel, which showed a great deal of her fine back. Pleased with her appearance, she added a single gold chain at her neck and a pair of oval gold-caged citrine earrings.
She arrived at Broussard’s, to find seven cars already in the drive. The house was even more completely invested with vines and foliage than she’d remembered, making the sprawling one-story structure look as though it had been there forever. From clefts in the greenery, light spilled welcomingly from the tall windows.
She went up the black stone steps and entered the familiar high-ceilinged alcove of white brick. From inside came the murmur of conversation mingled with the sounds of a string quartet playing a piece that for some reason made her think of canned ham.
The bell was answered by a houseboy in a starched white jacket. He bowed slightly. “Good evening, miss. Please come in.”
The French front doors opened into a large room brightly lit by a huge crystal chandelier. The immense scale of the room and its appointments—the mammoth fresh floral arrangement on the grand piano, the delicate French tables, the upholstered French chairs and overstuffed sofas whose fabrics subtly plucked colors from the Isphahan carpets—were not at all compromised by the formal dress of the six men by the fireplace, who all turned in her direction. Broussard came toward her, one arm extended.
“Hello, Kit. Come and meet the others.”
He took her to the five men waiting and said, “Gentlemen, our guest, Kit Franklyn.”
They all raised their glasses and uttered a mixture of welcomes. Broussard gave her their names, beginning with the man to her left. “Kurt Halliday, Arthur Jordan, Haley Dagget, Clay Peyton, and Walter Browning.”
“My pleasure, gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me.”
Broussard leveled his finger at her. “Rum and Coke?”
“If you have it.”
“We do. Be right back.”
The five men he’d left her with were all in their late forties to middle fifties. The one on her right was probably too big to have ever been a jockey, but he wouldn’t have missed the cut by much. His curly brown hair and gray mustache, though, gave him a tweedy look that seemed to call for leather elbow patches rather than racing silks. “It’s always hard meeting so many new people all at once,” he said. “So don’t feel embarrassed if you get us mixed up at first. We won’t mind.”
Kit replied by pointing at the man to his right. “Clay Peyton,” she said. Her finger jumped to the man at her far left. “Kurt Halliday.” She pointed at the man in the middle. “Haley Dagget.” Then shifted one to the left. “Arthur Jordan.” Finishing with the one who’d tried to be so helpful, “And you’re Walter Browning.” Sure, doing it at random like that was a bit pretentious, but she figured as the guest of honor, she owed them something.
Browning applauded against the mantel with his free hand. “Well done, Kit. Well done.”
“Since you had to vote on me, I assume you know what I do,” she said. “What keeps you all occupied?”
“I own Browning Medical. We manufacture surgical instruments,” Browning said. He deferred to the man beside him.
Clay Peyton was heavyset, with coarse features and thick lips, the sort of fellow who would likely even have hair on his back. “I’m an ear, nose, and throat man,” Peyton said. He looked at Haley Dagget, who was by far the tallest of the five and appeared to have the lean muscularity of an athlete. Dagget was almost entirely bald, but it went so well with his cool gray eyes Kit felt herself respond to him.
“I’m a neurologist and a neurosurgeon,” Dagget said. “Probably the best in the state.”
The others
hooted. “Why so modest, Haley?” Peyton said. “You’re among friends.”
“All right,” Dagget said. “Best in the South.”
Broussard appeared at Kit’s elbow with her drink. “I miss something?”
“Just Haley showing us how he’s a legend in his own mind,” Peyton said.
“Come on, Clay, let Art tell what he does,” Browning said.
Arthur Jordan was short and quite overweight. He was bald only on top and his sandy hair was swept up on each side as though he had just pulled a sweater over his head. He was clean-shaven, with cherubic features. “Family practice,” Jordan said.
He was exactly what Kit imagined a family practitioner should look like.
“Come on, Kurt, speak up,” Peyton said. “I just remembered something I wanted to tell Art.”
Kurt Halliday had large deep-set brown eyes and a thin face with a wide, expressive mouth. He looked like a man who took everything seriously. “Cardiologist,” he said.
“Okay now, Art, I heard one you’re going to appreciate,” Peyton said. “There’s this family, see, and they have two kids, a little boy and a little girl. The wife is a family practitioner and the husband is an ENT man, who can’t understand why his wife has chosen the most poorly paid branch of medicine. One night, the wife is telling the kids the story of Adam and Eve and when she finishes, she says, ’Now children, who were Adam and Eve?’
“The husband comes in the door in time to hear the question. ’Who were Adam and Eve?’ he says. ’Let’s look at the facts. They had no clothes, no car, no place to live… they must have been family practitioners.’”
Peyton laughed heartily at his own joke. The others merely smiled, except for Arthur Jordan, whose fat face reddened. “Is it my fault that the federal government pays less for thinking about a patient’s problem than doing something to him?” Jordan said. He looked at Kit. “Check the reimbursement schedule for Medicaid and Medicare, see how much they pay for a thirty-minute visit by a physician trying to treat the whole person versus what they pay for putting a drainage tube in their ears, something any baboon could do in five minutes.”
Following this tirade, there was shocked silence. Even Peyton seemed taken aback.
Kurt Halliday stepped into the void and changed the subject. “Kit, tell us what it feels like to find a skeleton in your backyard.”
Happy to help defuse things, Kit said, “It certainly changes the way you think of your home. I’ve only owned it for a few months and I was beginning to feel comfortable and secure there. But now, knowing what happened in it, I don’t sleep as well. And I don’t know if I ever will. Maybe after it’s all resolved…”
“What do you mean, resolved?” Halliday asked. “The victim identified?”
“We’ve already done that,” Kit said.
Arthur Jordan’s eyes widened with interest. “Who was she?”
“Her name’s not important. But it does help us understand what probably happened.”
“So there’s a chance you’ll be able to discover who did it?” Dagget asked.
“We have some leads.”
“I guess if you knew when she died, you could figure out who lived in your house at the time. Wouldn’t that be a good way to go?” Clay Peyton asked.
“That’s a possibility,” Kit said noncommittally.
“What about this fellow Paul Jarrell, the one they found in the shark tank at the aquarium last night?” Halliday said. “I heard on the news that you were there, too. Any connection?”
Since Kit had discovered Jarrell’s body too late to make it into the morning paper, no one else seemed to have heard about it. In response to the clamor for details, Halliday recounted what he’d heard and then looked at Kit.
“So far, there’s no evidence of a connection,” Kit said.
“Then why were you there?” Peyton said.
“I was meeting someone.”
“Pretty big coincidence,” Peyton said. “What are the chances of the same person finding two bodies under unrelated circumstances in the same week?”
“If coincidences didn’t happen, we wouldn’t have a word for it,” Kit said, glancing at Broussard.
From the moment the members had picked Kit as their guest of honor, Broussard had been concerned that she might talk too openly of her ongoing investigation. Now, seeing how well she was doing, he relaxed.
“Nice try,” Peyton said. “But I can’t buy your coincidence story.”
“That, of course, is your prerogative,” Kit replied, beginning to feel a trace of irritation at Peyton’s abrasive manner.
Trying to head off trouble, Browning said, “Kit, give us some insight into your job as a suicide investigator. What’s the most difficult part of it?”
“Determining intent,” Kit said. “For it to be suicide, the deceased must have intended to die.”
“Don’t they leave notes?” Browning said.
“Sometimes, usually not. And that’s where it can get tough.”
“For example?”
Kit thought a moment and said, “Say that Clay is a CIA operative and he’s captured by enemy agents who want information from him. Clay knows that to get this information, they will torture him mercilessly until he dies. Afraid of the pain, Clay takes cyanide. Suicide?”
“Of course,” Browning said.
“Why am I the hypothetical example?” Peyton said.
“She’s planting a seed and hoping it’ll grow,” Dagget replied.
“Go on, Kit,” Browning urged.
“But suppose that Clay submits to the torture without talking and after three painful days, he dies?”
“How about using somebody else as an example,” Peyton said.
“Why are you complaining, Clay?” Dagget said. “You just became a hero. I think it was worth it.”
“So, is the second case suicide?” Kit asked.
“No,” Browning replied. “It’s murder.”
“But Clay knew he would die,” Kit said, “and yet he wouldn’t talk. Didn’t he have a hand in his own death? Wasn’t it within his power to prevent it?”
“I see what you’re getting at,” Dagget said. “In the first example, he intended to die, knowing that dead, his secrets were safe. In the second example, death was a byproduct of his decision not to talk. It was not his intent to die. It was his intent merely to protect his secrets.”
“Very good, Haley,” Kit said. “You have an excellent grasp of the nuances involved.”
Dagget beamed at her praise.
“I don’t see how those two examples create any problem for a suicide investigator,” Peyton said.
“Let’s take it a bit further,” Kit said. “Ted is in great pain from a terminal disease. He obtains a lethal amount of a painkilling drug and takes it all at once, saying, ’I can’t stand this pain, I want to die.’”
“Suicide, plain and simple,” Peyton said in a bored tone.
“But suppose before taking the drug, he had said, ’I don’t want to die, but I must have some respite from this pain’?”
“Same answer, suicide,” Peyton said.
“Not according to the experts,” Kit said.
“Then the experts are wrong,” Peyton said. “Experts usually think too hard about things.”
“I’m not surprised you think so,” Arthur Jordan said. “I see what she means.”
Peyton raised his thick eyebrows. “But then, you’re more perceptive than we mere mechanics.”
The houseboy appeared in the doorway to the hall. “Gentlemen and guest, dinner is served.”
Kit had not yet made her final point, but the way Peyton and Jordan were sniping at each other, she was glad for the interruption.
Broussard gave her his arm and escorted her down the hall. The dining room was quite large and was lit by another crystal chandelier, but turned down low, so that the seven ivory candles in individual brass candlesticks on the table cast a flickering warm glow over the nut-colored oak wainscoting and made intriguin
g shadows on the red and blue Indian paisley print above it. In normal light, Broussard’s collection of nineteenth-century paintings featuring sheep were quite lovely, but in candlelight they were even more impressive, shining like jewels in their simple gilded frames.
The table was covered with linen the same color as the candles and was set with china bearing a busy Oriental pattern of garlands and medallions that picked up the colors of the wallpaper. The water glasses were blue crystal inset with a clear filigree, the wineglasses clear crystal with faceted stems. As a centerpiece, there were two creeping figs in a pair of planters decoupaged with playing cards, a surprisingly effective idea.
As Kit bent to read one of the lettered place cards, Broussard pulled out the chair at the head of the table. “Kit, this is yours.”
Everyone took their seats except for Walter Browning, who remained standing at the foot of the table. He folded his hands in front of him and said, “As current president, it falls to me to explain to Kit our rules. Once the menu is presented, no one is allowed to speak until the meal is finished. This ensures that each member may concentrate fully on the food and not have his attention diverted. It is also my role to propose the opening toast.” He nodded to the houseboy, who had been waiting in the doorway with a bottle of wine.
When everyone had been served, Browning raised his glass and said, “First, I toast Andy Broussard for the generous use of his home.”
“Here here,” they all said, lifting their glasses.
“Second, I toast whoever it was that accidentally dropped the first brontosaurus steak in the fire and ate it, anyway.”
“Here here.”
“And lastly, I toast our guest, Kit Franklyn, and the missing fabric in her suit.”
The “here here’s” were the loudest yet and Kit felt her cheeks redden. Browning sat down and the houseboy placed an ivory card on each plate. Kit eagerly picked hers up and read the menu.
No Mardi Gras for the Dead Page 13