A Charmed Death

by Madelyn Alt

  Marcus picked up quickly. “Hello, Sunshine. I was just thinking about you.”

  “Hey, Marcus. How’d you know it was me?”

  “Caller ID—it’s a wonderful thing. I just got home, this weather is crazy. Are you okay?”

  “Fine, fine. Marcus, did Liss send through those original picture files to you in e-mail?”

  “Yeah, they just came through. I should be able to open them with a higher resolution. Why?”

  “I need you to send those picture files to my phone. Can you do that?”

  There was a pause on the other end. “Well, yeah, of course I can. What’s up, Maggie?”

  His voice contained an alertness I attempted to soothe. “Nothing, really. I just wanted to see them again, Marcus. Something has been nagging at me, and maybe if I see them, I’ll figure out what it is.”

  “Do you think you—”

  “It’s probably nothing. Can you send them?”

  “Coming right up. You know, I’ve been thinking. We need to get that picture disk to the cops ASAP. We are officially withholding potential evidence, and that makes me a little nervous.”

  “I know, I know,” I moaned into the phone, covering my hand with my eyes. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. But I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him last night, not after everything else. One thing at a time. I’ll drop the storage disk by the station tonight on my way home.”

  “Tomorrow’s probably soon enough—no sense endangering yourself in this storm. Hey, I want you to be extra careful tonight.”

  “Sure. Why do you say that?”

  “Randy Cutter’s lawyer got him released on bond today.”

  I felt my heart give a little quaver of nervousness. So soon . . . “Even after breaking into my apartment and with a dead girl on our collective hands?”

  “He had no history, and his lawyer used that to his advantage. And as for Amanda’s death, even if he was responsible, the cops have to make sure they have every base covered. Whoever did it, they have to make sure the charges will stick. They’ll need out-and-out proof.”

  He was right, and I knew it, but that didn’t make me feel much better. What about keeping the general populace safe from would-be stalkers?

  “Listen, call me if you need . . . anything. I mean it. No worry is too small. And stay warm!”

  One by one the pics came over the airwaves. I saved them using the instruction booklet to guide me, then began reviewing them.

  By golly . . . no, it couldn’t be . . .

  I knew what I had to do to be sure.

  Scratching a note to Tom, I retrieved the picture disk from the safe and tucked both the note and the disk into an envelope that I addressed to him. I sealed it tightly, trying not to give in to the feeling that I was sealing my own fate.

  Chapter 19

  One last call to make while I waited for Christine to push the oil through her pistons.

  I dug out the phone book and looked up Coolidge, Kathleen. Dialing the number, I held the phone to my ear and listened to the sound of the ring. Please be home, please be home, please be home, I willed over the airwaves. Oh, please be home.

  She picked up on the fifth ring. “Hello?”

  I pressed the earpiece close against my ear so as not to miss a thing. “Hello, Katie? It’s Maggie. Maggie O’Neill.”

  Katie paused a microsecond before responding. “Oh. Hi, Maggie . . . I wasn’t expecting to hear your voice. What can I do for you?”

  I gripped the phone harder. “I . . . I was wondering, Katie, if I could ask a favor of you.”

  “Um, sure. Shoot.”

  God love the midwestern need to be polite. I took a deep breath. “Okay. I was wondering if I could ask you to take me back to Dr. Phillips’s office. I . . .” I what? What should I tell her? That I suspected her boss of carrying on an affair with a seventeen-year-old girl and possibly having information that might contribute to the police investigation of her death? Gee, that would really work in my favor of convincing her to help me break into the doctor’s office. “I lost an earring when I was there today, a very expensive earring. It was my grandmother’s,” I invented as I went along, “and it means an awful lot to me. My mother would kill me if I lost it. I’ve retraced my steps everywhere else except Dr. Phillips’s, and it just makes the most sense now, doesn’t it?”

  “Well . . . sure,” she said, though she sounded as if she were trying to convince herself as much as I was. “Um, how so?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “How does that make the most sense?”

  “Oh! Well, because I know I was wearing it yesterday, and all I can think is that the missing one must have come out when I was changing out of my clothes.” She didn’t need to know that I’d never changed out of my clothes at all for the impromptu appointment. That little nugget of info was between me and my conscience.

  “Oh. Oh, of course. That does make sense.”

  “So, you see, I was hoping . . . I mean, I know the weather is terrible, and I hate to ask, but . . . do you think I could convince you . . .”

  “Well . . .”

  “It would mean so much to me. Put my mind at ease, you know? My mom has a kind of sixth sense for this kind of thing, and I’m afraid she’s going to ask about them before I find it. And”—inspiration struck—“and if you like, to repay you I’d be happy to put in a good word with Marcus.” Was it mean of me, knowing that Marcus had no interest in Katie at all? I no longer knew. I only knew that I had to see the photographs on Dr. Phillips’s wall again.

  Katie’s voice came, eager enough to make me feel guilty. “Oh! Well . . . If we go now, the streets should still be okay.

  We’ll drive slowly. If you get to the office before me, just wait with your lights off. I don’t want to attract attention.”

  “Thank you, Katie. I really, really appreciate your help.”

  And that’s how I found myself not quite breaking into Doctor Phillips’s office at just past eight o’clock that night. Er, was it considered breaking and entering if one had the permission of someone and a key to aid the way? I didn’t think so.

  We stood in the little hillock of snow that the wind had pushed in front of the glass vestibule. Katie’s hands shook with cold and excitement as she struggled to insert the key into the lock of the glass entrance door as I lit the way with my keychain flashlight.

  “Marcus is sooooo . . . hawt,” she enthused, hardly seeming to notice that the wind was whipping snowflakes the size of quarters into our faces. I turned my back to it and tucked my chin into my old wool scarf. It might not be pretty, but it did the trick. I wished she would hurry—the darkness and the storm were making me a little nervous.

  At last we were wrangling our way into the glass vestibule. We managed the lock on the second door much more quickly with the problem of the wind on the outside of the building. The difference between the glassed-in space and the outside was incredible. Had the temperatures really fallen so quickly? I blew on my gloved fingers and rubbed my hands together.

  “I’ll just wait for you here,” Katie said, holding the inside door open for me. “That way I can keep watch. God, I hope no one sees us.”

  “No one will see.”

  I switched my tiny LCD flashlight to perma-ON and stepped into the dark waiting room. The light was bright enough to see where I was going, but it left the eeriest shadows that seemed to move on their own accord as I moved forward. I circumvented the rows of uncomfortable chairs and headed straight for the Dutch door that separated the waiting room from the inner sanctum.

  It was even darker in the hallway, away from the faint lamplight sneaking in through the waiting room windows. Darker and creepier. I headed straight toward the rearmost examination room, the room I’d been in a few days before for my yearly. This part of the office was even colder than the lobby. I felt the air pushing past me as I moved through the darkened hall, so I shrugged deeper into my wool coat, glad that I had left my gloves on. Passing by the first two
closed doors on the right, I paused before the last to summon my courage.

  My little flashlight did an admirable job of dispelling the gloom when I finally summoned the nerve to push open the door. Good thing, too—I was getting a little creeped out by all the closed doors. Somehow they seemed even more ominous closed than they did open and yawning with shadows and secrets. Too many secrets hide behind closed doors. I didn’t even want to think about what secrets I might discover here. A part of me was almost afraid to find out, but another part of me knew I could not turn back. Not now. After withholding information about the blog and the CD from Tom, I was afraid to go to him about the photo storage disk without something more than an inkling of nervous suspicion. Either I needed proof, or I needed to prove my suspicions wrong so that I could sleep at night.

  Somehow I found the courage within me to shine the light beam directly into the dark space. I wished I dared turn on the overhead fluorescents, but the last thing I wanted to do was to draw attention to a presence in the office, snowstorm or no. Best to get this over with quickly, before Katie gave up on me and went home.

  The picture glass caught the beam of light and flashed it back at me. Faces swam into view in the peripheral light as I moved the beam to the next frame. The picture I was looking for was on the right-hand wall, but I began with the one closest to the door, working my way back. In a way, I suppose I was trying to convince myself of Dr. Phillips’s humanity. That the balding, graying, slightly paunchy man I saw in these pictures, this good-natured man I’d known my whole life, could not be Papa Bear. He could not be sucked into an illicit relationship with a young girl. And he could never be capable of taking the life of another human being. He was a doctor, for God’s sake. He’d taken an oath to protect life. Surely he couldn’t have gone against that solemn vow.

  Surely not.

  I moved from picture to picture, pausing less and less over each one until I’d worked myself around the room to the one I remembered. It was a blurry photo of the doctor and two friends on what must have been a deep-sea fishing expedition based on the size of the fish the three of them were supporting. But it wasn’t the fish or even the friends that had caught my attention. It was the tattoo he sported on his right arm that had barely registered on my consciousness at the time, just enough to nudge me into alertness now. Could it be? A bear?

  If you’re here, come to Mama, Papa Bear . . .

  Reaching a hand into my pocket, I drew out my new cell phone and unfolded it. Its luminescent glow filled my hand with a reassuring blue light. With shaking hands, I worked my way through the menu until I found the picture files that Marcus had sent to me. I pressed the SELECT button, and the picture came into view in full, living color on the screen.

  There it was, the Shady Lady with its embellishment of red swimming briefs and snappy polka-dotted swimming bra, and in the next, the murky snaps of the illicit meeting. It took me a few minutes, but I managed to zoom in somewhat toward the part of the photo where the blur of arms and legs could be seen. It wasn’t the best picture, and I wasn’t an expert, but . . .

  Damn, damn, damn.

  Why did it have to look the same? The head of a grizzly bear, open-mouthed in a menacing snarl, right there on the man’s bicep.

  There was just one more thing I had to do.

  Replacing the photo on the wall, I closed the door behind me and made my way down to the examination room I had been shown into yesterday afternoon. This time I walked straight to a candid I wanted to see closer up—no roundabout delay tactics were needed or wanted this time. Dropping my phone into my purse, I carefully took the photo down from the wall, shining the LCD beam down on its glassed front.

  There, looking at it close up, I could see what I’d not been able to see earlier.

  Reflected in the water, the name of the good doctor’s pontoon boat.

  It was the Shady Lady.

  Shangri-La, my ass.

  I don’t know how long I stood there with my hands on either side of that photograph, staring down at the evidence that would have gone unrecognized forever had Liss and I not found the pics in the clock. Even seeing it confirmed, I could scarcely believe it. Doctor Phillips had been involved with Amanda. Deeply involved. Enough that she had secreted away pictures relating to the affair. Had she seen him that afternoon? The details of what had happened to Amanda may be hidden, but I knew it had something to do with those photos. I knew it did. It’s the only thing that made any sense at all, but more than that, the truth of it sank into my gut with a certainty that hummed along my nerve endings.

  When at last I snapped out of it, I took a deep, quaking breath and resolutely turned the frame over to remove the back. A few muffled curses later, I decided the picture was not coming out of the frame. So with a muttered apology to my late Grandma Cora, I stuffed the picture, frame and all, into the depths of my purse. Then I crossed myself and cast a pleading glance heavenward for forgiveness.

  Old habits do indeed die hard, if they ever truly die at all.

  I wasn’t really worried about what Doctor Phillips would do when he found the picture missing. I hoped by that time that the SMPD would have a chance to find whatever further evidence they needed to nail his ass to the wall. Whatever it took.

  With my feelings toward the doctor hardening with each passing moment, I flashed my little light around the room one last time before turning to go.

  “Maggie?” Katie’s voice came faintly from what seemed miles away, surprising me to a halt. “Maggie, look who showed up.”

  The room suddenly closed around me, and my heart began to thunder in my chest. I shut my eyes a moment and forced myself to keep breathing. I wanted to believe it was one of the other nurses, just stopping in to check on things, or even whatever town cop happened to be on duty. I wanted to believe . . . but I didn’t. Not for an instant.

  I stepped quietly to the door and listened.

  “She must not be able to hear us,” Katie was saying. “I hope you’re not mad, Doctor. She said she lost an earring. I didn’t think it would hurt anything.”

  “Of course not.” The voice was unmistakably gruff, unmistakably male, and it unmistakably belonged to Dr. Phillips. Shit. “You’re sure she’s back there?”

  “Uh-huh. Looking for her earring.”

  I flattened my back to the wall, my breathing shallow. He doesn’t know anything, I tried to tell myself. Just act naturally and everything will be fine. To him, you’re just a silly young woman willing to go out into a snowstorm to rescue a lost earring.

  Put that way, it did sound silly. I couldn’t believe Katie had gone for it.

  “I don’t know what you were thinking. You girls shouldn’t be out in weather like this.”

  They were coming down the hall; I could hear their footsteps. Thinking fast, I set my purse carefully down on the floor by the door and got down on my hands and knees with my flashlight, just as two sets of snow-covered boots appeared in the doorway.

  The harsh beam of a giant Maglite put my LCD flashlight to shame as it shone in my face. I winced as it hit my eyes.

  “Oh, sorry ’bout that,” Dr. Phillips said, pointing it away too late. “Miss Maggie, fancy finding you here. Katie tells me that you’ve misplaced an earring that you are desperate to find.”

  I blinked, but it was a lost cause. White spots had completely replaced the center of my field of vision. “Hello, Dr. Phillips.” Good girl, just stay calm and cool and collected and you’ll do fine. He doesn’t know. “Yes, I lost one of the earrings my grandmother gave me before she died. Great sentimental value. I thought I might have lost it here.”

  “I see. Must be terribly important to be out at all hours in weather like this. Have you found it yet?”

  “Well, no. Not yet.”

  He roamed the big beam of light along the floorboards and at the base of the room’s utilitarian furniture. “There aren’t many places to hide in here, that’s for sure.”

  It was an innocent thing to say, but give
n what I knew . . . I stood up. “Well, I’m sorry to have taken up your time, Katie. I thought for sure the earring would be here.”

  Dr. Phillips rose as well with an agility that made me take a surprised step backward. “No harm done. Maybe someone else will find it and turn it in. If you leave a description of the earring with Katie, we’ll keep an eye out for it.”

  He leaned a hand against the doorframe and bent down. My eyes traveled the path of his reach a moment too late to realize what he was doing.

  His hand closed around the strap of my purse. As he straightened more slowly, a frown settling around his brows, my racing heart seemed to stop altogether.

  The picture frame was poking out of the unzipped interior. Just a corner, but it was enough.

  I could see it on his face. Recognition. Confusion. Questioning. And above all, a stillness that made me very, very nervous.

  If I had had any remaining doubts, they dissipated entirely. The energy surrounding him had changed in a way that played havoc with my nerves, which were already on edge.

  He didn’t hand me the purse, but kept it dangling from his hand as he gestured us through the door. Having him at my back was not a comfortable feeling, but I managed to hide my discomfort long enough to hurry Katie up the hall toward the waiting room. All I could think of was how I was going to get us both out of there safely. I hadn’t meant to endanger her, and yet somehow I had managed to do just that. The poor girl was completely oblivious to the fact that, at that moment in time, we were alone with a potential killer.

  Ignorance can be bliss. I had the burden of knowledge, and the burden of obscuring that knowledge, for both our sakes.

  To my surprise and relief, Dr. Phillips handed me my purse without a word as we reached the glass vestibule. Maybe I’d been mistaken—maybe he hadn’t seen the picture after all. While Katie and I pushed away the snow that had built up against the outer door, he locked up the building, then followed us out.

  “Let’s get you girls home, hey?”

  I breathed easier once we’d both reached the safety of our cars. But one thing neither of us had counted on was the small incline that precipitated the way out of the parking lot and onto the road. Katie’s car, a minuscule foreign model, hadn’t the wherewithal to make it up the grade, no matter how slight it seemed. When her tail end swerved sideways for the fourth time and her taillights flared, I knew I had to back Christine down.