Royal Pains : Sick Rich (9781101559536)

by Lyle, D. P.

  “How could I refuse that? My own spies.”

  “Then it’s settled,” I said. “You’re coming.”

  Angela sighed. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

  “We’ll hit the costume shop Monday morning,” Divya said.

  With that decided, the conversation turned to the health fair. Jill was thrilled. Everything had run smoothly with no real hiccups. The turnout surpassed expectations and the vendors and booth renters reported brisk sales of their products.

  “Rachel Fleming signed contracts for two new vehicles today,” Evan said. “She also said she set a dozen appointments for the next couple of weeks.”

  “Jonathan Wiggins completely sold out of his mineral water,” Jill said.

  “What he didn’t give away,” I said.

  Jill nodded. “He’s a good guy, and he’s always supported the clinic. He also asked if I’d put him on the list for a booth next year.”

  “I guess the only negative was the kids we saw on drugs,” Divya said.

  “It’s amazing,” Angela said. “Today’s kids are different. I know when Danielle was growing up she wasn’t exposed to all the things teenagers see now.”

  “I get the impression that in her case it wouldn’t have mattered,” I said.

  Danielle laughed. “That’s true. I was always the jock chick. Sports don’t leave much time for trouble.”

  “I can’t believe they were selling that stuff right there at the fair,” Jill said. “Seems incredibly brazen to me.”

  “It is,” I said. “From everyone’s description it seems to me that they would stand out in the crowd. I mean her long hair and his ponytail?”

  “Not to mention selling at school and the beach,” Divya said. “Not exactly dark corners.”

  “They’ve been lucky,” I said. “But I’d put my money on Sergeant McCutcheon. He seems like a bulldog to me.”

  “I wouldn’t want him after me,” Evan said. “He sure scared Katy and Gloria Weber.”

  “That he did,” Divya said. “He even scared me, and I didn’t do anything.”

  “But you look devious,” Evan said.

  Divya raised an eyebrow and pointed her fork at him. “You want to rephrase that?”

  “You might want to reconsider,” I said to Evan. “She does have a sharp instrument.”

  Chapter 20

  I got up early Sunday morning and went for a run at the beach. As I drove over, I listened to the weather report. Not good. Today was going to be even hotter than yesterday. As I ran I watched the sun rise into a perfectly clear sky. There was little breeze. By the time I finished my run, sweat plastered my T-shirt to my chest.

  Didn’t bode well for the day. I had visions of stretcher after stretcher of the overheated and dehydrated.

  When I got back home the aroma of bacon greeted me. Evan was in the kitchen preparing breakfast.

  “How do you want your eggs?” he asked.

  “Whatever you’re having is fine with me.”

  “Scrambled it is.” He began cracking eggs into a bowl.

  “It’s going to be another hot one.” I stripped off my T-shirt. “In fact it already is.”

  Evan added a little milk to the eggs and began beating them with a fork. “Jonathan Wiggins said he would stock his booth with extra cases of his mineral water today. He said if we needed any just let him know and he’ll bring it by.”

  “Jill has already arranged to have more water stations than we had yesterday, so hopefully everything will be better.”

  Evan dumped the eggs into a skillet. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  I hoped he was wrong.

  Turned out he was right.

  For the first hour, things at the HankMed booth were quiet, but they picked up after that. By eleven a.m. the temperature was soaring and we began seeing our first cases of dehydration. Mostly kids and mostly minor. Wiggins Water became the treatment of choice.

  The kids seemed to like the mineral water more than the adults did. I thought that was odd, since it wasn’t loaded with sugar and caffeine like those energy drinks that are everywhere. And people want to know why kids can’t concentrate and why they act out in school.

  Jill stopped by a couple of times. She actually had little to do, as everything seemed to be going smoothly. A testament to her organizational skills. I told her that.

  “You doubted me?” she asked.

  “Never. Just that the first year of anything is usually buggy.”

  “It helps to have the right volunteers,” she said.

  “And finding those people was your job. So, good job.”

  “I could stay and listen to that all day, but unfortunately I’d better go make the rounds again so everything will keep running smoothly.”

  Divya and I continued seeing the usual minor stuff––bumps and scrapes and even a dislocated little finger. An eight-year-old boy who fell while racing around the track. A painful injury for sure, but mostly very scary-looking. To see your finger angle out in an odd direction is frightening. As it was for the boy. His tears evaporated when I tugged and snapped it back in place. The pain gone and the finger mobile again, he wiped his tears away with the back of his hand.

  “Let’s get an X-ray done, but I bet it’ll be okay.”

  “Are you sure?” his mother asked. “It looked like it was broken.”

  “These dislocations usually look worse than they are. There’s almost never a fracture involved.”

  I was right. No fracture. The boy was fascinated by the X-ray of his hand and his mother was relieved that the only thing required would be a splint for a few weeks. I arranged for them to follow up with an orthopedist and they headed out, the mother promising ice cream.

  By noon, the temperature approached ninety and what breeze there was offered little relief. Jonathan Wiggins dropped off more of his mineral water. Divya was finishing up with an elderly couple who had come in for respite from the heat when Principal Hyatt showed up. The couple had each finished a bottle of Wiggins Water, and Divya handed them two more as they left, telling them to stay in the shade.

  “Another hot one,” Hyatt said.

  “Yes, it is,” I said.

  “Mind if I grab one?” Hyatt asked, indicating the case of mineral water.

  “Please do.”

  He chose a lemon-lime. He twisted off the cap, took a couple of swallows, and then examined the label. “This is good. I’ve never tried it before.”

  “It’s popular,” I said.

  “I’d suspect it’ll be even more popular after this weekend,” Divya said. “Jonathan Wiggins said it was selling so fast he couldn’t keep stocked.”

  “He’s been donating some to us and to the Hamptons Heritage booth.”

  “That right?” Hyatt asked. He took another swig. “I’ll stop by and see him. Thank him for his generosity.” He propped a hip against one of the exam tables. “I had a talk with the Weber family last night.”

  “Oh?”

  “Jillian called. She told me about the girls. Katy is one of our juniors. Gloria’s a sophomore.”

  “How’d it go?”

  “Heated. Bill, the girls’ father, was furious. Understandably so. His initial reaction was to put them in rehab. Jillian tried to talk him down, but he wouldn’t listen, so she called me.”

  “The life of a high school principal.”

  He nodded.

  I knew it wasn’t the life of most principals. Most saw their obligations end at the schoolhouse door. Not Hyatt. He took every kid to heart. Maybe too much so, but that’s the way he was. His reputation told me that that was the only way he could do things. So he often found himself in the midst of family dramas.

  “But once things cooled down, we made some progress. The bottom line i
s that Katy and Gloria are good kids. They do well in school and have a very bright future. Bill and Jillian have done a good job raising them. Instilled all the right values. When I finally convinced Bill of that, things smoothed out.”

  “So the girls aren’t going to boot camp?” Divya asked.

  Hyatt shook his head. “They simply made a mistake. Folded to peer pressure. Had never done that before. Or so they said.”

  “The excuse of every teenager,” I said.

  Hyatt rubbed his chin. “True. But I think Katy and Gloria are different. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve had hundreds of students look me in the eye and lie. I’ve even been fooled before. But after all the years I’ve been at this I’ve developed a sort of internal lie detector. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good.”

  Experience will do that. Physicians develop the same sense. After a few years of treating patients you develop a sense for when they are being truthful and when they are holding back, or making something up, or maybe simply telling you what they think you want to hear.

  It might seem more logical to lie to your high school principal than to your doctor. After all, with the principal you are often in some sort of trouble when you visit his office. Such visits are rarely social and are usually more disciplinary in nature. Lying to protect yourself or your friends, though still wrong, is completely understandable. But lying to your doctor? Why would someone do that?

  There are many reasons. Not admitting your own failures or weaknesses is one. Something that is never easy to do. Things like yes, you are still smoking or drinking too much or no, you’re not doing your daily exercise or no, you aren’t taking your meds every day as you know you should. Some see this as disappointing their doctor and that makes them uncomfortable.

  Then there’s the fear factor. Fear that your doctor might uncover something awful. If you don’t tell him about the symptoms you fear most he won’t find that awful thing. Symptoms like shortness of breath, chest pain, dizziness, abdominal pain, and a host of others go unmentioned, even denied.

  It’s the mental equivalent of closing your eyes, covering your ears, and saying, “La-la-la-la, I can’t hear you.”

  Not smart, but common.

  So doctors, principals, cops, and many other so-called authority figures learn to spot lies.

  “The solution we came to was for the girls to promise to never do drugs again and for them to have random drug tests anytime their parents want,” Hyatt said.

  “The girls agreed to that?” Divya asked.

  “Not sure they really had a choice. Bill agreed not to punish or ground them for this episode if they agreed to the testing.”

  “That sounds reasonable to me,” I said.

  “I think they’ll do fine,” Hyatt said. He finished his mineral water and tossed the empty into the recycle box in the corner. “I also spoke with Sergeant McCutcheon this morning. He has six undercover guys here today, including Officer Griffin and himself. Maybe he’ll grab the dealers.”

  “If they come back today,” I said.

  Hyatt walked to the front of the tent and looked out toward the infield. “Bet they will.” He turned back toward us. “They see this as a rich market. Full of potential customers. Greed will get them caught.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Let me know if any of my other students show up on that stuff.”

  “Will do. And McCutcheon.”

  “What about McCutcheon?”

  The voice came from outside the booth. I looked up as McCutcheon and Griffin stepped around the corner. They looked like tourists. Khaki shorts and Hawaiian shirts, McCutcheon’s white and green surfboards on a yellow background, Griffin’s dark blue with red and green flowers. The world of the undercover cop.

  “And don’t say a word about Hawaii Five-O,” McCutcheon said.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said. “Even if it does fit.”

  He laughed. “Been a long time since either of us went undercover. This is the best we could come up with.”

  “You make a cute couple,” Divya said.

  “Not you, too.”

  “We caught a little grief from the other guys this morning,” Griffin said.

  “But you’ll blend in, and that’s what counts,” Hyatt said.

  Chapter 21

  “Dr. Lawson?”

  I finished wrapping a sprained ankle with an elastic bandage. A middle schooler who didn’t exactly nail the landing on the long jump. I told the boy’s father to keep his son’s foot elevated and iced. Divya handed him a baggie filled with ice.

  “Will do.” Then to his son I said, “Looks like no more running and jumping for you today.”

  The boy frowned. “Why did this have to happen today? I was in second place.”

  “That’s pretty good,” I said.

  “I’d win if it wasn’t for Patrick. He won yesterday, too.”

  “Patrick Knight?” Divya asked.

  “Yeah. You know him?”

  “We met him yesterday.”

  “He’s good,” the boy said.

  “So I hear,” I said.

  The boy hobbled over to his father. “I can’t beat him in anything.”

  “Stick with it,” the man said. “You will.” He nodded to me. “Thanks.”

  As they left Evan and Danielle showed up.

  “What mischief have Evan R. Lawson and Mata Hari, the superspies, been into?” Divya asked.

  “We’ve been doing the fund-raising walk,” Danielle said.

  “How many laps so far?” I asked.

  “Thirty-two.”

  “Eight miles? You got my brother to walk eight miles?”

  “On those legs?” Divya nodded toward Evan.

  Evan wore a pair of black athletic shorts and a white T-shirt. Danielle had on similar shorts with a light green tank top.

  “What’s wrong with my legs?”

  “Nothing a few trips to Marcy’s Bodyworks wouldn’t help.”

  “He’s been doing great,” Danielle said. “In fact he can actually walk and schmooze at the same time.” She laughed.

  “Evan can schmooze in his sleep,” I said.

  “Are you guys finished?” Evan said.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  “We’re shooting for fifty laps,” Danielle said.

  “Don’t overdo it,” I said.

  “It is hot out there.” Evan looked around. “Do you have any more of Jonathan’s magic water?”

  “In the box there,” I said.

  Evan grabbed a pair of the raspberry ones and handed one to Danielle.

  After resting for twenty minutes and downing two bottles of Wiggins Water, Evan and Danielle returned to the track to complete their laps. A few laps later they hooked up with George and Betsy Shanahan. Evan introduced them to Danielle.

  “You’re the surfer I read about, aren’t you?” George asked. “In the paper the other day?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were in the paper?” Evan asked. “It wasn’t about me injuring your arm, was it?”

  “No. They did an article on my career.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? I want to read it.”

  “It’s no big deal,” Danielle said. “But Grandma does have a few copies.” She laughed. “Maybe a dozen or so.”

  “That explains the sling,” Betsy said. “What did Evan do to you?”

  “It was an accident,” Evan said.

  Danielle laughed again. “Yes, it was. And it was partly my fault.”

  “Were you surfing?” George asked.

  “I was giving Evan a lesson.”

  “Now it’s even clearer,” Betsy said.

  Evan flapped his arms. “It wa
s an accident.”

  Betsy nudged him with her elbow. “I’m just teasing you.”

  “How far have you guys gotten?” Evan asked.

  “Forty-six laps,” George said. “You?”

  “We’re on number thirty-eight.”

  “I can’t believe this many people are doing this,” Betsy said.

  The track was filled with hundreds of people and passing slower walkers required a bit of weaving.

  “Thanks to Evan,” George said. He clamped a hand on Evan’s shoulder. “I should hire you to work for me. Maybe we could increase our customer base.”

  “I don’t think my brother would go for that. Besides, I could never leave HankMed.”

  “Don’t blame you. Must be easier than banking.”

  “Plus,” Betsy said, nudging George in the ribs, “if you had more customers I’d see even less of you.”

  “But think of the extra shopping you could do,” George said.

  “Hmm. Maybe I should rethink this,” Betsy said.

  Evan suddenly stopped.

  “What is it?” Danielle asked.

  “It’s them,” he said, pointing toward the row of booths across the track.

  “Them who?” George asked, his gaze turning in the direction Evan pointed.

  “That couple. Who’ve been selling drugs to kids.” He grabbed Danielle’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  He half dragged Danielle across the track and the infield, but by the time they reached the row of booths the couple had disappeared.

  “Where are they?” Danielle asked.

  Evan looked each way. “I don’t know. They were right here.”

  Then he saw them. A few booths down, walking away from them. “There.” He started after them.

  The stringy-haired woman glanced over her shoulder at Evan. She nudged the guy and he looked Evan’s way, too. Evan pushed through the crowd, Danielle following.

  The couple veered right and disappeared between two booths. Evan picked up his pace. He and Danielle cut between the two booths. Now they stood looking along the back of the row of booths. The couple was nowhere to be seen.

  “You go that way,” Evan said. “I’ll go along the back.”