by Dawn Eastman
Katie was saved from responding by the appearance of Bella bearing a tray of drinks, sugar, and milk. Just as she set down their mugs, John Carlson pushed open the door and walked to their table.
“Hi, Chief,” Bella said. “The usual?”
“You know me, Bella.” John winked at her and took the remaining empty armchair. He sank down into it and had to lean forward to keep himself from being swallowed by the cushions.
“Thanks for meeting me.”
Katie stirred milk and sugar into her tea and nodded. Matt sipped his black coffee and regarded Carlson over the rim of his mug.
“I need to take a statement from both of you about the night Ellen came into the ER.”
“Dr. LeClair was hardly there, Chief. I can tell you whatever you want to know.”
Chief Carlson nodded. “I remember. I saw her come in that night. But according to the EMTs, the pills Ellen Riley took came from a prescription Dr. LeClair wrote. Mr. Riley is convinced that Ellen would never have taken diazepam. He said she hated taking meds of any kind and certainly wouldn’t have taken an antianxiety medicine.”
Katie took a deep breath and wondered the best way to tell Chief Carlson that she agreed with Christopher and had no idea how Ellen had gotten the prescription.
“The thing is, the prescription bottle is missing.”
“What?” Katie said.
Matt set his mug down and leaned forward.
“The EMTs are very clear that they saw the bottle. It was your name on the label, and it had only been filled on Monday. But they either forgot to grab it when they took her to the hospital or lost it along the way. It’s not at the house or among her things that were given back to Mr. Riley.”
Katie took a large gulp of tea and tried to appear unconcerned.
“Maybe it was tossed with all the other debris from the code?” Matt asked.
Chief Carlson shrugged. “It’s one of the reasons I need to ask you to review what happened that night.”
Matt looked around at the other seating areas filling up. Katie exchanged a look with him, and they both turned to Carlson. Katie imagined they wore the same look of disbelief.
Katie lowered her voice and leaned toward John. “I’m sure the entire town knows you’re talking to us right now,” she said. “It’s probably the reason the café is filling up so quickly.”
Carlson glanced around, and his shoulders slumped.
“These people are unbelievable,” he said with a sigh. “Okay, just a couple of questions and then I’ll ask you to stop by the station either later this weekend or on Monday at the latest.”
Matt leaned back in his chair and sipped his coffee.
“Did you see this pill bottle in the ER?” Carlson asked Matt.
He shook his head. “I only know what the EMTs told me. I was too busy working to get a heartbeat to worry about where the pill bottle was.”
Katie felt her heart racing. She knew the next question was going to be about the prescription. Why did she prescribe it? How long had Ellen been on it? She didn’t want to answer at all and especially didn’t want to answer in front of Matt.
Carlson turned to Katie. “You said the other night that you weren’t on call. Has Nick given an excuse as to why he didn’t answer his phone?”
Katie felt herself relax a bit. She could answer this one. “He said he must have been in a dead zone when the service tried to call. But he didn’t tell me where he was.”
Two older women sat in the chairs closest to their area and quietly sipped their coffee. Katie and Carlson exchanged a look.
Carlson jotted a note in his notebook. “Okay, I’ll need to talk to you both alone. Just call my cell, and I can meet you.”
He struggled out of the cushy armchair and lumbered to the door of the café. Katie noticed several people whispering and watching him leave.
Matt let out a breath. “I hate answering those kind of questions. I want to help, but I also feel a little bit like I’m on trial.”
Katie nodded. She finished the last bit of cold tea and set her cup on its saucer.
“Do you buy Nick Hawkins’s excuse?”
Startled, Katie turned to look at him. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Matt shrugged. “Seems pretty weak. It’s one of those excuses that, even if it is true, you’d think you’d try to dress it up a bit if your partner had to cover for you.”
At first, Nick had apologized, and she’d moved on. But now she reconsidered. Patsy Travers’s report of seeing him at Ellen’s house the day she died already had her suspicious of Nick. Katie couldn’t help but wonder what he had been doing there. Now she wondered whether he had purposely ignored the emergency call.
9
Several hours later, Katie was undergoing an intense interrogation of a different kind.
She had returned home after rounds and her tea with Matt to find Gabrielle and Caleb painting the kitchen. She could have just said she was returning from rounds, but she had an annoying honest streak and admitted she’d been at the Purple Parrot with Matt Gregor.
Gabrielle launched into a meticulous dissection of every word, look, and gesture. Caleb had deserted them to go work on his app, and Katie felt like she was stuck being grilled by a rabid government agent.
“So when he asked you to have a drink, was it like a ‘Let’s grab a drink as doctors and talk about patients,’ or was it ‘I don’t have the guts to ask you out, so let’s go get a drink’?”
Katie sighed and then started to laugh. This was the fifth iteration of the same question. Gabrielle’s look of annoyance made her laugh harder until she had to step off the ladder and set her paint roller down before she hurt herself or got paint all over the floor.
Gabrielle stood with her hands on her hips, glowering. “You aren’t taking this seriously.”
That made Katie laugh even more. When she finally caught her breath, she nodded and then shook her head. She had to look away from Gabrielle to control the giggles that kept bubbling up.
“You’re right. I’m not.” She took some deep breaths. “Sorry.”
“Hmph.” Gabrielle turned to the wall and began rolling the paint hard enough that it splattered on her arm. “You’ve been talking about him since we were residents, and now that he’s finally noticed you exist, you won’t give me anything to go on.”
“I’m just distracted by this suicide and the weird prescription.” Katie pushed her hair back with her arm and picked up her roller again. “I don’t want to read too much into it because maybe he’s just being nice. He guessed she was the first patient I had lost since finishing residency, and I think he feels bad for making it sound like I shouldn’t have prescribed the diazepam.”
“Well, that’s not very encouraging.” Gabrielle set her roller in the paint tray and turned to face Katie. “Listen, I did some snooping at the hospital. My scrub nurse told me Matt Gregor’s one of those I-won’t-date-a-medical-person types. I was hoping she was wrong, but maybe he’s already written off any relationship because you’re a doctor.”
“Oh, I guess you could be right,” Katie said. She was surprised at her own disappointment. She squared her shoulders and moved to another section of wall. She swallowed and made her voice more businesslike. “Now that we’ve exhausted the Matt Gregor issue, let’s turn your inquiring mind to another problem.”
Gabrielle looked like a cat that had just seen a mouse dart across the room. “Ooh, is there another handsome stranger in the mix?”
Katie smiled and shook her head. “No. This is serious.”
“Handsome strangers are serious.”
“This is about my patient. The one who died Wednesday.” Katie bent to roll her brush in the paint and saw Gabrielle’s smile fade.
“The suicide? What about her?” Gabrielle picked up a brush and began cutting in along the baseboard.
“I’m worried it may not have been suicide.”
“Why? Even if you didn’t write that prescription, she could have gotten the me
dicine in any number of ways.”
“I know,” Katie said. “It’s just that everyone close to her says she was happy. She had no reason to harm herself.”
“You think it was an accident?” Gabrielle set her brush down and swiveled from her spot on the floor to face Katie.
“She thinks it was murder,” Caleb said from the doorway.
Katie glanced at Caleb and nodded. How long had he been standing there? He generally made himself scarce when Gabrielle was on a matchmaking jag.
“What?” Gabrielle looked from Caleb to Katie. “In this tiny little town?”
“People are the same wherever you go,” Katie said.
“Yes, but you never expect to know someone . . .”
“But let’s say it was murder,” Caleb said and walked farther into the room. “How do you force someone to take a bunch of pills?”
Katie shrugged. “I don’t know. As far as I know, there was no sign of a struggle, but if the police assumed suicide, would they even process the room as if it were a crime scene?”
“Probably not,” Gabrielle said. “They might not think that way. I would imagine the worst they deal with around here is bar brawls and domestic violence.”
“This has to stay here in this room,” Katie said. She held Gabrielle’s gaze until she nodded. There was no need to check with Caleb; his brain was like a vault. “I’m worried it could be Nick Hawkins.”
“Your partner? Why?”
“I’ve been doing my own checking around, and he was at her house that day. He never answered his phone when she went in to the hospital, and apparently Ellen and Nick’s wife used to be friends.”
“So you think there was an affair,” Gabrielle said. Katie wasn’t surprised that she had gone in that direction; Gabrielle always suspected an affair.
“Or something,” Katie said. “As far as I know, Ellen was happy with Christopher.”
“It sounds like we need to do some more nosing around,” Caleb said.
“We?” Katie looked at Caleb.
“Well, whatever I can do to help,” Caleb said. “But I guess mostly you need to nose around.”
Katie’s shoulders slumped. “I’d really like to know how that prescription came to be. And whether Ellen had any enemies. From what everyone says, she was well liked.”
Caleb went back to his laptop, leaving Katie to fill Gabrielle in on what little they knew.
The two of them batted the few pieces of information around until they had exhausted the possibilities and almost finished painting.
“We’ve been working at this for a couple of hours. What if we each finish our wall and then I take you to Riley’s for dinner?”
“Race you!” Gabrielle began rapidly spreading Sunshine Gold.
* * *
Riley’s was all steel and glass and brick with a large open dining room that felt like it belonged in a big city rather than a small town.
The noise level on a Saturday night made it almost impossible to hear what your tablemates were saying. Gabrielle and Katie had come early enough that they scored a table at the back in a relatively quiet corner.
They ordered drinks and then sat back to people watch. A favorite pastime of theirs was to make up stories about the people at the other tables. Doctors began every encounter with a patient by taking a history—usually limited to the reason for the visit, but often it was much more comprehensive. But the exam started from the moment they walked in the room. By evaluating body language, clothing, and appearance, they could get a few clues to the patient’s condition. Gabrielle’s stories tended toward the illicit affair, and Katie saw spies and secret meetings.
“That guy over there.” Gabrielle nodded to a table where a man sat alone checking his watch every minute or so. “His mistress has finally gotten sick of waiting for him to leave his wife, and she’s standing him up.”
Katie choked on her drink. “That’s the minister at the Methodist church,” she said.
Gabrielle lifted an eyebrow. “So I’m right?”
Katie laughed. “I doubt it. Look. Here’s his daughter.”
A pretty dark-haired young woman sat down in the chair opposite the minister, and his face blossomed with a warm smile.
“Hmm, okay, your turn,” Gabrielle said. “It’s kind of unfair that you know most of these people.”
Katie shook her head. “I only recognize a couple of people from town. I’ll bet a lot of them are from Ann Arbor.”
She surveyed the room until she found someone who looked suspicious. “Over there,” she said. She tilted her head in the direction of a woman sitting at a table with a man who was studying the menu. The woman was applying lipstick and using her phone as a mirror. “She’s a private investigator staking out that group of young women.”
“Them?” Gabrielle gestured with one finger while keeping her hand on the table.
Katie thought that she and Gabrielle were probably the most suspicious people in the restaurant.
“Yup. She’s not really looking at herself. She’s snapping pictures.”
“Why?”
“Umm, the father thinks she’s meeting her ex-boyfriend and hired the PI to follow her.”
“Ooh, that’s good,” Gabrielle said. “Is the boyfriend cheating on her, and the father knows it?”
“No, the boyfriend wants to move to New York to pursue his musical career, and the father doesn’t want her to move away.”
“Why don’t the people in your stories ever just talk to each other?”
Katie made a face. “How come all your stories involve sex?”
“I’m an obstetrician. I’d be out of business if people didn’t have sex.”
Katie laughed and sipped her drink. This was what she needed—to take a break from worrying about Ellen, rogue prescriptions, and murder.
“What can I get you tonight?” The waitress had sneaked up behind them as they talked about their fellow diners.
Katie hadn’t even looked at the menu, but she didn’t need to. “I’ll have the lamb and quinoa stew, please.”
Gabrielle ordered the chicken special and another round of drinks.
Katie held up a hand. “Just water for me, please.”
Gabrielle made a face.
“I’m on call—one-drink limit,” Katie said.
“Right,” Gabrielle said. “I forgot.”
After the waitress left, Gabrielle leaned forward. “Behind your left shoulder—don’t look now!” Gabrielle said. “Isn’t that your new partner?”
Katie turned in an exaggeratedly slow manner. “Yup. That’s Nick and his wife.”
“They don’t look very happy.”
Katie turned again and tried to evaluate the mood at the table across the room with the peripheral vision in her left eye.
“I can’t really see them. What are they doing?”
“Eating in silence. Not looking at each other.”
“Hmm. I don’t know her very well, and Nick has been grumpy lately.” Katie fingered the rim of her glass and looked around the room.
“Is it still going well at the practice?”
Katie nodded. “I love the patients and the location. The staff is really good.”
“But . . .”
“Besides the question of whether he was having an affair with Ellen, there’s something weird going on with Nick and Emmett. I don’t know if it’s a father-son thing or if there’s more to it than that.”
“Are they arguing?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s hard to define. When I worked with them a year ago on my rotation, Emmett was a real talker. He clearly loved what he was doing and wanted to share it with anyone who would listen. He’s still sort of like that, but it’s like he’s been dialed down. I’m not sure if it’s the practice, or me, or just that I don’t know them that well.”
“You’ve only been there a few months. It’ll take a while to get the sense of all those undercurrents.”
Katie looked down at her drink and swirled the c
ontents with the tiny straw.
“Dr. LeClair?”
Katie looked up to see Todd Talbot, the manager of the restaurant, standing at the table.
“Hi, Todd! I’m back again for my usual,” Katie said. She gestured across the table at Gabrielle. “This is my friend, Dr. Gabrielle Maldova.” She turned to Gabrielle. “Todd manages the restaurant and is personally responsible for my favorite meal.”
Gabrielle and Todd exchanged greetings.
“Could I join you for a moment?”
“Of course.” Katie gestured at the empty chair.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner, and Beth likely won’t speak to me for days, but I saw you and thought I would give it a try.”
“Beth?”
“Beth Wixom and I are engaged,” Todd said.
“I remember Ellen mentioning that,” Katie said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” Todd drummed his fingers on the table and didn’t meet her eye. “The thing is, Beth doesn’t think it was a suicide.”
Katie sat back in her chair, and Gabrielle feigned interest in the bread basket.
“She mentioned that to me at the hospital.”
“I think she’d really like to talk to you about her mother.” He finally met her gaze with a pleading look. “I don’t know what the rules are about privacy and all, but if you could meet with her and . . . I don’t know, just hear her out?”
“I’d be happy to talk to her, Todd.” Katie didn’t mention that she’d already tried to contact Beth. She didn’t want to get his hopes up that she agreed that Ellen’s death was suspicious. “But I heard the police are investigating.”
Todd snorted. “For whatever good that will do.”
Katie felt a surge of irritation. She liked John Carlson, and she knew he was looking into it.
Todd must have noticed her change in expression. He held up his hands as if to calm her. “It’s not that they aren’t listening; I just don’t think they really believe her. They think she’s just being overly emotional.”