Family Practice

by Charlene Weir

  “Why did you steal Daddy’s painting?”

  Marlitta, confused, shook her head. “No. I don’t understand about that. Why would I steal a painting? Dorothy told me to be there. At the house. Eight o’clock.”

  “Marlitta, please put the gun down.”

  “That meant she knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “The Ackerbaugh baby.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell them you tried to kill me.”

  “Nobody will believe that.”

  “Because I knew you had Daddy’s gun. What have you done with it? I had to defend myself.”

  Thunder crashed. They both jumped. The light flickered.

  “Mistake,” Marlitta said.

  “Yes. It was all a mistake. Just—”

  “Vicky,” Marlitta said impatiently, as though Ellen were being particularly dense.

  Vicky was a mistake? Ellen couldn’t unstick her mind from the round hole at the end of the gun barrel.

  “When she said that about the raincoat,” Marlitta said. “I had to do something. I didn’t realize she thought it was you. Then it was too late.” Marlitta shook her head. “Somehow she just knew.”

  “You took my raincoat.”

  “I brought it back. And there was Taylor. Really quite a nasty man. Creeping up on me. Interested only in money. Standing there smirking.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why me?”

  “The police need somebody.”

  “You took Daddy’s gun from me. You called me from Vicky’s. Why me?”

  “The first day of school.” Marlitta’s voice was clotted with resentment.

  “What?”

  “Your first day. When you went to school.”

  First day of school?

  “Mother took you. She walked with you to school on your first day.”

  “Marlitta, what—”

  “You were the only one.” Marlitta stood up, stepped away from the table, and took dead aim at the center of Ellen’s chest.

  She’s going to blow me away. Ellen’s mind was making frantic, shrieking noises, but her muscles just sat there. The funny thing was, she didn’t even remember their mother walking her to school.

  Thunder boomed. The light went out.

  Ellen slid under the table onto her hands and knees.

  The gun fired.

  Heart beating so fast she couldn’t breathe, Ellen strained to see in the dimness. Marlitta scraped a chair away. It fell. Ellen crawled to the far end of the table.

  “Ellen!”

  The table skidded as Marlitta shoved it. She was mumbling.

  Ellen slid out and ran for the door.

  It blew open just as Marlitta fired. Ellen rushed out. The door slammed behind her. The wind shoved her back against it, forced her mouth open wide, and rushed into her throat. Rain pelted down. She leaned into the wind. It caught her and sent her stumbling sideways. She tripped, fell, and rolled.

  Lightning flashed. She saw Marlitta coming after her, mouth open in a yell, but the words were blown away.

  Ellen scrambled to her feet. Bent forward, she slithered down a slope toward the trees, got blown in staggering side steps, corrected, got blown the other way.

  She hugged a tree, pulled air into her tight chest. In a bright flash of lightning she saw Marlitta, gun in her hand, whipped around by the wind, struggling through the rain.

  Ellen peeled herself from the tree trunk and moved on, sliding around trees. She stumbled up a slope, fell to her knees, scrambled to her feet.

  The wind carried Marlitta’s voice, screaming her name. If I can hear her, she’s too close. She crawled to a boulder. Kneeling, she clawed away small rocks around the base. Her fingers groped for the plastic bag. Rain ran down her face.

  She shook out Daddy’s gun, unfolded the oily rag she’d wrapped it in. Would it fire?

  “Ellen!” Marlitta’s voice, high and thin. “Stop this. We’re getting soaked.”

  Ellen curled her finger around the trigger. Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked.

  * * *

  Thunder echoed away, followed by another crack and a rolling rumble.

  “Ellen has a visitor,” Parkhurst said as the Bronco’s headlights picked out a dark car through the blowing curtain of rain.

  Susan squinted, trying to identify the make. “You recognize it?”

  He brought the Bronco to a stop behind it. “Marlitta’s Plymouth.”

  Oh, shit. The one other person who had just as much invested in Brent as he did.

  When she slid from the car, the wind caught her, nearly hurling her off her feet. The force of it shocked her. It snapped her hair against her face, stinging her cheeks. It pressed her pants legs tight around her; the cuffs fluttered against her ankles with a rippling sound.

  As Parkhurst came around the Bronco, a gust slammed against him, pushed him back. He took several running steps before he recovered.

  In just the few feet to the front door, they were drenched. He pounded on the door. She heard a rhythmic bang bang, bang bang bang.

  Staggering, leaning forward, buffeted by the wind, they went around to the rear of the house. Ellen’s Mustang sat nose in. The kitchen door blew open, banged shut, blew open.

  It was dark inside. Flashlight held high and to one side, Susan eased in and moved quickly right. Parkhurst, gun drawn, moved left. The light beam spotted an overturned chair, the pine table shoved askew. She listened, trying to hear over the howling wind. Parkhurst flipped the light switch up, then down. “Power’s out.”

  A sharp pop came from outside. They looked at each other.

  “Gunshot,” he said.

  She was already moving.

  “Where?” Stance rigid, constantly adjusting for the wind, pants legs whipping around his legs, he stared into the rain.

  A shot, followed quickly by another.

  He pointed. They took off, running into the wind. Susan stumbled uphill. Wind seemed the only thing keeping her on her feet.

  “Parkhurst!” His name was scattered by the storm. She wanted to tell him to be careful. The trees gave them some cover, but they were floundering right into range of a bullet in the chest.

  He crouched behind a tree. A few feet away, she did the same. Thirty yards downhill, she saw Marlitta, gun raised, step out from behind a tree. She yelled something Susan couldn’t hear and fired.

  The shot ricocheted off a boulder. There was a flash of return fire. Marlitta ducked back.

  “Police!” Susan yelled. “Drop the gun! Drop the gun!”

  In a running crouch, she moved closer and got behind a tree. “Drop the gun!”

  Marlitta, open-mouthed, turned; startled, confused, she aimed at Susan.

  Parkhurst shouted, “Put your hands in the air!”

  Marlitta spun toward the sound of his voice.

  “Put the gun on the ground!” Susan yelled. “Now!”

  Marlitta turned toward her. A long second stretched by.

  Marlitta lowered her arm.

  “Put the gun down!”

  She knelt and laid it on the sodden ground.

  “Step away from it! Step away from the gun!”

  Marlitta stood up, took a faltering step back.

  Susan and Parkhurst converged on her from both sides. He cuffed her. Susan grabbed the weapon.

  “Ellen?” Susan called.

  Like a drenched kitten, frightened and miserable, Ellen appeared over the far side of the boulder. “She was trying to shoot me.” Gun in her hand, Ellen rubbed the crook of her elbow down her face.

  “Lay the gun on the rock,” Susan said.

  “Yes. Okay.” Ellen placed the revolver on top of the boulder. “It’s the one— She shot Dorothy— I think—” Ellen froze.

  The rain had slacked off. Susan heard a great rumble, like a freight train. It bore down on them.

  “Storm cellar!” Ellen took off running.

  Susan snatched the gun from the bould
er and shoved it in her raincoat pocket.

  “Go!” Parkhurst shouted at her. He unsnapped one cuff and clicked it around his own wrist. Linked together, he half-dragged, half-carried Marlitta down the hill. Susan pounded behind them. Her ears popped. She felt lightheaded, had difficulty breathing. Beyond the roar, she heard hissing and screaming.

  Dirt, rock, boards whirled around her. A tree bent; the root structure rose up with yards of soil and was carried away.

  Ellen struggled with the cellar door. Parkhurst nudged her aside and wrestled it open. Ellen stumbled down the steps. Marlitta fell in, arm stretched out, pulling Parkhurst after her.

  Wind caught the door, wrenching it from his hands. It banged against him, making him stagger. Susan felt his free arm grope at her. Tangled in a clump, they stumbled, slid, fell down the steps.

  They sat on low wooden benches, their heads tilted up, and listened to the world being destroyed above them.

  The wind screamed, the rain sounded like bricks hitting the door. Around the edges, gusts seeped in, creating small eddies of dust and cobwebs. For sheer terror, this beat anything she had ever experienced.

  * * *

  Minutes dragged by for hours before the roar, shriek, and pounding stopped, leaving behind an eerie silence.

  Dreading what she might see, Susan opened the door. The world was still there. Ellen’s house was intact. Battered trees, bare of limbs, lay scattered around. Parkhurst’s Bronco was nowhere to be seen. Ellen’s Mustang had been turned upside down and blown downhill. Marlitta’s Plymouth, one wheel gone, had a barn sitting on it. A cow stood in the open doorway mooing plaintively.

  30

  JEN, PROPPED UP in the bed, looked at pictures of tornado devastation in the Hampstead Herald.

  “Wow. You were right there,” she said with awe in her voice, peering at Susan as if making sure she was real and not a cunning trick of light and mirrors. “You could have been smashed.”

  Two days had passed since that night in the storm cellar, an unforgettable night when cops, villain, and potential victim all waited together for the end of the world.

  The northeast corner of the county was the only spot where the tornado had touched down. Hampstead itself had been spared a direct hit but had suffered severe storm damage from high winds, hail, and lashing rain: trees down, windows broken, roofs ripped off, streets flooded, power out.

  Parkhurst’s Bronco had been located undamaged in a wheat-field two miles away. The barn squashing Marlitta’s car belonged to Harlen Dietz. The cow inside was unhurt, although it had taken some doing to get her down.

  Marlitta had been arrested.

  She’d known about the porphyria. Brent, not being a complete shit, had told her. This inherited disease kept them from having children.

  Before the two married, Dorothy, being the woman she was, looked into her mother’s old medical records to find out what Brent’s father had died of. She simply wanted to know Brent’s family medical history.

  Marlitta wasn’t as blind about her husband as the rest of them assumed. Foolishly in love, for sure, but she’d suspected the affair with Linette Ackerbaugh. Once in his office, she had, without his being aware of it, seen him stroke the back of Linette’s hand. She’d turned away, knowing this would end, as had all the others.

  When Dorothy got worried about the baby, started delving into medical texts and coming up with porphyria, Marlitta realized what must have occurred. Brent was the father.

  She also knew Dorothy would not tolerate a physician’s betrayal of a patient like that. Beautiful Brent was on his way out. Except Marlitta got her timing wrong. It was the stolen painting Dorothy had meant to deal with when she’d called her siblings together on that Saturday night.

  Brent claimed he didn’t know his wife had shot Dorothy or killed the others. If Beautiful Brent was to be believed, he also didn’t know he was the father of the Ackerbaugh baby. Personally, Susan had her doubts, but the matter was now out of her hands and in the hands of DA’s and defense attorneys.

  There was talk from Carl and Ellen of tracing the stolen painting and getting it back; that too was none of Susan’s concern, since no charges had ever been filed.

  Earlier this very day, Jen had been moved from intensive care into an ordinary room.

  “Should she be sitting up so long?” Susan asked Dr. Adam Sheffield.

  “If she wants,” Sheffield said. “She’s a strong kid. She’s going to be all right. She’ll figure out her limits.”

  Susan wasn’t so sure. It was only eight in the evening, and Jen looked more pale and fragile and tired than Susan could bear to see. Suddenly, she loved this little girl so much she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep tears from slopping over.

  “Ben Parkhurst was just here,” Jen said. She agreed to have the head of the bed lowered, bunched the pillow, and snuggled into it.

  “Yeah? What’d he say?”

  “You’re celebrating.”

  Right. Dinner maybe. “You’re almost as good as new. That’s something to celebrate.”

  “Don’t forget the ballet,” Jen said drowsily.

  “I promise.” Susan sat by the bed and watched Jen sleep, watched her eyelashes against her pale cheek, watched her chest rise and fall. When Jen’s mom came, Susan quietly left.

  Driving home, she felt tired and feverish. She poured a glass of orange juice for her scratchy throat and carried it up to the bedroom, where she caught sight of her face in the mirror. She stared.

  Dropping onto the side of the bed, she picked up the phone and punched in a number.

  “Yeah,” Parkhurst said.

  “It’s Susan. Listen, I’m afraid—”

  “Afraid?”

  “Well, that too, but I’m afraid I have the measles.”

  Also by Charlene Weir

  Consider the Crows

  The Winter Widow

  FAMILY PRACTICE Copyright © 1995 by Charlene Weir. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  “A Thomas Dunne Book”

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Weir, Charlene.

  Family practice / Charlene Weir.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-13492-4

  I. Title.

  PS3573.E39744F36 1995

  813'.54—dc20

  95-34732

  CIP

  First edition: November 1995

  eISBN 9781466834606

  First eBook edition: November 2012