Pickin Clover

by Bobby Hutchinson

  He’d have to tell her about Raymond. Undoubtedly, the media would broadcast the facts behind Stokes’s disappearance tomorrow morning anyway. He’d have to talk to Polly about it tonight.

  He dreaded it. As he washed, shaved, then hurriedly pulled on a fresh shirt, Michael thought it over and reasoned that if their financial situation was as critical as he suspected, he wouldn’t burden Polly with all the sordid details right away. She’d always relied on him to manage their finances, so she wouldn’t suspect how devastating this could be for them. He’d tell her some of the facts, of course; just not all of them immediately. Somehow, someway, he’d get them through this latest catastrophe without upsetting her any more than was absolutely necessary.

  It was only money, he reminded himself bitterly. He could make more. Money wasn’t even in the same league as brain cancer, was it?

  Before he left the house, he scribbled Polly a note: Sorry I missed you, my love. Got home early but have to go to this meeting, hope your day’s been good. See you after nine...M.

  At 9:20 that evening, Polly was sitting on a high stool at the kitchen counter, flipping through a decorating magazine and having a cup of tea, when she heard Michael’s car drive into the attached garage. She looked expectantly toward the connecting door, and a moment later he came into the kitchen.

  He smiled when he saw her, then stared as he shrugged out of his coat. “What’ve you done to your hair?”

  “Had it cut. You like?”

  He came over and stood beside her, and for a moment she was nervous. On one level, she knew she’d cut her hair to force him to look at her, to really see her again. She wanted him to want her, the way he used to. But he’d loved her long hair.

  Had she also been punishing him?

  “It suits you very well.” He leaned over and kissed her, the lightest brush of his lips across hers.

  Not much of a greeting, some inner voice taunted her, for a man who hasn’t seen his woman for two whole days. And here you thought a haircut might change things.

  “Got any more of that tea in the pot?” He sounded determinedly cheerful, but she was aware of the weariness in his eyes, the lines of strain around his mouth, and her heart twisted. She loved him so very much. She wanted things to be good between them, but somehow she didn’t know how to make them that way anymore.

  “Lots. It’s chamomile.”

  He took a cup from the rack and poured from the huge blue teapot, then leaned back against the counter as he sipped it. His long, strong body had always been elegantly beautiful to her artist’s eye, and it was still.

  His lean face, with its clean-cut planes and determined mouth and chin, had been reproduced in feminine perfection in their daughter. Susannah’s head had been shaped with the same leonine grace as Michael’s, covered with the same coal black, unruly crop of curls. The only feature she’d inherited from Polly was her amber eyes, startling and arrestingly beautiful with such dusky hair.

  Susannah would have grown into a breathtakingly beautiful woman. Even as a little girl, she’d loved clothes and had an eye for what suited her.

  Michael, too, wore clothes well, Polly mused. He was a sexy man, although sex had become one more area in their marriage that wasn’t working all that well.

  Stay focused. Stay in the present. Don't get mired in regrets... Frannie’s suggestions were like a soothing voice in her head.

  “So, how was Seattle?”

  “Sunny, for a change. The drive back was good, not too much traffic.”

  “And your meeting tonight? Was this the group you were doing a presentation for?”

  He nodded. “It went okay. Same old stuff. I talked for a while, they asked questions.”

  She knew he’d spoken about new treatments for cancer. She’d never attended one of the numerous lectures Michael had given since Susannah’s death, but Polly was aware through a casual conversation with another physician that Michael was now regarded as an expert in the treatment of the disease.

  He combined conventional treatment with any alternative form of medicine that showed promise, just as he’d urged the doctors to do with Susannah. However, he didn’t discuss this part of his work with Polly.

  True to form, he changed the subject now. “I spoke to Norah this afternoon, wished her a happy birthday. She said you’d had lunch together. Did you know your mother invited us for dinner tonight?”

  “Yeah, I knew. I didn’t want to go. And she didn’t ask us until the last minute anyway.” She realized she sounded defensive. Michael believed she was too hard on her mother.

  “I told Isabelle I was sure you hadn’t gotten the message, and Norah said the same thing, so it might be a good idea to stick to that story.” His tone was mellow, and he smiled at her and winked; for a moment she glimpsed the old Michael, unguarded and open.

  Polly smiled back. “Okay, I will.” She acknowledged she should at least have called her mother to refuse the invitation. She waited to see if he’d say something more about it, but he didn’t, and the intimacy was gone as quickly as it had arrived. Silence fell.

  Polly watched him, wondering if this tension that stretched between them would ever disappear, if there would come a time again when they could argue, even fight, the way they had before, knowing their marriage was secure.

  At one time, she thought with an ache in her heart, Michael would have swept her into a bear hug after getting home after a trip, swung her off her feet, kissed her breathless, whispered what he planned to do to her later...with Susannah giggling at her parents’ foolishness...

  Stay in the now. Again Polly could hear Frannie’s voice emphasizing the words that had become almost a mantra. And Polly managed to do it more often than not these days, which was a small miracle.

  Michael was saying something, and she realized she’d missed part of it.

  “...you remember I mentioned once that I thought maybe Raymond was having an affair with her? Well, apparently they’ve both disappeared, along with everyone’s money. Arthur Berina told me. I’m afraid Raymond cleaned out our checking accounts. I’ll go to the bank in the morning and straighten out the matter.”

  It took a moment for Polly to understand that Michael was, incredibly, talking about Raymond Stokes. She set the cup she was holding down and stared at him in shock and horror. “Raymond? Raymond Stokes has run off with that woman from his office? Carol, Clara—what was her name?”

  “Clarissa Coombs.”

  “But...but she’s lots older than he. And she’s an accountant, I thought you said.”

  Michael’s parody of a smile came and went. “Guilty, Your Honor, on both counts. Apparently her age and ability to add and subtract must have turned Raymond on.”

  Polly was aghast. “So he’s taken off with her and he’s stolen our money? I can’t believe this. How much money, Michael?"

  He hesitated and then shrugged. “I’m not entirely certain, but I’ll find out tomorrow morning.”

  “But surely the police...” Polly trailed off.

  “They’re on it, but he’s had a head start He’s undoubtedly left Canada, and I don’t suppose the R.C.M.P. will treat this as a major international crime. Of course, there’s always a chance they’ll catch him and recover what he’s stolen, but they’ll have to find him first. And Raymond has always been a very smart man, so I suspect he’s planned this out pretty carefully.”

  Polly watched her husband, trying to gauge how upset he was over this unbelievable turn of events, and realized there was no way she could tell. In the past months Michael had perfected a calm, unruffled persona that prevented anyone, most of all her, from guessing what was really going on with him. He’d put up a wall against emotion, and she couldn’t get past it.

  His lack of honest reaction infuriated her, and she suddenly banged a fist on the counter and hollered at him, something she hadn’t done in a long time.

  “For God’s sake, Michael, don’t just stand there and pretend this doesn’t matter. This is terrible. Surely y
ou’re angry or worried or.. .or desperate or something?”

  A grimace flashed across his handsome features, then disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. “I’m not overjoyed about it, but I don’t see that getting crazy will solve anything. And there’s no point worrying until I find out the extent of the damage, is there?”

  She wanted to scream at him, beat him with her fists, somehow find a way to break through the wall that divided them and liberate the passion she knew was trapped there. But she’d done all those things at different times in the past months, trying to elicit some honest reaction, and nothing worked.

  The man she’d known for more than a dozen years, husband, lover, friend, father to her beloved daughter, was gone, replaced by this automaton, this man who looked like Michael and sounded like Michael, even smelled like Michael, but wasn’t him at all.

  Whatever this thing was between them, it was killing their marriage as surely as the tumor had killed her daughter.

  She gave up. “Okay. I guess there’s nothing anyone can do right at this moment anyway. I’m tired, Michael.”

  It was all too true. A bone-deep weariness had rolled over and through her. “I’m going up to bed. Coming?”

  “In a while, love. I have some charts to do, letters to write.”

  The faint hope that had lingered in her faded. She knew it would be hours before he came to lie beside her, if he did at all. Some nights—all too many nights—he slept in the spare bedroom, always with the excuse that he’d had to work late and he knew how difficult it was for her to get to sleep so he didn’t want to disturb her. They rarely ate dinner together because he was always working late. If she so much as mentioned their daughter’s name, he got up and left the room. It had been three weeks since they’d made love, if that’s what the joyless coupling she’d instigated could be called.

  She’d insisted Frannie give her the statistics on marriage breakdown after the loss of a child, and the high percentage hadn’t surprised her in the least.

  Up in their bedroom, she poured a glass of water and gratefully swallowed the tablets that would bring oblivion.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Just as Michael suspected, the next morning’s newspaper reported Stokes’s disappearance and the plight of the clients he’d defrauded, but because of a major airline disaster in India, the story was relegated to page four. All the same, Valerie had read it before Michael arrived at the office, and she’d folded the page neatly and placed it squarely on his desk blotter.

  “I guess he stole your money along with everyone else’s, huh, Doctor?” She shoved her glasses up her nose and sniffed in disgust. “I can’t really say I ever liked Raymond Stokes, but I can’t believe he’d pull something like this,” she fumed, jerking her chin at the article as she set a brimming cup of coffee and a fat bran muffin in front of him.

  Valerie Lamb had been Michael’s office nurse since he’d first set up practice, and he often thought she was like the sister he’d never had. But then, Valerie was everyone’s sister, taking the neediest of his patients under her wing and doing whatever she could to help them. He’d watched her use her lunch hour to drive elderly patients to physio so they wouldn’t have to take the bus. She baby-sat two year olds so their mothers could talk quietly to Michael about their problems. She comforted anyone in want of comforting, young or old. It was a wonder such a tiny, stubbornly thin frame could contain such an immense heart.

  For months now she’d been bringing Michael home baked muffins each morning. She knew he left the house at six to do hospital rounds, and that he usually didn’t bother taking time to eat.

  “Raymond did all our accounts, didn’t he?” Her voice was troubled, and Michael thought she was probably worried about her check, which was due this Friday. Valerie was a single parent, with two out-of-control teenage sons and an invalid mother who lived with her and whom she supported. Her job as Michael’s office nurse was the financial glue that kept the family housed and fed.

  Of course he’d make certain none of this affected her.

  But that wasn’t it at all. “I just want you to know that if things are tight, you can put off paying me for a while. I’ve got a nest egg that’ll see me through.”

  Michael had to swallow a sudden lump in his throat before he could smile and reassure her. “Thanks, Val, but that won’t be necessary. I’ll have to take over the bookkeeping for a while, but certainly this won’t affect you or the practice in any way.”

  The truth was, Raymond’s duplicity could affect every aspect of Michael’s life, because he now knew the accountant had all but cleaned him out.

  Up since dawn, Michael had called investment companies in the East, and his worst fears had been realized. The final tally wasn’t in because the companies needed time to gather all the details, but it appeared that Stokes had, over the past few weeks, cleverly liquefied a sizable portion of Michael’s investments. A few he hadn’t been able to touch, but they were insignificant compared with the mammoth amounts he’d filched.

  Raymond had been extremely clever. He’d paid some of the bills for the month, but only the ones that might have alerted Michael to what was happening. Most of the monthly bills were still outstanding, with no cash to cover them. Michael had had to swallow his pride and negotiate a sizable loan from the bank to meet his immediate expenses at home and at the office.

  His stomach churned at the memory. In light of what Stokes had taken and the staggering amount of Michael’s unpaid accounts and monthly expenses, Arthur Berina was very reluctant to extend the already substantial line of credit; it had taken a great deal of persuasion to convince him to authorize the loan, and the manager had made it clear Michael would have to find another source of credit if any further funds were required.

  When Michael asked about extending the mortgages on the house, Berina had cited the drop in real-estate prices in North America, which were already being reflected in Vancouver. He’d said the mortgages Michael was already carrying were actually more than the assessed value of the property.

  Valerie’s voice interrupted such troubled thoughts. “There've been a number of calls this morning, the names and numbers are all here. And you have about twenty minutes before your first appointment. That’ll be Mrs. Nikols and her new baby. Here’s her chart.”

  Valerie placed the chart and the neat list of callers at his elbow, and when she left the room, Michael scanned it.

  Constable Roper, R.C.M.P., was the first person on the list. Michael grimaced, realizing he would have to talk to the police right away. Also, several representatives from the various investment firms he’d spoken to earlier that morning had already called back. Three patients requested that he phone immediately. Next on the list was a social worker, Garth Silvers, who worked for Community Services. He and Michael had met several times regarding a child Michael suspected was being mistreated.

  Concern about the little girl made him call the social worker first. He dialed the number, wondering what new catastrophe might have befallen his small patient, but Garth reassured him the child was fine; her grandmother had taken her to stay with her for a time.

  Embarrassment tinged Garth’s voice as he added, “The reason I called is personal, Doctor. I heard of a complaint the ministry received about property owned by an Isabelle Rafferty, who I believe is your mother-in-law?”

  Wondering what was to come next, Michael confirmed the relationship.

  “Well, a number of neighbors have signed a petition insisting something be done about the garbage in Ms. Rafferty’s yard,” Garth reported. “They feel that things have reached the stage where the yard is a fire hazard as well as a potential breeding ground for rats, and they claim that’s lowering their own property values. Several of them have indicated that unless the yard is cleaned up promptly, they’ll take legal action. I wanted to notify you first and see if something could be done before that happens.”

  Michael looked at the framed pastoral print on his office wall and wondered what the he
ll else could possibly go wrong in his life today.

  “I appreciate your call, Garth, and I promise you I’ll take care of this right away,” he said with far more confidence than he felt.

  Polly and Norah had been trying for months to get Isabelle to do something about her yard, to no avail. “Assure the neighbors that the garbage will be gone within a week.” He hung up and expelled a long, weary breath. Exactly how was he going to manage that? He’d have to talk to Polly to figure out a course of action. She’d be mortified when she heard about the petition.

  The police constable was next on his list, and Michael dialed the number, relieved to hear that Constable Roper was out for the morning and would return the call that afternoon. This would give Michael more time to fully assess what Raymond had stolen.

  In rapid and efficient order, Michael dealt with the three patient calls. He’d just finished when Valerie tapped on his door and announced that Mrs. Nikols was waiting in examining room one. Valerie silently pointed at the untouched muffin, and Michael quickly devoured it and gulped the now-lukewarm coffee before he hurried in to the new mother and the baby he’d delivered just days before.

  This was the part of his workday he liked best, office hours with one patient after another requiring his full attention and no time lapses in which to think. Today, however, keeping his mind on his patients was difficult.

  He worked steadily, and at twelve-thirty there was a short lull. He hastily ate the sandwich and fruit Valerie put in front of him, then dialed home. Polly often slept past noon, drugged by the sleeping meds she’d become reliant upon. He’d tried to wean her off them, but it hadn’t worked.

  She picked up on the third ring, and she sounded wide-awake. “I’m just reading this article in the paper about Raymond,” she said as soon as she knew it was Michael. “It says here that some of his clients have nothing left, that he stole all their investments.” Her voice telegraphed her anxiety. “Did that happen to us, Michael?”

  He knew he ought to say yes. Instead, he reassured her. “We did lose a substantial portion of our portfolio, but there’s no major damage done, Polly. I figure I can make up the shortfall in no time.”