Flashback

by Michael Palmer

  Although he would have preferred to remain less intimately involved with Guy's funeral than he had been with his death, accepting their request was the least he could do. It had been at his desperate urging that Marie and her mother had put aside their biases against such things and had agreed to an autopsy… a man of vision and conviction. A humble man, who faced mounting personal difficulties with courage and dignity…."

  The priest droned on, but Zack, seated in the first row with the seven other pall bearers, heard only snatches. His thoughts kept drifting, as they had much of the time, to the agonizing scene with Guy in the emergency room, and to the equally unpleasant experience of viewing his post mortem examination. As Zack had suspected, the man had died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. There was, however, a major surprise. The arteries in Beaulieuss brain, and, in fact, in his whole body, were those of a man decades younger. The lethal stroke had resulted not from any crack in a hardened vessel but from the rupture of a small aneurysm-a pea-sized defect in one artery which, almost certainly, had been present without producing symptoms for many years. The cause of that fatal tear, Zack knew, could only have been a sudden, drastic rise in blood pressure. That thought sent an angry jet of bile rasping into his throat, as it had over and over again since the autopsy. Guy Beaulieu's two years of difficulties at Ultramed-Davis, whether real or contrived, had loaded the weapon of his destruction. The humiliating conflict in the emergency ward with Mainwaring, Frank, and the security guard had, in essence, pulled the trigger. Frank, of course, saw things differently. He had issued statements of shock and bereavement from the hospital, and from Ultramed, and had sent a basket of fruit to Guy's widow. But in the few minutes he and Zack had spent alone, he had made it clear that he considered Beaulieu's death nothing short of an act of Providence. Unobtrusively, Zack glanced about the chapel. Suzanne, though dressed in sedate blue and wearing no makeup, sparkled in the midst of two rows of Ultramed-Davis physicians which did not include Donald Norman, Jack Pearl, or Jason Mainwaring. Several pews behind her, between the Judge and Cinnie, sat Frank, resplendent in a beige summer suit and appearing, as usual, composed and in control. The mayor was there, along with several other area notables, including the region's congressman. Guy Beaulieu had once described himself to Zack as "just a plain, old, small-town Canuck, lucky enough to be born to parents who wouldn't let him quit school to work in the mills."

  It was good, at least, to see that so many people knew better. Later, as Zack and the other pall bearers shuffled up the aisle with Guy's casket, his eyes and Frank's met briefly. He felt so distant from the man-so totally detached. Had they really grown up in the same home, played in the same yard year after year? Had they really worn the same clothes, shared so many childhood dreams? Had they really once been fast friends?

  The hope of reestablishing a friendship with his brother suddenly seemed naive. They would make do, perhaps, tolerate one another, even work together. They would spend sterile time together at family functions.

  But they would never be close. The open hearse was festooned with flowers. Zack, feeling overwhelmed by the sadness and futility of it all, helped slide the heavy casket into place among them. "Excuse me, Doctor, " a voice behind him said as he stepped back from the casket.

  "Kin I talk to you?"

  Zack turned and was surprised to find himself confronting the huge security guard, Henry Flowers, who seemed ill at ease in a dark suit and solid black tie. Looking on, several respectful steps behind him, was a petite, plain young woman in a white lace dress-almost certainly the man's wife. "Yes? " Zack asked. The guard shifted uncomfortably. "I… uh… I wanted you to know that I'm real sorry for what happened to Dr.

  Beaulieu, " he said. "He took care of my wife's mother once, real good care, and he's never done nothin' bad to me… Dr Iverson, I never laid a hand on him except to grab his wrist. I swear it I… His voice drifted away. It took several moments before Zack realized that the man did not know the results of the autopsy, and if he did he did not understand them. Zack reached out and put a hand on the guard's shoulder "You didn't do anything that caused Dr. Beaulieu's death, Henry, " he said, loudly enough for the man's wife to hear. "He had an aneurysm — a time bomb-in his head, and it just happened to go off while you were there."

  Relief flooded the guard's pocked face. "Thanks, Doc, " he said, pumping Zack's hand as if it were the handle on a tractor-trailer jack. "Oh, God, thanks a lot. If there's ever anything I can do for you, just ask.

  Anything."

  He backed away, and then grabbed his tiny wife by the arm and Zack watched until the incongruous couple had disappeared around the corner.

  Then he turned and headed to his camper, feeling marginally less morose.

  At least one other who had shared those awful moments in the quiet room had been affected by them. The procession to All Saints Cemetery was, according to the Judge, as long as any Sterling had ever seen. Following the service, Zack accompanied Frank and their parents to the shaded spot where Marie Fontaine and her mother were receiving final condolences.

  Marie, who seemed to have aged a year in just three days since her return home, accepted an embrace from Cinnie and a kiss on the cheek from the Judge. However, she barely touched Frank's outstretched hand before pulling away. "It was good of you to come, " she said coolly.

  Your father meant a great deal to all of us, " Frank replied blandly.

  She eyed him for a moment, and then said simply, "That's nice to know."

  Zack glanced over at his parents, but saw nothing to suggest that they appreciated the tension in the brief exchange. Marie then turned to him, took both his hands in hers, and kissed him by the ear. "Please stop by our limousine, " she whispered Imperceptible to the others, Zack nodded.

  Half an hour later, Zack sat across from Marie Fontaine and Clothilde Beaulieu in the back of the mortuary's black stretch Cadillac. The smoked-glass windows, including the partition separating them from the driver, were closed, but the limo's air-conditioning system kept the steamy afternoon at bay. Marie's husband, a gaunt, bearded man whose quiet dignity reminded Zack a little of her father, stood outside. "We wanted you to know how grateful we are for all you've done, Marie began.

  "Your father was always very good to me."

  "He was very good to everyone, " she said. "That's why it's so hard to understand why nobody stood up for him while he was being murdered."

  Zack's impulse was to correct her, but the intensity of her eyes told him not to bother. "It upsets me a great deal to think that anyone might have deliberately set about to ruin him, " he said. "Not anyone, Zack.

  Ultramed."

  "What?"

  "Zack, we know Father confided in you. We know that even though your brother runs the hospital, he thought you would give him the benefit of an open mind. Was he right?"

  "I told him I would listen and that I would respect his confidence, if that's what you mean."

  Marie glanced over at her mother, who nodded her approval of Zack's response. "That's exactly what we mean, " she went on. "Several years ago, Father opposed the sale of the hospital to Ultramed. He just didn t believe an outside corporation should be given such a vital foothold in this community-at least, not with so little community involvement or control. If it weren't for your father's influence, we think he would have succeeded in blocking it. But that is neither here nor there, now.

  Did you know that shortly after they took over at the hospital, Ultramed took legal action to fire him?"

  "No, " Zack said. "No, I didn't."

  "He was preparing to countersue them when they backed off. According to Father, they became frightened by a court decision in Florida that ended up costing one of the other corporations millions for trying to do the same thing to a pathologist who was working in a hospital they had acquired. "Zack, Ultramed wants blind loyalty from everyone working for them-total acceptance of their policies. Father fought them at every turn. Less than a year after they dropped the suit against him, the
rumors started. And within just a few months of that, a showy new surgeon was on the scene, snapping up chunks of Father's practice. i "That would be Jason Mainwaring, " Zack said. "Exactly."

  "Have you any proof that Ultramed engineered all of this? " he asked.

  "Only this." She reached beneath her seat, drew out a thick manila envelope and passed it across to him. "Mother and I talked it over last night. Father liked you and trusted you. And frankly, we have nowhere else to turn. This is all the information he had been able to gather in his battle against Ultramed. It doesn't prove they were behind his murder, but it does show something of how they operate-some of the things they're capable of doing to turn a profit."

  "What am I to do with this?"

  For the first time, Beaulieu's widow spoke. "Dr. Iverson, " she said, in a soft accent virtually identical to Guy's, "it was my husband's hope that the information contained in that envelope would convince the board of trustees, including your father, to exercise their option and order the repurchase of the hospital from Ultramed. Zack stared at her in disbelief. "Mrs. Beaulieu, are you forgetting that I work for Ultramed?

  They pay my salary, my office expenses, insurance, everything. To say nothing of the administrator at the hospital being my brother. What you are asking me to do isn't really fair."

  My huuand is dead. Is that fair?

  Zack saw the response flash in the woman's eyes and then vanish. We are asking you, " Clothilde Beaulieu said patiently, "to do nothing more than study the contents of that envelope and use it-or not-as you see fit. I assure you there will be no hard feelings if you return the material to us after you have looked it over… or even right now."

  "We mean that, Zachary, " Marie said. "We really do."

  For a time, there was only silence. Zack looked first at one woman and then the other, and finally at the envelope in his lap A sucker for anybody's cause. Had Frank's terse assessment of him been so irritating because it was so close to the mark? Suzanne… the mountains… the Judge. his career. Any clash with Ultramed and Frank was almost certainly destined to be a losing proposition for him. And there was much, so very much, at stake. The envelope was a Pandora's box. A bomb that might be nothing more than a dud, or nothing less than a lethal explosion A sucker for anybody's cause. Slowly, deliberately, Zack slid the dead surgeon's legacy under his arm. Then he reached across and shook hands with both wnn Pn "I'll be in touch, " he said. h. -_, _w* ** Frank, Frank, he's our man. If he can't do it, no one can… Over the two decades since his graduation from Sterling High, not a day had passed that Frank Iverson did not hear the chant echoing in his mind.

  Cheerleaders dancing on the sidelines, each one hoping Frank would at least spend a few minutes with her at the victory celebration after the game. Grandstands jammed with parents, teachers, students, and reporters, all screaming his name, all begging him for one more pass, one more score. The Judge and his mother, proudly accepting congratulations from those seated around them. Driving through the streets of Sterling toward his hospital, Frank heard the cheering as clearly as if he were standing on the field, staring across the line of scrimmage at the opposition, knowing that, in JUST a few seconds, his play would swell those cheers to a deafening roar. Frank, Frank, he's our man… They had been days of glory for him, days of strength and independence. It felt so good to realize that after all the difficult, humiliating years that had followed, after all the lousy breaks and the goddamn patronizing, demeaning lectures from his father, a return to the stature and influence of those times was so close at hand. Two weeks, that was all. Three at the most. He had done his part, and done it well.

  Now, all he needed was patience-patience and constant vigilance. Three years before, he had made the mistake of complacency, of trusting, and it had cost him dearly. There would be no repeat of that fiasco this time. Nothing would be taken for granted. Nothing. Besides, he affirmed as he swung up the drive to Ultramed-Davis, there were reasons aplenty for keeping his eyes open and his guard up. A million reasons, to be exact… If he can't do it, no one can. "HELENE, I DON'T know how to tell you this, but I think it's time we moved Mr. Gerard Morris's fabulous woodland scene out of the window and more toward the back-like in the storeroom."

  Suzanne propped Morris's huge oil against a display case and stepped back several paces, hoping that the change in lighting and perspective might thaw some of the feelings she had for the man and his work. "The man's a legend, " Helene Meyer called out from the back. In his own mind, he is."

  "Suzanne, when are you going to come to grips with the reality that tourists don't come up to northern New Hampshire to buy abstract art?

  They want mallards."

  "Paint by numbers, " Suzanne muttered, remembering a tongue lashing she had received from the pompous artist for reducing the price of one of his "masterpieces" by fifty dollars. "What?"

  "Nothing. Nothing."

  It was nearing three in the afternoon. Suzanne and her partner had been doing inventory nonstop since her return from Guy's funeral. Outside, muted midday sunshine filtered through a row of expansive, century-old sugar maples, turning Main Street into a gentle work of art that far surpassed anything Gerard Morris had produced. Immersing herself in the inventory and spending time with Helene had helped lift some of the melancholy Suzanne was feeling, but memories of Guy Beaulieu kept her mood somber. Although she had not known the man outside the hospital, she had shared several patients with him before his practice dwindled, and more than respected him as a person and a physician. Nevertheless, the stories that had been circulating about him of late were disconcerting, and Suzanne had gradually come to agree with those who believed that it would be in everyone's best interest for Guy to retire.

  Now, reflecting on Zack's opinion that the aging surgeon seemed quite capable and mentally intact, and with the realization that the man had died defending himself, she was having second thoughts. First Guy Beaulieu, and then the old woodsman Chris Gow-in both cases she had backed off, siding with Ultramed through her silence. True, the corporation had plucked her from a situation that had seemed totally hopeless and had given her a chance. For that alone she owed Ultramed her loyalty. But still, there had been a time, she knew, when she considered herself a liberal, a champion of the underdog.

  There had been a time when she would have gone to the mat for either man, Just as Zack had done. It was hard to believe she had changed so much over just a few short years. As she hefted Morris's painting off the floor and replaced it in the window, Suzanne silently cursed Paul Cole for the chaos he had brought to her life. "So?"

  Helene Meyer, dressed in jeans and a blue-print smock, emerged from the storeroom with a pair of ceramic vases that the had taken on consignment from a Micmac Indian potter. She was a short, dark, energetic woman with close-cut hair and just enough excess pounds to puff her cheeks and arms. "So what? " Suzanne asked. "So where are Morris's ducks?"

  Suzanne nodded toward the window. "Good, good. You're learning, child.

  You're learning."

  The White Mountain Olde Curiosity Shop and Gallery occupied the ground floor of a half-century-old, red-brick structure two blocks from the center of town. Three years before, when she received word that an uncle had died and left the place to her, Helene was working in a dead-end advertising job in Manhattan and competing with what seemed like several million other forty-year-old divorced women for any one of a minuscule pool of available men. She took her inheritance as an omen for change.

  Despite having "taken her act on the road, " along with her two children, Helene had never given up on the notion that Mr. Perfect was, at any given moment, just one man away. Perhaps, Suzanne reflected, that was why the woman always had a smile and an encouraging word for even the bleakest situation. "You okay? " Helene asked, setting the vases on a pair of lucite pedestals, and then reversing them. "Huh? Oh, sure, I'm fine."

  "You look tired."

  "I always look tired."

  "You always look beautiful, " Helene correcte
d. "Today you look beautiful and tired."

  "I'm fine. I'm just not sleeping too well."

  The explanation was an understatement. Since her discharge from the hospital, she had been almost continuously restless and ill at ease, sleeping no more than an hour or two at a time and often awakening with an intense, free-floating anxiety. It was hardly the mood she would have expected, given the outcome of her surgery. "You need some sex, " Helene said. "I don't need any sex. That's your cure for everything."

  "Well, have I had a sick day since you've known me? As long as there are ski lodges and contra dances and Thursday night single-mingles at the Holiday Inn, I intend to stay healthy as a horse. Don't you think it's time you-"

  "No. No, I don't. Now let's change the subject. Besides-" She caught herself after that one word, but it was too late. Helene leapt at the opening. "Besides, what?"

  "Nothing "

  "Oh, yes." She squinted across at Suzanne. "You did it, didn't you?

  The other night with that new doctor. What's his name?"

  "Zachary. But-"

  "Well, I'll be damned. No wonder you're so tired."

  "I thought that was supposed to perk me up."

  "Not when it's the first time in several years, it's not, " Helene said.

  "You need to keep in shape for that sort of thing. Glory be. He must be something else, that's all I can say. Tell me about him."

  "There's nothing to tell. He's a nice guy. I was frightened about my surgery and he was understanding, and things… things just… got out of hand. It was a mistake-just one of those things. We're not even going to see one another again outside the hospital."

  "Glory be, " Helene said again. "You stop that."

  Helene took Suzanne by the shoulders. "No, you stop that, " she said.

  "Suze, you're like my sister. Bringing you in as a partner in this place is the best thing I've ever done-except maybe for that furrier from White Plains…"

  She sighed wistfully, and Suzanne laughed. "If I keep putting my two cents into your life, " she went on, "it's because I love you. I know you had it rough with that jerk you were married to and all, but that's water under the bridge. He's gone.