Mark laughed. “Who knew she had a sense of humor?”
“Let’s hope it charms Guy enough that he doesn’t fire me.”
“If that was his intention he’d have done it by now.”
“Well, you were worried.”
“With good reason,” Mark said. “This thing with Lila would have been my second strike. I already upset Ruth Wheeler.”
Ross hadn’t heard. “What did you do?”
“I made a few calls to Merrick Memorial after Lila transferred here. I wanted to see if there was anything in her medical history that might help Dr. Oliver. A clerical error had me in touch with the medical records supervisor who said Blake’s records were restricted. The receptionist confused the Wheelers’ accounts and had medical records looking into the wrong one. The supervisor’s reaction was enough to make me curious.”
“How did that upset Ruth?”
“I went to the hospital after getting nowhere by phone. I did some asking around. That’s when Ruth got mad. She called Dr. Oliver, irate, insisting he fire me. If I were less useful, he would have. He told me to stay away from anything to do with Blake.”
“What did you find out?”
“One of the OR techs told me Blake took a sabbatical a few months before the shooting. He had made a fatal surgical error that had his patient hemorrhaging to death.”
Ross couldn’t believe his ears. The pressure of something like that would have affected Lila, especially if a malpractice case threatened Blake’s estate. “Did the patient’s family sue?”
“I’m not sure,” Mark said. “A lawsuit hardly seems a reason for Lila to try to kill herself, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“It’s a stretch, I agree, but there had to be a catalyst. Nothing about this case adds up. Lila attempted suicide the day of her husband’s funeral, a sort of knee-jerk reaction. I understand the grief. Honestly, I do. But why isn’t she getting better? She was on medication, in therapy, and nothing changed, right?”
“Nothing,” Mark agreed.
“And the minute Blake comes up, Ruth flies off the handles. What does this have to do with Lila? What ties Blake’s death, his secure medical file, and Lila’s suicide attempt to Ruth?”
“Good luck solving the riddle, Doc, but Ruth Wheeler, in my experience, is off-limits.”
“I think it’s time to change that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Ross slipped his laptop into his bag and scribbled out a note: “Be back in the morning,” for when Guy inevitably came looking. He hurried down the hall and had thought he made a clean getaway when he reached the front door.
“Dr. Reeves,” Chelsea called after him. “Dr. Reeves, wait. I have a message for you.”
Ross let his hand off the door handle and returned to the reception desk. “What is it?” he said, the tile floor radiating ice cold through his bare feet.
“A woman by the name Camille McKenzie called while you were out. She left a number and says it’s important you call her back.”
Ross set his shoes on the counter, tucked the message into the breast pocket of his scrub shirt, and picked them back up. “Anything else?” He alternated his gaze between the stairs and Guy’s office door.
“No. That’s it.”
“If Dr. Oliver asks, tell him I had to go back to the motel to change.”
Ross hurried to the car and drove as fast as he could, barefoot, to the motel.
* * * * *
Ross opened the door and sneezed when the pine air freshener went off. Housekeeping must have put it back when they cleaned his room, which, from the conflicting bleach and pine smells, couldn’t have been long ago. The bed had been made, towels folded, and a stack of “while you were out” papers sat piled next to his laptop. Four messages from Camille had him wondering what was so important.
He would call her back, but first things first.
Ross set his laptop on the desk and powered it on. He entered a search string and sighed with relief when only one Ruth Wheeler showed up in the town of Edinburgh. He dialed the number, holding the cordless phone between his ear and shoulder as he hung his soaking wet laundry over the shower curtain rod. The clothes smelled of dirt and lake water. He rinsed off his hands, about to hang up when the machine finally answered. He waited for the beep before speaking.
“This message is for Ruth Wheeler. My name is Dr. Ross Reeves from the Lakeside Psychiatric Center—”
“Hello?” A stern female voice interrupted him.
“Ms. Wheeler?”
“Mrs. Wheeler,” the woman corrected.
Ross had in his mind that Ruth Wheeler would be soft-spoken, matronly and perhaps even sad, but the woman on the other end of the line, in two short sentences, sounded callous and overwhelmingly annoyed. “Mrs. Wheeler, my name is Dr. Ross Reeves—”
“From Lakeside, you said.”
“Yes, well, I’m working with your daughter-in-law, Lila, and I wonder if I could talk to you about what happened with your son, Blake.”
“I’m aware of who Blake is, Dr. Reeves. What I’m not aware of is what bearing he has on Lila at this point and why you’re wasting my time.”
“Please, I think Lila’s having such a difficult time because of something that may or may not have happened before—”
“My son’s murder?”
“I’m sorry for your loss Mrs. Wheeler, but I need information if I’m going to help Lila.”
“Dr. Reeves, does Dr. Oliver know you’re making this call?”
Ross took a deep breath. “Well, no.”
“Then you may want to speak to him before I do. I’m tired of every attempt at getting through to Lila ending in a call to me, so I’ll do you a courtesy and make things easier on you. I’m not concerned with Lila’s difficult time, nor am I interested in conjecturing what effect losing Blake has had on her.” A small dog barked in the background. “Come here, Princess.” Ruth patted her hand against something soft, the sound echoing. “What I am interested in is Lila recovering enough to explain the decision she made about my son.”
“Decision?”
“Lila shut me out of Blake’s life. She had my only child removed from life support.”
The news came as Ross’s second shock of the day. Of all the things he imagined Lila feeling conflicted or guilty about, the possibility that she had a hand in ending Blake’s life hadn’t even made the list.
“She told me she was honoring Blake’s wishes, that there were things he didn’t want me to know,” Ruth said. “What isn’t she telling me? That’s the question I’ve been paying to find out. A son doesn’t keep secrets, Dr. Reeves. Not from his mother.”
Ross’s gut said otherwise. There were plenty of things he didn’t tell his mother to preserve her feelings. “Can I ask you something?” He had nothing to offer at the moment on the subject of secrets. “Why did Blake’s obituary request donations to the Huntington’s Society in lieu of flowers? Was that something he wanted?”
“It was something I wanted, and the only time my requests were heard during this entire ordeal. Blake’s father died of Huntington’s. Blake spent a good deal of his time fundraising. He would have wanted his death to make a difference.”
“I’m sure it did.”
“Dr. Reeves, I understand you want to help Lila, but she took away the only person I had left to love in this world. If you want to know why she isn’t getting better, it’s probably because she can’t forgive herself. The truth is, I can’t forgive her, either.”
“But—”
“Blake didn’t have to die. He needed more time.”
“Mrs. Wheeler—”
“Good day, Dr. Reeves. Please don’t call again.”
Ross set the phone on his bed and buried his face in his hands, which smelled of lake water. Earlier that day, he’d have believed Lila to be the most fragile person he had ever known, a wife so distraught over the loss of her husband that she’d have rather died than live without him.
It s
eemed to Ross now he might have been projecting.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ross showered and changed into clean clothes, feeling more like a private investigator than a psychiatrist. The call to Ruth Wheeler had taken an unexpected turn, leaving him conflicted about his feelings toward Lila.
Remembering Sarah’s final days, how much pain she had been in and how badly he had wanted her suffering to stop, he tried not to judge Lila too harshly—at least not without more of the facts.
Ross typed “Blake Wheeler Edinburgh Surgeon Malpractice” into a search engine, looking for anything about the patient who had died under Blake’s care. Non-specific results on malpractice and Edinburgh hospitals returned, but nothing relating to Blake. Ross searched “Huntington’s Blake Wheeler” and found only a few links related to fundraisers Blake had attended.
Ross opened the first link and clicked to enlarge a photo of the Wheelers, a stunning twenty-something couple almost ten years in the past. “Local Surgeon Donates $100,000 to the Fight Against Huntington’s Disease” the article declared. Blake, a handsome man with sandy blond hair and hazel eyes, wore a tailored black tuxedo and a rose in his lapel. He held his hand on the small of Lila’s back and had the starry-eyed look of a man in love.
Lila smiled, her lips full and her body a good thirty pounds heavier than the skeletal figure he had fished out of the lake earlier that morning. Her natural, tilted-head gaze held admiration for the man on her arm.
Ross clicked the back button on his browser and looked at two more recent articles. A third member had joined the Wheeler party, a man by the name of Dr. Jeremy Davis. Similar in height to Blake, Jeremy looked to be about the Wheelers’ age. His close-cropped brown hair had the faint hint of gray one might expect from someone in their thirties. He had fair skin and narrow, bespectacled eyes, which were perpetually fixed on Lila.
Ross tried not to let his mind go to the worst possible scenario, but he’d seen too many forensic shows to wonder if there wasn’t more to Lila and Jeremy’s relationship. He added infidelity to the list of possible reasons Lila would pull the plug on Blake. The guilt of such an act became one of the few plausible motives for Lila’s attempted suicide, other than grief.
According to internet research, Dr. Jeremy Davis, a schoolmate of Blake’s, lived only a few miles from the Wheelers. There was no mention of a wife or children. Confirmed bachelorhood didn’t make Jeremy guilty of anything, certainly not of sleeping with a friend’s wife, but it didn’t help his case, either.
Ross was about to dig further into Jeremy’s personal life when a knock came at his motel room door. He expected housekeeping, or someone from the office come to talk about his room, but instead found a leggy blond dressed in skinny jeans and a button-down flannel opened halfway down her cleavage. She brushed her windblown hair back from her face and nearly tripped when she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
“Camille. What are you doing here?” Ross stood in the doorway, not immediately inviting her in.
“Did you get my messages?” Camille’s words were slow, her speech slightly slurred. Her oversized purse slipped off her shoulder and jolted her when it hit the crook of her elbow.
Ross didn’t need to smell her breath to know she’d been drinking again. “I did, but it’s late. I was going to call you back tomorrow.”
A yellow checkered cab kicked up a cloud of dust as it pulled out of the parking lot. Ross wondered if the driver and Camille were on a first name basis.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” she said.
“Sure,” Ross answered, seeing no other option. “Can I get you something? Water? Soda?”
“Whatever you’re having.” Camille sat on the footrest next to Ross’s bed, her bag at her feet.
Ross handed her a bottle of water and turned the desk chair to face her. “Is everything all right?”
Camille twisted the cap off the water, took a sip, and wiped a stream of dribble from her chin. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Five calls between work and the motel had me wondering.”
“And yet you didn’t call back.” She leaned forward, offering Ross a clear sightline down her shirt.
He didn’t intend to notice, but she was wearing the most seductive lace bra. “I’m sorry about that. What’s up?” He tried to keep the conversation casual, but could feel the tension swelling between them.
“You didn’t leave me your cell number.” She licked her painted pink lips. “Didn’t you want me to call?”
“Of course I did.” Ross uttered the only acceptable answer. “It slipped my mind.”
Ross had wondered if Camille was coming on to him at Mick’s the night before. Now he was positive. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” Camille set her hand on his knee.
“What’s going on here?”
“What do you mean?” Camille left her hand where it was and slid the ottoman forward until her knee came to rest between his.
Ross tried to move his chair, but its back was against the desk. “It’s late, Camille, and you’ve obviously been drinking.”
“Two glasses of wine.”
“Enough to call a cab.”
“I’m not drunk, Ross.” She reached up and tugged at the neckline of her shirt. What appeared to be buttons were actually snaps and the swift motion had her breasts exposed through a veil of black lace. “I’m perfectly self-aware and I’ve been thinking about this since last night.”
She tried to kiss him.
He scrambled to get away from her.
“What are you doing, Camille? Stop.”
He stood and she yanked him back into the chair. She kicked the ottoman behind her and dropped to her knees, looking up at him with both hands on his thighs. “What if I don’t want to?” She stretched until her lips met his and whispered, “What if I need this?” She kissed him, her hands creeping closer to his groin. “What if I need you?” Her manicured nails scratched at his skin through his cotton pajama pants and sent chills up his spine. Her touch was electric. “I need you,” she moaned between kisses.
Her mouth tasted like wine and peppermint and for a moment, Ross almost gave in. Primal need had him blocking the part of him that knew this was wrong. He ran his hands over Camille’s narrow shoulders, down her toned back, and hooked his thumbs into the waist of her pants before slamming on the brakes.
“We can’t do this,” he said.
As usual, the right thing won out.
He took a deep breath to regain his center and lifted Camille’s chin.
Only then did he realize she was crying.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Camille, I’m sorry.” Ross wiped the tears from her cheek and offered her a hand.
Camille stood, holding her shirt closed. Mascara streaked her face and she sniffled, her expression something close to mortified.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh my God.” She turned around and frantically snapped her shirt, the end product one snap off from even. “Ross, I didn’t mean to—”
Either she was drunker than advertised, or in need of serious help. He wasn’t about to ask which. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay.” Camille brushed the dirt from the knees of her jeans—the mud from Ross’s shoes having dried on the carpet where she had been kneeling. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Camille, it’s all right. Nothing happened.” In a sense, nothing had. Her sharp change of mood had him thankful they hadn’t gone further. “Are you all right?”
She crossed the room, hoisted her oversized handbag onto the ottoman, and let out an exasperated laugh when she pulled out her cell phone. “Of course!” She dried her eyes with her sleeve. “Of course the battery’s dead.”
“Camille, if you need to make a call—” Ross held out his phone.
She snatched it from his hand. “I don’t even know the cab company’s number.”
“I can look it up online.” Ross’s computer had gone
into hibernate, but was running behind him. “Do you know the name?”
“Checkered taxi, or yellow taxi, or yellow checkered taxi,” Camille said, flustered.
“I find about ten of them.”
Camille threw his phone onto the bed with a laugh. “I can’t believe how stupid I am. I don’t know what I was thinking coming here. What the hell is wrong with me?” She collapsed to the floor, drew her knees to her chest, and buried her face in her arms.
Ross straightened the hem of his sweatshirt and cautiously approached her. “Hey, come on. It’s all right.” He set his hand on her heaving shoulder and she shrugged him away.
“I’m so embarrassed.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “It’s not you—”
“It’s me, right? That’s what you’re going with?”
He never imagined her taking rejection so hard.
“It is me, Camille.” Ross sat on the floor next to her. “Look at me.” She stared at the carpet, her eyes red, teary, and swollen. “Please?” He set his hand gentle against her damp cheek and turned her to face him. “You’re beautiful.” He sincerely meant it. “You’ve always been beautiful and I’m flattered that you’re interested in me, that you want to be with me, but the truth is, I haven’t been able to be with anyone since Sarah—not without feeling guilty. Do you know what happened right before I came back here?”
“No.” She cried harder, either because she was terrible at taking a compliment or was utterly humiliated.
“I broke up with my girlfriend. I couldn’t even bring her to my house because Sarah’s things are everywhere. Imagine how I’d feel after being with you, her best friend. You asked me about being a recluse, there it is. I am an emotional hermit,” he said. Camille let out a slight laugh. “Every time I think I’m getting over Sarah, something draws me back. This …” he gestured between them, “… me and you … can’t happen, Camille, and it’s nothing personal. Truthfully, I’m still in love with my wife.”
Camille climbed into his lap, weeping, her arms tight around his neck and her face buried against his chest. “I miss her so much,” she said between sobs.
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