“Yeah, yeah. And then what?”
Ms. Peach looked puzzled.
“You heard him explain to Madison that the effects of the Botox were temporary. And then what happened?”
“I left. I had no idea, of course…”
“Nothing else before you left?”
“Yes. One other thing.”
This time my eyebrows went up, but whatever it was Ms. Peach was going to say, it wasn’t coming easily.
“A kick.”
“A kick? You heard a kick?”
“It sounded as if she kicked the desk.” In control again. “Have you ever seen one of her fits, Miss…”
“Alexander. Rachel Alexander. No, I haven’t. I only met her once. The thing is…”
Ms. Peach was shaking her head again. “Then you have no idea, simply no idea.”
“That’s why I came to you,” I told her.
She nodded, then looked around to see who might be watching us. “Nasty,” she whispered. “A real terror.”
“Did you know her before?”
“Before what?”
“Before she stopped talking.”
Ms. Peach sighed. She shook her head.
“How long have you been working here, if I might ask?”
“Nearly five years, as if that’s any of your—”
“And the person who was here before you?”
“You mean the temp?” She rolled her eyes.
“No. The person who held the job before you.”
“Oh, you mean Celia?”
“Yes, Celia. How long had she been here?”
Ms. Peach’s brow furrowed. No free Botox for employees, I thought.
“Was she here before Madison stopped talking?”
“Well, yes, she was, but…”
“But what?”
“Two weeks after Madison was diagnosed, that’s when her mother disappeared and Madison became silent. So Celia would have only seen her five or six times.”
I nodded. “It’s Tourette’s syndrome, is that right?”
She began to shake her head. “I can’t discuss that with you, Ms. Alexander. You’re not a blood relative of the child’s, are you?”
“I understand,” I said. “But I’m confused now. Mr. Spector mentioned her, Celia, as one of Madison’s favorite people.”
“Celia?”
I nodded.
Ms. Peach snorted. “So that’s what she did with her time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she certainly didn’t pay attention to the files. I can attest to that.”
“They were disorganized, inaccurate?”
“You wouldn’t believe what I had to deal with.”
“How long had she been here?”
Ms. Peach compressed her lips and waited for me to come to my senses and stop asking her questions she knew she shouldn’t be answering. Or perhaps it was something else. Perhaps Ms. Peach was upset because she had already told me things she shouldn’t have. She reached into her purse and took out her keys and turned her back to me.
“Some people just don’t have the knack for it.”
“For?”
“For keeping things in order. For staying on top of things.”
“What a nightmare for you,” I said, “coming in on something like that, everything a total mess. I bet you put in a lot of overtime fixing the mess she left.”
“For months,” she whispered. “I never got home before eight at night.” She shook her head. “I was brought up to have pride in my work.”
“It’s amazing to me how few people there are like you nowadays. How does someone like that even keep a job?”
Ms. Peach inhaled through her nose but didn’t respond.
“I’m trying to remember what else he said about her.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Mr. Spector. Something about Celia being especially kind to Madison at such a difficult time,” I said, continuing to make it up as I went along, keeping an eye on Ms. Peach as I spoke. “Was it Storch, Celia Storch? I’m sure it started with an S, is that right?”
But Ms. Peach was on to me. She was frowning now, looking down at her keys, perhaps thinking it was time to get to work, time to get rid of the snoopy stranger.
I went on as if nothing had happened. “I wonder, Ms. Peach, is there any way you could help me out here?”
“In what way?”
“I wonder if I might talk to any of the other parents of the doctor’s other patients?”
“You know that’s impossible. And what on earth do you want to do that for?”
“I just wonder if any of the other children had a run-in with Madison,” I said.
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly give you the names of any of the doctor’s other patients. That would be against the law.”
“I understand. But you could tell me that, couldn’t you?”
“Certainly not. Anything that goes on here is private, confidential.”
“Even in the waiting room?”
“Yes, even there.”
“I guess you’re right,” I said. “Well, how about just letting me peek inside at the doctor’s office, for just one minute?”
Ms. Peach stood taller, somewhat appalled by what I was asking. “Isn’t that a bit ghoulish?”
“No, no, no,” I said, “it’s not what you think. It’s just so that if the child tries to communicate something to me, I’ll know what it is. I’m told her communications, her pictures, are kind of cryptic.”
“Not the one I found on the doctor’s desk.”
“Do you still have that?”
“Certainly not! The police took that.”
“Not even a copy?”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t have touched anything. It was a crime scene.”
“Not even the doctor? To make sure he was dead?”
“That’s different. Naturally I felt for a pulse.”
“And did you see the needle at the time, when you knelt next to Dr. Bechman to feel for a pulse?”
Ms. Peach put both her hands against her chest. “It was lying next to him. It must have fallen out when he fell.”
“Did you pick it up? Or did you go straight for the phone?”
“I went straight for the phone,” she said, a little too quickly.
“His or yours?”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“I mean did you just reach over, as anyone would, and pick up the closest phone, and did you see the drawing Madison had made at that time? Or did you carefully back out of the office and use your own phone, so as not to disturb any possible evidentiary material?”
Ms. Peach’s mouth opened but nothing came out.
“The detectives who were here had no issues with any of my behavior,” she said a moment later.
“Not that they mentioned,” I said.
“You’re making it sound as if I had some part in this when it’s clear it was Madison who—”
“No, no, no,” I said. “Nothing like that.”
Ms. Peach nodded.
“You mentioned that Madison was a terror. But you didn’t say whether or not she’d ever hurt anyone before, you or another child or, of course, Dr. Bechman.”
Ms. Peach leaned closer. “I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. I shouldn’t even be talking to you, but since you are being so persistent, yes, she did hurt other children here. That’s why Dr. Bechman started having her come last, when the other children were gone. Are you satisfied now? You’re barking up the wrong tree, Ms. Alexander, if you think by snooping around here you’ll find out that Madison didn’t do this. I don’t know when I’ve ever seen a child as full of rage, as mean-spirited.”
“Tell me about the children she hurt.”
Ms. Peach pulled her breath in, her chin along with it.
“Please, it’s important I understand. If I am, as you say, barking up the wrong tree, then shouldn’t I know it? Shouldn’t I stop wasting my time and poor Mr. Spector’s money?�
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“Well, I’ll give her this. She never started any of the fights. But if another child asked her a personal question,” she pointed to her eye, “or teased her, well, they could be twice her size, it wouldn’t matter to Madison. She’d never back down. She’d go after them like a wild animal.”
“I don’t understand. Why would a child get teased here?”
“Not all the children who come here have facial tics, Ms. Alexander. First of all, there are Dr. Edelstein’s patients, who are normal children coming in for checkups and shots. But not all of Dr. Bechman’s children had visible disabilities. Far from it.”
“I see. So Madison would get teased and she’d react, is that what you’re saying?”
Ms. Peach snorted. “React? Overreact would be closer to the truth. If you’d seen her…” She flapped a hand at me. “You don’t want to know.”
But of course I did.
I’d seen dogs like that, dogs who I’d been told wouldn’t start a fight, but would never shy away from one if challenged. Show me a dog who won’t back down and I’ll show you a dog who starts fights. Was that the way it was for Madison, too, that in one way or another, she’d provoke fights because she needed an excuse for venting her terrible rage?
“And what was the teasing like?” I asked, thinking of the kids who said that’s why they’d shot up their schools, killed teachers and classmates, because they’d been shunned or teased.
“Oh, the usual thing. Another child would ask her what was wrong with her eyes,” she said. “Or imitate her.”
“Anything else you think I should know, Ms. Peach?”
“If she had to wait for the doctor, she’d pace around the office, or sit and bang her feet against a leg of the chair. Sometimes she’d come over to the desk and pick up my things, examine them, put them down in a different place.”
Clever girl, I thought. She knew exactly how to play Ms. Peach into a frenzy. And I’d best be clever, too, because there was no doubt in my mind that Madison Spector would be turning that very cleverness on me the following morning.
“She filched things, too, at least two times.”
“Like what?”
“Money, for one thing. She was here first thing that day and asked me for a glass of water. I hadn’t put my purse away yet and—”
“How did she do that?”
“Well, when I went to get her the water, she must have—”
“No, how did she ask for the glass of water?”
“Oh, I see what you mean. Let me think. Well, it was very hot out and…”
“She looked all sweaty, is that right? So you offered her a drink of cold water?”
“Yes, I guess that’s…”
I shook my head. “You read her mind.”
Ms. Peach flushed.
“So it wasn’t only Celia who was kind to Madison, was it?”
“Well, she…” Ms. Peach took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I did try to…”
“And what was the other thing she stole?”
“One of the books from the reading nook. It was there that morning and missing when I cleaned up. It could have been one of the other children, of course, but it was a story about a turtle.”
“She brought the turtle here?”
“Emil/Emily? Oh, yes. Mr. Spector even introduced me to the turtle. When I suggested that Madison leave it out here when she went in for her examination, she swept everything off my desk onto the floor.”
“And what did her father do then?”
Ms. Peach snorted again. “Her father. Do you see the way he lets that child dress? Whose clothes are those she’s wearing? They’re certainly not hers.”
I thought I had an idea whose clothes they might be, but I didn’t say.
“Half the time he’d wait for her in the park, with his…” So angry she couldn’t say the word; she mimed taking a picture instead. “He cared more about that than—”
“Oh, I hardly think—”
“It’s getting late and I have work to do,” checking her watch. “If you want to see the office, you best come in now.” She looked at Dashiell, then back at me, her head going from side to side. “But not with…”
Pointing at him.
Hadn’t anyone ever told her it was rude to point?
“You’ll have to tie him up out here,” she said.
“I can’t do that.”
“Why on earth not?”
“Someone might steal him,” I told her.
“Him?” Staring now. Even worse than pointing.
“I did,” I said.
Ms. Peach looked up, reluctantly, as if it were difficult to take her eyes from Dashiell’s eyes.
“That’s how I got him,” I said, neglecting to add that he’d been a puppy at the time and that by removing him from where he was, I’d saved him from a life, or a death, in the pit, the dirt-floored ring where illegal dogfights took place.
“He’s house-trained,” I said, “and anyway, we’ll be in and out in a minute.”
She opened the gate and then turned to face me. “I don’t guess there’d be any harm in it. But I’ll be right there with you every minute.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” I said, following her into the small courtyard. She unlocked the wrought iron gate and then two locks on the inner door.
The waiting room, not unexpectedly, was full of toys and books, with cheerful pictures of animals on the walls, everything in pale peach, including the carpet. Ms. Peach punched a code into the alarm system to disarm it.
“I bet you’re the one who’s responsible for this,” I said. “It’s perfect.”
Ms. Peach beamed, opened a drawer on the other side of her desk, dropped in her purse and locked the drawer. “Dr. Willet wanted to redecorate shortly after I was hired. He asked me to find someone. I said, ‘Why spend all that extra money? I did the office at my last job,’ I told him. ‘I can do this one, too.’”
“And he agreed?”
“He was delighted.”
She led me to the second office down the long hallway. She opened the door, stepped back and let me pass.
Dr. Bechman’s office was done in beige, and like the waiting room, walls and carpet were in shades of the same color. His rather imposing desk was in the center of the room, bookshelves were to my right, three chairs faced the desk, a place where the child and his or her parents might sit and talk to the doctor.
Dashiell dipped his head and began soaking up the scents on the rug, right at the place where Dr. Bechman must have fallen.
“What is he doing?” Ms. Peach asked, as if it was now registering for the first time that I’d brought a dog into the doctor’s perfect office.
“Just checking out the scents on the carpet,” I told her.
“There are no—”
I held up my hand. “That’s just the way dogs view the world,” I told her.
She watched him a moment longer, as if he might do something untoward in this sacred space, while I looked around the room. Behind the desk, on the windowsill, facing the patients’ chairs, were the obligatory photos of the doctor’s family, an expensively turned-out wife who, my guess was, looked years younger than her age and two well-groomed teenage boys.
“That would be Mrs. Bechman,” I asked, pointing, “and the children?”
“A lovely person.”
“You’ve met her?”
“Just on the phone, of course.”
“Never here?”
She shook her head.
“So she doesn’t work in the city?”
“Mrs. Bechman?” Ms. Peach smiled, the kind of smile that lets you know how perfectly silly your question was.
“No shopping trips and then lunch with the doctor?”
“Oh, Dr. Bechman never went out for lunch. He just worked straight through, same as Dr. Willet and Dr. Edelstein, busy, busy, busy.”
I took a step toward her. For a moment, I thought Ms. Peach would take a step back, but she just stiffened.<
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“I’ve been so rude,” I said in a stage whisper. “I should have asked you right away. Was it Dr. Bechman who hired you? Is your job in jeopardy now?”
“Oh, no. I mean, yes, it was Dr. Bechman, but I work for the whole office. I’m sure…” And then the doubt I’d planted was written all over her face.
“I imagine they’ll find someone else to share the office, or buy his practice. After a decent interval, of course.”
“Of course.”
Ms. Peach was fussing with her hair.
I picked up one of Dr. Bechman’s cards. “Another pediatric neurologist, perhaps.”
“I’m sure Mrs. Bechman will sell the practice. It’s customary.”
I nodded. Dashiell lay down.
“We’ve had several inquiries already,” she whispered.
I nodded again, picking up a heavy paperweight from the doctor’s desk, turning it over in my hands and then putting it down an inch or so from where it had been. Ms. Peach reached by me and moved the paperweight back to its proper place.
I took a step toward the bookshelves. “The cops have been by a lot, I bet.” My back to Ms. Peach.
“They’ve been wanting to take Madison’s records, but they need a court order. Anything between doctor and patient—”
“Right,” I said, turning back to face her. “And there’s been no court order yet?”
She shook her head. “Dr. Willet is adamant that the police can’t look through the files without a court order.”
“The files? Not just Madison’s?”
Now she was whispering, though we were the only ones there. “That’s the hitch. They’ve asked for everything. Dr. Willet is adamant about protecting the rights of patients, particularly minor patients.”
“Why everything?”
Ms. Peach tightened her lips again.
“Maybe they want to see if any of the other children suffered harm from one of the doctor’s treatments.” I waited, but Ms. Peach had no comment. “Just being thorough, I guess, perhaps because no one actually saw Madison slam that needle into the doctor’s heart. Do most of the kids come with their parents?”
Ms. Peach nodded. “Except for Madison. She usually came alone. She was, is, a very strange child. Don’t you think so?”
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