by Mary Bush
“No, the neighbor didn’t tell us that. Colin did. He admitted that he wanted to try to get her to take him back,” Jack said.
“That’s a lie!” Lauren shouted. Her face grew red.
“He did go back and then Julia died shortly afterwards,” Jack stated.
“After he called and said he needed time to cool off, what did you do?” Thomas asked quickly.
Lauren looked lost, unsure of which way to turn.
“Where did you go? Colin told us you weren’t home and that you didn’t come back until the next day,” Jack pressed.
“My sister wasn’t feeling well. I went to check on her and ended up staying the night.”
“Could it be possible that you left because you were angry with Colin for going back to Julia? He informed us that he told you what he was doing. Weren’t you suspicious of why he was going back?”
“NO! You’re making it seem like we’re guilty. Why would we want Julia dead? How do I get my money now that she’s dead?”
“You weren’t going to get anything if she was alive either,” Jack said. A moment of cold silence could be felt in the room.
“Why was Colin at this convention? The convention where you met him?” Val asked.
“He was there with Julia. She was the one attending the convention. It was all about pathology.” Lauren’s words were clipped.
“It was a pathology convention?” Val inquired. “So, you were there with a pathologist. A pathologist from Buffalo?”
“Yes. Why on earth would I be there otherwise?” she said quickly, maybe a little too quickly. She appeared to want to pull the words back in. The next question was unavoidable.
“What’s this pathologist’s name?”
Lauren hesitated again, staring at Val. Val repeated the question.
“Phillip Blythe,” she said.
30
“So, the elusive Dr. Blythe has finally agreed to talk to us.” Thomas turned towards Gavin. “Thank you for making this arrangement.”
The three men stopped just outside the doctor’s office. “Dr. Blythe has agreed to meet on an informal basis. I hope you won’t resort to any line of questioning he might find offensive,” Gavin said, stressing the unofficial nature of the interview. “If there is a possibility that he’s going to be blindsided, especially without a lawyer present, there will be hell to pay.”
“Of course, Mitch, I would never do anything offensive,” Thomas said breezily.
As they entered the room Dr. Blythe stood up and welcomed them in a friendly manner, seemingly relaxed and not worried. They each took a chair around his desk. After a few thanks to the doctor for his time, the meeting began with Blythe speaking first. “I hear this meeting is about a woman named Lauren Fitzgibbons.”
“That’s correct.”
“I knew her a long time ago,” Blythe admitted.
“In what sort of context did you know her?”
“We dated,” Blythe said, calmly. He appeared to have no guilt about it.
“How long did you date her?”
“On and off, probably about a year. Our relationship was more off than on. Lauren liked to play the field. She went where the money was. When she finally realized I didn’t have any, we were officially off.”
“When was the last time you were on?” Jack asked.
Blythe took a moment to think about the answer. “That had to be about eight or nine months ago.”
“Do you still keep in contact?”
“No,” he said flatly.
“Did you know about Julia’s problem with her?”
“She told me about the lawsuit one day. I think she just wanted someone to talk to. I listened.”
“Did you tell Julia about your past relationship with Lauren?”
“No, I saw no reason to. I hadn’t spoken to or seen Lauren in a while. There was no reason to upset Julia.”
“I can understand that you wouldn’t want to upset Julia.” Thomas purposely waited a moment before he asked, “Wasn’t she in charge of reviewing your cases?” Thomas knew he was stepping over the line with this question. Gavin shot him a look of warning.
“Yes,” Blythe said slowly.
“Yes?” Thomas raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t that make you a little annoyed?”
“I wasn’t happy with the situation but I had nothing personal against Julia.” He looked over at Gavin. The severe glare indicated that he’d better not let Thomas go any further.
“It wouldn’t be strange if you were annoyed. It would be normal to be irritated with the person who is… How should I say this? Looking over your shoulder.” Thomas pressed on, ignoring the eye contact between Blythe and Gavin. Gavin, though, remained silent and Thomas didn’t know why.
Phillip Blythe became visibly agitated but he took a second and composed himself. He tented his fingers together, inhaled deeply and answered, “Julia and I shared an amiable professional relationship. I respected her opinion. If I had done something wrong, I would have valued her judgment on the matter.”
“She agreed with many of your reports, especially about this dog attack on a two-year old boy.” Jack opened a folder and flipped through the files.
Blythe just shrugged his shoulders. “So?”
“Let’s discuss what she said in some of these other reports. The ones she handed in to your superiors.” Jack read from the documents in front of him. “It appears as if Dr. Phillip Blythe may be overworked. He has made several serious errors in judgment that are hard to overlook. I wouldn’t expect these types of mistakes from a medical resident let alone the chief medical examiner.” Jack glanced up from the folder and stared at Blythe, waiting for a response.
Phillip Blythe’s face went white, his eyes opened wide and it took a second before he said, “I never saw that report.”
“Now, sir, this is dated almost two months ago. Someone must have reviewed this with you since that time. I’m sure you have been privy to this. You must have known what she said about you.”
Blythe stared blankly. “I had no idea.” He sounded genuinely stunned.
“Okay, I think this line of questioning has gone far enough,” Gavin finally announced.
“Of course. I’m sorry, doctor, I didn’t mean to imply anything improper,” Jack said.
Gavin got up to leave, indicating they all should follow. Both Thomas and Jack rose, but after taking a few steps Thomas stopped. “You took Lauren to a pathology convention. Am I right?”
“Yes,” Blythe answered, his tone questioning.
“Did you continue your relationship with Lauren after it?”
“Not for very long.”
“Why was that?”
“We broke up. She found someone else.” Blythe’s response came out sharp. It was obvious that Lauren’s brush-off hadn’t sat well with him. Thomas decided to continue the interrogation, ignoring the looks from Gavin. He had Blythe right where he wanted him.
“She found Colin Turner, didn’t she?” Thomas’s words were to the point.
“I have no idea who she found after me.” Blythe again appeared completely surprised.
“Lauren tells us she met Colin at your convention. You left Lauren alone and Julia had gone to bed early. Lauren went to the bar and met Colin.”
“I didn’t know any of this!” Blythe just stared at the two of them, his mouth open.
Gavin tried to grab Thomas by his arm to escort him out, but couldn’t quite manage it before Thomas spoke again.
“Lauren left you for Colin and Julia was checking over your shoulder. Now, let’s see, what happens next? Julia is killed. Colin’s in jail, and Lauren loses half her face to an infection. What brilliant payback you must feel.”
“How dare you!” Phillip Blythe jumped up. “I’m not listening to any more of this crap.” He stormed to the door, yelling at Gavin, “The next time you want to talk to me it will be through my lawyer. I’m not through with you yet, Mitch, coming in here with this shit! How dare you! Just wait until I’m throu
gh talking to your supervisor: you’ll be writing parking tickets for a living by the time I’m done.” And with that Blythe walked out of the office, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the hinges.
31
“I thought that meeting with Dr. Blythe went well,” Jack said to Thomas. The tone was tongue-in-cheek. He sat back on the couch in their hotel room and kicked off his shoes.
“I’ll have to agree. It wasn’t all that bad,” Thomas added in dry sarcasm. He opened a bottle of scotch and poured a drink for Jack and himself. He knew what happened with Dr. Blythe wasn’t good and hoped the alcohol might help dull the pain. That was his best suspect and any hope of questioning Blythe again, or really even investigating him further, especially without any concrete evidence, was gone. He shook his head as he handed Jack the glass. “I thought we had him back there.”
“We had our one chance, we jumped, and we fell flat on our faces. It happens. We were overconfident.” Jack motioned towards a large envelope Thomas was holding, an envelope that was waiting for them when they arrived back at the hotel. “What’s in there?”
“Probably more bad news,” Thomas said, and then rather than opening it, he tossed it onto the coffee table. “This case is so close and yet so far. It’s swimming all around us and yet I can’t grab hold of any part and reel it in. Why is this one so slippery? What are we missing?” He took a large sip from his glass. “Damn it! How in the hell did we not win that battle with Blythe?”
“Are we overlooking another possible suspect? Are we being too narrow-minded?” Jack asked. “Who besides Blythe had motive?”
Thomas just gave him an uninterested look. “It’s not just motive. This crime also has ability with it. Someone has to have had the ability to pull it off. Blythe is top of the list for ability. He’s a doctor for Christ’s sake. And he definitely has motive. Losing Lauren to Colin, Julia reviewing his cases. These are big reasons. Who else has motive and ability? No one.”
Jack was silent and Thomas knew he was right. There was no one else. Jack finally said, “So, you never told me what was in the envelope?”
“Julia DeHaviland’s financial records.”
“That finally came?” Jack sat up and eagerly reached for it. “God, we asked for that when we first arrived, almost three weeks ago. Detective Gavin’s been holding onto it for so long that I thought he would never give it to us.”
“Yes, it was about time Gavin handed them over. Funny that he didn’t say anything about this when we were with him earlier,” Thomas said without any emotion. If Gavin had finally given these records to him, with no discussion about them, it was because they had no real impact on this case. Colin was still very guilty.
Jack opened the seal and slid out the documents. He looked through them for a while and then exhaled slowly before setting them aside. “Julia DeHaviland gets the last laugh.”
“How so?” Thomas’s eyes were fixed on Jack, waiting for the answer.
“First, there’s no trail in her bank records indicating movements of large amounts of cash in or out. Nothing to show that she was hiding anything. According to this, she made very little money. She was basically broke all along.”
“That can’t be right,” Thomas said, stunned. “How could a plastic surgeon not have any money?”
“Oh, the account was opened with a fairly large sum. It covered the down payment on the house and also the expenses for a few months. But there are no deposits until Julia was hired at the medical examiner’s office. The only deposits were her paychecks from there. And what she earned wasn’t enough to cover the bills each month by this time. Some bills were paid, others weren’t. Then she just stopped paying everything altogether. The collection notices started quite a while ago and have just been multiplying.”
“There must be another account.”
“Not according to all of this.” Jack pointed to the papers that were strewn across the coffee table.
“Is it possible that Julia placed all of her wealth in her assets? That she didn’t have a large amount of liquid cash?”
“No. There’s really no equity in these assets. She owed a lot of money on them, especially for the building she was constructing for her plastic surgery practice.” He held up the loan papers so that Thomas could see.
“My God, look at how much money she borrowed. How do you get that without some type of collateral?”
“Maybe plastic surgeons are considered a good risk?”
“Unless they die.” Thomas exhaled. “Well, that explains why she wasn’t making anything. She was in the process of building this practice.”
“So, the woman Colin is trying to screw over for her money was poorer than a church mouse. What an unlucky bastard.” Jack laughed and pulled out another document. “And on top of that, here’s the cancellation notice for her malpractice policy—and he thought that she was bluffing with this. She wasn’t giving him a penny. Not that she had one to give.”
“As I told you, Jack, this is all just more bad news. In fact, it’s very bad news. These documents only add to the proof that he’s guilty. He said he was a player. The reason he gave us for being innocent was that he needed Julia alive. He wanted to string her along so she wouldn’t ruin him financially. If he found out she had nothing all along, that there was no way he could possibly get a cent from her and that he was already financially ruined, that’s motive to kill her. His excuse goes out the window. This is why Detective Gavin finally gave these to us.” Thomas sat down on the couch. “Colin’s screwed. Hell, maybe he should be.”
Jack’s phone rang and he looked down at the text. “It’s Val. She’s in the lobby. I almost forgot that I told her to meet me at this time. I thought I’d have some interesting news to tell her about Dr. Blythe. Well, I guess it could still be called interesting.” He took one last swallow from his glass, finishing the contents. Then slid his shoes back on. As he was leaving he took one more look at Julia’s documents and picked them up. “Maybe Julia spoke to Val about some of this,” he said. “It wouldn’t hurt to ask. We have nothing to lose at this point.”
32
Val sat uncomfortably in the hotel lobby chair. The Naugahyde felt sticky and smelled of stale coffee. She had hoped that Jack was going to tell her what happened with Dr. Blythe. But instead he asked her to look at Julia’s documents.
Julia’s finances were laid out in front of her. She almost felt guilty for looking at such personal information, peering into a very private matter that her friend probably fought hard to keep hidden. No matter how hard she looked though, there was really nothing that she could add.
“Jack, I told you the first day I met you that Julia never said to me what she did with her money. How she planned to win the financial battle with Colin was something I don’t know. I’m not sure how going through her paperwork will help.”
“According to this,” said Jack, “Julia never really had any money at all. Is this a possibility?”
“It’s a possibility, but I really don’t know.” Val sat back from the table and crossed her arms.
“I knew it was a long shot.” Jack looked into her eyes and then laughed.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, wondering where he was finding humor in this situation.
“You didn’t like me very much on that first day, did you? The day when we first met in your very small office.”
Val felt her face get hot. He was right. She hated him that day, and for a few more after that.
“You don’t have to answer,” Jack said. “You do like me now?”
Her face grew hotter. He was good-looking, famous and smart. He treated her as an equal and had been interested to get her involved and hear her opinion. Despite that, he had never asked her about her scar, and why she wasn’t practicing dentistry anymore. For Jack, who was always inquisitive, always challenging, this was the one detail he didn’t seem to need to know and Val had no idea why. Maybe he was allowing her personal space and he wasn’t going to intrude. Maybe, the person
she once thought was an egotistical bastard was a nice guy, when he wanted to be.
She didn’t hesitate when she said, “Yes, I like you now.”
“That’s all that matters.” He smiled.
She smiled back. Trying to control her emotions, she picked up Julia’s malpractice notice, hoping to distract herself long enough to get over the attraction she was feeling towards Jack. She glanced over the explanation for the cancellation. It was all pretty standard insurance company verbiage. After a few minutes, she finally collected herself enough and was ready to move the conversation on to something else. Val was dying to know what happened with Dr. Blythe. She went to set the document down, but her hand stopped midway to the table.
“Hey, wait a minute.” Val’s gaze fixed on a few key phrases and numbers. “This can’t be correct.”
“What is it?”
“She cancelled the insurance policy.”
Jack had a blank expression. “I don’t see the significance. Julia told Colin that she did so that he couldn’t get the money. We know that already.”
“Look at this date.” She pointed the numbers out to Jack. “The date of the cancellation.”
Jack narrowed his eyes, peering at the line Val had her finger on. She could tell that he still didn’t see the point.
“It’s before the lawsuit started,” she said. “Why would she have done this?”
“She must have known it was coming. That it was inevitable. Val, she cancelled this policy because she wanted to have nothing to give Colin. It all fits with her plan.”
“There’s a problem with that plan,” she said, and received a quizzical look from Jack.
He leaned forward. “And what would that be?”
“The day she died, she told me that she was meeting with her lawyer.” Val shook her head in astonishment. How did she pay this person? The malpractice policy would have covered all of her legal fees. If she cancelled the policy the lawyer wouldn’t have been paid through the insurance carrier. This would have been out of her own pocket.”