As she drove the car out of the driveway, Lucy asked, “Is Victor a friend?”
“Actually, he’s a patient.”
“Really? I took you for friends. But around you it’s hard to tell the difference.”
“How do you mean?”
“You have a really nice way with patients. A lot of the people who were in your office today consider you both friend and physician.”
“And how do you know that?”
“They told me so. It was neat to hear.”
“Sometimes it makes the job harder.”
“You mean staying objective-”
“That’s difficult enough. What I’m talking about makes being friends impossible.”
“Oh?”
“People tell me almost everything that’s personal and private, as they do most doctors. But in a place like Hampton Junction, I end up knowing both who’s got the secrets and who the secrets are kept from.”
“What?”
“Just the other day I was sitting in my office with a woman who sees me regularly for stress and a nervous stomach. The reason for her problems – she’s afraid her husband is running around on her. We were interrupted by a phone call from a woman whom I’m treating for depression because the man she loves, that very same husband, won’t leave his wife. They don’t teach you how to manage that kind of situation in New York.”
She gave an appreciative whistle. “Does it happen a lot?”
“Often enough. You’ll probably go through a variation of it while you’re here. After all, you’re a fresh audience, so people will definitely let you in on the seamier sides of life in Hampton Junction.”
She glanced sideways at him.
“Relax,” he added. “It won’t be that bad.”
She smiled, but drove without saying anything. A few minutes later, she asked, “Show me Kelly’s house?”
“Her old family home? It’s long gone. Her parents sold off and moved back to New York after she disappeared.”
“No. I meant where she lived with Chaz Braden.”
“Sure. It’s not far from here.”
She followed his instructions, heading in the direction of Saratoga Springs. After a few miles the thick forest gave way to a floodlit, rolling, snow-covered lawn surrounded by white fences adjacent to a lake. Ablaze with light and well back from the road stood a layered house with several wings emanating from a peaked center, the whole structure wrapped in a veranda. As a young boy passing by with his parents, it had always reminded him of a gilded bird trying to take flight. “Here it is. Rural chic of the pretend horsy set. Paddock style on the front yard, but nary a nag in sight.”
She said nothing, but slowed as they passed the large wrought-iron gate that guarded the entrance. In the parking lot at the end of a quarter-mile driveway, a dozen limousines glittered like a nest of black beetles.
“That’s odd,” Mark said. “Old man Braden must be up for Thanksgiving this year. He usually doesn’t show until Christmas.”
“He’s brought a lot of friends.”
“When here, he’s always having parties. Not that I’m on his guest list. Was, when I was a kid. My father used to get invited. I think that was Kelly’s doing. I learned much later from my aunt that Mom hated going and thought the rest of them acted superior to Dad. But after my mother died, he and I continued to attend, ‘for Kelly’s sake’ I heard him say more than once. Crazy, their looking down on him. Dad was more doctor than both Bradens put together.”
When they got back to Mark’s house, a shiny red Jeep almost identical to his own stood parked in the driveway. The keys and a note from his insurance company advising him that it was only a loaner until they settled his claim had been dropped through the mail slot in his front door. Ride ‘em cowboy, he thought, pocketing the keys.
“Could I take a look at your father’s file on Kelly?” Lucy asked after supper.
“Sure.” He got it out for her.
Having leafed through the contents at the kitchen table, she came to the newspaper clippings on the Braden’s charitable works. “What are these doing here?”
“I’ve no idea. My father kept them there. He also collected a pile of statistics on those two places, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what he was after.”
“Could I see them as well?”
Two hours later, papers spread out in front of her, on chairs, even over the countertops, she continued to pore over the data that had defeated him.
“Any luck?” he asked, standing in the doorway watching her.
“Oh?” she started, obviously surprised by his voice. “No, I mean I can’t see anything glaringly wrong.”
“Well, I’m heading up to bed. It’ll be a big day tomorrow, everybody calling in to get tuned up for Thanksgiving.”
“I’m going to work a while longer.”
“Good night.”
“Good night, Mark.”
Chapter 12
Wednesday, November 21,
10:07 A.M.
The Midtown Arms, New York City
“We only agreed to see you after checking your credentials, Dr. Garnet. I must admit, it appears you’ve had a very distinguished career,” Samantha McShane said. “Surprisingly so.”
For a guy working in Buffalo, Earl added, the unspoken qualification having practically leapt off her pinched lips. She sat on a round-backed, antique chair of a kind he’d seen in photos of Queen Victoria. Looking over the ornately furnished room, he figured Samantha must have gotten the rest of the old girl’s movables as well. Walter McShane stood behind her, scowling, as still as a stuffed ornament. Clearly it was Samantha’s idea that Earl be tolerated here at all.
“So what can we do to help you prove who murdered our Kelly?” she asked.
“Mark Roper has already let me look over copies of the police records, so I don’t need anything there. I’m interested instead in what you learned from the private detectives you hired. Is there any chance we could look through their reports, maybe even talk to one of them? Do you know if they’re still alive?”
Samantha looked up at Walter.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he muttered.
“Perhaps you could forward whatever you come up with to Dr. Roper. I don’t plan to be in New York much longer-”
“No!” Samantha said, sitting even more bolt upright than Earl would have thought possible. “That man has his own agenda in all this.”
Walter left his perch and wandered over to a large bay window overlooking Central Park West and gazed out at the green space beyond, his jaw a study in tension.
Earl focused on Samantha. “Why would you say that, Mrs. McShane? Dr. Mark Roper has demonstrated an ironclad objectivity in pursuing what happened to Kelly-”
“Tell him, Walter,” Samantha said, swinging around to confront her husband’s back.
“I don’t think it’s anybody’s business, Samantha.” He spoke without looking at her.
“I want him to know, Walter.”
He simply shrugged.
She returned her gaze to Earl. “A mother feels these things so much more acutely, Dr. Garnet. I’m sure you understand this, as a medical man. The loss of a child is the worst possible pain…” Her eyes watered over, and tears careened down wrinkled cheeks that seemed parched as washed-out gullies. Pulling out a hanky from the sleeve of her dress, she dabbed at her face, all the time slipping glances over at Walter as if checking whether he was watching.
He wasn’t.
The waterworks stopped. “Would you like to see Kelly’s room?”
Now the man pivoted to face her. “Really, Samantha-”
“If he wishes to see it, Walter, he can.”