Damn, Tommy doesn’t believe me either. “Look, there’s nothing to buy, Tommy. Kelly and I were just friends.”
“Well, then, all’s the more the pity, because our dear Kelly deserved a good man to love her before she died.”
Earl snapped another sideways glance at the well-coiffed man, to see if he was being serious.
His lips were pressed into a thin red line.
“She had it rough all right,” Earl said, the only admission he felt ready to make.
When they hit Tommy’s watering hole, the patrons greeted him by name and the staff gave them attentive service. Earl nursed a nice Irish red ale and made small talk, all the time willing Melanie to call. His drink, cool and pleasant to the taste, seemed to rile his stomach and set it churning again. Nerves, he thought.
3:30 P.M.
Hampton Junction
“They fired you?”
Victor Feldt nodded, face crimson and lips trembling under his magnificent mustache. He sat on the edge of the chair across the desk from Mark, his huge frame hunched over, his beefy hands clasped together and working each other with the steadiness of a beating heart.
“But that’s outrageous!” Mark got out of his usual chair and took the one beside Victor. “Why?” he asked.
Victor shook his head, pulled his mouth into a grimace, and swallowed a few times. His eyes glistened.
Mark let him compose himself.
“The reason they gave was that I showed unauthorized people around the lab,” he said eventually.
“What?”
The big man shook his head again. “I’ve taken visitors on tours since day one. ‘Good PR,’ my director always said. To pull this now, I don’t get it.”
“But they can’t do that. We’ll get you a lawyer, sue them for unlawful dismissal-”
“It’s no good. The rules are clear. They just never enforced them before.”
“So why now? Who’d you show the place to that got them so upset?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Of course.”
“Try you and Lucy O’Connor.”
He couldn’t have heard right. “Pardon?”
But Victor grimaced, held his palms skyward, and gave a huge shrug.
“You’re not serious.”
“I’m afraid I am.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“That’s what my director said. He’s as flabbergasted as I am.”
“There’s got to be some mistake.”
“Oh, there’s no mistake. They stipulated my alleged violation of lab security occurred between the hours of six and seven last night.”
“Wait a minute. Let me go to your boss. I’ll explain to him-”
“Won’t do any good. My own boss was apologetic as hell. The order to can me came from the head office in New York.”
“But how did anyone there even know about our visit?”
“That’s what I can’t figure out. I mean, security’s extra tight these days. But this doesn’t figure. It’s overkill.”
“Did the people in New York know you were showing two doctors through the lab?”
“I don’t know. But my director did. When he got the order, he looked at the surveillance tapes and saw it was you, then figured the woman was one of your students. He even called New York on my behalf, arguing that you were the local GP and no more a security threat than he was. They weren’t interested, and told him that unauthorized personnel were unauthorized personnel.”
“But orders from New York to fire you because you showed me around. Why would somebody in the head office of a high-powered lab be so skittish?”
“Beats me.”
Still dismayed, Mark began to think the worst. “Who owns Nucleus Laboratories?”
“A numbered company. You know how it works these days – nameless corporations within corporations.”
“Could you find out who’s at the top?”
“With all I know about their records? Give me a day. But what good will it do?”
“Just get me a name. I might be wrong, but this may have more to do with me than you. If that’s the case, and I can prove it, we could get your job back.”
Victor frowned “What do you mean?”
“Sorry, I can’t tell you any more right now. But do this for me, and if a hunch I have plays out, chances are Nucleus Laboratories won’t be causing either of us any more trouble.”
“Us?”
“Yeah! Us. Hey, without you managing the place, how am I going to get my blood tests done?”
Victor studied him a few seconds, then the apprehension in his expression dissipated. “It’s a deal, Doc. And thanks.”
“As I said, you’ve done me and everyone in my practice a big favor for years. It’s I who thanks you.”
For a few seconds the rest of the man’s flushed expression gave way to a hint of a smile, but couldn’t quite deliver all of it. “Just don’t tell anyone I’m doing it for you,” he said, getting to his feet and shaking Mark’s hand. “Not anyone. They find out I’m hacking into their business files, I’ll be blackballed from working in the industry ever again-”
A knock on the door interrupted him, and Lucy poked her head in. “Oh, hi, Victor, I thought I heard your voice. Wondered if you wanted to drop over for dinner later.”
“Oh, I couldn’t-”
“Come on. I’ve had a fresh vegetable soup on a low heat all day that’s a stew by now, so join us.”
Victor looked at Mark as if for permission to cross the line that separates patients from doctors.
“Absolutely, Victor,” Mark said, unable to think of any better medicine for the man than good company and a fine meal. “Please come.”
“Why, thank you.”
“Shall we say seven?” she asked.
“Yes, seven would be perfect.”
Mark saw the hint of a smile beneath the mustache.
“Lucy, you gave that guy exactly what the doctor ordered,” he told her, after Victor had left.
“What?”
“I’ll explain later.”
4:30 P.M.
Mark and Lucy finished early with the afternoon’s patients and took a short run together.
“You’re in as good shape as I am,” he said to her, as they started the uphill portion of his route.
She sprinted ahead and grinned at him over her shoulder. “The question is, are you in as good shape as me?”
Afterward they shared a pot of tea in his kitchen.
She sat curled up in a large rocking chair, holding her cup with both hands. “You could be right,” she said, having listened to him explain his theory why Victor might have been fired.
Behind her the large cast-iron woodstove that had been the centerpiece of the room in both his mother’s and aunt Margaret’s day crackled with burning maple. It filled the room with a warmth that was far cozier than the baseboard heaters could provide, but Mark had hardly ever bothered to fire it up. Lucy, however, as soon as she learned it was functional, had sent him out to retrieve an armload of logs off the woodpile while she chopped up some kindling.
The sounds transported Mark back to a time when his home was a happy place, but the memories also carried the dull aching reminder of parents and childhood prematurely lost. Which was why he’d shunned stove fires in the past.
Yet this evening was different. Lucy’s company mollified his usual discomfort with remembrance. How pleasant it felt at the end of the day to have someone with whom he could discuss the little victories. And the problems.
“Obviously I’m making someone nervous,” Mark said, “Nucleus Laboratories must be a business interest connected to Chaz Braden. Why else would our visit bring down such a heavy-handed response?”
She scrunched up her face into a show of skepticism, making her look as if she were staring into a harsh light. “But how could your investigation of a murder twenty-seven years ago have any connection with a lab built in 1996?”