From downstairs came a piercing wail. Dr. Chase must have reset the bone. He’d be putting a cast on Scott’s arm any minute now. I crossed the hallway above them on tiptoe, hoping the floors wouldn’t creak and give me away.
The room at the front of the house was uncarpeted, its hardwood floors spotless. A long wooden table ran the length of the far wall, and bookshelves framed both windows. Clean jars with ground glass stoppers were grouped together on the shelves, their labels missing or peeling. I picked one up and examined it closely. If anything had ever been written on the label, it had long ago faded into illegibility. Everything in the room was neatly arranged and impeccably clean, like a museum. I wondered if this had been old Dr. Chase’s laboratory, where he prepared his herbal and homeopathic cures. But whatever it was, there was no place to store even so small a thing as a medical folder in this austere environment.
The back bedroom also promised to be a major disappointment. Oversize warehouse-style shelves of tubular steel held boxes of paper towels, toilet paper, disinfectant soap, plastic garbage bags, and, as Bill had predicted, paper robes, all purchased in bulk sizes like the kind I brought home from Sam’s Club. Smaller boxes and cartons contained medical supplies. Near the window that overlooked the parking lot, four plastic chairs in the same style as those in the waiting room below were stacked, seat on seat.
I had turned to leave when I thought I’d hit the mother lode. After all those years in Washington, D.C., if there’s one thing I know, it’s archival boxes. And there they were, box after cardboard box of them, labeled “A-B” and “C-D” et glorious cetera, neatly piled in an alcove. I prayed these were the old doctor’s files. Maybe they hadn’t been shredded after all but were just on their way to the shredder. I lifted the lid from the box nearest me. It was empty. So was the box next to it. I pulled the lids of nearly a dozen boxes, but every damn one of them was empty.
My heart sank. Until that moment I’d never really understood that expression. But my heart sank, right down to the floor, and lay there. I chided myself for spinning my wheels on what was turning out to be a wild-goose chase. Yet I had discovered many theoretically inactive folders, like Liz’s, among the files downstairs. Futile or not, I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied until I had searched every last inch of Dr. Chase’s office, and maybe his condominium, too.
As I stood in the alcove, woolgathering, I was startled by the thunk of a car door closing. I rushed to the window just in time to see Mr. Waldron get into his car. Scott was already installed in the passenger seat, a clean white cast on his arm, cradled in a blue sling. Holy shit! I needed to get back downstairs, pronto!
But then I heard the footsteps behind me and knew it was too late.
“Hannah? What are you doing up here?”
I pasted a smile on my face and turned. “I noticed we were low on paper towels, Doctor. I couldn’t find any downstairs, so I thought I’d take a look up here.”
Chase’s eyes were wary slits. “I’m surprised you could get in. I usually keep the door locked.”
I shrugged. “I just turned the knob.” That wasn’t a lie, not exactly.
I crossed the room to a shelf and selected a four-pack of toilet paper and several rolls of paper towels. “Here, could you help me?” I handed a roll of towels to the doctor. He opened his mouth as if to object but apparently changed his mind. His lips clamped shut, and he sucked them in between his teeth, giving him an odd, lipless look. I prayed he didn’t suspect me of snooping. My spur-of-the-moment explanation had been brilliantly plausible, after all, but I noticed as I preceded him down the steps that he locked the door securely behind him.
As we reached the entrance hall, an elderly woman was just hobbling up the walk, saving me the trouble of making idle conversation with the doctor when my mind was racing off in all directions. Dr. Chase greeted the woman like a long-lost relative, then escorted her back to his private office.
I put the spare toilet paper in the bathroom, then dumped the paper towels on the counter in the kitchen, where I stood for a few moments at the sink and tried to control my shaking hands. I splashed some cold water on my face, dried it with a paper towel from a roll that was, I noticed, nearly new, then hurried to take the telephone lines off hold. But before I went back to work, I returned to the kitchen and spun yards of paper towel off the roll and stuffed them in the bottom of the wastepaper can, underneath the soiled paper robes.
Two patients arrived at noon, but by one o’clock there was a brief hiatus, and Dr. Chase suggested he could handle things on his own while I picked up sandwiches. I called Ellie’s Country Store and ordered a chicken salad for me and a tuna on rye for the doctor.
After my narrow escape I welcomed the lunch break and took my time getting to Ellie’s by walking around the block the long way, turning left down Princess Anne and left again at the old library. I strolled along Ferry Point Road and paused at the old pier across from the Tidewater Pub. I watched the khaki-colored water of the Truxton gently lick the pilings and tried to think of a way to get Dr. Chase out of his private office long enough to search it, too. So far, he’d kept me so busy I’d hardly had time to go to the bathroom, let alone give the place a thorough going-over. That business this morning was just a fluke; I couldn’t count on another broken arm materializing out of the blue. Didn’t the man have rounds to make at the local hospital? Medical meetings to attend? By the time I reached Ellie’s store, I was wishing emergency appendectomies on total strangers and pining for the good old days when doctors made house calls.
Angie already had the order made up and ready for me at the counter. “I put in two iced teas. Hope you don’t mind. That’s what the doctor always orders.” She looked cheerful and well rested and smiled at me in a conspiratorial way because, I supposed, we shared a secret. She must have read my mind. “You won’t tell anybody about Katie’s baby, will you, Hannah?” she whispered.
“No,” I promised again. “No one will find out about it from me.”
“I went to see Lieutenant Rutherford, just like you told me to.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Angie.”
“He was really nice. Brought me a Coke. Thanked me for coming in.”
“He’s only interested in the truth.” I added two Milky Way Darks to the bag feeling just a wee bit guilty about it, paying for it all, including my sweet tooth, out of money the doctor had given me from the petty cash.
“Did Lieutenant Rutherford say anything to you about reopening the case?”
Angie dropped the change into my outstretched hand and shook her head. “Not to me. But they’ll have to now, won’t they? Now that they know Katie was murdered?”
I said good-bye and left her busily wiping the countertop with a damp rag. On Ellie’s front porch, I fished one of the Milky Ways out of the bag, tore off the wrapper, and took what I reasoned was a well-deserved bite. I chewed thoughtfully and watched while an armored truck made a pickup at the bank across the street. Next door S &N Antiques was just opening for business; its door stood open, and the proprietor had dragged a Victorian high chair, a wagon, and two end tables onto the porch. I sucked the caramel off my teeth and studied the back of the Chase house. A huge magnolia tree dominated the backyard, shading what remained of the old doctor’s garden. I remembered what Connie had told me about it and decided to cut through the parking lot and take a closer look.
The garden was a tangle of overgrown shrubs, wayward vines, desultory weeds, and dried, drooping stalks still tied to redwood stakes, but I could tell that the plot had once been extensive and well planned. My experience with herb gardens was limited to what I had read in the Brother Cadfael mystery series. The good twelfth-century monk grew things in his garden at St. Giles with interesting-sounding names like betony, coltsfoot, hyssop, and dock that were used to treat wounds, skin irritations, and stomach ailments. Except for unruly clumps of dill, mustard, fennel, and mint, however, and a scrawny lemon thyme bush, there wasn’t much in Dr. Chase’s garden that I recognized.