“Someone from the Hippocrates Society?”
Patty looked up at the woman, impressed.
“As a matter of fact, yes. So, you know about the Society.”
“Not all that much, but everyone in our industry knows about them. They’ve become quite a thorn in our side over recent years.”
Our industry. Before this visit, Patty had formed the impression of Gloria Davenport as some sort of dilettante, uninterested in anything other than drinking and finding ways to spend her husband’s money. Forming impressions of people on too little information was a habit she resolved, once again, to break.
“Gloria, you say our industry. Were you very involved in your husband’s business?”
“I’m not surprised that you are the first policeperson to ask me that question. The rest of them seem content to believe that I am nothing more than a chronically besotted spouse who was lucky enough to marry a health-care baron, and now even luckier to inherit all his money.”
“But that’s not true?”
“Well, maybe the besotted part is. I don’t blame Cyrill totally for my drinking, but I will say that he was. . how should I put it. . difficult. Do you know much about OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder?”
“Some.”
“Well, Cyrill has-had it. Unfortunately, he was the only one close to him who didn’t know it. And for as long as I knew him, chief among the things he was obsessive and compulsive about was making money.”
“Pardon me for saying so, but it seems like he did a good job of it.”
“I suppose you’re right. Of course, he did have a running head start.”
Gloria’s expression was mischievous.
“Okay,” Patty said, “I’ll bite. What sort of running head start?”
“My maiden name was Storer, as in Storer and Elliot.”
“The investment house?”
“Complete with our own padded cell-I mean seat-on the New York Stock Exchange. When Cyrill and I married, I was worth somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred million dollars.”
“That’s some neighborhood,” Patty said.
“Cyrill was worth maybe a million cents depending on the status of his car payments, but he was full of dreams, and to his credit he had gotten a business degree from Wharton. Actually, that’s where we met. I was a year ahead of him. I bought Unity Comprehensive Health for him as a wedding present and out of curiosity to see just how good he could be. The rest is history.”
“Were you involved in the business?”
“Of course I was. I was on the board of directors from the start. I had to protect my investment. It wasn’t that hard to have Cyrill believe he was making all the brilliant decisions.”
“He didn’t?”
“Let’s just say he made some on his own, and lots that he thought were on his own.”
“So what’s the status of the company now?”
“Well, to all intents, Unity isn’t really a company anymore except on paper. We’re now well on our way to a merger with-”
“Excelsius Health,” Patty cut in excitedly.
Gloria looked at her queerly.
“Now, that’s a piece of information not many people are supposed to have-certainly not people outside our companies.”
Patty reached in her briefcase, passed over Ben Morales’s file, and explained how she had come by it. Gloria freshened her drink before opening it, and then scanned each sheet as if she were taking the final exam in a speed-reading course. In just a couple of minutes, she was nodding her head in understanding.
“There are several more cartons of Morales’s papers that I haven’t gone through yet,” Patty said, “so there may be more material on all this.”
“Well,” Gloria said with a sigh, “I tried to stay in the background, but I knew Ben Morales a bit, and most of the CEOs of these other companies, as well, and I knew Boyd Halliday at Excelsius was on the move. But until recently, I didn’t know how fast. Excelsius has already absorbed two of these companies, and if you count Unity, it’s three. I just read where Steadfast Health, which used to be a pretty well-run outfit, although not that big, has gotten itself into financial trouble and sold out to Halliday.”
“So why did your husband sell out to Excelsius?”
“Oh, he didn’t. He never would have parted with Unity. It was like an extension of him. I, on the other hand, was sick to death of the place, if you’ll pardon the gallows humor. I had been encouraging Cyrill to get out for more than a year in the interest of kick-starting our marriage, but no go. He had traded me in for the company. Such irony. The day after Cyrill’s funeral, his friends and former employees at Unity approached me with an offer I couldn’t and didn’t want to refuse, and I gave my blessing and control of my stock to them. A couple of days later, the wheels of merger commerce were turning, and turning fast.”
“Gloria, tell me something,” Patty said, now barely able to stay in her seat, “assuming this serial killer, who has led us to believe he is avenging his mother, picked the CEOs he was going to murder randomly or according to the ease with which he could get to them, don’t you think it’s strange that two out of four of the victims would never have allowed Excelsius Health to take over their companies had they stayed alive? My research has shown that in this state alone he had about a hundred managed-care companies to choose from.”
“I suppose so, but what about the other two-Marcia Rising’s company and that other one? They’re not on this list.”
“No,” Patty said thoughtfully, “no, they’re not. Dr. Leaf’s widow was not at all involved with his business affairs nor, it would seem, his personal affairs, either. I think it would be a good idea to speak with people at his company-Rising’s company, too.”
“You could be way off base,” Gloria said.
Patty gathered her things, stood, and embraced her hostess warmly.
“You’re right,” she said, “I could. You know something, though, that quote I told you from my father, the colonel, about education, isn’t the only one he’s famous for. There’s another. He writes it on the board in just about every class on police work that he teaches and shouts it out at the students.”
“I’m all ears,” Gloria said. “What is it?”
“It’s I hate coincidences.”
Gloria took Patty’s arm warmly as she led her to the door.
“I hope you solve these crimes quickly, dear,” she said.
“I just might,” Patty replied, her thoughts continuing to whirl. She stopped and turned to her hostess. “One last thing.”
“Yes?”
“Does the name Clementine mean anything to you?”
Gloria shook her head.
“Nothing,” she said, “except for the movie.”
“Movie?”
“I’m something of a movie buff-especially westerns. My Darling Clementine was an old John Ford film with Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp. Mid-nineteen forties, I would guess. It’s really a classic-maybe the best of the dozen or so movies that have been made over the years about the famous gunfight at the OK Corral.”
“Interesting,” Patty said, no longer surprised by any revelation from this woman, and wondering if there could be any connection at all between the film and the killer. “Where did that gunfight take place? Wasn’t it Kansas?”
“You might be thinking of Dodge City. No, the gunfight at the OK Corral took place in Arizona. Tombstone, Arizona.”
CHAPTER 25
Something big was going on.
Patty knew it the moment she set foot in her office. There was an electricity in the air. People who generally flew out the door the moment their shifts were over were still there. One of them, Brian Tomasetti-a burned-out department lifer but a favorite of hers nonetheless-was actually cleaning his service revolver.