A Thread of Truth (29 page)

L
uck is a relative term.

X-rays showed that my thumb and two of the other fingers in my left hand were broken, but the orthopedist was able to set the bones without surgery, so that was lucky. He did have to use external pins to make sure the set bones stayed in place, but that's where painkillers come in. After that, I was given a cast, a little brown bottle with more painkillers, and instructions to come back in two weeks for another X-ray.

Hospitals are boring and lonely. Sitting in white rooms with white lights under white sheets for incredibly long stretches of time gives you plenty of opportunity to stare at the walls and worry while waiting for someone to show up and perform potentially painful procedures on you. I was very glad Margot and Arnie came with me; they were a good distraction. After the initial X-ray and once-over by the emergency room doctor, we had to cool our heels until a hand specialist was located and arrived. Arnie used that time to quiz me about the confrontation with Hodge while Margot scribbled notes, but that didn't take too long. In an effort to keep me entertained, Arnie inflated two examining gloves, drew feathers and beaks on them with a Magic Marker, and staged a latex chicken puppet show/cockfight. Margot supplied appropriate and frantic clucked barnyard sound effects while Arnie hid behind a screen to handle the puppets and narrated play-by-play for the entire battle in a convincing impression of an ESPN announcer. Arnie was hilarious. Who knew?

When the orthopedist finally arrived, I was laughing so hard tears were running down my face. Concerned, he called for a nurse to get me more pain medication. I assured him I didn't need any and tried to explain what made me so giddy, but he just looked at me blankly.

“Never mind, Doc,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I guess you had to be there.”

After the doctor patched me up, Arnie and Margot drove me home. It was after two. I'm sure they were exhausted, but they insisted on coming inside and getting me settled. That turned out to be a good thing.

The apartment had been ransacked.

Every drawer and cupboard was open, the cushions were off the sofa, and the mattresses had been overturned as well. There were a couple of things missing—the television, my jewelry box, as well as several bottles of nonprescription medications from the bathroom—but nothing of real value because, frankly, I don't own anything of real value. Though it was obvious that it was intended to look like a robbery, I knew Hodge was the intruder.

“I don't get it,” I said as I picked up a sofa cushion. “Hodge has a number of bad traits, but I never thought stupidity was one of them. He's got to realize that he'd be the first person I'd suspect. What's he thinking? Is he trying to scare me? Or was he actually trying to find something? This is crazy. Even for Hodge.”

Arnie pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “Ivy, put down that pillow and don't touch anything else until the police get here.”

I was so tired and the pain pills were starting to wear off. “Oh, Arnie. Can't we wait until morning?”

“Sorry, kiddo.” Arnie didn't look up as he dialed the police. I pulled out kitchen chairs for Margot and me to sit on.

“They'll be here in a few minutes,” Arnie said after ending the call. “Now, to answer your previous questions. Was he trying to scare you? Definitely. Look at this mess. He wanted you to know he'd been here.”

“But that's crazy. He had to know I'd call the police and put the finger on him.”

“Maybe,” Margot said, “but think about it for a minute. Today, you'd call the police, but a few months ago, would you? I don't think so. Hodge hasn't seen the newer, stronger, braver Ivy. Maybe he thought you'd be too frightened to report the break-in. But I'm wondering how he got in. There's a security system, right?”

“Yes,” I answered, “you need a special card to open the main door, but if he timed it right, he could probably have snuck in behind someone else. It's dark. Maybe he hid in the bushes and waited until someone opened the door. If that someone was a mother with two or three chattering kids, she might have been too distracted to notice. It's possible.”

Arnie leaned back against the kitchen counter and crossed his arms over his chest. I'd spent enough time with him over the last few months to recognize this stance. It was his thinking pose.

“Okay, so let's assume that's what happened. Tomorrow, I'm going to call around to the local inns to find out where Hodge is staying and when he checked in. I'll bet you ten dollars he's been here for several days, watching you, figuring out your schedule and work hours so he'd know when you'd be out of the house.

“Ivy, when you saw him in the alley, you said he was hunched over the door of your car, like he was trying to break in. I think you were right. He was trying to scare you, but he's also looking for something. He came here first and, when he couldn't find it, he tried to break into the car, thinking it might be there.”

Arnie narrowed his eyes, considering the evidence. A smile spread slowly across his face and widened into a broad grin. He uncrossed his arms, rocked forward to shift his weight to his feet and laughed. “That's it,” he said to himself and then looked at us. “That's it! He was looking for something. First in the apartment, then in your car, but he didn't find it and do you know why?”

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“Because what he was looking for wasn't here or in your car, that's why. What he's looking for is in my office. Now aren't you glad I insisted you store them with me?”

“The files!” Margot cried. “He was looking for Ivy's files!”

“Bingo! Margot, this is why I have pledged my eternal devotion to you. You're as brilliant as you are beautiful!” Arnie made his hands into fists and pounded a drumbeat on his thighs, thrilled by the genius of his discovery. I was less convinced.

“But you've looked through those papers fifty times and haven't found anything.”

“I know.” Arnie pulled up his shirtsleeve and checked his wristwatch. “After we file this report, we're all going over to the office to look through them again.”

“Arnie, are you kidding?” I protested. “It's almost three in the morning. I've got to get some sleep before I have to pick up the kids tomorrow. Aren't you tired?”

Arnie's face lit up. He was the epitome of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed enthusiasm. “Nope.”

He clapped his hands together and rubbed them eagerly. “But, you're right. You've got to get some sleep. Margot too. But, Margot, as soon as you're up to it, could you come into the office? We're going to go over those files with a magnifying glass until we find whatever it is Hodge Edelman was so very anxious to get his hands on. I don't know what it is, but it's in there somewhere. Mark my words, Ivy! Somewhere in those papers is what we've been looking for. The loose thread.”

“Seriously?” I said. “You really think there's something there that will help us?”

“There has to be. Otherwise, why would he risk so much trying to find it?” He laughed. “Thank God, Hodge Edelman is such an arrogant, ham-handed burglar. It's been right under our noses all this time, but if he hadn't made such a show of searching for it, we might never have known it.”

Arnie looked at his watch again and sputtered, impatient as a horse in the starting gate, “Where are these guys?”

B
obby is too little to understand, but Bethany is old enough to know what the word divorce means. And if there was any chance she'd forgotten why we'd left Hodge and come to New Bern, when I arrived at Frankin's and Abigail's to pick her up the next morning, the sight of my left hand in a cast brought everything back.

As soon as she saw me, her eyes filled with tears. I knew what she was thinking. I got on my knees, wrapped her in my arms, and said, “It's okay, peanut. I'm fine.”

Trying to blink back the tears, she searched my face with her eyes. “I didn't say anything, Mommy. Not this time. I promise, I didn't.”

“I know.”

“Was it Daddy?” she whispered.

I wiped the wetness from her cheeks. “Yes. But everything is going to be all right this time. Mr. Kinsella is going to go with me to see the judge and tell him what happened and make sure that Daddy can't hurt us anymore.” I hoped I wasn't lying. Arnie seemed so sure.

“We're getting a divorce?”

“We are.”

“Good.” Bethany looked down at my hand. Her lip quivered. “I didn't say anything to him, Mommy. I didn't.”

“I know. It wasn't your fault, sweetheart. It was never your fault. Never.”

After the break-in, Franklin and Abigail insisted that the children and I move in with them until the divorce was final. I didn't like the idea of imposing on them, but in the end, I agreed and it was something of a relief. Margot might think of me as the newer, stronger, braver Ivy, and in many ways I was, but the attack in the alley and coming home to find my apartment broken into and ransacked had scared me, just like Hodge hoped it would. He was in jail for the moment, but there's a little thing called bail. Bottom line was, I didn't want to be in the house alone.

Franklin said he'd go over to the apartment and help me pack some things, but Abigail insisted she go in his place. “You're not supposed to be lifting anything heavy, Franklin, not until the doctor gives you the all clear. And if I know you, you'll be hefting boxes and suitcases and I don't know what all. You stay here and watch the children. I'll go to the apartment and help Ivy pack.”

“You see what it's come to, Ivy? Married less than a month and I'm already a henpecked husband,” he said, but he didn't look too upset about the arrangement. He kissed Abigail on the cheek and went into the living room with Bethany, who wanted to know which Barbie he liked best, Mariposa or Island Princess.

Staying with Abigail and Franklin turned out to be a nice break. Abigail treated me like a guest and, I have to admit, I enjoyed it. It was nice to be fussed over, especially with my left hand out of commission. As I'd feared, Hodge made bail. Arnie got a protective order issued against him, which was supposed to ensure that he steer clear of me, but Franklin insisted on accompanying me to and from work every day just the same and I let him. I wasn't convinced that a piece of paper would protect me from Hodge. Franklin's presence seemed much more substantial.

Another advantage to staying with the Spauldings was that Franklin and Abbie adored the kids and were happy, even eager, to babysit. That made it easier for me to spend my non-working hours at the law office helping Arnie and Margot go over those files with a fine-toothed comb. We did so again and again and again, but I didn't see anything new and neither did anyone else. After a week of it, even Arnie's enthusiasm was beginning to flag.

One night, just two days before we were due in court, when the clock was getting ready to strike eleven, Margot pulled a piece of paper out of a pile and said, “Ivy? What's this?”

Yawning, I walked over to the desk where she was working and peered over her shoulder. “This notation on the back of this piece of paper, this series of numbers and letters, what is it?”

“I don't know. That's Hodge's handwriting, not mine.”

“No clue?”

“None.”

Margot stared at the wall and drummed her fingers on the desk, thinking, and then copied the numbers and letters onto a legal pad.

“You think it means something?”

“Everything means something. The question is, whether or not this means something important. At the moment, nothing comes to mind, but”—she shrugged—“you never know. I'm going to make a couple of calls.”

 

On the day of the divorce hearing, I wore a nice dress with a jacket Evelyn lent me. I sat at the table, flanked on either side by Arnie and Franklin. Arnie was in charge of the case, but Franklin was sitting in the second chair just in case Arnie needed him and also as a show of strength to the other side. Apparently two lawyers are more intimidating than one. Franklin conferred with Arnie before the judge came in, giving him some last-minute advice and warnings, but told him he had every confidence in him.

Margot sat behind us on the first bench of the gallery, so she would be close if Arnie needed anything. Abigail was there with Evelyn and Charlie. They had gotten Garrett and Gina to cover for them at work.

As Arnie had advised, I sat without looking at Hodge, keeping my gaze focused ahead. But Hodge had either received no such advice from his attorney or discarded it. I could feel his eyes on me and it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, but I stuffed back my fears. I refused to be afraid of Hodge. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

As Arnie predicted, our court date had been pushed back, but only by a couple of weeks.

I had filed charges against Hodge for the attack in the alley, but that would be dealt with in a criminal trial later. Arnie explained that we could and would talk about what happened in the alley, but because Hodge hadn't yet been convicted, there were certain legal technicalities he had to observe.

“For instance, I can't try to force him to admit to attacking you, though I can push him to take the Fifth, refusing to speak on the grounds that he might incriminate himself. That won't look good for him, but doesn't help us as much as an outright conviction would. At this point, Hodge is only an ‘alleged' attacker.”

“Even though I'm wearing this thing?” I lifted my hand, heavy in its white cast.

Arnie nodded. “Afraid so. Hodge's side is going to try to argue that your injury was self-inflicted, a desperate attempt by a drugged-out mom who would do anything to keep her kids.”

“But how can he say that?! We have witnesses! Abigail and Evelyn and—”

Arnie held up both his hands to stop my stream of protest. “I know. I know. It seems crazy, but that's just the way things are. I'm just telling you so you'll understand that I have to be careful about using the attack as evidence against him. We don't want it to blow up in our faces, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, but I wasn't happy.

“Even so,” Arnie said as he adjusted the knot in his tie, “try to keep your cast on the table as much as possible when we are in the courtroom—out where the judge can see it. Nothing wrong with sending a few subliminal messages—every little bit helps.”

Standing in my ransacked apartment, Arnie had been so sure that everything was about to go our way, but now that our day in court had finally arrived and we still hadn't found a smoking gun among my files, he was less euphoric. Still, he was pretty sure it would be impossible for Hodge to get complete custody of the children now. And while that was an enormous step in the right direction, this most recent reminder of what Hodge was truly capable of had me in a panic. The kids wouldn't be safe in his care, I knew that. Hodge was a violent man and shouldn't be allowed to spend even one unsupervised hour with Bethany and Bobby.

But there was no guarantee the judge would agree, and if he believed the testimony of the first witness, chances were the court would have as many misgivings about placing the children in my custody as in their father's.

Dr. Kittenger was just as smug and self-satisfied as I remembered. Hard to understand given that he also was just as unattractive as I remembered. He sat in the witness chair, smoothing one hand over his nearly balding head to make sure his comb-over was still in place and sniffing loudly after he repeated the words “So help me God,” then proceeded to tell as big a bunch of lies as has ever been uttered under oath.

At least that's what I thought. Later, Arnie said he thought it seemed like a pretty average day in divorce court. I'm glad I'm not a lawyer.

According to Dr. Kittenger, I am a drug addict. Or at least I was in Pennsylvania. When Arnie confronted him with the negative drug test results, he asserted that perhaps I had since given up the habit (yeah, because if you've got a drug addiction, running away and living in a car with two small children is the thing that will make it easy for you to quit) but that when I was under his care, I was definitely an addict.

“I had suspected as much for some time,” he said, “but I didn't realize how big an issue it was until the day she kidnapped the children…”

“Objection!” Arnie leapt to his feet and looked at the judge. “My client has not been charged with kidnapping.”

“Sustained. Dr. Kittenger, please refrain from accusing Ms. Peterman of kidnapping.”

“I'm sorry, Your Honor,” he said, but he didn't look as if he meant it. “On the day she…left town…Ms. Peterman came to see me at the nursing home. Of course, my primary job is to oversee the medical care of the residents of the Shady Brook Care Center, which I own with Mr. Edelman. However, as a courtesy to Mr. Edelman, I have served as the Edelman family physician for some time.

“On the day she left, Ms. Peterman came to see me with what she said was a respiratory complaint, but I couldn't find anything wrong with her. During the examination, my pager went off and I had to tend to one of our patients. I left Ivy in my office briefly. When I returned, she wasn't there. My desk drawer was open, the one where I keep the key to the cabinet that contains the schedule C drugs.”

“Schedule C?” the attorney asked innocently, though he already knew the answer.

“Those are drugs whose use is restricted and controlled by the government, narcotics and such, drugs with the greatest potential abuse risk. That's why we keep them under lock and key; they're prime targets for addicts.”

Kittenger paused, letting the word addicts hang in the air, then took a handkerchief out of his pocket and trumpeted into it loudly, apologizing for the effect autumn pollens had on his system. “Anyway, when I got back to my office the key was missing and so was Ivy, but it didn't take me long to locate both of them. I found her in the storage room. She'd opened the drug cabinet and was stuffing bottles of pills into her purse.”

George Caldwell shook his head as if he genuinely regretted hearing this news. “And then what happened?”

“Well, I confronted her, naturally,” Kittenger said. “At first she admitted she had a problem, but when I said she needed to go in for treatment, she started backpedaling, denying everything she'd said before. She called me some terrible names and then walked out. Of course, I had to call Hodge and let him know about the situation. I didn't want to, but there were the children to be considered. It simply wasn't safe to leave them in the care of an admitted drug addict.”

He blew his nose again; it was a strange coincidence that he did so every time he uttered a particularly loaded phrase.

“When I told Mr. Edelman what happened, he was terribly upset, naturally, and very concerned for his wife. I advised him to check her into a rehabilitation program as soon as possible and he agreed, but he never had the chance. By the next day, she was gone and so were the children.”

Dr. Kittenger started to tell about what had happened when Hodge confronted me about my “addiction” and, of course, Arnie objected. But, it didn't matter. The judge didn't need Kittenger to fill him in on the details. Hodge was in the warm-up pen, waiting for his chance.

Before he did, Arnie cross-examined Kittenger, quizzing him about the incomplete nature of my medical records, asking him how it was possible that he hadn't noticed or noted my previously broken arm, or collarbone, old injuries that my physician's deposition stated must have occurred while I was under Dr. Kittenger's care. He mumbled something about it being hard to accurately date such things and suggested those breaks were from childhood injuries.

Arnie went on to question him about a few other oddities in my medical records. In the original records, there were many places where the doctor had added extra notes in the margins, squeezing in comments that supported his version of the story. Interesting, Arnie noted, that all these observations were written in different ink from that of the rest of the records—just the sort of thing you'd expect to see if someone were adding things to the records after the fact. This seemed to catch Kittenger off-guard for a moment, but then he countered that he was a busy man with many patients to tend to. Sometimes he got called away for emergencies and had to finish his record keeping in the evenings. “I take quite a lot of work home at night. I suppose that's what happened. Possibly I added some extra notes later at home, using a different pen.”

Then Arnie pulled out a pile of papers, billing records from Shady Brook, noting scores of dates when the good doctor had billed our insurance for office visits with me and then wondered aloud why there weren't any accompanying notes of those visits in my medical file.

I had to press my lips together to keep from smiling. The forensic accountant Arnie had hired had uncovered this during her investigation. I remembered most of those appointments, all times when I went in to have Kittenger patch me up after Hodge had given me another pounding, but he'd never kept any records about that. Kittenger knew what side his bread was buttered on, Hodge's, and he wasn't going to keep records on anything that might make his partner look bad.

Kittenger was really flustered by this. The best explanation he could muster was that there must have been some kind of error in the accounting department or that perhaps there had been a mistake and those bills were for visits by Bobby or Bethany instead. Arnie quickly produced the children's records, noting that there were no indications that Kittenger had seen them on those dates, either. In the end, the best Kittenger was able to do was assert that it was indeed highly irregular.