And a Puzzle to Die On (11 page)

“Really, Doctor? I thought there were several methods of determining exactly that. Isn’t there a huge difference between a heart that is pumping blood and one that isn’t? Can’t you tell if a punctured lung was still breathing air? Wouldn’t that show in your autopsy?”

Dr. Jenkins took a breath. “In my examination of the body—”

“Come on, Doc,” Cora cut in. “Just between you and me, I’ve referred to your autopsy several times. While you’ve never contradicted me, you’ve always carefully used the word
examination
. So I’m wondering, did you actually perform an
autopsy
on Gleason’s body?”

“Miss Felton—”

“That’s a bad start to a yes-or-no question. Kinda makes me think the answer is no.”

“There’s no call to autopsy an accident victim.”

“How about a murder victim?”

“Gleason was not a murder victim.”

“How do you know?”

Dr. Jenkins exhaled in exasperation. “Because I work within the bounds of reason. And the guidelines of the law. If there was any reason to suspect foul play, I would look into it. But there wasn’t.”

“So you didn’t,” Cora said. “Kind of a catch-22 situation.”

The doctor glowered at her.

“I mean, you’ll do an autopsy if you suspect foul play, but you’ll never know if there’s foul play unless you do an autopsy.”

“I’m familiar with Joseph Heller,” Dr. Jenkins snapped. “It’s not that way at all. If the police have reason to suspect something’s wrong, I of course look into it. If
I
have reason to suspect something’s wrong, I look into it. If there is no reason in the
world
to suspect something’s wrong, I
don’t
look into it.”

Cora took a manila folder out of her purse, extracted a piece of paper.

Dr. Jenkins’s eyes widened. “That’s my medical report! Where did you get it?”

“Sergeant Walpole gave me a copy to get rid of me.” Cora turned it over. “I notice you checked for alcohol, got the reading point one two five. You also checked for heroin, marijuana, and cocaine. And found none. Why did you check for those drugs?”

“One might have been a contributing factor to the accident.”

“You didn’t think the alcohol sufficient?”

“The alcohol was a sufficient cause. It might not have been the only cause.”

“Now you’re talking,” Cora said. “Did you check for chloral hydrate?”

“What?”

“Chloral hydrate. A Mickey Finn. Did you check for that?”

“Certainly not. Why would I check for that?”

“Well, if someone slipped the guy a Mickey, it would certainly be a contributing cause to his hugging a tree to death.”

“There was no reason to suspect any such thing.”

“There was no reason to suspect he took cocaine either, but you checked for that.”

“Miss Felton—”

“Would chloral hydrate have shown up in an autopsy?”

“Only if it was there.”

“Let’s find out, shall we? Why don’t you perform that test now?”

“That would be a neat trick. The accident was months ago. The body’s buried.”

“Can’t you exhume it?”

“Not without a court order.”

The phone rang.

Dr. Jenkins frowned, picked it up. “I’m busy, Margie. I said not to ring.… Well, tell her to wait. I’m in the middle of—” He broke off, said soothingly, “Oh, hi. Of
course
you don’t have to wait. Tell Margie to put you in an examining room, I’ll be right with you.”

The doctor hung up the phone. “I have patients to see. I’m sorry I can’t help you. But, trust me, Ricky Gleason’s death was an accident.”

“Uh-huh. You were saying something about a court order?”

“You’ll never get one.”

“Why not?”

“You haven’t a shred of evidence.” Dr. Jenkins shrugged the sexy hair out of his bedroom eyes and grinned. “I’m afraid you’re back to your catch-22 situation. You can’t get permission to exhume the body without the very evidence you’re hoping to find by exhuming it.”

Cora stomped out of the doctor’s office in what was rapidly becoming her usual foul mood. Goddamned doctor. Good looks or no, the son of a bitch needed his ears pinned back. Of all the smug, incompetent morons. It was getting so they’d let anybody into medical school these days. Cora wondered what percent of his class the doctor was in. After all,
someone
had to be in the bottom five, didn’t they?

Cora’s Toyota was at a parking meter across the street. She’d put a quarter in the meter for fifteen minutes, reluctantly added another. Now she was glad she did. Dr. Jenkins had kept her waiting a good quarter’s worth before he’d seen her, which was one of the reasons she’d been so aggressive in her questions. She’d be lucky if the meter hadn’t run out.

Evidently it had, because a traffic patrol car was pulled up next to it.

Cora set a new record for the thirty-yard dash, a feat of broken-field running punctuated by the unmistakable blare of the horn of a Mack Truck.

The meter maid had pad in hand. Cora knew she shouldn’t call her a meter maid, but if the woman had begun writing, that would seem a compliment compared to certain other modes of address.

Cora was in luck. The woman smiled, said, “Just in time,” and immediately transformed herself from a lowly meter maid into a stalwart, highly respected officer of the law.

Cora unlocked the door and got in, flopped her purse down on the passenger seat, and dug for a smoke. Her cigarette pack was empty. The elation of not getting a ticket vanished in an instant. Of all the times to run out of cigarettes. Just when she really needed one. She crumpled up the pack, looked around.

A few stores down the street was a newsstand. Cora got out of the car, started for it. Stopped. In front of the newsstand the meter maid was ticketing a car. If Cora walked right by her, the woman would see she didn’t drive off. Would she back up, check the meter?

Feeling like a damn fool, Cora went back and dropped a quarter in the meter. But she really resented it. Not to mention the meter maid, who was no longer her friend. When she came out of the newsstand clutching the cigarettes and discovered the woman had not gone back to check her meter, Cora felt like telling her she wasn’t doing her job.

Cora climbed into her car, rolled down the window, and lit up a smoke. There were still eleven minutes on the meter. Cora had half a mind to wait them out. She lingered for a few drags, and even took time to check her makeup in the rearview mirror. Satisfied, she started the engine and pulled out of the space.

Down the block behind her, a black sedan, idling next to a fireplug, pulled out and drove down the block.

Cora signaled for a right turn.

The car sped up. Halfway down the block it met the meter maid/traffic officer, ticketing another car. Oncoming traffic prevented the sedan from going around.

As Cora turned the corner, the black sedan shot across the center line, straight at an oncoming cab. The taxi driver slammed on his brakes and hit the horn as the black sedan swerved back into its lane, just ahead of the traffic patrol car.

The horn made Cora turn her head. In the split second before she rounded the corner, she could see the black sedan righting itself as it sped down the block.

Cora’s first thought was,
I’m being tailed
.

Her second thought was,
I watch too many movies
.

Nonetheless, Cora slowed up, kept an eye on the rearview mirror to see if the black car turned the corner.

It did, skidding as it came, beating the light by an eyelash.

Cora slowed down to get a better look.

Oddly enough, the black sedan, having all but killed itself to make the corner, seemed suddenly to have lost all sense of urgency. It slowed, as if considering parking spots on the block. Since there were none, and since it had zoomed by the perfectly good spot Cora had just left, this seemed a hollow ruse.

Cora slowed some more, tried to make out the driver, but the sun glinting off the tinted windshield spoiled her view. And the driver of the car kept hanging back.

Of course, Cora rationalized, this was probably all in her mind. The person tailing her was probably some housewife taking her toy poodle to the groomer.

On the other hand, it might not be.

Cora pulled up to the corner, put her directional
signal on left. In her mirror, the black sedan also signaled left.

The light at the corner had been green for some time. Just before Cora got there it turned yellow. Now all she had to do was snap a quick left, and the black sedan would never make it.

Cora didn’t do that. She slowed in the left-hand lane, came to a complete stop, let the light turn red.

Waited for the black sedan to pull up behind her, so she could check out the driver.

The black sedan had a change of heart. Its left-turn signal abruptly changed to a right. The car pulled up to a fireplug halfway down the block.

The woman-with-dog theory was beginning to look like a long shot.

Cora waited through what seemed like an interminable series of lights. Finally catching a green, she hung a quick left, sped down the block, and made a right, leaving the black sedan in the dust. It hadn’t made the left yet, wouldn’t know where she’d gone.

Gotcha!
Cora thought. She hunched over the wheel, Gene Hackman in
The French Connection
, Steve McQueen in
Bullitt
. Ignoring the light at the next corner, she skidded into a right and floored it, weaving in and out of traffic. She reached the next corner, ran her second straight red light, and hung her third straight right turn.

Now she was back on the street where she’d started, heading for the corner where she’d turned left, only from the opposite direction. She reached it, and hung her fourth right, completing the square.

Sure enough, halfway down the block, the black sedan was crawling along, trying to figure out where the hell she’d gone.

Cora couldn’t resist. She drove down the street, crept up behind the black sedan.

It was a Chevy with Connecticut plates. Cora pulled up closer. She hit the brake, fumbled in her purse for a notebook, wrote the license-plate number down.

Then she pulled up alongside the car. In the front seat was a fortyish blonde, with teased hair and too much makeup, chattering away on her cell phone. The woman was off in her own little world, probably not even aware she was driving a car.

Poking out the backseat window was the unmistakable nose of a toy poodle. That brought Cora up short. Her sarcastic prediction had come remarkably true.

Cora snorted in disgust. Of course it had. This wasn’t the only black sedan in the world. The one following her wouldn’t have parked in the middle of the block. It would have sped to the corner to see if she turned off on either street.

Cora did that now, looked both directions, saw nothing. Had the sedan been smart enough to follow the turns she made? Was it in back of her now?

No, the only black sedan behind her was dog-lady, planning her life. The black sedan, arriving at the corner too late and seeing nothing, would continue through the light to the next, and the next, looking up each side street.

Cora did the same. To no avail.

The black sedan had vanished.

Chief Harper took a sip of coffee. His smile was ironic. “You want me to run a license plate?”

“That’s right.”

“Because you
think
you were being followed?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Only the plate you want me to run
isn’t
the plate of the car you think was following you?”

“No, that car got away.”

“Since you can’t run the license plate of the car it
was
, you’d like to run the license plate of the car it
wasn’t
.”

“On the off chance I’m wrong.”

“Off chance? How could you possibly go wrong, bringing me a story like this?”

“I admit it’s shaky.”

“Shaky? Miss Felton, I can come up with a better conspiracy theory just going to the post office. You think the cop’s in on it. You think the doctor’s covering up. You think the car that isn’t following you might be following you.”

“That’s hardly a fair assessment of what I said.”