Sing It to Her Bones (17 page)

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.

I stripped some thyme from a spindly stalk and rolled the leaves between my fingers until the sweet, sharp aroma reached my nose. It would have taken
days of major-league weeding, hoeing, and pruning to get that garden looking even halfway presentable. A breeze rippled through a clump of pampas grass, suddenly reminding me of the weeds growing wild about the cistern where I had found poor Katie’s body. Where had she spent the last hours of her young life, I wondered, and, more important, with whom?

I shuddered and reminded myself that the answer might very well lie somewhere inside this house. Using my key, I let myself in through the back door.

When I returned to reception, only one patient remained in the waiting room, an overlarge woman in a loose cotton dress whose broad bottom encroached on the nearby chairs. “Have you signed in?” I asked. She nodded. I pushed through the swinging doors into the medical records room and stood there for a few seconds wondering what to do with lunch when Dr. Chase emerged from Examining Room A. He stripped off his latex gloves with a snap like a rubber band and tossed them into an oversize trash can next to the door.

I cradled the bag in my hand. “If I don’t do something with this soon, Doctor, the bag’s going to break.” I showed him where the condensation from the iced tea bottles was beginning to soak through the bottom of the paper bag. I nodded toward his private office down the hall. “Should I take it in there?”

“Oh, thanks, Hannah.” He nodded. “Just put it on my desk, will you?” He lifted the chart I had placed in the wall pocket outside Examining Room B, consulted
it briefly, then tucked it under his arm. “And put Mrs. Logan in A. As soon as I finish with her, I’ll be able to take a break for lunch.”

Dr. Chase disappeared into the examining room and shut the door.

Patting myself on the back for how neatly I’d just engineered an excuse to spend a little legitimate time in Dr. Chase’s office, I hurried in. It wasn’t any neater than the first time I had seen it yesterday. Bookcases, full to overflowing with books, medical journals, framed photographs, and carved duck decoys covered the chocolate brown walls. A large wooden desk stood in the center of the room, the two legs nearest me planted firmly on the fringe of an antique oriental carpet.

I set the bag down on the desk, first clearing a space by shoving a few charts aside. I withdrew the plastic-wrapped plate holding his tuna on rye and one of the bottles of iced tea. Out of habit, I set the damp bottle down on a folded napkin to keep it from ringing the desk, although a new blemish would hardly have been noticed among the many others that marred the once highly polished walnut. Intersecting circles decorated the surface, like those on the Olympic flag. A nice ring was forming now around the perimeter of a coffee mug, half full of a viscous brown liquid that even a good nuking in the microwave couldn’t have made drinkable. I picked up the mug and used another napkin to wipe up the spill and, to be thorough, followed the liquid trail to where it disappeared under a corner of the desk blotter.

I was straightening the blotter when I realized that there was something stuck underneath it. Since I had recently spent long minutes nosing around in the good doctor’s records without a second thought, it surprised me that I now felt like a cat burglar. I glanced over my shoulder toward the door, lifted the corner of the blotter, stooped, cocked my head, and peered under it. Green, yellow, and orange tabs.
Ohmagawd!
I had my finger on the chart and was just beginning to slide it toward me when I heard Dr. Chase’s voice behind me in the hall.

By the time the doctor appeared in his office doorway, I had dropped the corner of the blotter, twisted the cap off a bottle of iced tea, and was busily stripping the paper wrapper from a straw. My heart was pounding so loudly in my ears that I thought he’d hear it from where he stood—without a stethoscope.

“Lunch is served.” I popped the straw into the bottle and tapped it down where it sat for a moment as if thinking about something, then floated up lazily. “Would Monsieur like the see the dessert menu?”

Dr. Chase chuckled and rubbed his hands together briskly. “Tira misu? Crême brulée?”

I pulled the remaining Milky Way out of the bag. “Will this do?”

He settled comfortably into his desk chair. “Thanks, Hannah, but I’m afraid I don’t eat chocolate.”

“Doctor, I am shocked. Deeply shocked.” I pocketed the candy. “All the more for the rest of us, as my mother used to say.” With a show of nonchalance that
I didn’t feel, I backed toward the door, certain that the letters
G-U-I-L-T
must be emblazoned across my forehead. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the blotter. As I waited for it to rise up, point, and accuse me of snooping, I noticed that Dr. Chase probably hadn’t been in his office all morning. The Post-It messages I had taken for him were stuck all over his telephone and lampshade. He picked up one of the messages now, took a bite of his sandwich, and began to dial.

“Anything else you need?” I asked.

“No, thanks, Hannah. Eat your lunch, but stay by the phone. After lunch you’ll probably have time to pull charts for the afternoon.”

I negotiated the hallway in a daze, then sat down at the reception desk. I unwrapped my sandwich and stared at it, but my stomach was tied in such nervous knots that I didn’t feel very hungry.
Please don’t move that chart! Not until after I’ve had a chance to check it out
.

I drank some tea and found myself wondering why Katie’s chart had been hidden. Maybe it had been in the file room all along and Dr. Chase hadn’t given it a thought until I mentioned it yesterday. Maybe he’d found it in the files and put it under his blotter for safekeeping so it wouldn’t get lost in all the clutter. But then again, maybe he was involved in Katie’s murder right up to his scrawny little neck. I nibbled my sandwich in silence, watching as the buttons on the telephone blinked on and off as the doctor returned his calls.

Maybe it isn’t Katie’s chart at all. Lots of names start with DUN
, I reasoned. Duncan, for example, or Dunnet or Dunstable. Angie had put an extra pickle on my plate, and I ate it slowly. I’d have to make my opportunity. I checked the appointment book. Beginning at two o’clock, there were six appointments plus two folks who had called in: eight patients in all. I polished off the last potato chip, washed the salt off my hands at the kitchen sink, and pulled the charts. Eight patients would certainly be sufficient to keep the doctor busy long enough for me to get back into his office and take a second look under his blotter.

As I stood behind the reception desk, lost in thought, the intercom on the telephone buzzed so loudly that I nearly jumped out of my pantyhose. “Hannah,” Dr. Chase said when I picked up, “if you’re finished with lunch, I’ve got a few prescriptions for you to call in.”

I tossed the remains of my lunch in the trash and hurried back to his office. As I reached for the prescriptions, I noticed that the blotter had been moved a few inches closer to the lamp. Blast! I flashed what I hoped was a disarming smile, told him I’d take care of the prescriptions right away, and turned to go.

“Hannah?”

Oh-oh
. I held my breath.

“How are you feeling? I’ve been so busy I forgot to ask.”

I had to think for a minute before I realized what on earth he was talking about. I’d nearly forgotten about my tumble off the sailboat. “Much better, thanks. The medication really helped.”

The doctor balled up his sandwich wrapper and, with a flip of his wrist, made a perfect rim shot to the trash can. “Good. Just make sure you don’t overdo it, okay?”

I promised I wouldn’t, all the time thinking,
Fat chance!
I called prescriptions in to the local Giant and Safeway pharmacies and waited, with butterflies in my stomach, for the waiting room to fill up. At two-thirty I got a break. With a Pap smear in A and an EKG in ?, I calculated that Dr. Chase would be busy for a while.

I felt guilty about hustling the poor woman in A into a paper gown and assisting her up onto the examining table without so much as a magazine to pass the time. How many countless hours had I spent lying about on upholstered tables covered with paper, feeling forgotten, with the air-conditioning whistling through gaps between the ties in my robe, freezing my back, boobs, or buns? How many doctors had kept me waiting with nothing to do but count the holes in the acoustical ceiling tiles? So I used up precious minutes making sure she had everything she needed.

“Comfy?” I asked.

She held the inadequate gown together at her chest with a heavily ringed hand. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I am,” I said, and handed her a copy of the
New Yorker
magazine that was, amazingly, only two weeks old. She looked like the
New Yorker
type.

“Do me a favor,” she said.

I raised my eyebrows.

“Ask him to warm up the speculum.”

I laughed and patted her chubby knee. “Will do!”

I closed the door behind me and tiptoed down the hall feeling like the thief I was about to become. Just outside the door of Examining Room ? I paused. Inside, I could hear the doctor’s low voice speaking in soothing tones to a patient who was a nervous mountain of a man in his late seventies. As cover—I figured I needed it—I grabbed two charts from the pile waiting to be filed and scurried back to Dr. Chase’s inner sanctum, trying to appear as if I knew what I was doing. Even so, when I finally stood in his office doorway, my face burned and I found myself acutely aware of everything in the room. The framed diploma hanging crookedly on the wall next to the window, the faded floral drapes parted to reveal the untidy garden with the Crestar Bank sign in the near distance behind it, a VCR blinking red at 12:00, even the damned decoys all seemed to have eyes and were staring at me.

I crossed to the desk, held my breath, and raised a corner of the blotter. The chart was still there. I pulled it out, hardly daring to believe what I read on the label: Dunbar, Katherine Louise.

I stood there wasting valuable time, my heart thudding in my ears, flipping through the pages, trying to interpret old Dr. Chase’s scrawls, symbols, and abbreviations. I don’t know what I expected, notes in a neat, round hand maybe like “This girl’s pregnant” or “The rabbit died,” so I was disappointed when at first I couldn’t make heads or tails out of anything I saw. Katie’s chart might just as well have been written in code. I found a date: 10/2/90. That was a good sign.
BP125/70 must have been her blood pressure and I certainly knew what Pap and menses were, but the meaning of the rest of it, including a funny little diagram with lines and numbers, completely escaped me. I had the feeling that even if I had worked for Dr. Chase’s father for a hundred years, I’d still have needed an interpreter to decipher those Martian runes. It wasn’t until I turned to the next page that I saw it: “A/P:1 8 wk pregnancy.” I didn’t need a translator for that!

It had been my intention to slip a few pages out of the chart and photocopy them, but I forgot about the fasteners. Katie’s chart consisted of approximately twenty pages held together by a metal bar that passed through two holes that had been punched through the top of each sheet with the ends folded over and secured with another thin strip of metal.
Nuts!
I’d have to borrow the whole chart. I stuck Katie’s chart among those still in my hand. Clutching the booty to my chest, I ventured out into the hallway and was halfway to the photocopier when the door to Examining Room B opened and Dr. Chase emerged with the old gentleman, who looked so fat and flushed that I expected him to stroke out at any minute. I stood in the hallway grinning stupidly as the two men passed and the doctor began what I now recognized as his customary farewell ritual. I knew he’d spend time standing at the front door waving the old guy down the sidewalk, so I made a mad dash for the photocopier.

The machine was ominously quiet.

Damn and double damn!
Dr. Chase must have
turned the photocopier off while I was fetching lunch. Now I would have an infuriating wait while the blasted thing warmed up. I folded a few pages back and slammed Katie’s chart against the glass. I mashed the photocopier cover over the chart and held it down while I waited for the ready light to come on.
Shit!
I heard a familiar thud as the front door closed, followed by the sound of Dr. Chase’s footsteps returning down the hall. Through the glass panels of the swinging doors I could see the approaching expanse of his white lab coat and flashes of light reflecting off his little, round glasses.