Snapshot (16 page)

Maybe return to the scene of the crime and atone for it.

“What do you mean, hassled?” Mooney's voice interrupted my thoughts. “This is hassling?”

“Yeah.”

“Hah.” He smacked his glass down so hard I thought it would break. “If you want that plate number, owner, you give up your client.”

“Unfair,” I said.

“So?”

Dammit. Mrs. Woodrow had insisted that a stranger, a doctor, a man in a white coat had been present when her daughter died. Keith Donovan had asserted that Emily was hallucinating the incident. Harold Woodrow had intimated that his wife was a liar. Pablo Peña, JHHI's resident anesthesiologist, had denied shoving anyone out of a hospital room. And now I couldn't ask Tina Sukhia which one, if any, had been telling the truth.

With a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach, I wondered exactly where Emily Woodrow had been when Tina died. I hadn't yet received the day's mail, but I found myself hoping it wouldn't contain a confession.

“Mooney, let me get back to you.”

“Carlotta, the more time goes by, the less chance I've got.”

“Don't quote the stats at me. There's no pressure here, Moon. It's not like you found a city councillor with a knife in his back. The press is gonna see a minority nurse dead in some drug scam. Inside page, Metro, under the fold.”

“Tomorrow,” Mooney said.

“What about the license plate?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Moon, please.”

“What is this crap? I can wait, but you can't? If this plate has to do with Sukhia, the whole deal's off.”

“Mooney, it's Paolina. The plate belongs to a guy who's hustling Paolina.”

He gave me a hard look, but then he sighed and yanked his notebook out of his pocket. “This loser's twenty-eight years old,” he said.

“That's why I want to stop him fast.”

He made a face. “Plate's registered to Paco Lewis Sanchez. One five eight Peterborough, Boston.”

“What else?”

“Height: five-ten. Weight: one ninety-five.”

“What else?”

“That's all I got.”

“You could run him through NCIC,” I suggested. “Keep the crime computer ticking.”

“It'll cost,” Mooney said.

“Repayment in kind,” I replied.

“Like first thing tomorrow, everything you know about Tina Sukhia?”

“She's dead,” I said. “And the only way I even know that is from you.”

“You can trust me on it,” he said.

“Trust has to go both ways,” I replied.

“Like love?” he asked after a pause. Mooney's been trying to turn my attentions away from Sam for as long as I can remember. He might have succeeded, too, if we'd never worked in the same chain of command.

“Like lust,” I said. “I don't know a lot about love.”

“Yeah?”

“And what I do know about love,” I said, “I don't trust.”

18

She'd told me not to phone.

I punched her number as soon as Mooney's footsteps cleared the porch.

I've never yet tossed a client to the cops, but there's always a first time. I figured I'd use Tina's death to throw a scare into Emily Woodrow, speed up the process, get her to level with me. About her promised packet of information. About Cee Co. About why she needed a person with firearms expertise to take charge of her mysterious paperwork. Or else.

As the phone rang, I doodled on my blotter and tried to envision Emily, in her elegant beige suit, plunging a loaded hypodermic into Tina Sukhia's arm. Or, more likely, forcing her to swallow a quantity of pills.

Had Emily ever been a nurse?

If Patsy Ronetti had done her job, I'd already know. Why the hell hadn't she gotten back to me?

“Hello?” The voice was harried, anxious. I'd reached Harold, the husband, which seemed odd in the middle of the day. When I gave my name and asked to speak to his wife, he erupted, but not in the way I'd expected.

“She's not here,” he shouted. “She's not with her mother. Her friends don't know where she is!”

“Calm down.”

“She didn't come home last night. Her asshole therapist, the jerk, doesn't know where the hell she is.”

“She didn't tell you where she was going?”

“Shopping, for Chrisake, something like that. What do I know? How do I know?”

“Have you, uh, called anyone?”

“The police, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Why on earth would I call the police? Bitch walks out on me. On
me
! What did you tell her about me?”

“Huh?”

“It's not like she's been a comfort lately, you know? A helpmate. If she ever spoke to me in a civil tone anymore … It's not like … Well, things might be different with us, that's all. Ever hear the one about how there are two sides to every story?”

“I'm not sure what story you're trying to tell me,” I said.

His voice grew tight with suspicion. “Is she with you?”

“Yeah,” I said sarcastically, “that's why I called to speak to her.”

He hung up. I bit my tongue and winced.

Roz came speeding by and homed in on the refrigerator. She wore black from her leggings to her bustier. On the side that wasn't shaved, her white hair was developing greenish streaks. It looked like she was aging in a fashion usually reserved for plants.

I said, “Busy?”

“No more cleaning,” she pleaded. “C'mon. My hands stink. Something in Marta's refrigerator went right through the rubber gloves.”

“Soak them in turpentine,” I suggested.

Instead she displayed them five inches from my nose, full of odd rings and chartreuse nail polish. “Smell.” Her toenails were the same chartreuse.

“No, thanks.” I described the guy who'd escorted Paolina to her aunt's house. Then I scribbled Paco Sanchez's address on a scrap of paper. “See where this guy lives, what he does, who he sees. Drives a blue Firebird.” I wrote down the plate number as well.

“Maybe I can borrow Lemon's van.”

“Good idea. See if you can borrow it without borrowing him.”

“Two's better.” Lemon is her karate instructor and sometime lover. They share a penchant for slogans: hers on T-shirts; his plastered on the bumpers of his van—everything from friendly whales spouting
SAVE THE HUMANS
to travelers' warnings such as
NEW YORK CITY—WHERE THE WEAK ARE KILLED AND EATEN
.

“Two's better for what?” I asked.

“Surveillance.”

“One's cheaper,” I responded. The Woodrow riches weren't going to pay for this investigation.

“If it doesn't cost, you got any objection to him coming along for the ride?” she asked.

“Just don't miss the Sanchez guy 'cause you're busy screwing in the back of the van, okay?”

“Would I do a thing like that?”

“Oh, Roz,” I said. “Yes. You have and you would. But why rake up the past?”

19

When I dialed the Foley-Sukhia number, I got the recording again. Tina must have made the tape, and it was disconcerting to hear the cheerful voice of a dead woman over the line. While I listened, I recalled her photograph, white cap perched on glossy hair, smiling unlined face. I left no message.

After a glance at my watch, I quickly changed from torn jeans to black slacks. The grubby sweatshirt hit the laundry basket. I yanked a pea-green cowl-neck over my head, a sweater I've had since my Detroit high-school days, made of some indestructible acrylic fiber that never balls and never rips. I'm sure the clothing industry outlawed it years ago.

I combed my hair with my fingers as I dashed down the stairs.

My house has a stoop. Keith Donovan's house, two doors down, has a porch big enough to call a veranda. I rang the bell and paced, hoping I'd timed it right. Five minutes before the hour to five minutes after the hour, a psychiatrist ought to answer his bell.

He came to the door wearing a gray oxford-cloth shirt and charcoal slacks, his unknotted tie draped around his neck.

“Hey,” he said. “Caught me off guard. This patient's always late.”

“Spare a minute?” I asked.

“Have you seen Emily? Spoken with her?”

“My questions exactly.”

“She's not at your house?”

“She's not at yours?” I returned.

He pulled at one end of his tie and glanced hastily up and down the street. “Why don't you come in?”

His floor plan wasn't much different from mine. Foyer with staircase. Single step down to the living room. Dining room straight through the foyer. There the resemblance ended. If he did his own decorating, he was wasted as a therapist. A job at
House and Garden
beckoned. The foyer had been set up as a waiting room with a hunter-green loveseat and two inviting chairs. The wallpaper picked up the green of the loveseat. The area rug was a plushy Oriental.

He peered into a gilt-framed mirror, executed a flawless Windsor knot. If my foyer looked like his, I could raise my rates.

He'd taken the entire living room for his office, not just a corner of it like I had. It made me wonder about him. Where did he do his entertaining? Where did his friends hang out? Was he the workaholic the room suggested?

His inlaid mahogany desk probably cost more than every stick of furniture in my house. He couldn't have been a practicing, high-earning shrink for long. Cambridge is full of trust-fund babies. I wondered if he was one of them. Maybe he had an exceptionally wealthy practice. Or an extremely rich wife.

If he had a wife, there was no evidence of her existence. No ring on the man's hand. No framed photo on the desk.

I avoided sitting on the nearby couch. Made me feel too much like a patient. I settled for a tall chair with its back to the window. From the expression on Donovan's face, I'd copped his favorite seat.

“I haven't much time,” he said.

“Did you and Emily Woodrow ever talk about the nurse-practitioner who was with Rebecca when she died?” I asked, skipping to the meat and potatoes.

“Emily's husband called me, all worked up—”

“I've spoken with him. Any reason he'd expect to find Emily at your house?”

“What do you mean?”

Looking at his guarded face, I could tell he knew exactly what I meant. Lately, you open any newspaper, there's a story about some therapist who's getting sued for seducing a patient.

“I mean what I said,” I responded. “Mrs. Woodrow calls you Keith. You call her Emily. I thought you might be close.”

“You thought I might be sleeping with her? As part of her treatment?” He sounded amused rather than outraged.

“Not really,” I admitted.

“But you needed to ask.”

“Unlikelier events have occurred,” I said.

“She's not my type,” he offered.

“So what about the nurse?” I asked.

“You don't want to ask me what my type is?”

“Not at the moment. The nurse.”

“Emily talked about her,” he conceded. “Can I call her Emily without you drawing any cheap conclusions?”

“Did Emily talk about her by name?”

His raised eyebrows implied he'd be humoring me by answering such a ridiculous question. I hate that.

“Did Emily use her name?” I insisted.

“If you want to know the name, I'd have to check my notes—”

“Tina ring a bell?”

“Tina. Yes.”

Dammit, I thought. “A last name?” I asked.

“Is it important?”

“Start looking at those notes. Did Emily ever seem to blame Tina for Rebecca's death?”

He made no move toward his desk or wherever he kept his files. “In the past three months, Emily has gone so far as to blame Congress for her daughter's death,” he said with a twist of his mouth.

“Have any congressmen been found dead today?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“The body of a nurse named Tina Sukhia was found at JHHI this morning.”

“Sukhia.” He recognized the name, all right.

“And now Emily's missing,” I said. “And that might be a coincidence.”

“It would have to be a coincidence. What else could it be?”

“I can think of a startling number of possibilities.”

“Such as?”

“Tina Sukhia came into some money recently.
After
she lost her job.” I left out the new job. I didn't intend to discuss Cee Co. with Emily's therapist. If she'd felt comfortable talking to him about it, she wouldn't have invented a ruse to see me alone.

“Maybe she quit
because
she came into money,” he said.

“See. You can play the game, too,” I said.

“Your turn.”

“Emily has money. She could have used it to buy information.”

“Such as?” Donovan asked.

“The identity of the man who was in the room when Rebecca died.”

“The man Emily
says
was in the room,” he retorted.

I got the feeling he was less than happy with the present situation, that he'd much prefer to lean back in his own chair, above the fray, and ponder somebody else's problems. “Another thing you can buy with money is silence,” I suggested.

“So? Go on.”

Could Cee Co. be some abbreviated form of the Ruhly department-store chain, the source of Emily's wealth? Maybe the Ruhly empire consisted of a group of “Clothing Co-ops” or “Cecilia's Corners.” Maybe Tina's new “job” was to blackmail Emily Woodrow.

“Is it possible that Emily could have monkeyed with a piece of machinery, done something that inadvertently caused her daughter's death?” I asked.
And that Tina might have seen her do it
, I thought.

Donovan removed his reading glasses from his pocket, tapped them against his thigh. “Emily feels a basic responsibility for the child's death,” he admitted. “Of course, that's not unusual.”