The Perils of Peaches (Scents of Murder Book 3) (12 page)

“And now that Momma’s sick.”

“She’s not sick,” I said. “She has a problem with her pancreas gland, and she’s got to take better care of her body now more than ever. I’m headed over to see them this morning. She’s watching Hannah for me.”

“I feel like we should have done something to help keep this from happening. Like telling her not to fry everything or meeting her to go for walks.”

“You know Momma, though. She’d get aggravated at us making a fuss over her.”

“Well, I need to go. Kiss that sweet niece of mine for me, okay?”

“Sure will.” I ended the call as I headed down Momma and Daddy’s driveway. Ironic that I’d just started my family, and now my parents would need me more. No, this wasn’t a death sentence for Momma, but it was a reminder that her body wouldn’t last forever. The harder we treated our bodies, the more likely they’d break down or malfunction the older we got. And sometimes, things just happened.

I unbuckled Hannah from her car seat, and heaved her bag over one shoulder. My little sweetie was already a diva, with her luggage and admirers, and I, her personal assistant. She sneezed.

This made me pause at Momma’s back door. Was she sick? Should I call Barkha? Hannah had runny noses before, and horrible colic, but her boogers looked kind of yellow. I couldn’t maneuver to check her to see if she felt overly warm.

The back door opened.

“What’re you doin’, just standing there? C’mon in!” Daddy drew us into the house.

“Daddy, Hannah’s got a runaway booger and my hands are full.”

We bundled through the laundry room and entered the kitchen where Momma was putting chopped fruit into a blender.

“What are you doin’, Momma?”

She turned to face me. “Well, hello to you too.” Then she focused on Hannah, and wiped her hands on a nearby dish towel. “My little punkin’s come to see me today. And lookie at that runny nose!”

I handed over my daughter and plopped her giant bag on an empty kitchen chair. “Di called me. She said you heard from the doctor.”

Momma waved off my words with her spare hand. Then she snatched a tissue from the box on the table to wipe Hannah’s nose. “Nothing for you to worry about.” She darted a look at Daddy. “I feel fine.”

He looked sheepish. “I had to let the girls know, Pearl.”

“And so you did. But what are they going to do about it? Not much they can do.”

“For one thing, Momma, we want to support you and help you if we can,” I said.

“I’m a grown woman, and I don’t need your help. My doctor has already made me an appointment to go to some diabetic classes. They’re free, you know. I get free recipes, too, so that’s not half bad. I’m going to carpool with some other ladies. One of them can hardly get out of her house, her legs are so bad, but I told her we’ll get to that class one way or the other. Anyway, I’m fine.” Momma pushed a button on the blender, and the thing whirled to life.

“I know you are.” I had to holler over the blender. “We love you, that’s all. Be careful you don’t drink too much of that fruit smoothie there. That can make your blood sugar spike too.”

“But it’s fruit, it’s healthy. And you’re not a doctor.”

“True, but you still need to be careful.” I backed off a little. Momma was a grown woman, and she knew how to listen to doctors and dietitians.

“I’ll ask when I go to that dietitian class.” She turned the blender off. “So why do you look like you’ve been up all night?”

I yawned. “I was at the store, working on a new soap mix. It’s a shea butter blend.”

“Why don’t you just go home and get some rest?”

“I promised Eunice I would help her at the office. She’s taken Dr. Bradley’s death really hard.” At that, my phone warbled.

Eunice, of course.

“Andi, I’m opening the mail here at the office, and I found something you’ve got to see.”

I left Momma’s and stopped long enough to get a tall latte at Higher Grounds. It seems like those little special things I used to do for me, I didn’t get to do with Hannah. Not that she kept me from going by the coffee shop drive-thru window, but because she was ever-present on my mind, if not on my hip, or hanging from her baby sling from my shoulders. I just didn’t think about the same things anymore. I understood how some mothers could end up barely having time to do their hair or makeup before leaving the house.

Eunice sounded frantic on the phone, but I wasn’t going to overreact, especially in a waiting room full of patients. When I entered the lobby of Bradley Medical, Eunice looked at my coffee. “Where’s mine?”

“Um, it’s still at the coffee shop?” I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. If she was trying to joke, her earlier urgency on the phone confused me. Charts stacked on the desk, the calendar in front of Eunice with names and dates crossed out, and probably rewritten.

“I’m just playin’ with ya.” She smiled over my shoulder at a patient who entered behind me.

“Well, what did you have for me to see?” With everything heaped on Eunice’s desk behind the counter, I couldn’t imagine how she kept track of anything.

“Here. Look at this.” Eunice handed me a stack of white business envelopes. “I’d explain, but I’m a bit tied up at the moment—Dr. M’s schedule is full this morning.”

“Thanks.” Mindful of the patients watching me, I went to the kitchen area in the back of the building. I might as well enjoy my coffee before going to work.

Once I settled onto one of the dinette chairs, I scanned the envelopes. Statements from bill collectors, addressed to Franklin Bradley in care of Bradley Medical. Franklin Bradley had defaulted on over fifty thousand dollars in government student loans. And now they were coming after the Bradleys.

Now I remembered more. Franklin had called Dr. Bradley for money on several occasions. Franklin had tried to fund at least one semester-long internship in Europe, and then he changed his major. That was a heated argument. I didn’t know how long he’d been in college, but he seemed older than the average college student.

Would Franklin Bradley have murdered someone for fifty thousand dollars? In some circles, that wasn’t such a lot of money. But to others, that would be the wealth of the world. If Franklin stood to gain by his uncle’s death, and clearly he had, he’d definitely be under high suspicion. But with a tight alibi, I didn’t see how he could have pulled it off. Unless he had an accomplice.

I frowned at this idea. Maybe there was something else in Dr. Bradley’s office that everyone had missed so far.

Dr. Bradley had some secrets as well. What I needed to do was look in his office once more. Surely something needed filing, if Eunice hadn’t gotten to it already. I took my coffee and the envelopes from the kitchen.

Searching Dr. Bradley’s office wasn’t exactly in my job description, but it hadn’t stopped me the other day when I checked out his bathroom. Eunice had conducted her dusting frenzy too.

Eunice appeared in the doorway. “If you want to help, you can file those charts. The police wanted to take them at first, but I told them that was confidential information and if they needed anything specific from any of those patients, we needed a court order.”

At that, I nodded. “I’ll take care of these.” But I waved the bills at her. “If Franklin wants everything straightened out, we’ve got to start somewhere. But we do need to let Jerry know about these collection notices, unless he’s run Franklin’s financials already.”

Eunice opened her mouth, but the office phone rang and rescued me. She whirled in the doorway and left.

I took another gulp of coffee. I missed Di. If she still lived here, we’d meet for lunch and hash over all the suspects. I paused. I still didn’t know the cause of death. It was too soon to call it murder. All I had—and the police had—were some suspicious sounds on a recording.

I set down the bills and started going through the stack of charts, all labeled with a code number and not a patient name. The names that matched the numbers were on computer, so whenever anyone made an appointment, Eunice could pull their chart by number. Another fat file, a dark blue and not manila, was sandwiched in the pile.

The label on the blue file said “Treen Lawsuit.”

I opened the file, and it was a copy of documents filed by a lawyer on behalf of Victor Treen. I blew out a hard breath and let the file flop onto the desktop.

Gloria had never mentioned anything about this at Mommy’s Morning. Now I knew I really needed to talk to Barkha, and Jerry.

Chapter Ten

I found my chance at lunchtime, when Barkha bought lunch from Oat Grass for the three of us. Part of me really wanted one of Ben’s Bongo Burgers from Honey’s, but remembering Momma’s recent diagnosis, I settled for the spinach and feta melt.

“That’s right, Gloria. We’ll take three spring waters with that too.” Eunice hung up the phone at her desk. “Lunch will be here soon.” She moved to turn the office sign on the front door to “closed.”

“Good.” In my haste to get Hannah over to my parents’ house, I’d skipped breakfast. I fed Hannah, of course.

Eunice then disappeared into the kitchen, so I seized my chance and found Barkha in her office.

She was murmuring into her recorder when I entered. “Follow up p.r.n.” She clicked a button and set her recorder down. “I was going to make this a working lunch, but . . .”

I sat down on the chair opposite her desk. “I need your help.”

“What about?”

“Dr. Bradley. I’d like to know, do you think someone could have given him something to kill him?”

Barkha looked thoughtful. “It’s possible. I’d have to find out from Jerry what came up on the initial toxicology report. If he had any red flag drugs in his system, they’d have found the common ones right away.”

“I already have a short suspect list.”

“Am I at the top?”

“No, of course not.”

“If you’re looking for a murderer, you can’t rule out even a friend.”

“I know. I’ve been wrong about people before.” I thought back to my sleuthing of Honey Haggerty’s killer. Nope, I couldn't leave out the ones I wouldn't imagine being a criminal. “Even Tushar is on my list. He wants to protect you. He’s made that clear.”

“I know. I still don’t think he’d do something like that.”

“I’ve seen crimes of passion. He’d have means, motive, opportunity.” I stood and paced the room. “But then I also found a particular folder in Dr. Bradley’s office. Victor Treen filed a malpractice lawsuit against Dr. Bradley, but later withdrew it.”

“What? The Treens were going to sue Dr. Bradley?”

“Evidently. I figured you knew.”

“I didn’t.”

“According to this file, ‘nothing would be served by obtaining monetary gain because of our unfortunate circumstances. We are content to raise our daughter and move on with our lives,’ etc.”

“Most malpractice suits are hard to win,” Barkha said. “Their lawyer probably convinced them that it would cost more to go to court. It would be hard to prove Dr. Bradley acted negligently.”

“But they still backed down. I know if I thought someone tried to hurt Hannah, I’d never back down until they received justice.”

“You’re right.”

We fell silent, and the sound of Eunice’s voice in the front reception area filtered back to us. “Hi, Gloria. Guess they’ve got you on delivery duty today.” Rustling of a paper bag and Gloria’s voice murmuring something in reply to Eunice. Sounds from traffic outside as the front door opened.

What timing. Barkha shifted in her chair.

“I guess lunch is ready,” I said.

“We can talk more about this later,” said Barkha.

“I’ve put our lunches in the kitchen.”

I jumped at Eunice’s voice coming from behind me, close.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Hiram certainly didn’t skimp on the carpet for the office. Said he couldn’t work with noisy feet shuffling everywhere.”

“No problem. And I’m ready to eat.”

Barkha shrugged out of her lab coat and hung it neatly on her coat rack.

The three of us left Barkha’s office to cross the front reception area and head to the kitchen. A glare of sunlight on metal from outside made me squint. Someone had parked a convertible outside, and was getting out from behind the driver’s seat.

“Franklin’s here!” Eunice moved toward the front door as if heading to meet a dignitary. Her demeanor made me pause. She’d talked about how Franklin and Dr. Bradley used to argue. Now she welcomed him. Well, technically speaking, he was our employer now. And Barkha’s business partner with Bradley Medical.

“Oh, good, you’re all here.” Franklin strolled in and removed his sunglasses. I wondered who’d pressed his khakis and chosen his button-down shirt straight from a banker’s closet. That, and where he’d gotten the new wardrobe. His torn jeans and casual T-shirt and necklace had disappeared.

“What’s this about, uh, Mr. Bradley?” Barkha faced him directly. I’d never seen her back down from anyone, especially not the deceased Dr. Bradley. Even that day at Oat Grass. She put her hands on her hips and stood firm. Evidently this young guy wouldn’t faze her either.