Trust Me (34 page)

“Thanks, Tom.”

“No problem. Call me if you need anything else. Even at 3
A.M.
”

Quietly, Max put the phone down. He sat for a long time, not moving. There was a strange tightness in his chest, similar to
the way he felt when he passed an accident scene on the freeway. The twisted metal and shattered glass were there, right there,
just beyond the edge of his vision, and as much as he did not want to turn and look, he did.

He looked with hard eyes, and he saw betrayal. To think that only a few hours ago, he had been wondering about the point at
which a string of coincidences added up to significance.
How about now?
he thought, and almost laughed, despite the sick feeling in his chest.
Is this enough?
The terms of the trust hadn’t been enough. Pauline’s sighting of the van hadn’t been enough. Henry’s unconscious groans,
the question of the dogs, even the
second
sighting of Carly’s van hadn’t been quite enough to make him accept what had always been there, right in front of him. After
a few more weeks of this, even a video of Carly dragging Henry’s unconscious body would probably just make him insist that
the tape’s resolution wasn’t clear enough for a positive ID.

He felt as if someone had taken a dull knife and gouged a furrow through his heart. But what right did he have to be so stunned?
He had known, all along, that he was playing a dangerous game. Only a fool would build his house on a fault line, then announce
that he was shocked— shocked!—when the earth moved and his walls came tumbling down.

You gambled
, Max said cruelly to himself.
And you lost. Deal with it.
He had come too far and fought too hard to let himself be sidelined by something like this. Carly Martin hadn’t lied to him
any more than he had lied to himself. He had put blinders on his own eyes, but finally he was beginning to see things very
clearly. Rigid self-delusion might have killed his mother, but he was smarter than she had been, and not so easy to destroy.

“
C
arly,” Michelle said over the clinic intercom. “There’s someone here to see you.”

Carly turned her head so quickly that her nose bumped into the side of the kitten sitting on her shoulder. The kitten squeaked
and dug in her tiny claws. Carly grimaced and reached up to disengage the small, sharp creature.

“Who is it?” she asked. She handed the kitten to Brian and reached up to smooth her shirt.
It’s Max
, she thought, relieved.
It has to be. Thank goodness.

Something strange had happened last night. She had come home to find a phone message saying that he would not be coming to
dinner. He had made no excuse, and his voice had been as cool and impersonal as a stranger’s. She had immediately phoned the
hospital, afraid that something terrible had happened to Henry, and had been relieved to hear that everything was fine.

Max was not at the hospital or his hotel. Finally, Carly had tried his cell phone but reached only the voice mail. She left
a message and waited up until one in the morning for him to call, but he never did. Finally, puzzled and tired, she had fallen
asleep.

She had tried again that morning, with no luck, and had gone to work with an anxious feeling in her stomach. Something important
had come up, she told herself, and he hadn’t gotten back to the hotel until very late. He had not called her because he hadn’t
wanted to disturb her. He hadn’t realized how curt his message had sounded, and he didn’t know that she was worried.

“She won’t tell me her name,” Michelle said. “Or anything else. She says that she needs to talk to you.”

“She?” Carly’s rising hope slumped. It was not Max.
Well
, she thought.
Fine.
Whatever was going on with him would certainly be straightened out soon, and as for now, it was time to stop thinking about
it.

To her surprise, it was Edie in the waiting room. The girl had not taken a seat, although there were several available. She
stood, hovering halfway between Michelle’s desk and the door, as if she thought that she might need to make a break for freedom.
Her arms were folded against her chest, holding the edges of her leopard-print coat closed around her.

“Edie,” Carly said, “how did you know where to find me?”

“You’re in the phone book,” Edie said, as if she were speaking to an idiot. She hugged herself more tightly. “I thought your
place would be bigger.”

Carly smiled. “You should see the size of my office. Since you’re here, would you like a tour? I have a few minutes before
my next appointment.”

Edie shrugged. “I guess.”

The girl was mostly quiet as they walked down the hall, stopping to see the exam rooms, the lab, and the treatment room. They
looked into the surgery, which was not being used that day. Tuesday was normally one of Richard’s intensive workdays, but
he was still at the conference in Florida and was not due back until the next morning.

Edie looked impressed, in spite of herself. “It’s like a real hospital.”

“It is a real hospital,” Carly said. She pointed out the various monitors, the dental cleaning equipment, the anesthesia machines,
and Richard’s surgical laser. Next door was the X-ray room, and beyond that, the cat ward. At the sight of the animals, Edie
suddenly came alive. She began walking up and down the length of the small room, looking into the rows of cages, talking to
the cats and peppering Carly with questions.

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked, stopping at one cage to look at a gray tabby who was lying quietly on a folded blanket.
The fur on his abdomen had been shaved, and there was a catheter sutured to the outside of his body. “Is he sick?”

“He’s improving,” Carly said. “He was very sick on Friday. He had a urinary obstruction, which means that there was a mix
of inflammatory cells and mineral crystals clogging up his urethra and preventing him from going to the bathroom when he needed
to. He was vomiting and feeling really terrible.”

“Would he have died?”

“Probably. But he’s going to be okay. I cleared out the blockage, and he’s getting a lot of fluids, to clean out his body
and help his kidneys recover.”

“How do you know that he’s drinking enough?”

“We don’t depend on him to do it. He was on an IV over the weekend. Now he’s getting an electrolyte solution subcutaneously,
which means that we use a needle to put it right under his skin so that he can absorb it quickly.”

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Not much, and it’s making him feel a lot better. He’s due for another round, in fact. If you want, I’ll teach you how to
do it, and you can sit with him while he gets the fluids.”

“Me?” Edie looked astonished by the idea.

“I think you could do it. You seem smart enough.” Carly thought that she might finally be learning how to talk to the girl.
She did not tell Edie that she often taught clients how to administer fluids to their own pets at home. In the later stages
of some illnesses, it could be necessary to hydrate an animal daily, and it was quite easy to do, once you got the hang of
it. “Of course, you don’t have to. If you think that it might be too complicated—”

“No, I can do it,” Edie said immediately. She looked defiantly at Carly.

Carly suppressed a smile. “Okay, if you’re sure. Why don’t you come back to the staff room with me, and I’ll get you some
scrubs to wear. You can change in the bathroom. This way.”

Carly introduced Edie to the rest of the staff, and asked Brian to come and help her demonstrate how to give fluids. Edie
learned quickly, as Carly had thought she would. She left them there together, suggesting to Brian that when they were finished,
he take Edie back to the kennel runs. They had two dogs who needed some basic grooming, and it seemed to Carly like a good
next step. She wanted to give Edie as much hands-on work with the animals as possible, partly because she knew that the girl
was good at it, and partly because she thought that such work had a better chance of holding her interest.

Her next two appointments ran long, and it was an hour before she had a chance to go and see how things were going. She found
Brian and Pam in the lab, but Edie was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is she?” Carly asked. “She didn’t leave, did she?”

“No, she’s out back,” Brian said. “Smoking.”

“She found a pack of Dr. Wexler’s cigarettes and asked if she could have them,” Pam announced, looking up from the sink where
she was washing slides. “I wasn’t going to stop her. I thought if I said no, she might stab me.”

Carly sighed and looked at Brian. “Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she’s okay. She isn’t too friendly—”

“She sure isn’t,” Pam cut in. “What’s her problem?” Brian ignored the interruption. “But it’s just an act. She talks tough,
but she isn’t really mean.”

“Oh, excuse me,” Pam said. “I didn’t know you two were such good friends. What’s with all of that eyeliner? She looks like
a hooker.”

“Don’t be a jerk,” Brian said sharply. “She’s a runaway.”

Pam’s mouth dropped open, and she stared at him. Carly was equally taken aback. In the few weeks that the young man had worked
at the clinic, he had been as quiet and meek as a mouse. Apparently, he had shocked himself, too, because he turned bright
red and hunched his shoulders. “She wants to learn,” he muttered. “And she asks smart questions.”

“Is she going to work here?” Pam asked.

“I hope so,” Carly said. “Look, you guys. I know that she can be difficult, but she’s had a tough time, and she needs our
help. It would mean a lot to me if you would try to ignore her attitude for now. I think she’ll turn out to be worth it if
we all invest a little effort. Will you do it for me? Please?”

“Oh, all right,” Pam grumbled.

“I’ll work with her,” Brian said. “I don’t mind. She’s not that bad, and she really loves animals.”

Edie was standing in the small yard behind the clinic, leaning against the wall. When she saw Carly, she dropped the butt
of her cigarette and stepped on it. She looked younger and smaller in Carly’s light blue scrubs, like a child dressed up in
her mother’s clothes.

“How’s it going?” Carly asked.

Edie wouldn’t look at her. “I have to leave,” she said.

“Now? But—” Carly stopped herself, remembering Max’s strategy. “Well, okay. Thanks for coming over.”

The girl gave a slight shrug, still staring at the ground.

“I saw the dogs that you worked on,” Carly said. “They look good.”

“Thanks.”

“So… do you think you might come back sometime?”

Edie raised her head, and Carly was surprised to see that her eyes were red and swollen. “I can’t work here,” she muttered.
“I just waited around to tell you that.”

“Oh,” Carly said, surprised. “You know, if there’s any problem with Pam, I’ll talk to her and make sure that—”

Edie snorted dismissively. “You think I can’t handle her? I don’t care about her. It’s that other guy, the one in the picture.
I don’t like him.”

Carly was totally mystified by this. “What guy?”

“That’s his car,” Edie said, pointing. “Right?”

“That’s Dr. Wexler’s car,” Carly said. He had left his Porsche sitting in the private driveway behind the clinic while he
was away, because he did not have off-street parking at his apartment in Sausalito.

“I didn’t know his name,” Edie said. “I didn’t know he was a vet, either.”

“Edie, what are you talking about?”

“I just told you. I saw his picture inside, and that girl Pam told me that he works here. I know him because he comes to my
friend’s house to meet this guy named Darius, who supplies a lot of the rich guys.”

“I don’t understand,” Carly said slowly.

Edie threw her an angry look. “Moron,” she snapped. “Wake up. Your friend is a cokehead. He snorts that stuff like he’s got
no bottom in his wallet. He’s one of Darius’s best customers, and he’s been coming around as long as I’ve been there, which
is more than a year. How can you not know that? The amount he buys, he must be messed up all the time. How can you let him
do surgery on animals?” She sniffled and kicked furiously at the ground. “You make me sick.”

Carly felt as if her heart had just stopped in her chest. There was a roaring sound in her ears, and she put one hand against
the brick wall to steady herself. “Are you sure?” she asked in a choked voice.

“I should have known that you wouldn’t believe me,” Edie said. “Who cares. I’m getting out of here.” She turned, about to
leave, but Carly reached out and grabbed her by her bony arm.

“What are you doing?” Edie demanded. “Get off me!”

“Edie,” Carly exclaimed, looking the girl right in the eyes. “Answer me right now. Are you absolutely sure? Are you
positive
that my partner, Richard Wexler, is the man who you saw buying drugs? If you say yes, I’ll believe you.”

Edie stopped pulling. “Yes,” she said sullenly. “It’s not like it was just one time, okay? I told you, he’s been coming around
for a while.”

Carly let go of the girl’s arm. She closed her eyes and ran her hands over her face like a sleepwalker awakening from a dream.
“My God. It’s true. I
am
a moron.”