“Mrs. Fletcher,” Spellman said defensively, “we-”
“I think you should go now,” Mrs. Goddard said. It was not a request. Spellman flipped shut his notepad, made brief eye contact with his partner, and took two steps toward the door.
“Aren’t you going to tell me not to leave town, Lieutenant?” Rachel demanded bitterly.
Spellman turned. “No, ma’am, I’m not going to tell you that.” It was rare, I thought, to see a homicide investigator leave a room with his tail between his legs. Kind of fun, actually. It’s not that I didn’t like Spellman; I just took a certain perverse delight in seeing the mighty put in their place.
“Why don’t I let you two young people talk alone? I’ll go see if they need anything out there.”
Rachel kept her back turned to me, following Mrs. Goddard out of the room with her eyes. When she was safely out of sight, Rachel turned to me, her blue eyes wide open, relieved.
“I’ve been so worried about you. What happened at the hospital last night?”
“I heard a noise,” I whispered. “I went into the room. It was dark so I fumbled for the light. When I got it on, I saw Conrad stretched out on a bed. He was still breathing, though. I bent over him to see how badly hurt he was. Somebody came up behind me and knocked me silly. That’s all I remember for a few seconds, which was just enough time to give the other person a chance to get away.”
She held a hand up to her mouth, palm inward, almost in horror. “Oh my heavens. The police didn’t give me much in the way of details. Most of what I’ve been able to get has been out of the newspaper.”
“That’s not what we need to worry about now, Rachel. I need to know exactly what you know about Conrad’s gambling. I think I may have a line on who he owed money to, but we need to-”
“No. I won’t have it.”
“Won’t have what?”
“You’re through, Harry. I want you to stop this.” Her voice was tight as she strained to be forceful without being heard by her company in the other room. “I don’t want whoever killed Connie to get a shot at you. I can’t bear that. You have to quit.”
“Rachel, I can’t quit.” I put my hands on her shoulders without thinking, an unconscious, spontaneous motion. I squeezed her gently; her shoulders were knotted up like cordwood. “Not now. I’ve got to find out what really happened.”
“You’ve got to quit. I’m not going to have you get hurt in this, too.”
“Rachel, I-”
“We’ll talk about it later. We can’t now, not with all these … old biddies … here. Come by tonight, late. I’ll be up.”
I stood back from her. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
She put her hands on her hips, jaw clenched, eyes wide. “Of course, it’s all right. We are adults, aren’t we? We don’t need a chaperone. I’ll have the lights off. Just come up the driveway and park where you are now. The back door’ll be open.”
“Rachel, are you positive this is okay?”
“I just don’t want to hear any gossip from this crew. They think they’re helping, but the truth is they’re driving me crazy. My parents are due in tomorrow night, and Connie’s are going to have to fly back from Europe.” She pulled some blond bangs off her forehead. “God, it’s going to be a long week.”
“I know you’re exhausted. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be alone?”
She looked up at me, her forehead wrinkling. “Eleven tonight,” she said. “Be here.”
10
I pulled out into the thick traffic on Hillsboro Road still wondering just how in blazes Connie Fletcher was paying the mortgage on that place, not to mention the requisite cars, vacations, clothes, parties, landscaping, cleaning lady, and the assorted paraphernalia that go with maintaining that kind of lifestyle.
I pulled left onto the road almost by instinct, crossed the I-440 bridge, and found myself heading back toward the university hospital. I kept thinking that there had to be some way, some contact, somebody I could put the bite on to find what was really happening with the dear departed Dr. Conrad Fletcher and his professional life. If he was in hock to his bookie, maybe he told someone. A friend, perhaps, if he had any. Judging from the reactions of people I’d met in the hospital, Conrad Fletcher wasn’t a man with a wealth of friends. On the other hand, maybe I could find somebody he’d hit on for a loan, or a shoulder to cry on, or just somebody he’d shoot the breeze with. He was human, right? Even doctors need somebody to talk to, rather than at, every now and then.
Then I remembered. I’d been concentrating so hard on Conrad and Rachel that I forgot to put any connection from their life into my own. My father’s closest friend, before my parents retired to Hawaii, was a doctor: Dr. Eugene Hughes. Dr. Gene, we called him. Dr. Gene was a pediatrician, and he and his wife had a surprise late baby after the rest of their children were nearly grown. And that surprise late baby, James, was now in medical school himself.
Guess where? I could have slapped myself as I drove toward Hillsboro Village. And Dr. Hughes lived about ten minutes away. I jerked into the left-hand-turn lane at Wedgewood Avenue, which becomes Blakemore, then changes names again and becomes 31st Avenue. I turned left on West End Avenue, which becomes Harding Road a mile or two down. I drove out past St. Thomas Hospital and turned right onto White Bridge Road, which is Woodmont Boulevard on the other side of the intersection before it becomes Robertson Road the other side of the interstate. What a town.
I lost track of the street names chugging around the steep curves and wandering roads of the part of town called Hill-wood. Dr. Hughes’s house was a big gray one; I remembered that much. But it had been years since I’d been there. The last time was my father’s retirement party. My father and Dr. Hughes had flown in the war together and had been lifelong buddies after that.
There, on that corner, I thought, as I pulled into a steep downhill driveway and coasted to a stop. This looked like the right place. If not, I’d just have to hope they didn’t keep many shotguns around.
Dr. Hughes raised dogs, some of the finest hunting dogs I’d ever seen. I must have smelled like squirrel that day, or maybe they got a whiff of Shadow. Anyway, the dogs went crazy as soon as I got out of the car. I headed away from them, back up the drive to the walk that led to the front door.
I had to ring twice. Dr. Hughes opened the door, stood there holding a newspaper in one hand, his glasses tipped down on his nose, trying for a moment to recognize his dearest, most lifelong friend’s son.
“I’m Harry, Dr. Gene. Harry Denton.”
He paused for a moment, more astonished than anything else. “Well, of course you are, son. I recognized you. I was just trying to figure out if it was really you after all this time.”
He held the metal storm door open for me, and I walked in. The difference in lifestyle between a pediatrician and a hot-rod surgeon was acutely obvious here; Dr. Hughes’s house was large and comfortable, but it was definitely lived in. The furniture was old, most of it from the Fifties and early Sixties, with plenty of evidence that when no one else was looking, Dr. Hughes let the dogs in.
“Good to see you, Harry. It’s been too long.” His voice was jovial, yet with the distinguished edge that educated Southern men start to take on when they get old. It’s as if they live under some compulsion to sound like gentlemen farmers at that stage in life, as if all their great-grandfathers had been Civil War generals. If everybody who claimed to have a Civil War general in his past really had one, the whole damn war would have been fought with nothing but men wearing stars on their collars.
“Good to see you, Dr. Gene. How’ve you been?”
“Just fine, my boy. Just fine.”
Dr. Hughes’s wife had passed on about five years earlier. He’d lived alone until James finished his undergraduate work at Emory and came home to go to medical school. Now the two of them lived by themselves in this big house. And while I’m sure they had someone come by every week or so to clean house, domestic science obviously wasn’t all that much of a priority to them.