Vera clicked through a couple of pages. “I can’t tell you exactly what the numbers mean, but I can tell you his prescription was pretty strong.”
Bingo. “When does Dr. Scarmoon have hours here?” I asked.
“On Mondays and Wednesdays between one and three,” Vera said. “If you like, I can ask him to call you.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “I need to show him something, but I didn’t bring it with me. No need to waste his time until then. Thank you, though. You’ve been so helpful.”
We took our leave of Vera and the clinic.
“And that’s how the big boys do it,” Bailey said with a smirk as she pulled out of the parking lot.
“If the big boys had to work any harder than that, they’d pawn it off on us.”
My cell phone rang. “The Crystal Ship” by the Doors, one of my favorites, which was why I’d given Toni that ringtone.
“What?” I answered.
“I’ll start without you,” she threatened.
“Biltmore bar in half an hour,” I said. Toni hung up.
Bailey stopped for a red light, and I looked outside. A teenage boy danced around a pretty girl seated on a bus bench. She tapped his chest playfully, and he pretended to fall off the curb. She laughed, and he grinned with pleasure, a smile of almost unbearable sweetness.
“Is Drew on tonight?”
“Should be,” Bailey answered. “Why?”
“Romy,” I replied. “It’s time to get it over with.”
Bailey called Drew and told him he needed to come in a little early. When we got there, Toni was already at the bar. I motioned her over to a booth. We’d just slid into our seats when Drew sauntered in, hooked his sunglasses over the neck of his shirt, and joined us. Talk about timing.
Even though I’d already told Bailey the story, I felt my stomach tighten. I was perilously close to chickening out when Bailey forced my hand.
“Rachel’s got something she wants to tell us.”
I made myself take a deep breath. And so I told them about Romy and the fight that’d led to my breakup with Graden. I can’t say I enjoyed it in the doing, but I can say I was glad when it was done.
Drew looked at me with pain in his eyes. “I can’t even tell you how sorry I am.” Then he shook his head. “Girl, the trouble you’ve had in your life, I’d have thought you were black,” he said.
Toni smiled. “Amen, brothah-man.”
We all laughed. I appreciated their efforts to lighten the moment.
Toni, who was sitting next to me, rubbed my back. “I’m glad you finally told us, Rachel.”
Then her brow knitted, and she turned to face me, her expression perplexed.
“And you didn’t want to tell us because…why, exactly?” she asked.
“Because when I was a kid, everyone either felt sorry for me or looked at me like I was a freak,” I explained. “And I know what you’re thinking. We work with ‘victims’ all the time. But I didn’t want you to think of me that way.”
“And what way is that?” Toni asked, eyebrows raised. “Everyone gets a bad break here and there. Some get worse breaks than others. Why’s that anything on them?”
I opened my mouth to answer, then found I had no answer and closed it.
Toni continued, somewhat heatedly, “Rachel, there’s a difference between victim and volunteer. I can’t even imagine why I’d look at you any differently because some monster…” She delicately refrained from spelling it out. But then very undelicately continued, “I feel like smacking you upside your goof-assed head really hard. You know that?”
Drew kissed my hand and pulled himself out of the booth. “I’ve got to get to work.”
After he left the table, Toni calmed down and smiled. “Your whole thing with Graden makes more sense now,” she said. “It’s about boundaries. If he didn’t respect this one, then what happens next? Right?”
“Exactly.”
“He can learn,” Toni said. “You two have issues that’re on a collision course, that’s for sure, but it’s nothing some decent communication won’t fix-”
“You’re talking?” I interjected.
“So? I can still spot the problem. When things calm down with this case, you and I are going to talk,” she said, her voice sympathetic but firm.
I smiled. “It’s a deal.”
I didn’t tell her that the way this case was going, by the time things calmed down Graden would probably be married and have grandchildren.
76
Toni and I pulled the plug about an hour later, but Bailey stayed at the bar to spend some time with Drew. It wasn’t late, but it’d been a long day, so by the time I got back to the room, I was feeling warm and fuzzy but very tired. So I nearly missed seeing the note the night manager had slipped under my door, telling me to call him. Someone had left a package for me at the front desk. In light of recent events, he’d decided to have it checked out first. But the scanner had shown only a bottle with nonsuspicious liquid and a piece of paper. No dangerous materials. I told him to have it sent up.
I slipped off my shoes and sank onto the couch. It sounded like someone had sent me a bottle of hooch. Who was that thoughtful soul? Daniel? Or maybe Graden? Maybe this was Graden’s makeup gesture. The thought made me smile, and I kept smiling when I took the box from the bellman.
“Thanks, Jason.” Feeling magnanimous, I gave him a five-dollar tip and brought the box back to the couch and set it on the coffee table. The weight of it told me it was bigger than a wine bottle.
Using my car key, I slashed open the strapping tape and looked inside. It was a huge bottle of Russian Standard Platinum. My favorite vodka. It had to be from Graden. Not even Daniel knew it’d become my new favorite. My smile broadened as I lifted the bottle out of the box. Then I saw what was lying under it.
A photograph of me and Daniel, standing in front of Checkers. My hand on his chest. I stared dumbly at the image for a few seconds before recognition hit me: it’d been taken a couple of weeks ago, the night we’d had dinner together. What the…?
It was just a photograph, but the image radiated menace. I stared down at the photo but refused to touch it. Because I knew exactly who’d sent it. Lilah.
I felt a hot ball of anger start to burn in the pit of my stomach. If it was meant to make me feel guilty, she’d failed. I glared at the photograph with contempt. No. Lilah’s message was far more sinister than that.
This little “gift” was meant to make me feel vulnerable. It didn’t. All I felt was fury. If Lilah had shown up at my door in that moment, I would’ve beaten the crap out of her with my bare hands. I wanted to throw the whole box out the window. But on the off chance she or one of her hounds of hell had left prints, I knew I had to preserve it for examination. I wrapped my hands in a towel and moved the box to the end table. I’d take it in to SID with Bailey tomorrow.
When the sharp edges of my anger had worn off, I decided I needed an expert opinion. I looked at my watch. It was ten o’clock, but that was the shank of the evening for Dr. Bruno Spagnotti, my favorite forensic psychologist-or, as I privately called him, “the Scumbag Whisperer.” Short but with a powerful upper body, and a fuse that was both at once (short and powerful), Dr. Spagnotti had a big voice, a brusque demeanor, and a reputation for meting out visceral tongue-lashings from the witness stand to anyone who dared waste his time with “dumb” questions. But juries never seemed to doubt a word he said. On any given day, this could be a very good or a very bad thing for either side. Dr. Spagnotti had no favorites.
We’d met during a case I’d handled in the Special Trials Unit: a serial killer who raped and then set fire to five elderly women. The defense had called Dr. Spagnotti to persuade the jury that the defendant’s obvious mental disturbance-while not amounting to legal insanity-was sufficient to prevent him from premeditating the murders. It took Dr. Spagnotti just five minutes to leave that defense ploy in ruins. With a patience he never showed anyone but a juror, he explained that the crimes had to have been premeditated: victims of a similar age and appearance were deliberately targeted, and the defendant made sure to attack only when they were home alone. The jury came back with five verdicts of first-degree murder in less than an hour.