I suppressed a smile. My father in full righteous flow would be a sight to behold.
“Can you prove any of this?” Sean asked, and although his tone was absolutely neutral, my father bristled anyway.
“Sadly, no,” he said sharply. “The Storax people were doing more tests to confirm it when I was asked to leave—politely, of course—by the hospital administrators.”
“And you agreed?”
He shrugged. “I had no choice. My position there was afforded as a courtesy, not a right. Before I left, I made it clear to the hospital that I was intending to take the matter further. Unfortunately, I never got the chance.”
“What happened?”
“Jeremy died that night. Miranda got the call around midnight and I drove her to the hospital, but it was already too late.”
Again, he paused, took a breath—the only outward sign of his distress. He was talking about the death of a friend and he might have been discussing having missed a bus.
“What actually killed him in the end?” Parker asked quietly.
“In my opinion, a hundred milligrams of intravenous morphine,” my father said.
“Are you sure?”
“As I can be—and before you ask, no, I can’t prove that, either,” he said, glancing at Sean. “Not without access to his notes. Maybe not even then.”
“But you were sure enough at one point to make a public accusation to that effect,” Sean said, quirking one eyebrow. “Wasn’t that somewhat … foolish if you didn’t have any proof?”
My father’s chin came up. “Yes, as it turned out,” he said calmly. “The following morning I received a telephone call informing me of my so-called drink problem and telling me what would happen to Elizabeth if I didn’t participate in my own downfall.” His eyes flickered closed for a moment. “They were rather graphic and very detailed,” he added with grim restraint.
“Oh, Richard,” my mother said softly, her eyes on his face.
“We have to take this to the police,” Parker said, reaching for the phone on his desk. “If we—”
“No.”
There it was again, that quiet command. It was enough to bring Parker up short. His hand stilled and he regarded my father in steady silence for a few moments before he asked in a level tone, “Why not?”
My father didn’t reply immediately. He leaned forwards in his seat, clasping his hands and seeming absorbed by the way his fingers linked together. Eventually he looked up, his gaze taking in the three of us, ranged against him.
“You must think I inhabit a very rarefied little world,” he said, his voice reflective and almost a little remote. “And I suppose that in some ways, I do. I am not accustomed to being manhandled, to having my family threatened, and I find I … don’t care for it.”
“They won’t do it again,” I said, fast and low. “Trust me. They won’t get the chance.”
“No, they won’t,” my father said with a brittle smile. “But not because you’ll be there to take on all comers, Charlotte, I assure you.” He straightened the crease in his suit trousers and brushed away a piece of lint from the fine cloth before he looked up again. “When I was a medical student I had a bit of a reputation as a poker player,” he said. “I always knew when to bluff and when to fold a bad hand.”
“And you feel this is a bad hand,” Sean said. “So you’re going to fold, is that it?” He couldn’t quite keep the sneer out of his voice, but my father didn’t rise to it.
“I don’t know who was behind my coercion and Elizabeth’s unfortunate experience, but I can only assume they have some connection to the hospital,” my father said. “They had a major civil action brought against them last year for medical negligence, which they lost—somewhat disastrously—and they can’t afford another. It would appear they’re prepared to go to extreme lengths to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
Sean ducked his head in acknowledgment of the point. “That’s a fair description,” he said. “But what about your supposed friend, Jeremy Lee? What about his widow? You’re just going to walk away and leave things as they are?”
My father’s face whitened. “The longer I stay, the worse I’m making the situation for Miranda,” he said. “I’ve been totally discredited as any kind of expert witness. Trying to redress things now will only make them worse still. My best course of action is to go home as soon as possible, so we can try to put this whole thing behind us.”
My father rose, automatically buttoning the jacket of that immaculately tailored suit, and helped my mother out of her chair. She clung to his arm. He turned to face us.
“Thank you—all of you—for your assistance,” he said, not quite meeting my eye. His gaze just seemed to scutter across me from Sean to Parker and back again. “But there is nothing more you can do here.”
CHAPTER 13
Until the arrangements could be made for them to go home to the UK, my father booked a room for himself and my mother at the Grand Hyatt, which was somewhat more in keeping with his tastes and made me realize I should have questioned who’d chosen his previous hotel.
There were a lot of things I should have questioned.
My father refused Parker’s offer of the use of McGregor and the Navigator while they were in New York. Instead, much to my mother’s obvious disappointment, he insisted that they would catch a cab on the street, and Sean and I went down with them to the lobby. It was a good opportunity to have one last go at getting my father to make a stand, but he’d fallen back on frosty formality.
My mother did her best to fill the awkward silence with nervous, inconsequential chatter that put nobody at ease. I wasn’t the only one who was glad when we reached ground level.
Sean nodded to the doorman, who whisked outside to summon a cab, something he seemed to achieve almost instantly.
“You should have told me you were in trouble,” I said, making one last effort at getting through, aware even as I spoke of the stiffness in my voice that would prevent me from doing so. “Whatever you may think of me, this is what I do.”
My father looked down his nose at me. “I’m well aware of your capabilities, Charlotte,” he said curtly. “That is precisely why I didn’t.”
We saw the yellow Crown Victoria pull up smartly outside, and moved towards the doors. My mother seemed to have some spring back in her step, as though now she was reunited with her husband, all was right with the world again. With a sense of panic, I felt my parents slipping away from me. Unwilling to let it end like this, I walked with them, out into the pale slanted sunshine.
Sean had carried my mother’s heavy suitcase as far down as the lobby without apparent effort, setting it down while he tipped the doorman. My father picked it up, clearly surprised by the unexpected weight, and began lugging it across the sidewalk to the waiting cab while my mother paused in the doorway to rifle through her handbag for her sunglasses.
I had started to follow him when I heard an engine, away to our left, even above the normal background sounds of traffic. American engines are generally big and torquey. They don’t need to rev in order to provide power unless you want a lot of it, and you want it now. This was being thrashed and I turned instinctively towards the noise.
I was just in time to see another taxicab mount the curb about ten meters away, trailing sparks as it graunched over the concrete, front suspension taking the hit. It came barreling along the sidewalk towards us.
Like the one idling by the curb, the second cab was a yellow Crown Victoria. The big car leapt towards us, seeming wide enough to totally fill the space between the building and the street, engine roaring. The front wing grazed off the front façade, striking yet more sparks like it was breathing fire, and it kept on coming.