Connie spoke for the first time in a long while. “Dennis, even if he doesn’t have a rock-solid alibi, surely the police don’t really believe that Captain Alexander killed that woman! He’s a solid citizen. A war hero. When I think about all he went through in Vietnam…”
Using his fingers like a comb, Dennis smoothed his pale hair back from his forehead. “Under the circumstances, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still considered a suspect.”
Daddy pounded the flat of his hand on the table so hard that the spoons jounced and clattered. “I’ll clear it up right now! I wrote that letter to Georgina and I meant every word I said. I wanted to kill that damn therapist. I could have strangled her with my bare hands for what she’s done to my little girl. Wanted to, notice, but didn’t. After that session I drove home, wrote the letter, and cooled off. End of story.”
Daddy’s face turned scarlet; crooked, purple veins pulsed in his forehead. I had never seen him so angry.
Dennis must have decided Daddy wouldn’t bite, because he stood up and faced him, practically nose to nose. “Captain Alexander, we’ve just met, so I’m going on gut feeling here, but I believe you. Now, we’ll just have to hope you come up with a more solid alibi, or that somebody else pops up on Homicide’s radar screen, because right now, sir, you are what’s behind door number one.”
“Dennis, isn’t there anything you can do?” Connie spoke softly, her voice pleading.
Dennis shook his head. “Out of my jurisdiction. And Turner has already stuck his neck out for me on this.”
“Somebody’s got to do something!” Ruth moaned.
Since she was flying to Bali come hell or high water on Thursday, I figured it wouldn’t be Ruth doing the something that needed doing. I surveyed the glum faces clustered around me. Maybe Dennis’s hands were tied, but not mine. First thing in the morning, if Georgina still refused to talk to me about Diane Sturges, I’d start trying to track down the owners of some of the other names in the doctor’s appointment book.
chapter 9
Georgina wasn’t taking any calls. Scott, teetering on the edge of rudeness, made this abundantly plain when I telephoned the following day. So, with Paul drowning in beginning-of-semester tasks and Ruth resolutely Bali-bound, I prevailed upon Connie to help me locate the patients on Diane Sturges’s list. Connie had to prepare a shipment of her painted gourd figures for an art gallery in New York, but she had hired Dennis’s twenty-something daughter, Maggie, to help out. Usually Connie strong-armed me to manage the packing, so I was relieved to learn that she had made other arrangements. It was also encouraging to hear that Maggie was feeling up to it. It had been over a year since her mother’s death, but Maggie was still grieving and not yet comfortable with the undeniable romance between her father and Paul’s sister. Perhaps this was the first sign of a thaw. Connie promised to get Maggie started and see how it went.
After breakfast, I kissed Paul good-bye and stood on the front stoop watching him walk up Prince George Street until he turned the corner on Maryland Avenue on his way to class. I poured myself a second cup of coffee and carried it down to our basement office. I retrieved the pages Georgina had taken from Dr. Sturges’s appointment book from the filing cabinet where I had hidden them and spread them out, in chronological order, on the worktable. It was the first time I had given them more than a cursory glance.
The pages covered approximately three weeks in Diane Sturges’s busy practice. Sunday and Monday appeared to be her days off, but between ten and five on all other days she had appointments scheduled back to back, six per day and sometimes seven, with no break for lunch. Fridays she knocked off early. Georgina’s appointment at three was Dr. Sturges’s last scheduled session on that day.
I flipped backward and confirmed that Georgina also visited the doctor on Tuesdays at eleven. On the Tuesday immediately before the murder, Georgina’s name was duly listed and there was an additional notation-G. Alexander. Tuesday. Poor Daddy. He hardly had time to unpack his suitcase before Georgina managed to drag him into her private hell.
Most of the patients, like Georgina, visited the doctor twice a week. A handful made single visits and two lucky individuals bared their souls to the doctor each Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. I wondered what Sturges charged them. One hundred? Two hundred a session? I did some mental arithmetic. With thirty sessions per week, that was a healthy chunk of change.
I decided that anybody needing therapy three times a week was probably too screwed up to be of much help and moved on to consider the others. B. Smith. Hah! No way I could find a Smith in the phone book. Gini. Could have been anyone-a patient or an appointment with her manicurist. J. Riggins. Maybe. A. Jacobs. Good bet. F. Wandowsky. Even better. Once I had a list of possible candidates, I drove to the public library on West Street, parked, and headed straight for the shelves of telephone directories. Believe it or not, there were four people named A. Jacobs in the Baltimore metropolitan area, but there was only one F. Wandowsky. I jotted down that telephone number and those of a few other likely individuals, knowing it was just the tip of the iceberg. Most telephones were still listed in the husband’s name, so there could have been any number of A. Jacobs married to those John, Henry, and Thomas Jacobs listed in the directory. Back home, I tried another resource. I logged on to the Internet and clicked over to the white pages on the Lycos search engine. J. Riggins might be the J. S. Riggins living on North Charles Street. The A. Jacobs was definitely Andrea, I decided, because her address on Cold Spring Lane was just off Roland.
Exhilarated, I picked up the phone, then dropped it back in its cradle. What the hell was I going to say? Doctors’ records are supposed to be confidential. I puzzled over that while I went for another cup of coffee, hoping the extra caffeine would jump-start my brain.
Wait a minute! If the police had already contacted all of the doctor’s patients as they claimed, I could pretend to be Officer Williams, simply following up on something. But then I thought better of it. The last thing my mother needed was for another of her daughters to get arrested, this time for impersonating a police officer. If I impersonated anybody, it couldn’t be Officer Williams. I’d be a departmental secretary or something.
I tapped in the first number.
“Ms. Wandowsky?”
“Ain’t no Ms. Wandowsky here.”
“Ms. F. Wandowsky?”
“Name’s Frank. Whatcha selling?” The voice screamed tattooed arms, beer belly, and a round-the-clock five-o’-clock shadow.
“Sorry, sir. I’m afraid I have the wrong number.”
I hung up, then thought, You dope! Just because F. Wandowsky was a man didn’t mean he wasn’t a patient of Dr. Sturges’s. But the man didn’t sound very forthcoming-probably resented my interruption of his daytime television viewing-so I went to the next name on my list. Andrea Jacobs wasn’t able to come to the phone just now, but if I would leave my name and number, and day and time that I called, she would get right back to me. I hung up before the beep.
J. S. Riggins answered in a voice heavy with sleep. It wasn’t so much a “hello” as a “hmmph.”
“Ms. Riggins?”
“Yes? What time is it?” She sounded as if she had a mouth full of peanut butter crackers.
“I’m sorry if I woke you, Ms. Riggins. This is Betty Smith calling from the Baltimore City Police Department. I’m working with Officer Williams, following up with Dr. Sturges’s patients on something from the other day.”
“I already told you people all I know. Can I go back to sleep now? Christ! I work nights.”