The Second Time Around

  Mid-afternoon was clearly not heavy-traffic visiting time at the hospital. Miss Fess turned to her coworker. “Margie, I’ll be right back.”

  We sat in a corner of the lobby. She was clearly of a “get-to-the-point” mind-set and was intent on keeping our discussion brief. I was not going to mention my suspicion that what had happened to Dr. Broderick might not have been an accident. What I did tell her was that I suspected Nicholas Spencer heard something at the award dinner that sent him rushing the next morning to collect his father’s old research records from Dr. Broderick. Then I decided to go one step further: “Miss Fess, Spencer was visibly upset to find out that someone else had already collected those records, saying that he was getting them for him. I think that if I can find out who gave him disturbing information at the dinner, as well as whom he visited after he left Dr. Broderick’s office the next day, we might have some idea as to what really happened to him and to the missing money. Did you speak with Spencer at any length?”

  She looked reflective. I had the feeling that Kay Fess was one of those people who missed nothing. “The people on the dais gathered half an hour early in a private reception room for some picture taking; cocktails were served. Nicholas Spencer was the center of attention, of course,” she said.

  “How would you judge his demeanor at the beginning of the evening? Did he seem relaxed?”

  “He was cordial, pleasant—all the usual things you expect an honoree to be. He had presented his personal check for one hundred thousand dollars, earmarked for the building fund, to the chairman but did not want it announced at the dinner. He did say that when the vaccine was approved, he would be able to make a donation ten times larger.”

  Her mouth tightened. “He was quite a convincing con man.”

  “But as far as you noticed, he didn’t speak to anyone in particular at that time?”

  “No, but I can tell you that just before dessert was served, he was chatting with Dora Whitman for at least ten minutes and seemed quite intent on what she was saying.”

  “Have you any idea what they were talking about?”

  “I was sitting to the right of Reverend Howell, and he had gotten up to greet some friends. Dora was on Reverend Howell’s left, so I could hear her quite clearly. She was quoting someone who had praised Dr. Spencer, Nicholas’s father. She told Nicholas that this woman claimed Dr. Spencer had cured her baby of a birth defect that otherwise would have destroyed her life.”

  Immediately I knew that that was the connection I’d been trying to find. I also realized that I hadn’t been able to contact the Whitmans because they had an unlisted number. “Miss Fess, if you have Mrs. Whitman’s phone number, would you please call her and ask if I might talk to her as soon as possible, even immediately if she’s available.”

  I watched the expression of doubt come into her eyes even as she began to shake her head. I didn’t give her a chance to turn me down. “Miss Fess, I’m a reporter. I’ll find out where Mrs. Whitman lives, and one way or another, I’ll get to speak to her. But the sooner I learn what she told Nicholas Spencer that night, the better chance there is that we’ll know what really caused him to disappear and where the missing money is.”

  She looked at me, and I could tell that I hadn’t swayed her, that, if anything, I’d gotten her back up by reminding her that I was a reporter. I still didn’t want to talk about Dr. Broderick as a possible victim, but I did play one more card: “Miss Fess, I met with Vivian Powers, Nicholas Spencer’s personal assistant, yesterday. She told me that something happened at the award dinner that upset or excited him terribly. Sometime late yesterday, hours after we spoke, that young woman disappeared, and I suspect she may have met with foul play. Clearly there is something going on; someone out there is desperate to keep information about these missing records from getting to the authorities. Now, will you please help me get in touch with Dora Whitman.”

  She stood up. “Please wait here while I call Dora,” she said. She went to the desk, and I watched her pick up the phone and tap in the number. Obviously she didn’t have to look it up. She began to speak, and I held my breath as I watched her jot something down on a piece of note paper. There were more people coming into the lobby and making their way toward the reception desk. She beckoned to me, and I hurried over.

  “Mrs. Whitman is home, but she’s leaving for the City in an hour. I told her that you would come directly over, and she’s waiting for you now. I’ve written down her address and phone number and directions to her house.”

  I started to thank Miss Fess, but she was looking past me. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Broderick,” she said solicitously. “How is the doctor today? Still showing improvement, I hope?”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Now that Annie was dead, nobody ever came to see him. So on Tuesday morning when the doorbell rang, Ned decided to ignore it. He knew it had to be Mrs. Morgan. What did she want? he wondered. She had no right to bother him.

  The doorbell rang again, then once more, only this time whoever was there kept jabbing it. He heard heavy steps coming down the stairs. That meant it wasn’t Mrs. Morgan ringing the bell. Then he heard her voice and a man’s voice. Now he’d have to go and see who was there; otherwise she might use her key to come in.

  He remembered to put his right hand in his pocket. Even with the ointments he’d bought at the drugstore, his hand wasn’t any better. He opened the door just enough to see who had been ringing his bell.

  Two men were outside. They were holding up IDs for him to see. They were detectives. I have nothing to worry about, Ned told himself. Peg’s husband had probably reported that she was missing, or maybe they’d found her body already. Doc Brown had probably told the police that he was one of the last people in the store last night. According to their IDs, the tall guy was Detective Pierce; the one who was black was Detective Carson.

  Carson asked if they could talk to him for a few minutes. Ned knew he couldn’t refuse—it would look funny. He could see that they were both looking at his right hand because it was in his pocket. He’d have to take it out. They might think he had a gun in it or something. The gauze he’d wrapped around the hand would keep them from seeing how bad the burn was. He pulled it out of his pocket slowly, trying not to show how much it hurt when it brushed against the lining. “Sure, I’ll talk to you,” he mumbled.

  Detective Pierce thanked Mrs. Morgan for coming downstairs. Ned could see that she was dying to find out what was going on, and before he closed the door, he could see her trying to get a look into the apartment. He knew what she was thinking—that the place was a mess. She knew that Annie was always after him to pick up the papers and bring dishes into the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher and throw his dirty clothes in the hamper. Annie liked everything neat and clean. Now that she was gone, he didn’t bother to tidy up anymore. He didn’t eat much, either, but when he did, he just dumped the dishes in the sink and ran water over them if he needed a plate or cup.

  He could tell that the detectives were taking in the room, noticing his pillow and blanket on the couch, the piles of newspapers on the floor, the box of cereal and the cereal bowl on the table next to the gauze and ointments and adhesive tape. The clothes he’d been wearing lately were heaped on a chair.

  “Mind if we sit down?” Pierce asked.

  “Sure.” Ned shoved the blanket aside and sat on the couch.

  There was a chair on either side of the television set. They each picked up one and brought them nearer to the couch. Seated, they were too close to him for comfort. They were trying to make him feel trapped. Be careful what you say, he warned himself.

  “Mr. Cooper, you were in Brown’s drugstore last night just before it closed, weren’t you?” Carson asked.

  Ned could tell Carson was the boss. They were both looking at his hand. Talk about it, he told himself. Make them feel sorry for you. “Yeah, I was there. My wife died last month. I never did any cooking. I burned my hand on the stove a couple of weeks ago, and it’s still pret
ty sore. I went to Brown’s last night to get some stuff to put on it.”

  They’d expect him to ask why they were here, asking him questions. He looked at Carson. “What’s going on?”

  “Did you know Mrs. Rice, the cashier at Brown’s?”

  “Peg? Sure. She’s been at Brown’s for twenty years. She’s a nice lady. Very helpful.” They were being cagey. They weren’t telling him anything about Peg. Did they think she was just missing, or had they found her body?

  “According to Mr. Brown, you were the next-to-last person Mrs. Rice waited on last night. Is that right?”

  “I guess so. I remember there was somebody behind me when I checked out. I don’t know if anyone else came in after I left. I got in my car and came home.”

  “Did you notice anyone hanging around outside when you left the drugstore?”

  “No. As I said, I just got in my car and drove home.”

  “Do you know who was behind you on the line in the drugstore?”

  “No. I didn’t pay attention to him. But Peg knew him. She called him . . . let me think. She called him ‘Garret.’ “

  Ned saw the detectives look at each other. That’s what they had come to find out. Brown hadn’t known who the last customer had been. For now, they were going to concentrate on finding that guy.

  They got up to go. “We won’t keep you any longer, Mr. Cooper,” Carson said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “That hand looks swollen,” Pierce said. “I hope a doctor has seen it.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. It’s getting a lot better.”

  They were looking at him funny. He knew it. But it was only after he had double-locked the door behind them that Ned realized they hadn’t told him what had happened to Peg. They’d be sure to have noticed he let them go without finding out.

  They were bound to be on their way back to Brown’s to ask him about Garret. Ned waited ten minutes, then phoned the drugstore. Brown answered. “Doc, this is Ned Cooper. I’m worried about Peg. There were two detectives here asking questions about her, but they never did tell me what was wrong. Did anything happen to her?”

  “Wait a minute, Ned.”

  He could tell Brown was covering the phone with his hand and talking to somebody. Then Detective Carson got on.

  “Mr. Cooper, I’m sorry to tell you that Mrs. Rice has been the victim of a homicide.”

  Ned was sure Carson’s voice seemed friendlier now. He was right: They had noticed that he hadn’t asked what happened to Peg. He told Carson how sorry he was and asked him to please tell Doc Brown how sorry he was, and Carson said that if anything occurred to him, even if it didn’t seem important, to call them.

  “I’ll do that,” Ned assured the detective. When he hung up, he walked over to the window. They’d be back; he was sure of it. But for now he was okay. The one thing he had to do was hide the rifle. It wasn’t safe to leave it in the car or even behind all the junk in the garage. Where could he hide it? He needed a place where no one would look for it.

  He looked down at the scrubby little patch of grass outside the house. It was muddy and messy and reminded him of Annie’s grave. She was buried in his mother’s plot, in the old cemetery in town. Hardly anyone used that cemetery anymore. It wasn’t kept up, and all the graves looked neglected. When he had stopped there last week, Annie’s grave was still so new that the ground hadn’t settled. It was soft and muddy and looked as if she’d been thrown under a pile of dirt.

  A pile of dirt . . . It was like an answer being given to him. He’d wrap the rifle and the bullets in plastic and an old blanket and bury them in Annie’s grave until it was time to use them again. Then when it was all finished, he’d go back and lie down on the grave and be finished with it himself. “Annie,” he called, the way he used to call to her when she was in the kitchen, “Annie, I’ll be with you soon, I promise.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Ken and Don had both left the office by the time I was on my way back from Caspien, so I went straight home. I left messages for both of them, however, and they called me in the evening. We agreed to meet extra early in the morning, at eight o’clock, and talk with clear heads. I worked on my column and was reminded again of the daily struggles 99 percent of the world has in trying to balance their expenses against their income. I went through the new batch of e-mail, hoping to hear something else from the guy who wrote about seeing someone leave Lynn’s Bedford mansion before the fire, but there was nothing from him. Or from her, I added mentally.

  I finished up the column and at twenty of eleven washed my face, put on my nightshirt and robe, called out for a small pizza, and poured myself a glass of wine. The timing could not have been better. The restaurant is only around the corner, on Third Avenue, and the pizza arrived just as the eleven o’clock news came on.

  The lead story was about Nick Spencer. The press had connected the report of his possibly being seen in Switzerland with the disappearance of Vivian Powers. Their pictures were shown side by side, and the news angle was “bizarre new twist to Spencer case.” The gist of the story was that Briarcliff Manor police doubted that Vivian Powers had been abducted.

  I decided it was too late to call Lynn but reasoned that, if anything, this story strengthened her contention that she had no part in her husband’s plans. But if somebody did leave the mansion only a few minutes before the fire, that opened up the distinct possibility that she had an agenda of her own, I decided.

  I went to bed with conflicting emotions, and it took me a long time to fall asleep. If Vivian Powers was planning to join Nick Spencer only hours after I saw her, I can only say that she was one hell of an actress. I was glad I hadn’t erased her phone message. I intended to keep it, and I intended to go back to Gen-stone and talk to some of the women who answered the mail.

  * * *

  The next morning at eight, Don and I were in Ken’s office, clutching mugs brimming with fresh coffee. They looked at me expectantly.

  “Chronological?” I suggested.

  Ken nodded.

  I told them about Vivian Powers’s home, how the open door and overturned lamp and table had a phony, set-up look. Then added, “But having said that, she sure sounded convincing when she phoned me to say she thought she knew who took Dr. Spencer’s records from Dr. Broderick.”

  I looked at them. “And now I think I know why they were taken and what they may have contained,” I said. “It all came together yesterday.” I laid the picture of the dais at the award dinner on the desk and pointed to Dora Whitman. “I visited her yesterday, and she told me that she had spoken to Nick Spencer at the dinner. She told him that she and her husband were on a cruise to South America early last November. They became friendly with a couple from Ohio who told them their niece lived in Caspien for a short time some thirteen years ago. She had a baby at Caspien Hospital, and it was diagnosed as having multiple sclerosis. She brought it to Dr. Spencer for the usual shots, and the day before the family moved back to Ohio, Dr. Spencer came to the house and gave the baby a shot of penicillin because it had a high fever.”

  I took a sip of the coffee. The ramifications of what I had learned still stunned me. “According to their story, a few weeks later Dr. Spencer called the mother in Ohio. He was in a terrible state. He said he realized that he’d given the baby an untested vaccine he’d been working on years earlier and that he bore full responsibility for any problems that might have developed.”

  “He gave the baby an untested vaccine . . . an old vaccine he’d been working on? It’s a wonder he didn’t kill it,” Ken snapped.

  “Wait until you hear the rest of it. The mother told him that the baby hadn’t had any reaction to the shot. And what’s unusual in this day and age was that she didn’t go rushing to a lawyer with Dr. Spencer’s admission. On the other hand, the baby showed no sign of developing a problem. A few months later her new pediatrician in Ohio said the baby had obviously been misdiagnosed, because it was developing normally and there was no sign of the disease. The girl
is now thirteen years old and last fall was in a car accident. The MRI diagnostician remarked that if she didn’t know it was impossible, she would have said that the result showed the faintest traces of sclerosis in a few cells, a very unusual indication. The mother decided to send to Caspien for the original X rays. They showed extensive sclerosis in both the brain and spinal cord.”

  “The X rays were probably mixed up,” Ken said. “That happens too often in hospitals.”

  “I know, and no one in Ohio will believe that the X rays weren’t mixed up, except the mother. She tried to write Dr. Spencer to let him know about it, but he had died years earlier, and the letter was returned.

  “Dora Whitman told those people that Nicholas Spencer was Dr. Spencer’s son and she was sure he’d like to hear from their niece. Mrs. Whitman suggested that their niece write to him at Gen-stone. Apparently she did write but never heard from him.”

  “That’s the story Mrs. Whitman told Spencer at the award dinner?” Don asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And the next day he rushed back to Caspien to get his father’s early records but found that they were missing,” Ken said, jiggling his glasses. I wondered how often he had to replace the screw that held the frame together.

  “Dora Whitman promised to give Spencer the address and phone number of the people who had told her about their niece. Of course she didn’t have it at the dinner. He went to see her after he’d visited Dr. Broderick and learned that the records were gone. She said he was visibly upset. He phoned the Ohio couple from Whitman’s home, got their niece’s phone number, and spoke to her. Her name is Caroline Summers.

  “Dora Whitman heard him ask Summers if she had a fax machine available. Apparently she did because he said he was going to go to Caspien Hospital to see if they had retained a set of her daughter’s X rays, and if they had, he wanted to have her fax permission for him to pick them up.”

  “So that’s where he went after he saw Broderick?”