Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) (5 page)

The bathroom counter was crowded with a dozen white beeswax candles and an open white ceramic jar of potpourri. Next to the sink, an ornate white soap dish held balls of white soap sculpted to look like many-petaled roses. On the wall, an ornate white and gold clock looked like something that should have belonged to a Louis The Something Or Other, if French kings had had access to batteries. The old blue towels were gone, replaced by white towels with gold appliquéd butterflies that matched the ones on Jean’s bathrobe. Claire thought it must be uncomfortable to rub the butterflies over wet skin, but Jean’s face reflected nothing but delight as she surveyed what she had accomplished.

Claire scrambled for something neutral to say. “Wow - it’s so, so, so different!”

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Jean looked up at her, her face open.

What could Claire do but nod? And maybe the fact that Jean spent her days watching QualProd was better than watching the soaps. And besides, when Jean had been redecorating the bathroom, she must have been out of view, if not earshot, of the TV. Promising to visit more often, she turned down the offer of the QualProd catalog and resumed her run.

Claire’s worries alternated between her mom and Lori. What could she do to help either of them? Her mother had finally found something to fill up her days, and she wouldn’t let go of it easily. And then there was the Bradford Clinic. How could Claire find out its secrets? Her thoughts circled without making progress.

Claire turned onto Thirty-Fifth Avenue. Less than three blocks from home, she picked up the pace. Suddenly, a dog came hurtling out the open door of a nondescript ranch house. As far as Claire knew, this house didn’t even
have
a dog, an idea that was clearly erroneous because a black blur was shooting through a gap in the laurel hedge and streaking toward her like a bullet. The harsh hum of a growl was caught deep in its throat. Before she even had time to think, its shoulder collided with her knees. Hot breath grazed her left thigh, but the force of the dog’s effort carried it past her and into the street. Tires squealed, but Claire didn’t turn. She only had eyes for the dog as he whirled to face her. Already she knew this wasn’t the kind of dog that would only bark and bark at a passing runner, its woo-woo-woof adding a note of triumph as the interloper ran down the street.

Claire balled her hands into fists and stamped her foot. “No! Go away!” she yelled. Her voice came out higher than she had intended, less definite. She stamped her foot again. Her mind was mesmerized by the sight of the dog’s wet open mouth, all sides lined with long pointed teeth. Its narrow black and tan muzzle revealed a Doberman as a recent ancestor. She made a shooing gesture with her closed fists and yelled “No!” again, but the dog didn’t budge, watching her with yellow eyes.

Where was the dog’s owner? Claire cast a quick look back at the house from which it had came. The dog took that moment to leap at her. Her world narrowed to sharp ivory fangs set in wet pink gums. She scrambled backward, raising her forearm to shelter her jugular, already imagining the snick of teeth as they caught on bone.

Her left foot landed on something soft, a pothole at the side of the road filled with pine needles. The spongy footing sank beneath her. With an audible pop, Claire’s ankle gave way.

The sprained ankle saved her. The dog had angled it leap to meet her chest. Instead it soared over her as she fell. It landed in its yard, paws already scrabbling to turn around, but by this time its owner was upon it. He was a scruffy-looking guy, small and wiry, his hair still rooster-tailed from a nap. The stub of a hand-rolled cigarette was clenched between his lips. He almost fell out of his rubber flip-flops as he grabbed the snarling dog’s collar and began to pull it away.

“You okay, lady?” He threw the question over his shoulder as he dragged the dog through the dirt and back to the house.

Claire said yes as she got to her feet and limped away as fast as possible. She did not want to be anywhere near those teeth.

BAD DOG

###

“Wake up! Wake up! It’s time to wake up and have a happy day!” The persistently cheerful voice was accompanied by the hollow sound of someone knocking on glass. Claire groaned, then rolled over to hit the button of her Tom Peterson alarm clock.

She swung her feet out of bed, ready to stumble to the bathroom and from there to her first cup of coffee. When she stood up, her left ankle buckled. As a lightning bolt of pain ran up her leg, she collapsed in a heap on the floor.

Gingerly, she examined her injured ankle. Before she had gone to bed, Claire had used her bathrobe sash to wrap an ice pack around her ankle, but some time in the night it must have come loose. Her ankle was now streaked with purple, and swollen to twice its normal size. Sucking in her breath, Claire probed the worst of the swelling. There wasn’t even the slightest dimple to show where her ankle was. Maybe she had broken it. She tentatively tried wiggling her toes, then rotating her foot. Everything seemed to be working, albeit reluctantly.
 
Somewhere, though, she remembered reading that the ability to wiggle something didn’t necessarily mean you hadn’t broken it.

Claire scooted over to the bottom bedpost and pulled herself upright, standing on just her right foot. Slowly, she tried to transfer some of her weight to her left foot, but it hurt too much. It was clear that she wasn’t going to be walking out of her room any time soon. She sat down on the floor again.

“Charlie?” Claire waited a minute, then called out again, louder this time. “Charlie?” Then she remembered. Twice a week, Charlie took private lessons at Valley Ice. Claire occasionally accompanied her for the simple pleasure of watching her roommate practice. Dressed in a black unitard worn under a sheer black skirt, Charlie would stroke calmly down the ice, her hands clasped behind her back. One foot spoke and the other answered, the sound like a knife on a whetstone. If Charlie stopped for breakfast at Marcos Cafe afterward, as she liked to do, it might be several hours before she came home. Claire looked down at her ankle again. Was it her imagination, or was it even puffier than it had been a few minutes before?

It was clear she needed a doctor. Doctor. That gave her an idea. Maybe she could kill two birds with one stone. After all, who would be more likely to know about the Bradford Clinic than another doctor? Claire reached for her backpack, which was hooked over the bed post. She’d started carrying a backpack when she rode the bus. It held more and kept her hands free. People teased her about it, but they always came to her for what they needed - moist towelettes, a sewing kit, Band-Aids, aspirin.
 
Her hand closed around her little red address book. With a slow series of hitches, she scooted backward until she could reach the phone on the bedside table.

It was answered on the fourth ring. “Hello?” The voice was draggy with sleep. Claire looked at her watch and realized it wasn’t even eight yet.

“Dr. Gregory?”

“Yes.” He wasn’t sounding any more cheerful.

“This is Claire Montrose. I’m sorry to be calling you at home, but I remembered that you gave me your number and said I could call any time...” She was talking too fast.

“Claire Montrose? You should have said so in the beginning.” His voice had warmed up. “What’s up? You know I always enjoy a call from a famous sleuth.”

“Oh, my fifteen minutes of fame are long over.” Claire’s discovery of the long-lost painting had been just the kind of thing the tabloid TV shows loved - especially when her efforts to find its rightful owner had inadvertently resulted in further thievery as well as kidnapping and murder. “Anyway, the reason I’m calling you is kind of embarrassing....”

“It can’t be as bad as some of those license plate requests you used to ask me about. All those slang words for body parts. Or is that what you are calling about? Have you gone back to work at Specialty Plates?”

Michael Gregory, MD, was Claire’s doctor. To take her mind off her Pap smear a few years back, Claire had cast about for a source of conversation. On the counter she caught sight of the New York Times crossword puzzle - completed in ink. Dr. Gregory revealed that his avocation was all kinds of word puzzles: crosswords, puns, Scrabble. He also told Claire that he collected heteronyms, which were, he explained, words that were spelled the same, pronounced differently and had a different meaning.
Sow
as in pig and
sow
as in plant. Claire thought for a minute, then asked if
wound
was on the list - and made a friend for life.

In return, Claire had asked if she could add Dr. Gregory’s name to her Rolodex. Vanity license plate requests often contained what turned out to be slang or Latin for various bodily parts, functions or secretions. More than a few words and phrases had been added to the department’s Vulgar List after Claire had found out from Dr. Gregory exactly what they meant.

“No, I’ll never go back to Specialty Plates,” Claire said now. “This is more in your capacity as my physician.”

“Is that all I am to you?” Dr. Gregory was a consummate flirt, but since he seemed to treat any female between sixteen and ninety-six the same way, Claire didn’t take it personally. He gave a mock-tragic sigh. “Ask away.”

“I sprained my ankle running yesterday afternoon, and it seems that it’s gotten a lot worse overnight. In fact,” Claire looked at her ankle dubiously, “it seems to be getting more swollen by the minute. I can’t put any weight on that foot and my toes feel sort of tingly. I’m beginning to wonder if I might have broken something. Charlie’s not going to be back for a couple of hours. Do you think I should call an ambulance - or can it wait until she gets back? I don’t know how much more give my skin has in it.”

“Don’t call an ambulance. You don’t want to have to pay seven hundred dollars out of your own pocket. I’ll come by and take a look at it. If it looks broken, I’ll take you in for an X-ray.”

After some protesting, Claire agreed. Even though he wasn’t much over forty, Dr. Gregory was the last of the old-time physicians, the ones who made house calls and treated three generations of one family. He probably even accepted sacks of potatoes and live chickens in payment. He was like a modern Dr. Welby - only instead of a graying man with a fatherly smile, he had warm green eyes and tightly curled honey blonde hair. He kept a small office in the Multnomah Village neighborhood, with only a part-time nurse. “Sure, I could work myself into the ground and make four hundred thousand dollars a year, but for what?” he had told Claire once. “This way I get to make a decent living, be my own boss, and still have time to go hiking.”

Only after she had hung up the phone did Claire realize she was still wearing what she had worn to bed - nothing.

Pulling herself upright, Claire began to hop slowly toward her closet. Hopping was an even more ridiculous mode of transportation than she had imagined. She was able to advance only a few inches with each hop, and every time she landed it sent a thrill of pain through her dangling injured ankle. Normally, she enjoyed the long narrow expanse of her bedroom - it ran the full width of the house - but now it seemed endless. And when had her room gotten to be such a mess? She had to maneuver around a pair of Birkenstocks, a mystery novel she had started a few days ago, and a pile of clothes she had been meaning to take down to the basement laundry room.

By the time she made it to her closet, Claire was exhausted. Learning against the door frame, she pulled a black cotton-knit dress from the hanger.
 
It was the dress version of a T-shirt, with long sleeves and a hem that ended just above her ankles. Her dresser - and underwear drawer - was about a hundred hops away. Then Claire imagined Dr. Gregory kneeling before her, assessing her ankle, and then noticing he had a clear shot of her crotch.
 
Maybe she could skip the bra, but panties were a must. She had just finished struggling into a pair of cotton panties when the doorbell rang.

Claire hopped over to the window and pulled aside the curtain. There was Dr. Gregory’s little red Mazda Miata parked in the driveway, behind Claire’s infinitely less eye-catching ten-year-old tan Mazda 323 econo-box. And there was Dr. Gregory himself, holding a black doctor’s bag. He waved up at her.

“Come on in!” Claire shouted after she had opened the window.

He motioned toward the door. “The door’s locked.”

Claire made a face. How long would it take her to hop down the stairs? “This may take a minute.”