Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) (8 page)

After she peed, Claire wrestled her nylons back into place. The bathroom was perfectly PC, the kind that came with a changing table, a condom machine, and a couple of bottles of complimentary perfume that pervious patrons had over-enthusiastically used. A look in the mirror reassured Claire that the dress she had borrowed from Lori had been the right choice, and she grinned at her reflection. A piece of something green had wrapped itself around one of her top eye teeth. Hot with embarrassment, she picked it off, praying that she had been refraining from smiling widely.
 
Was she always doomed to look like a
Glamour
magazine’s “Don’t” and not a “Do”? As if to confirm her fears, Claire could feel her pantyhose slide down a millimeter with each step as she walked back to the table.

Dr. Gregory’s nostrils flared as he caught the scent that still clung to her, but he didn’t comment. “Once you get in the clinic’s front door, how will you know what to look for?”

“I’ve talked to my friend Lori, but she doesn’t remember a lot about the clinic’s layout. I need to find out before I go up there. Have you ever been inside?”

Dr. Gregory shook his head. “No. But I might be able to help you out on that front as well. You know that hypothetical case I gave you?”

“You mean about the good Catholic girl you might have referred to the clinic?”

“Maybe it wasn’t so hypothetical. I don’t think she’s had her baby yet. I still have her number in my records. If you like, I could call and ask if she would talk to you.”

Claire nodded. “I would, very much. What’s she like?” Dr. Gregory hesitated until she added, “I’m just trying to understand what kind of young woman goes through the Bradford Clinic.
The gossip in him won out. “She’s young, like most of them. Barely nineteen. Blond hair, blue eyes.” He waved his hand in front of his mouth. “She has these unfortunate buck teeth. She’s from a farm family that lives East of Cascades. Before she moved to Portland, going into the big city meant La Grande. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant right at the end of her freshman year, I don’t think she would have come back. Portland’s too overwhelming for her, but at least her parents aren’t here to notice how big her belly’s getting. She managed to keep it hidden all summer. Well, that’s not really true. She told me she spent the whole summer thinking she must have an ulcer and eating nothing but cottage cheese.”
Claire thought of cows, sheep, horses. “Didn’t you say she grew up on a farm?”
He shrugged. “Denial’s not just a river in Egypt. This girl didn’t come to me until she was five months along. She was freaking out, telling me there was no way she could have an abortion, and at the same time telling me her parents would kill her if she had a baby. She liked the sound of the Bradford Clinic, because she wanted to make sure her parents would never find out. They have a reputation for absolute secrecy. It’s one reason their prices are so high. Of course, sometimes the money also helps grease the skids, gets a couple a baby they otherwise wouldn’t get.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you adopt through the Bradford Clinic, there’s no paperwork involved, unless you count filling out the withdrawal slip at your bank. And no lawyer, and no nosy child welfare agency asking you questions and wanting to do hours of home studies. That’s very attractive to people for a number of reasons. Also, in this country, if you are over forty-five, it’s very difficult to adopt. The rumor is that the Bradford Clinic has no age limits. There’s also a rumor that, for a little extra money, a couple can get a birth certificate that lists them as the birth parents. I hear that some women even time a fake pregnancy to coincide with the birth. So you wouldn’t be the only woman associated with the Bradford Clinic who might be faking a pregnancy.”

The waiter came over and cleared their plates. “Would you like a dessert menu?”

Claire shook her head and answered for both of them before Dr. Gregory could. “No thanks, I think it’s getting late.” It was not only late, but she had had far too much to drink.

Claire wanted to pay for her half of the meal, or at least the tip, but Dr. Gregory wouldn’t hear of it. After he had signed his name to the credit card receipt, he insisted on walking her to her car. Against the cool air, Lori’s borrowed satin raincoat offered little protection, and Claire shivered. Before she could react, Dr. Gregory had shrugged off his jacket and put it over her shoulders. Claire didn’t think she had worn a jacket in that way since high school, but it made her feel cared-for. The waist of her pantyhose had slipped to the top of her thighs, forcing her to nearly waddle, and she hoped Dr. Gregory didn’t take it for a deliberate dawdle instead. When she reached her car, he took the keys from her hand, opened the door with an exaggerated flourish and then stepped closer to her. Claire stiffened, afraid he was going for a kiss, but instead he looked at her steadily and asked a question that slipped past her defenses. “How’s that boyfriend of yours back in New York?”

As Claire tried to find an answer, she took a jerky breath. The sound was like that of a person who has been crying a long time, and it revealed far more than she ever would have told him willingly. His green eyes were steady, but Claire couldn’t read his expression. They stood for long seconds, just looking at each other, then he broke the silence by saying, “There’s another heteronym I like because the words seem related. Tear and tear.” He slipped the jacket from her shoulders. “I’ll call you if that girl agrees to talk to you. And you let me know when you want that urine, okay?”

As Claire drove home, she wondered why Dr. Gregory was being so helpful. She hoped he wasn’t expecting her to sleep with him as a reward. But at the same time, she needed his help to get inside the Bradford Clinic. She would just have to walk a fine line.

A year and a half of attending college in the big city had not erased Ginny Sloop’s underlying small town trust in people. Dr. Gregory’s request that she consider talking to Claire had been enough to make her unhesitatingly agree. When Claire phoned, the young woman didn’t even ask her why she wanted to talk. And when Claire knocked on her door, Ginny Sloop opened it wide without first inquiring who was on the other side.

Claire introduced herself and put out her hand. “I really appreciate your seeing me.”

Ginny hesitated a beat and then held out her own narrow hand. The squeeze Claire gave it wasn’t returned, and Claire realized the other woman was young enough not to have had much experience shaking hands. She had a pale oval face, light blue eyes that blinked nervously, and curly dishwater blond hair parted in the middle and tucked behind her ears. Her narrow mouth was crowded with teeth, so that the top two protruded slightly and gave her a rabitty look. Before she had gotten pregnant, she must have been nearly invisible, with her soft features and thin frame.
 
But now she was dominated by her huge belly. It was almost bigger than the rest of her put together. Her tent-like gray maternity smock was stretched so tightly that Claire could see her navel had popped out from the pressure, like a cork protruding from a bottle.

 
“Come on in.” Ginny motioned for Claire to follow her inside. Her apartment was like that of poor students everywhere. Brick and board bookshelves lined the walls, and the only places to sit were a sagging couch or a single chair tucked under a desk made of a door balanced on two metal filing cabinets. The one thing that gave her apartment personality was the photos. Framed photos cluttered the scratched blond coffee table and hung thickly on the walls.

“Are you due soon?”

“Not for a month, if you can believe it. It’s twins, if you hadn’t guessed.” Her face was drawn with sadness when she said the word twins. Huffing with each move, she sat down the couch and then put rested her feet on the coffee table.

Claire sat on the other end of the couch. The plaid bedspread that covered the old couch did nothing to soften the protruding springs. What was Ginny doing with Dr. Bradford’s money? Then Claire remembered the bulk of it was only received after the woman relinquished her child. She turned her head to look at all the photos of a different Ginny. Ginny laughing, her eyes sun-squinted, her arms draped around the necks of two other girls. Ginny at twelve or thirteen, her fingers buried in the fur of a border collie that looked at the camera with its mouth open in a doggy smile. Ginny holding up a blue ribbon, her arm draped around the neck of a black and white cow. Directly behind where the real Ginny sat hung a picture of the old Ginny on the back of a bucking horse. Her back was slim and straight, her smile wide and unafraid. One hand gripped the pommel and the other raised her cowboy hat straight over her head. In all the photos, Ginny looked tanned and sturdy and nothing like the pale young woman who sat in front of Claire, grimacing as she leaned forward to rest her hands on the arch of her back.

“Dr. Gregory told me you grew up in a small town. Has it been hard making the transition to Portland?”

Ginny nodded. “My graduation class had 22 people in it. I’d known all of them since kindergarten. Here, there’s thousands of people who go to school. It’s kind of overwhelming. It’s hard to make friends. I never thought about it, but I guess I didn’t have to before. I already knew everyone.” The word bubbled out of her. Claire realized that Ginny must have days when she never spoke to anyone. “I haven’t told my parents about what it’s been like. Neither of them went to college, so when I was accepted at PSU with a full scholarship they were thrilled. They don’t want me working twenty-hour days for months on end and then see everything lost if it doesn’t rain or it rains too much. My mom does some waitressing in town, and there’s been times that’s the only money we’ve had coming in.”

“Do they know about your” - Claire was going to say ‘babies,’ but changed it to, “pregnancy?”

Unconsciously, Ginny rubbed her palms over swollen belly. “This happened right before I went home for the summer. I didn’t know myself for a long time. I’ve always been irregular. I just thought I was throwing up because I had an ulcer or something. Besides, I don’t think they really look at me anymore. I’m just Ginny to them, their baby. At Christmas break, I told them I couldn’t come home because I was working on a special project for extra credit. This term, I just kept wanting to sleep all the time. I finally had to drop out. They don’t know that either. They think I’m doing really well.” She sighed.

No wonder Ginny had opened the door so readily. There must be days when she didn’t even leave this room, with its reminder of what her life had been like before she pursued her dreams. “What will you do about school?”

“I’m enrolled again next term, but I lost my scholarship. I don’t know if you know this, but the clinic does pay the girls some money.” She watched Claire’s face carefully, as if expecting an outcry of disgust, but seemed reassured by whatever she saw there. “If I’m careful, it will be enough for at least a year. I’m going to take twenty credit hours this spring, which is more than a full load. If I do that for a few terms, I’ll catch up.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

Even though Claire was only about a dozen years older, she felt a wave of maternal feeling for Ginny. “What about the father? Does he know?”

Ginny snorted. “He knows. I made sure about that. By the end of last year, I thought that everyone was partying except me. I figured I was probably the only virgin on campus. I decided I was old enough to make my own decisions, even ones the Catholic church or my parents don’t approve of. There was this guy in my American History class, and one day he asked me to study for finals with him. It turned out he wanted to do a lot more than that. He told me he used a condom.” A dimple moved across her belly, and Claire realized one of the babies inside her must be turning. “I don’t know if he didn’t use it right or what. After I got back to school, I went to his apartment to tell him what had happened. You know what he said to me?”

“What?” Claire asked, unnecessarily, for the words were already spilling out of Ginny.
“He just sat there for a moment, and then he just said, ‘Oh, I kinda forgot about that.’ That’s how special I was to him. He offered me money for an abortion, and he didn’t look too jazzed about even that. Up until then I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew when he said that that I couldn’t kill my baby.
 
I told him I didn’t want his money. That I was going to have the baby. That was before I knew it was twins. He went all white. I think he’s afraid I’m going to sue him for child support for the next 18 years. I haven’t corrected his impression. I figured it was the least I could do.”

She raised her hand to her mouth to cover her smile and Claire found herself smiling back.

“Dr. G. didn’t really say what you wanted, just that you wanted to ask me some questions about the clinic. So are you pregnant? Or thinking about adopting? I’m afraid they already have parents lined up for these two.” Ginny looked at her with her tired, open face.

Claire found that she couldn’t lie to Ginny. She shook her head. “Neither, I’m afraid. Ten years ago, my friend had her daughter at the Bradford Clinic. Now Lori’s three-year-old son has leukemia. If she can find the girl, she might be a match for a bone marrow transplant. But the clinic won’t tell her anything”

Ginny straightened up. “I could help you. I could look around at my appointment this afternoon. It’s not like it’s a really busy place. I could just poke around.” She looked excited, animated for the first time.

“No,” Claire barked, her stomach giving a lurch. Why had she been seduced into telling the truth? This girl could ruin everything. “Absolutely not. If you go around asking questions, you could make it so that Lori never finds her daughter. Leave the sleuthing to someone with experience.”

“What are you, like a private investigator?”

Deciding a lie only counted if you said it out loud, Claire nodded.

Her face was still painted with two bright spots of color, Ginny sagged back on the couch. “All right, I won’t. But I can keep my eyes open when I’m there, can’t I?”

Claire knew there was no way she could stop her, but she had to try. “Don’t even do that. I don’t want you asking one question, no matter how innocent. If you made them suspicious, they might move the records completely out of the clinic.” She took out the little map Lori had drawn for her in pencil. “Where I need your help is right here and now. My friend tried to tell me about how things were, but that was ten years ago.” Claire handed Ginny the pencil. “Can you show me where the exam rooms, bathrooms, doctor’s office and nurses’ station are?”

Ginny did. Then she surprised Claire by sketching in another rectangle a few inches behind the clinic.

“What’s that?”

“The doctor’s house. He lives on the property. It’s this old beautiful three-story house, you know, the kind with the stone pillars and the big deep porch. It’s on the crest of a hill so it must have a great view of the city.”

###

From Ginny’s house, Claire drove to the I Spy Shoppe, fretting the whole way. The girl was so palpably lonely. What would stop her from blurting everything out to someone at the clinic? They were the only people Ginny ever spoke to. She seemed especially attached to the head nurse Vi, the same one who had cut Lori off the minute she started asking questions about her daughter.

The I Spy Shoppe was located in a strip mall on Barbur Boulevard, next to a space that held a new restaurant every month. Now it appeared to have morphed from a Pakistani restaurant into an Ethiopian one. When the lone waiter saw Claire’s Mazda nose into the parking lot, he picked up a menu and stood at attention, then slumped as she limped past the “Lentil Stew Made Fresh Daily!” sign. Claire made a mental note to take Charlie to the restaurant soon, although it would do little to stave off its inevitable demise.

With its cheap gray felt carpeting and white-painted walls, the I Spy Shoppe also had an air of impermanence about it, even though it had been selling its own particular brand of paranoia for over ten years. The small store’s half-dozen glass cases held an odd mixture of gag gifts (“Instant Worms,” “The Two-Headed Nickel - Wins Every Toss”) side-by-side with more serious - and expensive - items like leg shackles, bomb detectors and a briefcase booby-trapped to give any unauthorized user a nine-thousand-volt jolt.

The clerk, Jimmy, looked up from his
Soldier of Fortune
magazine. “What happened to your ankle?” he asked.

“A little escapade with a killer attack dog.” Claire said it with a smile, but he apparently believed her.

“An ankle’s not much to injure in that case. One trick is to remember to throw your forearm over your throat. Better to have your arm bitten than to have your throat torn out.” Jimmy demonstrated, looking as if he were trying to strangle himself. “And if you get knocked off your feet, you assume the pillbug position.” He laced his fingers together and put his hands over the back of his neck, with the fingers facing inside. He curled his body over so that his face was against his knees. He straightened up, his knees giving an audible pop. “Of course, you’re better off if it never comes to that. I always advise clients to try our Dog B Gon.” As Claire thought to herself that the name would make a good license plate, Jimmy tapped on the top of the glass case, indicating a small metal canister about the size of a bottle of correction fluid. “It’s guaranteed to stop about any dog in its tracks. And another thing to try is German. Most attack dogs are trained to ignore English commands. Say ‘Halt’ instead of ‘stop.’”

“I think this particular dog didn’t understand any language, English or foreign.”

“That’s the problem. People go out of their way to train their dogs to be mean, but it’s like leaving a loaded gun lying on top of the TV set. You don’t know who’s going to get hurt.” Eyes narrowed, he gave her a little nod, then switched into his salesman mode. “So what can I do you for today?”

Jimmy had once sold Claire a stun gun the size of a beeper. When it came to planning a break-in, he was happy to again give her advice, just as long as she understood it was speculative.
 
He spent his days fantasizing that he was really Double Oh Seven, while he sold “nannycams” hidden in teddy bears to suspicious parents - and telephone tapping devices to even more suspicious spouses.

Leaning on the counter so that she could keep her weight off her left ankle, Claire laid out her problem for Jimmy. “Suppose there’s a building I need to get into at night - but I don’t happen to have a key. If I were able to get inside beforehand, do you have anything I could use to keep the lock from closing so I could come by later?” She paused, then added, “Of course this is all hypothetical.”