SUICIDAL SUSPICIONS: A Kate Huntington Mystery (The Kate Huntington Mystery Series Book 8) (32 page)

When the pain in her skull had subsided some, she carefully slid out of bed and padded across the room to her dresser. Her briefcase was on the floor next to it.

She fumbled around in the dark until she found its handle, then carried it into the bathroom, closed the door and turned on the light. Sitting down on the closed toilet lid, she searched in the case for the piece of paper.

She stared at the suicide note and nodded her head, then wished she hadn’t.

She knew now where else she had seen those vague lines from photocopying–on the original clonazepam prescription at the pharmacy. There had been a couple of horizontal lines on it.

Had someone cobbled together a bogus prescription?

Kate dug a pad and pen out of the briefcase and wrote herself a note to call Judith about it in the morning. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t forget, but a concussed brain couldn’t be trusted.

In the dark bedroom, she put the briefcase back next to her dresser and carried the pad over to her nightstand.

Skip suddenly turned over in his sleep, startling her. She dropped the pad on the floor.

She barely kept from screaming in pain when she tried to lean over to get it. Feeling around with her bare foot instead, she had no luck finding it.

She’d have to trust her concussed brain after all, and even if she did forget, she’d see the notepad on the floor when she got out of bed in the morning.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Wednesday morning, Kate studied her face in the mirror. She didn’t look quite as gruesome as she had. The bruise on her forehead was now a lovely shade of light purple fringed with yellow. Her nose was still a bit red and puffy, but the cut didn’t look that bad. The intern had done a good job of stitching it up.

Kate made a mental note to avoid turning her back to her clients if she could. The scabs in the middle of the shaved lump on the back of her head were an unsettling sight.

She hoped her energy held out. Even though she didn’t have a full day of clients, there was the appointment this afternoon with the nun to get through as well.

It had taken some major re-juggling to clear Monday and Tuesday, and to re-schedule her last two clients for today. She hoped she was fully recovered by next week. It was going to be a rough one, with shortened lunch breaks and extra sessions tacked on to the end of most days.

At least she wouldn’t have the stress of driving and dealing with traffic. She was being chauffeured by Manny for the foreseeable future.

.

Liz called Kate while she and Manny were en route to her office. “Sorry this took so long, but I did a lot of looking for stuff that wasn’t there.”

“Hunh?” Kate said.

“You’ll understand in a minute. Are you sitting down?”

Butterflies fluttered in her chest. She wasn’t sure if they were from anxiety or excitement. Maybe some of both. “Yes.”

“Okay, first Laurie Blake did not start life as a Laurie. She was Lawrence Blake until twelve years ago.”

“Holy crap!” The butterflies bounced around her rib cage. “No wonder she seemed to be hiding something.”

“Yeah, but would someone kill to hide the fact that they were transgender in this day and age?”

The butterflies subsided. “Probably not, especially since she was relatively open about being gay.”

“Okay, well here’s another secret, and this one she might kill to keep. The thing I was looking for that I couldn’t find. Neither Laurie nor Lawrence Blake went to any veterinarian school in the U.S. And she’s not licensed by the State of Maryland to practice as a veterinarian.”

Kate realized her mouth was hanging open. She closed it.

“I finally found a record of her graduation,” Liz continued, “as Laurie, eight years ago. The vet school is in Jamaica, and apparently it’s not accredited in the United States.”

“Maybe she couldn’t get into a school in the states, or the one in Jamaica was a lot cheaper?”

“Could be,” Liz said. “But that’s pretty risky to set up a practice without a license. You’d think someone would have found her out by now.”

Kate shoved an unruly curl out of her face. “Not necessarily. Nobody’s ever asked to see my credentials, not even my landlord when I first rented the office space. She could go about her business for a very long time, maybe even an entire career, as long as nobody tried to file a complaint against her with the veterinarian licensing board.”

“Still, I say that takes a lot of nerve.”

“I agree, but she’d already reinvented herself by going from a he to a she. Why not reinvent herself professionally as well.”

“Yeah, makes sense,” Liz said. “So are you going to tell Lieutenant Anderson about this?”

“I think I have to. I might have been barking up the wrong tree all along here.”

Liz chuckled. “No pun intended. You thinking Josie’s death isn’t related to St. Bartholomew’s after all?”

“Maybe not.” Kate still believed that Josie had been abused at the church, but that might not have been what got her killed.

After signing off with Liz, Kate called Judith’s cell phone. The call went to voicemail. She left a detailed message about Laurie Blake.

Kate hated to do it. If the vet had nothing to do with Josie’s death, she’d just destroyed her livelihood. And maybe worse than that, if there were criminal penalties for practicing as a veterinarian without a license.

~~~~~~~~

Kate was gobbling down her sandwich at lunchtime, in between returning phone calls, when she remembered the insight about the prescription slip.

Crap!
Her concussed brain
had
forgotten it. No doubt she’d find that pad kicked under the edge of the bed.

She reached for her phone, then glanced at the clock on her desk. She was out of time. Her twelve-thirty client would be out in the waiting room.

That prescription slip nagged at her all during her next two clients’ sessions. Which was not good. She’d already been having trouble concentrating, thanks to her still fuzzy brain.

As she and Manny left her office at two-forty, she was considering calling Judith from the car. She shook her head and realized this was still not a good idea. When the ping pong ball of pain had stopped ricocheting inside her skull–at least it wasn’t a jackhammer anymore–she said to Manny, “I need to make a stop before we head for Essex.”

“Where?” he asked.

“A pharmacy.” She let him assume she was picking up a medication for herself.

Okay, so investigating the clonazepam prescription didn’t necessarily require her expertise, but she was hoping a personal appeal to the pharmacist’s conscience would get him to open up.

At the pharmacy counter, the man recognized her before she opened her mouth. His eyes went wide. “What happened to you?”

“Close encounter with a bad guy,” Kate said.

The pharmacist’s sympathetic expression faded. “Look, I don’t have time to talk to you right now. My assistant quit on me without notice, and I’m swamped.”

Kate glanced around. Again the place was hardly bursting at the seams with customers. She suspected the assistant’s defection was being used as an excuse.

“I won’t keep you long, Dr.…” She glanced at the nametag pinned to the pocket of his white coat to remind herself of his name. “Dr. Keller. Indeed, I’ll get right to the point. I can understand why you wanted to cover up about that clonazepam prescription that wasn’t handled properly, but we have no desire to get you in trouble.”

The pharmacist blanched. Manny was looking at her funny but he stayed silent.

“We
do
need your cooperation,” she said. “That medication was used to kill a young woman, and then her death was made to look like a suicide.”

Red splotches now adorned the pharmacist’s pale cheeks. “That’s not my fault.”

She ignored the interruption and pointed to her face. “A killer’s out there, and he did this to me. We need to stop him before he hurts or kills someone else.”

Dr. Keller stared at her, his eyes wide again, his mouth working soundlessly. Then his shoulders dropped. “What do you need to know?”

“What did you do with the original of that prescription?”

“I have it. I genuinely thought it was missing when that other detective was here.”

Manny’s eyebrows had gone up at the words
other detective
.

“That’s why I denied knowing anything about it,” Keller said. “But then I found it later. It had been misfiled.”

And you didn’t call the police because your lie had dug the hole you were in even deeper.

Kate opted not to say that out loud. It would only put the guy on the defensive. “May I see it, please?”

He nodded and went into his office. After a minute, he came back with a piece of paper and handed it to her.

She’d handled it before so she saw no reason not to again. As she’d remembered, the vague lines were there on this supposed original prescription slip–one just under the doctor’s printed name and office address and another just above his signature.

She leaned across the counter a bit and pointed to the lines. “I believe this prescription was cut and pasted from another one by that doctor.”

Dr. Keller went pale again. “I don’t know who filled it.”

“Aren’t you supposed to keep good records of that, especially for a controlled substance?” She knew he was.

He nodded once, then shook his head and swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Please don’t report me. I could lose my license. I do keep good records, but there’s nothing in there about this prescription. I have no idea what happened. We have a couple part-time pharmacists that work weekends and evenings. They both denied having filled it.”

“Okay, I’m going to keep this prescription slip for now.” She hefted her briefcase onto the counter and slid the prescription inside the folder for Josie’s case. “I’ll try to keep you from getting in trouble. But when my lieutenant comes here to talk to you later, you need to answer all her questions honestly.”

As they walked toward the front door of the pharmacy, Manny whispered out of the side of his mouth, “
My
lieutenant?”

“Shh.”

Manny held the door for her, then followed her out onto the sidewalk. “You shouldn’t have taken that prescription slip. The lieutenant’s gonna be pissed.”

“There’s a lot of things I shouldn’t be doing regarding this case, and the lieutenant would be more pissed if the slip mysteriously disappeared again.”

Once Kate was settled into the passenger’s seat of Manny’s car, she pulled out her phone. She got Judith’s voicemail again. As best she could, she explained in a message about the prescription and the encounter with the pharmacist. She disconnected.

Manny was threading his way through Towson’s heavy traffic, headed for the Beltway. “Are you sure Lieutenant Anderson is okay with us continuing to investigate this?”

“I’m not sure and I’m not going to ask. She’ll tell us to butt out if she doesn’t want our help.” Kate didn’t want to tell Manny that the lieutenant was actually investigating Josie’s death on the q.t., disguised as an investigation into the attack on her, and would probably welcome anything they could come up with. The fewer people who knew about the pressures from above at the police department, the better off Judith would be.

~~~~~~~~

Skip was getting annoyed. He’d tried several times on Monday and Tuesday to catch up with William Coleman, at his office and at home. No luck either place. He hadn’t wanted to leave a message and give the guy time to think about what he wanted to tell him, or
not
tell him. The plan had been to find out where he was, then show up unannounced. But finally Skip had been forced to leave a vague message on the man’s home voicemail.

That was yesterday afternoon, and the ex-priest still hadn’t called him back. Maybe he thought Skip was a telemarketer.

He might need to be a little less vague. He called the brokerage firm where the man worked. Once again, the receptionist said that Mr. Coleman wasn’t available.

“When will he be available?”

“I’m not sure, sir. Would you like me to transfer you to his voicemail?”

This time, Skip said yes.

“Mr. Coleman, my name is Skip Canfield. I’m a private investigator. I’m looking into a matter that you might be able to help me with. It doesn’t directly involve you, but you may have some useful information. Please give me a call as soon as possible. It’s very important.”

He disconnected and blew out air. He was getting the distinct impression that this dude was ducking him intentionally.

~~~~~~~~

Sister Michelina herself opened the heavy door of the convent. Her jaw dropped when she saw Kate’s face. “What happened to you?”

“It’s a bit of a long story. May I come in?”

The nun looked up and down the street. “Yes, but I have an appointment. He should be here any moment.”

“The man you have an appointment with is my husband.”

“He said he was a private investigator.”

“He’s that too. I’ve come in his place.”

Sister Michelina took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’d best come in.”

“This is my bodyguard,” Kate said as she and Manny stepped over the threshold. “He can sit out here in the foyer.”

The nun nodded silently and gestured toward a wingback chair against one wall. Then she led the way to the small parlor where she and Kate had talked before.

There was no offer of tea and cookies this time.

As Kate took a seat, rage boiled up inside of her. At this woman, at the pharmacist, and Dr. Kraft for that matter. All these people were lying to cover their butts, or someone else’s. Meanwhile a killer was getting away with murder and with beating her up.

A small, more lucid part of her brain told her that the anger was a delayed reaction to the mugging. Nonetheless, she decided Sister Michelina was a justifiable target for that anger. The nun was avoiding eye contact with her.

“Take a good look at my face, Sister,” she said in a sharp tone.

The nun glanced her way, winced, then looked away again.

“I know for sure now that Josie Hartin was murdered. I received a threatening note telling me to stop investigating, and when I didn’t,” Kate waved her hand toward her face, “this happened.” She turned her head around so the nun could see the back. “And this.”