SUICIDAL SUSPICIONS: A Kate Huntington Mystery (The Kate Huntington Mystery Series Book 8) (4 page)

“Well, if you meet with them, be careful what you say. They may be fishing for evidence for a malpractice suit.”

“That had crossed my mind. I’ll be careful.”

They said their goodbyes and disconnected.

Biting hard on her lower lip, Kate dialed the Hartins’ number. Mrs. Hartin answered on the second ring. In a brisk, business-like tone, she asked to meet on Saturday.

Kate hesitated, thinking about the logistics of child care. She didn’t know if Skip had any plans for the day. Did Maria have another date with her young man? Not so young really, she mentally corrected herself.

“That will probably work,” she said into the phone. “We can meet at my office.” She wanted this encounter on her own turf. “But I’ll have to check to make sure either my husband or nanny can watch my children.”

“Why wouldn’t the nanny be able to watch them?”

“She’s normally off duty on the weekends.”

A few seconds of silence. Kate imagined Mrs. Hartin contemplating why one would be so generous with servants.

Stop it! The woman just lost her daughter.

“Very well,” Mrs. Hartin said. “Call me if there is a problem. Otherwise we will be at your office, say at noon.”

“Mrs. Hartin, may I ask why you want to meet with me? You do realize that there are limits on what I can share with you.”

Another beat of silence. “I’d prefer to wait and discuss it in person.”

Kate swallowed the lump in her throat. “Okay. I’ll call if there’s a problem.”

~~~~~~~~

At noon on Saturday, Kate ushered the Hartins into her office. She had placed two straight-back chairs in front of her desk. The goal here was not to make these people all that comfortable.

She went around her desk and sat down. “You do understand that there may be very little I can tell you. Confidentiality constraints may keep me from answering your questions.”

Mrs. Hartin gave her a stiff nod. Mr. Hartin just stared at her, his eyes red-rimmed, his mouth set in a grim frown. Josie had described him as a reserved man, not particularly demonstrative but caring in his own way.

Kate’s heart went out to him, and even to his wife. At the same time, she found them scary.

Mrs. Hartin cleared her throat. “I understand, Mrs. Huntington, that you compared me to a dog in your last session with my daughter.”

Shock and confusion vied for dominance. Fortunately, Kate was adept at hiding her emotions. With a neutral expression on her face, she said, “I’m afraid I cannot discuss the specific content of my sessions with my clients.”

“Not clients, Mrs. Huntington.” The woman’s tone was sharp. “Client. A client.
My
daughter.”

“Technically, I cannot even confirm that a specific person is my client.”

“Bullshit,” Mr. Hartin said.

Kate stared at him for a beat, trying to figure out what made this man tick.

Mrs. Hartin ignored him.

“I’m not trying to be difficult,” Kate said. “The rules of confidentiality in my profession are very strict. Due to the stigma attached to being in therapy, therapists cannot even say whether or not someone
is
their client. If possible, I will try to answer your questions, in general terms.”

Mrs. Hartin leaned forward. “And what does that code of ethics say about taking measures to prevent a client from committing suicide.”

Kate felt the clinical detachment kick in. She’d dealt with hostility from families more than once before. “We are required to do so,” she said in a calm voice, “if we have reason to believe that a client is
actively
suicidal.”

“Well, obviously my daughter was actively suicidal,” Mrs. Hartin said, “since she committed suicide!”

Kate was very glad that she’d set this meeting up in her office. The setting was helping her stay grounded in her professional persona.

“
Actively
is one of the key words in that sentence, but so are
has reason to believe
. The last three times that I was in communications with your daughter, she was not depressed, much less suicidal.”

She was waltzing on thin ice even admitting to “communications” with Josie but the whole thing was becoming a bit ludicrous. The Hartins knew she was Josie’s therapist.

“Again I will point out, Mrs. Huntington,” the woman said, “that she
was
actively suicidal,
since
she committed suicide.”

“Ma’am, I am a therapist, not a mind reader. If someone is acting totally fine around me, showing absolutely no signs of depression…” She trailed off intentionally, implying that this was the case with their daughter. “It is possible that your daughter’s mood deteriorated after my last communication with her and she did not call me to report this.”

Mrs. Hartin sniffed loudly. “Is that how you phrase it, Mrs. Huntington, that she should ‘report’ her mood shifts to you?”

“No, that is the formal language I am using with you. With my clients I
warmly
encourage them…” Did this woman even know the definition of
warmly
? “…to contact me whenever they are feeling down. But if they do not call me, there’s nothing I can do. I can’t read their minds from across town!”

“So what about the dreams?”

Kate’s heart pounded.

Dreams! What dreams?

She hoped she’d successfully hidden her surprise. Josie had mentioned dreams in her last session, but how the hell did her mother know that?

The abrupt change of subject would have been more effective if Mrs. Hartin hadn’t given her a smug look.

Awareness dawned. Kate sat back, feigning a calm she didn’t feel. Elbows on the arms of her desk chair, she tented her fingers in front of her chin. “Mrs. Hartin, your remarks lead me to believe that you have found your daughter’s journal. There is no guarantee that I know everything that is contained in that journal.”

The woman’s face remained neutral but her eyes lit up with glee.

Kate caught herself before she shook her head.
Even now, with your daughter’s body barely cold, it’s all about having the upper hand, being in control.

“What has happened to Josie’s dog?” She wanted to know the answer, but she was also hoping the question would inject some humanity into the interview.

“The creature was barely alive,” Mrs. Hartin said. “We instructed the veterinarian to put it down.”

Kate’s stomach twisted. She wasn’t able to keep the horror off of her face, and she wasn’t sure she cared.

The glint was back in the woman’s eye. “Don’t worry. The vet insisted she would care for the
mutt
for free.”

Of course, her daughter’s dog should have been a purebred. One of the many ways Josie had defied her mother was by insisting on rescuing mutts from the pound, starting with Buster in her teens.

Mrs. Hartin sniffed. “She said she’d find it a home, should it survive.”

Kate was dying to know what had brought the dog to a state of being barely alive, but she wasn’t willing to show her ignorance to this woman.

“Mrs. Huntington, our lawyer has advised us that we could file a lawsuit against you,” Mrs. Hartin said. “Our main reason for coming here today was to determine whether or not that was appropriate.”

Kate narrowed her eyes and studied the woman across the desk. Mrs. Hartin wanted her to beg. And that might or might not fend off the lawsuit.

But even though she felt guilty about Josie’s death, the logical, professional part of her brain knew that all the things she’d said to the Hartins were true. She wasn’t about to grovel and give this bitch any satisfaction.

Josie, you were so right. Your mother is truly a piece of work.

“I believe I have already made my position clear. I was unaware of any depression or suicidal inclinations.”

“So in other words,” Mrs. Hartin said, a sneer in her voice, “you are unable to accurately detect the mood state of your clients and are therefore incompetent.”

Kate’s chest tightened. She gritted her teeth. She opted not to dignify the woman’s words with a response.

After a moment, Mrs. Hartin continued, “I do have her journal. And obviously she was a lot sicker than you thought she was. She speaks of recurring dreams, nightmares really, of feeling haunted at night by dark shadows.” The woman stared at her, waiting for her to defend her incompetence.

Kate glanced at Mr. Hartin. The whites of his eyes were now more red than white. His cheeks had sagged. He swallowed hard and looked away.

Her heart ached. She blinked once to relieve the stinging in her eyes. She wasn’t about to let herself cry, or even look like she was about to, in front of Mrs. Hartin.

The woman frowned. “Well, young lady, what do you have to say for yourself?”

Sorry, the parental tone may have worked on Josie. Not so much on me.

Kate took a deep breath and leaned forward. “Mr. and Mrs. Hartin, I wish I could tell you more and perhaps give you some modicum of comfort. But I can’t get specific. Let me try to explain some things in more general terms.”

Mr. Hartin made a noise, somewhere between a snort and a harumph. Mrs. Hartin gave him a quelling look, which he ignored.

“I often suggest to clients that they keep a journal. It serves several purposes. It gives them an emotional outlet, and also helps them consolidate an insight by writing down their thoughts and feelings as they are happening, or shortly thereafter. Sometimes the client shows me their journals, but not always. Indeed I emphasize to them that the journal is for their benefit. I don’t want them writing with my reactions in mind.”

She stopped to take a deep breath, choosing her words, which were mostly aimed at Mr. Hartin. “Normally, the things a client journals about, they do bring up in therapy and we work on it. They may or may not note in the journal how the issues have been resolved, or even that they
have been
resolved. Nor are they likely to write about the good things going on in their lives.”

Kate looked directly at Mr. Hartin, waited until he made eye contact. “A client’s journal only shows the dark side of their life, not the good side, and in recent times your daughter was in a good place.”

Mr. Hartin’s eyes grew shiny. He gave her a small nod.

Mrs. Hartin sniffed again. “Father Phelps was right.”

The name took Kate by surprise. “Father Samuel Phelps? At St. Bartholomew’s?”

“Yes,” Mr. Hartin said, his voice raspy.

Mrs. Hartin lifted her chin. “Father Phelps said that nothing good would come of Josephine being in therapy.”

Kate seriously doubted the priest had said that. She knew Father Samuel. He had been the pastor of her parents’ church for decades–the church she had grown up in.

He had most likely said something similar and Mrs. Hartin was twisting his words, perhaps unintentionally. People often heard what they wanted to hear.

Kate resisted the temptation to respond.

“What I don’t understand,” Mrs. Hartin said, “is how a girl, who is, quote, ‘in a good place’ can end up committing suicide.”

Honestly, I don’t either.
Kate caught herself before she said the thought out loud.

“Do you know what Josie’s diagnosis was?” she asked.

Mrs. Hartin narrowed her eyes at her. “She said that you told her she was bipolar.”

Kate resisted pointing out that the diagnosis had been confirmed by two doctors, Josie’s psychiatrist and her GP.

“Let me explain some things about bipolar, again in general terms. It is a biochemical imbalance that causes fluctuations in mood, from very high to very low–”

“Manic-depressive,” Mr. Hartin said.

“Yes, that’s the older name for it. These moods can be aggravated by what’s going on in the person’s life and/or their psyche, but the direct cause of the mood swing is usually more about brain chemistry than anything else.”

“In other words,” Mr. Hartin said, “it’s not related to how the person feels about life.”

“Not how they
really
feel. But once the chemistry gets a solid grip on the person’s brain, they may experience feelings that are not based on the reality of their life. Or their true feelings about life events may be greatly intensified by the brain chemistry.”

Mr. Hartin nodded.

Mrs. Hartin made a soft
tsk
ing noise under her breath. Her nose went up in the air. “We will be consulting with our lawyer next week.” She stood. “We will decide then whether or not to pursue a lawsuit.”

Mr. Hartin and Kate both stood as well.

Kate breathed in through her nose to calm herself, willing her tense jaw to relax. “I was very fond of your daughter. My condolences to both of you for your loss.”

Mr. Hartin’s mask cracked. For a second, Kate thought he was going to cry. “Thank you,” he mumbled. Then his face pinched back into its unhappy frown.

Kate’s chest ached. She wished she could do something to relieve this man’s pain.

Mrs. Hartin gave her husband a sharp look. She turned on her heel and abruptly left the office. He trailed after her.

Kate waited until she heard the slam of the outer waiting room door. Then she sank into her desk chair. Burying her face in her crossed arms on the desk, she gave in to the tears she’d been fighting for the better part of two days.

CHAPTER FOUR

Kate felt better after her good cry. As stressful as the meeting with the Hartins had been, saying the things to them that she needed to hear herself had helped them sink in. She wasn’t a mind reader. She couldn’t be expected to know what was happening with clients if they didn’t tell her.

Halfway home, she caught herself humming to the song on the radio. Her throat tightened. She flashed back a decade to the time right after her first husband’s death.

She had caught herself humming to the radio then, but it was weeks after his death, not days. Back then she had seen it as a good sign, that she would survive the crushing blow of Eddie’s death.

Now it made her feel guilty. How could she so quickly dismiss Josie’s death and get on with her own life, as if the woman had never existed?