SUICIDAL SUSPICIONS: A Kate Huntington Mystery (The Kate Huntington Mystery Series Book 8) (9 page)

Carol shook her head vehemently. “I hate the hospital. The staff either acts like I’m crazy or I’m a small child. Last time, one nurse kept saying, ‘Now dearie.’ I wanted to slug her.”

Kate’s mouth went dry. She wasn’t convinced this woman would make it through the weekend. Her mind blanked. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

“What about that thing you had me sign once?” Carol said. “Promising I’d call you if I felt like hurting myself.”

“Are you making that promise?”

Carol looked away. She twisted her hands together. “Yes.”

Kate didn’t believe her. Terror raged through her system, blood pounding in her ears. She still couldn’t think of what to say, so she opted for the truth. “You’re scaring me, Carol.”

Carol’s gaze flicked in her direction, then away again. “You don’t have to be worried about me.” Her voice was low, deflated.

That scared Kate even more. Her hand shook as she reached up to brush hair back from her face. Should she consider an involuntary admission?

Probably wouldn’t work since the client would just swear to the emergency room doctors that she wasn’t suicidal, and it would blow Carol’s trust in her.

These times when Carol waxed suicidal had been easier to deal with back before her husband had jumped ship. Yes, it was hard living with someone who had such a severe mental disorder, but still… It wasn’t like his wife wanted to be depressed or that she had any control over the mood swings.

Carol was staring at her. “Are you okay, Kate? You seem really nervous today.”

Kate’s throat tightened. A voice in her head said,
The client’s not supposed to be worrying about
you
!

Since she was doing such a crappy job of hiding her anxiety, she might as well use it. “I told you, you’re scaring me.”

Carol sighed, then sat up straighter in her chair. “Look, I promise I won’t hurt myself this weekend. I’ve been this low before, and I always pull through. I know I will this time too. I just have to tough it out.”

“How about we arrange for a friend to come over and stay with you?”

Carol rolled her eyes. “I don’t want a babysitter. I’ve got several new books on my tablet. I’m gonna curl up and read all weekend, not even try to do anything else.”

That sounded very depressed, but safe. “Okay, but I do want you to sign an agreement. I know you keep your word, so that will make me feel better.”

It isn’t about
you
feeling better,
the voice in her head said.

No,
she answered the damn voice,
but guilt about letting me down might just keep this woman alive!

When a client was suicidal, you used whatever worked.

Kate grabbed a pad from her desk and wrote out the agreement, then passed it to Carol, along with a pen.

“I don’t think I’m gonna go back to work today,” Carol said as she signed it. “I’m gonna go home and take a nap.”

Adrenaline jolted through Kate again. There wasn’t much else she could do though. Again she considered the involuntary admission, and again rejected it as not feasible. Two doctors were required to sign off on such an admission. Carol’s psychiatrist would be one, but Kate didn’t see them convincing a doctor who didn’t know them that this woman was actively suicidal. Not if Carol was saying she was fine.

Kate understood the need for that two-doctor requirement. It helped prevent abuses of the system by family members who just wanted to get someone out of the way. But it also made it difficult to hospitalize someone who was legitimately suicidal.

Kate took the pad back with a trembling hand.

At the office door, Carol gave her a hug. “I’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

Dear God, I hope so.

As Carol walked across the waiting room toward the outer door, Kate recalled the conversation with Skip the night before. She’d told him she could handle her own emotions, but she wasn’t all that sure she’d be able to cope if she lost a second client to suicide.

She bolted after the woman. “Carol, wait.”

Grabbing one of her cards from a holder on the end table, she scribbled her cell phone number on the back, all the while thinking,
What am I doing?

She never gave out her personal numbers. She used an answering service as a buffer. Clients called them with an emergency, the service called her, and she called the client back.

She handed the card to Carol. “Just in case,” she said in a low voice so her next client, sitting in a chair a few feet away, couldn’t hear her.

.

At noon, before she left for her lunch date with Rob, Kate called the only number she’d been able to find for Gerald Kraft, MD. The previous evening, she’d searched the Web but found no office address or number, only the one residential listing in that name.

As the phone rang in her ear, she told herself she wanted to know what the doctor had to say before she met with Rob. It might influence her response to whatever threat the Hartins were now making. She shook her head. The reality was that she was procrastinating. She dreaded finding out what that lawyer had been calling about.

“Hello.” A male voice.

“Dr. Kraft?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Kate Huntington. I was hoping I could talk to you about one of your patients.”

“I don’t have patients anymore, young lady.”

What the heck did that mean? “So you didn’t start seeing a Josephine Hartin recently?”

“Ms. Whatever-your-name-is, I retired two years ago.”

Ah, that explained the lack of an office address. “Did you have a Josephine Hartin for a patient before you retired?”

“Name doesn’t ring a bell. Who are you anyway?”

“Uh, Ms. Hartin is deceased. I’m looking into her death.” Neither was a lie; they just weren’t the whole truth.

“Sorry to hear that, but I can’t help you.” His tone was crisp.

“Could you check your records?”

A beat of silence, then air being expelled into the phone. “They’re locked up in a storage unit.”

“Okay, I might be able to come at this from another direction.” Kate paused, deciding how much to say. “Ms. Hartin filled a prescription for clonazepam the day she died. The label on the pill bottle said you were the prescribing doctor.”

“And when was this?” the man asked, his voice now cautious.

“Not quite two weeks ago.”

“What?” the man barked into the phone. “I sure as hell didn’t write that prescription.”

~~~~~~~~

Rob sat in his and Kate’s favorite booth at Mac’s Place and wondered if they’d gotten their wires crossed.

The manager came out of the kitchen door and sketched him a quick wave as he hurried off to deal with some problem. After all these years, it still seemed a little weird that Mac himself wasn’t here to greet them when they came in for their weekly lunch date. But the man seemed a lot happier since turning the restaurant over to a manager and becoming an operative of Skip’s private investigations agency.

Rob had ordered their usual crab cake sandwiches and sides and was contemplating calling Kate when he spotted her coming through the restaurant’s door. She headed his way. Wishing he had better news for her, he rose and swallowed her up in a bear hug.

She wrapped her arms around his waist and hung on for an extra beat. “Sorry I’m late.” Her words were muffled against his chest.

They settled onto the benches of the booth, across from one another. “How are you doing?” Kate asked.

“I’m okay. How are you?”

Kate shrugged. “I was doing better, until that lawyer called. What did she say?”

“You’re not gonna like it. Her clients are filing suit, and she hinted broadly that what they really want is your file on their daughter.”

“What? No way.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told Kathy.”

A waitress appeared next to their booth, two glasses of iced tea in her hands. She put them on the table. “Your crab cakes should be out soon.”

Kate gave her a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Thanks.”

Once the waitress had gone, Rob said, “I told her that was unethical, and I couldn’t quite understand why they were asking for it.”

Kate tilted her head slightly in a half nod. “I understand. They’re looking for answers. But they’re not going to find them in my notes. And what they would find would just cause them more pain. Not to mention that I would never do that to Jo… uh, the client. She would not want her parents seeing what she said about them.”

Rob stirred sugar into his iced tea, delaying what he had to say next. “They may be able to subpoena the file.”

Anger sparked in her eyes. “I’ll fight them on that, but I don’t know how else I can defend myself against a suit. I had no inkling that she was suicidal, and I’m not convinced now that she was.” She told him about the dog issue that had first made her skeptical and the prescription supposedly written by a doctor who was retired and swore he’d never written it. “That’s what made me late, talking to him. I called Judith on the way over here. She gave me the pharmacy’s address from the pill bottle label. I’m going to see what I can find out from the pharmacist.”

Some of the tension in Rob’s chest released. “I hope you’re right. If Judith reopens the case as a homicide, they’d have no grounds for a lawsuit. Otherwise, I don’t know how we’ll fight it.”

“Yeah, either I didn’t know she was suicidal or I knew and didn’t do anything about it. I’m guessing the former’s a little less damaging. But their attorney will have a field day making me look like an idiot.”

He wished he could contradict that assessment, but she was right. “If your insurance company wants to settle out of court, I’d suggest letting them.”

She nodded. “That would get around the subpoena for the records.”

Rob’s chest tightened again. “Crap! Then the parents won’t agree to settle, because the records are what they really want.”

The waitress brought their food. Kate stared down at her crab cake sandwich and grimaced. “I’ve lost my appetite. Could I get a box for this?”

The young woman gave her a puzzled look. “Sure.”

Rob’s stomach churned. It took a lot for Kate to lose her appetite. If they were cutting lunch short, he might as well take his sandwich back to the office and deal with some of the paperwork piled high on his desk. “Make that two boxes.”

While they waited, he studied Kate’s face, especially her eyes. They were the quickest way to judge her stress level. Not as bright blue as they usually were, but not the washed-out gray that indicated total overload either.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m okay.”

“You’re not doing anything dangerous, are you?”

“No. I’ve already had this conversation with Skip. At this point I’m just doing some legwork.” She looked at her watch. “Want to come with me to that pharmacy?”

He hesitated. The paperwork called, but he sensed she hadn’t told him everything. “Sure.”

The waitress brought them two styrofoam containers. They boxed up their lunches and headed out of the restaurant.

Rob dropped an arm around Kate’s shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze.

~~~~~~~~

The pharmacy was an independent one, in an older building. Kate and Rob made their way down somewhat dingy aisles to the pharmacy counter in the back.

Kate was trying to decide how to broach the subject. There really wasn’t a subtle way to do it. At the counter, she asked to speak to the pharmacist about a confidential matter.

That got the attention of a middle-aged man wearing a white coat. He removed the reading glasses from the end of his nose and motioned them down to his end of the counter. “May I help you?”

“I hope so,” Kate said. “I’m looking into a prescription that was filled here on March tenth for a Josephine Hartin.”

A petite woman glanced up from counting pills at a bench along the side wall. Then she lowered her gaze to her task again.

The pharmacist tilted his head. “I can’t really give out any information about our customers.”

Kate leaned forward to get a better look at the plastic nametag pinned to the pocket of his white jacket. It read
Dwayne Keller, PharmD
. “I understand, Dr. Keller, but there’s something irregular about this prescription. It’s for a controlled substance, and the doctor whose name is on the pill bottle swears he never prescribed it.”

The pharmacist’s eyes went wide. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Uh…”

Rob leaned forward and said in a low voice, “We’re asking because Ms. Hartin died of an overdose of various drugs, including the one from here.”

Dr. Keller blanched. “Do you have the prescription number?”

“Yes.” Kate pulled out her notepad and read it off.

The pharmacist punched keys on a computer keyboard. His skin paled even further. “Just a moment.”

He went through a doorway into a tiny glass-walled office area. Resettling the reading glasses on his nose, he started rummaging through a file cabinet drawer. After a moment, his face registered relief as he pulled a slip of paper out of a file.

He came out of the office, but instead of returning to the counter he stepped over to the woman, who now had her back to them and was straightening items on a shelf along the back wall. The pharmacist showed her the slip. “Do you remember this customer, Sybil?”

The woman glanced at the paper. Shiny auburn hair bounced on her shoulders as she shook her head. “No. We get too many people through here.”

Rob raised his eyebrows at Kate. They both looked around. Herds of customers were distinctly lacking.

The pharmacist lowered his voice. All Kate could hear was an indistinct rumble. The woman shook her head again.

He returned to the counter. “We’ve got the prescription on file, but neither my assistant nor I remember the customer.”

“Could we get a copy of the prescription?” Kate said. “To compare it to the doctor’s signature?”

The man hesitated.

“Look,” Rob said, “we already know all the information that’s on it, so what can it hurt?”

The pharmacist shrugged. He lifted a hinged section of the counter and walked over to a copy machine. Punching in a code that apparently bypassed the need to feed it coins, he copied the prescription slip.