The Perils of Peaches (Scents of Murder Book 3) (3 page)

“No problem,” said Barkha.

“Where’s Eunice?” Franklin glanced around the waiting room, occupied by only the four of us. Hannah squealed.

“In the kitchen, cleaning the coffeepot, I believe,” Barkha replied.

“. . . Laboratory results reveal . . .” came Dr. Bradley’s voice, louder now. He appeared in his doorway long enough to push the door closed and shut himself back inside.

“Okay.” The young man stalked down the hallway behind the counter toward the office’s kitchen. We stared after him. “Eunice, you’ve got to talk some sense into him.” Then came the sound of water rushing from a faucet.

Barkha reached into her lab jacket pocket and handed me a computer disk. “Here are my files. My last patient just left, and Dr. Bradley has two more waiting. Um, about earlier, at the restaurant . . .”

“I was going to ask. Are you all right? I thought you’d want to know about that man—Dr. Gupta, I assume—showing up at your place.”

“I’m okay now. I called Dr. Gupta. I let him know I’ll talk to him. It’s the least I can do after he drove all the way here. But Dr. Bradley . . . well, let’s just say sometimes the past dies hard.” She shook her head and slipped out of her navy blue jacket that made her look very doctor-ly. “Pray for me, please. I have some tough decisions to make.”

“I’m here if you want to talk.” Usually doctors offered comfort and a pair of ears. Now, it was my turn.

“Thanks. I . . . I really appreciate it.” Barkha’s gaze slide to Dr. Bradley’s office door. “Tushar and I were supposed to get married. Our families made plans. Maybe at one time I did too.”

“Tradition?”

“More like expectations, I guess. We’ve known each other since we were children, and we’ve always been good friends. Let’s just say it’s not meant to be. Or what God has planned, either.”

“I wondered if it was something like that. And then . . .”

“Then I took the position here. My parents still don’t talk to me unless I call them first. So . . . I haven’t called them since this spring. They just don’t understand.”

“I’m so sorry, Barkha. I couldn’t imagine that happening with my family.” I wanted to hug her. “Of course you’ve got my prayers.” Hannah held a fistful of my hair, which I managed to get out of her hand.

“Enough about me right now.” Barkha reached for Hannah, who in turn reached for her. “How’s our little one? My, but she’s growing fast. Seems like yesterday I was telling you to push. And here we are.”

“Ouch. That pain is a fading memory, and you had to remind me.” I laughed. “I wish these extra twenty pounds were a memory.”

“Those will come off in time, I’m sure.” Barkha handed Hannah back to me. “There you go.”

“Are you coming to Momma and Daddy’s on Sunday? She asked about you the other day.”

“I’m planning to be there.”

“Jerry said something about coming too.”

At this, her face flushed, not the angry red I’d seen earlier in the restaurant, but another sort of flush altogether.

I opened my mouth to say more, and Dr. Bradley’s door flew open again.

“Do you mind keeping it down? I’m trying to finish work so I can get home at a decent time for once.”

“I apologize, Hiram,” Barkha began.

“Mrs. Hart-ley, it would do you well to remember your place around here.” Dr. Bradley gave us each a blistering glare, then slammed his office door.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” I said to Barkha. I’d sooner run a register at Wal-Mart than work for that man ever again. “Let’s go, Hannah.” Yes, like Momma said, not all money was good money. Even though Barkha was higher up on Dr. Bradley’s totem pole than I was, I didn’t know how she did it.

Chapter Two

“So what I really wanted to tell him was he could forget about having me transcribe his reports anymore.” My husband, Ben, sat on the floor in front of our loveseat where I tried to give him a back rub. I kneaded the knot between his shoulders with a little extra vigor.

“Ow.” Ben winced. “Go easy. And quit. Transcribing, I mean. Not the back rub.”

“Sorry.” There, another knot to be conquered in his shoulder blade. “But why does Dr. Bradley have to be so rude? He’s got the bedside manner of a Tennessee River rat.”

“He’s not a bad doctor, actually. He’s a lot nicer when you’re the patient.”

“When did you go to him?”

“Last year. He’s the one who sent me for the stress test.”

I remembered that time, when I was approaching the big-as-a-house phase of my pregnancy and was on bed rest for over a month. Somehow I must have blocked out the Dr. Bradley part. “Oh. You did. He was nice, you said?”

“He took plenty of time, didn’t make me feel like he was pushing to get rid of me. Sounded concerned, and said I ought to exercise after my stress test gave the call-clear.”

“Talk about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He always makes me feel like I’m a bother.”

“I’m sure it’s just your imagination, Babe. Because you are never a bother.”

Ha. If he only knew. “I’d ask Barkha, but I wouldn’t want her to commit any kind of professional faux pas by talking about Dr. Bradley. She’d probably agree with me, though. He and Barkha were having quite a talk at lunch today, and she wasn’t happy about the conversation.” More pressure on Ben’s shoulder blade. “This afternoon when I asked her about it, she opened up a little bit about her old friend, Tushar, who just came to town.”

“She’s not used to the way everyone’s in each other’s business here.” Ben shrugged his shoulders. “You know how we don’t like feeling like we’re living under a microscope, either.”

“I guess. I wish I could help her. She seems so distracted lately. And I wonder if this Tushar guy is trying to get back together with her. But then Eunice said he’d talked to Dr. Bradley for a while. It can’t be good.” I frowned as I kneaded Ben’s back.

“Babe, don’t worry about it. When the good doctor’s ready, she’ll talk. And if she’s not, she won’t.” Ben’s tone was soft, but the words stung. “I think you’re looking for a sister substitute.”

Ouch. “I don’t think that’s true. I’m pretty used to Di not living around here anymore.” Ben’s words and my earlier conversation with Di rang in my ears. “I like Barkha. She’s different.”

“Exactly. Which is why we can’t force her to be anyone else than who she is.”

We fell silent and I relished the moments while Hannah slept during those quiet hours between dinner and our bedtime.

“But I’m not forcing Barkha to be anyone else. I admit I’d love to set her and Jerry up on a date. They both need to get out more. I think their personalities complement each other.” I shook my head.

“If you try that, they’ll probably both run screamin’ in the other direction.” Ben turned to face me.

“You know as well as I do that Jerry only needs a little encouragement to ask her to dinner. He looks at her at church, barely says hi, and then pretends his cell phone is buzzing and walks off. Or maybe it really is.” I shifted back onto the loveseat cushion. “And then when he does manage to say hi to her, she finds someone else to talk to.”

Ben took my hand. “This is why you need to quit matchmakin’. Maybe it’s one-sided. I know Jerry’s liked her for a long time. I’d had to see him get hurt if she didn’t feel the same way.”

I loved and hated the way he distracted me by rubbing his thumb on my palm. “Well, then if they don’t have dinner together, he can invite her for coffee. Trudy would make them a special latte at Higher Grounds.”

“Whoa, so you would drag poor Trudy into this plot too?”

“That’s not funny—” A cry came from the nursery. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be right here.”

I left to check Hannah.

Her nursery, formerly our computer room next to the master bedroom, was decorated with ponies and princesses. We’d been so sure a Ben Junior—we called him BJ for almost a trimester—was going to join us that Ben had a local artist paint a pony pasture mural on one wall, with a blue sky that covered the ceiling. Then Hannah came instead, and a quick fix turned the mural into princesses on a pony ride in the country.

Hannah was teething, or she had gas, and I wasn’t sure which. Or maybe it was both. A pitiful wail came from her mouth. Pacifying her had grown into a process of elimination. Her perfect face flamed red, and giant tears, precious as diamonds, streamed down her petal-soft cheeks.

“Momma’s here.” I scooped her up. Momma. The name still sounded foreign to me, yet it seemed like I’d always had it. Hannah’s firm little tummy rumbled under my touch. “That’s the problem. Let’s get you some gas drops, and then we’ll get Daddy his supper.” Ben was awfully quiet.

I snuggled her against me as we went to the kitchen. Ben’s assertion followed me. Had I truly looked to Barkha as a substitute sister? Maybe I’d assumed we shared a bond, since she cared for me during my pregnancy, and helped deliver Hannah.

All I knew is that when I’d seen her enter our church, besides the fact she looked different from the majority of us in Greenburg, is that she looked like someone who needed a friend. She’d hugged a crisp new-looking Bible and seemed like she hugged some secrets too.

The gas drops, a wonderful invention, waited for us in the cabinet near the sink. Once I managed to get a few drops into Hannah, I set her in the playpen in the corner of the kitchen. The crock-pot on the counter needed my attention. I’d finally dragged the thing out of the cabinet and started using it once my schedule got crazy. Now Ben needed to sample my homemade beef stew that had simmered most of the day.

“Just you wait, Hannah Banana.” I smiled at my daughter. My heart swelled again, and the memory of Dr. Bradley’s caustic manner faded.

A snore blared into the kitchen. That figured. Another night of Ben dozing off before dinner. Sometimes I wanted him to close Honey’s Place down, even though the restaurant we’d inherited made it out of probate and was finally making money again.

Two years ago, Ben had inherited the restaurant from the notorious Honey Haggerty, who’d been murdered. Honey’s sister had threatened to sue us into tomorrow to get the restaurant for herself. But then she hit the Powerball numbers—over 100 million dollars—and she started an around the world trip she still hadn’t come home from. One hundred million dollars definitely outshined a small-town diner that needed a new roof and a repaved parking lot.

Roland Thacker, local business mogul, could probably afford to buy the restaurant. The guy loved real estate. Maybe someday I’d convince Ben to sell. I glanced at Hannah, who crept around the edge of the playpen. If Ben missed her first steps because of working long hours. . .well, Momma was right when she said you couldn’t get moments back.

I sighed and took down a pair of bowls from the cabinet. I’d take my beef stew to the computer, along with Hannah, so I could work through Barkha’s dictation files. Dr. Bradley’s reports could wait until Monday morning because I had no intention of making another trip into the lion’s den to fetch them. Let him growl.

“Impression: Allergic rhinitis and sinusitis. Plan: Amoxicillin five hundred milligrams . . .” Barkha’s voice came over the tape, and my fingers moved over the keyboard as I typed her words. Wait. Had I just zoned out? I replayed the last few seconds of the digital sound file, and tried not to yawn while I listened to the medical report. Trudy from the coffee shop had gone to the doctor about her sniffles, and sure enough, she had a sinus infection. Barkha had seen her as a favor to Dr. Bradley, who’d been swamped with a rash of sniffles and summer colds.

The idea of typing reports for both doctors of Bradley Medical Group was that I could spend time at home with Hannah and get paid for it. Already I’d stopped to feed her again, and kiss Ben when he ambled to bed. The thought of crawling between the sheets and drifting off to oblivion appealed to me. But I had still had peaches to peel. The cycle never ended.

I sighed and saved the finished report on my computer before printing it. Enough for now. The hands of the clock crawled toward eleven.

One of the things I’d agreed to when I decided to work for the Doctors Bradley and Mukherjee was confidentiality. I knew who had hemorrhoids, and who’d cheated on someone and had to go to the doctor as a consequence. The thought of Greenburg’s secrets being played out on sound files made me shiver sometimes.

The ringing phone made me jump. I ran to answer it, so Hannah wouldn’t wake again. When she had a colicky night, her restless sleep made her prone to wake at just about anything, even the tag on Spot’s collar jingling as she headed down the hall on a midnight prowl.

Bradley Medical displayed on the caller ID. I snatched up the phone.

“Andi, it’s Barkha. Something’s happened at the office. Jerry is here, but I wanted to call you, too.” Her voice sounded infinitely weary.

“What happened? Was there a break-in??”

“Hiram was still here. I . . . I stopped by because I saw lights on. He was unconscious at his desk, the back door ajar.” She barely whispered the words.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“You don’t have to . . .”

“It’s not a problem.” Barkha hadn’t asked me to come, but I heard her unspoken request. “Hannah’s already down for the night.”