Without a Word (20 page)

I didn't wait until I got home to see what Madison had written on the drawing. I sat on the steps in front of her building, opened the tote and slipped out the folded piece of paper right there, smoothing it open on my lap. There were no words. Madison had merely continued the wavy line. Now it went all the way through the heart, dividing it in two. It was no longer a stabbed heart, no longer a threat. It was a broken heart. She'd simply been telling Bechman how she felt.

Had he stopped her before she'd finished it, telling her he understood, explaining again that the droop was temporary, that it would go away. Had he told her they could wait and see before trying the Botox again? Is that why the needle had been left on the desk or on the counter behind him? He'd had it ready but changed his mind when he saw how upset Madison was. And had she picked it up after he'd put it down, the way she picked up everything? Bechman would have been wearing latex gloves. Madison's hands would have been bare.

“How's my favorite research person coming along?”

When I turned, startled, there was Ted. You used to hear people coming, but no more now that everyone and his grandmother wore running shoes. He sat next to me. In day
light, he looked older than he had in the apartment. Given his profession, I didn't think the flattering lighting in his apartment was a coincidence.

“Not bad,” I told him. “And you?”

“Fabulous. My agent just called. He has a lead on a commercial I'd be perfect for. If I'm lucky, I'll get to play the guy with diarrhea. Or maybe it's acid reflux. I forget. The important thing is the
cachet
I get putting this on my résumé.” He rolled his eyes. “And how goes your work life?”

“Plugging along,” I told him.

“Any leads to Miss Sally?”

I shook my head. The last thing I wanted to do was tell the gossipy neighbor something my client didn't yet know.

“Oh. The tan could have fooled me. I thought perhaps you'd tracked her to Belize. Or Costa Rica. Isn't that where people go when they want to disappear?”

“Yup. Rich people. People with assets to hide. Sally didn't have any of those. She didn't even have a credit card with her when she left. She didn't have a watch.”

“Just house keys and Leon's dog.”

“That sounds about right.”

“Too bad. I thought perhaps you'd found the trucker who'd spirited her away.”

“I wish,” I told him.

“But you're still working on it, aren't you? Please don't tell me you've given up. I do miss her so.” He waited a beat, stood, then tossed his striped scarf over one shoulder. “I'm off. Did I mention that I have to
audition
to play the guy with psoriasis? Plum roles like this don't just get handed out. One has to work for them.”

He started to walk away. “Don't forget to keep me posted,” he said, his back to me, wiggling the fingers of his right hand in the air. I was about to get up when I heard another voice, the stoop turning into Grand Central Station.

“Rachel?”

“Yes?”

“Nina. You left your card under my door. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to call you. Things just kept coming up.”

She sat down next to me, a tall, horse-faced woman with big teeth and bad skin.

“I knew it was you because of him. I saw Leon walking him last night and so I said, ‘Oh, you got another dog,' and he said he hadn't, that the dog was yours. When he mentioned your name I had this gigantic guilt attack that I hadn't called, but Leon said you were away so of course I waited.”

“I was hoping you could tell me something about Sally.” It was stale by now, no longer needed, but again, I didn't want to say so. It would make more sense to listen for a couple of minutes than to reveal the truth.

“Why is he doing this?” A conspiratorial whisper. “She's dead.”

“What makes you say that?” Glad she hadn't called before I'd gone to Florida.

“It's the only thing that makes sense,” she said, taking out a cigarette, holding the pack out to me, then lighting hers, blowing a stream of smoke straight out in front of her. “She had everything, a guy who adored her, the freedom not to work but to go to school, an adorable kid.” Nina shrugged. “Why would she have left of her own volition?”

“You're saying she was happy? She never complained about anything?”

“Happy? Who's happy? You tell me who you know that's happy.” Angry now. “That's a reason to toss away a good deal like Leon? The man would have killed for her, he was that devoted.”

“But—”

“Me, I wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.” She took another puff of her cigarette and tossed it toward the gutter.
“A lot of people would be happy with what she had. Shit, with less than she had.”

“Did you tell her that?”

Nina sighed and ran her hands through her aubergine hair. “She expected too much from people, too much from life.”

“You told her that, too?”

She adjusted herself on the step, then changed her mind and stood.

“She took offense?”

“I couldn't say. I got a new job around then and Sally decided to take an extra course.”

“So you were both short on time?”

“Exactly.”

“Was this around the time Sally disappeared?”

“You're not—”

“No, no, no. Of course not.”

“I was only trying to help her see how lucky she was. Isn't that what friends do?”

I nodded and thanked her for her help.

“How long will you keep trying?” she asked. “The police…” She didn't finish, just stood there shaking her head, her lips pruned up, a line between her eyes.

“Until Leon tells me to stop,” I told her.

“Are you married?” she asked, bending toward me and whispering.

“No,” I said.

Pointing at me now. “See. Exactly my point.”

It was two o'clock. Bechman's office would be open already, the waiting room full of children. I wanted to get there later, after the kids had left but while Ms. Peach was still there. I folded the copy of Madison's drawing, tucked it back into my tote and headed home to formulate a plan for getting what I was after.

But on the way, as I was passing the Bleecker Street playground, a little kid coming down the slide on his belly, going face-first into the sand, too stunned to cry once he landed, it occurred to me that not every idea was a good one. Ms. Peach? What did I think she would do, let me see the original files, see if the doctor had changed his note-taking style, see if perhaps there were notes removed before Leon was given the copy of Madison's records I now had in my bag? I had no legal standing, not even a PI license. But what good would that do in this case? Even if I were related to Madison, all I'd be entitled to is exactly what I had—a copy of Madison's medical records, not a look-see at the original file.

I could take Dashiell with me. I could bully my way in, have Dashiell keep her in one place, find the file and check it out. I could take a gun, too, a baseball bat, a meat cleaver. What was I thinking? I couldn't threaten Ms. Peach on the slim chance she had doctored the doctor's notes. Because if she hadn't, or even if she had, threatening her could land me in jail, and that was not going to help Madison at all. Helping Madison was the point. It had been the point from day one, I thought, passing Mama Buddha, smelling black bean sauce as I passed the open kitchen door, a small man in an apron, his foot against the wall, catching a smoke in the crisp fall air. There had to be another way to get what I was after. There had to be a better way.

There was always Hyram Willet, the doctor who seemed to own the practice, or if not the practice, at least the building that housed it. And while there was no way short of dynamite that I could get into the medical office from the street, check the records in privacy and get back out undetected, Dr. Willet, I was sure, could get there from his apartment. If I told him my theory, would Dr. Willet invite me into his house, take me down to the office, give me free run
of the files, Dr. Willet who was fighting tooth and nail to prevent the detectives from doing the very same thing? I didn't think so.

There was one other doctor at the practice, Laura Edelstein, a pediatrician. In fact, I thought I'd seen her name on the copy of Madison's records. I was around the corner from home. I checked the time—not quite two-thirty. If the office was open at all, that meant that either Dr. Willet or Dr. Edelstein was working. Standing outside the gate to my cottage, I dialed the office, getting even luckier than I'd hoped I would. Ms. Peach was taking or making a call. My call went through to voice mail, but before I was invited to leave a message, I got to hear their message, giving me the office hours for both Willet and Edelstein. Dr. Laura, it said after the general message, was in Monday through Thursday afternoons from one to five.

For the moment, as I unlocked the gate and unclipped Dashiell's leash, all my hopes were on Dr. Laura.

I stood across the street from Dr. Bechman's office waiting for the last patient to leave, a little boy holding some sort of robot, refusing to let his mother take his free hand.

“You know you have to hold a grown-up's hand to cross the street, Jeffrey,” she said as I crossed the street. Then, “What do you suggest?”

I could see Ms. Peach in the waiting room, picking up toys and books and putting them back where they belonged, bringing order back to her world. Dr. Edelstein would be returning phone calls. I decided to go into the park on the odd chance that Ms. Peach would be leaving the office first.

I sat on a bench facing north, Dashiell up on the bench next to me. I could see the brownstone that housed the doctors' offices, the gate closed, no one coming out yet. Back at home, I'd pulled out Madison's records again, checking them carefully, line by line. I had seen Laura Edelstein's name there, but only on the top of the letterhead, all three names still there. No one had thought to have new stationery made. Perhaps they were waiting for someone to buy Bechman's practice. Perhaps they were trying to keep expenses down, avoid the cost of interim stationery. Whatever the rea
son, Ms. Peach had used the old letterhead. Some people did that with Christmas cards after one spouse dies inconveniently close to the holidays, crossing out the dead person's name and sending the cards anyway. Merry Christmas!

I was hoping that it was Dr. Edelstein who had referred Madison to Dr. Bechman. If not, there'd be less of a chance I could persuade her to help me. But then I thought of another possible connection, perhaps an even stronger one. I pulled out my cell phone and made a call, got my answer, then waited some more.

Dr. Edelstein was at the gate now, opening the latch, closing it carefully behind her, a plain-looking woman with a long nose, pale skin, dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was a big woman, taller than average and with a weight that fell somewhere on the high side of normal on those charts doctors always had in their offices, which meant by New York standards, she was on the heavy side. Hell, by New York standards, where sizes 4 and 6 were considered a medium, Olive Oyl was on the heavy side.

She headed east, and I did so as well, walking inside the park until I got to an exit. For a while, I stayed on the opposite side of the street, but when we came to Fifth Avenue and she turned left, I left the park, crossed the street and caught up with her.

“Dr. Edelstein?”

She turned, looked at me, then looked down at Dashiell. “Yes.”

“I understand you were at the medical practice around the corner when Celia Abele worked there.”

She stepped back. “What is this about?”

“And that you are JoAnn's pediatrician, but you see her at your other office, at the hospital. Is that correct?”

“Who are you? What is it you…?”

“You heard about Celia, of course.”

Dr. Edelstein blinked. I didn't wait for more.

“Charles doesn't think that Celia committed suicide, Doctor, and neither do I. I think her death is connected to the death of Eric Bechman.”

“Of course it is.”

I shook my head. “Not in the way you think. It wasn't grief that killed Celia.”

I watched the information play across her face, waited as she took another step back, another step away from me.

“If you could only give me ten minutes to explain.”

“Who are you? What is your connection to Celia and Eric?”

“My name is Rachel Alexander,” I told her. “I'm a private investigator, hired by Leon Spector, whose daughter, Madison—”

She began to shake her head. “I can't talk to you. I can't help you with this.”

“Madison didn't kill Dr. Bechman. If we can sit down somewhere, I can explain. I can show you—”

“I have to get home. I'm expected…” Making a point of checking her watch.

“Do you have children, Dr. Edelstein?” Knowing she did, a girl of six. Ellie. When I saw the look on Dr. Edelstein's face, I lifted one hand. “I'm not here to threaten you, Doctor. Far from it. It's just that since you have a child, too, a daughter, you must understand how Charles Abele feels, how Leon Spector feels.”

“Of course I understand. What does that have to do with anything?”

“I have good reason to believe that Madison didn't murder her doctor. And she surely didn't murder Celia. If I'm right, and let's assume for the moment that I am, someone else did. Someone else killed them both.”

She had finally stopped walking. She was standing there, holding her jacket tight around her body, just staring at me, wondering what the hell was happening to her orderly life. Well, who hadn't ever worried about that? No one I knew. And wasn't that the point I was trying to make, that Leon's and Charles's lives had been torn to shreds, not just once either. If she was going to help me, she'd have to understand that, no matter what it took.

“Who?” she said.

“I don't know yet. That's why I need your help.”

“You said you could show me something,” she said. “Show me what?”

I had Madison's drawing in my jacket pocket, the copy of her medical records as well. I took the drawing out first, unfolding it, handing it to Dr. Edelstein. “This is a copy of the drawing that was found on Dr. Bechman's desk a few hours after he was murdered.”

She began to shake her head.

“I know it looks different. As you know, Madison doesn't speak. She stopped speaking shortly after her mother disappeared. I was hired to find her mother—and I did.”

Dr. Edelstein's mouth opened, but I held up my hand before she had the chance to speak.

“Mr. Spector thought if I could find his missing wife and bring her home, that if she had her mother back, Madison would speak again, that she would tell us whether or not she had committed this terrible crime. But her mother won't come back.” I shook my head. “Wishes won't change that. She won't.”

Try as I did to stop it, I felt my eyes getting wet. I felt a tear fall.

“I've been trying, with Dashiell's help,” looking down at him, then back at her, streams of people passing us going both ways, the world leaving work and going home for the evening,
“I've been trying to get through to her, to Madison, to connect with her, to show her that she could trust me, and I think I did, somewhat, because she was willing, just today, to tell me what this drawing meant by finishing it.”

Dr. Edelstein looked down at the drawing in her hand, then back up at me.

“You saw the original, didn't you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“So you can see the difference.”

“Yes, I can, but what does it mean?”

“The drawing wasn't a threat. Madison was telling Dr. Bechman that the effects of the Botox had broken her heart. He must have understood. He must have stopped her before she finished it, to tell her that, to say she didn't have to have the second injection.”

“What is it you want from me, Ms. Alexander?”

“If whoever murdered Dr. Bechman also murdered Celia, the likelihood is that Celia was killed because she knew something, something someone didn't want me to find out.” There were benches in the entranceway of Two Fifth Avenue, low bushes behind them, a place to wait for a friend who was coming down. “Can we sit a moment?” I asked her. “There's something else I'd like to show you.”

Dr. Edelstein hesitated, then walked to the closest bench and sat. I sat near her, turning so that I could face her, pulling the copy of Madison's records out of my jacket pocket.

“I asked Mr. Spector to obtain a copy of Madison's medical records for me, something I could show her mother if I located her.”

“Even with that…?”

“She wouldn't look at them. But I'm hoping you will.”

“She wouldn't look at them? At her own daughter's—”

“That's done and gone, Doctor. There's no use discussing
it because all the talk in the world is not going to make Sally come back,” picturing her cabin, empty now, perhaps Roy's water bowl forgotten in the corner, a single shoe lying on its side in the closet.

She reached for the papers. “Of course I'm aware of her condition because of the—”

“It's not the diagnosis I want you to see. It's the form in which the notes are written.”

“The form? You mean you can't read his handwriting?”

“No. It's not that. It's the spaces.” I handed her the sheets. “As if something had been removed, whited out, and then the copy recopied.”

“You mean a problem with the copying machine, part of the records missing?”

“Yes and no. I believe parts of the records are missing, but I don't think it's a problem with the copying machine.”

“And what is it you think I can do for you, Ms. Alexander? Surely you don't think I can give a private investigator access to the medical records of one of the children who come to our practice.” Stopping, shaking her head, one hand on her shoulder bag as if she suddenly thought I was planning to snatch it, that that's what this was all about.

“I'm aware that you can't do that. It would be against the law. But
you
could look at them, couldn't you? You could see if they've been altered.”

Laura Edelstein held my eyes for what seemed like a very long time. Then she reached for the envelope with Madison's records in it, pulling the sheets out, opening them on her lap and beginning to read.

When she'd finished reading Madison's records, she folded them and put them back in the envelope. “If you'll just give me a moment to call home, we can go back to the office.” Her face grim.

“No, we can't. I'm afraid that's not a good idea. The of
fice—someone might be watching the office. I don't want to put you in danger.”

“Then what do you have in mind?”

“Is there any way you can look at them tomorrow, by going in early or by somehow getting Ms. Peach out of the way?”

“Are you saying Louise Peach has something to do with Dr. Bechman's murder?”

“All I know is that Ms. Peach gave the records you have in your hand to Madison's father when he asked for a complete copy of her medical history with Dr. Bechman. Perhaps I'm wrong, Doctor. Perhaps they're accurate. But if they aren't…”

She shook her head. “I'm in the hospital before office hours, so I can't get there early. But I can get rid of Louise. I can send her out to fill a prescription for me. She won't be happy, but she'll go.”

“Would that be an unusual thing to do, sending her out on an errand?”

“No, not really.”

“And wouldn't you have the medication you need in the office? I thought doctors get free samples of everything.”

“I'll be sure to come up with something we don't have on hand. I'm sure I can figure that out. Meanwhile, can I hold on to this?” Holding up the envelope I'd given her.

“Of course.” I took out a business card and added my cell phone number. “You'll call me as soon as you know?”

“I will.”

“Doctor, can you make a private call from the office, one no one else can listen in on?”

She stood but she didn't walk away. “I can,” she said. “I can use my cell phone.” Serious as a bad diagnosis, something you never want to hear, even for your worst enemy. “What if the files are identical? What if Louise Xeroxed what was in the file, as it was in the file, then what?”

I shook my head. “I tracked down Celia. I was hoping for another view of Madison. I was hoping for something more sympathetic, which is what I got. But I also got more than I'd bargained for. I got this cock-and-bull story of how Dr. Bechman was supporting his second family. You do know…”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course. I didn't think what they did was right, but—”

“Not the point, Doctor. We all judge, but that's not the issue here. And all beside the point now. The issue is that he needed enough money to take care of Celia and JoAnn without it showing up on his taxes, forms his wife would be signing, too. Even if she's one of those unconscious women who has no idea what's going on financially in her own family, just having that information available in black and white was a poor idea. For example, had they ever split up, had a lawyer ever gotten hold of his tax forms,” shaking my head, “that wasn't a trail he wanted to leave. If his wife did find out, he'd be finished in every way you can think of.”

Dr. Edelstein sat down again.

“Celia said that Eric has this gig with an advertising company where he ran focus groups for them to determine things in advance about new drugs before they went on the market, what kind of wording would make people feel most confident, what color the pills should be, that kind of stuff. She said they paid him off the books, that they paid him in cash.”

I could see by the expression on her face that she didn't buy the story either.

“Unlikely,” I said. “That's what I thought, too. Oh, I'm sure the drug companies hire advertising firms and I'm sure those firms run focus groups and do everything they can to sell us, the public, on their new products, even in those circumstances where the need for such a product didn't previously exist. They're very good at that and the American
public is endlessly gullible. But to pay enough money to support a family and do that off the books?” I shook my head. “That I can't imagine. And even if I could, Doctor, just the same way when you hear a few symptoms, you can list the rest of them, just the same way the traffic cop shakes his head when you tell him you were only speeding because you were going downhill, that's the way I can tell when someone's spinning out a story, making it up as they go along. The voice goes up in register, ever so slightly, but I can hear it. Eye contact diminishes. And most people talk faster, even louder, once they're on a roll, particularly if they think you're buying what they're selling.”