Ill Will Page 12

  Maybe Reginald Banks decided to use unproven, untested nostrums instead of going through another fight with the maze of insurance denials and appointment bungles. Nature’s Beautiful Gift itself may not have hurt him, but if it gave him a rationale to avoid conventional medical treatment, it might have killed him. And I had to fault conventional medical treatment for putting that maze in front of him.

  I had assumed that The Cure, the blue-labeled bottles I’d found as well, probably were linked to NBG. Part of that was finding them together—how many shyster schemes could Reginald Banks have come in contact with? But so far, I’d found no link from the NBG site. It was possible that they had nothing to do with each other.

  Fletcher McConkle had hired me to investigate whether his aunt was being fleeced by someone selling NBG. And possibly The Cure? Now I had reasons beyond his money to investigate this case.

  I glanced at my watch. It was just after four o’clock. Not a lot of time to really get going unless I wanted to be here all night. I didn’t want Cordelia home alone for even one second. Plus I had to decide whether the comfort of a decent mattress was worth the risk that Dudley Dude might return.

  I called the Grannies and asked them to research Nature’s Beautiful Gift and The Cure. I wasn’t interested in the NBG sales spiel but wanted info on where they were located, who actually owned the company, and whether the profit margin indicated community service or avarice.

  Wherever we ended up sleeping tonight, Cordelia and I could look over the stuff in my truck from Reginald Banks’s house. I could even call it part of my billable hours to Fletcher McConkle.

  As Joanne had advised, I would vary my hours and leave now. That would give me adequate time to take enough of a complicated route home that no one would be able to follow me.

  Chapter Ten

  It was only a little past 4:30 when I got home, but Cordelia was already there. Or at least her car was.

  “Cordelia?” I called. At first there was no answer. “Cordelia? Are you here?”

  Faintly from the back of the house, I heard her indistinct reply.

  I found her sitting on the screened-in porch, holding Rook, her cat.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She didn’t look at me immediately, “We need to talk.”

  We’ve had our differences; what couple hasn’t? I didn’t know if I wanted to talk. But especially in the last few months, it felt like things were okay—no, not just okay, but good. Good like our talk earlier today, caring, connected. What could have happened?

  She glanced up at me. I was still standing.

  “Please sit,” she asked.

  I slowly let myself down on a chair opposite her. I realized her eyes were red.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. My mind churned as to what could be wrong. She’d gotten the cats from Torbin and Andy. Had they fought—continued their fight about medical care? Could it have something to do with Reginald Banks and me suddenly being a part of her world?

  “I…saw Jennifer today. Some of the tests had come back.”

  It was all I could do to not scream, No, there can’t be anything wrong with you. But I held myself calm and said, “Tell me. Whatever it is, tell me.”

  “Those times, when I woke up so hot—sweating—and thought it was perimenopause,” she said, stroking Rook as if she might have to say good-bye too soon. “And the swollen lymph nodes? I thought it was a lingering cold—that’s what I wanted it to be.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “My blood counts are way off. And my lymph nodes are still swollen both under my arm and in my groin. Classic signs of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. That’s what the preliminary pathologist report indicates. He’s doing further stains—tests—to be sure.”

  I wanted to scream, to pray to any god listening. Somehow I said, “Couldn’t it be something else?”

  She answered slowly, “It could, but the horse is lymphoma, zebras are something else.” She referenced the standard lore of medical students, “If you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras.” She added, “And the zebras might be even worse. If you’re going to get sick, it’s better not to have something exotic that no one knows how to treat.”

  I got up to sat beside her, petting Rook so that our hands touched.

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “You go on living your life. And I…get more tests. I’m sorry, that came out wrong. I want you to keep going, keep everything as normal as possible for as long as possible.”

  I wrapped my arms around her and held her close. Rook, uncharacteristically, allowed himself to be swallowed in my embrace, as if he knew he was needed.

  “They have much better treatments these days,” I said. “I know you’re a doctor, but you’re not a cancer doctor and what you learned in medical school has probably changed a lot. Gotten better.”

  She nodded against my sleeve as if wanting to catch my optimism.

  She was silent. I just held her.

  Finally, she lifted her head. “We’ll run more tests. Some are so slow they don’t require treatment for a long time. Caught in time, it’s a very curable cancer. Right now I know just enough to worry. Maybe it’ll all be okay. It seems you can’t get over forty without having a cancer scare.”

  “How much should I worry?” I asked her, wanting her to be honest with me.

  “Save it for when you have something to really worry about, and we’re not there yet.” She kissed me softly, then again, not so softly.

  The kissing stuff was too much for Rook and he chose now to squirm out of her arms.

  Much as I wanted to sit here and hold her forever, the rest of life intruded. “Go on living your life,” she’d said—we didn’t have much choice.

  Rook and Hepplewhite, our cats, weren’t good guard cats and wouldn’t be much help if Dudley decided to come visit.

  I allowed one more kiss before gently breaking off. “There is nothing more I’d rather do, but the police haven’t caught the asshole who jumped me yesterday. I have to worry that he might try again. And I have to make sure you’re—we’re safe.”

  She nodded reluctantly. “So, Ms. Security Professional, what do you recommend?”

  “Joanne offered to come over and we could take turns standing watch.”

  “Won’t that put Joanne at risk?”

  “She’s a cop. She carries a big gun.”

  “Nothing like a gun fight at home. Other options?”

  “We could camp out again in their spare bedroom.”

  “Only if you take the air mattress this time.”

  “Even if I prefer the floor?”

  “You don’t prefer the floor; I heard your groans this morning. How about going to a hotel?”

  “We can do that. Should I take the cats back to Torbin and Andy?”

  “You don’t think it’s safe to stay here?”

  “Once they catch him it will be.”

  “What if they don’t catch him?” she asked.

  That was the pesky question I had been asking myself. “He’s not after me for himself. He was hired by a swindler who’s a bit of a hothead. Unless there is money to be made my attacker has no reason to come after me. He’ll be on to other things in a few days.” Perhaps a little optimistic, but that was my best guess. Prejean would move on to other swindles, Dudley would ingest some more meth, the world would spin a few times, and I would be history.

  “Then let’s do a hotel tonight and we’ll deal with tomorrow when it arrives,” she decided for us.

  Bribing Rook and Hepplewhite with treats coaxed them into their carrier and I toted them back to Torbin and Andy’s place. Torbin was not there, so I was able to avoid any sharply pointed questions about the quick cat turnaround. Andy was fine with the explanation that we’d hoped the cops would catch my assailant by now but they hadn’t, so to be safe, we’d stay away another night.

  When I got back Cordelia had booked us a hotel in the French Quarter—yes, not that far away, but a random enou
gh location it wasn’t likely that Dudley could find us there. It was the upper Quarter, near Canal Street, and we live near the lower Quarter off Esplanade. Ten blocks can make a world of difference.

  “So we play tourist for the night?” I asked as we threw a few things into our respective small bags—I let her have the nice purple one this time.

  “No, we play locals out enjoying our beautiful city.”

  It’ll all be okay, I told myself as I loaded our bags in the trunk. Dudley will disappear, into jail, rehab or meth overdose, and Cordelia’s tests will come back negative. The fates are just making us pay attention to the important things.

  She let me drive—she hates driving on the interstate or in the Quarter for the same reason, too many idiot drivers per square inch. Cordelia is a more stable and sane driver than I am, and I suspect her theory is I’m crazy enough to deal with these drivers—like the one in front of us trying to pass a buggy on a one-lane street. He seemed to think that some hotel driveway would give him enough room on the right to squeeze by. I was rooting for the donkey to kick his headlights out.

  But the donkey was smarter than that—or more a creature of habit. It pulled over to the right into a no parking zone as a way to let the cars behind the carriage pass. However, Mr. Idiot Driver was so close that he couldn’t easily pull around. I zoomed by him on the legal left, as did every car behind me. As I turned down Bienville Street, he was still stuck behind the buggy.

  One of the nice things about driving a stick shift is that the valet parking guys view you with greater respect—you may be a middle-aged woman, but you’re a middle-aged woman who knows how to drive a manual.

  I waved away the bell man. Our duffels were hardly worth his effort, especially considering there were several other elderly guests arriving as well. He could help the little old ladies. Almost as an afterthought I grabbed the two bags that I had taken from Reginald Banks’s house.

  I let Cordelia do the checking-in stuff—it was her credit card paying for this, after all. If I were hotel security I’d want to know that one of my guests was here for the reasons we were here. I knew what to look for, the man in a sober suit who was watching people, not smiling at them. I found him at the far side of the lobby.

  He was an ex-cop and seemed almost happy to have something real to be secure about.

  “Don’t you worry, ma’am,” he told me. “He sounds like the kind of guy we’d have three guards surround the minute he walked in here even without your warning.”

  Cordelia and I met at the elevator. The hotel had not batted an eye about two women sharing a king-size bed. Ah, New Orleans.

  Once we were in the room, she pulled me into her arms, barely giving me time to drop the bags, and kissed me thoroughly. I returned her kiss, enjoying the heat of the moment, the novel surroundings. We were lovers in a hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans. For the moment, we could pretend that we didn’t live ten blocks away and it was just us behind closed doors in a room with a big bed.

  She broke off our kiss, still holding me in a tight hug. “Will you think I’m terminally unromantic if I suggest we wait until after dinner to continue?”

  I kissed her on the cheek. “I think it’s been well established that you fall more on the practical side of things than the romantic side.”

  She sighed. “I need to remember to bring you flowers more often.”

  “No, you don’t. Practical is not a bad thing. You’ve never forgotten my birthday or our anniversary. I’m not with you because of a constant barrage of bouquets, but because you remember things like we need to eat. We can have wild hot monkey sex now and then discover that the only places open are the ‘you’re drunk and you need grease’ type of places. Or we can go out now—”

  “Have a romantic dinner,” she interjected.

  “Have a very romantic dinner,” I echoed. “And have enough sustenance to keep us through—”

  “A long night of hot human sex,” she again broke in.

  “Yes, exactly. Practical can be a very romantic thing.”

  She kissed me one more time then let go. “Unpack, put on the decent clothes, and let’s go to a nice place.” She put her duffel on the bed then noticed the bags. “What are those?”

  I explained it was what I’d taken from Reginald Banks’s house earlier. Then lamely added, “I mean, we can’t have sex every single minute. I just grabbed it because it was there. We don’t need to do anything.”

  “No, it’s okay. I wonder what happened to him as well. If we don’t look at it tonight we can do it in the next day or so.”

  Cordelia called the concierge to get reservations. Unlike visitors, we can always go to the really good restaurants here, so in consequence, we rarely go unless there is some compelling reason like a birthday or someone visiting. The upper Quarter is full of first-rate restaurants, ones we had wanted to try and just never gotten around to. While Cordelia was sussing out the possibilities, I hung up the few clothes we’d brought and was setting out our bathroom stuff.

  She came up behind me and put her arms around my waist. “Okay, dinner at eight. We have a little time. I only brought one extra pair of underwear, so perhaps we should spend it looking at the stuff you found.” She cupped my breasts and left a row of kisses on my neck.

  “Tease,” I muttered as she let go. But I followed her out of the bathroom and then gently upended the bags on the bed.

  She put on her reading glasses and examined the bottles, first looking at the ones from Nature’s Beautiful Gift, then The Cure. She spent several minutes examining them all, even taking out the pills and sniffing them. Finally, she threw the bottle she was holding down in frustration.

  She pulled off her glasses and said, “There is no way to tell what these really are. Some of them smell like they have some herbs or something in them. Nature’s Beautiful Gift seems to be on the legal side of the line with its claims; The Cure certainly not. The only way to know what’s really in them would be with lab tests.”

  “What if it was something that caused or contributed to Banks’s death?” I asked.

  “That might be hard to prove. I have a brief overview of forensics back in med school, so there’s not much I can tell you. If there was some foreign substance in his body that was harmful and that substance could be traced to one of these pills, then maybe something could be done. I’m not even sure that would be criminal, though. Usually if there are enough harmful side effects reported, the worst that happens is that the pills get pulled.”

  “Banks didn’t seem to be very well-off. Why spend money on these things?”

  She thought for a moment, “He wanted to be cured. Desperate people believe in false hope. Sometimes it’s all they have to believe in.”

  “So these might have hurt him,” I said.

  “Might have. Certainly in the pocketbook. It’s unlikely they helped him.”

  “What if they do the things they claim, provide relief far beyond what conventional medicine offers?”

  “Reginald Banks is dead. They didn’t seem to help him much.”

  “Couldn’t you say the same about conventional medicine?”

  “He died of a massive infection. That shouldn’t have happened. If he’d been treated properly—earlier, he would be okay.”

  “So they both failed him,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, but in different ways,” she argued. “Reginald Banks was failed by medical care because he didn’t receive it. There are tragic flaws in the system, but mostly with access and affordability. If he’d been in a hospital three days earlier, he’d be alive. But the other stuff,” she picked up one of the bottles, “this promises a cure. It didn’t deliver.”

  I looked at the stark white lettering on the bottle. The Cure. No, it hadn’t cured Reginald Banks. “I’m also curious about a denial of service letter he got from his insurance company.” I rifled through the papers until I found it.

  She put the glasses back on and read it. “There has to be some mistake. Insu
rance agencies profit by making errors. The real scumbags automatically deny services or payment on the premise that a certain percentage of people won’t or can’t fight. But Reginald had a clear medical need for his treatment, and this seems to claim he was getting medical tests too closely together. That shouldn’t be true if he skipped an appointment and had fallen out of care. Sounds like someone transposed an account number and sent him the wrong thing.” She handed the piece of paper back to me.

  Was a stupid mistake what caused Reginald Banks’s death? His insurance company screws up, denies service they shouldn’t have denied, so he misses a needed appointment. I shoved the pill bottles and pile of papers back into their plastic bags. Maybe his next of kin would want them. I stuffed the bags in the closet where we didn’t need to see them.

  Right now I wanted to live furiously in the moment, with no thinking about thugs chasing me, waiting for medical tests, or worrying about a man who could no longer be saved.

  I reached out and took Cordelia’s hand. “Would you care to join me in an intimate dinner?”

  “I would be delighted.”

  We left the hotel room into the clean air of early spring, to vibrant, happy streets and an unhurried, romantic feast.

  Chapter Eleven

  I made the coffee while Cordelia showered. The world kept turning. Much as we had wanted to linger in last night, morning had come, a gray dawn of off-and-on drizzle. The lingering was over. We weren’t tourists; there would be no beignets or café au lait. She had to go to work. I did, too, I just had more leeway in my hours.

  We had done what New Orleanians do, gone out to a wonderful restaurant only to talk about other great places we’d eaten, banter over recipes, decide what we’d try when the weekend came and we could take more time to cook. We focused on good memories and I was relieved to notice that it didn’t feel strained, that one led to another and another as if we could never run out. We stayed away from the bad recollections and the worries of today, an unspoken compact that those could wait until the morning. Perhaps in the morning, Joanne would call to say that Dudley was arrested and Prejean had moved to some other disaster. And Cordelia’s tests would turn out to have been messed up, or more extensive testing would find nothing.