Marcia Talley - Sing It to Her Bones

“Quite sure.” I leaned forward and took a deep breath, knowing when I did so that the charade would be over. I’d be putting an end to my part-time employment. “Dr. Chase, I have a confession. I know you told me Katie Dunbar’s chart had been shredded, but yesterday, when I came to work, my curiosity got the better of me. I’m sorry, but I went rummaging through the file room, looking for it.”

Dr. Chase stared at me, eyes enormous behind his glasses, his tented fingers just touching his lips.

“As you know, I didn’t find it there. But I did happen to notice a chart on your desk when I was cleaning up some spilled coffee.” I pointed. “It was stuck under your blotter.”

The doctor still didn’t comment, so I floundered on. “I meant to put it back, of course, but things were so hectic yesterday, I just stuck it in the nearest file cabinet.” I thought it would be wise not to mention the photocopy. “I’m sorry. I feel just awful about this. I know I’ve betrayed the confidence you placed in me. But what’s done is done.”

I straightened my back and took another deep, steadying breath. The next part was going to be harder. It would have been easier if the doctor had reacted to anything I’d told him so far but no, he sat there like the great Sphinx, drawing the point of a pencil mindlessly forward and back along a seam on the arm of his chair. “Dr. Chase, I need to tell you that I did read the chart. I know that when your father examined Katie in 1990, she was two months pregnant.”

Dr. Chase rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and adjusted his position slightly, as if trying to get comfortable. “Sometimes charts that would normally be declared inactive get missed when they’re part of a family unit that includes current patients. In Ms. Dunbar’s case, though, the chart was shredded.”

“But, Doctor, I saw it!”

It was weird. Dr. Chase was staring at the bookshelf near the window, but I had the feeling he was aware of every move I made. “You’re mistaken.” The doctor removed his glasses by the nosepiece and, still holding them, rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. Maybe it was easier for him to lie to someone whose face appeared before him as an impressionistic blur.

“Katie Dunbar is dead, Dr. Chase. What can her pregnancy matter to anyone now?”

Dr. Chase sprawled in his chair and stared at the ceiling, his mouth a thin, tight line. His eyes traveled from the ceiling to the window where sunlight dappled the sill. “It’s too complicated to explain.” He was addressing the magnolia tree in his garden, not me.

“Explain about Elizabeth Dunbar, you mean?”

His head snapped in my direction, his dark eyes wide. “What do you know about Liz?” At last! My questions had triggered a reaction .

“Only what I overheard of your conversation with her last night.” I thought I’d keep him guessing about the point at which I’d stumbled upon their argument.

Dr. Chase closed his eyes and wagged his head silently from side to side. When he finally spoke, his words lay flat and frosty in the space between us. “You seem to be everywhere, Mrs. Ives.”

“I admit I had ulterior motives when I volunteered to help out here. I thought it’d be an opportunity to check out the information in Katie’s file without bothering anyone. But discovering you and Liz together was purely accidental. I’d left the phone number to the vacation house my husband is renting at the reception desk, and I had to come back for it.”

“Humph.” The doctor scowled in my direction.

“And while we’re on the topic of Liz Dunbar”-I blundered on-“what did she mean by ‘I’ll take care of the other’? Maybe I’m being a bit paranoid here, Doctor, but there’s something I’ve neglected to tell you about my so-called accident. I lost control of the car because two jerks in a dark van tried to force me off the road.” I saw, rather than heard, Dr. Chase’s intake of breath. “And when I didn’t drift off the shoulder obediently, like a good little girl, someone in the van decided to shoot at me.”

Five seconds passed with no sound in the room but the tick-tick of his pencil as it slipped through his fingers and dropped, point down, on his desk. And again. How could I get him to talk? I decided to change tactics. “I know she was pregnant, Dr. Chase, because I saw it on her chart. But I’m not the only one who knows it. She told a girlfriend, you see.”

Dr. Chase, who seemed at that moment a bunch of loosely connected parts, gathered himself together at last and responded directly to what I’d said. “Let me deal with this.” He mumbled something I couldn’t catch.

“What?” I leaned forward.

“I said…” He paused. “Never mind.”

“Do you know who shot Katie?” He shook his head. All of a sudden I thought I knew what he feared. “Are you covering up for your father?”

“No!” The word exploded from his lips.

“Who then? You must be protecting somebody. Why else would you destroy that chart?”

Dr. Chase rose from his chair and walked around the desk, wearing his kindly physician face, once again in control. Standing over me like that, he looked taller than his five feet ten, but his face was so calm that it didn’t occur to me to be frightened. “This is more complicated than it looks, Hannah, and I know this is going to sound melodramatic, but for your own protection, I’d suggest you mind your own business.”

“But-”

“Lay off it, Hannah.”

I considered reminding him of his duties as a coroner, threatening to go to Dennis with what I knew, but thought better of it. “You’re a good doctor,” I said instead, grasping his free arm and squeezing it gently. “I’ve seen the way you care about people, and I know you couldn’t have done anything to hurt Katie.”

“I have no idea who killed that young woman.” He stepped to his desk and fidgeted with a glass paperweight that had a dandelion in full white-headed bloom encapsulated inside like a moth in amber.

“Then tell the police what you know,” I insisted. “We’re talking about 1990 here! An out-of-wedlock pregnancy wasn’t the end of the world like it was in the forties and fifties. It may not have had anything to do with Katie’s death, but it may help the police.”

“I’ll consider what you’ve said, but I won’t make any promises.” Dr. Chase returned to his chair and flung himself into it so hard that it rolled backward and the wheels slipped off the edge of the carpet. I decided to leave him there, scowling, with his feet stretched out straight in front of him and his arms dangling limply over the upholstered leather arms of his chair. From my position in the hall he looked small and defeated.

“Hannah? I’m sorry about your car.”

I massaged a sore spot on my shoulder. “Me, too, Doctor. Me, too.”

“But under the circumstances, I don’t think we can work together anymore.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “I’ll call Redi-Temp and get someone to fill in for me on Monday.”

“That will be fine.” His voice seemed lifeless.

As I left the office, I was sure of only one thing: Until I sprang it on him, he didn’t know about my accident. But by the frightened look on his face, I was certain he suspected who was behind it. And, although I couldn’t work out exactly how she managed it or why, that somebody was probably Liz.

I accelerated away from the doctor’s office, feeling relieved, even though I had just lost my second job in less than four months. On my left, halfway down High, I could see the low brick and cinder-block building of the Volunteer Fire Department, its oversize garage doors rolled open. A single fire truck had been pulled into the drive, and someone had bathed and polished the vehicle until its yellow paint and chrome grill gleamed in the sun. A volunteer dressed in blue jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt was washing down the drive with a hose. At the end of the drive stood a sign on wheels with removable letters: WEDNESDAY NIGHT SPAGHETTI SUPPER-ALL YOU CAN EAT. My stomach rumbled.