Peter Clement - Mortal Remains

10:45 A.M.

New York City Hospital

Tommy Leannis eased himself into a floral-patterned settee opposite Melanie Collins. She sat at a small glass table, pouring coffee from a sterling silver pot into delicate porcelain cups with matching saucers – not the freebie mugs sporting drug company logos that he and the other doctors in his clinic used. He glanced around the plush office, eyeing the thick mauve carpet, the oversize mahogany desk, and the matching wall-to-wall bookcase behind it. “You’re sittin’ at the top o’ the world here, aren’t you, Melanie?” he said, cheerily hiding the bitterness he felt at her good fortune. His own career had been a never-ending, sweaty scramble just to end up a mediocre plastic surgeon, competent enough to avoid getting sued, but no star. He’d never shaken off the insecurity that plagued him in medical school, and he incessantly second-guessed himself, going through life with constantly clammy palms. Melanie didn’t have one damn bit more talent at medicine than he. How the hell did she manage to pull all this off?

“Sugar, Tommy?”

“One would be perfect, and just a drop of cream. I’m trying to keep my lean-and-hungry look.”

She smiled, handed him his cup, then settled back in her chair. “I asked you here as an old pal to help me with a problem.”

“Oh?” Old pal, his ass. What did she want? The woman hadn’t once invited him here since she took over as Chief of Internal Medicine five years ago. He sipped the coffee; it was delicious, of course.

“It’s about Earl Garnet. I’ve been beside myself, and maybe it’s nothing, but the strangest thing happened last night.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, we were talking about Kelly – he’s helping Mark Roper investigate her death – and I’d told Mark at the memorial service that Kelly was in love with someone at the time of her disappearance-”

“You did? My God, Melanie, if Chaz Braden hears you said that, he’ll blow a fuse.”

“I know, Tommy, but even he had to suspect. She was practically glowing before she disappeared.”

“Well I never noticed.” Neither did he want her to engage him in any talk of that sort. Maybe she felt immune to Chaz, because of her position, but he sure as hell didn’t.

“Here’s what’s strange, Tommy. I figure Mark briefed Earl about what I said. Yet Earl never once asked who I thought her lover was.”

“So?”

She hesitated, as if reluctant to speak.

He didn’t say anything to encourage her, taking another sip of his coffee instead.

“So do you think it might possibly have been Earl?”

He nearly choked. “Goody Two-shoes Garnet? You’ve got to be joking.”

“They spent a lot of time together, and were always talking-”

“I know, but he was so straitlaced.” You ought to know, he nearly added, remembering that Melanie had made several obvious plays for Earl and gotten nowhere.

“I thought so, too, but maybe we were wrong. I mean, what do you think? Could it be that he didn’t ask about Kelly’s lover because…” She looked questionably at Tommy.

“It was him all along?” He digested the notion a few seconds, rubbing the palm of his hand through the bristly top of his hair, then chuckled, finding the idea not so crazy once he thought about it a bit. Chaz could be such a mean son of a bitch, why wouldn’t Kelly have tried to sneak around on him? Tommy rather liked the possibility that she and Garnet had been fucking each other with no one the wiser. People who misbehaved, broke the rules, and didn’t get found out always pleased him, especially ones who were so outwardly on the up-and-up. It gave sneakiness a touch of class. Maybe he, too, could slip through the cracks and beat the odds – a loser’s lullaby, he knew, yet seductive enough to make him believe even a guy like him might take a chance and come up a winner.

“Tommy?”

She snapped him out of his reverie. “Sorry. The thought of them doing it, under our noses so to speak, took me a bit by surprise.”

“Do you think I’m right?”

“Maybe.”

“I was hoping you’d tell me that I was crazy.”

He flashed a grin and toasted her with his cup. “Then my verdict, dear Melanie, is you’re crazy.”

“What do you think I should do?”

He ignored the question, too busy wondering if there might be a way to use this information to benefit himself.

11:20 A.M.

Central Park, New York City

Earl hurried along the Central Park side of Fifth Avenue. A north wind sent fallen leaves flying in front of him and whipped up the flaps of his coat in bullying gusts. Cellular in his hand, he punched the redial button for Mark’s number. Still busy.

He walked a few blocks more, punched redial again, and got Mark’s answering machine. “Mark, it’s Earl. I just got out of the McShanes’ apartment. Nothing like a home visit to get at the truth in a family. Call me back as soon as you can. I think I figured out what your father really meant in his notes about Kelly. I need you to tell me if you think I’m crazy.”

He shoved the phone back in his pocket and increased his pace, as much to work off his excitement as to combat the damp and cold insinuating itself through his clothing.

Minutes later he felt the receiver vibrate. He had it to his ear halfway through the second ring. “Mark?’

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Get out your father’s files and take another look at that medical report of Kelly’s first visit. You know how certain symptoms and signs sometimes fit together to remind us, as doctors, of certain syndromes.”

“Of course.”

“I want you to read it over with a question in mind. If you saw that little girl in an ER today, what might you at least think of?”

“Why? I thought we already agreed that the problem was functional.”

“Just humor me.”

“Okay. Hang on a sec.”

It seemed forever before he picked up again.

“I’ve got it in front of me.”

“Give me the differential you went through to rule out organic causes for her complaints.”

“That’s easy. I first thought of chronic disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease or malabsorption syndromes. But my father said that she’d no history of fever, and her blood tests were repeatedly normal. Presumably that meant they showed no history of anemia, elevated sed rates, or protein deficiencies. Without those changes, I wouldn’t even consider the diagnoses.”

“What else?”

“You mean really bizarre stuff?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. If she continued to have complaints, and actually lost more weight or started to have night sweats, I might get more aggressive and want to rule out childhood malignancies, leukemia, lymphoma, that sort of thing. But it obviously wasn’t any of those. Kelly lived to be a healthy adult.”

“All the GI complaints. A history of multiple doctor visits, a surgeon persuaded to operate on a normal appendix and do a laparotomy. Batteries of normal blood tests and negative X rays. And the only concrete sign is her being slightly underweight? Add in the mother being a drama queen who even now uses Kelly’s death to make herself the center of attention, and what does all that suggest? Would you still think the visit to your father involved nothing more than a neurotic, overprotective mother seeking excessive reassurances that her daughter was okay? Or would you think of a disorder that wasn’t even officially recognized until about thirty years after your father saw them?”

“Oh, my God! You mean Munchausen by proxy?”

“I’m not willing to go that far. But there are disturbing similarities.”