Virginia Kantra - Guilty Secrets

Oh my God.

“You’re Joe Reilly,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“The journalist.”

“Guilty.”

“You’re here to write about the clinic.”

Joe kept his hands in his pockets. “That was the idea.”

His editor’s idea. Not Joe’s.

Actually, his editor’s idea was for Joe to profile the woman standing in front of him, Eleanor Dolan, the driving force and guiding light of the North Side’s Ark Street Free Clinic. The so-called Angel of Ark Street.

Joe thought the idea was hokey and the name probably undeserved. The past year had left him with a jaded view of women and a jaundiced view of the medical profession.

But he could see how the name might have stuck. Eleanor Dolan looked enough like an angel, the kind that showed up in Russian icons flanking the Madonna—pale, blond and severely beautiful. She was even dressed in white, a lab coat, instead of a printed smock like the other nurses wore.

A vain angel? Joe wondered. Not that it mattered. The Dolan woman could dress like the queen of England in white gloves and a blue hat and it wouldn’t make her newsworthy.

Although it might be interesting to see what was under that lab coat.

Even if Eleanor Dolan was the angel his boss made her out to be, Joe was no saint. And he was getting mighty tired of self-denial. So he let himself look, appreciating the slope and curve of Dolan’s sweater between the open panels of her coat. Very nice.

Of course she caught him staring.

She frowned. “I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

He shrugged, enjoying the flash of annoyance in her eyes. “I had some time free today.”

“I don’t. Monday is our busiest day.”

“I noticed.”

“Some of our patients wait outside for two hours before the clinic even opens.” She must have realized scolding wasn’t likely to generate the kind of publicity she wanted, because she softened her tone. “Please come back tomorrow. We’ll be fully staffed then, and I can give you a tour.”

Joe knew all about official tours. He’d been escorted by experts in Haiti, Kosovo and Baghdad. The skin prickled on the back of his neck.

Which was ridiculous. Eleanor Dolan didn’t have anything to hide. She was just anxious to make a good impression.

“That’ll be great,” Joe said. “In the meantime, any objections if I stick around? Make some general observations, maybe ask a few questions?”

Dolan opened her mouth. Closed it, and tried again. “Not at all. I’ll have to ask you to stay in the waiting area, though. To protect our patients’ privacy.”

Okay, maybe she wanted to make a good impression.

And maybe she was a little bit of a control freak.

“Sure, no problem,” Joe said.

And it wasn’t, he thought as she led him back to the lounge. He wasn’t Ed Bradley from 60 Minutes. Hell, he wasn’t even Joe Reilly, wonder-boy foreign correspondent anymore. He was just Joe Reilly, staff writer, and unless Nurse Dolan was dealing drugs from the clinic waiting room, she had nothing to fear from him.

Nell regarded the clinic pharmacist in disbelief. “What do you mean, you think we might be missing units from the narcotics closet?”

She heard her voice rising and struggled to contain it. She didn’t want to scare the patients.

But Ed Johnson, the pharmacist, flinched. He looked almost ill, slack and pale, his forehead beaded with sweat.

Nell sympathized. She felt sick herself. “How many units?” she asked. “And which drugs are missing?”

Ed rubbed his shiny face with one hand. “I don’t know, exactly.”

This was bad. Any theft or significant loss of controlled substances had to be reported to the nearest DEA office as well as to the police. But if she didn’t even know what was missing…

“When did you take inventory?”

Ed’s gaze slid from her. “I was keeping a tally,” he mumbled.

“Ed.”

At her tone, Lucy Morales, one of the RNs, looked over.

Nell took a deep breath and tried again. “You’re supposed to take inventory twice a day.”

“I know,” Ed said miserably. “But we were busy.”

Nell’s patience stretched like a rubber tourniquet about to snap. She loved her job. She did. But she was sick of covering for other people’s mistakes, tired of making herself responsible for everyone and everything.

Only of course she couldn’t yell at poor Ed. He was past retirement age. And he needed this job, needed the poor salary that was all she could afford to pay him.

“All right,” Nell said. “I want you to take inventory now and then again before you go home tonight. Let’s make sure we have a problem before we start worrying about how we’re going to solve it.”

She stomped down the hall, feeling the ghosts of her past breathing behind her. The last thing she needed was to make waves with the DEA. Especially with sharp-eyed, smiling reporter, Joe Reilly, cruising around like a shark scenting for blood.

Nell leaned over the counter that separated the office area from the medical aisle. “Hi, Melody. Has Mr. Vacek come in today?” Stanley Vacek was one of her regulars, an elderly man with a thick eastern European accent and a perpetual scowl who suffered from high blood pressure.

Melody King looked up from the computer screen and blinked, her lavender eyelids startling in her pale face. The office manager had long, mousy brown hair and an abused expression. “He was here a while ago. But I think he left.”

“He can’t leave,” Nell said. “He’s hypertensive.”

“That don’t stop him from walking out the door,” Billie observed on her way to take the vitals of the patient in Exam Two.

Nell frowned. “But he needed a refill on his medication.”

Melody stuck out her lower lip. “I didn’t ask him to leave.”

“No, of course not,” Nell said, automatically reassuring.

“I think he got upset the other guy was asking questions,” the office manager said.

Nell’s stomach sank. “What other guy?”

But she knew.

“That Mr. Reilly,” Melody said, confirming Nell’s fears. “I think Mr. Vacek thought he was from INS or something.”

“He’s not,” Nell said.

“I didn’t say I thought he was an immigration officer.” Melody lowered her voice. “I think he’s a cop.”

Lucy Morales pulled a chart from the stack on the counter. “Are we talking about the guy in the jacket? Because I think he’s hot.”

Irritation ran under Nell’s skin. Why? Because she agreed with Lucy? She pushed the thought away.

“Hot or not, he doesn’t have the right to disturb our patients.” She marched into the waiting room, relieved to have someone she could yell at without feeling guilty.

Patients filled the lines of chairs. A shrieking toddler flung himself backward off his mother’s lap. An elderly woman sat, her lined face passive, her hand clutching her husband’s thin arm.

Reilly was folded onto one of the uncomfortable chairs, one long leg stuck out in front of him. He was smiling and talking over the head of a little girl in purple barrettes to her mother, who was smiling and talking back.

Okay, so she couldn’t yell.

He’d still scared off grumpy Stanley Vacek. He scared Nell. Until the problem—potential problem—with her drug inventory was resolved, she didn’t want him in her clinic. For her patients’ well-being, for her own peace of mind, he had to go.

Nell cleared her throat. Reilly looked up.

“I’m sorry. I have to ask you to come back tomorrow.”

Reilly straightened slowly. He wasn’t a big man, only a few inches taller than Nell’s own five feet eight inches, but his physical impact was undeniable. His eyes, a dark, deep blue, were filled with weary humor. Cops’ eyes, Nell thought. Priests’ eyes. The kind of eyes that invited confidences and promised absolution.