Diane Davidson - The Grilling Season

“It’s going to be awful… .” “Yep,” she agreed matter-of-factly. Again she ran her bejeweled fingers through her tangled, damp hair. “But let me clue you in to something, kiddo. You are not responsible for the Jerk’s problems. He is. A hard lesson that took both of us a lot of years to learn, but there it is. Right?”

I stared out the window in sullen silence. Hard lesson, indeed.

“Okay now. Next step,” Marla breezed on, “who’s at home? Somebody to screen your calls? Be with Arch?”

“Macguire Perkins.”

“Oh, great. How’s he doing? Is the mono over, or almost over, or what?”

“He’s sleeping, as usual. Not eating. But he could be good for Arch. You know, be someone to talk to besides me about what’s happening.”

“Does Macguire do anything that would get Arch out of the house? You know, go out to the movies, whatever?”

“I suppose,” I murmured. What did Macguire do? Not much. Virtually nothing at all, to be honest. “He’s under doctor’s orders to get mild exercise. And for Macguire ‘mild’ means ‘with as little exertion as possible.’ I urge him to take a walk most days. Sometimes Arch goes along, and they make it as far as John Richard’s office.”

“Okay, you’ll have to get Arch to go out with Macguire for a stroll today. You want him out of the house for a bit. You know your phone’s going to start ringing.”

I sighed. “You know you can’t make Arch do anything when he has his mind set on something else. Which he will have when he hears this news. Besides, Arch was supposed to go hiking with John Richard and spend the night with him while I worked the McCrackens’ Stanley Cup celebration party here in the club.”

“Good,” said Marla bluntly. I wondered confusedly why everything seemed good to her today. She cast an appraising eye at the Rodines’ house. Gail’s face was no longer in the window. “I’ll call Arch’s friend. What’s his name, Todd Druckman?” I nodded, and she went on. “I’ll ask Todd if Arch can go over and spend the night. That’ll get him out of your house. Can Macguire accompany you and help tonight? Is he contagious or anything?”

“No, he’s not contagious. But I can assure you he won’t have the energy for it.” I stared glumly out the window. “How can you talk about all this now?”

“Uh. Let’s see. ‘Cuz your husband the cop asked me to take care of you?”

I touched her forearm and she tilted her head questioningly. “Is this really happening?” I asked my best friend. “Did John Richard finally kill someone?”

She didn’t answer, because at that moment we both heard a very faint voice calling, “Mom?”

Arch had come out onto the Rodines’ porch. At fourteen, he was still much shorter than his peers, with tousled brown hair and a generally scruffy appearance. He had changed into khaki cutoffs and a T-shirt printed with the Biocess logo. Biocess was the product of a drug company for which John Richard had been doing endorsements lately. Unfortunately, the only things Arch or I ever got out of John Richard’s high-paying endorsements were ugly Tshirts and pens that leaked all over the place. Arch’s tortoiseshell glasses winked as he shielded his eyes against the sun and frowned at Marla’s and my cars in the street.

“We’ll be up to get you in a minute, Arch!” Marla called. “You don’t need to come out yet!”

Without replying, Arch turned on his heel and retreated into the house.

“So do you think he did it?” I pressed, not able to let it go. “Do you think John Richard Korman actually, finally, went over the edge and killed someone?”

“Of course I do,” Marla replied evenly. “With ten or twelve drinks in him and something to set him off? No question. You said yourself you saw the bruise marks. And the Jerk had something big to set him off, take my word for it.”

“What? I mean, besides some money problems.”

“He didn’t have anything besides money problems, Goldy. He and ACHMO are being sued by the McCrackens, and even with malpractice insurance, he’s going to have costs. I heard the malpractice people hired an attorney, ACHMO had to hire several attorneys, and John Richard had to hire his own separate attorney. You know how much preparation these trials are going to take. My guess is the financial mess of his lawsuit is eating him alive.” She said it smugly. I wasn’t the only one who wanted John Richard to suffer. “Look, you haven’t had any child support for months, right?”

“Three, to be exact.”

Marla raised her eyebrows in mock astonishment. Of course she’d heard me complain about John Richard slacking off in this department numerous times. She went on. “You were so eager to get out of that marriage that you took a one-time financial settlement and minimal child support. Now every time you need something for Arch, like, say, tuition money, you have to go back and negotiate, or should I say beg. Right?” I nodded dully and glanced up at the porch. Arch was nowhere in sight. Marla wagged a finger at me to make sure I was paying attention. “My lawyer went for a part of the practice. Ten percent of the gross income per annum. Not that I needed it, but I figured the best way to punish the Jerk was in his pocketbook. If you – “

I interrupted impatiently. “Marla, a woman is dead. Where is this going?”

“To the bank, honey. Back in the good old pre-managed care days, I got sixty to eighty thou a year, a reliable ten percent of six to eight hundred thousand of the Jerk’s gyn and baby-delivery practice. But things began to change. With more and more of his patients signing up with HMOs instead of half of them being insured and half paying out of pocket, his income started to decline. He supplemented it with endorsing that designer antibiotic for pregnant women with infections. What’s the name of it?”

“Biocess,” I supplied.

“Right. Another fifty thou a year there, of which I got a paltry five. Plus he began to work in the hospitals on the weekends, but you know how he hates to have his social life tied up, even if working a weekend shift brought him in another sixty thou a year. All this was getting exhausting for the poor fellow.”

“Marla – “

“Wait. Then he got bought out by the AstuteCare Health Maintenance Organization, aka ACHMO, which sounds like a sneeze more than an HMO, but – ” She shrugged. “We don’t need to be reminded of that little transaction, which also brought into our lives the now-dead-as-a-doorknob Ms. Craig.”

Poor Suz. An ache pierced my chest.

“Goldy, these days, if you want to have a baby in Aspen Meadow, or if you want to have the Jerk as your gynecologist, you or your husband or your significant other has to belong to ACHMO, yes? I mean, God only knows why any sane woman would insist on having John Richard as her doctor. But he does have his supporters, I suppose. How strong that support might be depends on your willingness to pony up with the cost of ACHMO membership.”

“Marla, I know this. And that ACHMO bought his practice for one point one mil, and he bought the fancy new house in the club over by Suz. So what?”

Marla said patiently, “So I got a hundred ten thousand when he sold the practice, but in the two years since then I’ve only received thirty thousand dollars the first year, twenty this year. Don’t you get it? His annual income has dropped by more than half. Enough to get him mightily ticked off, wouldn’t you say? First I called that new secretary of his, the sweet young thing? You know who I mean.”

“ReeAnn Collins,” I said. ReeAnn was a lovely twenty-three-year-old who’d been working for John Richard for the last ten months or so. I’d suspected ReeAnn was half in love with him, of course. I’d thought of warning her off, as I always thought I should. But I never did. I hadn’t warned Suz Craig, either. A stone seemed to form in my throat.