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.
“ReeAnn didn’t know anything about why my reimbursement was dropping off,” Marla went on smoothly, “so I called AstuteCare. I demanded to know how much money John Richard was due to get and when.”
“Sheesh, Marla.”
“Oh, it was fun. I talked to Suz Craig’s secretary and then I talked to some guy named Chris Corey, who handles Provider Relations. Corey used to be a doctor, but now he’s making it big in administration,” she added with a coarse laugh. “He was so-o- o polite, trying to tell me that how much John I Richard made was none of my frigging business.”
“Yes, I know him ? ” In my mind’s eye, I saw a heavy man tumbling down a flight of steps. “Chris I Corey sprained his ankle over at Suz’s.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen him limping around. He lives with his sister, Tina, up here. She’s one of the women in charge of the Babsie show at the LakeCenter.”
I tried to focus. I didn’t care about the Coreys. “Are you telling me,” I said, “that John Richard has gone from earning up to eight hundred thousand dollars a year down to making three hundred thousand dollars a year?”
“Sad, ain’t it?”
“And he supplemented that income by endorsing Biocess and working in the hospital. You’re saying you didn’t like the way your share dropped and you tried to find out if he was stiffing you.” What on earth did any of this have to do with the death of Suz?
“Right!” Marla said firmly. “So finally I called my lawyer about the drop in income and told him about all the people I’d talked to. My lawyer made some more calls and then let me know that the Biocess endorsement was in some kind of limbo. Plus John Richard hasn’t yet received the latest bonus he was supposed to get from ACHMO. A bonus in the big fat neighborhood of two hundred thousand dollars. When the bonus does come through, I should see some more cash. I would love to have my cut of that, Goldy. But mainly I did all this just to annoy John Richard, because I knew it would get back to him that I was nosing around. The guy is up to his ears in debt from the good old days, what with payments to you, and payments to me, and payments on his condos, and payments on his new house, and payments on his cars, and dealing with the McCrockens. So. I wanted the Jerk to know I was on his case. I wanted him to squirm.”
“And the connection to Suz Craig is …” Marla raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t I tell you? Suz was the one who decided whether or not he got the bonus.”
6
Marla and I were prevented from further discussion of John Richard’s plummeting finances and mounting problems by the sudden reappearance of my son. Arch bounded awkwardly off the Rodines’ porch and frowned as he lugged his overnight bag toward us. I had the sinking feeling that the overnight had not gone well. Marla asked if I wanted her to stay and I said no. After giving Arch a quick, wordless hug and me a bright, reassuring smile, she va-voomed off in her Mercedes.
“Why was Marla here?” Arch asked as he clicked his. seat belt in place. He had the thickened voice and strong boy smell that always seems to accompany the morning-after of slumber parties.
“Just visiting,” I said lightly.
“Do you think Dad’s up yet? I haven’t had any breakfast.”
“You don’t seem very happy,” I observed, more as a probe to see if anyone had called the Rodines to report the situation on Jacobean Drive.
“Oh, well.” His tone was disgusted. “I mean, we were going to have breakfast, we were supposed to, but then something happened.” He shook the hair out of his eyes. “You know Clay Horning?”
“Yes.” Clay Horning was the resident hooligan of the Elk Park Prep eighth grade. I kept my opinion to myself,
