“Inoperable, because of its location. Radiation was the only viable option, and a poor one in her case.”
“It wouldn’t have cured her?”
“Saved her life, you mean? No. The tumor was malignant and fast growing.”
“How long did she have?”
“A year, at the most.”
“At the least?”
“Perhaps six months.”
Well, there it was. The explanation for the August diary entries, the reason Nancy had given the $10,000 to T. R. Quentin and refused to take any of the woman’s paintings. It opened up other possibilities, too. I glanced at Celeste Ogden. She hadn’t moved or changed expression. Will of iron, I thought.
“You told this to Mrs. Mathias, of course.”
“Of course,” Dr. Prince said. “I must say she took it bravely.”
“When was this?”
He consulted a paper on his desk. “August twenty-second. The day after I received the final test results.”
“Here in your office?”
“Yes.”
“Did she come alone, or with her husband?”
“Alone. I understood Mr. Mathias was to be present, but he didn’t come.”
“Did he join her on subsequent visits?”
“He did not.”
“Did he ever contact you about his wife’s condition or prognosis?”
“No.”
“Did you try to contact him?”
“No. Mrs. Mathias asked me not to.”
“Did she say why?”
“Only that she would tell him when the time came. She didn’t want anyone else to know.”
“Not even me,” Celeste Ogden said.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Ogden. Not even you.”
T hat son of a bitch!” she said.
Her first words since we’d left the Medical Associates offices. Low, hard, venomous. Mathias, of course, not Dr. Prince.
We were alone in the elevator going down. She stood with her back tight to one wall, staring straight ahead. There were cracks in the armored facade now, a moist sheen to her eyes. This was as close as she would ever come, I thought, to a public display of emotion.
“He didn’t care enough to be there for her, even after she told him. She did tell him; her diary proves that.”
“Yes.”
“I hate him,” she said. “God, I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hate that man.”
“You have good reason.”
So did I, for that matter, whether he was guilty of complicity in his wife’s death or not. There was a disturbing, close-to-home parallel here. Nancy Mathias had had a malignant tumor; so had Kerry. One inoperable, prognosis negative; one operable, prognosis favorable. And Mathias’s reaction when he was given the grim verdict? Unresponsive, nonsupportive, even argumentative. He couldn’t have loved his wife, or cared about what she was going through, the turmoil of fear and suffering. Kerry was life itself to me. How could I not hate that kind of man, that kind of selfish indifference? Oh yeah. As much as you can hate a virtual stranger.
The elevator doors whispered open and we started across the lobby. Mrs. Ogden murmured, more to herself than to me, “Why didn’t Nancy want me to know? Him, yes, but not me? I loved her, I’d have done anything for her. She knew that.”
Rhetorical question. The kind answer was that Nancy hadn’t wanted to upset her; the probable truth was that Mathias’s control was too strong and he wouldn’t allow it. She’d told him, all right, two days after she found out on August 22. The following week he’d again promised to meet her at Dr. Prince’s and then failed to show up, using an important meeting as an excuse; that was what her angry diary entry that week referred to. The handwritten note among her papers was another unanswered plea for his presence at a consultation with Dr. Prince. “D,” in her shorthand, stood for doctor.
Outside on the sidewalk, Mrs. Ogden said, “I was wrong.”
“Wrong about what?”
“As miserable as he is, as much as I loathe him, he couldn’t have been responsible for Nancy’s death. It must have been a tragic accident after all.”
“What makes you say that?”
“If she was dying, with less than a year to live, there’s no reason for him to have had her killed, is there?”
“Mercy killing, put an early end to her suffering,” I said, but I didn’t believe it.
Neither did she. “There’s no mercy in him. Not an ounce.”
I could see one other motive, now, given the kind of man Mathias was-the most monstrous, obscene motive for spousal homicide imaginable. It started my blood boiling just thinking about it. But I kept it to myself. Conjecture, with nothing to back it up. And that was what I’d been concerned about all along, the source of the bad feeling about this investigation.
How the hell could murder be proven, by me or anybody else?
22
KERRY
She didn’t know what to do with herself.
For a while she worked on her computer, but there just wasn’t much for her to do from home. It was make- work anyway. Jim Carpenter and Miranda Doyle were covering her accounts; she gave them input on concepts, copy, art, TV and radio spots, but time pressures meant that they were the ones responsible for most of the creative refinements and for organizing the campaigns. What she was given was already-completed work for her rubber-stamp approval. Her function since she’d taken the leave of absence was mainly advisory.
She read a couple more chapters in The Magic Island. Interesting enough, if a stretch of credulity, but her mind kept wandering. Hyperactive lately, thoughts and ideas piling up, tumbling against one another. Part of it was cabin fever. But it was more than that, too. She had already broken through the shell of fear and anxiety she’d been trapped in for the past three months. The medical ordeal was finished; the tumor and the cancerous cells were gone; the prognosis was favorable. She felt fine aside from the soreness and stiffness from the radiation burning, and even that wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been during the last few treatments. Her stamina was coming back; she didn’t need daily naps anymore; she was sleeping well and had energy most of the time. Her sex drive hadn’t quite returned, but the fact that she was thinking about it again, and had discussed it with Bill, meant that it was only a matter of time. Lovemaking, for a while, might not be very pleasant; there was bound to be some awkwardness and probably some discomfort. But that wasn’t going to prevent her from doing it. For her own sake as well as his.
Next week sometime. And next week she would be back at Bates and Carpenter full-time-resume that important part of her life as well. She’d already talked to Jim Carpenter about it. He was just as eager for her return as she was.
Bill thought it was premature. He felt she ought to stay home another couple of weeks, rest, continue to build up her strength. He’d been a rock throughout this damn crisis, she couldn’t have gotten through it as well as she had without him, but he couldn’t seem to let go of his concern for her. He was still afraid, and she loved him even more for that, but you can’t keep existing in a constant state of anxiety and fear. She wasn’t any longer. She
