The Murder Book

Her breath caught, and the hands on her hips whitened. 'What happened, sir, is what I told you: Pierce fell off Akhbar. Now he's gone and I'm the one has to live with that and I don't appreciate your raking all this up.'

'I'm sorry,' I said.

'You keep apologizing, but you don't stop asking.'

'Well,' I said, 'here's the thing. Maybe it was an accident, but you did ask for a drug scan on Akhbar. Paid the coroner quite a bit of money to do it.'

She took a step away from me, then another. Shook her head, plucked a piece of straw out of her hair. 'This is ridiculous.'

'Another thing,' I said. 'Detective Sturgis never introduced me by name, but you know who I am and what I do. I find that kind of curious.'

Her eyes widened and her chest heaved. 'He said you might do this.'

'Who did?'

No answer.

I said, 'Dr. Harrison?'

She turned her back on me.

'Mrs. Schwinn, don't you think we need to get to the bottom of things? Isn't that what Pierce would've wanted? Something was keeping him up at night, wasn't it? Unfinished business. Wasn't that the whole point of the murder book?'

'I don't know about any book.'

'Don't you?'

Her lips folded inward. She shook her head again, clenched her jaw, swiveled, and caught a faceful of sun. A tremor jogged through her upper body. Her legs were planted, and they absorbed the motion. She turned heel and half ran toward her house. But I followed her inside; she didn't try to stop me.

We sat in the exact same spots we'd occupied a few days ago: me on the living room couch, she in the facing chair. The last time, Milo had done all the talking, as he usually does when I tag along, but now it was my game and, God help me, despite the anguish of the woman sitting across from me, I felt cruelly elated.

Marge Schwinn said, 'You guys are spooky. Mind readers.'

'We guys?'

'Head doctors.'

'Dr. Harrison and I,' I said.

She didn't answer, and I went on: 'Dr. Harrison warned you I might be back.'

'Dr. Harrison does only good.'

I didn't argue.

She showed me her profile. 'Yes, he was the one who told me who you were- after I described you and that big detective, Sturgis. He said your being here might mean things would be different.'

'Different?'

'He said you were persistent. A good guesser.'

'You've known Dr. Harrison for a while.'

'A while.' The living room windows were open, and a whinny from out in the corral drifted in loud and clear. She muttered, 'Easy, baby.'

'Your relationship with Dr. Harrison was professional,' I said.

'If you're asking was he my doctor, the answer is yes. He treated us both- Pierce and me. Separately, neither of us knew it at the time. With Pierce it was the drugs. With me it was… I was going through… a depression. A situational reaction, Dr. Harrison called it. After my mother passed. She was ninety-three, and I'd been taking care of her for so long that being alone was… all the responsibility started bearing down on me. I tried to go it alone, then it got to be too much. I knew what Dr. Harrison was, had always liked his smile. So one day I got up the courage to talk to him.'

The admission- the confession of weakness- clenched her jaws. I said, 'Was Dr. Harrison the one who introduced you to Pierce?'

'I met Pierce at the end of… by the time I was better, able to take care of things, again. I was still talking to Dr. Harrison from time to time but was off the antidepressants, just like he said I'd be.'

She leaned forward, suddenly. 'Do you really know Dr. H? Well enough to understand what kind of man he is? When we first started talking, he used to come over every day to see how I was doing. Every day. One time I came down with the flu and couldn't do my chores and he did them for me. Everything- vacuumed the house, washed and dried the dishes, fed the horses, cleaned up the stables. He did that for four days running, even made trips into town for supplies. If I'd paid him by the hour, I'd be dead broke.'

I knew Bert was a good man and a master therapist, but her account astonished me. I pictured him tiny, aged, purple-clad, sweeping and hosing horse stalls and wondered what I'd have done in the same situation. Knew damn well I'd have fallen far short of that degree of caring.

What I was doing right now had nothing to do with caring. Not for the living.

How much was owed to the dead?

I said, 'So you met Pierce when things had smoothed out.' Sounding wooden, formulaic. Shrinky.

She nodded. 'Dr. H. told me I should get back into my old routine- said my old habits had been good ones. Before Mama got terminal, I used to drive into Oxnard and shop at Randall's for feed. Old Lady Randall used to work the counter and she and Mama were old friends and I used to like going in there and talking to her, hearing the way things used to be. Then Mrs. Randall took sick and her boys started working the counter and I had nothing to say to them. That and my energies were flagging so I switched to a mail-order feed outfit that delivered. When Dr. Harrison said it would be good for me to get out, I started going to Randall's again. That's where I met Pierce.'

She smiled. 'Maybe it was all part of his plan- Dr. Harrison's. Knowing Pierce and me both. Figuring there'd be some kind of chemistry there. He always said no, but maybe he was being modest like he always is. Whatever the truth, there was a chemistry. Must've been, cause the first time I saw Pierce he looked like nothing but an over-the-hill hippie and I'm an old Republican ranch girl, shook Ronald Reagan's hand, wouldn't normally be attracted to that type. But something about Pierce… he had a nobility. I know your detective friend probably told you stories about the way Pierce used to be, but he became a different man.'

I said, 'People change.'

'That's something I didn't learn till late in life. When Pierce finally got up the courage to ask me out for coffee, he was so shy about it, it was… almost cute.' She shrugged. 'Maybe we met at just the right time- the planets moving perfectly or something.' Tiny smile. 'Or maybe Dr. Harrison's a tricky one.'

'When did you tell Dr. Harrison you were seeing Pierce?'

'Pretty soon after. He said, 'I know. Pierce told me. He feels the same way about you, Margie.' That's when he told me he'd known Pierce for some time. Had been doing volunteer psychiatry at Oxnard Doctor's Hospital- counseling sick and injured people, burnt people- after the Montecito Fire they put in a burn unit and he was their psychiatrist. Pierce wasn't any of those things, he came into the emergency room having terrible seizures from his addiction. Dr. Harrison detoxified him, then took him on as a patient. He told me all this because Pierce asked him to. Pierce had strong feelings about me but was deeply ashamed of his past, depended on Dr. Harrison to clear the air. I still remember the way Dr. H. phrased it. 'He's a good man, Margie, but he'll understand if this is too much baggage for you to carry.' I said, 'These hands have been hauling hay for forty years, I can carry plenty.' After that, Pierce's shyness mostly left him, and we got close.' Her eyes misted. 'I never thought I'd find anyone, and now he's gone.'

She fumbled for the bandana and spit out laughter. 'Look at me, what a sissy. And look at you: I thought you guys were supposed to make people feel better.'

I sat there as she cried silently and wiped her eyes and cried some more. A sudden shadow streaked the facing wall, then vanished. I turned in time to see a hawk shoot up into the blue and vanish. Foot stomping and snorting sounded from the corral.