“Nurse Fugate, you mean,” Alexa said. She wondered if he knew the pill bottles were gone. But what would that mean? Either Sibby had told him she’d taken them from the house, which seemed very unlikely, or someone else had told him. But who?
“What?” he asked.
“You said you always called her Nurse Fugate, but just now you called her Dotty,” Alexa said.
“Sibhon Danielson was at River Run and you never told me?” Casey asked her uncle.
LePointe stood, and Alexa could tell he wanted to throw things at her-chase her out of the house swinging the poker that leaned against the fireplace. But he came around the desk and stood beside Casey’s chair. “Agent Keen, you’ve upset my niece with your insinuations. Please leave us and get on about your business. My niece is not emotionally able to withstand this sort of pressure. I am warning you: you are stepping on very dangerous ground.”
Casey was sobbing. When her uncle put his hand on her shoulder, she shot from the chair and fixed him with an icy look of rage. “What is going on here? My God, Unko! What the hell is going on here?”
“I have no idea,” LePointe said. “I don’t know anything about Sibhon Danielson. I’m as stunned as you are, my dear, but I’ve yet to see any proof that she is indeed out of the hospital, or was living with Nurse Fugate.” The smile Dr. LePointe intended to be reassuring would have looked at home on a Bell’s palsy victim. “Let’s not jump to conclusions and say things we’ll regret.”
“That monster murdered my parents!” Casey yelled. She turned her eyes to Alexa. “Where is she now?”
“We have no idea.”
Alexa decided she had nothing to lose in pushing, to see what happened. “You don’t know anything about Sibby Danielson, Doctor? Odd. If Sibby Danielson was an inmate at River Run for the twenty-six years where you were director of the facility, and were seeing patients on her ward, you must have known she was there.”
“Of course I knew she was there,” LePointe replied angrily. “So what? I never treated her. I wouldn’t know the woman if she walked into this room.”
“According to the police files, I understood that she was your patient when she killed your brother and his wife,” Alexa said.
Again Casey’s eyes widened with obvious disbelief. “Unko? Is that true?”
“She was no longer my patient when she did that!” LePointe roared. “She was upset because I had quit treating her. She was a psychotic mess and she was disturbed, and possibly she imagined that my brother was behind my refusal to treat her. Patient transference. She imagined we were married and Curry was standing between her and some ideal of happiness. She confronted my wife and created a scene at the country club. I tried to get her committed before! Casey, I did not know she was out of the hospital! Sibhon Danielson is an extremely dangerous woman. I don’t know, but if she killed Dorothy, it was because poor Dorothy had taken it upon herself to help her, which the hospital was never able to do. Maybe Dorothy aided in her escape in some misguided sense of compassion or sense of duty. It’s even possible they may have had some codependent relationship that Dorothy didn’t want to have ended.”
“I’m sure they’re pulling her records at the hospital about now to get a photograph and a physical description. Since we are here together, perhaps you could give me a current description, Dr. LePointe?”
“What? How would I know? I just told you I haven’t so much as laid eyes on her in years. I never treated her at River Run, if that’s where you’re taking this, Agent Keen. I doubt you’ll find anybody who will say differently.”
“I don’t disbelieve that,” Alexa said truthfully. “But things can change.”
“Maybe I should call Lucille Burch and tell her that Gary’s been abducted,” Casey said.
“No! The media will just make it into a sideshow!” LePointe snarled.
“They’ll jump all over it,” Alexa agreed. “The possibility of a Sibby Danielson connection to Gary’s disappearance will be one hell of a trigger, especially since they were already looking into Sibby’s whereabouts. They’d had a tip that she’d been released from River Run,” she said for LePointe’s benefit. “I assumed it was because it’s an anniversary of the murders. I think we should use them to get word out on Gary.”
“About time,” Casey said.
LePointe’s worried eyes shifted back and forth between Alexa and his niece. Alexa was sure he was seeing the horror of film crews camped outside his high gate, the unpleasant questions, scores of investigative reporters rooting around in his business like a pack of wild pigs.
“The police report said that Kenneth Decell rescued Casey from Sibby that night,” Alexa said. “Your private investigator, who conveniently was here when the postman delivered this letter.”
Alexa felt Casey’s eyes on her, but she kept hers on LePointe, watching every facial tic and eye movement, every gesture.
“Is that some sort of accusation?” LePointe demanded. Clearly Dr. LePointe was a stranger to being accused of anything. “He helps me and the trusts with a variety of matters, and he has been searching for Gary West too. And yes, Sibhon injured him, so perhaps I have felt some degree of responsibility toward him. But he is a good and thorough investigator.”
“I’m not accusing anybody of anything, yet. I’m just stating what I believe to be the facts, and wondering how things may be connected.”
LePointe’s eyes shifted as his mind glimpsed solid ground and stepped toward it. “Do I need to remind you that you are a guest, invited in by us, a consultant who is supposed to help us find Gary?”
“I am an FBI agent trying to assist the local authorities in finding Gary West, and in the course of that investigation I have uncovered information that may figure into the disappearance of Mr. West.”
“And how was it that you ended up at River Run interviewing Dr. Whitfield about Sibhon Danielson?”
Alexa pounced. “I didn’t say that I had been at River Run or mention that I spoke to anyone there. How did you know that?”
Dr. LePointe’s silence was deafening, so she went on.
“The media asked for the official police files pertaining to the homicides, which Detective Manseur pulled to see if there was something there that might be helpful. I thought the media investigating a rumor that Sibby Danielson had been released was too coincidental. I accompanied Detective Manseur to River Run. Nurse Fugate’s name came up, and I discovered, in the course of trying to contact her to discuss Sibhon, that Nurse Fugate had been murdered and that in all likelihood Ms. Danielson had been staying in her home. All that I’ve been trying to do since early this morning is to find Mr. West, and I intend to do exactly that. Unfortunately, this letter’s appearance and your pronouncement of its authenticity to Jackson Evans has cost us precious time. As of now, it appears to me that you may be trying to mislead the authorities and impede their investigation. Now I’m going to kick this into high gear, no matter how the media chooses to deal with it. It appears it may open some personal and professional unpleasantness for you, which I can honestly say doesn’t bother me.”
“There’s a great deal at stake,” LePointe said. “A very great deal. The foundations’ reputations are paramount. If we are careful about what we say publicly, no-”
“I don’t care about that!” Casey snapped. “I don’t care about what anybody says or thinks, and why you do is a mystery. All anybody gives a flip about is how much money they can get from you. They couldn’t care less about our illustrious reputation. Damn you! I’ll give away every penny I own to anybody who will give Gary back to me. If he isn’t back today, I’m going to drop to my knees and beg on television. And if he doesn’t come home, I’ll spend every cent I have to find those responsible and see them punished.”
“If Gary can be found, he will be,” Alexa said.
“Casey, show some backbone!” LePointe growled. “You will not do any such thing. You will not let anyone see you begging!”
Casey pointed her finger at her uncle. “I never realized what a horrible and disgusting person you truly are. I wish to God I could hate you. If I find out you or Decell had anything to do with Gary…I’ll see you in prison.” That said, she rushed from the room.
After collecting the envelopes containing the evidence, Alexa followed Casey, who had taken Deana from the maid and was striding for the front door, while her uncle’s booming voice-ordering her to come back this very moment-rang hollowly through the house.
