I smiled my approval. Some people had minds that naturally gravitated toward organization. It would’ve taken me months to think of a scheme like this. I was struck by the simplicity of the page yet how full it was of information. Everything was so accessible. My eyes, of course, went right to the top of the page. I wasn’t surprised. Hunter Morgan was way ahead of the pack. She and Tinsley had spoken 167 times over that period. Next up was our lover boy, Chopper McNair. They clocked in at 134 times. But it was the third name on the list that caught my attention. Gunjan Patel. Whoever this was, they had spoken 101 times.
I pointed to the name.
“She’s a doctor,” Carolina said. “Not a PhD, but a real medical doctor. She practices psychiatry at Northwestern. She’s been there for about ten years. Her husband is also on faculty. He’s an anesthesiologist. They were in the same medical school at the University of Chicago.”
I sat back and took a healthy pull of lemonade. It was sweet and bitter and cold all at the same time, exactly the way lemonade was supposed to be. Carolina took a delicate sip of her seltzer water. She could make even something as mundane as drinking water a sensual experience.
“A psychiatrist,” I said, thinking aloud. “Why did Tinsley need to see a shrink, and why so many calls?”
Carolina shrugged. “Either she has a serious problem that needs a lot of attention, or her shrink has become a friend. Any way you look at it, that’s a lot of calls.”
“And a lot of dinero if she’s paying by the hour,” I said. “Seems like the head-examining business is a growth industry.”
“And for her husband too,” Carolina said.
“What do you mean?”
Carolina flipped to the second page. She had circled the name Bradford Weems in the middle of the list. Tinsley had spoken to him seventy-five times. But there were two numbers next to his name. The first had seventy-four connections, and the second phone number had only one.
“So, Tinsley was no stranger to our illustrious Drs. Patel and Weems,” I said, finishing the rest of the lemonade and motioning to our waitress for a refill. “But why seventy-five calls to the husband if the wife was the psychiatrist? And why was one of those calls to a different number?”
“I knew you’d ask that.” Carolina smiled. “The seventy-four calls were to his cell phone, but the one call to the different number was to a landline in his home. And here’s something even more interesting. That call to his home happened to be the last call she made.” Carolina grabbed the master spreadsheet and traced a row at the bottom of the page. “They spoke at eleven fifteen that night for a total of seven minutes. So Tinsley spoke to either the husband or the wife not long before she disappeared.”
“Voilà,” I said. “Never a stone unturned.”
“And the most I get for it is a lunch salad.”
“Yes, and the handsomest company in the joint.”
“There’s that too,” she said, leaning over and kissing me softly on the cheek. “Not a bad trade, I guess.”
I promised myself I wouldn’t wash that side of my face for a year.
9
DR. GUNJAN PATEL WAS a slim, attractive woman in her early thirties, with shoulder-length dark hair, warm skin, and a tiny diamond stud in her nose. She wore a smart black pinstriped suit and a gold necklace with a diamond heart charm that rested against her cream-colored silk blouse. Her office was a modern affair, all chrome and glass. She shook my hand firmly when I walked in.
“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,” I said, taking a seat in a low-slung leather chair. Rather than go back to the chair behind her desk, Dr. Patel took a seat in the chair next to me. It, too, was leather, but the raised seat and straight back elevated her to a position of authority. Psychiatrists were the most intentional people on the face of the planet.
“I won’t take much of your time,” I said after we both had gotten settled. “I know you have a busy practice.”
“You said it had to do with Tinsley Gerrigan,” she said matter-of-factly. Nothing like getting to the point.
“It does,” I said. “She’s missing.”
“Missing?” Dr. Patel asked. Her eyes opened a little, but other than that her expression didn’t change.
“She hasn’t been seen or heard from for five days,” I said. “Her family has no idea where she might’ve gone.”
“And you’re looking for her?”
“The family has hired me to do that,” I said. I slipped her one of my business cards, which had only my name and office number. She looked at it cautiously, then calmly set it on the round glass table beside her.
“So, how can I help you?” she said.
“Was Tinsley Gerrigan having lots of problems?”
“I don’t understand your question, Mr. Cayne,” she said. “We all have problems.”
“Yes, but some more than others. Tinsley’s problems were obviously troublesome enough that she felt the need to have professional help. That must mean something.”
“Many others could stand to use some professional help too,” she said. “They just don’t seek it.”
“One of my ex-girlfriends said something like that to me once,” I said. “Maybe that’s why she’s an ex. But that’s a different conversation. Do you like Tinsley?”
“That’s a rather strange question,” Dr. Patel said.
“Can’t doctors like people?”
“I don’t consider my patients in that type of subjective manner. Doing so would introduce my emotional bias. I focus my energies on their problem or problems and what I can do to help them get better and find clarity. It’s not my job to pass judgment.”
This was going to be a chess match. “Let me try it in a different way,” I said. “Is Tinsley a likable young woman?”
“Sure,” Dr. Patel said. “But that has nothing to do with the intentions or quality of my services. It doesn’t matter whether someone is a serial
