Mickey, balding, shrunken, but with a smile so endearing he always reminded me of a stuffed troll, looked up from the thick layer of golden dough he was rolling out. “Goldy! So glad to see you!” He set aside his marble rolling pin and bustled forward to embrace me. He smelled marvelous, sweat mixed with spice and flour. His long white apron dusted my outfit. I grinned and returned his hug, then looked over at Brandon. His handsome face was no longer set in its usual impish expression. He looked as if a monsoon had arrived at his doorstep.
“Morning, Brandon,” I said pleasantly. “So glad I could run into you here. I’ve been trying to call you to apologize for our misunderstanding at my ex-husband’s office.”
His shiny dark hair fell in his face and he immediately brushed it back. “Sure, okay, no hard feelings,” he mumbled without visible enthusiasm. “Glad to see you.”
“Coffee, coffee, let’s have some fresh,” said Mickey, obviously glad of my company, even if his son was not.
“Why didn’t you answer my calls?” I asked Brandon as I sat in one of the chairs at his father’s worktable. Out of earshot, Mickey ran water and measured out ground coffee.
“I can’t call you back,” Brandon rejoined. “They are watching me every second. I’m afraid every call of mine is monitored. .
. .”
“Who’s ‘they’? Who would monitor your calls?” Brandon’s handsome face screwed up in dismay. “The same guys who were here before, from the headquarters office of Human Resources. They’ve come back in from Minneapolis until the preliminary hearing with your ex is over. I’m telling you, Goldy, it’s a bad scene.”
“You think that’s a bad scene? My fourteen. year-old son has moved out until the preliminary hearing. That’s how ticked off with me he is over this case. I want to find out what the hell is going on with my son’s father a whole lot more than your corporate bigwigs do.” He said nothing. “Please, Brandon. Please help us.”
Brandon exhaled unhappily. “Whatever I tell you, you’ve got to say you didn’t hear it from me.”
“Brandon, for heaven’s sake! You didn’t participate in any illegal activity, did you?”
His smile was a younger, less wrinkled version of his father’s. “Of course not. No illegal activity. I didn’t even kill Suz Craig, as is believed in some circles.”
“What circles?”
His face turned pink. “Oh, you know. The gossip mill.”
“Was she about to be fired by ACHMO when she was killed?”
His father reappeared with the coffee. It was marvelous, dark and hearty. We took grateful sips and showered praise and thanks on Mickey.
“You all go ahead and visit,” Mickey told us. He eyed the rectangle of dough. “I gotta work.”
“Can’t we help you?” I offered. Cloth towels shrouded the domed top of another enormous bowl of risen dough.
“Naw, naw,” Mickey replied, waving a floured paw. “The priest is doing grief work with me. Says I gotta work. Stay busy. Best antidote. I like having you here, though.”
I looked back at Brandon, who shrugged. He murmured, “Just let him. He knows what he needs. I’m here for company. When I help him, it’s usually on the weekends.”
“Was Suz about to be fired?” I asked Brandon again. “Or had she been submitted to some kind of disciplinary action?”
Brandon sipped his coffee and was silent. For a moment I feared he’d decided not to answer. “Not exactly reprimanded. She was… being observed. In her dealings with people.” I waited for him to go on. He shifted in the wooden chair. “Headquarters had had a lot of complaints.” He seemed to go into a trance as he watched his father spread butter on the rolled dough.
“Complaints from whom?” I prompted. Brandon blinked and shrugged. “Everybody who’d ever had to work with Suz Craig.”
When he seemed in danger of going into another trance, I said, “Amy Bartholomew said the same thing. She said Suz set a trap for her. Amy wanted to control her own destiny, as she put it, and Suz had other ideas. Suz accused Amy of compulsively feeding the slots up at Central City. Then Suz tried to make it impossible for Amy to buy the health-food store.”
Brandon’s eyes were on his father as he sprinkled dark cinnamon sugar over the golden dough. “Yeah, I know. I’m the very young, very unsuccessful head of Human Resources, remember?”
“Amy said Suz criticized you for spending too much time here with your father and for coming into the office too tired to do good work. She criticized Chris Corey, too.”
“Oh, boy, don’t remind me.” He looked at the ceiling. “Chris was putting together a new Provider Relations Manual. He’s very thorough, and Suz kept changing the language of certain guidelines. It was her fault he missed the deadline. But she threw a fit anyway, in front of everybody.”
“Did she criticize Ralph Shelton?”
“Of course,” he said simply “She told us she was putting together a file of patient complaints, plus a critical letter from her, into a packet to go to MeritMed.”
“Why would she do that? He already told me that was why he was fired.”
“Who knows? Plus, Goldy, I’m not convinced she should have fired him. Every doctor gets unhappy patients. Last year, the state board of medical examiners received over seven hundred and fifty complaints. Eighty-five percent were dismissed.” He sighed. “And then Shelton was so pathetic, calling each of us after she fired him, to see if we could stop her from sending the packet of complaints on. We all suspected Shelton was trying to renew his old friendship with Korman to get him to prevent her from sending the packet to Shelton’s new employers at MeritMed. But apparently Korman repeatedly gave Shelton the brush-off through that cute secretary of his.”
“Sort of the way you gave me the brush-off today.”
“Sorry. I really was in a meeting.”
“Did Suz criticize and threaten John Richard, too?”
Brandon’s large brown eyes and narrow face suddenly seemed overcome with sadness. “She could be the warmest, most loving person you could ever imagine.” He paused and looked away. “She could also be vicious. Every day when I drove into that parking lot, my stomach would clench. What kind of mood was she going to be in today? What would she try to do to me? How could I fend her off??
“Did she want to have control over John Richard?” I persisted.
He frowned, then shook his head. “Who knew? He didn’t share much with us, you know, the administrators. Suz’s control of information was what concerned her, and she was good at it.” His forehead wrinkled. “I did hear that Korman’s billing was problematic, and that he didn’t automatically qualify for a bonus he was expecting.”
“Who told you those tidbits?” When he shrugged, I went on. “Where do the ACHMO honchos come in? Why were they here last month? One of them told me they were fighting fires.”
“Thank you so very much,” I told Mickey. “You can’t imagine how much I appreciate this.”
He poured me more hot coffee. “Of course I do. Food-service people are the last ones to sit down and actually enjoy eating anything. Besides, I love the company, as Brandon can tell you. I’m about to make some sour-cream cakes now… . You two need anything else?”
“Thanks, Dad. No,” said Brandon warmly as he squeezed his father’s hand. For the first time I noticed the bags under Brandon’s eyes. His schedule must be brutal, I thought. He’d told the cops he went to bed at eight P.M. every night so that he could be here by two A.M. It wasn’t a regimen I would want to follow on any long-term basis, especially since I’d tried it for the last few nights and now felt like a walking zombie.
“I’m going to leave in a few minutes,” I told Brandon. “I think I understand better now why everyone, especially my ex, had trouble with this woman. It’s hard to believe that Suz would threaten you with changing your medical records, though. Couldn’t anybody call her on trying to intimidate people? It sounds so much like blackmail.”
Brandon chewed the last of his bear claw. “Great idea, Goldy. Now we know those meetings she had with us in her office were taped. When I called headquarters the week after HR left, they said to me, ‘You get proof she’s threatening you and we’ll fire her.’ Not that I would trust them. But I checked the labels on the tapes Luella Downing found. None were from the Monday after the HR people left, when Suz went on her threatening rampage.”
“That’s it?” I said, astonished. “Monday ? what would it have been, July 14? The tapes from that day are
