“Nobody seems to remember that, exactly. Doc Finn was talking in low tones. But everybody could hear Billie. He would say something, and she would yell at him to mind his own business. Then he would start to talk, or try to, and she would scream at him not to be so nosy.”
I sighed and got up to wash the pan I’d used to fry Tom’s eggs. Charlotte Attenborough’s magazine,
I said, “Won’t Billie tell you what Doc Finn was talking to her about?”
“She says he told her she was losing weight too fast, and that it wasn’t good for her.” Tom took a last bite of his lunch. “Thanks, that was great. Here’s the deal with Billie: She’s lying. I’ve been in this business long enough to be able to spot that. So I took a different tack and told her we’d heard she was angry when Doc Finn ran off her two fiances. She shrugged. Plus, we’ve got access to Finn’s files, and Billie wasn’t even a patient of his. When we asked her when the last time she’d seen a doctor was, and when exactly he had weighed her, she clammed up and told us that if we wanted to talk to her further, she needed to have her attorney present.”
“Did you tell her you were in the middle of a homicide investigation, for God’s sake?”
“She already knew. The higher-ups in the sheriff’s department thought we should announce that Doc Finn’s death was a homicide. No particulars, of course, just the usual, that we were looking for help with the investigation. But none of that made any difference to Billie.”
“Oh, God. That means Jack knows.”
“Probably.”
“Do you think I should go over there?”
“No. If he wants to contact us, he will.” He looked expectantly around the kitchen. “I know you’ve got some cookies stashed around here somewhere.”
I shook my head. “You’re not going to want any trout.”
“Speaking of which, you better get out those steaks. I think I just heard hail on the roof.”
I don’t know where Tom got his supersonic sense of hearing, but just at that moment, a flash of lightning and an almost simultaneous loud clap of thunder announced that, indeed, a hailstorm was upon us. The lights went off, then came back on again.
In the walk-in, I found half a dozen individually wrapped filets mignon, which was a good thing. If I knew Arch and his pals, they’d come racing home from their fishing trip, soaked, starving…and, if the hail kept up, empty- handed.
“Do you want some cookies?” I asked Tom. “We don’t have anything on hand. I could bake some, though.”
“Please don’t go to the trouble. I was just wondering.”
“I’ll do some baking while you’re barbecuing, how ’bout that?”
“Super.”
“Now, Tom,” I said, as I began to melt butter with brown sugar, “tell me why you want Boyd to go out to the spa with me. Is it just that Finn and Billie fought out there?”
Tom opened his palms. “No. It’s more of a feeling. Too many things going on that don’t add up. Doc Finn goes out there and has a big fight with a spa client. Then that night, somebody makes a bogus call to him from Southwest Hospital. The rear of his Porsche Cayenne was badly dented, so we figured someone ran him off the road. And get this: we found a towel from Gold Gulch in the back of Finn’s car.”
“Maybe he had a shower out there.”
“He didn’t, we checked. Plus, the towel was behind the seats. Who takes a shower and then puts the towel in the very back of his SUV?”
“Nobody I know.”
“Exactly. And guess what else we found in his car? Not with the towel, mind you, but on the floor of the front seat. A pair of women’s shoes.”
The hail was hammering on the roof now. “No name inside, I suppose.”
“No, but when we went to talk to Billie Attenborough, we took the shoes, and asked her about them. She recognized them, no question, but she wouldn’t say whose they were. Then her mother walked into the living room, and said, ‘Oh, there are my silver pumps. Did you borrow them, Billie?’”
“They were Charlotte’s shoes? So, did Billie borrow them?”
“Who knows? ’Cuz just at that moment, Billie said, ‘Don’t say or do anything, Mom.’”
“Jeez, Tom.”
“I know.”
I said, “I certainly hope their house gets broken into, so the sheriff’s department can answer their call with, ‘We can’t say or do anything.’ Is there anything else you found out?”
Tom said, “Out at Doc Finn’s house? There was a vial in the trash can out back. We also found a note to himself that said, ‘Have analyzed.’”
“What was in the vial?”
“Don’t know yet. We’re trying to see if there are traces of anything in there that we can send off for analysis. We also don’t know if the note goes with the vial.”
“Hmm. That’s it?”
“So far.”
“All right, well, listen.” I told him about Jack charging around in the Smoothie Cabin, apparently looking for something.
“I don’t suppose he told you what he was looking for.”
“Nope, but I’ll bet you it’s related to what ever was in that vial in Doc Finn’s trash. Do you think Victor’s hiding drugs out there? That he’s some kind of dealer?”
Tom said, “Hmm. So we’ve got a faked call from a hospital, a dented car, an argument at Gold Gulch Spa, a pair of shoes, a towel, a vial, a cryptic note, and Jack rummaging around in the Smoothie Cabin. All very strange.”
I removed the cocoa-butter mixture from the stove to cool, then measured out oats, baking powder, and salt. “And none of it adds up,” I said as I began beating an egg in our mixer, “at least not yet. But listen, I have some things to tell you.”
I wasn’t five words into what Marla had learned at her fund-raiser when Tom pulled out his notebook and began to write down what I was saying. When I got to the monetary details of the contract between Billie’s mother and Craig Miller, Tom whistled.
“Have you ever heard of such a thing?” I asked.
“Nope. Jack’s son’s ex-wife, Paula, the drunk lawyer with the big mouth? Did Paula mention if she’d shared this information about the four million with anyone else, specifically, Billie Attenborough?”
“She didn’t say. Why?”
Tom tilted his chin. “I was just wondering how Billie would have reacted. I mean, how would you have felt if your mother had paid John Richard to marry you?”
“I’d have gone ballistic.”
“What do you think it would have told you?”
“That my mother didn’t have any confidence that I could attract anyone on my own.”
“Uh-huh. Now I’m wondering if Doc Finn could have gotten wind of the contract somehow, and told Billie about it. That could have made her go ballistic.” Tom rubbed his forehead. “But if Billie wouldn’t even let her mother talk about a pair of shoes, she sure as hell isn’t going to tell us what she and Doc Finn really talked about.”
I looked at all the ingredients I’d assembled, unsure of exactly what kind of cookie I was going to make for Tom, Arch, and the boys.
“You had something else to tell me?” Tom asked. “’Cuz I’d like to go have a shower before I get called upon for grilling duties.”
“Do you know anything about Doc Finn’s will?”
Tom seemed surprised. “We’ve had a preliminary talk with his lawyer. Doc Finn left everything to Duke University Medical School.”
“Right. Well, according to Lucas, or rather, according to his inebriated ex-wife, Paula, Lucas was upset that Doc Finn was trying to get Jack to change his will to leave everything he has to Duke, too.”
