Friday at the clinic tended to be busy. People knew we weren’t open on the weekend, so if they had trouble then, they’d have to go to urgent care or the emergency room. Most people preferred our clinic and passed that word on to new arrivals.
Vic greeted me looking a little more harried than usual. Normally nothing bothered her.
“What is it?” I asked.
“My husband’s mother is in the hospital at Piedmont.”
“Do you need to be there? If so, I can handle this.”
“I know you can,” Vic said. “I don’t need to go now. We spent half the night getting her settled in a room, and they’re running tests. I’m fine now but I may need to leave sometime during the day.”
“That won’t be a problem.” I took a look at the waiting room. “So far things look a little light for a Friday.”
They stayed light for whatever reason. Vic had to leave in the late morning, but there were no emergencies. This was another time it felt good to be in a normal routine. I even had time to call Lurleen while I ate my lunch.
“I’m so glad you called,” she said, “and I’ll make this fast. Stephanie said she’d been trying to track down who or what frightened Nicole at the time of our meeting. She doesn’t believe it was a prank. One of the neighbors saw someone dressed in black heading to the back of the house. She didn’t think much of it at the time since she knew Stephanie was having a mystery book club that night. The neighbor assumed it was someone in character for the event, but she told Stephanie she wondered why the person went to the back door and not the front.”
“Did the neighbor get a good look at the person?” I asked.
“Not really. She couldn’t see a face, but she did say the person was tall with a brown pony tail. She noticed that from a light near the garage at Stephanie’s house.”
“So how can Stephanie be so sure it wasn’t simply a neighborhood prank?” I asked.
“Stephanie swore she canvassed everyone in her neighborhood, and she’s convinced none of the kids were up to that kind of mischief.”
“Thanks, Lurleen. You should pass this information along to Mason. I’ve got to run. I’m the only doc on the roster today.”
“Already done. I told Danny and he’s telling Mason.”
It wasn’t much to go on, and I really didn’t have time to think about it until I was driving home. A tall person, a woman perhaps, had managed to frighten Nicole out of her wits. How had our mystery person pulled that off? Everyone was in the room when it happened. Wait, not quite everyone—Josephine came in late but she had short gray hair. And wasn’t there one person who said she didn’t have time to be in the book club? Adeline Morgan. I wondered what she looked like.
Lurleen was waiting for me when I pulled up to my house at the end of my work day.
“The kids are off with Hannah’s grandfather for dinner. I said you wouldn’t mind, and they got their homework done before I let them go.”
“Thanks, Lurleen.”
“Mason called to say he’d be late, and Danny’s on a stakeout of some kind. That means we can talk freely.”
Uh oh. “You haven’t done anything you weren’t supposed to do, have you, Lurleen?”
Lurleen frowned. “No, I haven’t. The fact that we can’t talk to anyone else about Nicole’s murder doesn’t mean we can’t talk to each other and think about what’s going on. We still have freedom of thought, you know.”
“Fine. Let me get a glass of wine, and let’s think out loud.”
“Great.” Lurleen followed me to the kitchen and we settled on bar stools at the island, each with a glass of wine. “I’ll start,” she said. “Stephanie came for a visit to see what I thought about a memorial service. I said I wasn’t sure about that since I didn’t really know Nicole. She said it was more for the living than the dead and that she never would have suggested it if it had been all about Nicole.”
“Did you ask her more about her relationship with Nicole?” I asked.
“I did, but she wasn’t ready to go there. She was willing to speculate about who might have tried to frighten her the night of the book club and how they pulled it off.”
“I’m all ears.”
At that moment my cell rang.
Vic was on the line, checking in with me to see how the day went. I assured her everything was fine and asked about her mother-in-law.
“It looks like a small stroke, maybe a TIA. She lost movement on her right side but it’s returned now. They are keeping her in the hospital another day to run more tests. Thanks, Ditie, have a good weekend.”
“You too.”
I took another sip of wine and turned to Lurleen. “So what does Stephanie think she’s figured out?”
“She said it had to be someone connected with the group, someone who knew we were meeting and that Nicole would be there. She said that boiled down to the woman who claimed she didn’t have time for a book club, Adeline Morgan.”
“I had the same thought. What does Adeline Morgan look like?”
“Stephanie described her as tall with long brown hair. She said she only met her once or twice at functions at the CDC.”
“Does Stephanie know anything more about her? Did she have some connection with Nicole?”
“No,” Lurleen said. “According to Jonathan, Adeline is simply a person who works with him at the CDC. He made a point of telling Stephanie they were not friends, only acquaintances at work.
“Jonathan seemed pleased when she came on board about three months earlier.” Lurleen said. “She’s not working in his lab but in an adjacent one. He said what a good scientist she was and how lucky the CDC was to have her.”
“So he knew her from somewhere before?” I asked.
“He told Stephanie he only knew her by reputation,” Lurleen said. “However, when Stephanie suggested they have her over for dinner to welcome her, he said that was a bad idea, but he never said why.”
“Three months ago would have been about the time Stephanie noticed Jonathan wasn’t doing well,” I said. “I spoke to a friend at the CDC who knew Adeline and said she liked her. Does Stephanie have an opinion about Adeline?”
“Not really,” Lurleen said. “She thought she was a really nice woman based on a brief conversation. Stephanie said a lot of the people from the branch could only talk about science issues. Adeline wasn’t like that. She was gregarious and talked to everyone.”
“So Jonathan sings this woman’s praises and then wants nothing to do with her,” I said.
“Apparently,” Lurleen said, “according to Stephanie’s account of things.”
“Why do you say it like that, Lurleen?” I asked. “We know Jonathan is hiding something, but do you think Stephanie is as well?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, I feel as if Stephanie is reading from a script. When I last saw her, she said it might not be a good idea for you to talk to Jonathan after all, that he was having second thoughts.”
“I wonder if Jonathan is the one having second thoughts or if Stephanie is,” I said.
“That’s a good question,” Lurleen said. “If you’re cleared to go by Kevin Delaney, I say you still go.”
“I agree. What else did she say about Adeline and whatever it was that frightened Nicole?”
“She didn’t have a lot more to say. I mean it makes sense on the one hand. Adeline was supposed to come to the book club but didn’t. She’d have known the exact time and date for the meeting. On the other hand she seems like a really nice woman from Stephanie’s description. When I asked her about that, Stephanie said looks can be deceiving.”
“If it was Adeline,” I asked, “what could she have possibly shown Nicole through a window that would have frightened her to the point she ducked behind a chair.” I tried to answer my own question. “A gun, an assault rifle, something like that?”
“Maybe,” Lurleen said, “but Nicole didn’t yell for everyone to get down. Wouldn’t you do that if you saw someone with a gun?”
“Yes, I would.”
“So was it something more personal?” Lurleen asked.
“Does Stephanie have an address for Adeline?”
“No, only an email address, but it won’t be hard to track her down.”
Lurleen and I sat together in silence for a minute, sipping our wine. I wasn’t sure what Lurleen was doing but I was trying to imagine what could have frightened Nicole so badly. It had to be something she saw and recognized in a flash. No one else saw it or at least no one else claimed they saw it.
Lurleen’s mind was apparently in sync with mine. “I was trying to figure out what could have scared Nicole the way it did. I was thinking about what scares me. Obviously something grotesque could make me squeal, but I’d quickly figure out if it was some kind of Halloween trick like the walking dead, a vampire. I’d recover immediately and then I’d laugh about it. Nicole never laughed about it. She tried to say she was mistaken but she never made a joke about what she saw.”
“And later that same night she was murdered,” I said. “It seems very likely those two events are related.”
“There is so much we don’t know,” Lurleen said. “I hope Mason will be able to tell us at least some of it.”
We heard a car honk a few times and that meant the kids were back with Tim McMasters, Hannah’s grandfather. I hadn’t seen him in ages. I turned to Lurleen. “The rest of this is on hold for now,” I said, as I ran out the front door to greet them.
The kids jumped out of the car, hugged me and ran inside to greet Lurleen and Hermione. Hermione was waiting at the door for them, all wiggles and licks. That gave me a chance to say hi to Tim.
“It’s been too long,” I said, “you need to come to dinner. How are you?”
“Great. We’d love to have dinner with you.” He turned and introduced me to an older woman sitting beside him. “Beatrice, this is Dr. Brown, the person who solved a great mystery that involved my former wife.”
“I know all about you and Lurleen, Dr. Brown,” Beatrice said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. You two turned everything around for Tim.”
“Please call me Ditie.”
“Ditie, as in Aphrodite,” Beatrice said. “I can see why you got that nickname—you have a lovely face.”
I’m sure I blushed.
She gave me a radiant smile. “I don’t think Tim would have been ready for a new relationship until you helped clear up the past, so I’m very grateful to you and Lurleen.”
“Things sound pretty serious,” I said.
“Very serious,” Tim said. “We plan to be married in a few months.”
“Wonderful!” I said. “I highly recommend it.
“I might be asking you for some thoughts about the wedding,” Beatrice said. “Hannah said yours was the best wedding ever with the best wedding cake.”
“That I can help you with, either with a recipe or a person to make it for you. Let me know which you prefer.”
I waved goodbye and watched them leave. Mason drove up moments later. We took a second to kiss in the driveway before we went inside.
“Much to tell,” he whispered as he walked up the steps.
“You sound like Lurleen,” I said. “Have you been drinking?”
“Not a drop,” he said. “I’m pretty sure Lurleen will want to stay and hear what I have to say, maybe after the kids get to bed.”