Someone had been rifling through my veggie baby case files. I could tell at once.
Most of the files were still in the storage room upstairs, where, box by box, I was reading through them. But the most important ones—the medical depositions and the patient’s medical records—were in my office, where I had been studying them between working on other cases.
“Bonita,” I said, making her get up from her computer and come into my office, a quizzical look on her pretty face.
“You been going through these files?”
“No.”
“Anybody else been in here?”
“Not while I was here.”
“The medical records on the plaintiff, the mother, I started through them last evening. Somebody’s gone through the file with her records—the file clasps holding the pages together are not aligned evenly.”
Bonita sighed. “I’ll straighten them out, but first I have to finish those notices of deposition and get the interrogatories in the Windjammer case ready, and—can’t you just let the clasps be crooked for a little while?”
“That wasn’t my point.” I hadn’t finished reviewing the plaintiff’s medical records last night because I had reached a point at which I could no longer focus, and now I realized somebody could have taken something out of the file and I wouldn’t know. “Somebody’s been messing with my files.”
“Now why, chica, would anybody want to do that? Not a person in this law firm wants a thing to do with that case.”
The phone rang before I could retort, and Bonita picked it up, spoke a word or two of greeting in her professional voice, then smiled at the phone as if it were a person and whispered something, and laughed sweetly at the response. Hmm, I thought, reading the whisper and laughter as a hint of romance and wondering if someone was finally giving the ghost husband a shove. Then she handed the phone to me. “Henry,” she said as I took it.
“What’d you pull up on Dr. Trusdale’s other suits?” I didn’t bother with hello because Bonita had already given him a good enough greeting for both of us.
“I got the reports from his prior insurers. He didn’t list either of them on his application with us. Guy had a talent for covering his tracks. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve had to do to find this out. Why, it took me over three days just to—”
“Yeah, yeah, Henry, life’s hard. Now what’d you find?”
“Suit in Texas was nothing, really, a bit of an infection, apparently cured right up with superantibiotics. No permanent damage, so it settled for nuisance value. But the one in Miami was different. Kind of a sad story.”
Yeah, as if I’d never heard a sad story before. “Define nuisance value in Texas first,” I said.
“Twenty thousand.”
Nothing, I thought. “Okay, what about Miami?”
“Guy getting a hip replacement picked up a nasty staph infection.”
Well, that was sounding familiar. What was Dr. Trusdale, the Typhoid Mary of staph? Maybe he did go to the bathroom and not wash his hands. I wondered if anybody had ever scraped his nails or tongue to see if he was a carrier.
“Infection got into the patient’s heart,” Henry continued. “He needed a heart transplant after the staph ate up his heart muscle, but his HMO wouldn’t authorize it.”
“Oh, and that’d be new,” I said.
“Guy was just a regular joe, not rich enough for a heart transplant, so bottom line was he died. His widow sued Dr. Trusdale, the HMO, the hospital, and just about everybody else.”
“What was her name?”
“Elaine Sanford Jobloski.”
“How’d it play out?”
“Court dismissed the suit against the HMO. Trusdale’s insurer settled for a quarter of a million and the hospital fought back until the widow cracked and went into a mental institution. Her attorney let the hospital suit drop.”
“Henry, write me up a file memo of everybody’s names and addresses and get it to me soon as you can. Bring it over—don’t mail or fax it.”
“But our case is over. No harm done. I mean, I didn’t catch those prior lawsuits before, but it didn’t hurt you. Or the company.” His voice almost squeaked. “I mean, yes, if I’d caught those prior suits before, we’d never have issued the policy to him in the first place, but, look, nobody was hurt by that... that oversight.”
“Henry, I’m not after you. I just thought Detective Santuri should know this.”
“Oh,” Henry bleated.
“Look,” I said, “we’re buds, okay? We watch each other’s back. Don’t worry.”
But when I hung up the phone, I thought, Man, Henry had screwed up big-time in not finding out about those suits during the insurance application process. If Henry and I had learned about those prior staph cases for the first time at trial, it would not have been pretty.
Only the fortuitous event of Dr. Trusdale’s death and my quick settlement had saved us both from being cut off at the knees in front of a jury.
I looked up from that thought and said, “So?” to Bonita.
She smiled and shut my door on the way out.
That night, I was telling Newly that somebody was screwing around with one of my files, that Henry was getting sloppy and defensive on me, and the other highlights of my day.
Newly was painting my toenails while he listened, and he said, “You think there is some connection?”
I stopped doodling my fingers in his chest hair to wipe up the drop of Radical Red he had spilled on my leg, and said, “Between what?”
“Well, you got mugged. Your client had a history of staph suits that he was covering up, and he got killed. Now somebody is snooping in your files.”
“They don’t even know if Dr. Trusdale was actually murdered,” I said, missing the point as Newly finished my toes, put the nail polish away, and started brushing my hair.
He was wearing my pink satin tap pants again.
“Haven’t you done your laundry yet?” I asked, leaning my head back as he pulled the brush through my long black hair in smooth, even strokes. This laundry question was a test—if he even hinted that I should do his laundry, he was out. Right then. On the curb.
But Newly didn’t get trapped that easily. “Sure, hon, I’ve done a couple of loads. Great washing machine. Folded my stuff, put it up in the guest room. In that empty chest, just like you told me.”
What I had told him was not even to think about putting any of his stuff in my room.
“So, why . . .?” I pulled up the laced hem of the satin panties.
“Because they feel so much better than mine. Much softer. You don’t mind, do you?”
Making himself right at home, I thought, but then forgot about it when he slapped the brush lightly across his hand and asked, “Want me to tie you and spank you? We’ve never tried that. Or you could do me if you want.”