fourteen

“What brought this on? Do you have any idea?”

Death shifted on the exam table and the paper cover crinkled beneath him. In the last year, he’d seen a lot of doctors’ offices. James Gregory’s was pretty average, with oil paintings and plants in the waiting room and the examination rooms sterile and barren of personality.

“My girlfriend and I went caving over the weekend,” he admitted a bit reluctantly, paranoid that Gregory would guess which caves they’d been in and why. His cough had worsened in spite of Talia’s administrations and the infection had climbed up into his upper respiratory passages. Gregory stared at him.

“Caving?” he asked. He swiveled his chair to look more directly at Death and tapped the tablet computer on his knee. “Caving in the Mississippi River Valley? With your lungs? Really? Do you have a death wish, Mr. Bogart?”

Death blinked. “What’s the big deal about caving?”

“Have you ever heard of caver’s lung?”

“I cannot say that I have. What is it?”

“The proper name is histoplasmosis. It’s a fungal infection caused by coming into contact with bird or, especially, bat guano. Most cases occur in the Mississippi or Ohio River Valleys.”

“Is it serious?”

“Normally, no, but under some circumstances it can be and it can even prove fatal. The damage to your lungs puts you at a greater risk for things like this. You really need to put more thought into things. If you’re going to go caving, for example, wear a filter mask and make it a point to avoid any chambers that have been colonized by bats.”

“I didn’t know that,” Death said. “I’ll be sure to be more careful in the future.”

The doctor fiddled with his tablet for several seconds, scrolling up and down, frowning here and there. Death waited and tried not to fidget.

“I’d like to go ahead and run a couple of tests to see if there’s any evidence of histoplasmosis. I’ll forward the results to your regular doctor and you should follow up with him, especially if this infection doesn’t clear up within the next couple of weeks. I’m also going to give you a prescription for an antibiotic. Histoplasmosis is usually asymptomatic in the early stages, but it can co-exist with a bacterial infection, and you almost certainly have one of those.”

He scrolled up on his tablet and read some more.

“Are you still doing your breathing exercises and cardio?”

“Of course.”

He nodded, touched his finger to the screen. “I see you have a prescription for an antidepressant. How’s that working?”

“Oh, that.” Death shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, I don’t need that anymore.”

Gregory lowered the tablet and gave him his full attention. “Mr. Bogart, this is a new prescription. It’s just over a week old.”

“Uh, I told my doctor that I was coming to St. Louis to settle my little brother’s estate. He thought the drugs were a good idea.” That wasn’t exactly the truth. Certainly not the whole truth. But it was enough, in Death’s estimation, to be sharing with Gregory. “It didn’t do anything but make me sick to my stomach, though. And, anyway, I got a better antidepressant. A redhead.”

“Having supportive people in your life is excellent, but it doesn’t mean the drugs can’t help you, too. Depression is an illness. You’ve got to understand that. It’s not a sign of weakness or something to be ashamed of. Clinical depression involves specific chemical imbalances in your brain. That’s what this medication is for. To correct that concrete, physical problem.”

“I just don’t see how puking my guts up is supposed to cheer me up,” Death countered, a bit defensively. Discussing his mental health wasn’t on his agenda this morning. He’d gotten the prescription after the incident at the shooting range, taken it twice, given it up, and forgotten about it.

“It’ll take your body a week or two to get used to the medication. You have to give it time to work.” He fiddled with the tablet, tapping it on his knee, turning it in his hand. “Your redhead, does she know you’re supposed to be taking antidepressants?”

“Of course not.”

“Why ‘of course not’? Don’t you think she’d like to know?”

“I just don’t want to worry her, that’s all.”

“If she cares about you, don’t you think she’s worried anyway?”

Death had no answer to that and the silence stretched out between them for several seconds.

“You know,” Gregory said finally, “I have conversations like this with my own sister. Her husband isn’t doing well. Frankly, I don’t expect him to be with us much longer. At this point, I’m just trying to make him comfortable and prepare her for the inevitable.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“My point is, life hands us difficult times, sometimes, through no fault of our own, and all we can do is use whatever means are at our disposal to get through them.” He sighed. “You know, I remember when your brother passed away. Alaina and I attended his memorial, in fact.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“He died on her husband’s family property. It seemed a show of respect was in order. It was a lovely ceremony. I understand you were unable to attend yourself ?”

“Yeah, I was in a military hospital in Germany. In a coma.”

“Several of the firefighters gave eulogies and a charming little girl of about seven sang James Taylor’s ‘Fire and Rain’.”

“That was his goddaughter, Miranda.”

“She has a lovely singing voice for one so young. It’s a pity you couldn’t be there. Funerals and the like are for the living, Mr. Bogart, and I think you’re probably the one who needed it most of all.”

_____

“Ohmigod!”

Wren winced and moved the phone away, putting it on speaker. Cameron shrieking like a little girl had her ear ringing.

“Wren! Ohmigod! You’re not going to believe what I found!”

She exchanged a glance with Annie Tanner. While Death was at the doctor’s office, she and Annie were at the Tanners’ house, she on her laptop and Annie on her PC, researching Andrew and Alaina Grey. “You found a picture of Andrew Grey and he looks like Randy,” Wren guessed.

“No! I found an old picture of Andrew Grey and he looked just like Death’s brother! Wait … you knew?”

“My friend Annie and I talked our way into the Greys’ house yesterday. We saw a painting on the wall. We’re trying to find out everything we can about Andrew Grey now.”

“Annie who? And how? And what did Death say?”

“Annie Tanner. Her husband was Randy’s best friend. I’m at her house now and I’ve got you on speakerphone. Cam, this is Annie. Annie, this is my friend Cameron. He’s a newspaper reporter back home in East Bledsoe Ferry.” Cameron and Annie said hi to one another and Wren gave Cam a quick rundown on how she and Annie had gotten in to see Alaina and Andrew Grey’s wedding portrait.

“What did Death say?”

“Uh, yeah. About that. We didn’t tell him.”

“What? You have to! This is his brother you’re talking about. I mean, there’s got to be a connection! You know that!”

“Yes, I know. And I’m going to tell him. But I want to find out everything I can about Andrew Grey first, try to figure out what’s going on. Death’s been hurt so much, Cam. I’m just trying to protect him as best I can. That’s why I’m not going to tell him for now. And that’s why you’ve got to promise not to tell him either.”

“I think you’re making a mistake,” he said. “But, if that’s what you want, okay. You’ve got to let me in on this, though. Or else I’m telling.”

“Blackmail?” Wren asked, amused.

“Absolutely!”

“Well, it isn’t necessary. We’re counting on you to use your journalistic skills and contacts here.”

“Do we have any theories about what happened?”

“I suggested they murdered Andrew,” Annie said, “then switched him with Bogie to get rid of the body without anyone suspecting anything. But Wren pointed out that Bogie wasn’t murdered. He died of natural causes. And they’d still have to get rid of Bogie, so they wouldn’t have gained anything.”

“Bogie?”

“Randy,” Wren clarified. “His friends here call him Bogie.”

“Oh. Got it. Hey! Andrew Grey’s kind of a local celebrity, isn’t he? How come no one ever noticed how much he and Randy looked alike before?”

“I thought about that,” Wren said. “I think it’s because they didn’t look the same at the same time, you know? That picture where Andrew looks like Randy is ten years old. In current pictures they don’t look alike at all, really. Andrew’s gone completely gray, for one thing, plus I think he’s had some plastic surgery and it’s kind of distorted his features. And when he did look like Randy, Randy was in high school and then he didn’t look like Randy.”

“Maybe Randy was really Andrew Grey’s secret son,” Cam suggested excited. “And they set up the whole thing with the fire and the secret tunnel to kidnap him so he could take over Grey’s empire after Grey had a stroke?”

Wren stared at the phone. “Cameron, that theory doesn’t make any sense at all. And I’m sure Randy wasn’t Andrew’s son. Death’s parents were totally in love. There’s no way his mom would have cheated on his dad. Besides, you’ve seen the pictures. Death and Randy both look like their dad.”

“Not as much as Randy looked like Andrew. And maybe she didn’t know she cheated on him.”

“You mean, like, she didn’t notice it wasn’t her husband she was having sex with? Are you saying Andrew disguised himself as Liam Bogart, like Zeus disguised himself as Alcmene’s husband to father Hercules?”

“What?” Cam asked.

“What?” Annie asked.

Wren sighed. “Classical mythology? Never mind.”

“Maybe he made a clone of Liam, but with his own DNA.” Cameron was on a roll. “The Grey family is into some pretty cutting-edge medical research—cell splitting and cryobiology and such. Maybe he made a clone and it fathered Randy and when Randy hit a certain age they needed to study him—for science—so they made another clone and dressed it up in a firefighter costume and switched it with the real Randy so they could take him back to their lab and experiment on him. Only they got the badge number wrong.”

“It would have to have been a clone that had the same dental work done that he did,” Wren pointed out, exasperated. “They ID’d Randy by matching his dental records, remember?”

“I like it,” Annie said unexpectedly.

Wren stared at her.

“Oh, I don’t believe for a minute that that’s what really happened,” she agreed. “But I wish it was, because then Bogie might still be alive.”

_____

With Cam enlisted and sworn to reluctant secrecy, Wren and Annie settled down to their research.

“Andrew Grey has a Wikipedia entry,” Wren said. “I’ve never actually known of anyone in real life who had their own Wiki entry.” She read, “Andrew Stephen Grey, son of … grandson of … blah, blah, blah, three times great-grandson of 19th century brewing icon Aram Einstadt. Sole heir to the Einstadt family fortune, married five times. He has two children, I didn’t know that.”

“Right, by his third wife,” Annie said. “She was the one who lasted the longest. Ten years and two days. His kids would be,” she did the math in her head, “the boy’s fifteen and the girl’s eleven. Their mother has full custody. He doesn’t even have visitation rights.”

“That’s a little unusual, isn’t it?” Wren asked. “I wonder why not.”

“Well, according to this, she divorced him for infidelity and conspicuous cruelty after he was caught in a scandal involving an orgy at an S and M fetishist party.”

“They were at an orgy or he was at an orgy? There’s news stories about orgies? Where are you finding this?”

“In On the Scene Magazine.”

“Oh, I saw some links to articles on that in Google, but they were in the archives and you had to be a member to access them.”

Annie blushed. “Okay, so I’m addicted to trashy celebrity gossip magazines.”

“Well … great! Only, um, how reliable are they?”

“Probably not terribly, at least if you take them individually. For example, if you believe this magazine, Kate was pregnant for about two and half years before Prince George actually popped out. If a story is repeated across a lot of the magazines, though, there’s a lot higher chance that it’ll be true.”

“So we need to see if the orgy story is repeated elsewhere.”

“It is. I actually found it first on Look at the Starz. I came here to double check. It’s all hearsay and anonymous sources, but the story is pretty much identical. Andrew already had a reputation as a playboy. His first wife was a socialite, like him. They got married in their early twenties, all satin and lace and respectability. A couple of years later she filed for divorce on the grounds of infidelity. As soon as the divorce was finalized, he married his mistress, but that one only lasted three years. Then he married wife number three. She was a model like numbers two and five. Four was an actress.”

“So what was the scandal? Just that he got caught having an orgy?”

“It was a kinky, S and M fetish party, and the hosts called the police on him after he refused to honor one of his partners’ safe word. When they investigated, it turned out that the girl he’d brought to the party with him had a fake ID. She was a minor. He claimed he didn’t know how old she really was, but no one believed him. I think that’s what lost him custody of his kids.”

“He sounds like a charming fellow.”

Wren went back to her laptop, adjusted her search terms, and tried again. “The third wife was Leilani Moran, right? She’s the one who sued for access to him after he had a stroke.” She clicked the link. “This is confusing. I’m getting the news stories all out of order.”

“Yeah, same here. Only with me, I’m getting the wives all out of order.”

“Apparently, the Grey family is worth a fortune. Cam’s right, they’re not only into pharmaceuticals, but they have a lot of connections with advanced medical research.”

“Yeah, and they’re very careful to guard that fortune. I remember an article from back when Andrew and Alaina first got married. Let me see if I can find it.”

“You remember a ten-year-old gossip article about a couple that isn’t even really famous?”

“I only remember it because it struck me as so weird at the time. And it was about their wedding and I was planning my wedding to Rowdy at the same time.”

They read, each pursuing their own line of inquiry, in silence for several minutes.

“Here it is,” Annie said. “They had a pre-nup.”

“A lot of couples get pre-nups,” Wren pointed out. “Even Death and Madeline had a pre-nup, fortunately.”

“Yeah, Bogie mentioned that. Their grandmother was a lawyer. But this was a really weird pre-nup. For one thing, it pretty much assumed that the marriage was going to end in divorce.”

“Pessimism or realism?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. Anyway, according to the terms of their pre-nup, if this article is right, if he filed for divorce, he would have to pay her alimony until and unless she re-married, unless he could prove infidelity, in which case she wouldn’t get anything. If she filed for divorce, she wouldn’t get anything unless she could prove infidelity or cruelty, in which case she’d get either a lump sum or monthly alimony, depending on the circumstances and how long they’d been married. And it also said that, if the marriage ended for any reason, she had to return all gifts he’d given her and repay any moneys that she’d been advanced as his wife.”

“That’s mercenary.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I was marrying my high school sweetheart at the time, for love and for forever, and the contrast stuck with me, though I hadn’t thought of it in ages.”

Wren’s phone rang and she answered to find Death on the line. She talked for a couple of minutes and then hung up.

“He’s back at Randy’s,” she said. “The doctor gave him a prescription for antibiotics and he’s going to take it easy for the rest of the day. I need to get back there and keep an eye on him. I don’t like leaving him alone when he’s sick, even if it’s not supposed to be serious. Madeline did that. I’m not Madeline.”

“I can understand that,” Annie said, still reading. “Oh, wow!”

“Oh, wow?”

“Wife number four tried to kill him. With a stiletto heel. Prada.” Annie sniffed. “That’s such a cliche.”

“A cliche?” Wren asked, eyebrows raised.

“Well, as much as killing someone with a shoe can ever be a cliche, yeah, I’d say so.”

“So you’d use, what? A Reebok?”

“Ha ha. Very funny. Obviously I’d use a pair of Mary Janes. Give it that certain, extra-creepy, kinky overtone.”

“Why’d she try to kill him, I wonder?”

“I don’t know. They were only married two months. She was the actress, so maybe she had a more violent temperament than the models did.”

“Maybe,” Wren conceded. “I know, I was in the drama club in high school and let me tell you. The drama taking place on the stage was the least of it!”

“She pled innocent by reason of insanity,” Annie said, still reading. “Spent a few years in a rehab facility and now she works as an instructor at an acting school in,” she snickered suddenly, “the San Fernando Valley.”

“Why is that funny?”

“Well, you know what the San Fernando Valley is known for?” Wren just shook her head, bewildered.

“The San Pornando Valley.”

“Good heavens! Really? How do you even know all this stuff ?”

“I read, like, fifteen of these magazines a week.”

“So it’s possibly not a, shall we say, prestigious acting academy?” Wren asked.

“Well, it might be. But it also might not. Why?”

“I don’t know. I just thought she might be someone we could talk to who actually knows Andrew Grey. Though I’d really like to talk to Leilani and find out why she was so determined to get in and see him. Apparently, she tried to get in to see him in the hospital right after he had his stroke, but Alaina wouldn’t allow it. She filed the suit on the grounds that she was concerned about his welfare and that, as the mother of his children, she had a right to know how he was doing. She also claimed it was unethical for his brother-in-law to be his physician and tried to get the court to appoint another doctor to care for him.”

“What happened?”

“It dragged through the courts for just over four months. She finally dropped it when Alaina let her in to see him.”

“So it didn’t amount to anything after all?”

“Probably not,” Wren agreed.

“You sound like you’re not too sure of that.”

“It’s just that the timing is funny.”

“How?”

“Alaina let Leilani in to see Andrew in the hospital three days after Randy died.”