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I had to sprint to the car before Norma Rae zoomed off without me. She didn’t even pause to light a cigarette before backing out of her parking spot.
“I wrote that doctor a bum check,” she explained, squealing into traffic. “I ain’t even got an account with that bank no more.”
“Great,” I said, my heart sinking. “There goes our chance for a second visit.” A check with insufficient funds was one thing, but an account that didn’t even exist would likely be discovered immediately.
She flapped her hand. “Eh, what he expect needin’ the money right away like he got some mobster after him ’bout a gamblin’ debt? He gotta know us normal folk ain’t walkin’ around on the street with that kind of cash.”
“Whatever he thinks, I don’t want him to reject our application before we get back into the clinic,” I told her. “I found a storage closet, unlocked. Patrick caught me before I could look inside. I had hoped we could accost him again before he figures out your check can’t be cashed.”
“Like you think he ain’t down at the bank this very moment tryin’ to get his money? No way he gonna wait around till after we come visitin’ again. Ain’t you see how greedy that bastard be? He bound to know my check ain’t no good before I be straddlin’ my first lecher tonight.” Norma Rae scowled and turned onto another street. “Ain’t nothin’ to worry ’bout anyway. I can be writin’ him a check from my real account next time. I surely ain’t got five Gs in there, but the good doc don’t know that till after we be leavin’.”
“Your second check might buy us a chance to search the storage area for Carly’s file. Maybe that’s where Options keeps the archived patient information.”
“We be deliverin’ that check in person,” Norma Rae agreed. “Can’t be trustin’ the postal system when it comes to gettin’ the good doc his bum checks.”
I tapped my finger against my thigh. “Did you find it odd that he asked for a check during our first visit?”
The Options clinic didn’t appear to employ any of the rigor I’d expected with regard to adoptive parents attending orientations, filling out mounds of paperwork, enduring home visits, and passing grueling interviews before even being considered qualified to raise someone else’s baby. Patrick’s main concern had been getting us to leave a check before we stepped out the door.
“No. He a doctor, ain’t he? They all greedy.” Norma Rae slapped her hands against the steering wheel. “You know last time I got my skin microdermabraded they charged me two hundred bucks? And this be a routine procedure. Ain’t like I had plastic surgery or got my boobs done.” She shook her head. “Two hundred bucks. Now tell me all doctors ain’t greedy, chargin’ that much for an essential medical procedure.”
“I don’t think microdermabrasion counts as an essential medical procedure.”
She smacked the steering wheel again. “That be what the insurance folks done told me! They be another worthless, greedy bunch. If it ain’t essential, them derma-thieves shouldn’t be recommendin’ it. And if it ain’t medical, why they got doctors doin’ it, braggin’ ’bout all them credentials they s’posedly got? Damned crooks, the bunch of them.”
I hoped the taxi driver in front of us didn’t mistake her continued gesturing as commentary on his driving. The advertisement placard glued to his trunk sported the words Fire a real machine gun for free! next to a bikini-clad blonde armed with a rifle. Although the ad was a common one in Las Vegas, I didn’t want to take my chances that it might also represent the cabbie’s preferred method of expressing road rage.
Norma Rae pounded on the air-conditioning controls. “Man, you done got me on a bad subject when I ain’t had me a nicotine fix since lunch.”
“This whole clinic is starting to feel like a bad subject,” I replied. “The adoption process is too lax to determine whether we’re qualified parents.” I fingered the mother profiles in my lap. “If you were one of these girls, would you want your baby raised by parents who hadn’t gone through a home inspection? Or even been interviewed?”
“That be why they got the background check.”
“The only thing that skimpy background check will tell them is whether we’ve been convicted of child molestation.”
“At least they got standards,” Norma Rae said.
“Low standards,” I argued. “You’d think at a minimum they’d want to know our philosophy on belt whippings as a form of discipline, or something.”
“Don’t know ’bout no beatin’s, but I say when the little brats throwin’ themselves a tantrum, ain’t no tap on the ass gonna hurt ’em. And I ain’t afraid to say that to the good doc neither.”
“But he didn’t ask, which is what I find troublesome.”
I glanced at the pages in my hand, the word Brittany staring at me from the top sheet. Her profile was surprisingly short, only a few bullet points about her physical characteristics. Brittany stood five feet three inches tall, was white with blue eyes and blond hair, and loved ballroom dancing. She claimed the father was also Caucasian, and her baby was a girl.
A pinprick of guilt stabbed me. When we actually chose a mother, I couldn’t imagine how she’d feel about being led to believe her baby had found a home—good or not—when she discovered we really had no intention of raising her child.
I scanned through Brittany’s profile again. “Brittany loves ballroom dancing,” I mumbled, something I couldn’t place nagging at me. I envisioned a five-foot-three, blond pregnant girl of about eighteen twirling around a dance floor, but the image failed to identify whatever was bugging me.
Norma Rae snorted as she reached blindly into her purse on the console and pulled out a cigarette pack. “That probably be what got her in this situation. Some chump take her ballroom dancin’ once, then teach her how to dance the horizontal. What Brittany be needin’ is a good, solid mentor.”
I watched Norma Rae plug an unlit cigarette into her mouth then take her hands completely off the wheel to locate a lighter. “Like you?” I asked.
She spoke around the cigarette. “Sure. I could teach her a thing or two ’bout the ways of men.”
“Except that would fly in the face of our lesbian story.”
“Nah, plenty of lesbos been with men. They just finally come to their senses. Us straight gals ain’t been enlightened yet.”
“Brittany loves her lesbian mentor,” I said.
Norma Rae laughed. “Brittany love herself some beaver.”
I jerked upright, my forehead nearly colliding with the windshield as my thoughts snapped into place. “That’s it, that’s what’s bothering me.”
“Beaver? Honey, you lettin’ this lesbo routine get to ya.”
“No, Brittany.”
“Honeybuns, you lookin’ to replace your Norma Rae?” she said with mock offense.
“I’m serious.”
“Okay, then what be buggin’ you?”
I mentally replayed my search for Carly’s file to make sure I wasn’t overlooking anything before I shared my observation with Norma Rae. “The first drawer I looked in contained files for the pregnant girls, but I don’t remember seeing a file for Brittany.” I flipped to the next profile. “Or Jane. Or LaToya. So where are these girls’ files?”
“You sure ya ain’t just forgettin’ the names? You only be lookin’ for Carly. Would be easy to forget the others.”
I shook my head even though Norma Rae’s eyes were fixed on her cigarette, which she was trying to light while driving. “Let me do that,” I told her, grabbing the cigarette and lighter before she involved us in a head-on collision.
“You better hurry. My fix be way overdue.”
“Just keep your eyes on the road.” I lit her cigarette and jammed it into her mouth, dropping the lighter back into her purse.
Thankfully, Norma Rae refocused on traffic without any further prompting. She breathed in cigarette fumes, her whole body relaxing. She didn’t speak until she pulled the cigarette, now half smoked, from her mouth. “Okay, tell me the names you remember.”
I closed my eyes and pictured the inside of the file-cabinet drawer. “There were about two dozen files. The first was for an Adrienne. No, Adelaine.”
My eyes flew open as I processed a connection I’d overlooked earlier. Adelaine had also been the first contact in Carly’s phone. Perhaps Carly had known her from the clinic. If they were both Options patients, they had likely confided their pregnancy fears to each other. Carly might have even consulted Adelaine before pursuing the abortion.
I made a mental note to call Adelaine again tomorrow.
“Go on,” Norma Rae said.
“Then I think Amy. Then there was a C, but I forget the name. It came after Carly, though. I don’t remember seeing any B files.”
Norma Rae didn’t say anything as she took a drag from her cigarette. I couldn’t tell if she was processing this information or just in rapture from the hit.
“Maybe those weren’t the girls’ files,” I considered. “Maybe they were different files. The files on the pregnant girls could be kept somewhere else, like the storage closet.”
I decided not to mention my theory of the two Adelaines until I talked to Carly’s Adelaine. If she corresponded to Options Adelaine, I didn’t know how to explain the presence of her file amid the absence of the others.
“What else would them files be for?” Norma Rae asked. “Patrick’s girlfriends? I ain’t believe for a second that snake snagged himself so many conquests that he gotta keep a file on each of them. Though I wouldn’t put it past the good doc to try.”
“I should have looked in one of the files,” I said, mentally berating myself.
“Okay, let’s say they ain’t the girls’ files,” Norma Rae continued, her tone more serious. “Could be they files for nurses. Maybe those the employees.”
“Carly mentioned in her journal that only two doctors work at the clinic,” I said. “I doubt between the two of them they’d need two dozen nurses.”
“Or receptionists.”
“You think they employ two dozen receptionists, yet not one managed to show up for work today?” I asked.
“Okay, then they ain’t receptionists. How the hell would I know what they for?”
“They must be the client files.” I couldn’t think of any other viable option.
Norma Rae took her cigarette-free hand off the wheel and snapped her fingers, letting the car steer itself for a second. “Maybe they adoption-applicant files.”
“Those were in the other drawer. There were only three of them.”
“Then there be only one other explanation. Those must have been the good doc’s files on his favorite Girls Straight To You,” she said, naming one of the popular escort services that employed illegal immigrants to hand out cards of naked women in various sexual poses to unsuspecting tourists walking the Strip.
“The folders were too thick,” I countered, as though Norma Rae had come up with an actual theory.
“How many files you say there be?”
“A couple dozen.” In case she couldn’t perform the math, I added, “Maybe twenty-five, tops.”
“That be quite a few. Ya might’ve overlooked Brittany’s file. Or maybe it ain’t filed where it s’posed to be.”
“Maybe,” I conceded. “But I wouldn’t have forgotten looking at all these girls’ files.” I held up the stack of profiles. “Out of all these women, I would remember seeing one name in that drawer.”
Norma Rae shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
I presumed she intended the comment as an insult.
Partially to have hard evidence and partially to document the patient names before I forgot them all, I pulled a used envelope out of my purse and wrote down the names I recalled. I jotted down a single letter for the ones I couldn’t remember. When I finished, I compared the profile names against each girl on my list. I didn’t find a single match.
“Could it be that the names on the profiles are not the girls’ true names?” I asked out loud. “The clinic obviously treats client confidentiality seriously. Patrick wouldn’t even tell me whether he saw Carly.”
Norma Rae nodded and blew out a cloud of smoke. “So Brittany ain’t really Brittany. That be, like, her stage name. Like us, at the club.”
“Maybe she doesn’t really like ballroom dancing either.”
“You think she’d make up somethin’ like that? Now why would she be doin’ that?”
“Just thinking out loud.”
I stared at Brittany’s profile, suspicions swirling through my brain. What else might be fake? Maybe she was really a bottle blonde, or reached exactly five feet without heels on.
I straightened as another thought occurred to me. I counted the twenty names written on my envelope. Then I started tallying the pages in my hand.
Norma Rae took her focus off the road and her cigarette long enough to flash me a sharp look. “What you doin’ over there? You sure be makin’ a lot of racket while I be over here chauffeurin’ your ass around, tryin’ to concentrate.”
“I’m counting the profiles we were given.” I steadied the pages to calm Norma Rae’s nerves. “There are twenty-two.”
“So what? We just pick one and tell the good doc we want that baby. Don’t matter which one. We ain’t gettin’ the little rug rat anyway.”
“There are too many profiles,” I said, a tingle working its way down my spine.
“It ain’t like ya need to read ’em. Just pick one.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “You don’t understand. There are too many profile sheets period. If those files I ran across belong to the clients—and I don’t know what else they would be—then there are too many profile sheets here for each girl to have a file in that drawer.”
Norma Rae turned close to the Chinese restaurant where we’d left my car. “So you sayin’ there be files missin’. We already know that.”
“Then where are they?” I leaned back against the seat, the tiny pulse of a headache building behind my right eye. “The storage closet? Why would Options keep some files in the reception area and some elsewhere? And why would a medical office put active patient files in a storage closet? Is that common?”
“What you askin’ me for?” She puckered her lips. “I look like a desk clerk to you?”
“Between the lackluster adoption-qualification process and the missing files, I have a feeling something strange is happening at Options.”
“Well, no shit.” She pulled up next to my car. “This be my last stop, Miss Daisy. Now get your ass outta my limo.”
I climbed out of her car. “Thanks for your help today. I’ll see you at work.”
“Can’t wait.”
While she drove off, I got into my own car. I was actually looking forward to a night of brainless dancing. Running through my moves would provide a welcome distraction from this mess.
I had expected the visit to Options to answer some of my questions. Instead, it had only raised more doubts.
* * *
“Megan!” John boomed from his office as I made my way toward the dressing room.
I turned back and poked my head in his doorway. “Hi, John.”
“You given any more thought to my ideas?”
I racked my brain in search of what he could be talking about. My mind came up blank. Apparently I only had room for thoughts concerning Carly anymore.
He gestured wildly, doing something with his hands that I couldn’t and probably didn’t want to interpret. “Sexy librarian, burning bras to ban book censorship, goggling over glasses. Kinky cook, twirling turkey basters, spatula spankings.” His hands flopped on top of his desk. “Any of this ring a bell? You’re supposed to be thinking about a new stage act.”
I groaned. “I completely forgot.”
“Okay, tell me what you think about this: you out on stage with two measuring spoons as a top and a frying pan as a bottom.”
I was so preoccupied by my visit to Options I couldn’t even laugh at the resulting image.
John squinted at me. “No, that wouldn’t be a good look for you. How about coming out wearing just an apron?”
I was suddenly desperate to end this conversation. I didn’t think I could listen to any more suggestions about my new uniform without pulling my hair out. “That might work,” I said, inching my way farther into the hall. “I’ll think about it.”
“You don’t sound convinced,” he stated. “You have a better idea?”
I shook my head. “Honestly, I haven’t given it much thought. I’ve been distracted.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that. What’s on your mind?”
“Carly, actually.” I could trust John, and his impartial opinion might even help solve this mystery. “She had an abortion before her overdose, and I’ve been trying to figure out why. I went down to Options, her pregnancy clinic, and now I’m even more confused than ever.” I stepped into his office and related my afternoon.
He laughed loud enough for the walls to shake. “You and Norma Rae posed as a lesbian couple? Man, I would have loved to see that.” He fell silent for a moment, tapping his desk with a spastic finger. “In fact, our guests might like to see that too. Okay, instead of bookish Betty or Betty Crocker, what do you think about a duo act? You and Norma Rae performing an exotic seduction dance on stage? One of you can dress up like a man, one of those old-fashioned men in a suit and fedora hat. You’ll have your sexy underwear on underneath, but the audience won’t know that until later . . .”
I frowned. Okay, so John was decidedly unconcerned about my findings. I should have emphasized the discrepancies with the files and omitted the part about Norma Rae and me pretending to be a couple.
John swiveled without warning and began pounding on his computer. “With two of you involved in one act, I’ll need another girl to work your same shift. Diana’s been asking for more hours. I bet this act will boost our popularity with the under-twenty-five demographic. Girl-on-girl is all the rage with the young guys. Their generation is much more liberated.”
I opened my mouth to point out that anyone willing to visit a strip joint—even homophobic, right-wing conservatives—would be hard-pressed to complain about two girls dancing in tandem, but before I uttered a word John started clicking furiously on his mouse.
As I watched his frenzied motions, my head buzzed with another realization. I hadn’t seen a computer in the Options reception area. Did any business operate without a computer nowadays? Technology would be especially important to a medical clinic. So why didn’t Options have a computer, or where did they keep it?
I hadn’t looked in the examination rooms. Perhaps the doctors kept computers, and maybe even paper files, there. Of course, locating the missing files still wouldn’t explain the clinic’s scanty adoption procedures.
I wondered whether the police had ever looked into Carly’s affiliation with Options. I doubted it. Officer Sparks hadn’t even known about her pregnancy until I’d mentioned it.
Perhaps I should turn her journal over to him. If he read firsthand about Carly’s initial excitement over becoming a mother, followed by concerns stemming from the baby’s lack of movement, and culminating with an Options appointment on the day of her death, he too might develop the same questions regarding her abortion and subsequent overdose.
And I should certainly inform him of my own findings. The mere absence of Carly’s file raised questions. Combined with Brittany’s and the other girls’ missing files, Sparks would have no choice but to reopen Carly’s case, or open a case in the first place.
I drew myself up, resolving to phone Sparks first thing tomorrow. Something fishy was going on at the Options clinic, and he needed to know about it before he put Carly’s death to rest.
