The Case of the Questionable Quadruplet Page 2

  For my wife’s thirtieth birthday, I had commissioned a necklace to connect the tangled threads of her identity. The interwoven chains of silver and gold represented the father, Avram Silver, she’d lost to suicide when she was three, and the stepfather, Morris Golden, who’d helped raise her. The pendant was a large shimmering opal, her birthstone.

  It had been her thirty-fifth birthday less than two weeks earlier that had prompted me to confront my loss by discarding some of her possessions and safeguarding others. I should have put the necklace in a safe-deposit box, along with a handful of other jewelry. Now, I discovered after reaching home, all that remained of them were the images on Tory’s phone.

  “I’m sorry.” Disgust shadowed my sister-in-law’s heart-shaped face. Through the bay window, waning sunlight picked out chestnut highlights in her frizzy brown hair. “I left it in full view. Tempting.” Her gesture encompassed a rack of Lydia’s many-hued garments, a drawing table, shelving units packed with art books, brushes and paints, blow-ups of web designs, and open boxes of personal items I couldn’t bear to look at.

  The room had been messy enough already. While I doubted the police had deliberately disturbed anything, someone had rummaged through the stuff. The disarray wasn’t improved by the black fingerprint powder dusted across some surfaces. I’d seen more of that in the main hall, around the broken door pane.

  “Any idea who might have done this?” I asked.

  Living on a cul-de-sac, we don’t get much traffic, foot or motorized. Also, whoever broke in had been smart enough to gain access via the front door, gaining a sixty-second delay before the alarm blared.

  “It’s not a typical burglary,” responded Tory, who’d escorted the police through the house. “The other rooms seem fine. Maybe the alarm scared the guy off.”

  “I wish it had scared him into a heart attack.” That might be overkill, but it reflected my anger.

  In bustled her roly-poly, balding father. His remaining puffs of gray hair quivered with outrage. “Are you all right, Eric?”

  “Yes, thanks,” I said. “I wasn’t here when it happened.”

  “It could be traumatic.” An exchange of glances flicked between him and Tory.

  I wished they wouldn’t fret about my supposedly fragile emotional state. Of course I grieved for the woman I’d loved for more than half my life, but I was in no danger of shattering. The less fuss, the better. I’d grown up here in silences, in the distances between people who often couldn’t be there for each other. It’s what I was used to, as Lydia had understood.

  Still, I couldn’t complain about having them around. Tory had done me a favor today, while, as a housemate, Morris tried to be both unobtrusive and useful. He’d dealt with the laundry since Vivien’s departure and occasionally ran the vacuum, although I had the impression the noise scared him.

  “Maybe the fingerprints will match a known felon or the police will catch a break going door to door around the neighborhood,” Tory said. “That necklace is distinctive. They’ll check pawnshops and Internet listings, and I’ll do the same, to be thorough.”

  “Much appreciated.” No matter how much drama my sister-in-law stirred up in her personal life—there’d been quite a bit recently—she was good at her job.

  “Is it okay for me to clean?” Morris asked. “The police didn’t leave any of that yellow tape strung around like on TV.”

  “They don’t normally do that in a burglary,” Tory said.

  “I don’t expect you to scrub the place. You’re a busy man,” I told her father. Except for a young woman he paid to assist in preparing and delivering the catered meals, he did most of the cooking himself. “We need a new housekeeper.”

  Morris brightened. “I’ve saved the cards those cleaning services drop off.” He must have caught my scowl. “But we don’t want a bunch of strangers tromping through here. I’ll look for a reliable individual. With references.”

  “Great.” I’d had bad experiences with crews that rotated employees. There was an unacceptable level of breakage and misplaced items.

  “Cheese blintzes with blueberry sauce on the menu tonight,” he added.

  “Sounds wonderful.”

  “I’ll fix a salad.” Since Tory was staying in a motel, she’d begun joining us for dinner.

  They scattered to their tasks. As my mood calmed, I noticed the accordion-style doors ajar on the double-wide closet. This room had once served as my father’s home office and held his old files. He’d brought them here after their contents were digitized, storing them in a metal cabinet so ancient we left it unlocked because we’d lost the key.

  My father’s notes about Malerie might contain observations that hadn’t made it into the computerized version, including signs of postpartum psychosis. Unlike the depression referred to as baby blues, postpartum psychosis is a severe, relatively rare condition that could have gone untreated thirty years ago. The symptoms include confusion, obsessive thoughts about the baby, paranoia and delusions, and it can indicate an underlying issue such as bipolar disorder.

  The cabinet drawers were neatly labeled in my father’s handwriting: A-L and M-Z. Shouldn’t be hard to locate Abernathy, I thought, and pulled on the top left drawer. It stuck, then creaked open.

  But I wasn’t able to find Abernathy. Between Abbott and Abner, right where Malerie’s records should have been, there loomed a large gap.

  Chapter Two

  Diligent searching failed to unearth Malerie’s records. When I phoned Vivien, our former housekeeper was horrified to learn of the burglary and swore she’d never opened those cabinets during her years with us.

  My father had been too orderly to yank out a file and fail to return it. This had been done by someone else. Had this been the target of the break-in, or was my discovery coincidental? Or had the burglar grabbed the most convenient file, assuming, wrongly, that it contained financial information?

  That night, I tossed until the sheets bunched. After straightening them, I sank into dreams of my lost wife and her shimmering necklace.

  On Friday morning, I slid my champagne-colored electric car into a charging station in the medical center parking structure. As I walked toward the exit, a man unfolded his lanky body from a familiar car, its bumper displaying a shiny new parking sticker. Oh, hell. When had that psycho secured office space here?

  The best word to describe Dr. Jeremiah Quincy Schwartz, OB/GYN, is creepy. I am not in the habit of disparaging my fellow M.D.s, and as far as I could tell, Jeremiah suffered no more lawsuits than the typical doctor. Nor was it any of my business that he acted as if he’d recently arrived from another planet and had to observe the rest of us for clues how to behave.

  The problem was that the people he mostly observed were me and, until her death, Lydia. Take his vehicle. Shortly after my wife and I acquired his-and-hers hybrid sedans—mine blue, hers green—Jeremiah bought the identical model, also blue.

  He and I met at Harvard Medical School. I was never sure when he set his sights on Lydia, who’d moved to Boston to be near me, taking a graphic design job at an ad agency. Midway through the first year, her mother died in a car crash. Abruptly, my longtime girlfriend withdrew from our relationship, saying she needed space.

  It was a shock when she started dating Jeremiah. I couldn’t see what they had in common, aside from both being the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. He wasn’t bad looking, I supposed, with thick curly brown hair and a tall, knobby build.

  Within a few months, his strangeness wore thin. She broke it off and, later, returned to me.

  Despite my hurt, I bore in mind that we’d been a couple since our freshman year in high school. In our early twenties, the separation allowed us both to discover on a more mature level that we belonged together.

  When I chose the University of California, Irvine for my residency, so did Jeremiah. After I joined my father’s practice in Safe Harbor, he latched onto a practice in a neighboring town. By then, Lydia and I were married. Although she re
ported running into Jeremiah annoyingly often, he never broke any stalking laws as far as we could tell.

  Unable to ignore him, much as I’d have liked to, I nodded politely. He fell into step beside me as we exited the garage. Four inches taller than my five-feet-eleven, he measured his pace to mine.

  My jaw hurt from gritting my teeth. To break the tension, I said, “New office?”

  “I have been on the waiting list.” Jeremiah spoke in his usual stilted manner, as if English weren’t his native language. It was, unless you counted New York as a foreign country.

  “Congratulations.”

  He glanced at my water bottle. “You no longer drink coffee in the morning?” There was a take-out cup in his hand.

  “I drink it at home.” Truth is, until Morris moved in, I had grabbed breakfast at the café whose logo decorated Jeremiah’s cup. Since we hadn’t worked in the same building until now, how had he known which place I frequented?

  No sense stewing about it. When I used to complain about him imitating me, Lydia said that as long as he was following, I’d always be ahead.

  We entered the glassed-in lobby of the six-story medical building, a boxy partner to the graceful hospital next door. When Jeremiah discarded his cup in a trash can, I had to squelch the impulse to snatch it and have it tested for fingerprints. Despite his fixation, I didn’t suspect him of breaking into my house. But I’d better never spot a bulge beneath his shirt that resembled a necklace.

  We both exited the elevator on the fourth floor and headed in opposite directions. I refused to turn to see if he was staring after me.

  In the office, Farrah was reviewing the appointment schedule on her computer. “How’d it go?” she asked. “Any damage?”

  Ah, she meant the break-in. I told her about the jewelry and Mrs. Abernathy’s missing file. “If you run across it, please inform me immediately.”

  “Of course.” She snapped her fingers. “I meant to tell you. Dr. Schwartz snagged a suite down the hall.” Farrah knew pretty much all about my past, since her aunt Selma used to assist my father.

  “I ran into him.” I tossed my bottle in the recycle bin.

  “According to the grapevine, his temp nurse can’t stand him.” As usual, Farrah kept me apprised of interesting hospital rumors. “He hired a replacement who starts next week. There’s a betting pool on how long she’ll last.”

  “She has my sympathy.” Enough about Jeremiah. “Has Dr. Levin come in?”

  “Any minute.”

  I thanked her and went to my private office. There were emails about conferences, questions from patients that Farrah couldn’t answer, and a message from my brother-in-law. Barry, a urologist, worked in the newly opened second office tower opposite this one. Tory’s low-key younger brother was my favorite of Lydia’s relatives.

  “Heard about the break-in. Anything I can do?” he’d written.

  “It’s under control.” I considered adding a pleasantry such as wishing him a happy Rosh Hashanah, except I could never track exactly when on our calendar the Jewish New Year fell. Usually September but occasionally October, and besides, he was no more an observant Jew than I was a practicing Christian.

  I had just hit Send when Isaiah entered. “You looking for me?”

  At nearly seventy, my partner still had more black than silver in his hair and only enough wrinkles to add gravitas. Despite or because of the difference in our ages, we got along well. He was a great source of insights gleaned from experience, while he left the microsurgical procedures to me.

  I told him about Malerie’s claim. He placed her immediately, since her late husband had been an anesthesiologist.

  “Oh, yes, Winston Abernathy’s second wife,” Isaiah said. “She inherited a bundle when he died. Smart investor, that man. Someone might be yanking her chain to get at her money.”

  The possibility of trickery seemed far-fetched. “She has two daughters. I presume they’ll inherit.”

  “And a former son-in-law who’s a suspect in his wife’s murder, if I’m not mistaken.” Isaiah took a keen interest in his colleagues’ doings. “Well, even if he is a lawyer, I don’t see how he could manipulate matters to his advantage by sneaking in a look-alike.”

  “About the triplets and their birth. Do you recall any details that might not be in the computer?” I asked.

  “Such as?”

  “Postpartum psychosis?”

  Isaiah tapped his foot. “Doesn’t ring a bell, but if something occurs to me, I’ll pass it along.”

  After he strolled out, I called Malerie. A patient with unresolved, puzzling symptoms merited a follow-up.

  She answered with a chipper, “Hello?”

  “It’s Eric Darcy,” I said. “How are you?”

  “You mean have Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs paraded through my house today?” she replied tartly. “No. I stand by what I saw. I had another dream last night. I can’t recall the details but it’s driving me crazy, like there’s a piece I can’t fit into the puzzle.”

  She wasn’t the only one. “I talked to Dr. Levin. He wasn’t able to shed any light on the subject.” I had no intention of mentioning the lost file, which I hoped would simply turn up. “Malerie, if you’d had quadruplets, they would have been witnessed by the entire delivery team.”

  “People lie,” she snapped. “I’ll get to the bottom of this, if I have to hire a private detective to do it.”

  Not my sister-in-law, I hoped. But a search of birth records couldn’t hurt. “By the way, do you have other relatives in the area?”

  “Whose daughter is a ringer for my triplets? Hardly.” She paused. I waited. “People lie,” she repeated. “That gives me an idea.”

  What a relief if she solved the problem herself. “If I can help, feel free to stop by. No appointment necessary.”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  It’s hard to gauge how long patients will require, and I try to be there for them. As a result, my duties kept me tied up through lunch. I declined Farrah’s and Glenda’s offers to stay; my staff members deserve to eat in peace. Since Isaiah took a two-hour break, his nurse was available to pinch-hit for an hour.

  Stepping into an exam room in midafternoon, I had a peculiar flash that made me wonder if I was too old to be skipping meals. There she sat, the mysterious redhead, gray eyes solemn, mouth twisting in an off-center smile.

  Read the face sheet, you idiot. This was no mystery woman. Not only did she have long hair, but I recognized her husband, Fred Jeffers, as he rose from his chair to shake hands.

  I greeted him and Danielle Abernathy Jeffers, one of the two surviving triplets. With her vulnerable expression and vivid coloring, Danielle seemed considerably younger than Fred. He had thinning hair and puffy jowls, although he was only thirty, three years her senior.

  As a teenager, Danielle had suffered severe pelvic inflammatory disease, leaving scar tissue that damaged her ovaries and tubes. In six years of marriage, she’d undergone several surgeries, resulting in a single conception. The flare of hope had been replaced by anguish when a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy required a complete hysterectomy, ending her chances of carrying a child.

  At my suggestion, they’d started attending an infertility group at the hospital to cope with the stress and to consider their next step. “Have you guys reached a decision?”

  “Well, it’s important to my husband—to us—to have a child who reflects some of our genetic heritage,” Danielle said.

  “You’re going to hire a surrogate?” Financially, that would be a strain for Fred, a computer programmer, and his wife, a sales clerk. But unlike adoption, it would provide a child with the father’s DNA, and success rates have been rising.

  The couple exchanged glances. “The problem is the cost.” Bitterness laced Fred’s words. “Considering how eager my mother-in-law’s been to have grandchildren and how rich she is, we figured she’d help.”

  “She won’t even loan us the money.” Danielle blinked back tears.
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  “Not a penny. When we asked, she didn’t think twice, the old bat.” As Fred grew agitated, his voice rose shrilly.

  “Fred!”

  “Sorry, honey. But she’s rolling in it,” her husband said. “What’s she plan to spend it on, anyway?”

  The refusal baffled me, too. True, Malerie had a reputation for being stingy. When she was widowed, she’d cut off her husband’s regular donations to hospital-related charities. Yet after the loss of a daughter, surely the prospect of grandchildren would seem especially sweet.

  “She claims surrogates are greedy,” Danielle said. “Honestly, they more than earn the money!”

  “We’d need an egg donor, too,” Fred said glumly. “There’s another freaking fortune.”

  Using a separate egg donor has become standard practice, since a surrogate who also provides the eggs might develop a strong attachment to the baby. Despite California laws upholding surrogacy contracts, those situations can be difficult.

  “If a member of the maternal family donated eggs, that would provide a genetic link on both sides,” I pointed out. “And lower the cost.”

  “If Dee Marie were alive and if her asthma didn’t interfere, she’d have done it,” Danielle said sadly. “As for Doreen…”

  “Out of the question,” Fred broke in. “She’s well aware I don’t approve of her life style. Oh, she may be keeping your mother in the dark, but it’s obvious Doreen’s gay. If she ever set foot inside a church, they’d set her straight, no pun intended.”

  “You mean, inside our church,” Danielle corrected. “Anyway, she’d never trust Fred with her eggs.”

  “Fine with me,” he said. “Homosexuality’s hereditary, isn’t it, doc?”

  That was a controversial subject. “A study of twins in the United Kingdom found that identical twin sisters, who share all their DNA, had a higher incidence of both being lesbians than fraternal twins,” I began.

  “See, honey? I told you it’s genetic,” Fred announced triumphantly. “You and Dee Marie were identical, and both normal. Doreen’s the odd sister out.”