Family Practice Read online

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Also by Charlene Weir

  Copyright

  To Jackie and Ariana and Jake

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks are owed to Detective David Peres of the Daly City, California, Police Department and Sergeant David Hubbel of the Lawrence, Kansas, Police Department.

  Special thanks go to all the wonderful people at Alta Bates Hospital.

  Any errors are mine alone.

  1

  WHOEVER IT WAS won’t get away with it. Dorothy strode into the relative gloom of the open garage behind the medical building and ran the back of her hand across her forehead. March may have come in like a lion, but it went out like a drenched cat. All the rain left the air so sticky with humidity it felt like flypaper. The heat was getting to her; she felt a little sick. Or maybe it was because she was so angry. Fingers spread, she pushed at the blond hair that clung damply to her face.

  Snapping the folded newspaper under one arm, she lifted the lid of the trash can near the rear door, dropped in something, and carried the remains of her lunch inside.

  The air conditioning raised bumps on her sweaty, bare arms. She took a moment to smooth the skirt of her tan dress, adjust the navy belt, and compose her face, before walking along the carpeted corridor to the waiting room. One elderly lady sat in a brown tweed armchair.

  “Oh, Doctor, there you are.” Debra Cole, a young woman with soft brown hair and doelike eyes, looked up from the reception desk with a worried frown. She plucked at the cuff of the long-sleeved white blouse she wore with her green skirt. “Mrs. Clinkenbeard’s been waiting, and there was—”

  “I need to make some phone calls,” Dorothy said, “before I see her.”

  “But Doctor—” Debra looked startled.

  And no wonder, Dorothy thought, glancing at the clock on the wall. I’m late, and on top of that I’m going to keep a patient waiting. Not the way things are run around here. This time it’s necessary. I’ll be as quick as I can.

  In her office, Dorothy tapped the folded edge of the newspaper against the desk, then smacked it down hard on a corner and sat rigidly upright in the swivel chair. Oak, old and scarred, the chair had been her mother’s, as had the desk, the ancient wooden file cabinets, and the medical practice. She slid open the bottom desk drawer to stash her purse and realized she was shoving in the paper bag with her lunch.

  Where was her purse?

  Oh, for heaven’s sake. Abruptly, she stood up, headed for the door. Maybe I’m getting old. Forty-six. She lifted the trash can lid, fished out her purse, brushed off a few coffee grounds, and dumped the sack. Nonsense. Forty-six wasn’t old.

  At her desk, she snatched up the phone. “Come to the house this evening,” she said when Carl answered.

  “Not tonight. Sorry. I’ve got plans.”

  She’d meant that as an order, not a suggestion. “You think I don’t? That I wouldn’t like to spend an evening with my husband?”

  “Hey, live it up. Play out your dreams.”

  As usual, he was going to fight her. Depression draped itself around her like a heavy shawl. She was living her mother’s dream. Where would she be if she’d followed her own? Mama’s plan was that all five of her children would attend medical school and then practice in a family clinic. When she died, it was Dorothy’s reponsibility as the eldest to see the program was carried out. She brushed damp strands of hair off her forehead. What if she hadn’t promised? “This is important.”

  “Isn’t it always? Where would we all be without you?”

  Willis had always wanted to be a doctor, but Marlitta was going to be a movie star. And Carl— “Huh, you wanted to be a cowboy, as I recall. You’d be drifting nowhere.”

  “With no focus for my misery.”

  “Save the sarcasm. I’ve got patients waiting. Be there at eight.” When she hung up, tiredness rolled over her. How would it be simply to go home and play Chopin nocturnes on the piano?

  Deep down any little smidgen of depression terrified her, because of Daddy. She shook herself to throw it off. Get those calls made. Picking up the phone again, she punched in Ellen’s number.

  Mama always worried about Ellen. Because Ellen looked like Daddy, Mama was afraid she would turn out to be like him.

  And then, after all, it was Daddy who was responsible for the money. Well, now Dorothy was responsible for that too, and if whichever one of them did this thought he—she—could get away with it, he—she—they were wrong.

  * * *

  April Fools’ Day. Very funny, God. Ellen, standing at the kitchen sink full of dirty dishes, stared out the window at the lush green hills, leafy trees, and a sky with such a huge mass of black clouds it looked painted in. A speck of white in all the green caught her eye, and she watched a bald eagle take off, spread its wings, and bank in a lazy arc. Usually a sight so beautiful it made her teeth ache; lack of a morning shower made life take a sour turn.

  She felt sticky, hot, and grumpy, and only half-awake. With all ten fingers she scratched her itchy scalp through her short, dark curls. Try to think of the heat as a good omen, predicting a good growing season.

  Sure thing, Pollyanna. You won’t even plant for another two months, and God knows what the weather will be then. All those clouds out there? They’re working up for more rain. Get a grip. Well, at least my crops haven’t washed out, unlike others around here.

  She loved this little house, nestled up against the shallow hills. Built in 1865 of native limestone, it had walls eighteen inches thick. The most exciting day of her life—the day she’d signed her name on the deed. Owner of a house and twenty-five acres of land.

  A knock at the open kitchen door made her turn from the window. A stocky, red-haired man in blue work pants and short-sleeved blue shirt with the name Winslow stitched above the pocket obliterated the light coming in, then treaded carefully across the old, scuffed linoleum floor like the bearer of bad news and handed her a grubby sheet of paper.

  Averting his eyes, he stepped back. She didn’t know if it was the cutoffs she wore, which had unraveled more than they should have in the laundry, the skimpy red T-shirt with glittery gold letters that read “Good Gourd!” or if she smelled bad because she’d missed a shower.

  While he self-consciously looked around her cheery kitchen—white wood cabinets, striped gray wallpaper with tiny, pale-yellow flowers, bright-yellow curtains, plain pine table, and hanging baskets with an assortment of varicolored gourds—she zeroed in on the figure at the bottom of a column of numbers. It loomed up l
ike total disaster.

  “Seven thousand dollars?” She looked at him. “For plumbing?”

  “It’s an extensive repair. Your whole sewer line has collapsed. All them pipes need to be dug up and replaced—wrong kind of pipes in the first place—and the new ones laid in. You can see there on—”

  “My ex-boyfriend put in that sewer.”

  Winslow the plumber treated that with the scorn it deserved.

  Well, the ex-boyfriend hadn’t been good at anything else; why should he be good at plumbing?

  “I’m sorry, Miss—uh—Barrington. You’re welcome to get another estimate, but—”

  She waved that away. Seven thousand dollars was seven thousand dollars no matter who wrote it at the bottom of digging, pipe fitting, joins, and corners. Oh dear God, where was she going to get seven thousand dollars? She was barely scraping by, the business was just beginning to take off and she probably had all of three hundred in her checking account.

  Winslow shifted from one foot to the other as she gazed with horror at the paper quivering in her hand. She had no shower, no flushing toilet, no clean dishes, no usable washing machine. She couldn’t even brush her teeth; just the thought made them feel fuzzier.

  “Well—” She cleared her throat and tried again. “I don’t know—”

  He nodded, giving her time to work up to it. He had her and knew it. She could live without washing dishes, but she couldn’t live without a shower. Fine. All you have to do is figure how to pay for it.

  When the phone rang, she grabbed the receiver with a stranglehold. “Yes?”

  “It’s Dorothy. I want you to come to the house this evening. Eight o’clock.”

  How like her oldest sister to dispense with the nonessentials. No hello, how are you, what’s new. Just, I want you to. “Why?”

  “There’s something that needs— Well, it’s very important. I want everybody there.”

  Important? What was so important that Dorothy wanted her there? Ellen, youngest of the five siblings, and twenty-three years younger than Dorothy, was the only failure in this family of overachievers. Half the time she felt they forgot about her, and the other half tended to treat her like a poor, unfortunate retard.

  “Okay.” She threaded her fingers through the phone cord. “Dorothy, something important has come up for me too. I wonder if—”

  Winslow the plumber stood with his back to her, gazing out the open door at the empty fields and pretending not to listen.

  “Later, dear. I have patients waiting.”

  “Right. But Dorothy, is it okay if I come over sooner, like in an hour or so, and stay—uh, for a few days?”

  “Of course. It’s your home. Your room is always ready.” There was a click and then the dial tone.

  Ellen grimaced and hung up. She’d wanted to ask to borrow the money, even though she was pretty sure Dorothy wouldn’t lend it. Dorothy had been against her buying the property in the first place and strongly insisted the only thing was for Ellen to move back home. And after that, what? Live with Dorothy forever as the never-amounted-to-anything sister?

  Ellen slapped the sheet of paper on the pine table, signed on the dotted line, and handed it to Winslow the plumber before her mind could tell her what she was about. “Do it,” she told him. She could always rob a bank. Or steal a painting. “How long will it take?”

  “Big job. All them pipes have to be dug up and the new ones laid and fitted, and then there’s—”

  “How long?”

  “Oh, I’d say”—he studied the ceiling as though it might have the answer—”maybe seven to ten days. Working days,” he added ominously.

  Ten days? “Good. Fine. Just get it done.” She’d stay with Dorothy until all those expensive new pipes were in working order. Dorothy would be pleased; plenty of time to get in lots of I-told-you-sos, with little jabs of here’s-what-you-should-do.

  Winslow the plumber folded the paper carefully, tucked it into his shirt pocket, lumbered out, and took off in a pickup with “Ackerbaugh Plumbing” painted on the side.

  She watched it jounce down the road. And that could use another truckload of gravel too.

  Nadine’s station wagon, bouncing along, coming this way, pulled aside to let the pickup pass and trundled up to the house. “What’s happening?” Nadine asked as she slid from the car.

  “Well, for one thing, you’re fired.”

  Nadine grinned. “You can’t fire me. You haven’t paid me in two months.” She’d squeezed her plump body into jeans—hers reached all the way to the knee—and a white T-shirt with the same glitzy lettering as Ellen’s. Nadine, blond hair coiled into one thick cord and pinned in a circle on the top of her head, opened the rear car door and leaned in to collect three-month-old Bobby complete with carry cot. Slinging a diaper bag over her shoulder and propping the carry contraption on one hip, she kicked the door shut and trudged to the house.

  “So what is it now?” She plopped Bobby and carrier on a wooden chair. He slept serenely on; he might have Nadine’s round face, blue eyes, and pale coloring, but he also had his father’s phlegmatic disposition. She pulled out another chair and slumped into it with her short legs stuck under the table.

  “Bankruptcy,” Ellen said.

  “Oh, boy, we better have some coffee.”

  “I can make it, but you’ll have to drink it all. I have no drainage.” She relayed the bad news.

  “Oh, no. Ellen, what are you going to do?”

  Ellen spooned grounds into the coffee maker and poured in bottled water. “Maybe I should just give up and sell out to Harlen Dietz.”

  “Do you think he did it?”

  “Made the sewer collapse?” Ellen laughed. “Not unless he paid that jerk to put in the wrong kind of pipes.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t put it past him. He wants this place and you won’t sell. I still think you should have gone to the police. There have been weird things going on around here.”

  When the coffee dripped through, Ellen poured two mugs and set them on the table.

  “If I had it,” Nadine said tentatively, “you know I’d lend it to you.”

  “I know. I couldn’t have done any of it without you.”

  Three years ago, when she’d decided to go into the business of raising decorative gourds, Nadine had been the only person who’d thought it was a good idea, and the only permanent employee. At harvest time, fifteen or so people were hired temporarily; the rest of the time, she and Nadine struggled with it all. Nadine worked like a plow horse, sometimes waiting months to get paid.

  Ellen dropped into a chair, rested her elbows on the table, and blew out a breath. “Just when things were starting to go.”

  “It’ll be all right.”

  “I feel much better for those words of comfort.”

  “I’m being sensitive and understanding,” Nadine said. “Another loan?”

  Ellen took a sip of coffee. “The last time I tried, the loan officer could hardly stand up for laughing.”

  “Well, I’m not giving up. This is the only job I’ve got. If you think I’m going to find a tender for Bobby and expose myself to sexual harassment in some business office, you’ve got another think coming. We’ll get through this. Somehow.”

  “I’m trying to wallow in the depths of despair here. Do you have to be so upbeat?”

  “Despair is useful.”

  “I’m tired of this. I really am. I want to live like the rest of my family. Successful. Respected. Loan officers overflowing with obsequiousness. Flushing toilets,” Ellen added darkly.

  “Oh, that’s why you’re so down? Something happen with your family?”

  “My sister called.”

  “Marlitta or Dorothy?”

  “Dorothy.”

  “What did she want?”

  What had she wanted? A mind filled up with sewer lines didn’t leave room for real sharp. Dorothy’s usual brisk, I’m-in-control voice had held an odd note of uncertainty.

  “Now you mention it, I don�
��t know.” Something to do with the clinic? That wouldn’t require her presence. With a little squiggle of uneasiness, she picked up the coffee mug.

  “You think she might lend you the money?” Nadine asked.

  “I suppose I’ll have to ask. She disapproves, you know. Raising gourds is not at all a suitable occupation for a Barrington.”

  “What about Marlitta? Or one of your brothers?”

  “It’s Dorothy who has money. The rest do very well, managing to live just beyond their means.”

  “You have a really weird family, you know that?”

  Ellen smiled. She truly did. Nadine came from a large, extended family of hearty, affectionate people who squabbled and hugged and genuinely liked to spend time together. She’d never understood the reserved, repressed Barringtons, who lived within a few miles of each other and barely spoke. They were all strangers. Ellen sometimes wondered if they even liked each other; other times the whole thing just seemed sad.

  Nadine’s family used to astound Ellen when she was a kid, the joking and teasing, the general feeling of people living together with interaction. Ellen’s family might have resided in the same house, but they all lived separately.

  She’d always thought she felt isolated because she was so much younger than the rest of them, but over the years she came to realize every one of them felt isolated. The really sad part was they probably wanted to like each other but didn’t know how.

  “I guess,” Ellen said, “you get to take a few days’ vacation. At least until we have functioning pipes.”

  “What will you do? You want to stay with us?”

  “Thanks.” Nadine had a tiny one-bedroom apartment, a large husband, and a baby. “I’ll stay with Dorothy. That’ll give her something to be pleased about.”

  No matter how hard she struggled, they always pulled her back. Home, money, family, security. Odd, even though she felt like a barely tolerated stranger in their midst, the thought of going home made her feel better.

  Nadine fiddled with her spoon, swirled it through the coffee, then lifted a spoonful to her mouth and sucked it in. “Have you talked to Adam since he’s been back?”

  “No.” Ellen sat her cup down with a clunk. “Don’t intend to, either.”