No Cure for Murder (6 page)

They understood death and dying, and their solemn vows to each other that when death came, they’d meet it with dignity and on their own terms.

Jacob entered his office at 10 a.m.

Margaret Cohen stuck her head into Jacob’s office. “Dr. Spelling wants to see you. It’s important. She just finished examining P.J. Manning.”

“He spoiled Zoe, doting on her, treating her like a little princess. Nothing she could do was wrong. It’s amazing she turned out so well.”

Zoe Spelling grew up in the elite Kings Point area of Long Island and had a mixed reaction when she reached Great Neck High School. She was smart, pretty, and popular, an affirmation to an ego already overdeveloped by parental indulgence.

“I’m bored to death, Daddy. The schoolwork’s too easy.”

Great Neck High was one of the top school systems in the country. Maury didn’t understand why they were unable to provide challenging material to his daughter. After several contentious meetings with school officials, Maury sat with the principal. “Gifted students are equally entitled to assistance as the learning disabled. Zoe isn’t getting the enrichment she needs.”

The principal shook his head. “You’re joking. We have more advanced placement classes, arts and clubs supporting a multiplicity of interests than any school in the nation. If Zoe’s unable to find intellectual stimulation at Great Neck High, she’s not looking.”

After two semesters at Higgins Academy, an upstate prep school, Zoe came to Maury. “Get me out of here, Daddy. Great Neck High is a paradise by comparison.”

Maury was a bit surprised when the headmaster at Higgins supported her decision. “That may be the best choice for Zoe. Don’t worry, we’ll keep her records sealed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ask your daughter.”

When he did, Zoe was ready. “They don’t get it, Daddy. They may call this a prep school, but to my way of thinking, it’s more like a military school. I, for one, won’t put up with their crappy rules and regulations.”

When Zoe returned to Great Neck, she fell into the swing of high school life, becoming class president, editor of the yearbook, and homecoming queen. With SAT scores through the roof, several prestigious universities expressed an interest, but she’d already selected Hunter College in the heart of Manhattan. She graduated Summa Cum Laude and gave a speech at the commencement held at Radio City Music Hall.

She attended medical school at Columbia and during her training in Family Practice, she volunteered several nights a week at the Free Clinic. The year before completing her training, she met and fell in love with Byron Harwood, a professor of applied statistics at the university.

During their six-week honeymoon in Europe, Byron received the offer to join the mathematics department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jacob knocked on Zoe’s door, and then entered.

Jacob delivered Paul Joseph (P.J.) Manning forty-five years ago at Brier Hospital. His father Chester Manning, a former professional football player, was coach for The Golden Bears, and Chester’s wife Phyllis was the head librarian. Jacob had cared for the entire family for decades.

P.J., like his father, became an All-American at UC, then played eight years as a wide receiver for the San Francisco 49'ers, retiring after a knee injury.

P.J. married his college sweetheart, Julie, and they settled into a comfortable life in Orinda just east of Berkeley. He had several remunerative offers, but chose instead to accept a position as Director of Athletics at Diablo Valley College in Concord.

They had three girls, the light of their father’s eyes.

P.J. and Julie rode their bikes together on the large complex of east bay paths and P.J. played over- thirty basketball two nights a week.

Zoe held P.J.’s chart. “P.J. noticed fasciculations, twitches in his shoulder muscles. At first, they occurred about once a month then increased in frequency to several times a week. Although basketball wasn’t his primary sport, P.J.’s jump shot had an accuracy of nearly eighty percent. In the last month, that declined to half that figure. He and Julie became more alarmed when his speech began to thicken and weaken.”

“We don’t know for sure, P.J., but I don’t like these symptoms and findings. It suggests neurologic disease of some kind. We need to do some testing.”

“Heard of it! Years before I joined the 49ers, two players died of ALS, Matt Hazeltine and Gary Lewis. Hazeltine died within two years of the diagnosis.”

“I’m not making that diagnosis. We must run some tests.”

“There’s got to be some other explanation, Jacob. This will kill Julie and the girls.”

Chapter Nine

Marilyn and Robert Hughes had difficulty believing in their good fortune. Robert served as medical director of Brier Emergency, and the Coldwell-Banker office in Lafayette had named Marilyn Real Estate Agent of the Year with over twenty million dollars in sales. They planned carefully and Sarah Hughes dutifully complied by choosing to be born just as Marilyn celebrated her thirty-ninth birthday.

The attractive couple lived in the Piedmont section of Oakland. He was tall and athletic, but had added a few too many inches to his girth over the years. She, like most of the women in her family, looked years younger than the calendar suggested. She kept her blonde hair short and always looked great, especially when she dressed for work.

Sarah was a beautiful baby at eight pounds nine ounces. She had her mother’s love and her daddy’s adoration.

They tried to fulfill their master plan by having a son, but in spite of many attempts, including in-vitro fertilization, Marilyn was never again pregnant. They accepted the fact that Sarah was their one and only.

By the age of ten, Sarah was the perfect little girl. She had short chestnut hair worn back with barrettes or bows. She loved the expensive dresses Marilyn purchased for her. She dutifully attended art, ballet, and girls’ soccer, having little time left for anything but homework.

“She’s the sweetest thing,” said Robert, “but she’s too neat, too organized, and too restrained.”

“Wait until she reaches her teens, honey. You’ll be begging for the good-ole-days.”

Sarah had one close friend, Kelly Cowan, who lived three houses away. The two spent long hours in each other’s rooms doing homework and surfing the Internet.

One day, when Sarah was thirteen, Marilyn returned home early. When she ignored the Do Not Disturb sign on Sarah’s door, all their lives, in a moment, changed forever. Marilyn heard the Rolling Stones blasting from the room, and when she opened the door, both girls were dancing before the web camera in bra and panties.

Marilyn froze at the sight. “What’s going on here?”

Sarah gasped, and then reached for the computer keyboard blanking the screen at once. “It’s nothing, Mother. We’re just having fun.”

Later, with the help of monitoring software, Marilyn and Robert discovered the streaming videos, the emails, and the trail of payments to the girls over the Internet.

Robert opened Sarah’s ledger book. “Look at Sarah’s record keeping. They’re in incredible detail and show an income of $500 to $1000 dollars a week.”

The reality shattered the Hughes’s image of Sarah’s sweet innocence. More alarming was Sarah’s attitude, the combination of dismissing the significance of what she’d done and her indifference to its effect on herself and her parents.

The next year brought more changes in Sarah, most of them unpleasant. She rarely talked with her parents except to argue. She sabotaged each intervention by counselors and psychiatrists.

“You can’t control me anymore, Mother. I don’t care how many shrinks you bring around.”

By her fifteenth birthday, she completed her transformation. Sarah knew how to reach her parents, especially Marilyn, and flaunted her independence with multiple piercings in both ears, the side of her nose, and her tongue. She rejected the refined tattoos, the flowers, or hearts, for the vulgar violent and bloody ones that decorated her neck and ankles. Worse, she adopted the Goth theme; black nail polish, hair, eyeliner, and black clothes with studs and zippers. Her clothes reeked of marijuana and she returned home drunk on several occasions.

Sarah gave her usual response to Marilyn’s ‘where are you going’ question, “Out,” as she left the house one evening.

Robert and Marilyn sat in the kitchen. He shook his head. “I don’t know her anymore. More than that, I hate her appearance. I detest the word revulsion, but it’s close to how I feel about my own daughter.”

“Not really. She’s rejected the shrinks and social workers.” He hesitated a moment, then said, “Carleton Dix, the hospital chaplain, maybe he’s a possibility.”

“You must be kidding. From what I’ve heard of him, his rigid orthodoxy is all wrong for Sarah.”

“I agree, but the chaplain directs a teen group. Don’t underestimate the power of peer pressure on even someone like Sarah, look what it’s done to her so far.”

Chapter Ten

P.J. Manning shuffled through Jacob’s parking lot to his car. He gazed up, feeling the warm midday sun and bathing in the soft westerly breeze carrying the salty smell of the San Francisco Bay. Days like this made P.J. reflect on how great it felt to be alive. Today, he couldn’t escape the irony.

Julie Manning seared the pork loin and the kitchen filled with the hearty aroma of roasting meat. She turned as the front door opened. “Is that you, P.J.?”

When she heard no reply, she walked to the family room and found her husband sitting on the sofa, head down. She stared at him, finding it difficult to breathe. “What’s wrong? What did Jacob say?”