Skinny-dipping (22 page)

Okay, get a grip, Lil, I thought. Not ratting out somebody for transporting a bag of LSD was one thing. But not ratting out somebody who had killed someone, had tried to kill someone else, and had possibly tried to kill me was too much.

No, I couldn't keep this secret.

I wondered where Jennifer was on this Sunday night. With Monday morning's workday looming, she probably wouldn't be at Ashton's now, as least I hoped not. I saw no way out of making the phone call, so I picked up the phone on my desk and punched in Ashton's number. At least I'd keep it off the cell phone airwaves.

Sam walked out to Bonita's desk and picked up her phone to listen.

Ashton answered on the fifth ring. “Yo.”

“Ashton, you alone?”

“Hey, babe, want to come over?”

“What exactly does Jennifer do?”

“Anything I want her to do.”

“I mean, at the medical services place where she works.”

“Why do you want to know that?”

“It's a long story, Ashton. Now, what's she do?”

“She does all that paperwork for the insurance claims. Files the claims for the patients, processes the checks when they come in, you know, stuff like that. She's a great bookkeeper. I told you she wasn't as dumb as you make her out to be.”

Apparently not, I thought.

“Ashton, ah, you need to protect yourself, I, er . . .” I saw Sam wave his hand for me to stop, but this was Ashton. For better or worse, he was my law partner. For better or worse, he was my friend. I spit it out quickly. “Jennifer has been filing fake bills with an HMO. It shows up in Dr. Trusdale's and Dr. Randolph's files. You've got to—” Sam crossed back into my office and slammed down my phone.

We glared at each other but didn't have the time to explore our sudden mutual anger.

“I've got some work to do now,” he said. “Stay here or get a ride to my house. Stay off the phone and don't go to your house.”

Assuming, apparently, that I would explicitly obey, Sam then turned and slammed himself out the back door.

Immediately I called Ashton back, and he answered equally immediately and without preliminary greetings.

“Lilly? You didn't call the cops, did you?”

Okay, technically I hadn't
called
the cops, and I didn't want my law partner thinking I was ratting him and his girlfriend out to the police, so I word-smithed my answer with careful legal precision. “Ashton, I haven't called nine-one-one, but you need to protect yourself. Are you—”

“Gotta go, babe.” Slam.

Visualizing Ashton rushing toward his personal shredder, I wasn't particularly offended he hadn't stayed on the line long enough to chat about whether he was involved in Jennifer's scheme or not. Still bristling at Sam's order, I decided to go home and call Ashton later to pursue his potential culpability.

Sam's car wasn't long out of the parking lot before I found the first associate I could, a first-year still toiling away in the Smith, O'Leary, and Stanley library, and I demanded he take me home, which, in true toadlike associate fashion, he did posthaste.

As it turned out, this was not a particularly bright move on my part.

Chapter 30

I have no idea
exactly why I went to my own house, except that Sam had told me not to and I don't take orders from my lovers. Taking orders from Jackson is about all I can stand. So I went to show my independence. Oh, and to make sure Johnny Winter was really in his cage and not dousing my new secondhand couch and matching chair with Eau de Tomcat Piss.

Sure enough, Johnny Winter, the errant and nearly homeless rodent, was in his cage, and he shared his feelings about that by kicking some cedar chips on the floor and then lifting his leg and peeing on me when I moved too close.

By the time I got the ferret wiz off of me and changed clothes—I mean, after making love in it, solving a murder in it, and getting pissed on by a small animal, that red dress was totally done—the doorbell was ringing. Thinking it was Sam, and eager to see him even if he was going to fuss at me for warning Ashton and then coming home, I blithely went out to answer it,
blithely
being a very nice word for “plain stupidly.”

I opened the door, and Jennifer glared at me, Bear-ess by her side.

“You bitch,” she yelled, pushing the door open as I tried frantically to close it in her irate face.

As they shoved into my house, side by side, Bear-ess wagged her tail and woofed at me, licking in my general direction in a kind of doggy air kiss, and Jennifer repeated, “You bitch.”

“Me! You're the one who shot up my car.”

Okay, so I missed the more obvious point, but I was under a lot of pressure.

“Yeah, but I wasn't trying to kill
you
.”

“What were you trying to do?”

“Kill Randolph.”

Oh, well. Ask a silly question.

“See, it worked out so good with that other doctor. Once he was dead, you closed the file and I knew you wouldn't make the connection about the fake insurance claims.”

Well, sure, Jennifer the Underestimated did have a point there.

What she also had was a gun. Pointed at me.

I smiled and put on my best-girlfriend tone of voice, and said, “But why kill the first doctor?”

“Ashton was always bragging about you, how smart you were, how you always looked at everything. Anal-retentive, a real detail queen, he said. He told me you even got computer printouts of, like, the entire medical and
insurance
records of guys who sued your doctors. When he told me you had a case with Dr. Trusdale and that you'd already gotten the guy's insurance records, I got worried. So, like, I was going to go through the file and tear up the fake claims that day you were in trial. But the lock code was changed and I couldn't get in. So I waited for you behind the stairs, and after you punched in the code I tried to choke you, just till you passed out, so I could get in and steal the file. But Ashton came up.”

I remembered the mugging, the reenactment, Sam's assessment that the mugger was a rank amateur. So, okay, maybe Sam was a better detective than I'd given him credit for. He just didn't know what to do with that information.

And I remembered the odd, perfumy smell on the mugger, how it smelled like the flea spray Olivia used, how that had made me suspect her.

“You use that all-natural flea spray on Bearess, the one Olivia uses?”

“Yes,” Jennifer said, looking puzzled. “What's that got to do with anything?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Why'd you kill Trusdale?” As if we were gossiping over tea.

“That's what I was trying to tell you. Then, I asked Ashton, you know, about the case, Trusdale's, I mean, and, like, what would happen next. He said you'd probably settle it if you could, so I decided to push that along. If Trusdale got sick or died from smoking pot, I figured, you know, that you'd have to settle it. Quick. Before you saw the fake bills.”

How had Jennifer gotten such a good grip on the litigation process? “How would you know about settlements and stuff?” I asked.

“Oh, Ashton talks that shit all the time, like he's some college professor and I'm the girl in the front row. You wouldn't believe what I know.”

Apparently not.

“Then, after Trusdale died, I knew you wouldn't be looking at the insurance records once you'd settled his case, and I thought the whole mess was over. But then Ashton told me Jackson had dumped the Randolph case on you too. I didn't figure Jackson would notice the fake claims, not after what Ashton told me about him. But you would notice them, being—what is it? Obsessive-compulsive?”

Well, Ashton certainly is the little motormouth, I thought, and edged toward the kitchen door, thinking about potential weapons and how fast I could run.

“So I had to kill Randolph too, once it was your case, 'cause you'd look at the insurance records and stuff. So I had to end the case before you compared the insurance claims with the actual medical file.”

Trying to kill Randolph was so half-brained, so digging the hole deeper, so weird, and so pathetic, I thought, and so pathological. “Jenn, you ever think you might need some help?”

Jennifer shook the gun at me, which, while scary, wasn't nearly as scary as shooting it at me would have been.

“You're the one needs help,” she said, stating, I thought, the obvious. “Stop moving to the kitchen.”

“Aw, Jenn, come on. You're not going to shoot
me
.”

“No. I'm not. I'm going to shove you off the Sunshine Skyway. Like, you know, a suicide. Now come on, let's go.”

“Jenn, don't be crazy. What the hell good will that do?”

“Don't you be calling me crazy,” Jennifer screamed, a wholly new and horrible expression distorting her features. “I spent a year showing 'em I wasn't crazy. In Miami. After my husband was killed. Poor, sweet Elliot,” she said, her voice softening, her eyes dreamy. “You didn't even know I was married, did you?”

Inside my brain, I could practically hear little pinging noises as the last dots were connected.

“Jennifer, you're not...you weren't . . . Are you Mrs. Jobloski, by chance?”

She inhaled and started sobbing. I took that as a yes.

“So, you were faking bills...” Filing fake claims by Dr. Trusdale and Dr. Randolph for revenge? Jennifer seemed to recover, and she shook the gun at me again.

“Those men killed my husband, same as if they'd poisoned him. And nobody would do anything. So I was filing fake bills under their names and diverting the money to a separate account. Setting them up for fraud and stealing money from the HMO that killed Elliot.”

“But, then, why worry about me figuring it out? I mean, why kill Trusdale if you wanted him fingered for defrauding the HMO?”

“Oh, that's just how I got started. When I learned Trusdale and Randolph probably wouldn't even go to jail for the fake bills, I started thinking about a better plan. Then I realized that it was the HMO that killed Elliot, and that the only way to get even was to steal as much money from that damn HMO as I could. So I, you know, I branched out some. Added some doctors. You wouldn't believe how it added up, all the money I got outta that HMO.”

In a sick sort of way, this was brilliant, I realized. Compliments seemed inappropriate at the moment, though, so I asked, “But why kill me?”

“I heard you and Ashton on the phone, and knew you figured it out. But you said you hadn't called the police.”

Damn, she had been at Ashton's. Another miscalculation on my part.

“But Ashton knows too. So killing me doesn't help you.” But I wondered, and not for the first time, if Ashton was part of this plan.

“Ashton knows how to keep a secret,” she said, and flashed a cheerleader smile that scared me down to my toes. I figured that meant Ashton was already dead. I envisioned his mangled body bleeding beside his really big pool.

“Why the Skyway?” I asked, then wondered if she planned to dump Ashton off the bridge with me, like some lovers' leap thing.

“I told you, to look like suicide. Everybody knows you've got, like, this nut thing about that bridge.” Jennifer's blond cheerleader simper was gone now.

Dizzying as it was, I tried to think as Jennifer was thinking. Ashton was either dead or would be, or he really wouldn't tell, and I'd be a suicide, and Jennifer was what? She thought she was off scot-free because I hadn't called the police? What about Sam? If I told Jennifer that Sam also knew, would she kill him too? Wasn't he a big boy, with a big gun, who could take care of himself and who presumably wouldn't blithely answer his door to a murderess?

But if I told her the police did know, she had two choices—leave me alone and sprint for the hills, or figure she might as well just shoot me for ratting her out and then sprint. I didn't have a clue which way she'd go, and fifty-fifty odds on getting shot or not didn't appeal to me. Besides, letting her play out faking my suicide gave me more time, and more time seemed suddenly enticing.

With my palms sweating, I figured my best hope was to stall here long enough for Sam to find me. I mean, Sam would know to come to my house, but he wouldn't know to go to the Sunshine Skyway. If I told her Sam knew, Jennifer would be less likely to let me dillydally around, stalling, and more likely to just plug me. So that was my plan: Don't tell Jennifer the police already knew, and stall her until dutifully rescued by my new lover.

“Why bother making it look like a suicide?” Okay, I think I got this already, but stall, stall, stall was my new mantra.

“Like, 'cause, then nobody will suspect me. Ashton keeps quiet, 'cause, you know, we're in love and all, and you're dead, and I'll get your files and throw them off the Skyway too, and then I'm okay. See? Nobody connects me to you and Trusdale, then I don't have to leave Ashton. Not just yet, anyway.”

Okay, that made it sound as if Ashton wasn't dead by the pool or stuffed in the trunk waiting for a plunge off the Skyway. So she was going to fake my suicide so she could stay with Ashton and not just flee right now? So this thing with Ashton was real?

“I won't tell. Jenn, we're friends. Come on, I didn't tell about the LSD. And, you know, Ashton's my partner. I didn't call the police, did I? I called Ashton.”

“Ashton won't tell because he loves me. But you I can't be sure about.”

“You trust Ashton that much? Is that because he's in on it with you?”

“Ashton? No way. Yeah, I mean, I kind of got the idea from him. You know, that little fifteen-minute cheat theory he has. After he explained that to me, I figured, you know, I'd do a version of that on the insurance claims.”

“But how'd that work? Damn, they hardly pay the real claims, and you got them paying fake claims?”

“Yeah, about half of them. The bills they denied, I let go. I mean, I wasn't going to hassle them over the fake claims.”

Well, no duh, I thought, but I wondered about the mechanics of her hair-brained yet brilliant scam. “How'd you get the money? Don't the checks go to the doctors?”

“Not right off, not for the ones with our services. We collect the checks, do the bookkeeping, eventually deposit the checks in their accounts, send them copies of everything.”

“But, Jenn, insurance companies send copies of the paperwork to the patients. Didn't you think somebody might call and say, ‘Hey, what's with this hip X-ray I never got?' ”

“Come on. Cost-containment shit—this HMO doesn't send an EOB unless the patient asks for it. You think a patient's gonna ask for it when he doesn't know a claim is filed?”

“Health insurers don't send out explanations of benefits anymore?”

“Not this HMO. And I only fake-billed it. I just took from the HMO that wouldn't let Elliot have a heart transplant after Trusdale infected him. It doesn't send out EOBs, and some of the other HMOs don't anymore either. It's a different world with all this managed-care shit. There are things they routinely deny—ER claims, like, almost always get rejected, most surgeries—but ultrasounds, physical therapy, and office visits are usually still paid because of the tight limits on the number of these claims the patient is allowed. So I maxed those out, you know, and moved on to the next patient. You'd be surprised how often I got paid.”

What surprised me was how efficient Jennifer had been at filing fake claims. What she was talking about required a great deal of surreptitious paperwork and memory, detail work—the sort of thing I excelled at but for which Jennifer had shown no inclination at all. Guess I had read her wrong.

“But, okay, so you filed the fake claims and collected the checks,” I summed up, thinking, again, Stall, stall, stall. “But those checks were made out to the different doctors. How'd you cash them?”

“I told you once that I worked for a bank in Miami. My boss was a jerk, but he handled the coke dealers.”

Oh, yeah, the crickets and petty-revenge stuff, because her banker boss didn't respect her.

“Before Elliot married me and took me away from all that, I helped my boss clean the dealers' money. You don't think I learned a thing or two, like how to set up an offshore account?”

“So,” I said, still hoping Sam would come barging in and rescue me, “exactly how did that work?”

“Come on, do you think I don't know you're stalling?”

I looked at the gun, remembered she wasn't a very good shot, and calculated my odds of running, screaming, or jumping on her. In the end, stalling continued to seem like the best thing to do.

“Hey, you've got to tell me how you did it. I mean, how'd you get Trusdale to smoke the joint?”

“He was easy to seduce. Told him the pot would make him more potent—no problem at all. Like, he didn't even notice I wasn't smoking any.”

“So, okay, but tell me this, were you a biology major or what? How'd you know how to poison both doctors?”

“No. I got the oleander idea from that book. You know, the one they made into a movie? Woman kills her lover with oleanders when he dumps her. It was an Oprah book. For the LSD, I tracked down one of the Miami dealers.”