The Doctor Rocks the Boat (16 page)

Fenimore had just begun another list, headed “Alibis” when the phone interrupted him

“Hi.”

Jennifer.

“Well, it's about time!” Fenimore said.

“Did you miss me?”

(Not “How are you feeling?” or “I'm so sorry, I was kidnapped and they taped my mouth shut.”) “I suppose . . .”

“Good. How are you feeling?”

(Better late than never.) “Okay.” He attempted a feeble tone.

“I have so much to tell you.” They had not really talked since his accident because there were always two or three others in the room during visiting hours at the hospital. “Roaring Wings was wonderful. He's a fount of information. My book will throw a whole new light on the Native American.” She bubbled over with enthusiasm.

“You actually got him to talk?”

“Oh yes. No problem. Once you touch what is closest to his heart . . .”

(He has a heart?)

“. . . the history of the Lenape people—the stories just flow from him.”

“Hmm.” Fenimore called up a picture of the stoic, monosyllabic Lenape chief he knew and found Jennifer's description hard to swallow.

“And he made me a bona fide Lenape dinner!”

“Cracked corn and muskrat pie?”

“Don't be silly. Fresh catfish from the river and the most delicious corn bread you ever tasted.”

Fenimore felt an alarm go off inside him. “Well, I'm glad you've finished your research. Now you can start writing.”

“Oh, no. I've barely begun my research. I've scheduled another interview next weekend.”

Fenimore was silent.

“Sorry for running on so,” Jennifer misinterpreted his silence. “I should have asked about the Ashburns. Have there been any new developments?”

“Caroline was here.”

“How is she?”

“About as you'd expect. But there was an aspect to her grief that worried me.”

“Oh?”

“She seemed distracted, in a daze. Non compos mentis. I wondered if she was taking something.”

“Tranquilizers?”

“I asked her that, but she was very vague. Her whole manner was disturbing.”

“Well, I'm sure you'll figure it out. I have to run and finish typing my notes before I forget everything.”

“He didn't go for the tape recorder, then?”

“No way. He almost threw me out when he saw it. But I convinced
him to let me stay.” She gave a conspiratorial giggle that Fenimore found disconcerting.

After she hung up, Fenimore stared at the phone for a long time. While he was still staring, it rang again. He picked up.

“Yo, Doc.” Rafferty. “You're not holding out on me, are you?”

“What do you mean?” Fenimore's guilty conscience kicked in.

“This Ashburn case is heating up. I need all the information I can get.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Let's get together tomorrow at my office and I'll pick your brains—say, eleven o'clock?”

“All right,” Fenimore agreed reluctantly.

The case must be hot if Raff was willing to work on Sunday. Fenimore sighed. Suddenly he felt very tired. Almost too tired to climb the stairs to bed. He was half dozing in his chair, when he heard a noise. He looked up. Tanya was in the doorway.

“I was worried about you.” She smiled.

“You were?”

“Uh-huh. Rat told me how sick you were, and . . .”

“Nice of you to worry,” he said gruffly. “How is your cough?” He retreated into his physician role.

“Better. I wanna thank—”

“None of that. We're all happy to help you, Tanya. I'm glad Rat found you.”

“Me too,” she murmured.

“If you're tired of TV, there's a library full of books in there.”

“Yeah, I saw them.”

“Do you like to read?”

“Not much. I mean, I don't read much except for school.”

“Let me show you.” He led her back to the library. His hand automatically reached for the little green book,
Robinson Crusoe.
“Try that.”

She held the little book a moment before opening it.

“You two may have something in common.”

She gave him a quizzical look.

“Well, Crusoe was stranded on an island—and you were stranded in a cellar.”

She curled up on the sofa with the book.

“But don't stay up too late,” he warned, “It's important that you get your sleep.”

She didn't answer; she was reading.

As Fenimore made his way slowly up the stairs, he wondered if he was missing something, not having a family.

T
he next morning, Fenimore was awakened by chest pain. But the pain wasn't acute and it didn't radiate down his arm. Just a dull ache. The doctor in the ICU had warned him that near-drowning victims sometimes suffered symptoms days, even weeks after the event.

“Oh hell,” he groaned. Accustomed to perfect health, he found any illness—even a common cold—exasperating. He reached for the phone, then remembered it was Sunday. He hated to disturb a doctor on Sunday. He decided to wait it out.

He was suddenly aware of unfamiliar noises floating up the stairwell. “What the . . . ?” He shoved his feet into his old slippers and shuffled out into the hall. Peering over the bannister, he saw an unusual sight. Mrs. Doyle and two teenagers playing cards at her desk. It was a game of slapjack and it had grown quite rough.

Whack! Rat slammed his hand on top of Tanya's hand, which had just landed on a fat pile of cards topped by a Jack.

“Ouch!” she squealed. “They're mine.” She threw his hand off and grabbed up all the cards.

Mrs. Doyle sat benignly by, waiting her turn.

“Erumph.” Fenimore cleared his throat. Three pairs of eyes turned upward.

“Oh, Doctor, we're—” Doyle stopped in mid-sentence and lunged to her feet. One look at Fenimore and her keen nurse's eye told her he was not well. She hurried to the bottom of the stairs. “Go back to bed. I'll be right up,” she ordered. Turning to the young people she said, “Take your game into the other room.”

They quickly folded their cards and disappeared.

Unlike Fenimore, Mrs. Doyle had no qualms about disturbing a doctor on Sunday. Once she had tucked Fenimore safely back in his bed, she dialed the home of Dr. Randolph Larkin, chief of cardiology at Fenimore's hospital. The doctor prescribed two aspirin and said he'd be right over. Although house calls were a thing of the past, when a colleague was sick, exceptions were made.

Twenty minutes later, Dr. Larkin rang the bell. Dressed for a lazy Sunday at home, he wore jeans, a sport shirt and Nikes. The fact that he had not taken time to change alarmed Mrs. Doyle. That probably meant it was urgent. She ushered him upstairs. As she mounted the stairs behind him, she caught a glimpse of Horatio and Tanya peering out of the library, their expressions anxious.

“Sorry to drag you out,” Fenimore whispered. The chest pains had increased and his voice was weak.

“You can cover for me for the next six weeks, Fenimore,” Larkin chuckled, as he took his stethoscope from his back hip pocket. Some of the old-school doctors still carried one with them all the time out of habit. “Did you take your aspirin like a good boy?”

Fenimore nodded. It was becoming an effort to talk.

After listening to Fenimore's chest for a moment, Larkin straightened up. “I think we'd better admit you, Andrew. You'll get better care at the hospital where there's a good staff and state-of-the-art equipment.”

Too weak to protest, Fenimore closed his eyes.

Taking this as consent, Doyle ordered an ambulance. In the hall, after muttering several Hail Marys, she asked the doctor, “Is he bad?”

Larkin looked uneasy. “These near-drowning cases are hard to evaluate. This could be a minor episode, but we have to keep an eye on him. Can you accompany him to the hospital?”

Doyle thought fast. What about the children? Then she decided: If Rat had taken care of Tanya for all those weeks in the cellar, he should be able to look after her for a few hours here. She nodded.

A half-hour later, Fenimore was admitted to the ICU for the second time in a week.

J
ennifer was trying to decipher the notes she had taken from Roaring Wings. She wished her handwriting were more legible. She knew she should have typed them the minute she got home, while they were still fresh in her mind, instead of waiting a week.

The phone.

She put the notes aside and answered it.

Mrs. Doyle.

Andrew was in the ICU again. She slammed down the receiver and hurried out to hail a cab.

Horatio was restless. Doyle had told him to stay and look after Tanya, but he wanted to know how the doctor was doing. They were playing gin rummy, but his mind kept wandering and Tanya had won two games in a row.

“Pay attention, Rat,” she said with a triumphant look as she won the third game.

“I'm tired,” Rat said, laying down his cards. “Let's watch TV.”

“You just don't like getting beat,” Tanya grumbled. But she reached for the remote.

The ICU physician watched Fenimore's cardiogram on the monitor. Normal for three leads, then that disconcerting T wave. She took Fenimore's pulse. Slow but strong. She replaced his hand on the sheet. The fingers were long and slender, like an artist's or a musician's. She knew about Fenimore. Not only an exceptional cardiologist, but he had an excellent reputation as an amateur detective. She hoped he would wake up soon so she could talk to him about his cases—his criminal cases, that is.

Mrs. Doyle sat in the visitor's lounge at the end of the hall, leafing through a year-old copy of
People. Who were all these people?
she wondered.
Had they really been famous a year ago?
She threw the magazine down and began to pace. She shared the lounge with two other occupants—a skinny woman and a blubbery man. Jack Sprat and his wife, in reverse. What would she do if anything happened to the doctor? She refused to think about it. He had a strong constitution. He was going to be
fine.
She decided to look for a pay phone and check on the children.

Rafferty paced his office. It was eleven thirty. Where was Fenimore? Did he forget? Or was he deliberately avoiding him? He reached for the phone and dialed.

“Doctor's office,” a young male voice answered.

“That you, Rat?”

“Yeah.”

“Where is Doyle?”

“At the hospital with the doc.”

“Helping him with a case?”

“No. She's helping
him.
”

“What?”

“The doc took sick this morning and he's in the hospital again.”

“Well, why didn't you say so?”

“I was gonna. . . .”

Rafferty hung up and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair.

Mrs. Henderson had been sitting in the cocktail lounge of the Barchester Hotel for fifteen minutes, and she was not amused. She was unaccustomed to being kept waiting, and Dr. Fenimore was usually so prompt. Could she have mistaken the time? She glanced at her watch for the hundredth time. Her nieces and nephews told her she was getting forgetful, but she noticed that they often forgot things too. It wasn't a matter of age, it was a matter of overload.
We're all doing too many things these days,
she thought.

She tapped her fingers on the glass tabletop and played with the slim, elegant matchbook with “Barchester” printed in a silvery blue. For once, she blessed Philadelphia for its backward ways. They still allowed smoking in some of the more elite cocktail lounges. She took a cigarillo from her handbag and signaled the waiter. After he lit it for her, she ordered a martini, straight up, with an olive. If she had to wait, she might as well enjoy herself.

I
t wasn't clear whose idea it was, but after Fenimore's friends had paid their respects at the ICU, they gathered, by common consent, back at his home office to determine who had caused the doctor's present deplorable condition.

When they arrived, Mrs. Doyle discovered a string of telephone messages from Mrs. Henderson, becoming more and more incoherent as they progressed. (Horatio had stopped answering after the third phone call.) The number left on the tape turned out to be the cell phone of her chauffeur. When Mrs. Doyle spoke to him, he said he would bring her around right away. Doyle wasn't sure whether “bring her around” referred to her geographical location or her physical condition.

Someone made the decision to order enough Chinese food to last the night, and they settled into the living room wearing expressions of grim determination. Rafferty ran the meeting and Doyle took notes (her hand was clearer than Jennifer's), while Jennifer, Horatio, and Mrs. Henderson, looked on—the latter consuming cups of black coffee at a rapid rate. Tanya sat in a corner absorbed in reading a little green book.