The Lady Doctor's Alibi (7 page)

“Qué pasa?” he asked.

“You speak English?”

“Sí,” the man said, “I spik English. What do jou want?”

“Does Marietta live here?”

“Who are jou?”

“My name is Clint Adams.”

“What do jou want with my Marietta?” the man demanded, frowning.

“I want to give her her job back.”

The man’s face brightened. He turned and shouted over his shoulder, “Marietta!”

 

Clint walked back into the office with Marietta Gonzales in tow. She was younger than her husband, early twenties, small and pretty. He’d gotten the distinct impression she’d either been given or sold to the man.

“Marietta,” he said, “this is Dr. Sugarman.”

The girl’s eyes widened.

“Dios mío. Jou are a woman.”

“Yes, I am,” Lissa said, “and you are a nurse?”

“I was Dr. Graham’s nurse.”

“Do you have training?”

“Dr. Graham,” she said nervously, “he—he trained me himself.”

“Well, come with me, Marietta,” Lissa said, “and let’s see how good a job he did.”

“Sí, señora.”

“Doctor,” Lissa said, “just call me Doctor.”

“Sí, Doctor.”

“See you later, Clint,” Lissa said, “and thanks.”

 

Rufus took Lillian Graham, now fully naked, upstairs and threw her on the bed. He got her on her hands and knees and took her from behind. He couldn’t wait until he could buy himself a woman he could take from the front without having to cover her face. Lillian had been good enough for him for a while, but now that she was going to have her husband’s money, and he didn’t have to stay in that fleabag hotel anymore, things were going to change.

But she still had one thing for him to do before he could get some money from her, and she’d tell him what it was as soon as he finished tearing her up from behind.

When Clint walked into the sheriff’s office, the older deputy, Jim Boone, was the only one there.

“Mr. Adams,” he said with a nod. He was standing, not sitting, behind his boss’s desk.

“Deputy,” Clint said. “Sheriff around?”

“Not right now,” Boone said. “Fact is, I ain’t sure where he is right now. Somethin’ I can do to help you?”

“I had a talk with him about the Dr. Graham murder,” Clint said. “Told him I was going to talk to the widow.”

Boone’s eyebrows went up.

“That’s a hard woman,” he said.

“Exactly what I was thinking. Do you know if the sheriff is considering that she might have hired someone to do it?” Clint asked.

“I think he’s leanin’ towards that other doctor, the woman, uh, Sugarman?”

“Then why would he put her in Graham’s office, taking care of his patients?”

Boone shrugged.

“Somebody’s gotta take care of ’em, and he sure knows where she is now.”

“Two good points.”

“So you think the wife did it?”

“That’s a big house, and I presume there’s a lot of money involved. She might have had a lover—”

“Uh, you said you talked to the widow?” Boone asked. “Did you see her?”

“Like somebody told me,” Clint said, “there’s somebody for everybody.”

“I guess . . .”

“How well did you know the doctor?”

“Not at all,” Boone said. “I never met him.”

“You never had to go to him?”

“I don’t get sick.”

“What about injuries?”

“I usually take care of them myself,” he said.

Clint knew what the man meant. He was of a generation—Clint’s generation—that knew how to take care of themselves, knew how to remove a bullet and stitch a wound.

“When you see your boss, tell him I talked with the widow and I think she might have had her husband killed.”

“I’ll tell him. You, uh, gonna stay in town until we find out the truth?”

“Yep.”

“You know the lady doctor?”

“I met her when I first came to town,” Clint said. “I hurt my ankle on the trail, wasn’t sure if it was broke or not.”

“And?”

“It’s not.”

“That’s good.”

“But that’s when I met her, and I like her,” Clint said. “I don’t think she was after Graham’s practice. I think she wants to build her own.”

“Well,” Boone said, “I guess she’s got his now, whether she wanted it or not.”

“I guess so,” Clint said, “but the widow’s not happy. She wants Doc Sugarman out of her husband’s office.”

“Then who’d take care of the patients?”

“She doesn’t care about that.”

“Like I said,” Boone said. “Hard woman.”

“I got Doc Sugarman a nurse to work with her.”

“Where’d you find a nurse?”

“A young Mexican girl who Doc Graham had trained. She worked for him until the doctor’s wife fired her for being too young and pretty.”

“Seems like those patients are gonna be well cared for, at least for a while.”

“Looks like it,” Clint said. “The doc has already saved one little girl’s leg.”

“That’s good.”

“How’s your new deputy working out?”

Boone made a face,

“He’s too young, but nobody else wants the job . . . unless . . . ?”

“No, not me,” Clint said. “My badge-wearing days are long behind me.”

“We could sure use you.”

“I’ll be around,” Clint said. “If you need help, let me know, but I’m not going to put on a badge.”

“Suit yourself,” Boone said with a shrug. “This kid ain’t gonna last too long. He’s already struttin’ too much behind that star we pinned on him.”

“Maybe he’ll learn.”

“Yeah, he’ll learn by gettin’ dead.”

“You and the sheriff seem to know what you’re doing,” Clint said.

“Yeah, well, we been at it for a while.”

“How long have you been his deputy?”

“Three years.”

“I would have thought it’d be the other way around, you being older and all.”

“It was the other way around,” Boone said. “He was my deputy until he beat me in the election three years ago.”

“And you stayed on as his deputy?”

“First order of business when he won was to ask me to be his deputy,” Boone said. “We had worked together well for two years before that. I like Veracruz, didn’t want to leave, don’t know nothin’ else but wearin’ a badge. I got to stay on, and he ended up with the headaches. It’s been a good deal for me.”

“No ego?” Clint asked.

“I got an ego, but that didn’t mean nothin’ in this case,” Boone said. “We work together about the same, ’cept like I said, the headaches are his. He has to play the political game, I don’t.”

“I get what you mean,” Clint said. “That was always my least favorite part of the job.”

“I’ll tell the sheriff you stopped by,” Boone promised.

“Okay,” Clint said. “I’ll stop by later, maybe catch him in.”

“Good talkin’ to ya,” Deputy Boone said.

“Same here.”

Clint decided to talk to some of the people who had businesses around Dr. Graham’s office. His friend Talbot Roper was the best private detective he’d ever met, and it was he who told Clint that the only way to find the answers was “to ask the right people the right questions.”

So he spent the rest of the day talking to people, though there really wasn’t that much left of the day. Much of it had been spent retrieving Eclipse from the livery and then bringing him back there.

Basically, he wanted to know if anyone had seen somebody suspicious hanging around the doctor’s office. Or if anyone had seen the doctor’s wife in the company of somebody suspicious.

He stopped in a store across the street from the doctor’s office just as a woman was pulling the shade down on the front door.

“Can I just talk to you for a minute?” he asked the middle-aged woman. This would be his last stop of the day, because all the businesses were closing up.

She sighed, looked put-upon, then opened her door a crack.

“This is a hat shop, sir, not a hardware store,” she said. “I hardly think I have anything in here that would interest you.”

“I’m really not interested in shopping,” Clint said.

“Well, then, what do you think I can do for you?” she asked.

“I’d like to talk to you about the murder of Dr. Graham, across the street.”

Her eyes widened with interest and she immediately swung the door open.

“Come in, come in,” she said. “I suppose I can make time for a good cause. That poor man didn’t deserve to die like that.”

She shut the door after he’d entered, put her closed sign in the window, and pulled the shade down. The last thing she did was turn the lock. It was odd, but Clint suddenly felt trapped.

“Would you like some tea?” she asked. “I always have a cup of tea after I’ve closed.”

“That would be nice.”

“Come with me.”

The woman was about Lillian Graham’s age, late forties, pleasant-faced but a bit chubby, with wide hips and a large butt. Clint followed her through a curtained doorway and found himself in a small kitchen. Through another doorway he saw some furniture.

“Do you live here?”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “It’s difficult to run a business and maintain a home elsewhere. My name is Gloria Wells, by the way.”

“Miss Wells. I’m Clint Adams.”

“What is your interest in Dr. Graham’s death, Mr. Adams?” she asked.

“I’m just trying to help find out who killed him, ma’am.”

She said, “Humph,” and put the kettle on the stove. Clint suspected this woman had something she desperately wanted to talk about, which was probably the reason she had let him in. He decided to wait until they were sitting, having tea and cookies, before he gave her the chance.

“Miss Wells—”

“Missus,” she corrected. “I’m a widow.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said.

“That’s all right,” she said. “Mr. Wells went quickly two years ago. We had thirty wonderful years together.”

“Well, that’s good,” I said.

“Not like some people.”

“Some people?” he asked. “Which people are those?”

“Well,” she said, “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but the doctor and his wife did not have a very happy marriage.”

“How so?”

“Well, if you’ll pardon my French—”

“Of course.”

“She was always such a royal bitch to him.”

“I see. And that was obvious?”

“To anyone with eyes,” she said.

“So he mistreated her?” Clint asked, purposely turning it around.

“Hell no,” she said. Then she added, “Excuse me.”

“Sure.”

“She mistreated him,” Gloria said.

“I see.”

“In fact,” she said, “it wouldn’t surprise me if she had him killed.”

“Did you ever see her with another man?”

“Well . . .”

“You have?”

“I saw her, once, coming out of a hotel . . . with a man.”

“Really?” He found that very interesting. “Where was this hotel?”

“In a not very nice section of town.”

“Could you give me directions?”

“Of course,” she said, and did. She gave him very good directions.

“And what made you think that anything was . . . going on?” he asked.

“The man she was with was a big, younger, hulking brute of a man,” Gloria Wells said, “not at all like her husband.”

“I see.”

She sipped her tea.

“Gloria?”

“Yes?”

“What were you doing in that part of town?”

“I was . . . just passing by.”

Clint picked up his teacup. He looked at Gloria over the rim. He could certainly see where she might have been there with her own hulking brute.

It actually made more sense to him than Lillian Graham being there.

He left Gloria Wells’s store, wondering if she had been doing just what she’d accused Lillian Graham of doing—except that Gloria had no husband to answer to. Maybe Graham found out that his wife had a lover. Maybe they had a fight and it got out of hand. It was doubtful she had beaten him to death herself, so maybe she had her lover do it. And maybe the lover was in it for the money. He could certainly believe that a man would be carrying on with Lillian in order to get his hands on her husband’s money.

He stopped just in front of the store and looked around. Closed signs were showing in all the windows. There were people on the streets, most of them probably heading home. Then he saw the man.

He was a big fellow, lots of black hair, sloping shoulders, thick through the middle. What had Gloria said about the man Lillian had been with? A brute? This man sure matched that description.

Clint moved sideways, then into the deep doorway of the shop next to Gloria’s. He watched the big man, who was showing interest in the building that housed Graham’s office.

The man walked back and forth in front of the building. Maybe he was trying to decide whether or not to go in and see the doctor. Or maybe it was something else entirely.

In the end, the man decided not to enter the building. Instead, he walked away down the street. Clint decided to follow him.

The man walked with giant strides, and Clint felt himself having to hurry to keep up. Ultimately, he took Clint right where he wanted to go—the docks. They even went past Clint’s hotel, the livery where Eclipse was staying, then finally to a hotel that—when he checked his directions—matched the description of the hotel Gloria Wells had described to him.

He looked across the street, where there was another fleabag hotel. Had Gloria been coming out of that one when she saw Lillian coming out of this one? Well, that was her business.

His business was this hotel in front of him, and the man who had gone inside.

He started into the hotel, stopped when he saw a woman coming out. She smiled at him, looked him up and down, and he knew the offer was coming.