The Last Blue Plate Special (14 page)

“Wes, what hospital is Ruby Emerald in?”

“Mercy.”

After hanging up I headed toward the shopping center where the restaurant called Samson’s is located, the restaurant where
Dr. Megan Rainer had told a receptionist she would meet someone named Chris for lunch.

The place was already filling up when I got there, and individual people are never popular with waiters during busy times.
I was dyescorted to a small booth for two in the main room and handed a menu with the unstated expectation that I’d order
something simple and then leave. From my vantage point I could see the entrance, and it wasn’t long before Megan Rainer arrived
with a thickly built man in jeans and a blue shirt. He wore little round glasses and his frizzy dark brown hair hung in a
heavy braid down his back. Megan was speaking about something with great enthusiasm, but his eyes kept straying to the menu
he’d grabbed from a bin. They wore matching wedding rings.

“I’ll have a cheese blintz and coffee,” I told the waiter as Megan and what was obviously her husband were seated in a booth
diagonally across the aisle from mine. He faced in my direction, and I could hear parts of his half of the conversation. Things
like, “Corned beef looks good” and “Love their matzo ball soup, but I think I’ll go with the Reuben.” I wondered why it is
that TV sleuths in this position always stalk suspects who graciously discuss their crimes over lunch. “Have you tried the
Caesar? And by the way, I hid the
real
emerald pendant in the casket lining beside the false birth certificate. Maybe we should split a dessert?”

I nursed my cheese blintz long enough to learn a few things, though. For example, Josh, apparently their son, was going on
a school field trip to the Scripps Aquarium and wanted to take his camera. This was a problem because the school had a rule
against children taking easily lost or stolen items on field trips. It made sense to me.

It also became clear that something was wrong with their dishwasher and some daffodil bulbs had been planted that nobody expected
to grow. Megan Rainer and her husband laughed a lot. More than once I saw her touch his hand on the table. The only dissension
involved something to which he kept saying things like, “It’s only two more years, hon. We planned it this way” and “Come
on, you can do it!” After these remarks I could see Megan Rainer’s right hand curl to a fist around the handle of her fork.
Then she’d wave the fork around while saying things I couldn’t hear. But I’d learned a little. Like, Megan Rainer and her
husband, Chris, got along. They were concerned about their children’s activities. And they had some sort of agreement which
meant Megan had to do something for two more years because they’d planned it that way.

I would have eaten lunch anyway, I told myself. The time hadn’t been a total waste.

After giving Brontë a saved sliver of blintz, I got on I-5 heading south toward the Hillcrest area of San Diego. Two sprawling
medical complexes, the University of Southern California Medical Center and Mercy Hospital, contribute to Hillcrest’s patchwork
ambience. A single block boasts two sushi bars, a body-piercing shop, three narrow bookstores specializing in cookbooks, used
medical texts, and Russian erotic art, respectively, a landmark deli, and an abandoned movie theater under whose marquee the
homeless now sit on folded sleeping bags.

Some of the local merchants keep cans of dog food under their counters for the pets of the homeless population. Donations
for this dog food are provided by Hillcrest’s shoppers, who include highly paid personnel from both hospitals. There is no
shortage of dog food in Hillcrest, a fact which says something about the nature of complex human societies, although I’m not
sure what. I found a parking spot on the street in front of the theater and promised Brontë I’d be back within half an hour.
Then I walked up to Mercy Hospital and asked at the information desk for Ruby Emerald’s room number.

Mercy is a Catholic hospital, and although wimpled nursing nuns in starched habits are a thing of the past, Mercy has compensated
for the loss with an abundance of crucifixes. They’re everywhere. Brass and oak crucifix over a water fountain. Abstract stone
and brushed-steel crucifix between rows of framed photos of hospital benefactors, all of whom look like corporate executives,
which they are. The crucifix over Ruby Emerald’s bed was sixties modern, aluminum and black wood. Ruby was reading the
Wall Street Journal
and humming “Don’t Fall in Love with a Dreamer” with the radio when I walked in. Kenny Rogers again. I fought an urge to
sing along.

“My name is Dr. Blue McCarron,” I said, quickly adding, “I’m a social psychologist.”

Ruby Emerald merely smiled brightly from her hospital bed and said, “I think you must be in the wrong room.”

“No, I don’t work here,” I explained as she adjusted the position of her awkwardly splinted left arm. It was propped upward
at an angle to her body, making her look as if she were hailing a cab. “I’m working with the police.”

“Yes?”

“You know about the taped threat regarding you. I’m working on that investigation.”

“I read about it in the paper is all,” she said. “They called it the Bugs Bunny Caper! I don’t think it means much of anything.
As a psychologist you should know there are jealous, nasty people out there. I’ve gotten threats before.” A smile pulled at
the corners of her lips. “But let’s face it, the dangerous guys are the ones you let in your bed.”

“J. R. Jones. I was there when it happened, Reverend Emerald. It was horrible and I’m so glad your injuries weren’t worse
than they are. And I’m not a clinical psychologist, I’m a social—”

“You were there?” she interrupted. “What a disaster! And please call me Ruby. I should never have gotten involved with Jerry,
but you know how it is. You don’t think he sent that stupid tape to the television station, do you? I can’t imagine Jerry
doing that. He’s a sweet guy, really, but you know how they are. Marriage and all that. He wanted to plant a flag through
my head saying ‘Property of …’ you know?”

In the harsh California sunlight filtering through the window I could see that Ruby Emerald was not young. Pushing the outer
edge of middle age in all likelihood. The skin of her arms was a mosaic of parched lines despite the expensive jar of herbal
body cream on her nightstand. At her temples I could see that the blonde curls were gray at the roots. Early sixties, I guessed.
But her brown eyes sparkled with an ageless exuberance that probably accounted for J. R. Jones’s murderous devotion to her.

“No, I think someone else sent that tape,” I said. “Someone connected to the Rainer Clinic.”

The brown eyes grew wide. “No! I can’t believe that. Everyone was so nice there, you have no idea. I mean, they’re really
top-notch, just the best. And trust me, with what they get for a simple, old-fashioned face-lift, there’s no reason for anyone
there to be jealous of what I’m making!”

“The motivation might not be jealousy,” I mentioned with some hesitation. There was no reason to frighten her with bizarre
theories about gender-maddened serial killers. “Could you tell me a little about what happened the night before the revival?
I know you were hospitalized.”

“Now, that was strange,” she answered, knitting her brow like a puzzled child. “That evening was very strange. Jerry was with
me, very upset because I’d been trying to call it quits for months and finally I just told him, this is it. I let him think
I’d met someone else, although I haven’t. It was just a way to get him to back off. And in the middle of this a delivery service
brings a deli tray I hadn’t ordered, so I knew it must be from one of my followers. The card had been lost, but it was very
nice. Red wine, caviar, several cheeses including my favorite English Stilton, a liver pâté with a little loaf of fresh bread,
and beautiful imported chocolates all around the edge. Sometimes people send flowers and things, but this was
really
nice.”

I wasn’t sure where this was going, but I smiled encouragement.

“Well, Jerry was certain the goodies were a gift from this new sweetie I’d just made up because there wasn’t any card. He
was furious, storming around. I just went on nibbling at this and that, especially the Stilton. It was quite good. And then
he grabbed the tray and threw it against the wall! Can you believe it?”

“Sounds like a waste of good food,” I volunteered, hoping I didn’t sound as dim as I thought I did. “So how did you wind up
in the hospital that night?”

She seemed chagrined. “I guess I was more upset by Jerry doing that than I realized, because all of a sudden I just felt terrible.
My heart was pounding, I felt dizzy and sick, and I started sweating something awful. And the headache! Just this terrible
headache. Jerry called 911. He said he was afraid he’d killed me. Guess I should’ve listened to
that,
huh?”

“Do you remember the name of the delivery service that brought you the deli tray?” I asked.

“No. I didn’t see the van. Just some guy at the door with the tray.”

“What did the guy look like?”

She shrugged. “Just some guy, short guy. A deliveryman. I don’t remember. Why? Do you think something on that tray was poisoned?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “But as a precaution, in the future—”

“Don’t eat strange food? No problem, Dr. McCarron. But I still think I’d do better to keep the overly devoted types out of
my bed.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

“Here’s my card,” I told her. “Please call me if you think of anything else.”

It was close to two when I picked up the copy of the Rainer Clinic file Wes Rathbone had left at the front desk of police
headquarters for me. After grabbing an amaretto chocolate gelato at a drive-in, I took Brontë to Balboa Park and sat in the
empty organ pavilion to eat it. Rathbone’s file told me that Jennings Rainer, sixty-seven, had opened the Rainer Clinic twenty-five
years ago at a different address and moved to the current location eleven years ago. Prior to opening his own clinic he’d
practiced with a medical group and been on staff at a prestigious hospital in Boulder, Colorado. Rainer had been married for
forty-five years to the former Marlis Hutchins at the time of her death from cancer two years ago.

I walked Brontë around the pavilion and along the wide pedestrian avenue which is the park’s backbone. At the avenue’s end
a stream of water shot twenty feet into the dry autumn air and then fell into a pool at this base. When we got to the fountain
I let Brontë splash in the water as I read on.

Jennings’s daughter, Megan Rainer, forty-one, was his partner in the business. Also a plastic surgeon, she’d graduated from
a California university and done her residency in San Francisco. Married ten years ago to Christopher Nugent, also forty-one,
Megan Rainer was the mother of two children, Jenna, eight, and Joshua, six. Christopher Nugent wrote abstracts for scientific
journals for a living and stayed at home with the two children. The file noted that Nugent was involved in several local ecology
organizations.

The other medical employees of the clinic were Jeffrey Pond, forty-two, the clinic operating room manager, a registered nurse;
Thomas Joseph Eldridge, forty, a surgical assistant and also an r.n.; and Dr. Isadora Grecchi, fifty-one, an anesthesiologist.
All of which told me nothing except that the Rainer Clinic employed a lot of middle-aged people. In a small setting such as
this, what that usually means is that the same professional staff have been employees for a long time. My guess was that all
of these people had been with Jennings Rainer for years, which would suggest that they were well paid, well treated, and knew
one another in the way that lifelong friends do. Scarcely a population from which to expect the eruption of a pathological
killer.

“Maybe,” I told Brontë as she shook water from her fur all over my black dress, “the person sending these threats is an ex-patient
who wants to make us
think
somebody connected to the clinic is sending them. Maybe somebody who wasn’t happy with a service performed there?”

Brontë was sniffing a breeze from the direction of a wheeled hot dog vendor and showed no interest in my suggestion.

A few people die each year from complications related to cosmetic surgery. These are invariably people who have tried to economize
by turning themselves over to surgeons who lack board certification or have lost their licenses and are practicing illegally.
You have to wonder about that sort of frugality. But all the medical personnel at Rainer were licensed. I didn’t think the
grieving spouse of a lethal face-lift sometime in the past was behind the threats. But I didn’t dismiss the idea, either.
Nor did I dismiss the possibility that a dissatisfied patient who’d wanted to look more like Leonardo DiCaprio than is possible
might be behind them. In fact, I didn’t dismiss anything. And I had an idea about what to do next.

Balboa Park is home to a number of museums and, I told myself, I was already there. Among other things, museums house curators,
and curators often know a great deal about obscure things. Like china. As in plates. A curator might be just what I needed.

The Mingei International Museum specializes in folk art, but I started there anyway because I love the gift shop. A seventy-ish,
deeply tanned docent wearing a gorgeous hand-woven dashiki in beiges and ecrus told me nobody at the Mingei would be able
to answer my questions about blue willow plates, which do not qualify as folk art. But somebody across the park’s carriageway
at the San Diego Museum of Art probably would, she said.

She also told me that the dashiki was one of a collection for sale in the gift shop. I had tied Brontë to the wrought-iron
railing outside the museum shop, and she watched through the floor-to-ceiling windows as I admired a rack of dashikis. One,
a broad weave of deep purples and reds highlighted by bands of gold satin, just
was
Roxie. Christmas, I thought when I saw the price tag. I’d give it to her for Christmas.