The Last Blue Plate Special (20 page)

“Rainer is from another time, BB,” I said, addressing the issue of Grecchi’s marital status. “In his day it was assumed that
all any woman could possibly want was to care for a husband and family. And don’t assume—”

“This Grecchi gonna turn out to be our man,” he conjectured.

“Don’t assume that,” I insisted as we sped south on 1-5 toward the heart of San Diego and a one-thirty appointment with Isadora
Grecchi. “And why wouldn’t Rox be a good shrink for Rainer? He’s depressed and he knows it. I think she’ll be wonderful with
him.”

I did think Rox would be helpful to Jennings Rainer, and I didn’t think Jennings Rainer had sent threatening letters
or
poisoned caviar to anyone. But I’m not renowned for my abilities with people, only with numbers.

“What did you think of Rainer?” I asked BB.

“Sad old dude. Loved his wife, she gone. His daughter ain’t gonna take over the business. All he got is that dog.”

I equate the love of animals with a sort of core decency which precludes the murder of other species, such as our own. But
that isn’t remotely true. Any number of murderers have been apprehended in the company of a pet, and there are regulations
regarding what must be done with pets taken into custody because their owners are on their way to death row. I thought Jennings
Rainer was exactly what he appeared to be, but that didn’t mean he was. What if Snuffy was just a prop? A borrowed dog meant
to create precisely the illusion I’d fallen for? But Snuffy had seemed happy in the arms of Jennings Rainer and had clearly
expected the walk Rainer said they took every day. Had I been conned by a schnauzer?

And the wife’s computer. Rainer couldn’t have faked that without a lot of work. It was real, as were his feelings. And the
computer couldn’t have been used to e-mail me or Rathbone because it wasn’t connected to a server. It was only a dusty electronic
ghost Rainer would need help exorcizing. Rainer and thousands of other people in coming years, I thought. People who could
return in time to the lost world of a dead loved one with the flick of a mouse, perhaps discovering things they were never
intended to know. And then perhaps not being able to get back. I wondered if dad had given this problem any thought. It would
make a terrific pastoral counseling workshop.

BB seemed unusually thoughtful. “Dude really loved his wife,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Blue, you ever love anybody like that? Like if they gone you just
empty
?”

I didn’t know what to say. BB is eight years younger than I am, and while a friend, he’s also a former patient of Roxie’s
from his days in prison. There were boundaries, I thought. But he wasn’t being nosy or intrusive. He just wanted to know something.

“Yes,” I said, forgetting about the boundaries. “It took me a long time to get back to myself after she was gone. For a while,
for a few years, I felt empty like that and kept emptiness around me. It’s hard. And nobody tells you how hard it’s going
to be. There aren’t any songs on the radio about that emptiness, no books or movies. But sooner or later most people find
out, and then they don’t talk about it, either. Why, BB?”

“I never cared that much about anybody,” he said quietly. “But I’d like to.”

Isadora Grecchi lived in an old Craftsman bungalow in San Diego’s Mission Hills district. Built in the thirties, these architectural
gems can be found all over central San Diego. Grecchi’s had been restored but with modern features where advisable. Its long-eaved
roof had been done in synthetic, fireproof shake shingles, and a deck cantilevered over a canyon rim in back was visible from
the street. I parked in her driveway and saw the front door opening. Even from her porch, it was clear that Isadora Grecchi
wasn’t happy about our visit.

“What’s
he
doing here?” she yelled.

BB flexed all the muscles in his upper body and then stood glowering beside my truck with his arms crossed over his chest.
He was truly formidable, unless you knew him. And so was Isadora Grecchi. I was certain no one had ever described her as “pretty,”
but with her coarse, unruly black hair and huge brown eyes, she was
interesting.
Wide cheekbones, aquiline nose, too-large mouth. She was wearing jeans and a paint-spattered tan corduroy shirt, no shoes.
Big bones, about five-five, but not an ounce of fat.

“And who does
your
hair?” BB said under his breath.

“Mr. Berryman is my bodyguard,” I said for the second time that day. “I’m Dr. Blue McCarron.”

“I know who you are. The police said it would be necessary to talk to you in order to avoid being interviewed by one of them
at the police station. I had no idea they’d send a bag lady and an apprentice pimp. I want you to get this asshole off my
property.”

Her voice was deep and projected like a trained singer’s. I could have heard her a block away.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s police policy to ensure the safety of consultants in the field.”

“Bullshit,” boomed Isadora Grecchi, quite correctly. “All right, come in. Let’s get this over with.”

Grecchi’s opening remarks were no indication of her taste. The interior of the house had been gutted, providing a spectacular
view through the structure and out to the deck and canyon beyond. The original woodwork on walls and ceilings had been kept
and refinished in an eggshell varnish that emphasized the grain. Ditto the hardwood floors, rarely seen in any but San Diego’s
oldest homes. A fireplace in the north wall also retained its original Italian glazed tiles in a deep celery color Grecchi
had repeated in silk throw pillows strewn on two couches slipcovered in buttery yellow canvas. On the east wall was a stark
black and white abstract I suspected was an original Franz Kline. The only thing in the room that didn’t exude artistic taste
so understated you almost missed it was a shabby brown corduroy teddy bear on the mantel. The toy was missing one of its black
button eyes and lent a sense of sadness and disarray to the impeccable surroundings.

“Sit down,” Grecchi told me.

To BB she said, “What kind of statement are you making by displaying your underwear? You look like a fucking two-year-old.”

BB merely stood by the door and glared, although I could tell he was warming to her. To the right of a kitchen/dining area
at the back of the house I could see an easel under a skylight. The scent of oil paint was everywhere and she held a brush
in her left hand.

“You do abstracts,” I guessed aloud.

“And you don’t,” she answered.

A comedian. But there was an edge to Isadora Grecchi that wasn’t funny. Something jumpy and bitter. Maybe dangerous.

In fifteen minutes I was told several times that she knew absolutely nothing about threatening letters or murders connected
to the Rainer Clinic, where she had worked for fifteen years. All other questions were answered cursorily. She’d had a decorator
select her china and didn’t know what a blue willow plate was, she said, opening a kitchen cabinet door to display elegant
plain black dishes and pale green Hungarian stemware. She had never belonged to a church and in fact couldn’t be paid enough
to set foot in one. I could tell she was enjoying my incompetence, which made me feel even more incompetent. Until I mentioned
Jennings Rainer.

“Dr. Rainer mentioned that you’re involved in women’s health care issues,” I said, fishing awkwardly. “And yet you’re doing
breast implants and—”

“I don’t do breast implants or any other form of surgery,” she interrupted. “I’m an anesthesiologist. I anesthetize.”

But I’d seen it and so had BB. A leap of emotion at the mention of Rainer’s name, a softening of those dramatic facial features.
The impression, oddly, was one of motherliness. Isadora Grecchi seemed to feel, for a split second,
protective
of the aging surgeon. But why?

“When the clinic closes, I plan to join the staff of a hospital which specializes in breast cancer,” she went on in obvious
defense. “In the meantime, I donate two afternoons a week to surgeries at a women’s reproductive health center.”

The politically correct credentials were clearly important to her. So why had she stayed on the staff of the politically incorrect
Rainer Clinic for fifteen years?

“Is the clinic definitely closing?” I ventured. “Dr. Rainer seemed to hold out hope that his daughter might take it over.”

“Megan,” Isadora said coldly, “hates the money with which she supports a husband and two children. She wants to go live among
towering pines and eat tuberous begonias. She will not take over the practice when Jen … when Dr. Rainer retires. Which will
happen in a matter of days, thanks to you and this demented crap about one of us killing our patients. Once a rumor like this
gets out, the clinic is finished. Jennings isn’t ready to broadcast the information, but yes, the Rainer Clinic will close
this week. He and Megan and I have already canceled all procedures scheduled after tomorrow, when the story will hit the press.
The police said this interview would take about fifteen minutes. Your time’s up.”

“Mind if I use your bathroom?” BB asked, already moving toward a hallway off the main room. “Gotta—”

“Just use the bathroom and then get out of here,” she snapped, really angry now. She didn’t want BB in her house, especially
in her private space. I could see that his request to use the bathroom was, to her, an invasion. Women don’t react to men
the way Grecchi did for no reason.

“We’ll be gone shortly,” I said. “I know this is unpleasant for you.”

With BB out of the room there was a difference in the woman facing me. A sliver of openness. And a look.

Don’t go any further,
it said.

I wanted to put a hand on her shoulder but there was something about Isadora Grecchi that wouldn’t be touched. Instead I suggested
that she return to her painting while BB and I made our exit. She agreed, and as we left I saw her dabbing at the canvas with
the brush in her left hand, while with her right she held up the middle finger at our retreating backs.

Outside, BB said, “Computer in the bedroom
with
a phone line, so our lady of the bad hair can send e-mails. Lotta pills in the bathroom.”

“Pills? Did you get any of the names?”

He rolled his eyes and then said, “Klonopin, Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, Neurontin, Nardil, Parnate.”

“Write them down once we get in the truck. I don’t know about the rest of them, but Prozac’s a popular antidepressant. Rox
will know what they are. Looks like we might have a suspect. Grecchi’s a ticking bomb.”

“The lady don’ like men, tha’s for sure,” he said while writing. “But she ain’t no dyke. Hard to get a call on that one.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to get a call on Isadora Grecchi, in whom something painful lay tightly curled. Then I remembered my
conversation with Roxie when Rathbone first asked us to work on the case.

“What if we’re tracking down a woman?”

What if we were?

Our next appointment was for three-thirty with Thomas J. Eldridge, the surgical assistant, at his home in Carlsbad. To reach
the northern coastal suburb we had to go back up 1-5 past La Jolla and a sequence of beach communities. By Del Mar, the first
village beyond La Jolla, BB’s stomach was growling.

“We’ll find someplace in Del Mar to get a sandwich,” I said. “I need to call Rathbone anyway.”

Del Mar’s main street, Camino Del Mar, is part of the old Coast Highway, originally a horse path with breathtaking views of
the Pacific. The current population far exceeds what the street can offer in the way of parking spaces, so I headed for Del
Mar Plaza. The new and relentlessly upscale shopping center has an underground parking lot. My satisfaction at being able
to park obscured my judgment, however. I’d forgotten that BB and I looked as if we’d wandered off the set for a movie involving
black ghetto criminals in Jane Austen’s England. The mâitre d’ at my favorite restaurant tried valiantly not to scream when
we approached his podium at the door of the restaurant.

“Two, please,” I said.

BB pulled his pants up to his waist, although since they weren’t supposed to be there, they didn’t stay.

“Of course,” we were told, and then escorted to a table in the rear near a small bar not currently in use. The bar acted as
a wall between us and the other patrons.

“I’d prefer a table with a view,” I said.

“I’ll see if one is available.”

At two-ten in the afternoon most of the tables were empty.

“Look like about sixty available,” BB noted, giving the man a sizing-up look I was sure he’d learned in prison. “The lady
want a
nice
view.”

The mâitre d’ sighed in a way which suggested that escorting people to tables in restaurants was an exhausting job with weighty
philosophical ramifications.

“Will this do?” he said into a space of thin air between us, indicating a window table with a presentable view of the Pacific
Ocean.

“Sho nuff,” BB said. Menacing grin. Lots of teeth.

“Don’t overdo it,” I told BB, and then ordered the restaurant’s signature salad—a salmon jerky Caesar with wonton croutons.

BB ordered a salad of greens, apples, caramelized walnuts, sun-dried cranberries, and balsamic maple dressing topped with
goat cheese fondue. We decided to split the entree, barbecued sugar-spiced king salmon with garlic mashed potatoes. BB was
impressed with the food.

“Don’t get nuthin’ like this in prison,” he joked. “Or nowhere else. What kinda food
is
this, Blue?”

“California cuisine,” I told him. “What that means is a creative chef and a mix of styles ranging from Tex-Mex to Pacific
Rim. I’m going to call Rathbone, see if there’s anything new we need to know before the Eldridge interview. I wish I knew
what I’m doing.”

“Two outta five,” he said. “So far my money on Grecchi. Somethin’
off
about her.”

I agreed with BB. Isadora Grecchi was wound as tightly as the mile of rubber band inside a golf ball. Had something cracked
the tough surface, causing her to unravel? And even if so, would a woman to whom the plight of women is so important threaten
and possibly kill women?