Chapter Nine
Gage
Zane eyes me over the huge breakfast Lucille laid out for us. Scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, bacon, sausage, toast, and pancakes. It’s like dining at a buffet, and it’s all I can do to eat at a normal pace and not cram it all into my mouth at once.
I didn’t eat dinner last night. One of our cases finally broke wide open and we worked until late wrapping it up. Besides Zarah texting and asking what my favorite cookie is (plain old chocolate chip), she was quiet all day. I missed her like crazy, and I couldn’t resist loading Baby into the truck and driving out. Falling into her bed felt like heaven.
The delicious scents of coffee and bacon woke me up, and also Zarah’s light touch skimming over my morning wood.
I told her if she was going to tease me, then she better be prepared to fork it over, and she did, on top, very thoroughly.
Now her big brother is sizing me up, his eyebrow cocked, noting my relaxed state and the goofy smile I can’t keep off my face.
Zane’s a man, and I don’t have to put into words what my posture means. I see it on him and the way he kisses Stella’s hand between bites of pancake.
Lucille begins to clear the empty breakfast platters.
“Can I hitch a ride into the city?” he asks.
His request surprises me, and I mumble, “Sure.” How am I supposed to turn down Zane Maddox? The dude gets whatever he wants.
“Thanks. I’ll be ready to go in ten.”
“Right.”
Stella walks out of the dining room carrying her plate and mine. I feel foolish and object, but she insists I’m a guest and to shut up.
We’re alone, and I ask Zarah, “What are your plans today?”
She feeds Baby a piece of sausage and says, “I think Stella and I are going shopping. I want to find her a new dress to wear at the courthouse. You marked your calendar, right? You’ll be there?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Thanks.”
Zane pokes his head around the doorjamb holding a briefcase in his hand. “Ready to go? No time for more hanky-panky.”
Zarah blushes, and it’s adorable.
“We’ll find time later,” I say, smacking a kiss to her cheek. “Have fun today.”
“Be careful,” she says, scrubbing her fingers through my beard. I have to resist the urge to purr like a kitten.
“Always.”
I hurry and catch up to Zane in the foyer, Baby trotting along behind me, her ears perked.
He waits until we’re fifteen minutes into the drive to say, “Sorry I hurried you out of there. We have an appointment to talk to Iona Belsely.”
“We?” I ask. “And who?”
“Iona Belsely. She was the director at Quiet Meadows.”
“Why are we talking to her?”
“I want to know if she knows anything about what was going on there.”
I sigh and consider my words. I promised Zarah I wouldn’t tell Zane what happened at the facility, but I didn’t say I wouldn’t say anything at all. “I brought Zarah out there a couple of days ago.”
Zane scowls. “And you didn’t think to ask me, or her doctor, or, I don’t know, run the idea by her therapist ?” he asks angrily.
“You know I don’t like Jerricka Solis. I trust her about as much as I trust a kid around the stash of cookies Lucille gave me before we left.”
He glares. “Look, I know you love my sister, but I don’t think you know enough, or are qualified enough, to be involved in her care.”
I scoff. “You forget that Quiet Meadows is the reason she needs ‘care,’ as you so delicately put it. We both agreed there’s something going on, and that facility holds the key.”
“Hence the visit with Iona Belsely.”
“ Hence Zarah and I walking around the building.” I mock his tone.
“Fine,” he snaps. “Did you find anything?”
I pause. Obviously, the first thing on my mind is the video, and the second thing is my promise to Zarah not to show it to him.
Settling on a middle truth, I say, “Quiet Meadows has a...testing site. In the basement.”
All the blood rushes out of Zane’s face leaving him whiter than a ghost. “What?” He leans toward the dash, his eyes glassy, perspiration dotting his forehead.
“There’s a staff-only elevator in the doctor’s wing. Zarah knew the code. ”
“What were they testing? Did she remember?”
I pick and choose my words carefully. “If the drugs were...effective.”
“Stop the truck.”
I jerk to the side of the road and slam on the brakes.
Zane grapples frantically with his seatbelt buckle, and he bolts out of the cab, leaving his door hanging open. He drops to his knees and vomits into a snowbank the plow made clearing the highway.
Baby whines, and I reach over the seat and rub her neck.
I don’t look at his breakfast against the stark white because my own churns in my stomach. I held it together while Zarah relived her nightmare. It was the least I could do given the fact she went through it. God only knows how many times they tested her in the five years she spent at the sanatorium.
Maybe Zarah’s right after all. Maybe Zane has no fucking business watching that video. The son of a bitch was weak then, and he’s weak now.
Using a pristine handkerchief that’s as white as the snow he just puked in, he wipes his mouth and climbs into the truck. He slams the door shut, rests his head against the back of the seat, and closes his eyes. “Sorry.”
“No need to apologize.”
“Did she . . . did she remember details?”
“No,” I lie, my voice clipped.
“Thank God for small favors.”
“If you want.”
I’m pissed, my anger simmering close to the surface. I want to clock him, I really do. Let my demons come out to play all over his pathetic body.
“I deserve what you’re thinking.”
He fucking does deserve it, and I don’t say anything to deny it.
“I’ll fix it,” he insists.
“I’m not the one you need to say that to.”
“Yeah, I do. You love my sister, and you think I’m a despicable sack of dog shit.”
I throw him an annoyed glare. “I wasn’t even in the picture three months ago. You don’t owe me a goddamned thing. You owe those two women back there,” I say, jerking my thumb toward the rear window, “all that and more.”
“I don’t know what to do.” He slumps against the door, his handkerchief pressed to his lips.
“Buy that fucking piece of shit building and raze it.” The words slip out. I don’t fucking know how many millions of dollars I just told Zane to spend, but the second I say it, I like how right it feels.
“I’ll buy it all,” he mumbles, pulling his phone out of his jacket pocket.
“Buy it all?” What the fuck does he mean?
“This is Maddox,” Zane barks into his phone. “What are they going to do with Black Enterprises?”
A voice vibrates through the line, annoyed, like a mosquito buzzing.
“They aren’t going to find anything on Willow Black. They’ve been digging for a year and a half. She either doesn’t know anything or she’s covered her tracks so well they’ll never find them.”
There’s a pause as he listens.
“No, I don’t mean the companies. Those are gone. Any legal part of anything Clayton Black did will be sold off and liquidated. I mean the actual brick and mortar building. Make Willow an offer. Before this is over, everything Clayton and Ash Black owned will be mine.”
He disconnects, his hands shaking.
“The Blacks don’t own Quiet Meadows.”
Zane laughs, incredulous. “You’re like a fucking pit bull. You don’t give up.”
“I never will, Maddox. Remember that.”
Punching in another number, he scoffs. “My dad would have liked you.”
Hiding a smile, I ride the compliment all the way to the city.
“Iona Belsely landed on her feet.”
“A step down, maybe, but not too bad.”
When we neared the city limits, Zane was in control of himself again, jabbering on his phone, snapping orders. The Blacks owned extensive property. Between calls, Zane explained he couldn’t actually buy everything the Blacks had acquired over the years nor did he want to, but the skyscraper was a top priority along with a few other buildings that housed businesses that could bring in big paydays if run legally. Hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, but not Ladies and Gentlemen. “That place could burn to the ground and I wouldn’t give two fucks,” Zane said.
He seemed satisfied by the time we pulled into the parking lot of a little assisted living facility.
“Did the Feds ever find anything on her?” I ask, turning the key in the ignition, the engine clicking and cooling in the silence.
“Nope. I mean, she could have been lying left, right, and center, but there weren’t any money trails like there were for Zarah’s doctor. She was paid well, but that doesn’t mean she was keeping secrets. If she was in Ash’s pocket, they hid it well enough no one found any evidence. Come on.” Zane gets out and leaves his briefcase on the floorboard.
I attach Baby’s service vest to her back. I don’t want her to sit in the truck by herself. I don’t know what Zane thinks Iona Belsely knows and we could be a while.
The lobby smells like school glue and old people, and Baby presses her body against my leg. It’s not the old people. It’s the scent of death. People come here to sit around and wait to die. Pleasant.
“We have an appointment to see Iona Belsely,” Zane tells the receptionist.
Her eyes widen. She knows exactly who he is. “I’ll let her know you’re here.”
She picks up a phone, presses a button, and murmurs into the receiver. Hanging up, she says, “Miss Belsely can see you now. She’s down the hall, first door on your left.”
“Thanks.”
The building is homier than Quiet Meadows. A lot homier than Quiet Meadows. The facility’s carpeted, and the walls are painted a beige tinged with a pink cast. Potted plants are everywhere, and several conversation areas invite friends and family to sit with their loved ones and chat. The hallway that leads us to Iona’s office is covered in the same dark green carpet, and there are pretty watercolor prints hanging on the walls.
Her door’s shut, and Zane raps only once. The cocky son of a bitch doesn’t wait for a reply and barges his way in.
I’ve never met Iona Belsely. All I know of her is that she used to be Quiet Meadows’ director. Any and everything went through her. There wasn’t much mention of her in the news—maybe they couldn’t charge her with anything.
“Mr. Maddox,” she says, sitting behind a massive desk and glaring, her mouth turned down into a perpetual frown. “And you are?” she snaps at me.
“Gage Davenport. This is Baby. She’s harmless.”
Her gaze softens for a moment. She must like dogs. “I highly doubt that. Nothing associated with the Maddoxes is harmless.”
“I’m sorry you’re still stinging after what happened,” Zane says, sliding into a seat without being invited to do so.
I follow suit, dropping into a mint green Naugahyde chair, the armrests a blonde oak. Baby sits next to me, her body stiff, alert. She’s on the job.
Iona folds her hands on a blotter, paperwork covering every inch. “It will always shame me that I didn’t know what was going on under my own roof.”
Zane shakes his head. “You can’t mean to tell me you had no idea what was happening at the facility? That my sister was an experiment?”
Iona’s eyes widen. “What are you talking about?”
“Ashton Black was drugging her—”
“We all know that now , Mr. Maddox. I had no idea that Mr. Black didn’t have your sister’s best interests at heart or that he was conspiring with her psychiatrist. I never associated with Miss Maddox...that wasn’t in my job description there, nor is associating with patients what I do here. Why did you want to speak to me?”
“I wanted to ask if you knew about the testing site in the basement.”
Iona presses her lips together. “Yes. I knew about the space. Whether it’s accurate to call it a testing site, that’s not for me to say. That area was protected by Dr. Pederson and I wasn’t privy to what went on down there. Even the cleaning staff wasn’t allowed in the basement.”
I wish I would have been prepared to speak to her. I don’t have the files of the dead girls or their pictures on me. “Did you know JodiAnne Connelly? Or Savannah Mesa? Do you remember Marci Grayson?”
“I think you need to leave.”
Zane and I trade a look and I ask, “Then you do remember them. Do you know they’re all dead?”
She covers her mouth with a trembling hand and tears fill her eyes. “I did, yes, but may I—may I ask how?”
“JodiAnne died of an alleged cardiac arrest. Savannah of alleged suicide. And Marci fell down a flight of stairs and broke her neck.”
“When you say ‘alleged,’ what do you mean?”
“I mean, JodiAnne’s mother suspected foul play and asked my father and me to investigate. Savannah’s sister hired us to look into her suicide. Meredith seemed convinced that while her sister had mental health issues, she’d never do that. Especially since she was engaged at the time of her death.”
“And Marci?”
“I spoke to her mother and read a page of Marci’s diary. She was sure someone was watching her. In fact, all the girls exhibited paranoia of that nature. No one paid it any attention because of the issues they’d had in the past.”
Iona ages a million years in front of my eyes. “I heard about the girls in the news, but I wasn’t aware of the circumstances. Did you see this article in today’s paper?”
It isn’t above the fold, just a brief article two pages in on the bottom right accompanied by a grainy black and white photo of a slender young woman who has black hair and large eyes. I read the text beneath the photo: Thirty-year old Stacy Birmingham was found dead in Bryant Park today by a jogger on an early morning run. The KCPD is investigating what appears to be a drug overdose. No other information is available at this time.
“She was a patient at Quiet Meadows?”
Iona nods.
Zane watches our exchange.
“Why was she there?”
She doesn’t answer, only stares at her hands.
“Miss Belsely, she’s dead. Confidentiality isn’t much of an issue.”
Iona blows out a sigh. “You’re right, of course. Nothing matters now. She was a patient of Dr. Pederson’s. He specialized in bipolar disorder, and Stacy was diagnosed bipolar with symptoms of schizophrenia just like JodiAnne Connelly. Dr. Pederson liked the mystery of it. What a mental illness could do to the mind and how chemicals could solve it. Medication, you know.”
“Why do you think Stacy Birmingham is dead?”
“The article says she died of a drug overdose.”
“Iona, why do you think Stacy Birmingham is dead?” I ask again, more firmly. She has a theory, and it’s wanting to burst from her lips like water pushing against a crack in a dam.
“Because when Quiet Meadows closed, Dr. Pederson lost control of his patients. He couldn’t monitor them on a daily, even hourly, basis as he had in the past. His treatments wore off and the girls buckled under their illnesses.”
“Why didn’t he keep seeing them as patients?”
“Dr. Pederson was using research grant money awarded to Quiet Meadows. When the facility closed, the grant was rescinded. He didn’t have the funds or the physical space to keep his studies going.”
“Was Zarah a part of that?”
Iona shakes her head. “No. Her chart indicated she was beyond treatment.”
She pales, and Zane hisses.
I ignore him. He can explode later. “Dr. Pederson still practices.”
“Yes, but he no longer participates in the drug trials. He’s back to strictly psychiatric care. Therapy. I heard he’s dabbling in holistic medicine of all things.”
“He works with Dr. Jerricka Solis.”
She shrugs. “He’s a well-respected doctor. I’m sure he collaborates with several therapists in the area.”
“Do you know her?”
“She walked the rounds at Quiet Meadows now and again.”
“Did she ever visit Zarah?”
Iona leans back and rubs her cheeks. “I don’t know. I was the facility’s director and spent most of my time in my office. I was rarely informed of what the doctors did, unless they needed more staffing. The human resources paperwork went through me for approval.”
“The girls who are dead, you’re saying they relapsed because they were no longer under Dr. Pederson’s care.”
“I’m saying that could be why Stacy Birmingham is dead. The other girls you mentioned sound like they passed away due to other causes.”
It’s hard to argue with that. When the ME says a woman died from cardiac arrest, the woman died from cardiac arrest.
I look to Zane to see if he has anything else to ask. Apparently, he hadn’t been any better prepared for this appointment than I was. He doesn’t have much to say.
“What did the facility do with patients who didn’t have the capacity to recover?” he asks.
“Nothing. They were treated just like all our other patients, so long as their families could afford to pay. We had a few elderly celebrity clients who couldn’t live on their own and their families hid them at Quiet Meadows to keep them out of the news. A handful of the patients had been clients well before I was hired. If you hadn’t discharged Miss Maddox, she could have been a resident for the rest of her life.”
“You never thought to question Ashton Black?”
“Why? When he visited, he did what he liked and everyone answered to him. Even Dr. Pederson. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the funding Dr. Pederson received came from Mr. Black. He was very curious about Dr. Pederson’s drug trials. After he’d visit Miss Maddox, he would follow Dr. Pederson on his rounds. He quite enjoyed seeing those patients miserable, defeated, depressed. There was a spark in his eyes whenever he toured the facility. He enjoyed others’ suffering, as I’m sure you are aware.”
“Yes, he liked to hurt people,” Zane mutters.
There’s a lot of talk about Ash, but...“Did Senator Cook ever visit Quiet Meadows?”
Iona swallows and looks like she wants to be anywhere but in her little office under our interrogation. “Why are you asking?”
“Because we’ve come into some information he owns Quiet Meadows and did during the years Zarah was a patient there.”
She forces herself to smile. “Then it stands to reason he would visit, yes?”
“I was just wondering.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“Thanks for your time, Miss Belsely.”