Chapter 11 #4
Noreen Goble lived on a quiet street off Rivers Avenue in a white vinyl-sided bungalow with black shutters and a front porch that had been lived on hard and happily.
There was a ceramic rooster by the front door and enough wind chimes strung along the porch that you could hear them from the curb, a whole chorus of them turning in the late afternoon breeze.
She answered the bell before I’d finished ringing it.
Noreen was somewhere in her late seventies, a small round woman in a yellow linen blouse with reading glasses hanging from a beaded chain around her neck and white pants. Her salt-and-pepper hair was permed into tight curls and her lipstick was coral. Her eyes were brown and sharp.
“Right on time,” she said, and stepped back to let us in. She looked much too excited to see us considering what we were there for.
She walked us into a living room where every surface held something— photographs and figurines and stacked magazines and a collection of ceramic roosters that suggested the one outside was only the beginning. Nothing was dusty.
She settled us onto a floral sofa, took the wingback across from us, and folded her hands in her lap. A calico cat materialized from somewhere and jumped onto the arm of her chair.
“Can I get you anything? I’ve got sweet tea and lemonade.”
“No, thank you,” Dash and I both said. I was floating considering all the coffee and tea I’d been served on this trip.
“Deidre tells me you’re looking into Henry’s death,” she said, eyes sparkling. “Isn’t that something? I’ve never been questioned in an investigation before.”
“We believe Henry was murdered,” Dash said.
“Oh, I know he was. I’ve always known.” She set her glass down.
“Henry Wainwright was the finest man I ever worked for. A man like that doesn’t shoot himself.
Not in a million years. I told my friend Jan as soon as I got the news.
I said, ‘Jan, there is no way Henry Wainwright shot himself in the head.’”
“What was he like?” I asked.
“Like working for a saint, if saints were also funny and remembered your birthday and never once raised their voice. Twenty-some years I sat at that front desk. I knew every patient he had. I knew their families. I knew who was sick and who was getting better and who was never going to.” She smoothed the fabric of her slacks.
“His handwriting was a catastrophe. I’d have to ask him to read his own notes back to me half the time.
And he never minded. Not once.” She shook her head.
“Do you know he paid a man’s mortgage off one Christmas?
Man had been coming in for years and couldn’t always make his copay and Henry decided to help him out.
Never told a soul. I only knew because I processed the paperwork. ”
She scratched behind the cat’s ears and it purred loudly.
“He had a patient in those last months—young man, addict, broke into the clinic looking for samples. Got through the back window before the alarm scared him off. Henry didn’t want to press charges.
Paid for the boy’s rehab himself. That’s the kind of man he was.
” She shook her head. “Then he went out and bought a gun for his desk. Said he wanted something close at hand when he was working late. Which—I’m telling you—was happening more and more toward the end.
Coming in tired. Distracted. I knew he was working on something, but he wouldn’t say what. ”
Her voice dropped to a whisper so I had to lean forward to hear.
“And then there was the other business. The business at the clinic that Henry didn’t know about.
” She looked at us and there was an unholy glee in her eyes.
“Jackie Henshaw and James Everett were carrying on, and James a married man. Right under Henry’s nose.
I know because I caught them myself—walked into exam room two one lunch hour to restock the supply cabinet and there they were. Boy, did I get a surprise.”
The wind chimes tinkled outside.
“I never told Henry, though. I sometimes wonder if I should have, but I know things like that always have a way of coming to the surface.”
“Did they?”
“I know James and his wife separated for a time, but it didn’t stick. You never know what goes on in a person’s marriage, that’s for sure.”
“We found Henry’s appointment book,” I told her.
She laughed. “And good luck deciphering it. Chicken scratches and initials. I don’t know how he kept up with what.
I’d take his messages and make his appointments for him, and then go put sticky notes on his desk so he could transfer it into his appointment book.
I knew every board member by name, every donor who called, every patient who had a complaint. ” She tilted her head.
“Did Henry have a personal life? Any outside relationships that you know of?” Dash asked. I could tell he was testing the waters of her knowledge.
“It doesn’t feel right to speak of the dead that way.”
I took that to mean that she was going to anyway.
“But Henry was a man after all, and like the Bible says, ‘it’s not good for man to be alone.’” She patted the back of her head, and none of the sausage-like curls on her head moved an inch.
“Serena Jameson,” she said, clucking her tongue.
“Beautiful young thing. She came by the clinic a few times. The first time she’d made an appointment as a patient, but I caught on pretty quick that she was never just a patient.
But I didn’t tell anyone. The scandal would have rocked the whole island. ”
“Did you ever listen in on calls?” Dash asked her candidly.
She met his eyes without a flicker. “Occasionally a call would come through on the wrong line and I’d stay on a moment before I hung off.” She said it without apology. “But there’s nothing I can think of that can help you find who killed Henry.”
“Would Henry have been upset about James and Jackie’s affair?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “He thought the world of James’s wife, Edie.
I never liked Jackie. She was like a cat in heat.
She had her cap set for Henry when she first got to the office, and he never paid her the time of day.
So I guess she decided to settle for James since he was one of those men who had a wandering eye. ”
“Did Jackie know about Henry and Serena?” Dash asked.
For the first time Noreen stopped and thought before she answered. “Yes. She did.”