Chapter 18 #2
“She was a tramp,” Noreen said. “She was barely out of college and looking for a sugar daddy, and Henry was as weak willed as any man. Henry was the most clockwork man I ever worked for. Same schedule, week in and week out, for decades. And all of a sudden, there were gaps in his appointment book. Little mystery windows, fifteen or twenty minutes, tucked into places where he never had gaps. Like I wasn’t going to notice.
” She looked at me. “He was sneaking off to Charleston. Booking hotels. Sneaking her into his house at night.”
I raised my brows at that. “Sounds like you followed him.”
“Of course I did. Someone had to look out for him.”
“But the problem was she didn’t go away,” Dash said.
“She wasn’t just a fling. And when the demands for blackmail started coming Henry wasn’t as keen to keep a secret as James was.
In fact, Henry only made one payment, and that was because Serena begged him to because she was afraid of her father’s response. ”
“Sounds like she was right to be afraid,” Noreen said. “If he found out he very well could have killed Henry.”
“He didn’t,” Dash said. “We have an excellent researcher on our team, and last night she was finally able to find an alibi for Byron Jameson. There was an article written about a speech he gave for an award one of his colleagues was given. All the way in Salt Lake City, Utah. So no, Byron was not Henry’s killer.
And he had no reason to blackmail anyone.
The killer and blackmailer are one and the same. ”
“Is that right?” she asked.
“Henry had asked Serena to marry him,” I said. “That’s why he didn’t care if the blackmailer told the world about their relationship.”
I could tell by the way her eyes widened that she was surprised by that bit of information.
“Despicable,” she said, shaking her head. “The scandal would have ruined anyone associated with him. Add in James’s infidelity we’d have had to close the clinic.”
“But then you would have had trouble with your little side business,” Dash said. “Did you know Henry had fathered a child?”
Noreen was trying to work out what Dash had just said about the side business, but the new topic was too juicy for her to resist.
“I saw the pregnancy test results,” she said. “He ran the test and put it in her chart himself. This made me curious because he never did that, so I went to check and see what he was hiding.”
“You needed the information to protect him,” I said reassuringly.
“Someone had to. The fool. Henry Wainwright was the best man I ever knew,” she said.
“And the finest doctor. Kind, decent, good to his core. He had no business getting tangled up with a girl young enough to be his daughter, and frankly she had no business pursuing a man that far out of her league.” Her voice didn’t waver, but something behind it did. “He deserved better than what he got.”
“Did you have feelings for him?” I asked. “Beyond professional loyalty.”
She picked up her coffee mug and set it back down without drinking. She looked at the crossword. Then she looked at me.
“That would be silly,” she said. “He obviously wasn’t attracted to women his own age.”
I didn’t dig further into that can of worms.
“We know it was you, Noreen,” Dash said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. It sounds like you were running a pretty slick operation. But you made a mistake.”
Her mouth opened and closed, and I knew she was dying to ask what she did wrong.
“I’ll tell you,” he continued. “You made a mistake in handwriting the notes. Neat block lettering, slightly tilted. Very consistent, very distinctive.” He paused.
“You transcribed Henry’s notes into patient files for years because you were the only one who could read his handwriting.
You’d write in cursive until you got to certain medications, or if there were important notations that needed to be more visible.
And then you switched to block lettering.
Just like the blackmail notes. Patterns never lie. ”
“Well, I’ll be,” she said, staring at Dash in awe. “I guess I should have been more careful about that.”
Then she laughed and I felt chills dance up my arms.
“I ran that clinic,” she said. “Not helped run it—ran it. The schedules, the correspondence, the billing, the patient relations, the board communications, the supply orders, all of it. I transcribed Henry’s chicken scratch into something a human being could actually read, which was itself a full-time job.
I dealt with difficult patients and difficult board members and difficult insurance companies, and I did it all without being asked twice and without making a fuss. ”
She paused, her breathing ragged.
“And do you know what Henry said to me on my twentieth anniversary at the clinic? He said, ‘Noreen, I don’t know what we’d do without you.
’ That was it. No raise. No bonus. Not even a thank you card.
And when the clinic closed after he died, I got nothing.
Not a letter of reference. Not a word from James. Nothing.”
There was a tremor in her voice that belied the gentle expression on her face.
“I’d been sitting on information about half of Grimm Island for years,” she said.
“Patient files. Private correspondence. Phone calls people had in the waiting room thinking nobody was listening. I was always listening. I knew which prominent families had secrets they’d pay to protect.
Which public figures had habits that would end their careers.
Which marriages were held together by nothing but mutual embarrassment.
” She looked at Dash. “It started as a thought. And then it became a letter. And the payment came and nobody came looking. So I wrote another letter. And another. I needed a good retirement system after all.”
“How many?” Dash asked.