Chapter Thirty-Two Tess Angelhart
Chapter Thirty-Two
Tess Angelhart
When Luisa and Nate walked into the den, they were arguing. Tess said, “Guys, shhh.” She pointed to the phone that was pressed
to her ear.
Tess refocused on listening to the woman on the other end of the line. She continued to write rapidly on the pad in front
of her. “Yes, uh-huh, okay, great. I appreciate all your help. Thank you.”
She ended the call and did a fist pump into the air. “Wow.”
“Who was that?” Luisa asked.
When Tess looked up, she noticed that Nate wasn’t in the room.
“Where’s Nate?”
“Doing what Nate does,” Luisa said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “What did you learn? Good news?”
“Maybe,” Tess said. “I made a connection. It might not mean anything, but it might mean everything.”
She took a deep breath. She was way too wired. She grabbed a water bottle out of the minifridge hidden in the bookshelf—under
the hidden bar—and drank half of it.
“Lay it out,” Luisa said.
Tess went over to the whiteboard that Gabriel had set up for her. She wrote a name at the top of the board.
Hollander & Wyck Laboratories.
“I just got off the phone with a totally disgruntled employee who used to work for them. She had a lot of things to say, most
of which were useless, but I think I have a connection.”
“Who are they?” Lu asked, grabbing a water bottle for herself and sitting down on the leather sofa.
“A small, private research lab that was bought up by a major pharmaceutical company when they created a state-of-the-art prosthetic
device. They aren’t important. Except for the fact that Willa Blankenship, Mildred Maddox, and Peter Stockman all worked there at the same time.”
“Interesting,” Lu said. “But not illegal. Even if Mildred hired a former colleague to work with her in the VA, it’s not illegal.
How did you find this out?”
“LinkedIn. I went through the LinkedIn profiles of everyone we have and started charting their employment history, to see
if they match up other than the VA. And I got Hollander & Wyck. I reached out to a couple former employees with no connection
to the VA and one actually talked to me. That’s how I found out that Peter Stockman—who doesn’t have a LinkedIn profile—worked
with Willa and Mildred at Hollander & Wyck.”
“Good work,” Luisa said. “How can we use this?”
“I don’t know, I’m still making connections.
I have more Hollander & Wyck former employees who aren’t with the VA, but maybe they connect up elsewhere—like with Neurovantix.
And not everyone is on LinkedIn, though I’ve found that some people will start a page and put in their information and then just forget about it.
It’s not up-to-date, but it has some history.
And my new contact gave me more names to check out.
Still, that Stockman was associating with the same people who ran this corrupt trial, that tells me they might all be involved in some way. ”
Luisa looked at her board, nodded. “Devil’s advocate: Neurovantix was a small subdivision of a larger company, and only Willa
Blankenship is connected to it, right?” She pointed to Tess’s chart. “Are you suggesting that because Willa knew people here
in Phoenix that she decided to run the trial here? Was she even in charge of that decision?”
“I don’t have any evidence suggesting she was or wasn’t,” Tess said. “I’m giving you facts that I know. Margo and Jack talked
to Mildred Maddox, who appeared to let her staff handle everything and she barely even supervised. Well, I suppose there’s
a lot of paperwork in that position.”
“You’re digressing.”
“Right. Sorry. Well, we only know about Peter Stockman because he was promoted to replace her. But now we know that he and
Mildred worked together in the past, Willa worked with them in the past, and they are all involved in some way with the Neurovantix
trial.”
“This is a good direction,” Luisa concurred. “You’ve done a lot of work.”
“But we don’t have proof of anything.”
“We’re getting there.”
Tess felt that she was on the right path, but she was still running backgrounds on each person in the VA administration and
research departments, anyone who was listed on their website. She also had a full list of doctors from the public search database,
but that was virtually insurmountable to research. The administration alone was time-consuming.
“Did anything come from your meeting with Novak?” Tess asked.
“We couldn’t talk to him, but his nurse was super helpful. I think I know what happened on Monday to the file Liz was looking at.”
Luisa explained how records couldn’t be deleted, but they could be merged and, essentially, made to disappear.
“I told Jack and Margo,” Luisa said, “and we agree that when Liz saw the file missing, she contacted Medical Records. Maybe
an IT request, or maybe she talked to someone specifically.”
“But how did they know to delete it—I mean merge—so that it was gone?”
“I have two theories on that,” Luisa said. “Either someone flagged the file and knew Liz saw it that morning during Novak’s
appointment, and subsequently merged it, or Liz filed an IT request about the missing data, which alerted the medical records
department and then someone merged the file because they didn’t want anyone asking questions.” She paused, then added, “Or
a third option is that she mentioned it to someone she shouldn’t have.”
“But why kill her?” Tess asked.
“Perhaps they felt the questions would shine a light on their fraud,” Luisa said. “Remember Dr. Pierce said the drug is up
for approval next week.”
“Killing her seems unnecessary,” Tess said. Her heart went out to the boys who’d lost their parents. “She couldn’t have known
why it was important, and they could have given her the run-around for a week or two.”
“She called Margo,” Luisa said.
“How could they have known that?” Tess said, worried about her sister.
Luisa shrugged.
“How big is the medical records department?” Tess asked.
“They have fourteen people on staff at the VA full-time,” Lu said. “There are a couple people who work part-time. I have a
list.”
“How did you get that?”
Lu hesitated. “I’d rather not say.”
Tess sighed. Lu was going to get them in trouble if she hacked into the wrong system. “I won’t ask.”
“We’re on the right path, I think,” Lu said. “I’m going to run through some of these names and see who was working on Monday.
But first, I just got an idea on how I can get Annette Blankenship talk to me.”
“How?”
Luisa grinned, pulled out her phone, and a minute later said, “Yes, hello, this is Luisa with Banner Health in Phoenix. I
need to speak with Dr. Annette Blankenship regarding one of her patients who was admitted to our hospital this morning. Yes,
I’ll hold, thank you.”
Luisa winked at Tess, who realized this was exactly something Margo would do. Tess couldn’t lie that smoothly.
A minute later, Luisa put the call on speaker and said, “Dr. Blankenship? Yes, this is Luisa Angelhart with Angelhart Investigations.
I’m calling about your mother, Willa. Don’t hang up. I need to talk to her, but can’t seem to locate her.”
“I’m not in contact with my parents. Why do you need to speak with them?” Annette said.
“It’s about a drug trial she worked on four years ago with Neurovantix and the Veterans Administration.”
“And you’re with which health care system?”
“I’m a private investigator hired by someone who was harmed by the Neurovantix trial, and it’s imperative that I speak with
your mother about the records we have uncovered in the course of our investigation.”
Annette laughed. “You want to serve her papers, don’t you?”
“It hasn’t come to that yet,” Luisa said. “I’m simply reviewing the raw data from the trial and need to ask clarifying questions.”
“Well, good luck. I don’t even have her phone number.”
Odd, Tess thought and sat down on the couch. She leaned closer to the phone, though she could hear perfectly well.
“What about an address?”
“Sure, I’ll do that. One minute.”
Annette put her on hold and Luisa frowned. “If she hangs up, I’ll be pissed.”
“You’re good,” Tess whispered.
Luisa grinned. “Thanks. It’s fun.”
A few seconds later, Annette returned. She rattled off an address and then said, “That’s in Booker Bay, Australia.”
“She moved to Australia?”
“Yes. A little over three years ago. Took a position at a research hospital in Sydney, didn’t even discuss it with my sister
or me. Our family has never been particularly close, but moving across the world? It was a shock. And at the time, my sister
was in the middle of a high-risk pregnancy. She was very sick and needed help with her other kids. Our mom had planned to
spend two months with her before and after the birth, then canceled and said they were moving. I can’t say it was out of character,
but it did surprise us.”
“Do you know what hospital she’s working at?”
“No,” Annette said. “They send birthday and Christmas cards and that’s it. Dad has called a couple of times, but whenever
I ask questions about when they’re going to visit, he says they’re too busy. My dad was a high school chemistry teacher. He
says he’s teaching at a school there, but . . .”
“You don’t believe him?”
“No. I don’t know. Look, I don’t mean to sound bitter, but my parents, and my mother in particular, has never been all that interested in our lives.
I don’t even know why they had children in the first place.
I look at my sister and think she was made to be a mom, and it certainly wasn’t because of the example our mother set. ”
Tess and Luisa exchanged looks.
“Do you know of anyone who is in contact with your mother? Maybe someone she worked with at Neurovantix or another company?”
“Aunt Mildred. I’m sure they’re still in touch.”
Tess frowned. She mouthed, Willa is an only child.
Luisa asked, “Is she your mother’s sister? Do you have a last name?”
“She’s my mom’s aunt, but they’re only, like, ten or twelve years apart. Mildred Maddox. Last I heard she had retired. Ms.
Angelhart, I really have to go. I have a patient waiting for me.”
Annette hung up without a goodbye.
But they got what they needed.
“Mildred Maddox is Willa’s aunt? They’re related?” Tess was excited. She ran back to her computer to see what she could learn
from the public databases. “They knew each other before Willa started working on the trial. Did Maddox specifically want Willa
in there? Or did Willa use her aunt to smooth the way for the trial here? Did anyone know they were related?”
Of course, Luisa didn’t have the answers, but Tess would find out.
Luisa whistled softly. “Wow, nice place.”
Tess looked up from her own computer screen and Lu turned her computer to reveal a beautiful home on a bay surrounded by water
and trees.
“Gorgeous,” Tess said. “Where is it?”
“About twenty minutes north of Sydney. The median home price in Sydney, Australia, is 1.3 million dollars.”
“They sold their house in New York. They could probably afford it.”
“They lived in Syracuse,” Luisa said and typed.
“They sold their house for just over seven hundred thousand. I don’t know what they owed the bank, but they had lived there for over twenty-five years, so we can assume they had ample equity.
But this house on the water?” More typing.
“Last sold—three years ago—wow. Nearly four million Australian dollars. The exchange rate is roughly 1.5 Australian dollars for every US dollar, so going there they’d benefit, but still, that’s a lot of money for a teacher who made ninety thousand a year and a research scientist who made—based on average salary for the industry in her position and experience—maybe 130 a year. ”
“They could have family money,” Tess offered.
“Or they were paid off by someone who didn’t want her exposing the corrupt trial. Maddox is wealthy. Didn’t you say her house
here is two million and her house in Wyoming is close to five?”
“Yes.”
“And what does her husband do?”
“He was the CEO of a company. I don’t remember which one. He retired at the same time she did. They could easily have ample
resources to own both properties.”
“So maybe Maddox gave her niece the money, but why?” Luisa wondered. “Devin was dead, Dad was in prison, why did Willa leave?”
“Send everything you have to Margo and Jack. Maybe they should go back to Mildred and ask about Willa Blankenship.”
Luisa sent the info to Margo, then asked Tess, “Have you heard from Mom?”
Tess shook her head. “Not since last night.”
“I’m worried about Dad.”
Tess was too. But Luisa rarely said she was worried about anything, so her voicing it made Tess doubly worried.