The Plague Doctor Read online

  “No, but he’s out of his funk and that’s almost as good as far as I’m concerned. He had me really scared when he just sat in the corner and wouldn’t talk. It was eerie. Almost like he was catatonic or something.”

  “So you had a nice visit, dear.”

  Mother had seen Cassie drive up and came to join in the welcome.

  “As nice a visit as you can have with your boyfriend when he is in jail accused of murder, Gran.”

  “No need to be sarcastic, dear.”

  “I’m sorry. Yes, we had a nice visit.”

  She turned to me, “Ethan wants to see you, Mom.”

  “Me? He won’t talk to a lawyer but he wants to talk to me?”

  “That’s right. And soon. Can you go down there now? Chief Joiner said it would be okay.”

  “Are you going back with me?”

  She looked a little disappointed, “No, he wants to see you alone.”

  So, alone I went. After Andy Joiner helped me park Watson in one of the narrow little spaces behind the building that served as the Rowan Springs City Hall, Fire Department, and the Lakeland County Jail, he led me thorough a back door and down a long, narrow hallway to Ethan’s cell. A deputy parked himself in a chair just out of sight and sat nervously waiting for me to scream for help.

  Ethan stood up when I entered and helped Andy close the door behind me, then he politely offered me a seat on the opposite bunk to his. Both beds were clean and neat, with snowy white sheets and dark blue wool blankets.

  The cell walls and floor had been recently painted, and no graffiti or foul odors could be seen or sniffed. I was impressed. I would have to register to vote, so I could back Andy in the next election.

  Ethan looked a little tired and wan, but he was clean-shaven and neatly dressed in jeans and a starched blue chambray shirt with “Lakeland County Jail” stenciled over the breast pocket.

  Even though he had requested my presence, I knew he must be humiliated for me to see him under these circumstances. And to make matters worse, like an idiot, I started laughing. For a horrible moment I thought he was going to cry. I hurried to explain while mentally kicking myself for being so insensitive.

  “I used to have a shirt just like that, only I made it myself, I mean the jail part. I used an indelible magic marker and wrote ‘Oregon State Penitentiary’ on the front.” I directed him with a twirl of my index finger. “Turn around.”

  “Yep! It was just like yours, with big numbers across the back. I wore it to embarrass Mother when she insisted that I go with her to her shindigs.”

  He sat back down on his bunk and smiled.

  “And was she? Embarrassed, I mean? Somehow I doubt it.”

  Ethan was feeling a little better. He gave me another little smile.

  “And you would win the Kewpie doll. I was the one who always ended up being embarrassed because I was such a rebellious little creep.”

  “Not like Cassie at all.” He relaxed his long body against the wall.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and took at least one foot out of my mouth.

  “No. Cassie has been a lady since the day she was born. Just like her grandmother.”

  “Mrs. DeLeon, thanks for coming. I really appreciate it. I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused you and your family.”

  “Goodness, Ethan, you haven’t caused us any trouble. You’re the one in trouble—or haven’t you noticed?”

  He gave that “aw shucks” grin again, and I could tell he was feeling more like his old self.

  “I have to admit that I was badly thrown when they arrested me. I’m afraid it took me a while to come out of my depression. I’ve been in some tight spots before, but never something as low on the totem pole as this.”

  He stood up and walked over to the high little cell window. He was tall enough that he could see out.

  “My mother will never understand.” He turned back, his face grim again.

  “She’s like your mother, but without the kindness and sense of humor. To her, appearances and professional demeanor are everything. This will be the last straw in my checkered career. She’ll wash her hands of me even if I do get off scot-free. And it’s a given that she’ll fire me.”

  “Fire you, what do you mean, fire you? Mothers can’t stop loving their sons.”

  “You don’t understand. My mother is my boss at CDC.”

  “Dr. Eloise Haywood is your mother?”

  He seemed genuinely surprised that I knew her name.

  “Eh, I went with Cassie to send the e-mail to your office.”

  I thought quickly for a moment and decided to tell him everything.

  “We also brought your computer back to the farm for safekeeping,” I whispered.

  He sat down hard on his bunk. The springs made a loud and musical protest against his weight. I held my breath for his reaction.

  “Wow! Thank you, Mrs. DeLeon! At least she can’t accuse me of being careless with confidential information. Thanks to you and Cassie.”

  He got that goofy lovelorn look on his face.

  “I bet it was her idea, huh?”

  “Yes, Ethan,” I lied.

  The deputy yelled a terse warning for us to stop whispering.

  “Look, Ethan, Chief Joiner won’t let me stay in here much longer. We’d better get on with it. Why did you ask to see me?”

  He cleared his throat, and the Romeo look vanished.

  “Cassie told me when we first met about your work, I mean your detective work—writing the books and all. I was hoping you would help me out. Maybe you can find out what really happened.”

  He had turned a peculiar shade of red.

  “I want to ask you and Leonard Paisley to get me out of this mess.”

  Chapter Nine

  The afternoon was beautiful—sunny and warm—with a soft breeze from the south which lifted my hair and kissed my cheeks. High above, little fluffy white clouds scooted across an intense cerulean sky like naughty chicks scurrying home to mama. It was perfect weather, and there were no bars between me and the great outdoors. One hour in a jail cell was more than enough for me. I had left feeling infinitely sorry for Ethan.

  Too unsettled to go home just yet, I decided to walk around and sort out my feelings. Ethan’s request that I help him was not unexpected. I was already trying to help to some extent. But now that he was really counting on me to solve his problems, I wasn’t sure I was up to it.

  I tried to explain to him that I was not really a detective—just a writer who seemed to get in the middle of murderous muddles and had to figure her way out. I could not guarantee any results at all. But like others before him, he simply ignored what he called my modesty. He’d brightened like a hundred-watt bulb when I said I would do the best I could.

  Damn! Another muddle. Leonard had better put on his thinking cap for this one. It was a dilly.

  Rowan Springs had two main streets—one went north and the other south. When they met at the courthouse square, they divided and went east and west as well. It had been a very nifty plan when the town was founded over a hundred years ago. Amazingly enough, it still worked today—with the addition of one or two traffic lights and a four-way stop sign here and there.

  The jail, firehouse, and City Hall were on the north side of the square. The pharmacies and clothing stores were on the south side. A barber shop, a beauty shop, and one Tai Chi studio were on the west.

  When I was a little girl, I used to shop for groceries with my grandmother at the A&P on the east side of the square. Rowan Springs was still a little country town back then. Farmers brought their wagons to town filled with fresh produce and live chickens and sold them off the tailgate. My grandmother always bought a nice fat hen for Sunday dinner. I usually made a pet of it before we got home and cried all night after she swung it by the neck until the body popped off and went flapping across the backyard. Somehow the violent demise of my new feathered friend never stopped me from devouring the juicy meat off the crispy fried pulley bone after
church the next day.

  The hitching racks were long gone and so were the grocery stores. They had moved out to the mini-mall on the road to the lakes where there was more parking space.

  Once abandoned, the high-ceilinged old stores had been turned into offices for lawyers and accountants. Bruce Hawkins, Mother’s lawyer, had been the only one in town to rebel against having an office on “Lawyer’s Row.” Instead he had turned the old Capitol Theater into a wonderful art deco homage to the movies he used to love and made his offices there.

  I walked around the square lost in reflection and memories. My mind was a hundred years in the past as I admired the wonderful old carvings on the fronts of the buildings.

  I did not see the crowd gathering outside of the jail until I rounded the corner of the courthouse. Andy Joiner was standing on the steps in front of his office trying to disperse what appeared to be the beginnings of an unruly demonstration.

  I crossed the street and stood behind an obese, middle-aged woman with stringy grey hair. She was waving a homemade placard with the word “feend” misspelled in bright orange letters. I watched in morbid fascination as the flabby fat under her arms swayed grotesquely with her every movement. She noticed me watching her and turned around.

  “You got daughters?”

  She thrust the placard under my nose and waved it dangerously close to my brand new Ralph Lauren sunglasses.

  “That crazy doctor inside the jail is killing our babies. You’d better join us and make your voice heard. We don’t want his kind ‘round here—even in jail. He’s a monster!”

  “How can he hurt you or your daughters if he’s in jail?”

  “He’s a monster, I told you. Has them supernatural powers. Puts spells on people. Makes them do things they don’t want to do. That’s how he got poor little Brittany Hayes pregnant. Now she’s carrying that devil’s child.” She ran over to another newcomer to the scene where I heard her repeating the same vicious spiel.

  I hurried back to Watson and took the back road out of town.

  Mother and Cassie were out in the backyard raking leaves where Aggie was busy rolling around madly in the biggest pile. I shucked my linen jacket, grabbed a rake, and went to join them.

  “How’s Ethan, dear? Holding up well, I hope?”

  “Yes, Mother, and he said to tell you ‘hello.’”

  “How nice. I must send him some blackberry cobbler with the next one of you who goes back to town.”

  Cassie dragged her pile of leaves behind her to add to Mother’s cache.

  “What did Ethan want to see you about?”

  Cassie looked like a beautiful wood nymph. Her hair was loose and blowing in the wind, with one bright orange leaf caught in the long, dark strands.

  I bucked up my flagging spirits and forced a smile.

  “He wants me and Leonard—and you two, of course—to find out who killed Hayes and raped his daughter—and get him out of jail.”

  “Oh, is that all.” She discovered the leaf and tugged at the stem to free it. “Didn’t he send me a message?”

  I left the three of them raking, or in the case of Aggie, unraking leaves and headed back to my desk in the library. I could hear Cassie laughing at the antics of the puppy and considered for a moment going back to join them, but no matter how beautiful the afternoon, the truth was, I hated raking leaves. And relaxing on the patio watching them work would earn me no kudos. Besides, Cassie needed the distraction, and I needed her to quit crying herself to sleep. I hoped she would be too tired tonight to waste time on that nonsense.

  And I had forgotten to tell them the choice bit of news I had learned: Brittany Hayes had claimed she was pregnant with Ethan’s baby when she had been a patient at the Morgantown abortion clinic, long before he’d even arrived on the scene. She had probably cried rape to explain her pregnancy to her family, but why had she put the blame on Ethan? Since I was not positive of all my facts, I decided to keep the information to myself for a while.

  From my vantage point behind the big desk in the library, I could watch Cassie and Mother as they crisscrossed over the back yard. After a while, Cassie went down to the carriage house and brought up the John Deere tractor with the wagon attached to the back. Cassie drove the tractor around to each big pile of leaves in turn and stopped while Mother scooped up the debris and loaded it in the wagon. After only a half turn around the yard the wagon was full. Mother climbed in back and hitched a ride down to the dry pond bed where we built our bonfires. They stopped, emptied the wagonload of leaves, and started all over again, with Aggie running round and round the moving tractor and barking maniacally the whole time. I decided the puppy would sleep well tonight also. It looked like I’d be the only night crawler. I was restless and could not get back to work for the life of me.

  I shivered and realized that the room had grown a little chilly. My father had grown tired of emptying out ashes and installed some wonderful gas logs in the big open fireplace the year before he died. I pushed the magic plunger and a big beautiful fire appeared.

  It was the first fire of the season. Usually we all gathered together for such an occasion, but everybody else was already having too much fun. I had to enjoy something.

  I sat on the wide brick hearth for a few moment to warm my rear end, then took up my position behind the desk again. Ethan’s computer was still on, and the screen saver—which I had not seen before—slowly moved across the monitor. Big red letters on a hideous purple background repeated over and over again, “ABORTION BUG.”

  I shivered again, but not from the cold. For the first time, I realized that there was something really malevolent going on here—something that I did not have a clue about. It was some “thing” that even Ethan did not really understand, yet feared nonetheless. He had managed to transfer that uneasiness to me this afternoon. He had never spoken the words, but I knew he was afraid that I might find what he had been looking for when he came to town. He knew that I would not be prepared. I had never been in a cave in Kinshasa. I would not know a vector if it bit me. And it just might.

  Chapter Ten

  I fanned the floppy discs out on the desk in front of me and wondered why they were called by that name. They were anything but floppy. There were ten of them in all. I wished I had made a list of the ones I had already scanned. I had been in such a hurry when I had finally figured out Ethan’s encrypted password that I had just looked at them helter-skelter. Now I had no idea which ones I had reviewed and which I had not. I would have to start all over again.

  I needed to get organized. The computer screen was too small for my organization chart. I needed something larger. I remembered tucking a large piece of cardboard under the bed, thinking I would need it someday. Smart lady. I needed it now.

  What I did not know was that someone had let Aggie back inside the house. She was cooling her tummy and taking a nap under my bed. I got the cardboard but I also got a nasty nip from our furry little cobra. Damn dog!

  I was in the bathroom putting on some antibiotic ointment and a Band-Aid when the police caravan pulled up in the driveway. Two Lakeland County police cars pulled in first and went on around the circle. Another cruiser followed a large unmarked Toyota van with dark tinted windows.

  My heart leapt with joy. They were letting Ethan go! But then I saw Chief Joiner open the van door and help him out.

  Ethan was handcuffed and shackled. He had to bend over to accommodate the chains. I realized with a sinking heart that he looked exactly like the old man in the storybook.

  Cassie was on the tractor, but when she saw Ethan she hopped off and went running to him. When Joiner stopped her before they could embrace, I heard her angry retort without really understanding the words.

  Two deputies got out of the first car and stationed themselves at Ethan’s side. Cassie stood meekly in front of him with a crooked little attempt for a smile on her face. It was a sad, pitiful scene and mercifully, over in less than three minutes. I didn’t even have time to open the wind
ow so I could hear what was going on. Joiner helped Ethan back into the van and they all disappeared around the drive in a cloud of gravel dust.

  Cassie stood like a statue until Mother tried to put her arms around her, then she shook off the embrace and ran toward the lane and the back field. Aggie had awakened when the cars pulled out of the drive and was now barking furiously as she saw her mistress running off to play without her. She slipped out when I opened the French doors to join Mother and went barreling down the lane in pursuit of Cassie. I found myself hoping a fox would eat her up.

  The tractor engine was still running. Mother climbed up in the seat to drive it back down to the carriage house, and I hopped on the back of the wagon and rode down with her.

  Honeysuckle vines with their dainty white flowers vied for space with wild berries on the back fence. I reached out and grabbed a couple of blossoms as we drove past. I pulled out the stamens and sipped the tiny drop of incredibly sweet honeysuckle nectar. Too bad there wasn’t enough to bottle. Or maybe it was a good thing. Anything that delicious would be overwhelming in large amounts.

  We drove down past the dry pond bed and back up to the carriage house. The trees along the lane still had enough foliage to prevent me from seeing Cassie; besides, she was probably halfway to the big pond by now. I wasn’t worried for her safety. There were no bogeymen in the woods.

  Mother parked the tractor three times before she got it just exactly where she wanted it. When she finally turned off the engine, the silence made my ears ring.

  “Wow, I thought you would never stop. What’s the matter? Is there a prize for the farm with the best-parked John Deere?”

  When she did not answer, I hopped out of the wagon and went forward to the tractor where she remained on the seat.

  “What is it, Mother? Are you all right?”

  Her face was grim and tight and her eyes were bright with tears.

  “They are taking Cassie’s young man to Teddyville to the state penitentiary. Andy Joiner was kind enough to let him come and say goodbye.”