I pulled out into the thick traffic on Hillsboro Road still wondering just how in blazes Connie Fletcher was paying the mortgage on that place, not to mention the requisite cars, vacations, clothes, parties, landscaping, cleaning lady, and the assorted paraphernalia that go with maintaining that kind of lifestyle.
I pulled left onto the road almost by instinct, crossed the I-440 bridge, and found myself heading back toward the university hospital. I kept thinking that there had to be some way, some contact, somebody I could put the bite on to find what was really happening with the dear departed Dr. Conrad Fletcher and his professional life. If he was in hock to his bookie, maybe he told someone. A friend, perhaps, if he had any. Judging from the reactions of people I’d met in the hospital, Conrad Fletcher wasn’t a man with a wealth of friends. On the other hand, maybe I could find somebody he’d hit on for a loan, or a shoulder to cry on, or just somebody he’d shoot the breeze with. He was human, right? Even doctors need somebody to talk to, rather than at, every now and then.
Then I remembered. I’d been concentrating so hard on Conrad and Rachel that I forgot to put any connection from their life into my own. My father’s closest friend, before my parents retired to Hawaii, was a doctor: Dr. Eugene Hughes. Dr. Gene, we called him. Dr. Gene was a pediatrician, and he and his wife had a surprise late baby after the rest of their children were nearly grown. And that surprise late baby, James, was now in medical school himself.
Guess where? I could have slapped myself as I drove toward Hillsboro Village. And Dr. Hughes lived about ten minutes away. I jerked into the left-hand-turn lane at Wedgewood Avenue, which becomes Blakemore, then changes names again and becomes 31st Avenue. I turned left on West End Avenue, which becomes Harding Road a mile or two down. I drove out past St. Thomas Hospital and turned right onto White Bridge Road, which is Woodmont Boulevard on the other side of the intersection before it becomes Robertson Road the other side of the interstate. What a town.
I lost track of the street names chugging around the steep curves and wandering roads of the part of town called Hill-wood. Dr. Hughes’s house was a big gray one; I remembered that much. But it had been years since I’d been there. The last time was my father’s retirement party. My father and Dr. Hughes had flown in the war together and had been lifelong buddies after that.
There, on that corner, I thought, as I pulled into a steep downhill driveway and coasted to a stop. This looked like the right place. If not, I’d just have to hope they didn’t keep many shotguns around.
Dr. Hughes raised dogs, some of the finest hunting dogs I’d ever seen. I must have smelled like squirrel that day, or maybe they got a whiff of Shadow. Anyway, the dogs went crazy as soon as I got out of the car. I headed away from them, back up the drive to the walk that led to the front door.
I had to ring twice. Dr. Hughes opened the door, stood there holding a newspaper in one hand, his glasses tipped down on his nose, trying for a moment to recognize his dearest, most lifelong friend’s son.
“I’m Harry, Dr. Gene. Harry Denton.”
He paused for a moment, more astonished than anything else. “Well, of course you are, son. I recognized you. I was just trying to figure out if it was really you after all this time.”
He held the metal storm door open for me, and I walked in. The difference in lifestyle between a pediatrician and a hot-rod surgeon was acutely obvious here; Dr. Hughes’s house was large and comfortable, but it was definitely lived in. The furniture was old, most of it from the Fifties and early Sixties, with plenty of evidence that when no one else was looking, Dr. Hughes let the dogs in.
“Good to see you, Harry. It’s been too long.” His voice was jovial, yet with the distinguished edge that educated Southern men start to take on when they get old. It’s as if they live under some compulsion to sound like gentlemen farmers at that stage in life, as if all their great-grandfathers had been Civil War generals. If everybody who claimed to have a Civil War general in his past really had one, the whole damn war would have been fought with nothing but men wearing stars on their collars.
“Good to see you, Dr. Gene. How’ve you been?”
“Just fine, my boy. Just fine.”
Dr. Hughes’s wife had passed on about five years earlier. He’d lived alone until James finished his undergraduate work at Emory and came home to go to medical school. Now the two of them lived by themselves in this big house. And while I’m sure they had someone come by every week or so to clean house, domestic science obviously wasn’t all that much of a priority to them.
“Dr. Gene,” I said, after he closed the door and escorted me into the living room. “I kind of came by on business.”
There was a picture of him and my father on the mantelpiece, an old black-and-white from the war; the two of them were wearing leather flying helmets and parachutes in front of a P-40.
He frowned at me and led me over to the couch, newspaper still in hand, and motioned for me to sit. He settled into his easy chair and fanned the paper out in front of him.
“I’ve been reading about your business, boy. I heard you lost your job at the paper, but I didn’t know you’d gone into private detecting.”
He made it sound like pimping. I was a long way from becoming a pimp; six or seven weeks, at least. I shrugged my shoulders. “Same old story. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“But now you’re not so sure.”
“Yes, sir. I’m not so sure. But I still want to stick with this, if only to make certain my own name stays clear.”
“Are you a suspect in this murder?” His eyeglasses slid a little farther down his nose as he asked.
“Not a strong one. But yes, sir, I’m sure the police are keeping an eye on me.”
“But you didn’t have anything to do with this, did you?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, then, why don’t you just back off and let the police do their jobs? You’re only going to get in more trouble if you interfere.”
I felt the blood pressure in my neck rising. Who was this guy? Just because he and my father fought, drank, and screwed their way across the European Theater of Operations nearly fifty years ago doesn’t give him the right to-
“I’m not going to interfere.” I interrupted my own train of thought. “But I am going to do some background checking. I can do some things the police can’t do, mainly because I’m not the police. I want to find out what happened to Dr. Fletcher, too. It’s important. It’s what I’m getting paid for.”
He snorted. “You think you can do a better job than the police.”
“No sir, only a different job.”
He paused, letting the weight of his words sink in even before he spoke them. “Harry, you came from a good family. You’ve got a fine education, a crackerjack mind. You had a fascinating career, and for some reason or other, you’ve chosen to self-destruct. And now this … this … detecting business. I don’t like it.”
“I appreciate that, Dr. Hughes, but for the time being, it’s what I do. I’m a grown man, sir. I make my own way now.”
“And what a way,” he filmed. “Sneaking around some sleazy motel on Murfreesboro Road at night, taking pictures of adulterers and prostitutes.”
“Doc, there’s not much difference between those motels on Murfreesboro Road and the mansions in Belle Meade. Just a different class of John, that’s all.”
“You’ve become profoundly cynical, haven’t you?”
“No, sir, just a realist.”
“Does your father know about this mess?”
“Not yet. And I’d appreciate your not saying anything to him.”
He reached up and pulled his glasses off his nose and twirled them in one hand by the earpiece. “All right. But I want you to let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. Your father and mother never appointed a godfather for you, so I sort of feel like the job’s mine by default.”
“I appreciate that, Dr. Hughes. And the one thing you could help me with now is by letting me talk to James.”
He stiffened. “What has James got to do with this?”
“Nothing, sir. I just want to find out what the medical students thought of Dr. Fletcher. I’m only looking for background.”
“I don’t want my son drawn into this.”
“He won’t be.”
I sat downstairs while the doc went up to get his son. I heard water running upstairs, so I figured James was in the shower. I wandered around the living room and made my way to the kitchen. The remains of an early dinner were heaped up on the counter. I glanced at my watch and realized it was nearly seven o’clock, and that I was getting a bit peckish myself.
James came downstairs, impressed khaki pants buttoned but still unbelted, no shirt, no shoes, rubbing a towel through his wet hair.
“Hey, Harry,” he greeted me. James was a decade younger than me, with a couple of years to spare on top of it. I remembered him as a child and realized I hadn’t seen him in several years. For the first time in my memory, he seemed an adult.
“Hey, James, what’s happening, man?”
“Same old, same old.” He took my hand and pumped it. He had his mother’s reddish-brown hair and his father’s deep brown eyes. He was a handsome young man, intelligent, with a bright future. I found myself envying him.
“How’s medical school?”
“Tough. I’m third year, though. So apparently I’m going to make it. A lot by now is just routine. You grind it out. Next year, I start jockeying for residencies.”
“Great. Hey, listen, where’d your dad go?”
James looked behind him. “He’s upstairs in his office, I guess. He just came up, said you wanted to talk to me. Seemed kind of tight.”
“It’s my fault,” I said, leaning against the counter and crossing my arms. “He doesn’t approve of my present career path.”
James winced. “Oh, man, I’m sorry. I hate when he does that. The old man seems to think he knows what’s best for everybody.”
I smiled at him. “He means well. I’ve just gotten myself in a mess over this Conrad Fletcher situation.”
James wrapped the towel around his head and gave it a good shake. “Yeah, it’s been all over the school. Not you, I mean. Just Fletcher getting murdered.”
“I wanted to get an insider’s point of view from you, James.”
James pulled the towel off his head and wrapped it around his shoulders. “I took classes from Fletcher. We had to. No way out of it. I’d have probably gotten him next year for surgery rotation. Whoever killed him had fabulous timing. Did us all a favor.”
“I got the feeling not many people were fond of him.”
“He was abrasive, abusive, probably a rageaholic. Popular? No, I’d have to say not.”
“Diplomat,” I commented. “Any idea who might have hated him enough to kill him?”
“God, Harry,” he sighed. “Who didn’t hate him enough to kill him?”
“James,” I said, pulling out my notebook and pen, “can you be a little more specific?”
“To begin with,” he said, pausing a long moment, “there was me.”