Privileged Information by Stephen White

Author:Stephen White [White, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-08-30T18:39:52+00:00

Twenty-three

The thoughts that precluded easy sleep Friday night joined me for coffee Saturday morning.

In the time since I remembered seeing the crystal turtle in my hand, which was Wednesday afternoon during Michael McClelland’s canceled appointment, and when I picked it up off the maroon fabric of the driver’s seat of Diane’s Saab, which was Friday afternoon, a lot of people had been in my office. I had seen three patients on Thursday and Michael McClelland on Friday. The janitors had cleaned twice. I was pretty sure that there were two of them. I could call the janitorial service and find out. Diane had easy access to my office, but I had a difficult time developing a motive for her to hurl my crystal turtle through the windshield of her most coveted possession.

Leaving my office door unlocked while I walked around downtown during breaks in my day was a habit I had developed because of a tendency to forget to carry my keys. I had probably left the office unlocked at least a couple of times since Wednesday.

So. Four patients. One partner. One to four janitors. And possibly one uninvited intruder.

I sipped coffee in the living room and distracted myself marveling at how the golden patches of autumn seemed to double each night in the trees that hugged the meager streams running west to east across the valley.

I decided on two theories.

First, somebody was giving Diane a message about affiliating with me. Maybe one of her patients. When I included Diane’s thriving practice, it greatly increased the list of people with possible access to the office. Or maybe a colleague with an ax to grind against me or Diane. Or maybe a self-righteous, unaffiliated, equal opportunity vigilante.

Second, somebody was giving me a message. Which meant that Cicero’s barber and the turtle hurler might be the same person. Or they might not. When I pondered who might be giving me a message, I needed an expansive frame of mind. At the top of the list would be Sheldon Hart. Mr. Hart, however, didn’t strike me as the breaking-and-entering, mischievous, vandalizing type. But then, I reminded myself wistfully, his daughter hadn’t struck me as the suicidal type, either.

Motive? To scare me or to get me to stop practicing or to punish me for the sins of which I was popularly accused. But why Diane’s Saab? The easiest answer was that the hurler thought it was mine.

Okay. Then what did a turtle in a Saab and a shaved dog’s neck have in common? Sounded like a question for some esoteric IQ test.

I slapped cold bacon into a cold pan as I tried to remember for the zillionth time whether you should never put bacon into a cold pan or always put bacon into a cold pan. I chopped a cold, wrinkled baked potato and diced some onions and peppers and drowned them in melted butter in another pan. I gently scrambled together two eggs in a small bowl. Merideth would have derived significant joy

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