A Night at the Operation (12 page)

Okay,
that
was odd. “Looking for Sharon? At the theatre?”

“Ye-ah.” A tone indicating that I was even stupider than usual.

“What’s her name?”

“Elliot, I sell snacks. I’m not supposed to be your secretary.”

That was true, but didn’t seem relevant. “Is the woman still there, Sophie?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“Don’t impersonate my mother. You’re too young, and I’ll have strange dreams. Look. Don’t let the woman leave before I get there, understand?”

“What am I supposed to do, physically block her at the exit?” I was starting to get nostalgic for the old monosyllabic Goth Sophie. This new one had way too much equity in the Bank of Sarcasm.

“If she tries to leave, tell her I’m on my way. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” And this time, I did hang up.

I told Gregory what Sophie had said, and he increased his speed from a limit-obeying fifty-five miles an hour to a downright death-defying sixty. The man was an animal.

While we were hurtling toward Midland Heights in an attempt to set a new land-slowness record, I called Meg Vidal on Gregory’s phone, which I’d decided would be my phone until he grabbed it out of my hand.

“Well, it’s about time,” she said, after I assured her it was not Gregory reaching out to her.

“We’ve been busy.”

“Did you find out anything?” Meg asked.

“A few things. I’ll tell you when I see you. Where are you now?”

“On my way to your house,” she answered. “You dad gave me his key. I assume it’s okay if I stay the night.”

“Stay as long as you want, but if you expect hanky-panky, I’ll have you know I’m not that kind of boy,” I answered. “Dammit.”

“Thank goodness for small favors,” Meg said. “Listen. The hospital is a zoo; every cop in the county is tearing the place apart looking for Chapman’s body. There wasn’t much point in sticking around there, so I spent the afternoon working with Barry and making a few phone calls. I’ve found out a few things, but nothing astonishing.”

“I’ll be the judge of what’s astonishing,” I told her. “What’d you find out?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. Are you on your way to the theatre?”

I assured her I was. “We’re racing there to meet a mysterious woman who might be the key to the entire mystery,” I told her, to make it sound important. “It’s possible Gregory is actually exceeding the speed limit by a mile or two.” Gregory scowled at me. It’s the simple pleasures that make life worthwhile.

“I’ll wait up,” Meg said. “Call if you need me.”

We got back to Comedy Tonight in a record (for Gregory) hour and fifteen minutes from door to door. It would have taken a normal person forty-five minutes, but one must make allowances for the adrenaline-deficient. I was out of the car and at the door of the theatre pretty much before he declared his vehicle parked.

It was warmer inside, but not that much. The heating system had probably been built while Hope and Crosby were filming
Road to Morocco
, and had not responded well to being dormant for the better part of a day. I touched the radiator in the lobby on the way in, just to make sure it was hot. Well, warm.

Not cold, anyway.

Sophie was behind the snack bar, sitting on her stool and reading
The Real ACT Prep Guide.
Jonathan, without any tickets to tear in half, stood by her, adoringly and silently. He was the perfect lapdog.

I unlocked the office and put my parka inside. Then I wasted no time getting to Sophie. “Where is she?”

Sophie looked up. “Who?” Twenty-two sixty. I’m asking you.

“The woman who was asking for Sharon. Where is she?”

“Oh. Near the back, I think.” She pointed vaguely in the direction of the auditorium, and went back to her book, putting a pencil in her mouth.

“Sophie,” I said, as Gregory walked up beside me. “What does the woman look like?”

“Oh, she’s old,” Jonathan volunteered, doing his best to keep us from disturbing Sophie. “She’s got to be at least forty.”

Gregory, who is forty-one, coughed. “You saw her?” I asked Jonathan. “Can you show me where she is?”

Jonathan whispered, gesturing to the ever-concentrating Sophie. “Sure. Come on.”

He practically tiptoed away from Sophie, who was highlighting passages in the book with an expression of seriousness I had only seen on her once before, when she was deciding whether her new ringtone should be Marilyn Manson or vintage Megadeth. Manson had won, but it had been close.

Jonathan led us to the auditorium door, which he opened slightly. On the screen, John L. “Sully” Sullivan was at his low point, confined to a chain gang for a murder he didn’t commit, and the guards were allowing the inmates their one and only pleasure: Pluto cartoons shown in a church. It is Sullivan’s epiphany: the moment he realizes that making silly comedies might just be a high calling after all. That one always gets to me, and for a moment, I was caught up in the film. Jonathan tapped me on the shoulder.

“There she is,” he said, pointing.

I followed his finger and saw the woman he was indicating: She was in her late thirties, by my estimate, and overdressed for a night at Comedy Tonight, as anyone not in jeans and a flannel shirt (and tonight, a parka) would be. This woman was wearing an actual dress and a hat, of all things, and was watching the screen with no facial expression.

People were starting to look around to see why there was light in the auditorium, so I crept in and closed the door after Gregory followed me inside. I walked slowly to the woman, and since there was no one else seated nearby, I spoke quietly to her (I would
never
talk during the movie if it would disturb another patron, and would appreciate it if you would follow the same code the next time you’re seated near me).

“Were you looking for Dr. Simon-Freed?” I asked.

She looked up, sharply. It wasn’t so much that she had been intent on the film as that she simply wasn’t expecting to hear that question at that moment. But she recovered quickly. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Are you him?” I decided not to correct her grammar.

Gregory and I exchanged a glance. “No,” I said. “Dr. Simon-Freed is a woman. I’m her ex-husband.”

“Simon is a woman’s name?” she demanded, apparently intending to prove to me that I
was
Dr. Simon-Freed.

I motioned toward the door. “Let’s talk out there,” I suggested. The woman nodded, and we all went back into the lobby.

Once we could speak at a normal volume again, I explained to her who I was and why Sharon’s name sounded like a man’s. Then I asked the woman for her name, and she gave it to me.

“Gwen Chapman,” she said. “My father died Thursday night, and your ex-wife was his doctor.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

 

 

 

 

“DON’T
get me wrong,” Gwen Chapman said. “I don’t think Dr. Simon-Freed was involved in my father’s death.”

That was a relief—a member of the Chapman family who wasn’t accusing Sharon of murder. I was starting to like Gwen.

“That’s refreshing,” I told her. “I met your sister, and . . .” Gwen made a face. “Lillian,” she said. “I imagine you got an earful.”

I smiled. “Both ears.”

She laughed. “Lil’s always been like that,” she said. “Everybody’s out to do her wrong, even people she’s never met. I imagine it’s a hard way to live.”

“Harder for the people who live with her, I’ll bet,” I offered.

Gwen shrugged. “My father loved her,” she said.

“How do you know your father’s dead?” I said to Gwen. “The last I heard, they couldn’t find a body.” It hadn’t sounded so unfeeling in my head.

“He would have gotten in touch by now,” she said with a catch in her voice. “It’s been two days.” That struck to my heart, because it was the same period of time since anyone had heard from Sharon. Just about forty-eight hours.

“Besides,” Gwen Chapman continued, “my father left a suicide note.”

It took a moment for that to sink in, but Gwen went on. “It said that he couldn’t live with the idea of deteriorating before our eyes, of the excruciating pain he would be experiencing. He didn’t want to end up in a bed waiting for someone to turn off the machine.”

Behind her, I saw the auditorium doors open, and a few people wandered out. Sullivan must have concluded his travels. Among the stragglers was Martin Tovarich, who grinned as he caught my eye and then veered right and headed for the men’s room. The urge hits fast when you’re over seventy.

“Ms. Chapman, believe me, I’m very sorry your father was so upset, and I understand why he would be under the circumstances.” I would have bet the farm I was saying those words, but the voice was actually coming from a little to my left, and belonged to Gregory. Doctors know what to say when somebody dies; it’s like when your mechanic tells you that the transmission on your fifteen-year-old Buick has gone belly-up, and offers you the phone number of his brother’s junkyard. “But I don’t think we know exactly what happened yet.”

Gwen Chapman did what might be described as a classic double take, and then settled her gaze on Gregory. “I’m sorry; who are you?” she asked.

“I’m Dr. Gregory Sandoval.” He probably had monogrammed boxer shorts that said “Dr. Gregory Sandoval” on them, but it was better not to think about that. “I’m Sharon’s husband.”

“Soon-to-be ex-husband,” I answered, as a reflex.

Gwen looked like she was getting a headache. “I thought
you
were her ex-husband,” she said to me.

“Who says you have to be limited to one?”

Gwen, wisely, let that go. I asked her why she’d come to Comedy Tonight.

“I called Dr. Simon-Freed’s practice, to see if there were anything I could find out about my father’s diagnosis, and whether it would have affected his brain—you know, suicide might have been the outcome of a drug-induced depression, or something of that nature—and I was told the doctor wasn’t in. The woman on the phone suggested I check with you.” I mentally cursed Betty for sending a distraught, if pleasant, woman to me when I was at least as distraught, if not as pleasant. I guess Betty hadn’t known what else to do.

“Ms. Chapman,” Gregory said. “There’s something you should know.” That threw me off, because I
knew
Gregory wasn’t stupid enough to tell Gwen that Sharon was missing, so I had no idea what he was going to say. Medical information, maybe? “Dr. Simon-Freed has been missing since Thursday night. If there’s anything you can tell us that would help us find her . . .”

Well, what do you know? He
was
stupid enough, after all!

“Gregory . . .” I growled. Never give away information to the opposition, even when they’re charming (and sort of cute).

“Oh, my goodness,” Gwen Chapman said. “The doctor disappeared just about the time my father . . . ?”

“I’m afraid so,” I told her, immediately in damage-control mode.

Gregory was more in damage-creation mode. “We’re afraid she might have been taken against her will,” he said.

“Good lord, really?” Gwen said. “I hope that’s not the case. That would be terrible.”

I don’t know why, but I guess I felt that Gwen was really concerned, and that she had some insight into her family that could help. “You identified your father?” I asked. “How did you find out what had happened?”

Gwen’s eyes narrowed, but only because she was trying to follow my train of thought. “Come out and ask it, Mr. Freed,” she said. “You want to know where I was Thursday night.”

“I didn’t mean to make any insinuations.”

“My sister called me,” she went on. “I guess the police had called her. The maid in Dad’s house had discovered his body.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again.

“Why didn’t your sister go to the hospital, then?” I wondered aloud.

“Lillian doesn’t handle . . . situations well. She usually leaves that to her husband, Wally.”

“And he was in Japan that day, right?” I said.

Gwen nodded. “How did you know that?”

“Your sister mentioned it. On business, she said. Were your father and your brother-in-law involved in any business together?” So sue me; I was looking for a scapegoat. I’m a bad person.

Gwen saw where I was going immediately. She blanched. “Wally?” she asked.

I nodded. Gregory was looking at me as if I’d sprouted a third leg, growing out of my nose.

Gwen Chapman’s demeanor underwent an instantaneous overhaul. Her soft, concerned brown eyes darkened and her expression went from concern to something more worried—some would say panicky. “I . . . I don’t want to talk about Wally. He scares me,” she said. And before I could answer, she turned on a dime and walked out of the theatre.

I was about to tear down Gregory and put up a convenience store on his site, just for being idiot enough to tell Gwen about Sharon’s disappearance, but I was called off by a voice to my right.

“Who was that?” asked Martin Tovarich. “She was talking to you for so long; she must have loved
Sullivan’s Travels
.”

I introduced Tovarich to Gregory (although I considered not doing so, just to piss Gregory off), and then told him the woman he’d seen was Russell Chapman’s daughter. Tovarich reached into his coat for a reporter’s notebook and a pencil, which he licked. Really.

“It was?” Tovarich asked. “Which one?”

“Gwen,” I got out through clenched teeth, still staring at Gregory with death-ray eyes.

“The younger one,” he said, probably remembering from his files. “What was she doing here?”

“She has . . . issues,” I answered. I turned to look at Tovarich, and saw the same broad grin he’d had when he left the auditorium. “But you look like
you
enjoyed the movie.”

“I
loved
it!” he erupted. “The idea of this man, this artist, who doesn’t realize what an important thing he’s doing with his life . . . What a joy!”