Bad Medicine (23 page)

From there, the music room, with its Steinway grand and matching Georgian settees, the rosewood inlaid secretary and gilded mirrors. Frank took a moment to acknowledge the Rembrandt sketch alongside the piano before sighing and moving on.

Molly led him through the hallway with the pair of Mings and Japanese watercolors. Into the sitting room with its fifteenth century Japanese seasonal screen, the Qua Yen ink and color over the sofa, Hopper seascape over the Adam mantel and the Queen Anne corner cabinet filled with her father's priceless jade collection. Molly actually thought she heard Frank whimper.

"Tea?" she asked, for the first time in her life enjoying what her parents had not bestowed on her.

Frank could hardly form words. "Do you have anything stronger?"

Then she really smiled. "No."

He actually looked as if he were in pain. "Tea, then."

When Molly returned with clean knees and two glasses of iced tea, Frank was studying the small Feininger behind the brace of Chippendale chairs in the corner. "I thought there was a Picasso."

Molly handed off the tea, feeling better than she had in a while. "Over the TV in the family room. Mums and Dad considered Picasso too vulgar for the good furniture."

Frank started to laugh. He stopped when he realized Molly was dead serious. By then, though, she'd ensconced herself on the sofa.

"Doesn't it piss you off?" he asked suddenly.

Molly had heard the sentiment before. "Not at all. If it hadn't been for you, I'd be living in another state altogether and renting this out to Washington U. or something. Although I admit I'd at least take the Homer with me."

"The Homer?"

She smiled. "In my bedroom."

She could see he was itching to see what was up there, and this time there was no sexual innuendo at all. True to form, when cornered, Frank struck back. "Don't give me that 'if it hadn't been for you' crap. You had liability insurance."

Molly felt the color rise in her neck. "With a cap you guys paid no attention to. Which has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I was neither faulty nor negligent. But then, that's all behind us, isn't it?"

"I thought you were appealing."

"I considered it until my insurance company informed me that I'd pay the lawyer fees out of my own, already-depleted pocket. Which is why I don't have insurance anymore, either. So don't come after me again, cause this time all you'll get is my eight-year-old car and an empty bottle of Maalox."

"I didn't clean you out."

Molly lifted her eyebrows. "You didn't? Then why am I working two jobs?"

Frank's smile this time was knowing, taunting. "Because you need the work, Saint Molly. Not the money."

Molly opened her mouth to say something scathing. She shut it again, because she didn't have the energy to even start that particular argument.

"Any time you'd like a taste of my job, just let me know," she said instead. "After that, you might not be so quick to litigate."

"Not a problem anymore," he retorted, hand to heart. "Remember? I'm on the side of the angels now."

"You're on the side of the biggest fees. Just like always."

His eyes positively gleamed with delight. "Precisely."

Molly knew the concentration couldn't last. Even as he was answering her, he was back on his feet, drawn to the exquisite jade carvings hidden carefully behind special glass. Three shelves of them, pillaged and plundered from some of the finest ancient artists in the Orient.

"My God," he breathed, truly awed. "You really mean to tell me that you don't enjoy any of this?"

Molly looked around, brought away the memories that came unbidden with the works of art Frank saw. "I guess I just didn't get that all-important acquisition gene."

He didn't manage to answer her. For a minute, Molly thought he'd forgotten she was there as he sipped at his tea and tried to get a good look at the intricate carvings. When he did speak, he surprised her.

"Did you know there are cops watching your house?"

"Uh-huh."

That got his eyes around to her. "Okay. Does it have something to do with why you wanted to talk to me about Joey?"

Joey. A boy's name. A buddy's name, a big brother.
Hey, Joey! Can you come out and play? Yo, Joey, let's do some hoops!

Molly wondered if it occurred to Frank that there wasn't a Joey anymore.

"I don't know. There's been a lot going on lately. Why did you send him to me?"

"Who better to send Joey to than Saint Molly of the Battlefield?"

"Cut out the crap, Frank. Why?"

For the first time since she'd known him, Frank Patterson seemed uncomfortable. Instead of joining her back on the couch, he picked one of the Chippendale chairs and eased into it as if afraid it would break. "Because he needed the official word," he said simply, the glass of tea held between his knees as if he were a young man balancing punch at a cotillion. "He needed certainty. He didn't see her dead, he couldn't very well go to the funeral—"

"Does
his family know he's alive?"

"I don't know. It's not something I ever discussed with them."

"Don't you think you should?"

"That's up to Joey."

Molly sighed. "Joey. That means you've known him a long time."

"Fifth grade. Saint Gabriel's."

There it was again, the school association. Molly had gone to Cathedral Parish, Visitation Academy for high school. Where the "better" young Catholic women trained. Molly had fit in about as well as a rapper at the opera.

"Saint Gabe's, huh?"

Which would have put his upbringing in the near south side. Solid middle-class neighborhoods, close associations, fierce loyalties.

"Yeah."

"Why didn't you tell me before that you knew Mary Margaret from way back?"

"Peg," he said, just as they all had. "Her name was Peg."

Molly nodded acquiescence. "Peg, then. Why?"

For just a second, Frank's certain gaze faltered. "I didn't see that it would make any difference."

"Do you still think she committed suicide?"

"Yes. Don't you?"

It was Molly's turn to feel uncomfortable. "I think you wouldn't have sent Joe Ryan to me if all you wanted was for him to feel better."

Frank was up again, pacing the room, fingering the furniture as if he couldn't quite let go of the idea that it was forever out of his reach. "I owe him."

"Do you think...?"

When Frank came to a halt, he did it right in front of her. Molly came close to backing away, because where there had only been challenge and humor in Frank's eyes, now there was something else. Something dark, like sin or death.

"Yes," was all he said.

All he needed to say. Molly hadn't been able to ask him, and he hadn't needed her to. Was Joe to be believed? Was he as perceptive as he seemed?

Was there something living beneath all that awful isolation?

Suddenly, Frank smiled. A terrible smile of dawning understanding. "He told you, too, didn't he?"

Too? What the hell was he talking about? How would Frank know? How would he understand?

"Told me what?"

This time, Frank laughed. He laughed out loud as if Molly were the funniest person on earth. "Don't try and squirm out of it, Saint Molly. You know he did."

"Did what?" she demanded, on her feet, too.

Frank's expression grew enigmatic, "You know, my mom used to tell us kids the story of this spooky old lady who lived near her when she was growing up. Mrs. Donatelli. Mrs. Donatelli saw her baby die in a fire. Couldn't get in to help save her. She was never the same after that. But she also started to be able to just kind of know things, ya know? She had the sight, they called it back then. Well, Joey's kind of like that. Maybe he doesn't have the sight, but he sure as hell sees things other people don't."

"What do you mean, he told me, too?"

Frank wagged a finger at her. Then he just took hold of her hand and sat his glass into it. "Nope, this one's all yours. Just do me a favor. Go over the case once more for Joey. Give him the facts. Let him have a little peace."

Molly followed Frank as he headed toward the front door. "What do you mean, Frank?"

"Will you do it?"

"Yes, I'll do it. Will you help me if I need it?"

He stopped by the front door, his attention once again straying, this time to the bronze pot that stood in the corner of the foyer. "That's Tang Dynasty," he protested, his hand out.

"Frank!"

"I can't do anything to compromise my clients," he told her, reaching for the front door. "But you'd probably like to know that all Peg's personal effects have been sent to her parents." Then he flashed her a completely unrepentant smile. "Help Saint Molly of the Battlefield? How can I resist an offer like that?"

"Did Peg know Pearl Johnson?" she asked quickly before he got away.

"Hell if I know."

"Did you know that four other lawyers have committed suicide?"

"Are you kidding? That's all people are talking about down at the Lawyer's Club and the MAC. We're losing members fast."

The Missouri Athletic Club. The postschool place to belong, if you wanted to follow the Right Path in St. Louis.

"Have you heard anything that might sound odd?"

This time Frank looked dumbstruck. "Don't you think five lawyers committing suicide is strange?"

"On my less-charitable days, I think it's a gift to the city."

True to form, Frank laughed. "And me not doing the gentlemanly thing and adding myself to the list."

Molly could afford a smile this time. "My thoughts exactly. Will you keep an ear out down there? There's some question about Pearl's contacts. Maybe... would Peg have been interested in something a little shady?"

"Like I told you. She was driven. Worked hard, played hard. Who knows?"

He did get the door open this time. Molly put a hand on his arm. "What did you mean?" she tried once more.

He didn't even answer. He just grinned and walked out.

"Hey!" she yelled as he walked down the lawn. "You forgot your Ted Drewe's!"

"Think of me when you lick the spoon!" he called over his shoulder.

It just figured that he'd be walking down to a Mercedes sports coupe. Molly would have probably felt a lot worse if she'd taken the time to actually watch him walk all the way to the curb and get in. As it was, by the time she heard the throaty roar of his engine, she was scraping the bottom of the ice cream cup to get the very last of that pineapple and custard.

* * *

The next morning found Molly back in her office going over Peg Ryan's file. She would have loved to say she found something spectacular, something that jumped out at her and told Joe Ryan that his little sister had been immune to the whispers of a quick exit.

There was nothing new. Nothing that looked any different than it had before. Peg Ryan had been mercurial, a little unpredictable, demanding on others and even harder on herself. Which, Molly thought in passing, sounded an awful lot like Winnie. Peg Ryan had lost a big case and hadn't been able to handle it. Peg Ryan had an older brother she'd been protecting who hadn't been able to handle anything for about a quarter of a century.

An older brother she was protecting. An older brother whose own family didn't even admit he was alive.

That was Molly's first niggle. Joey. The big brother Peg had been protecting. Seeing on the sly without the knowledge of her family. The big brother who needed her to stay just where she was.

If she'd been that conscientious about Joe, why would she just desert him like that?

Peg was also an up-and-coming member of the Barracuda Brigade, an aspiring partner in a company that specialized in protecting the big fish from the little fish. Not exactly a position one would imagine compatible for an idealist. Not the record one would think belonged to Mother Teresa.

None of the technical findings had changed. There was still the .357 Magnum Peg had bought six months earlier, permit included, in anticipation of a move into the city that had never materialized. The forensics still matched the scenario. The alcohol and tox screen said she'd been drunk and she'd been on prescription medication and just a little extra.

The question mark they'd had on some of the pills had been filled in. A little cornucopia of diet pills, water pills, and something that bore the generic labeling of synapsapine, which the lab tech noted was another antidepressant.

The written verification had also come in from Peg's private doctor that he'd been seeing Peg for stress symptoms and prescribed accordingly. No questions, no alerts.

Molly sat where she was for a long time watching out the window over Vic Fellows's desk and thinking.

He told you, too, didn't he?

What the hell had Frank Patterson meant? How could he possibly know what Joseph Ryan saw with those Chaldean eyes of his?