Regrets Only (27 page)

“What happened?”

“She’d ordered some two-hundred-dollar bottle of Cabernet and when the waiter asked for proof of age from her companion, she got up and demanded to see the maître d’. As he tells it, she explained that it was a very special occasion and asked if he’d make an exception. He said no, that he could lose his license. She was insistent, did the ‘Who’s ever going to find out?’ routine, but it sounds as though he’d heard that before and he held firm. So finally she returned to the table. After she left, the maître d’ realized that she’d ordered a second bottle and he wondered what was going on. He did a little investigating on his own, and it turned out she’d offered her waiter an extra hundred in his tip to pour two glasses and be quiet about it. Poor guy was fired.”

“When was that?”

Jack shrugged. “I know what you’re thinking, but the waiter wasn’t terminated until Tuesday.”

Lucy thought for a moment. “But what about the third person? Wasn’t the reservation for three?”

“Absolutely. But the third person didn’t show up. The maître d’ was pretty irritated. It had been a last-minute reservation, and he’d done a fair amount of rearranging to squeeze them in as it was.”

“What was the name on the reservation?”

“Nichols.” Although relatively common, Nichols happened to be the surname of the president of the Rabbit Club. Could it be coincidence? Lucy wondered. “Did you get a first name?”

“No,” Jack replied. “And the name didn’t ring any particular bells with the maître d’. The number for confirmation was a cell phone, registered to a pharmaceutical company in Radnor. I tried calling twice but got no answer.”

“Voice mail?”

“We’re doing a voice match now with the message from Reese’s answering machine.”

“What was your impression?”

“To the naked ear—or whatever the expression might be—it sounds the same.”

8:46 a.m.

They were in the parking lot when the duty officer came running up, waving a manila envelope. Al was assigned to desk duty after he’d taken a bullet in his hip and never regained full mobility. The several hundred yards had winded him. “Hey, Lucy. This came for you.” He handed her the package. The return address belonged to a prominent downtown law firm. “It just arrived by courier. I thought it might be important enough to try and catch you.”

“Thanks,” she said, immediately realizing what it was. The Haverill attorney had tracked down the insurance policy and made a copy for her as she’d requested. It was the document that confirmed Archer’s $5 million inheritance.

“By the way, I’m really glad you’re okay,” Al added, looking at the pavement. He kicked a cigarette butt aside.

“She’s better than okay,” Jack said. “Although all this display of humanity is unnerving, at least to me. Who thought we had such a bunch of sentimentalists?” He winked. “Let’s go, O’Malley.”

She settled into the passenger seat of Jack’s Taurus, fastened her seat belt, and then undid the clasp on the envelope. He started the engine, adjusted the radio station, and flipped the car into reverse as he hummed along to a Celine Dion ballad. How quickly life returned to normal.

She removed the multipage document and quickly skimmed the fine print. According to the signature line, the policy had been purchased a decade before. At that time, Archer had been designated sole beneficiary. She glanced through the next several paragraphs until something caught her eye. The original value was ten million, not the five that Rodman had said. Perhaps he’d misunderstood. She continued to read, then paused and read the last page again. It was an addendum dated March 31 and in it, the beneficiary had been changed. Instead of just Archer, a second person was named: Avery Herbert. Next to the name, someone had scribbled in the margin in pencil, “Social security number and address to be provided by the insured.” Apparently that hadn’t happened.

Less than two months before her murder, Morgan had cut Archer’s inheritance in half so as to include someone else in her legacy.

Avery Herbert, Avery Herbert, she mulled the name in her mind. Then the significance registered. She’d seen that very name on the flagged page of the
Social Register
in Morgan’s office. She flipped back the pages of her notepad to the earliest stage of this investigation. Avery Aldrich Herbert, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Foster Herbert from Gladwyne. Her memory served her well. Who was this person? What was Morgan’s connection to the daughter of this couple? And was this the Avery of the letter Gertrude Barbadash had given her? If so, apparently a lot of cash was coming her way.

Jack stopped at a light and station surfed, settling for a Moody Blues classic. Lucy summarized the information from the insurance policy.

“So what do you make of that?”

“Avery could be a godchild or a niece, I suppose,” he replied. “Maybe given what had happened with her own family, she’d had a close relationship later on in life with another kid. Maybe that had provided some kind of solace for her earlier choice about her son.”

“Neither Archer nor his father was in communication with this woman. Years had passed. They know nothing about what she was up to,” Lucy said, thinking aloud. “She could have had another family, more children, anything, and they wouldn’t have known. Avery could be a daughter. The Herberts could be adoptive parents.”

“You think this woman abandoned one child and gave up another? What kind of parent would do that?”

Lucy was wondering the same thing, although she had no answer. Somebody desperate, somebody sick. Neither description seemed to apply to the successful, respected psychiatrist that Morgan appeared to have been. “Do we have any idea who is the beneficiary of her estate?”

“Not yet.”

She scribbled a note to herself to follow up. “It just doesn’t make sense to me. Why spend a fortune on premiums at her age for one child she doesn’t know and another child who belongs to a different family? I assume Dr. Reese had assets. Why not leave those to Archer and this Avery Herbert and call it a day?”

“There’s a big difference between ‘assets’ and ten million cash. Maybe she wanted to make a statement.”

“Yeah,” Lucy mumbled. She thought of her lunch with Rodman, his disdain for inherited wealth. Morgan had clearly disagreed with his philosophy. She wanted her money to liberate her son, to give him freedom to do what he wanted to do.

“Nancy Moore came by yesterday,” Jack said, changing the subject. “With her husband. The guy was a jerk of the first order. He introduced himself three times as ‘Attorney Moore.’ I finally had to tell him that I wouldn’t forget. I can’t stand when lawyers do that. Why isn’t he just plain old Mr. Moore?”

“Makes him sound more important, I guess. Everyone wants a title.”

“Whatever. Anyway, you were en route to the ER when she showed up so Ben sat in with me.”

Was that his way of reminding her yet again not to fly solo? He’d made his point. Or if he hadn’t, Calvin had done it for him. “What did she have to say?”

“Not a whole lot more than what you learned. She wasn’t surprised about Calvin. She’d thought he was certifiably nuts and had begged Morgan not to see him as a patient, but the doctor was pretty dismissive of her concerns. For a while he stopped coming around—consistent with what he told you about conducting his therapy over the phone—but then he returned. She said Morgan wouldn’t discuss it and didn’t want her approach to therapy to be second-guessed.”

“What about Ellery?”

“Apparently he took a backseat. Let the women duke it out. Even after his gun was stolen, he didn’t get involved. According to Moore, he’s fiercely ambitious. He was working overtime to try to get the appointment to run the Wilder Center. Took on a bunch of new research projects. Scheduled a lot more speaking engagements. As she described it, he became quite the man about town, meeting with various important faculty members and trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, doing everything he could to gain the spotlight over his contenders, chief of whom was Morgan.”

“How did Morgan respond to the nomination?”

“Apparently she kept it to herself. As you said, her schedule was pretty packed to begin with. There weren’t many more hours in the day to fill.” He turned into the parking lot adjacent to the Spruce Street office building. “Okay, here we are.”

9:25 a.m.

“I’m sorry, but you’ve just missed him.” Dr. Ellery’s secretary seemed genuinely disappointed to be the bearer of bad news. A middle-aged woman, she wore her graying hair in a topknot, red Lucite glasses on a chain around her neck, and a pink and green dirndl that accentuated her substantial bosom. “He’s giving a press conference today at the Union League. He had some personal matters to attend to before then, and had me cancel all his morning patients.” She forced a smile. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Uh . . . yes. Miss . . . ?”

She produced a black plaque with a faux veneer base from her top drawer and put it out on the counter of the reception desk.
BETTY GRAHAM
was printed in gold letters. “Despite what the doctors say, I don’t want just anyone to know who I am.”

“How long have you worked for Dr. Ellery?” Jack asked.

“Fifteen years, if you can believe it, and for Dr. Reese for nearly a decade perhaps. I can’t recall precisely when she joined this office suite. Ms. Moore was the most recent addition, but even that’s been a while.”

“What do you do for them?”

“Filing, billing, scheduling, negotiating rates with health insurers, a little bit of everything. Increasingly, Dr. Reese took over her own paperwork, but Dr. Ellery couldn’t function without me. I’m not sure he could find a paper clip, not that all my years of service are getting me any thanks.” She pushed the fragrant bouquet of lilacs—apparently a fresh delivery—slightly to the right to get a better view of both detectives. Her long fingernails had been painted a bright magenta.

“Will you be going with him to the Wilder Center?” Lucy asked.

“No. The announcement had hardly been made and he snatched up some young thing from the Behavioral Therapy Unit. She can barely type and doesn’t understand the concept of filing, let alone the practice, but I’m sure you’ve heard that before.”

“Can you tell us what kind of relationship Dr. Ellery had with Dr. Reese?”

“How much time have you got?” She snorted. “Let’s just say that what started out as friendly deteriorated fairly rapidly once they were both nominated for the directorship.”

“Could you be any more specific than that, ma’am?” Jack asked.

“I believe they knew each other professionally before Dr. Reese agreed to join this office suite. When she first started here, they seemed pretty friendly. I recall that they left together after work on occasion. I assumed they were going out for drinks or dinner.”

“Were they ever involved romantically?”

Betty shook her head. “I would doubt it. Dr. Ellery fancies himself a bit of a ladies’ man, but Dr. Reese was too professional for that—and, frankly, too cold. I wouldn’t be surprised if you found . . . Let’s just say she seemed to be perfectly satisfied without any male companionship. Anyway, for years they had lunch once a week. It was primarily to discuss office matters—I know that because they came back with more than a few new tasks for me—but it seemed that they were friends, too. My guess is they shared some personal information on occasion, maybe sought advice from one another. They seemed jovial enough together.”

“What changed?”

“Dr. Ellery became Mr. Hyde once the list of nominees was announced. He wanted that position, and it seemed to me he’d do anything to get it. The man became a monster—giving orders, canceling patients so he could dine with the powers that be, more concerned with his physical appearance and social calendar than his work. I thought it was very unprofessional.”

“Why did he want it so badly?” Jack asked. “Looks like he’s got a fairly good operation going here.”

“Power. Money. Prestige. You’re the Y chromosome here. You tell me. The man loves the limelight, and becoming the director of the Wilder Center offered plenty of that. But then—just about the time we all thought a decision would be made—he had a little problem.”

“What was that?”

“The Herbert boy’s suicide.”

“The what?”
Jack and Lucy exclaimed in unison.

Betty was taken aback. “Foster Herbert, a young boy, maybe sixteen or seventeen. He’d been a patient of Dr. Ellery’s for a while. A sweet boy he was, very polite, attractive, but extremely troubled. I did the insurance forms. I’m not the doctor and even I knew his diagnosis was dismal: 296.3x, sometimes with catatonic, sometimes with melancholic, and oftentimes with atypical features.”

“Can you tell us what that code means?” Jack asked.

“It is major depressive disorder, recurrent,” Betty recited. “The ‘x’ designates that other features are present.”

Lucy neither wanted nor needed further explanation. After Aidan’s death, she’d combed the DSM searching for answers. This devastating illness was ingrained in her mind. “Recurrent” meant it didn’t go away.

“In any event, this past winter—January, I think it was—he shot himself right out behind the family barn while his mother and father were out to dinner,” Betty continued, seemingly pleased to have a captive audience. “The parents blamed Dr. Ellery. I don’t know the particulars, but there was even some stuff in the paper that was critical of the psychiatric care the boy had received.”

“Do you happen to recall the name of Foster’s father?”

“Sure. Bill. William Herbert. The wife’s name is Faith.”

“Do they live in Gladwyne?”

Betty flipped through a Rolodex, apparently one she hadn’t bothered to keep current. “Yes,” she said, surprised. “The monthly statements were sent to Greaves Lane, although I know the father requested that the final bill be sent to his law office at Leedes, Collin, and Wilkes. How did you know?”

“I remember something in the newspaper,” Lucy lied. Foster was dead; his sister stood to inherit five million from Morgan Reese. How they were all connected, though—and how Archer might fit into the picture—remained a mystery. She scribbled the name of Bill Herbert’s law firm.