was sure I hadn’t even blinked. Wondered if he’d seen something or was
just finessing.
I said, “Psychologists aren’t called in only to analyze, Chuck.
We also give support to people under stress.”
“Being a hired friend, huh?” He jiggled his nose again, stood,
smiled.
“Well, then, bL a good friend. They’re good kids. All three of
them.”
I drove away trying to figure out what he’d been after and whether I’d
given it to him.
Wanting me to see him as a concerned grandfather?
Chip and Cindy den’t keep secrets from me.
Yet Chip and Cindy hadn’t taken the trouble to inform him Cassie was
being discharged. I realized that during all the contacts I’d had with
both of them, his name hadn’t come up once.
A tightly wound little man who was all business-even during our few
minutes together, he’d mixed family matters with hospital affairs.
He hadn’t wasted a moment on debate, had never tried to change my
opinion.
Choosing, instead, to shape the conversation.
Even the choice of meeting place had been calculated. The dining room
he closed and now treated as his personal galley. Getting refreshments
for himself, but not me.
Brandishing a ring of keys to let me know he could open any door in the
hospital. Bragging about it, but letting me know he had too much
integrity to grab office space.
Bringing my presumed hostility toward the despoiler of the Psychiatry
department out in the open, then trying to neutralize me by appending a
bribe just subtle enough to be taken as casual conversation: Hopefully,
one dey we’ll be able to establish a good, solid department.
Bring in some top people. . Would you ever consider returning?
When I’d demurred, he’d backed off immediately. Empathized with my
good sense, then used it to support his point of view.
If he’d been a hog farmer, he’d have found a way to use the squeal.
So I had to believe that though ours had been a chance encounter, if we
hadn’t bumped into each other soon, he would have arranged a meeting.
I was too small a fry for him to care what I thought about him.
Except as it related to Cassie and Chip and Cindy.
Wanting to know what I’d learned about his family.
Meaning there was probably something to hide and he didn know if I’d
discovered it.
I thought of Cindy’s worry: Ieople must think I’m crazy.
Was there a breakdown in her past?
The entire family fearful of a psychological probe?
If so, what better place to avoid scrutiny than a hospital without a
Psychiatry department?
Another reason not to transfer Cassie.
Then Stephanie had gone and ruined things by bringing in a
free-lance.
I remembered Plumb’s surprise when she told him what I was.
Now his boss had checked me out personally.
Shaping, molding. Painting a rosy picture of Chip and Cindy.
Mostly Chip-I realized he’d spent very little time on Cindy.
Paternal pride? Or directing me away from his daughter-in-law because
the less said about her the better?
I stopped for a red light at Sunset and La Brea.
My hands were tight on the steering wheel. I’d cruised a couple of
miles without knowing it.
When I got home I was in a bad mood and thankful that Robin wasn’t
there to share it.
The operator at my service said, “Nothing, Dr. Delaware. Isn’t that
nice?”
“You bet.” We told each other to have a nice day.
Unable to get Ashmore and Dawn Herbert out of my head, I drove over to
the university, hooking into the campus at the north end and continuing
southward until I came to the Medical Center.
A new exhibit on the history of leeching lined the hallway leading to
the Biomed library-medieval etchings and wax simulations of patients
being feasted upon by rubbery parasites. The main reading room was
open for another two hours. One librarian, a good-looking blond woman,
sat at the reference desk.
I searched through a decade of the Index Medicus for articles by
Ashmore and Herbert and came up with four by him, all published during
the last ten years.
The earliest appeared in the World Health Organization’s public-health