Off-the-path medical building.
Chains around the clinic parking lot, armed guard.
Had he been greedy and wanted even more?
Bloated billing? Cooking the books?
Hope going along with the fraud?
But Cruvic had paid her only thirty-six thousand a year, a very small chunk of a million-dollar business.
Maybe the thirty-six represented only what she’d reported on her tax returns and there’d been other payments, in cash.
Or had Hope not been a willing partner to fraud and, learning the truth, quit, or threatened to expose Cruvic?
And died because of it?
Then what about Mandy Wright? Her only link to obstetrics, so far, was a terminated pregnancy and a tubal ligation.
Far-fetched, Delaware.
The most likely scenario was that she and Hope had been murdered by a psychopathic stranger and Cruvic, however mercenary and ethically slippery, had nothing to do with it.
Still, I’d promised Milo to check out his credentials, Deborah Brittain would be in class for the next few hours, and the panicked Tessa Bowlby had a day off. Lots of days off, as a matter of fact: enrolled in only two classes, both on Tuesday and Thursday.
Reduced academic load.
Trouble coping?
I’d give her another try, too, but first things first.
Calling the state medical board, I found out no malpractice complaints had been lodged against Milan Cruvic, M.D., nor was his license in jeopardy.
Farther fetched.
I got dressed and drove to school.
At the Biomed Library, I looked Cruvic up in the Directory of Medical Specialists.
B.A., Berkeley—Hope’s alma mater, another possible link. They were the same age, too, had graduated in the same class.
Old friends? I read on. M.D., UC San Francisco—once again, studying in the same city as Hope.
Then, she’d come down to L.A. for her clinical training and he’d moved to Seattle for a surgery internship at the University of Washington.
By the book, so far.
But then it got interesting.
He completed only one year of his surgery residency at U of W before taking a leave of absence and spending a year at the Brooke-Hastings Institute in Corte Madera, California.
Then, instead of returning to Washington, he’d transferred specialties from surgery to obstetrics-gynecology, signing on as a first-year resident at Fidelity Medical Center in Carson, California, where he’d finished, passed his boards, and gotten his specialty certification in OB-GYN.
No listing of any postgraduate work in fertility.
That wasn’t illegal—an M.D. and a state license allowed any physician to do just about anything medical—but it was surprising, even reckless, because fertility techniques were highly specialized.
Where had Cruvic learned his craft?
The year at the Brooke-Hastings Institute? No, because he’d been just a first-year resident at the time and no reputable institution would take someone for advanced training at that point.
Self-taught?
Cutting corners in a daring and dangerous way?
Was that the real reason he practiced away from the other Beverly Hills doctors?
If so, who sent him referrals?
People who also wanted to skirt the rules?
But maybe there was a simple solution: He’d undergone bona fide training but the fact had been accidentally left off his bio.
Still, you’d think that was the kind of thing he’d be careful to correct. And the directory was updated each year.
Freelance fertility cowboy?
Cutting corners?
Taking on cases no one else would go near?
Something on the fringe . . .
Perhaps a daring nature was what had attracted Hope to Cruvic.
So different from the stodgy, routine-bound Seacrest.
Old Volvo versus shiny Bentley.
Something on the fringe . . .
Something gone bad?
Now Hope was dead and Cruvic, as he himself had pointed out, was alive, busy, bouncy, doing God knew what.
But what of Mandy Wright?
What did a scholar and a call girl have in common but gruesome death?
Nothing fit.
I stayed with it, plugging Cruvic’s name into every scientific and medical data bank the library offered. No publications, so his year at Brooke-Hastings probably hadn’t been for research.
The institute wasn’t listed anywhere, either.
By the time I finished, my gut was tight with suspicion, but there was nothing more to do and it was time to find Deborah Brittain.