Grace gaped at him, reluctant to believe that she had heard what she knew she had heard.
“There are certain forces, dark and powerful forces,” Wainwright said calmly, “that want to see—” Shrieking angrily, Aristophanes sprang at Wainwright with berserk passion. He landed on the man’s chest and scrambled onto his face.
Grace screamed and jumped back in fright.
Wainwright staggered to one side, grabbed the cat with both hands, and tried unsuccessfully to wrench it off his face.
“Ari!” Grace cried. “Stop it!”
Aristophanes had his claws in the man’s neck and was biting his cheek.
Wainwright wasn’t screaming as he ought to have been. He was eerily silent as he wrestled with the cat, even though the creature seemed determined to tear off his face.
Grace moved toward Wainwright, wanting to help, not knowing what to do.
The cat was squealing. It bit off a gobbet of flesh from Wainwright’s cheek.
Oh Jesus, no!
Grace moved in quickly, raising the trowel, but hesitated. She was afraid of hitting the man instead of the cat.
Wainwright suddenly turned away from her and stumbled through the rose bushes, past white and yellow blooms, the cat still clinging to him. He walked into a waist-high hedge, fell through it, onto the lawn On the other side, out of sight.
Grace hurried to the end of the hedgerow, stepped around it, heart hammering, and discovered that Wainwright had vanished. Only the cat was there, and it bolted past her, sprinted across the garden, up the back porch steps, and into the house through the half-open rear door.
Where was Wainwright? Had he crawled away, dazed, wounded? Had he passed out in some sheltered corner of the garden, bleeding to death?
The yard contained half a dozen shrubs large and dense enough to conceal the body of a man Wainwright’s size. She looked around all of them, but she could find no trace of the reporter.
She looked toward the garden gate that led to the street. No. He couldn’t have gone that far without drawing her attention.
Frightened, confused, Grace blinked at the sun-dappled garden, trying to understand.
The Harrisburg telephone book contained neither a listing for Mr. Randolph Parker nor one for Herbert Bektermann. Carol was perplexed but not surprised.
After she saw her final patient of the day, she and Jane drove to the address on Front Street where Millicent Parker had claimed to live. It was a huge, impressive Victorian mansion, but it hadn’t been anyone’s home for a long time. The front lawn had been paved over for a parking lot. There was a small, tasteful sign by the entrance drive:
MAUGHAM & CRICHTON, INC.
A MEDICAL CORPORATION
Many years ago, this portion of Front Street had been one of the most elegant neighborhoods in Pennsylvania’s capital city. During the past couple of decades, however, many of the riverfront boulevard’s grand old houses had been razed to make room for sterile, modern office buildings. A few of the rambling houses had been preserved, at least after a fashion—the exteriors beautifully restored, the interiors gutted and converted to various commercial uses. Farther north, there was still a section of Front Street that was a desirable residential area, but not here, not where Millicent Parker had sent them.
Maugham & Crichton was a group medical practice that included seven physicians: two general internists and five specialists. Carol had a chat with the receptionist, a henna-haired woman named Polly, who told her that none of the doctors was named Parker. Likewise, no one of that name was employed as a nurse or as a member of the clerical staff. Furthermore, Maugham & Crichton had been at their current address for nearly seventeen years.
It had occurred to Carol that Jane might once have been a patient of one of Maugham & Crichton’s physicians, and that her subconscious mind had made use of the firm’s address to flesh out the Millicent Parker identity. But Polly, who had worked for Maugham & Crichton ever since they’d opened their doors, was sure she had never seen the girl. However, intrigued by Jane’s amnesia and sympathetic by nature, Polly agreed to check the files to see if Maugham & Crichton had ever treated anyone named Laura Havenswood, Millicent Parker, or Linda Bektermann. It was a fruitless search; none of those names appeared in the patient records.