Corpse Suzette

“And Mr. D’Alessandro?”
    “The doctor was good to me.
I hate the idea that something might have happened to her.”
    “What about him?” Dirk
said. “Was he good to you, too?” Bridget’s Irish blue eyes suddenly looked a
bit guarded. Then she said, “Mr. D’Alessandro and I had a pleasant enough
working relationship.”
    “And that was his idea,
I’ll bet,” Savannah said, quickly scanning the nurse’s pleasant enough figure.
    “What’s that?” Bridget
asked.
    “That your relationship
remain professional. I would imagine that was more your idea than Mr.
D’Alessandro’s.”
    She looked uncomfortable
with Savannah’s brand of frankness, but she nodded. “Yes, I suppose you could
say it was more my idea than his.”
    “Do you know of anyone who
would want to do either or both of them any harm?” Dirk asked.
    “Well...” She mulled it
over for a moment. “I guess there were some people who weren’t all that pleased
with the results of their surgeries. Some patients have very high expectations.
They think they’ll achieve some sort of physical perfection and then their
lives will be much happier. And of course, that’s an unrealistic expectation.”
    “Anybody in particular more
disappointed than normal?” Dirk asked.
    “Maybe a couple.”
    “Could you give us their
names?” Savannah said.
    Bridget looked horrified at
the very thought. “Oh, we guard our patients’ anonymity very carefully at the
Mystic Twilight spa. If word got out that we had released their names—”
    “Look, Nurse Bridget,” Dirk
interjected. “I appreciate the fact that you want to protect your patients and
all that noble stuff. But we have a dead person, maybe two, and I don’t have
time to worry about whose face-lift is going to be public knowledge, if you
know what I mean. If you can think of anybody who was upset with either Dr. Du
Bois or Mr. D’Alessandro, you’d better spit it out.”
    “I’ll make a list for you,”
she said, “if you promise me that you won’t tell where you got it.”
    “I’ll cover you,” he said
with sudden and unexpected kindness. “Don’t worry about it. I like nurses. I
have a lot of respect for what they do. They took good care of me when I got
shot in the line of duty.”
    Oh, no, Savannah thought. Here
we go again. The “Bullet in the Ass” story that she’d heard a few hundred
times too many. She liked to think she was as compassionate and empathetic as
anyone. But when it came to Dirk’s barely-grazed right buttock, she had run out
of sympathy in 1999.
    “Here we are,” she
announced brightly as they reached the door to D’Alessandro’s office. “Let’s
check in here first.”
    They entered the office,
and after a quick look around, Savannah decided that it looked just the same as
it had when she had last been in here. It had the neat, tidy appearance of a
worker who did precious little work. Nothing appeared to be out of place. Not a
pen or pencil in sight.
    “Let me ask you something
bluntly, Nurse Bridget,” Dirk said. “To the best of your knowledge, did Mr.
D’Alessandro use illegal drugs?”
    The nurse looked genuinely
shocked at the very idea. “No, not at all. He drank socially.” She paused, then
added, “And he was... well... very sociable. But other than that, nothing.”
    “How about prescription
drugs?” Savannah asked. “Was he on any sort of medication that you know of?”
    “No, and if he were, I
think I would know. I’m in charge of our med inventory and I would know if he
was taking anything out of the cabinets.” She looked quizzically from Dirk to
Savannah and back. “Why do you ask?”
    “There were some injection
marks on his thigh,” Savannah said.
    “Oh, those.” A light dawned
on Bridget’s face. “The B1? shots.”
    “What are those?” Dirk
asked.
    “He gave himself B,, shots,
claimed they kept his strength up. I gave him a couple when I first started
working here, but then he got the nerve to start doing it himself.”
    “And he did this
regularly?”
    “Yes. Once a month.”
    “Did he do this here at
work or at home?” Dirk said.
    “Here. It’s handy. We have
the needles and syringes and gauze, and we keep his vials of B 12 in
the drug cabinet.”
    “Which room is the cabinet
in?” Savannah asked.
    “Exam Room One, where I
draw blood,” she replied.
    Dirk gave Savannah a quick
glance. She knew the look: He was onto something. Or at least he thought he
was.
    “Let’s go there,” he