Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

scene,” she nearly spat out at me. “I guess you haven’t spent much time with her.” She cocked her head and waited for my reply.
    “That’s correct,” I told her.
    “Do you think this is the first time she’s acted up?” Shaking her head, frowning. “Well, it’s not. Only this time—”
    “Was there yelling?” I asked.
    “Yelling? She doesn’t make a sound.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “It’s just one of her many ways of manipulating the people who are forced to deal with her.”
    “So there was no yelling?”
    “Well, Dr. Bechman would never have yelled at a child. At anyone. So the answer to your question is no, there was no yelling.”
    The little tag pinned to her chest uniform said “L. Peach.”
    “So you didn’t hear anything, Ms. Peach, anything at all?”
    She inhaled sharply through her nose but said nothing, a woman in her sixties, neat in her white uniform, hair pulled tightly back off her full face. Her cheeks were doughy and she was wearing too much makeup. Behind her bifocals I could see she was fuming. A second later, I thought she was about to cry.
    “She was the last person here. She, she...“
    I just waited, Dashiell sitting close to my leg.
    “I heard him before I left for the day. I heard him saying what he’d said before, what he’d told Mr. Spector when he came in with her right after it happened,” pointing to her eyelid, “that the effects of the Botox were temporary, that that’s why she was supposed to come in every three months for shots, because it wasn’t permanent. Anyway, this shot was supposed to be for her other eye. He did one at a time. He was very conservative in his treatment of . . .“
    “Yeah, yeah. And then what?”
    Ms. Peach looked puzzled.
    “You heard him explain to Madison that the effects of the Botox were temporary. And then what happened?”
    “I left. I had no idea, of course...“
    “Nothing else before you left?”
    “Yes. One other thing.”
    This time my eyebrows went up, but whatever it was Ms. Peach was going to say, it wasn’t coming easily.
    “A kick.”
    “A kick? You heard a kick?”
    “It sounded as if she kicked the desk.” In control again. “Have you ever seen one of her fits, Miss . . .“
    “Alexander. Rachel Alexander. No, I haven’t. I only met her once. The thing is...“
    Ms. Peach was shaking her head again. “Then you have no idea, simply no idea.”
    ‘That’s why I came to you,” I told her.
    She nodded, then looked around to see who might be watching us. “Nasty,” she whispered. “A real terror.”
    “Did you know her before?”
    “Before what?”
    “Before she stopped talking.”
    Ms. Peach sighed. She shook her head.
    “How long have you been working here, if I might ask?“
    “Nearly five years, as if that’s any of your—”
    “And the person who was here before you?”
    “You mean the temp?” She rolled her eyes.
    “No. The person who held the job before you.”
    “Oh, you mean Celia?”
    “Yes, Celia. How long had she been here?”
    Ms. Peach’s brow furrowed. No free Botox for employees, I thought.
    “Was she here before Madison stopped talking?”
    “Well, yes, she was, but. . .“
    “But what?”
    “Two weeks after Madison was diagnosed, that’s when her mother disappeared and Madison became silent. So Celia would have only seen her five or six times.”
    I nodded. “It’s Tourette’s syndrome, is that right?”
    She began to shake her head. “I can’t discuss that with you, Ms. Alexander. You’re not a blood relative of the child’s, are you?”
    “I understand,” I said. “But I’m confused now. Mr. Spector mentioned her, Celia, as one of Madison’s favorite people.“
    “Celia?”
    I nodded.
    Ms. Peach snorted. “So that’s what she did with her time.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, she certainly didn’t pay attention to the files. I can attest to that.”
    “They were disorganized, inaccurate?”
    “You wouldn’t believe what I had to deal with.”
    “How long had she been here?”
    Ms. Peach compressed her lips and waited for me to come to my senses and stop asking her questions she knew she shouldn’t be answering. Or perhaps it was something else. Perhaps Ms. Peach was upset because she had already told me things she shouldn’t have. She reached into her purse and took out her keys and turned her back to me. “Some people just don’t have the knack for it.”
    “For?”
    “For keeping things in order.For