Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

Alexander, but I was told they were on the needle.”
    I flapped a hand at her, as if the bad news she’d just given me were nothing at all. “You just told me she handled everything, didn’t you?”
    Ms. Peach didn’t answer my question. Instead she carefully put the copy of Madison’s drawing in a large manila envelope, as if it were a medical report or an X ray, and handed it to me.
    “Anyone could have made that picture,” I said, as if I were talking to myself. “I certainly could have.” I stopped short of suggesting that Ms. Peach herself could have made the drawing. But I was sure she’d gotten the point anyway. Ms. Peach headed for the door, opening it for me.
    “You said you were the one who found the doctor?“
    “Yes, and I can tell you it was quite a shock.”
    “So you were the first one in that morning?” I asked her as casually as I could.
    “It wasn’t morning. I found him that evening.”
    “I don’t understand. You said that you left when the doctor was in his office with Madison. I didn’t know there were office hours in the evening.”
    “There aren’t. I came back.”
    “Back to the office? Whatever for? Was it when you realized you hadn’t set the alarm?”
    “No,” she said, her face red, her hands trembling. “I forgot my book.”
    “Your book !?”
    “Will you please stop repeating everything I say,” she shouted.
    “It’s just that—”
    “After dinner, I realized I’d left my book at the office and I wanted to finish it that night. It’s not that far and so I—“
    “How long after you’d left was that?”
    “About two hours.”
    “Two hours?”
    “See. You’re doing it again. If you don’t stop that compulsive mimicry, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.“
    “Must have been a good book,” I said, ignoring her outburst.
    Ms. Peach opened the door. “I have work to do.”
    “So the doctor’s wife hadn’t called to inquire where he was. That’s not why you came back?”
    “No. He had a meeting. It would have been a late night. She wasn’t expecting him for dinner.”
    I nodded. “And she wouldn’t have called you anyway, isn’t that so? I mean, the doctor must have had a pager.”
    “Of course.”
    “And no one called the office to see why he’d missed the meeting?”
    “Of course not. It’s not as if he was the speaker .”
    “Just one more question, Ms. Peach.”
    Her eyebrows went up.
    Then I shook my head. “Another time,” I said. “You’ve got work to do.”
    This time I left without looking back, crossing the street toward the park. The phone call I had to make could be made there as well as anywhere else, and while I had just been cruel to Ms. Peach, very cruel, I’d done so for a reason. But there was no reason I could think of to be cruel to Dashiell by having him this close to the run and not giving him some time for R & R. As I entered the park at the corner and turned onto the path, his ears went up. I could hear the barking, too, a pleasure after the suffocating beigeness of Dr. Bechman’s office.

CHAPTER 6

    I called Leon from the dog run.
    “I was just at Dr. Bechman’s office,” I said.
    “Oh.”
    “I was told Madison’s fingerprints were on the needle.“
    “It doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t mention it.”
    “Leon...“
    “If it meant something conclusive, she’d be charged, wouldn’t she? And what does this have to do with finding Sally?”
    “Maybe nothing,” I told him. “Maybe something. I have to toss a wide net, then eliminate what I don’t need, what doesn’t help. It’s not as if she left a trail of bread crumbs. I don’t know where I’m going to find what I need to get me started in the right direction. Okay?”
    “Okay.”
    I sighed. So did Leon.
    “I need the name of the high school where you were teaching when you met Sally.”
    “Abraham Lincoln. On Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn.“
    “And do you remember the names of any of her friends?“
    “She was never a big talker.”
    “No best girlfriend?”
    “She never said.”
    “And you never met any of her friends?”
    “No, I never did.”
    “No one in history class she came in with, sat next to, left with?”
    “Not that I noticed.”
    “What about her other teachers?”
    I waited while Leon thought. “I can’t recall.”
    “One more question for now, Leon. Do you recall the name of the receptionist who worked for Dr. Bechman before Ms. Peach, Celia something?”
    There was a