Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

thinking? I couldn’t threaten Ms. Peach on the slim chance she had doctored the doctor’s notes. Because if she hadn’t, or even if she had, threatening her could land me in jail, and that was not going to help Madison at all. Helping Madison was the point. It had been the point from day one, I thought, passing Mama Buddha, smelling black bean sauce as I passed the open kitchen door, a small man in an apron, his foot against the wall, catching a smoke in the crisp fall air. There had to be another way to get what I was after. There had to be a better way.
    There was always Hyram Willet, the doctor who seemed to own the practice, or if not the practice, at least the building that housed it. And while there was no way short of dynamite that I could get into the medical office from the street, check the records in privacy and get back out undetected, Dr. Willet, I was sure, could get there from his apartment. If I told him my theory, would Dr. Willet invite me into his house, take me down to the office, give me free run of the files, Dr. Willet who was fighting tooth and nail to prevent the detectives from doing the very same thing? I didn’t think so.
    There was one other doctor at the practice, Laura Edelstein, a pediatrician. In fact, I thought I’d seen her name on the copy of Madison’s records. I was around the comer from home. I checked the time—not quite two-thirty. If the office was open at all, that meant that either Dr. Willet or Dr. Edelstein was working. Standing outside the gate to my cottage, I dialed the office, getting even luckier than I’d hoped I would. Ms. Peach was taking or making a call. My call went through to voice mail, but before I was invited to leave a message, I got to hear their message, giving me the office hours for both Willet and Edelstein. Dr. Laura, it said after the general message, was in Monday through Thursday afternoons from one to five.
    For the moment, as I unlocked the gate and unclipped Dashiell’s leash, all my hopes were on Dr. Laura.

CHAPTER 30

    I stood across the street from Dr. Bechman’s office waiting for the last patient to leave, a little boy holding some sort of robot, refusing to let his mother take his free hand.
    “You know you have to hold a grown-up’s hand to cross the street, Jeffrey,” she said as I crossed the street. Then, “What do you suggest?”
    I could see Ms. Peach in the waiting room, picking up toys and books and putting them back where they belonged, bringing order back to her world. Dr. Edelstein would be returning phone calls. I decided to go into the park on the odd chance that Ms. Peach would be leaving the office first.
    I sat on a bench facing north, Dashiell up on the bench next to me. I could see the brownstone that housed the doctors’ offices, the gate closed, no one coming out yet. Back at home, I’d pulled out Madison’s records again, checking them carefully, line by line. I had seen Laura Edelstein’s name there, but only on the top of the letterhead, all three names still there. No one had thought to have new stationery made. Perhaps they were waiting for someone to buy Bechman’s practice. Perhaps they were trying to keep expenses down, avoid the cost of interim stationery. Whatever the reason, Ms. Peach had used the old letterhead. Some people did that with Christmas cards after one spouse dies inconveniently close to the holidays, crossing out the dead person’s name and sending the cards anyway. Merry Christmas!
    I was hoping that it was Dr. Edelstein who had referred Madison to Dr. Bechman. If not, there’d be less of a chance I could persuade her to help me. But then I thought of another possible connection, perhaps an even stronger one. I pulled out my cell phone and made a call, got my answer, then waited some more.
    Dr. Edelstein was at the gate now, opening the latch, closing it carefully behind her, a plain-looking woman with a long nose, pale skin, dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was a big woman, taller than average and with a weight that fell somewhere on the high side of normal on those charts doctors always had in their offices, which meant by New York standards, she was on the heavy side. Hell, by New York standards, where sizes 4 and 6 were considered a medium, Olive Oyl was on the heavy side.
    She headed east, and I did so as well, walking inside the park until I got to an exit. For a while, I stayed on the opposite side of the street, but when we came to Fifth Avenue and