Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

she turned left, I left the park, crossed the street and caught up with her.
    “Dr. Edelstein?”
    She turned, looked at me, then looked down at Dashiell. “Yes.”
    “I understand you were at the medical practice around the comer when Celia Abele worked there.”
    She stepped back. “What is this about?”
    “And that you are JoAnn’s pediatrician, but you see her at your other office, at the hospital. Is that correct?”
    “Who are you? What is it you . . .?”
    “You heard about Celia, of course.”
    Dr. Edelstein blinked. I didn’t wait for more.
    “Charles doesn’t think that Celia committed suicide, Doctor, and neither do I. I think her death is connected to the death of Eric Bechman.”
    “Of course it is.”
    I shook my head. “Not in the way you think. It wasn’t grief that killed Celia.”
    I watched the information play across her face, waited as she took another step back, another step away from me.
    “If you could only give me ten minutes to explain.“
    “Who are you? What is your connection to Celia and Eric?”
    “My name is Rachel Alexander,” I told her. “I’m a private investigator, hired by Leon Spector, whose daughter, Madison—”
    She began to shake her head. “I can’t talk to you. I can’t help you with this.”
    “Madison didn’t kill Dr. Bechman. If we can sit down somewhere, I can explain. I can show you—”
    “I have to get home. I’m expected...“ Making a point of checking her watch.
    “Do you have children, Dr. Edelstein?” Knowing she did, a girl of six. Ellie. When I saw the look on Dr. Edelstein’s face, I lifted one hand. “I’m not here to threaten you, Doctor. Far from it. It’s just that since you have a child, too, a daughter, you must understand how Charles Abele feels, how Leon Spector feels.”
    “Of course I understand. What does that have to do with anything?”
    “I have good reason to believe that Madison didn’t murder her doctor. And she surely didn’t murder Celia. If I’m right, and let’s assume for the moment that I am, someone else did. Someone else killed them both.”
    She had finally stopped walking. She was standing there, holding her jacket tight around her body, just staring at me, wondering what the hell was happening to her orderly life. Well, who hadn’t ever worried about that? No one I knew. And wasn’t that the point I was trying to make, that Leon’s and Charles’s lives had been tom to shreds, not just once either. If she was going to help me, she’d have to understand that, no matter what it took.
    “Who?” she said.
    “I don’t know yet. That’s why I need your help.”
    “You said you could show me something,” she said. “Show me what?”
    I had Madison’s drawing in my jacket pocket, the copy of her medical records as well. I took the drawing out first, unfolding it, handing it to Dr. Edelstein. “This is a copy of the drawing that was found on Dr. Bechman’s desk a few hours after he was murdered.”
    She began to shake her head.
    “I know it looks different. As you know, Madison doesn’t speak. She stopped speaking shortly after her mother disappeared. I was hired to find her mother—and I did.”
    Dr. Edelstein’s mouth opened, but I held up my hand before she had the chance to speak.
    “Mr. Spector thought if I could find his missing wife and bring her home, that if she had her mother back, Madison would speak again, that she would tell us whether or not she had committed this terrible crime. But her mother won’t come back.” I shook my head. “Wishes won’t change that. She won’t.”
    Try as I did to stop it, I felt my eyes getting wet. I felt a tear fall.
    “I’ve been trying, with Dashiell’s help,” looking down at him, then back at her, streams of people passing us going both ways, the world leaving work and going home for the evening, “I’ve been trying to get through to her, to Madison, to connect with her, to show her that she could trust me, and I think I did, somewhat, because she was willing, just today, to tell me what this drawing meant by finishing it.”
    Dr. Edelstein looked down at the drawing in her hand, then back up at me.
    “You saw the original, didn’t you?”
    “Yes, of course.”
    “So you can see the difference.”
    “Yes, I can, but what does it mean?”
    “The drawing wasn’t a threat. Madison was telling Dr. Bechman that the effects of the Botox had broken her heart. He must have understood. He must have stopped her before she