Stork Raving Mad: A Meg Langslow Mystery (A Meg Lanslow Mystery)

scratch.”
    It sounded like a quote. And he was absently fingering his coat pocket. Was it just my imagination or did I see a small lump there, the size and shape of a roll of Tums?
    “And your father did suggest it—both to Dr. Wright and toMr. Mendoza,” Blanco said. “I got the impression he was disappointed that they both refused.”
    “I’m sure he was,” I said. “He loves riding in the ambulance.”
    “So his disappointment wasn’t necessarily due to any reservations over their condition?’
    “If he’d had any reservations about their condition, he’d have kept nagging till they agreed to go to the hospital,” I said.
    “I don’t know about Mr. Mendoza, but Dr. Wright is very strong willed,” he said. “She’s hardly ever sick and when she is, she does her best to carry on as if there were nothing wrong with her.”
    I suspected I knew the type—the people who wouldn’t stay home when they caught cold, but insisted on dragging themselves to work, shedding germs and damp tissues everywhere. I’d gone through a phase of being like that myself, until I’d realized that the world could usually manage to get along without me for a day or two. Dr. Wright seemed like the type who had liked feeling indispensable.
    “I should have insisted that she go to the hospital,” Blanco said.
    “And if you had, would she have listened to you?”
    Blanco sighed and shook his head.
    “If Dad thought she was injured, either she’d be in the hospital right now or he’d still be following her around, nagging her,” I said. “You have no idea how persistent he can be.”
    “Isn’t that possible—for someone to hit their head and feel fine initially and then later have some complication?”
    “Like a subdural hematoma,” I said. “Yes, I suppose that’s possible.”
    Possible, but I hoped it didn’t turn out to be true. Dad would never forgive himself if he’d failed to hospitalize a patient who turned out to have had a traumatic head injury.
    “You should suggest that to Dad and the chief,” I said. “If you haven’t already.”
    “It would be so much easier to understand,” he said, “if it were all a horrible accident. I can’t imagine why anyone would actually kill her.”
    Clearly he hadn’t been eavesdropping on Ramon and Bronwyn.
    “Not everyone agrees with the actions she’s taken on Ramon Soto’s case,” I said.
    “But that’s hardly a life-or-death issue,” Blanco said.
    “It could be for Ramon,” I said.
    “He could do another dissertation, couldn’t he?” Blanco’s expression was puzzled. Maybe tossing off major research projects was a breeze for him.
    “He’s spent three years on this one,” I said. “That’s probably an eighth of his entire life. And what’s more, it’s three years of tuition. Unless he’s on full scholarship, Ramon has probably racked up some pretty serious student loans. Another three years of work, more tens of thousands of debt.”
    I suddenly realized that I was probably making too good a case for Ramon as a suspect. I could feel Ramon’s pill bottle pressing against my leg.
    “And Ramon’s just the one we know about,” I said. “How many other students and former students might be walking around feeling that Dr. Wright ruined their lives?”
    “Oh, dear,” he said. “I never considered that. The fact that someone could have some violent, irrational grudge.”
    Irrational? Well, it was all in your point of view.
    “Watch your back, then,” I said as I turned to leave. “We wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”
    “To me?” His voice rose to a squeak. “Why should anything happen to me?”
    “Right now, a lot of people associate the two of you,” I said. “For all some of these people know, you were helping Dr. Wright with whatever she was doing that they don’t like. So be careful. We don’t want more trouble.”
    He gave me a startled look and scurried back to the kitchen, clutching his cell phone like a talisman.
    Okay, it was a mean thing to say, but he’d angered me, with his slurs on Dad’s professionalism and his automatic assumption that anyone who didn’t like Dr. Wright was irrational.
    Still, he was looking less and less like a credible threat to Ramon’s dissertation. I had been wrong in thinking that we were facing two formidable adversaries. Dr. Wright might have been formidable. Dr. Blanco was merely the faithful sidekick.
    Or perhaps he was only a weapon Dr. Wright had planned to