Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) Read online

  “There is one more thing, Doctor.”

  He shook his head in mock irritation. “Michael, Michael, I’ve told you to call me Michael.”

  “This is something I wanted to ask you in your official capacity as a doctor.”

  “You name it.”

  “Can you tell me how to fake a pregnancy?”

  There was a long pause while he considered her question. He finally cocked his head to one side. “Although I probably shouldn’t be, I am willing to discuss this mater with you.” Claire opened her mouth to thank him, but he raised a cautioning hand. “On one condition. You must allow me take you out to dinner.”

  D8NNE1

  Chapter Five

  “I feel like a magazine ad for tampons,” Claire complained, and was gratified when Lori’s smile met hers in the tall mirror that hung on the door of Lori’s walk-in closet. Claire had called Lori the day before, while she reluctantly rested in bed. When she heard that Claire hoped to persuade Dr. Gregory to help her pose as a pregnant woman, Lori had insisted that Claire come over to plan what to wear. She was convinced that Claire lacked the appropriate outfit that would both guarantee Dr. Gregory’s help and that wouldn’t look out of place in Sinq, Northwest Portland’s hottest restaurant. Claire, who mostly dressed in jeans and T-shirts, had to admit she was right.

  “You don’t like all-white?” Looking in the mirror next to Claire’s shoulder, Lori twitched the lapel of an antique white silk jacquard vest into place. The vest was layered over a lightweight ivory wool turtleneck and paired with matching wool pants.

  Discarded clothes were heaped on the bed and scattered on the floor. Even though she was three inches shorter and currently fifteen pounds heavier, many of Lori’s clothes from thinner phases in her life fit Claire.

  “You know what will happen if I wear this within a ten-foot radius of any food or beverage? “ Claire stepped back from the mirror, unbuttoned the pants and let them drop to her knees. She sat down on a dark-green velvet overstuffed chair to finish taking them off. After a day draped with an icepack, her ankle had begun to heal, but it was still unable to solely support her weight. In the shower this morning, her foot had looked bloated and shapeless, green near the ankle and purple along the bottom edge where the skin gathered to smooth out into the sole. “If I wear this, I’ll guarantee you that I’m doomed to spill something on it that even my drycleaner can’t get out. She scolds me enough already. You know what she told me last time I brought something in?” Wagging her finger, Claire did her best approximation of the drycleaner’s Korean accent. “‘You messy eater! Many spot!’” She slipped off the vest, pulled the sweater over her head and handed everything back to Lori.

  “I wore that outfit to a New Year’s Eve party with Havi,” Lori said, her eyes unfocused. “We had a wonderful time. We didn’t get home until three.” She sighed and shook her head. “Let me see what else I have back here.” She disappeared again into the walk-in closet. The yellow halter dress she emerged with was splashed with bright orange sunflowers.

  “Have you told him yet?” Claire asked.

  Without looking at Claire, Lori shook her head. “How can I? You know how they say people either see the glass as half-full or half-empty? In Havi’s case, he wants to know who in the hell drank his water.” Claire smiled but Lori didn’t. “He’s so angry right now, but there’s no one to be angry at. If I tell him, then I’ll just be giving him a place to put his anger, and I can’t deal with that right now.” Her tone hardened, as if Claire were arguing with her. “If you find her, then I’ll tell.” She let her breath out in a sigh, then amended it to, “When you find her.” She sat on the bed and looked at Claire. There were shadows under her dark blue eyes. “Do you really think you need to go to the Bradford Clinic posing as a pregnant woman?”

  Claire was still figuring out the answer to that question herself. “The only place I can find out who adopted your daughter is at the clinic. We already know they won’t talk to you, so they wouldn’t talk to me, at least not as Claire Montrose. The minute I showed up asking questions they would show me the door. But if I go as a pregnant woman who is considering adoption, I might have the opportunity to beg, borrow or steal the information we need.” Claire hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. “Do you think I can get away with saying I’m a college student?”

  Leaning forward, Lori put a finger under Claire’s chin and examined her face with narrowed eyes. “Maybe. If you said you were twenty-five you could probably get away with it. A lot of students at PSU are in their mid-twenties. It’s a good thing you don’t have many lines.”

  “Redheads don’t tan, especially in Oregon. I gave up and started wearing sunscreen a long time ago.”

  Lori held the sunflower dress against herself. “Well, what do you think? This always looks good on me when I’m a red-head.”

  “It might be a little ...” loud didn’t seem like a polite term. “Colorful?”

  “Okay. I can take a hint. No big flower prints.” Lori disappeared again into the closet. Claire could hear hangers sliding back and forth as she sought another selection. “How about this?” She came out with a red cocktail dress, cut low in the bosom and high on the legs, the kind of thing that would show off Lori’s curves and would make Claire look as shapely as a clothespin.

  “I don’t think it’s really me,” Claire said. “You have to be you to carry off that dress.”

  “I guess it’s just another dress I have good memories of. Let’s see, let’s see. Wait a minute, I might just have something in the back. I bought it at Nordstrom’s Rack, but it’s a little too long for me. I’ve only worn it once.”

  The dress Lori emerged with was still swathed in clear plastic from the drycleaner, but right away Claire could see how striking it was - and how unlike anything she regularly wore. A floor length black knit, it had a cut-away back crossed by two curving bands of satin. “Could I wear a bra in that?” she asked.

  Lori snorted. “What are you, a B-cup? Honey, you don’t need to worry. Go on, try it on. And if you absolutely decide you have to have a bra, just go down to Nordstrom and get yourself some of those glue-on cups. They’ll give you a little bit of support and prevent that ‘headlight’ phenomenon.” For a moment, Lori seemed nearly her old self, dispensing fashion advice with a smile and a wink. It was almost possible to forget about the desperately ill child sleeping downstairs.

  “At Minor High, guys would say your highbeams were on. Or they’d yell down the hall that they wanted to ‘taste your chocolate chips.’ High school is a much blunter place than the rest of the world.”

  “Yeah, that kind of talk would be grounds for a class action suit nowadays,” Lori said. “Go on, try it on.”

  Claire stood up and Lori helped lift the dress over her head, the fabric cool as it slid across her skin. She looked in the mirror. The dress fit her like a dream, the knit hugging her, but not too tightly. Turning to the side, she smoothed the dress over her abdomen. Was it her imagination, or did it already look poochy after two days without exercise?

  Lori read her mind. “Just go buy some of those Perfect Silhouette pantyhose. They’ve got a lot more than a control top - they also stop your thighs from jiggling and contour your butt.”

  Claire was curious. “Where does all that extra flab end up? Can I move it up to my chest and give myself cleavage for the night? I’ve always wanted cleavage.”

  Lori snorted. “It’s overrated. I got to be a double-D when I was nursing, and I quickly found out that it’s no fun when your breasts are bigger than your head.”

  At the thought of nursing, Lori started to look sad again, so Claire switched subjects. “This dress doesn’t make me look too pale, does it?” Her skin seemed as ghostly white as the vanilla ice-milk Jean used to buy by the half-gallon box when she was dieting (and then polish off in a single night).

  “There are yellow-based blacks and blue-based blacks,” Lori said with the air of a connoisseur. Claire had never noticed any suc
h thing herself. “And while a yellow-based black would make you look sallow, a blue-based black actually compliments the slightly rosy undertones in your skin and also sets off that apricot-colored hair of yours.” She gathered up Claire’s hair loosely and pulled it to the top of her head. Their eyes met in the mirror. “Wear it up like this. Not too tight. And not too many hairpins, either. You want some of these curls to spring up.”

  “I’m not trying to seduce the guy. This is a fact-finding mission.” Claire regretted the words as soon as she said them, because they brought her friend back to reality. Lori’s shoulders curled over and her lips pressed together in a thin white line. “There is something else you could do to help me. I need to know everything you remember about the layout and the staffing of the clinic.”

  “It’s been nearly ten years, but I’ll tell you what I remember.” Lori took a notepad and pencil from the drawer of a bedside table. “It’s near Sylvan.” She drew a thick line, then a narrower line that snaked up at a right degree angle to the first line. “Here’s the highway, and up here there’s a private drive. It’s not really marked - you have to know what to look for. I remember that by the time you get to the top you don’t even believe you’re near a city any more. The cedar and fir trees up there must be a couple of hundred of years old.”

  “And what’s the clinic like inside? Does the doctor have an office - and where is that in relationship to the exam rooms? Is everything visible from the nurses’ station, or are there walls in between?”

  “I was afraid you were going to ask me about stuff like that.” Her teeth sank into her lower lip. “That’s one part I just don’t remember a lot about. There’s a waiting area, and a nurses’ station in the front, but I don’t really remember where things were exactly.”

  Claire was beginning to feel frustrated, although she knew it wasn’t Lori’s fault. “How about the records? Do you remember where they kept the records?”

  “All I remember is that they always had a big fat manila file in the room. But now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure it had a number on it, not a name.”

  A number. That meant even if Claire could find the records, they might not do her much good. Maybe a better bet were the people. “Okay, so there’s the head nurse, Vi. Are there other staff?”

  Lori sighed. “Another nurse or maybe two. I only really dealt with Vi. And Dr. Bradford.”

  “What’s he like?”

  Lori looked up at the ceiling as she searched her memory. “Tall. Thin. He seemed old to me then, but he was probably only in his mid-forties. And he has these pale eyes, like blue ice.”

  “He doesn’t sound like the warm, fatherly type.”

  Lori nodded. “He was all business.” Her smile was bitter. “I guess that’s what it was, a business. He probably sold my daughter to the highest bidder.”

  “Mommy!” The wail was faint, but Lori was already halfway down the stairs by the time it was repeated. “Mommy!”

  Claire followed her down more slowly, her ankle protesting at every step. Zach was in the hallway on his hands and knees, his small body seeming to convulse as he vomited on the oak floor. It was still a shock to see his completely bald head. Kneeling by him, Lori massaged his shoulders, tears running down her face.

  Panic hummed in Claire as she looked at the bright red spattered on the floor. “Is that blood?” Was Zach beginning to hemorrhage inside?

  Without looking up, Lori shook her head. “He had Spaghetti Ohs for lunch. Could you start filling a tub for me?” She continued to pat and soothe him until his stomach was empty. While Lori gave Zach a bath, Claire found rubber gloves, a bucket and a sponge under the kitchen sink. She scrubbed the floor clean as she listened to Lori hum as the water splashed. How hard it must be to be strong for him, not to scream or cry or curse God, but instead to hum Zach a lullaby.

  After he was tucked back in bed, Claire asked, “Do you need to call the doctor’s office? He seemed so sick.”

  Lori shrugged. “I know what they will say. ‘It’s normal.’ ‘It’s to be expected.’ ‘Bring it up with the doctor next visit.’ Vomiting is normal. He’s so tired he can’t hold his head up sometimes, but if I call they say that’s okay. From the oncology nurses’ point of view, it’s all normal. Constipation, stomach cramps, headaches, headaches, pains in his jaw. These drugs they have him on, they can permanently screw up his liver, give him heart failure or diabetes, even make his bones so brittle I could break his arm if I’m not careful. I guess they figure that all those are in the future, and the cancer is killing Zach now.” Lori’s voice broke.

  A hundred years from now they will pity us, Claire thought, for how we tried to fight cancer by burning, poisoning and cutting the patient. And what if these remedies, as awful as they were, didn’t work? She had to find Zach’s sister.

  ###

  Dante’s phone rang for the third time, which meant the answering machine was about to click on. Claire decided she didn’t feel like talking to a machine, not when what she wanted was the real Dante. Part of her felt guilty about going out to dinner with Michael Gregory, even though she knew in her heart that it meant nothing. She was about to disconnect when the phone was picked up.

  “Hello?” The breathless voice was a woman’s, low and melodious.

  “Oops. Sorry - I must have dialed the wrong number.”

  “Were you calling Dante? He’s in the shower. This is sara.”

  Sara, the woman who thought her ghost-written quickie celebrity autobiographies meant she shared both a profession and a spelling affectation with e.e. cummings; sara, the woman Dante had dated two years earlier; sara, who seemed to be on a one-woman mission to make feel Claire feel provincial, stupid and plain.

  “Is this Claire?” Her voice was as sickly sweet as cough syrup.

  “Yes. Yes it is.” With an effort, she kept the speed and pitch of her voice normal. Claire had felt this way once before, when her car had been rear-ended. The impact had snapped her forehead onto the edge of her steering wheel, opening up a section of her skin as neatly as a seam. She had stared at her blood-flecked dash with the same sensation of disbelief, layered over the knowledge that in another second she was going to be feeling great pain.

  “We were just planning a surprise birthday party for Ant.” Ant was sara’s putative boyfriend. Claire wasn’t going to give the woman the satisfaction of inquiring why such an activity required a shower. “Should I ask Dante to call you when he gets out? What time is it there anyway?”

  How like sara not to know whether New York ran ahead or behind the rest of the country. For a minute, Claire imagined the map of the United States the other woman must carry in her head. It would be like one of those caricatured cartoon maps you sometimes saw in tourist spots. New York City - complete with the Empire State Building and the twin towers of the World Trade Center - would bulge out to cover most of the nation, nearly overlapping with the slightly smaller Los Angeles reduced to the Hollywood sign. The rest of the map would be mostly blank, with an occasional cartoon sketch of a cow or a blade of wheat.

  “You know, you’re right. I think by the time he gets out of the shower it will be too late to call me back,” Claire said. Then she broke the connection.

  NSTIG8R

  Chapter Six

  In the shadow of an oversized bouquet of tropical flowers, Claire waited in Sinq’s lobby. The flowers seemed too big to be real, but when she tapped a petal with her finger it was cool to the touch. The restaurant was all glossy pale wood and walls covered in wheat-colored linen, but its look of quiet elegance was offset by the loud babble of voices. Many of the diners weren’t talking to their companions but to their cell phones. From the nearest table she could hear a man arranging to sell six hundred shares of stock. A waiter went from table to table, dealing drinks like cards.

  Claire walked over to the window, but it was too dark outside to pick out the faces of the people walking by. Her Perfect Silhouette pantyhose seemed to have shifted downward in just t
he walk from the car. Discreetly, she tried to tug on the waistband, which was now level with her hipbones. It didn’t budge.

  A cool hand cupped her bare shoulder, startling her. Before Claire could even draw in a breath, Dr. Gregory was dropping a peppermint-scented kiss on her cheek.

  “You’re looking lovely. I don’t think I’ve seen you in a dress before, just jeans or running shorts. I now know just how much I have been missing.”

  “Thank you,” Claire said. His gaze made her uncomfortable, so she looked down at her shoes, plain black Aerosole flats, stretchy enough to accommodate the Ace bandage she still wore around her ankle. When she had opened the door to the restaurant, heads had turned, and she’d both enjoyed the feeling and been unnerved by it. Dr. Gregory’s compliment just served to remind Claire of her continual promises to herself that she was going to stop walking out the door looking like she just woke up. She was going to start wearing earrings, she was gong to buy pretty sweater sets, she was going to put on make-up more than once a month and she was going to start wearing shoes that weren’t meant for exercise.

  The hostess took them to their seats at a small table on the outskirts of the restaurant. When they sat down, Claire’s knees grazed Dr. Gregory’s under the table, and he gave her a private smile. She was going to have to be careful. There had always been a little hum of interest coming from his direction, but tonight it seemed more intense. She gave him a brief answering smile, then took shelter behind her menu.

  Claire had spent enough time with Dante in New York City restaurants that she now knew basically how to eat at a place like Sinq, how to sit so the waiter could smoothly set the plate in front of her, how to deconstruct a dish that had been created to dazzle the eye as much as the palate, even how to imagine how truffle-infused roasted garlic mashed potatoes with chanterelles might taste. The thought of Dante gave her a pang, but she pushed the thought away.