Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) Read online

  The menu was filled with the kind of terms she associated more with New York than Portland: banana ketchup, shredded arugula, mango chutney, broccoli rabe. Every entree seemed to have at least a dozen ingredients. The first entree listed was a “pan-seared tenderloin of beef sandwich stacked with phyllo, dried cherry and fig bigarade, caramelized Fuji apples and sweet potato, accompanied by hazelnut dumplings, and finished with a tawny port reduction swirl.” This was beyond even Claire’s power of imagination. She settled for the simplest thing on the menu, pasta topped with roasted red peppers, pine nuts and tiny quills of asparagus. Dr. Gregory ordered a steak smothered in sautéed shallots and shitakes, which surprised her. He didn’t seem like the meat and potatoes kind of guy, even the truffle-infused kind. While they waited for their main course they dipped slices of bread into a plate of what the menu had described as “unfiltered Umbrian olive oil.” Claire had no clear idea where Umbria was, or even if it was a region or an entire country, but the end result was still good enough to make her lick her fingers.

  “So is it fun being a doctor?” Claire asked. Dr. Gregory had ordered the same drink for both of them, and Claire took a cautious sip. It was sweet-tasting, but with a kick at the end.

  He smiled to himself. “It was what I always wanted to be when I was growing up. You know, Dr. Kildare. Dr. Welby. All the good guys on TV were doctors. Of course, a nineteen-sixties TV version of a doctor’s life isn’t exactly how it works today.” He pinched the end of his nose. “Dr. Welby never had to deal with managed care or capitation.”

  “What’s captiation?”

  “If this is any hint, it has the same Latin root as decapitate.” His mouth smiled but his eyes didn’t. “The HMOs tell you they will only pay you so much per head. Of course, that only works if everyone stays healthy. You pray like heck that none of your patients gets really sick or needs a referral to a specialist.” He took another long sip of his drink and then set the empty glass on the table. “Thank goodness there’s still a few private pay patients like you. You know, I wasn’t exactly fantasizing about having to turn myself into a hustler when I put myself through school. I did enough of that when I was an undergrad majoring in English lit. Once I got hired by a temp agency to walk around at a doctors’ convention dressed in a giant stomach puppet and hand out samples of a new antacid. I saw these guys in their nice suits and with their clean hands. The next day I changed my major to pre-med. I thought being a doctor would mean I wouldn’t have to figure out how to make money.” He signaled with two fingers for the waiter. “Here, let me order you another one.

  Claire realized she had finished her own drink without being aware of it. She was going to have to take it easy, especially when she was sitting across from a good-looking man and trying hard not to think about whether Dante had betrayed her. When Dr. Gregory excused himself to go to the bathroom, Claire pushed her drink away from her and vowed not to touch it. She was relieved when their food came.

  “Do you realize you are about the only woman in here who’s eating?” Dr. Gregory asked her after she had eaten a few mouthfuls. He gestured with his fork, his words coming fast, his face animated and happy. “Look around. In a place like this, the men eat and the woman pick. I’ll bet you half of them go home and make themselves throw up whatever they did eat.” Claire’s gaze followed his gesture. It was a room full of bare shoulders and studied rumpledness, and just as Dr. Gregory had noted, the women’s plates of striped sea bass or crispy mango duck with mandarin coffee glaze sat virtually untouched.

  “So, why did you ask me about how to fake a pregnancy? I take it that it’s not just that you want to put a good scare into your boyfriend?”

  Claire decided not to answer his half-framed question about whether she had a boyfriend. She was going to keep everything on a professional level. “You like puzzles so much, I’m sure you know why I asked. I figured I could make an appointment to see this Dr. Bradford, and see what I can find out about what happened to my friend’s daughter. But I don’t want to get booted out of the clinic after I fail a pregnancy test.”

  He gave her a sly grin. “Claire, don’t tell me you’re sleuthing.” He reached across the table to pat her hand. “You should leave that kind of thing to the professionals.”

  Claire pulled her hand free. “My friend doesn’t have the money to pay a private investigator. She’s having a hard enough time paying for health care for her kid. She’s got one of those insurance policies that pays for eighty percent, but twenty percent of a whole lot of money is still a whole lot of money. I just want to look around the clinic little bit, check things out. So, say I’m a patient of yours and I come to you and say I’m pregnant. How do you -.”

  He interrupted her. “Is that what you’re planning on doing at the Bradford Clinic? And then what? Are you going to bring a miniature camera disguised as a ball-point pen? Hide a cyanide capsule in a false tooth?” The skin by his eyes crinkled when he smiled over the edge of his glass. He was one of those people who seemed to have a year-round tan.

  “I don’t know what I am going to do. But I need to get in there. I figure the only way I can get in the door is if I’m a patient. But that’s the tricky part, as I’m not willing to actually get pregnant to do this. I was hoping there might be some way to fool them. So tell me - if I came to you and said I was pregnant, how would you know if I were telling the truth?”

  “I wouldn’t. At least not in the beginning, not until I see the results of your urine sample. If you tell me that your menses are two weeks late, then I begin to think you may be pregnant. And then if you complain of nausea, particularly in the morning or after going a few hours without eating, and if you say that your breasts are tender when I do my clinical exam, then I am nearly certain.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward her. “Now as your doctor, I happen to know you have a tipped uterus, which is good.”

  Claire could feel herself flushing. “Why is that good?”

  “Early in a pregnancy it’s nearly impossible to palpate a tipped uterus and tell anything. I would rely more on what you report to me. A positive urine test would just be the icing on the cake. So to speak.”

  She lowered her voice. “But how would I pass a urine test? Could I put someone else’s pee in the cup?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Say, for example, if you carried a vial filled with a pregnant woman’s urine in your purse? The only thing that might trip you up is if the nurse picks up the sample and realizes it’s cold. Everyone’s supposed to be following universal precautions these days, which means you wear gloves whenever you handle blood or body fluids. Wearing gloves, a person might not notice whether the sample is the right temperature. When they do drug testing, though, the first thing they do is drop a thermometer in the sample to make sure it actually belongs to the person it’s supposed to. I heard of a guy once who bought some clean urine. Before he went in for the test, he tried to heat it up in the microwave. I guess he thought it would cool down on the way over to the test site, but still be warm by the time he poured it into the collection cup. Only his brain must have already been fried, because he set the timer for two minutes. The container exploded - and that was the end of the microwave’s useful life.”

  Claire made a face. “Can you think of a way to keep a sample the right temperature without destroying it?”

  Looking thoughtful, Dr. Gregory took a sip of his drink. “A real sample should be internal body temperature, which, you’ll remember, is nearly one-hundred degrees. What you could do is conceal the sample in your armpit.”

  “Armpit?” Exploding urine samples, hiding things in your armpits- Claire hoped that none of the other diners was eavesdropping on their conversation.

  “Axillary temperature - that’s armpit temperature in layman’s terms - is only a degree cooler than internal. That’s why I sometimes suggest that parents stick a thermometer under their kid’s arm for a few minutes. It’s a good alternative for babies too young to use an oral thermometer - or for parents too sc
ared to use a rectal one.”

  “How would I get my hands on a real sample, though? I don’t know anyone who’s pregnant.”

  “Then you’re in the wrong line of work. Every pregnant woman who walks through my door has her urine checked to make sure she’s not spilling sugar or protein. After that, the sample goes right down the drain. If you’re nice,” a dimple flashed on his chin as he smiled, “I could pass a sample your way.” He set down his glass and signaled the waiter again.

  Claire decided not to explore what he meant by ‘nice.’ “But what I need is the urine of someone who’s just barely pregnant, right? You’ll have to be careful not to give me urine from some woman who’s nine months along, or the clinic will know I’m lying.”

  “Actually it won’t matter. An in-office urine test only looks for the presence - or absence - of the pregnancy hormone HCG. It doesn’t make any distinction about how much there is, just whether it’s there or not,” Dr. Gregory said. He raised a cautioning finger. “If I do help you out, though, you have to promise me two things.”

  “Sure. What?”

  “You can’t tell anyone about how I helped you. And most especially you can’t tell Dr. Bradford. Even if he catches on as to what you’re doing, you have to promise me you won’t bring my name into it. He’s a big man in this town, especially in medical circles. If he got mad at me, I could easily find my name being ‘inadvertently’ left off preferred provider panels.”

  Claire agreed, with a mental asterisk that excerpted Lori and Charlie. After all, they already knew about this dinner tonight. And she could swear them to secrecy. “You said I had to promise two things.”

  He smiled. “‘Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back.’ You have to let me know what you find out.”

  “Of course.” Their salads had come and gone. Claire excused herself to go the bathroom. When she got up, she could feel that her pantyhose had shrunk a little bit more, trying to regain the original doll-size they had been when she pulled them from their package. No longer anchored over her hipbones, they slid perceptibly as she walked to the bathroom. They were beginning to tug her panties down, too.

  After she peed, Claire wrestled her nylons back into place. The bathroom was perfectly PC, the kind that came with a changing table, a condom machine, and a couple of bottles of complimentary perfume that pervious patrons had over-enthusiastically used. A look in the mirror reassured Claire that the dress she had borrowed from Lori had been the right choice, and she grinned at her reflection. A piece of something green had wrapped itself around one of her top eye teeth. Hot with embarrassment, she picked it off, praying that she had been refraining from smiling widely. Was she always doomed to look like a Glamour magazine’s “Don’t” and not a “Do”? As if to confirm her fears, Claire could feel her pantyhose slide down a millimeter with each step as she walked back to the table.

  Dr. Gregory’s nostrils flared as he caught the scent that still clung to her, but he didn’t comment. “Once you get in the clinic’s front door, how will you know what to look for?”

  “I’ve talked to my friend Lori, but she doesn’t remember a lot about the clinic’s layout. I need to find out before I go up there. Have you ever been inside?”

  Dr. Gregory shook his head. “No. But I might be able to help you out on that front as well. You know that hypothetical case I gave you?”

  “You mean about the good Catholic girl you might have referred to the clinic?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t so hypothetical. I don’t think she’s had her baby yet. I still have her number in my records. If you like, I could call and ask if she would talk to you.”

  Claire nodded. “I would, very much. What’s she like?” Dr. Gregory hesitated until she added, “I’m just trying to understand what kind of young woman goes through the Bradford Clinic.

  The gossip in him won out. “She’s young, like most of them. Barely nineteen. Blond hair, blue eyes.” He waved his hand in front of his mouth. “She has these unfortunate buck teeth. She’s from a farm family that lives East of Cascades. Before she moved to Portland, going into the big city meant La Grande. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant right at the end of her freshman year, I don’t think she would have come back. Portland’s too overwhelming for her, but at least her parents aren’t here to notice how big her belly’s getting. She managed to keep it hidden all summer. Well, that’s not really true. She told me she spent the whole summer thinking she must have an ulcer and eating nothing but cottage cheese.”

  Claire thought of cows, sheep, horses. “Didn’t you say she grew up on a farm?”

  He shrugged. “Denial’s not just a river in Egypt. This girl didn’t come to me until she was five months along. She was freaking out, telling me there was no way she could have an abortion, and at the same time telling me her parents would kill her if she had a baby. She liked the sound of the Bradford Clinic, because she wanted to make sure her parents would never find out. They have a reputation for absolute secrecy. It’s one reason their prices are so high. Of course, sometimes the money also helps grease the skids, gets a couple a baby they otherwise wouldn’t get.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you adopt through the Bradford Clinic, there’s no paperwork involved, unless you count filling out the withdrawal slip at your bank. And no lawyer, and no nosy child welfare agency asking you questions and wanting to do hours of home studies. That’s very attractive to people for a number of reasons. Also, in this country, if you are over forty-five, it’s very difficult to adopt. The rumor is that the Bradford Clinic has no age limits. There’s also a rumor that, for a little extra money, a couple can get a birth certificate that lists them as the birth parents. I hear that some women even time a fake pregnancy to coincide with the birth. So you wouldn’t be the only woman associated with the Bradford Clinic who might be faking a pregnancy.”

  The waiter came over and cleared their plates. “Would you like a dessert menu?”

  Claire shook her head and answered for both of them before Dr. Gregory could. “No thanks, I think it’s getting late.” It was not only late, but she had had far too much to drink.

  Claire wanted to pay for her half of the meal, or at least the tip, but Dr. Gregory wouldn’t hear of it. After he had signed his name to the credit card receipt, he insisted on walking her to her car. Against the cool air, Lori’s borrowed satin raincoat offered little protection, and Claire shivered. Before she could react, Dr. Gregory had shrugged off his jacket and put it over her shoulders. Claire didn’t think she had worn a jacket in that way since high school, but it made her feel cared-for. The waist of her pantyhose had slipped to the top of her thighs, forcing her to nearly waddle, and she hoped Dr. Gregory didn’t take it for a deliberate dawdle instead. When she reached her car, he took the keys from her hand, opened the door with an exaggerated flourish and then stepped closer to her. Claire stiffened, afraid he was going for a kiss, but instead he looked at her steadily and asked a question that slipped past her defenses. “How’s that boyfriend of yours back in New York?”

  As Claire tried to find an answer, she took a jerky breath. The sound was like that of a person who has been crying a long time, and it revealed far more than she ever would have told him willingly. His green eyes were steady, but Claire couldn’t read his expression. They stood for long seconds, just looking at each other, then he broke the silence by saying, “There’s another heteronym I like because the words seem related. Tear and tear.” He slipped the jacket from her shoulders. “I’ll call you if that girl agrees to talk to you. And you let me know when you want that urine, okay?”

  As Claire drove home, she wondered why Dr. Gregory was being so helpful. She hoped he wasn’t expecting her to sleep with him as a reward. But at the same time, she needed his help to get inside the Bradford Clinic. She would just have to walk a fine line.

  UJUSTME

  Chapter Seven

  A year and a half of attending college in the big city had not erased
Ginny Sloop’s underlying small town trust in people. Dr. Gregory’s request that she consider talking to Claire had been enough to make her unhesitatingly agree. When Claire phoned, the young woman didn’t even ask her why she wanted to talk. And when Claire knocked on her door, Ginny Sloop opened it wide without first inquiring who was on the other side.

  Claire introduced herself and put out her hand. “I really appreciate your seeing me.”

  Ginny hesitated a beat and then held out her own narrow hand. The squeeze Claire gave it wasn’t returned, and Claire realized the other woman was young enough not to have had much experience shaking hands. She had a pale oval face, light blue eyes that blinked nervously, and curly dishwater blond hair parted in the middle and tucked behind her ears. Her narrow mouth was crowded with teeth, so that the top two protruded slightly and gave her a rabitty look. Before she had gotten pregnant, she must have been nearly invisible, with her soft features and thin frame. But now she was dominated by her huge belly. It was almost bigger than the rest of her put together. Her tent-like gray maternity smock was stretched so tightly that Claire could see her navel had popped out from the pressure, like a cork protruding from a bottle.

  “Come on in.” Ginny motioned for Claire to follow her inside. Her apartment was like that of poor students everywhere. Brick and board bookshelves lined the walls, and the only places to sit were a sagging couch or a single chair tucked under a desk made of a door balanced on two metal filing cabinets. The one thing that gave her apartment personality was the photos. Framed photos cluttered the scratched blond coffee table and hung thickly on the walls.

  “Are you due soon?”

  “Not for a month, if you can believe it. It’s twins, if you hadn’t guessed.” Her face was drawn with sadness when she said the word twins. Huffing with each move, she sat down the couch and then put rested her feet on the coffee table.