City of the Dead (Alex Delaware, #37)(12)

Blanche, our little fawn French bulldog, was sprawled on the couch alternating between bassoon snores and piccolo dog-dream squeaks.

The rhythmic up-and-down of her body made me laugh. A salami respiring.

An eyelid lifted, revealing a soft brown iris.

“Hey, cutie.”

Robin said, “I won’t ask if that’s her or me,” and lowered the tile to the rosette rimming the guitar’s sound hole.

Blanche yawned and deliberated her next move, finally wiggled down and landed on her feet. Shaking herself off and cocking her head, she sneezed twice, waddled to me, rubbed her head against my pant leg, and purred happily as I petted her.

Robin, still peering through the magnifier, checked the tile, removed the glasses, and got up. As she walked toward us, Blanche left me and ran toward her, panting as if reuniting with a long-lost relative.

“Nice try, girlfriend, but I know where your allegiance lies. And I’m going to give him a big smooch anyway, so deal.”



* * *



—

We sat on the couch drinking coffee, Blanche wedged tightly between us. Snoring.

Robin said, “How does she do that? Just drop off?”

I said, “Clear conscience.”

“For eighteen hours a day?” She leaned over and kissed the top of Blanche’s head. “Sweet dreams, cutie—maybe she’s got the right idea and consciousness is overrated. So what horrible thing happened this otherwise glorious morning, my darling?”

It’s taken me a while to figure out how much to tell her. I’ve settled on enough not to insult her intelligence or make her feel excluded but not so much that her head also fills with the wrong stuff.

Walking that line, I summed up, including the naked man and the moving van but omitting the gore.

“Stabbed in the middle of the night in her own house?” She shuddered. “Every woman’s nightmare. Who was she?”

“Do you recall a couple of years ago, I told you about someone trying to pass herself off as an expert in a custody case?”

“I do remember. You were pretty miffed. That’s who it was?”

I nodded.

She said, “Crazy. Then again, you got called in, so why wouldn’t it be?”

We sat for a while until, predictably, we both got restless. A short kiss was followed by a long one and a hand pat signaling Robin’s need for solitude. She returned to her bench and I headed for the studio door, Blanche padding along after me.

Robin said, “See what I mean about allegiance? Now you’re going to slip her a treat and solidify the favoritism.”

I said, “Whatever it takes.”





CHAPTER


    7


The man who’d told me about Cordi Gannett was a neuropsychiatrist ten years my senior named Sheldon Strull.

Shel had an office on Camden Drive in Beverly Hills and a busy practice evaluating adults and children with seizure disorders and brain abnormalities. I used him for med consults and he sent me legal consults when the issues were outside his purview or when lawyers wanted more than one expert. He’s well trained, outgoing, thoughtful, easy to work with.

He’d complained about Gannett at the tail end of a collegial lunch at a Greek restaurant on Canon Drive. Shel and I would both be testifying in an amusement park accident case that had injured a ten-year-old boy. The plaintiff’s lawyer had asked that we coordinate our reports. We each refused, told him lockstepping at the outset was inappropriate but once the reports were done, we’d be willing to compare notes.

That time had come. Comparison had taken five minutes. Even without prep, we’d agreed on the basics. No big surprise, the injuries to body and soul were obvious and profound.

The rest of the time was spent talking about travel and hobbies—my guitar playing, his viola playing in a Baroque ensemble—and then, of course, Shel’s grandkids.

When he finished extolling, he put a half-eaten dolma back on his plate and said, “Can I ask you about something else, Alex? Fair warning, I may start getting pissed off and don’t want to ruin the atmosphere.”

“Never seen you pissed off.”

“There’s always a first time.”

“No prob, go for it.”

He pinged the edge of his bread plate with a well-trimmed fingernail. “No offense, but I always thought psychologists had laws as strict as us about misrepresentation.”

“We do.”

“Well, it didn’t stop some charlatan—is there a feminine version, we’re talking a woman, a charlataness? Whatever, the regs didn’t stop her from palming herself off as a psychologist and poaching a patient. The poaching part didn’t bother me. You know how busy I am. But this particular patient—an adolescent, technically an adult, actually, she’s eighteen. But not an adult, if you know what I mean.”

I nodded.

He fooled with the stuffed grape leaf. Finished it. “The girl has an atypical seizure disorder plus multiple soft signs and requires a cocktail of meds that will likely change over time. Instead, she dropped out and started getting interpersonal therapy—whatever that is. Is it something?”

“Garbage-can term,” I said.

“I figured. I tried talking to the mother and she seemed to agree with me but she wouldn’t do anything about it, said the kid was adamant, thought I was out to O.D. her on drugs. It bothered me, not the part about me, my ego’s just fine. The kid’s not getting what she needs. So I did something I wouldn’t normally do and called the psychologist. Gave her a few days to call back and when she didn’t, I looked her up. Your board doesn’t list her. Is there somewhere else I should look?”