“Okay,” Allison said. “I’ll go. I’d hate to get you into any trouble.”
“Thank you,” Kendra said, standing up. Their little interview was apparently over.
“It was good to see you again,” Allison said. “I have nice memories of you.”
“If I knew something about your fall I’d tell you,” Kendra said. “But I don’t know anything to help you.”
“I believe you,” Allison said. “I just thought... Never mind. I won’t ask.”
She started to walk to the door but Kendra stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“You should use my bathroom first,” Kendra said. “It’s a long drive back.”
“I don’t have to go, but thank you.”
“But you should try,” Kendra said. “You should really try before that long drive.”
Kendra looked her in the eyes as if trying to tell Allison something.
“You’re right,” Allison said, playing along. “I should.”
“It’s over here.”
Allison followed Kendra to the bathroom. She switched on the light for her and pointed around.
“If you need hand lotion after you wash your hands,” Kendra said, “there’s some in the medicine cabinet. I hate dry skin.”
“Me, too,” Allison said. “Thank you.”
Kendra left and Allison closed the door. After she flushed the toilet, she washed her hands and dried them on a hand towel. Allison opened the medicine cabinet to find the hand lotion. She stared in utter astonishment at the sight that greeted her.
Pill bottles. One entire shelf in the cabinet was lined with nothing but prescription pill bottles. There were over a dozen different medicines. Kendra was only three years older than Allison. How could one twenty-eight-year-old woman be on so much medicine? Allison scanned the labels. She didn’t know what many of the pills were for but some of the names she recognized. One was a well-known and often-prescribed antidepressant. The other was an antianxiety pill. Allison pulled her phone out of her bag and took quick pictures of the labels on the bottles. She’d have to look them up later to see what they did. But Allison already had an idea why Kendra wanted her to see them.
A house. A nondisclosure agreement with a retired surgeon. And a whole row of prescriptions. It all added up to one hell of a malpractice suit. Dr. Capello had operated on Deacon and Thora and on Roland, too. And on Oliver. Which meant it was very likely he’d operated on Kendra. He’d operated on her and something had gone wrong. Kendra’s family had sued or threatened to sue, and Dr. Capello had settled with money in exchange for Kendra, and probably her family, signing an NDA in order to keep it quiet.
When she finished taking the photographs, Allison quietly closed the medicine cabinet and went back out to the living room.
“I did have to go, after all,” Allison said.
“Never hurts to try before a long trip. You used my hand lotion?” she asked.
“I did. It smells nice, like strawberries. I noticed all the medicine in your cabinet.”
“Told you I was a mess,” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry,” Allison said. “I wish... I’m just so sorry.”
“Do you have medical problems?” Kendra asked.
“No,” Allison said. “I wasn’t one of Dr. Capello’s patients.”
Kendra’s lips were set in a firm, straight line. She nodded. “Lucky you.” She managed a smile as Allison walked out the door. “Drive safe.”
“Thank you,” Allison said. “It was good to see you.”
“You, too.” Kendra stood in the doorway, her hand on the door ready to close it. “If you see Antonio, say hello for me.”
She shut the door.
Allison stared at the closed door. Behind it she heard the locks engaging. Say hi to Antonio... Kendra had said she didn’t know Antonio.
Another hint. If Allison had been on the fence about tracking down Antonio Russo before, she wasn’t on it anymore.
Back in her car, Allison frantically typed in the names of the prescription drugs from inside Kendra’s medicine cabinet. Nearly all of them were psychotropic medications—there were the pills for depression and anxiety, yes, but also OCD and mood disorders. There was an antiseizure medication, too, plus two different sleeping pills. Allison nearly wept as she read through the conditions the various pills treated. Kendra, sweet, nerdy, quiet, gentle Kendra, must have a legion of mental illnesses. And if Dr. Capello had settled a malpractice suit with Kendra or her family, that meant he was the cause of them.
Allison turned her car on and off again immediately.
She looked at Kendra’s ancient Mazda in the driveway, at the house her former sister was scared to death of losing. Allison dug into her handbag and found the brick of cash McQueen had given her. He’d said not to give it to strangers with sob stories. He never said anything about giving it to family. She counted out ten-thousand dollars, wrapped it up in a ponytail holder, walked back to the house and shoved it through the mail slot. Then, before Kendra could find it and give it back, Allison drove away.
As Allison made her way to the interstate, she reminded herself that lots of doctors had unintentionally harmed patients. It didn’t necessarily prove any kind of malice. It just happened. Surgeries were risky, and sometimes they had good outcomes, sometimes they had bad outcomes and sometimes there were lawsuits—that’s what malpractice insurance was for. Dr. Capello himself had spoken with deep feeling of the surgeon’s graveyard he carried within him, which contained every patient he’d ever tried to help and lost. Kendra’s medical problems were heartbreaking, devastating, but they might not have had anything at all to do with Allison’s fall or the phone call. Kendra was a very ill woman, but she didn’t seem violent or aggressive to Allison at all. When Roland said Kendra was incapable of hurting her, he’d meant it, and now Allison believed him.
But still...
Allison stopped for gas. Before driving away she sent McQueen a text message asking if he had an address or phone number for Antonio yet.
She’d made it fifty miles down the road before her phone buzzed with his reply. She glanced at the message and wished she’d been smart enough to pull off the road before she’d read it. The message nearly caused her to swerve onto the shoulder.
Russo’s been in a private mental hospital for fifteen years.
A private mental hospital?
This was getting worse and worse by the minute.
Allison saw a McDonald’s just ahead, so she pulled in and parked. She rested her forehead on the steering wheel and breathed. Her phone buzzed again, another message from McQueen.
I have the address if you want it.
Did she want the address? No, of course she didn’t want the address. She would rather eat glass than go to a mental hospital to see a man who’d been living there over half his life. There was no reason for her to go. Antonio had lived with the Capellos for such a short time, then he’d left long before Allison had arrived. It was absurd to think he’d had anything to do with her fall or the phone call. If she went to see him, that would mean she wasn’t investigating her accident anymore. It would mean she was investigating Dr. Capello. And why would she do that?
Because her former sister was on fourteen different drugs and almost never left her house, and no one deserved that. That’s why.
Allison texted McQueen back.
I want it.
Chapter 23
The hospital was in a suburb of Portland. Allison knew she could make it there and back to The Dragon before the end of the day. It would be very late when she got back, and it wouldn’t be easy accounting for her whereabouts, but she couldn’t worry about that now. She needed to see Antonio, and she might not get another chance like this.