“Umm—and your caseload these days? Can you handle it?”
“My caseload is growing, Randall.” An exaggeration, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. “And my patients are doing fine. Thank you for asking.” You nasty, vindictive jerk.
She hadn’t even been the one who’d demanded the divorce. She’d simply not knuckled under to his insistence that she change her lifestyle to suit Randall and his image.
“See you later, Kelley,” Randall said. “Madelyne.” He nodded toward the other doctor and headed down the hall, Cheryl trailing in his wake.
“Son of a boring snitch,” Madelyne hissed in an under-tone after them, making Kelley laugh despite all the malaise turning ugly cartwheels inside her. “Ignore him, kiddo.” She paused for only a second before continuing, “But there’s someone no red-blooded American woman can ignore. If I could whistle, I’d do it right about now. Who the heck is he?”
Kelley inhaled sharply. She knew just who Madelyne was talking about but didn’t let on. Instead, she turned to look in the direction her friend was facing. “Oh,” she said as she spotted Shawn Jameson coming down the hall toward them. “He’s the new child-care attendant at Kid-Club.”
“Well, damn. If I’d known that, I’d have had myself a kid or two to leave with him.” As Shawn reached them, Madelyne looked at Kelley expectantly.
What could she do but introduce them? “Hi, Shawn. This is my colleague, Dr. Madelyne Younger. Madelyne, this man is a genius with crayons. He staved off an entire room of fussy children this morning by drawing them into submission. Including Jenny.”
“No kidding?” Madelyne said. Kelley was almost embarrassed by the frank way her colleague looked Shawn up and down.
He appeared both amused and uncomfortable. Kelley considered rescuing him, but he did it himself.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Dr. Younger, but—”
“Madelyne,” she corrected swiftly.
“Madelyne,” he said. “But I’m off to a meeting. I’ll see you around, I’m sure. And I’ll be at KidClub later when you pick Jenny up, Dr. Stanton.” The look he turned on her with his cool blue eyes seemed to impart a message that Kelley could not decipher.
She wasn’t certain she wanted to.
In fact, she suspected, with the way things were going around here, that even from the new guy on the block, a great-looking man who couldn’t possibly blame her for anything, the message would not be one she wanted to hear.
“SO YOU’VE STARTED working at KidClub?”
Shawn, sitting casually in the small but luxuriously appointed hospital administrator’s office, nodded at Louis Paxler.
The hospital administrator, fiftyish, had a sweep of hair several shades darker than his thin brown brows. It looked real but not natural, probably dyed rather than a hairpiece. He wore a dark suit, and the red tie fastened over his white shirt appeared to lift up the extra flesh beneath his chin.
“I got there early this morning.” Shawn leaned back in the tall leather chair facing Paxler’s mahogany desk. “Marge showed me around.” Marge Ralston, head of KidClub, had no sooner arrived than there was a minor emergency in the kitchen. She had hurriedly left Shawn in charge of greeting the children. The way his credentials had been presented to her, she’d obviously had no concern about dumping that small responsibility on him.
If only she’d known…
Louis Paxler knew the truth—a version of it. He watched Shawn as if trying to analyze him from beneath his gold-rimmed glasses. “Does she suspect who you are?”
“If so, she didn’t let on.”
“Fine. So…who did you meet there?”
Shawn hid his amusement at the administrator’s thinly veiled question. He knew who Paxler meant. He decided to play him for a minute. “Well, there were about a dozen kids. Can’t tell you their names offhand, but I’ll learn them. And—”
“Any of their parents?”
“A couple.” Enough of this game, Shawn told himself. Stringing the administrator along wouldn’t get him answers he needed. “One was Dr. Kelley Stanton.” The lovely, sexy Dr. Kelley Stanton….
“Ah, yes, Dr. Stanton.” Paxler’s tone was decidedly chilly. “I’m not sure how much you know, Mr. Jameson, but—”
“Call me Shawn. And I was told you relayed your suspicions about Dr. Stanton and her involvement with the blaze to the fire department’s Fire Investigation Bureau. Right?”
Paxler nodded, grim satisfaction narrowing his mouth. “Of course, they first thought it was an accident, but then decided it could be arson. They didn’t find enough evidence to accuse anyone, though.”
“And you thought it might be Dr. Stanton? Why don’t you fill me in?”
“Of course, Mr.—er, Shawn. Except…the hospital will still collect on its insurance claim, won’t it?”
“As long as you cooperate,” Shawn assured him. “But if an arsonist is found, the insurance company may be able to recoup the damages.” Which was probably correct, although Shawn wouldn’t have anything to do with that decision. But Paxler had been told only that Shawn was an investigator for Investigations, Confidential and Undercover, a private agency whose nickname seemed appropriate for an inquiry at a hospital. ICU was supposedly looking into the fire for the insurance carrier. The administrator had been told nothing about Colorado Confidential—or that the flu epidemic was the subject of deeper inquiry.
At first Paxler had resisted, but then had agreed to cooperate, particularly after getting an official call telling him that the more helpful he was, the faster the hospital’s claim—already delayed—was likely to be processed.
Colleen had contacts in a lot of useful places.
“Okay, then,” Paxler said. “About five months ago, the hospital was besieged by cases of flu transported from Silver Rapids, a town just north of here. It’s too small to have a major hospital of its own, so the people who were most ill were brought here for treatment. Two died. Older folk who had a harder time fighting off the illness. But…”
“But what?” Shawn prompted.
Paxler stood, pushing aside his desk chair, which appeared too modern to fit with the rest of the ornate furnishings. Shawn glanced around and wondered where the three doors at the room’s perimeter led to.
The administrator walked to a window, peered out as if looking for an answer on the Denver street below, then turned back. His gut made his belt protrude, but he otherwise did not appear heavy. “Look, Shawn. Though I expressed my concerns to the authorities, I didn’t intend to. Not exactly. I mean, if what I fear is correct, the hospital could have liability here. But if I am right… Well, it just can’t happen again. In my position, I simply can’t allow it.”
“And your fear is…?”
“That Dr. Kelley Stanton was negligent in her treatment of those patients. Now, look.” He raised his hands as if trying to halt Shawn, though Shawn hadn’t moved. “I can’t prove anything, but the couple who died, their course of treatment—well, I think the most telling thing is the fire in the records office.”
“It’s why you can’t prove Dr. Stanton was negligent?” Shawn knew the background. But after having met Kelley Stanton, even briefly, he couldn’t believe she was less than an excellent doctor. Yet he had nothing to base that feeling on other than a first impression that had left him wanting to get to know her better. Much better. And not entirely because she was a suspect.
Which meant he had to pay attention to what Paxler said, to steer his irrelevant, unscientific impressions back on track.
Paxler