Copper Lake Confidential - By Marilyn Pappano Page 0,89
cell. With no more of a name to go on than Anne, he would need the photographs.
Once he merged onto Interstate 20, he kicked up the speed to ten above the limit and set the cruise control. Should he have told Macy why her anxiety meds weren’t working? That he was going to the hospital to see if he could learn anything about Anne? He wasn’t hopeful. If hospitals were prickly about patient confidentiality, psychiatric hospitals must be doubly so. But he wasn’t looking for information on a patient. Just a woman who’d spent a lot of time there.
He decided for the dozenth time that not telling Macy was right. One more dose of blood pressure medicine wouldn’t hurt her. Besides, she had to be at the house with Brent and Anne while he was gone, and there was no way she could hide his suspicions—her guilt—that long, if at all. She would surely say something to someone, and whichever one was responsible for switching the pills—maybe both of them—might take more direct action. It was best that she remain in the dark awhile longer.
And if he didn’t learn anything on this trip?
Then it was time to call the police. Ellie Maricci’s husband, Tommy, was chief of detectives now that A. J. Decker had been promoted to fill the retiring chief of police’s spot. Tommy was a good cop and had subtlety down to an art. Marnie had worked with all of the detectives at one time or another, and she respected Tommy a lot.
The drive to Columbia and to Claremont House took nearly three hours. The place was gorgeous. Built of stone and surrounded by terraced gardens, it looked like an Italian villa lifted from Tuscany and placed on this spot of wooded land. The roof was rust-colored tiles, huge windows lined four floors and marble steps led up from a rose garden and down to the pool, up to patios and down to lush expanses of grass.
Access to the main portion of the building was easy: he simply walked in the door. A receptionist sat at a desk centered on a large patterned rug in the middle of a vast marble floor. A bouquet of pink roses stood at each end of the desk, their shade a perfect match to the pinks in the contemporary paintings on the walls.
A broad corridor bisected the lobby running north-south, and two smaller ones ran east-west from each end of the lobby. Discreet signs indicated gift shop, restaurant and snack bar down one hall, administrative offices down another. A grand staircase led to the second floor, guarded by a suit full of muscles at the bottom.
Stephen wondered how luxurious the patient rooms were—not that it mattered. It was still a hospital room, its occupant still in a place she or he didn’t want to be. Macy must have hated every moment in her gilded prison.
A very expensive prison. She’d commented that Anne’s family either had money or very good insurance, but from what Stephen understood, insurance rarely paid as well for psychiatric treatment as for medical care, and this place must have cost a fortune. Was Anne’s sister still here? Was that another reason, in addition to Clary, Anne wanted Macy out of the way? Because with Brent’s renewed access to the Howard fortunes, she could pay for her sister’s care?
Or did her sister even exist?
He approached the woman at the receptionist’s desk. She was about his mother’s age, with narrow glasses and a well-fitted suit, and she gave him a warm smile. “Can I help you?”
He pulled out his phone and located the photo of Anne. “I’m picking up my friend here. She was visiting her sister, and her car wouldn’t start. Her name is Anne Jones. Have you seen her?”
He watched the woman study the photo closely before shaking her head. Not so much as a faint hint of recognition. “I haven’t, but I only came on an hour ago.”
“I’m surprised you don’t recognize her. She practically lived here last time her sister was in.”
She shook her head again. “I can have her paged if you like.”
“Um, no, thanks. I’ll just wait around here like she told me to.” He smiled awkwardly, shoved his cell and his hands into his shorts pockets and walked off to look at a monster-sized painting on the far wall. After a furtive glance at the reception desk, he turned down the hall and went into the gift shop.