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  Alex’s sneering voice grew louder, drawing the attention of those sitting near them. A vein in Rutherford’s neck pulsed as he gritted his teeth to keep from shouting. “Keep your voice down, you idiot. Why don’t you just take an ad out in the Times-Picayune?” He gulped the remainder of his beer, then waited as it made its way through his anger-constricted esophagus. Why he ever took this cretin into his operation, he’d never know.

  In the beginning, Rutherford had sensed that Alex was like him. Both came from humble backgrounds, both had found their way out of the slums to a better life while ignoring the finer points of law and ethics. Yet, there was one big difference between them. Rutherford knew how to survive in the long term, would fight through all odds and win, while Alex deserted the ship as soon as it sprung a leak. To Rutherford, Jeanette was a tiny leak — one easily plugged.

  “Byron! What are you going to do?” Alex snapped his fingers in front of Rutherford’s face.

  Pulling his attention away from a flame-haired girl walking by the table, he grabbed the offensive digits and squeezed them as hard as he could. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  Alex winced and bit his lip so that only a slight hiss escaped.

  Rutherford smiled, then released Alex’s fingers. “We are going to go about business as usual. We will follow the medical protocols to the letter up to and through the follow-up doctor’s notes, but we will only do so on the successful and moderately successful grafts. The failed grafts — those records will be shredded. She doesn’t handle the follow-up scheduling, Sally does. Keeping Sally sweet is your job. There’s no reason why Jeanette should ever connect the number of patients seen with the number of records kept.”

  Alex rubbed his sore fingers. “Okay, but what about the past patient records? The ones she’s trying to organize? She’s got to realize that we’ve seen and operated on more patients than there are records.”

  “Easy. We pass the blame to her predecessors. After all, Walter told me he said they were all bimbos. When she comes to me again, and she will, I’ll just shake my head and play the poor doctor who is totally ignorant about business and office management. Then I’ll commend her on her work, tell her she is saving the project. She’ll eat it up, trust me. She’s smart, but she’s naive and trusting. She’ll believe anything I tell her.”

  Rutherford’s eyes followed a petite red-head with large breasts and tight round ass as she walked by the two men for the umpteenth time. Pro, he thought, but still fresh-faced. His loins stirred in interest. He gestured to the Titian-haired whore, his cock telling him it was time to go — and he didn’t intend to leave alone.

  “And if she doesn’t buy into this fairy tale — what then?” Alex reached across to tug on Rutherford’s arm, but stopped at the last minute, obviously recalling the earlier warning. “What if she persists in digging up the truth?”

  As he stood up to meet his bed mate for the evening, Rutherford stopped, turned, then leaned down to whisper in Alex’s ear, “Well, then, she’ll become a problem. And you know what we do with problems, don’t you?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  One week later.

  Jeanette stretched her neck from side-to-side to lessen the kinks that were threatening to develop into a full-blown tension headache. It was the fifth night in a row that she hadn’t left her office on time. Thank God for Scott and the babysitter, or she wouldn’t be able to do her job.

  Her need to get the files in some semblance of order kept driving her to work on them until she was satisfied she’d done all she could. Tonight, finally, she could see a light at the end of the tunnel as far as the file organization was concerned. But, there were still serious problems. Problems that she hadn’t fully disclosed to anyone, not even Dr. Rutherford.

  Thanks to Dr. Rutherford’s intervention, all the surgical consents since the altercation with Dr. Randolph a week ago had been properly filled out and signed before surgery. In fact, to her relief, language had been added about specific potential side effects.

  Just that morning, Jeanette had thanked Dr. Rutherford for attending to the matter.

  His response had been immediate and complimentary. “No, no, thank you, Jeanette, for keeping us on the up-and-up.” He’d smiled and patted her shoulder in a disturbingly caressing manner. “I’m just a doctor and often forget about the need for all the legal and administrative hoopla. That’s exactly why I hired you. Austin assured me you were bright and organized. You’ve already proven him right two-fold.” Sweeping his hand over her shoulder, then down her arm, he took her hand and lifted it to his lips for a light kiss. “Keep up the good work, my dear.”

  Heartened by her boss’s response, Jeanette worked like a fiend for the remainder of the week to get the files in order. As she worked, she had Sally keep track of patients scheduled for follow-up and enter them onto the database Jeanette had created from the partial patient files. Once the database was as complete as she could make it, she’d run it to find any other missing documents, compare patients who were seen, operated on and followed-up with, and the surgical outcomes. She should be able to run the database tomorrow. Then she would see how much more work she had to do to get things up to snuff.

  Besides the records and database, Jeanette had taken to checking surgery trash at the end of each day. She wanted to pin down the exact source of corneal tissue the project was using. So far, the results were disturbing. Most of the tissue came from the Eye Bank, designated as donor tissue on the accompanying paperwork but labeled as SRP tissue on the containers. All of it was in the blue preservative Dr. Rutherford used. In his special little bottles. As a precaution, she’d locked several bottles and the accompanying paperwork in a file drawer. She wasn’t sure yet for what purpose, but just in case.

  Jeanette’s next step — and the reason she’d stayed extra late tonight — was to go through the Patient Billing records to see how the tissue was being charged.

  Locking up her desk, she backed up the database on a CD-ROM, then shut down her computer. Removing the CD, she slipped it into a sleeve and put it in her purse. She knew it was crazy, but she’d gotten the sense that someone was getting on her computer and checking her work. Even though she’d been changing her password every day. To be safe, she took all her work home on a CD-ROM disk every night. She’d worked too hard to lose it.

  Leaving her office, she turned out the lights, then made her way to Sally’s office, which she shared with Patient Billing. Looking around, Jeanette saw no one, heard nothing except her own anxious breaths. Satisfied she was alone, she entered the office and shut the door before she turned on the light. It was an inner office, so there was no way anyone passing by the building would see the light.

  She placed her purse on Sally’s desk, then walked over to the filing cabinets where the patient billing records were kept. Opening up the drawer for the current year, she pulled out the first ten folders, then carried them to Sally’s desk. She skimmed the files. It didn’t take long to find discrepancies. No one had taken the least precautions to disguise the breach of the research protocol in billing patients.

  “Oh, my God.” She flipped through all ten folders again, confirming what she’d seen, then sat back. Running her fingers through her hair, she rocked nervously in the desk chair. Out of ten patients, eight had been charged exorbitantly large amounts of money for the corneal tissue, exorbitant when compared to the two patients who had received donor tissue and paid a small processing fee.

  Jeanette pushed herself away from the desk, then refiled the patient folders. Pulling out ten more, she checked them while standing at the filing cabinets. She repeated the process for the better part of an hour. After completing the current year drawer, she slammed it shut, then flopped into Sally’s chair.

  “What am I going to do?” Her muttered question echoed loudly in the empty office. She’d found more than fifty percent of the patients in the current year had paid for commercial corneal tissue, miscoded as donor. Almost all of the commercial tissue had
been billed prior to her hiring, starting with the month before the annual convention six months ago. The same convention where she’d heard the Silver River Pharmaceutical salesmen brag about his company’s sales to the Epi Study.

  The skepticism she’d felt at the time was a distant memory now. Stu Thomas had been right. SRP was supplying a large part of the tissue for the project, and had been for quite a while. That meant from her first day on the job, both Walter and Dr. Rutherford had lied to her about the source of the tissue.

  What else had they lied about? Had they lied about the Eye Bank’s ongoing relationship to the Epi Study? On the day of the convention, Jeanette hadn’t caught the whole conversation between Fred and the other men, but she’d seen enough to know they were doctors. She knew she would be able to recognize all three of them if she saw them again.

  “Okay, Bootsie,” Jeanette muttered to herself. “What do you do now?”

  Document what you’ve found out. Then, confirm Stu Thomas’s assertions and those of the doctors you overheard.

  Tracking Stu Thomas and the doctors would be a piece of cake. She had the loquacious salesman’s card, and the doctors she would find through the Medical Center photo directory. Documenting all those patient billing records she’d just skimmed was another story. It would take hours and hours to copy all the files. There had to be an easier way.

  Spying the Billing clerk’s computer, she smiled. “Of course, a printout of patients’ billings!” Technology at its greatest.

  Sitting down, she powered up the computer. First hurdle passed. The clerk had no password, something she would change — tomorrow. Tonight it suited her purposes. The familiar Windows screen appeared carrying with it a surprise, a loud surprise. Darth Vadar’s voice boomed, “What is your bidding, my Master?”

  Startled, Jeanette looked around. Had anyone heard? She held her breath and listened. No sound from the outer office. Satisfied she was alone, she entered the program files and clicked on QuickBooks Pro. It opened into the patient billing database. Clicking once more on Records, she found the Accounts Receivables and double-clicked. Yes, that’s what she needed.

  Customizing it, she set it up for the last twelve months. It took mere seconds, but it seemed like hours. The empty clinic and her sole occupancy of it were getting to her.

  After backing up the report, she exited the program and pulled the CD out of the computer. Before shutting down the system, she lowered the volume just in case her billing clerk had anymore little surprises built into her Windows program. Her nerves couldn’t take another shock.

  Breathing more easily now, she stood up. She’d done all she could for the evening. Tomorrow, she’d come in early and merge the data to her database.

  As she left the darkened clinic, Jeanette looked for any signs that someone had entered while she’d been in the billing office. No one had come in, not even the cleaning crew. Just like the past five nights, no one had bothered her or even commented on her late evenings.

  Yet she had a right to be cautious. Purposefully, she hadn’t shared what she was doing with the staff — not even the doctors. Maybe it was because even early on in her review of the patient files, she had instinctively known that something was terribly wrong. Yes, Dr. Rutherford had admitted he hadn’t a clue about the office. And Jeanette had wanted to believe him — until tonight when she’d found that he had lied to her about the origin of the corneal tissue, found that too many patients had been billed for commercial tissue.

  Damn, she couldn’t believe that a doctor of his stature would willingly commit a fraud on the patients in his care. Point of fact, she only had circumstantial evidence. As far as she knew, Dr. Rutherford didn’t order tissue. He didn’t do the billing. So, she would give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was only telling her what others had told him. Maybe Walter Monnier and Alex Randolph, two men she believed capable of much fouler deeds than fraud, had lied to him and had given orders behind Rutherford’s back. She could easily imagine them sharing in any profits of an illegal scheme.

  So, she would continue to investigate until she knew for a certainty who the miscreants were.

  She had the patient billing data. The next step would be to track down Stu Thomas and the Eye Bank Board Member and his friends, whom she’d overheard at the annual conference. If they connected Dr. Rutherford to the knowing usage of the commercial tissue, then she would have absolute proof that Dr. Rutherford lied, that the project was violating its charter and medical protocol by over-charging project patients. If they didn’t, then she would take it to Dr. Rutherford and let him find the culprits harming his project.

  And if Rutherford’s lying, Bootsie — what you gonna do?

  She didn’t have a clue.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Momma, do I have to go to school?”

  Jeanette closed her eyes and mouthed a silent prayer for patience before turning to her daughter. “Yes. Sister Mary Cecille and the other nuns would miss you terribly if you didn’t show up. Not to mention your team mates. You don’t want to miss the volleyball match, do you?”

  Brigitte shot her a look that only could originate with an eight-year-old feeling for her independence. Jeanette couldn’t recall if she’d given her dear departed mother this kind of grief, but vowed to confess such a sin to the priest, just as a precautionary matter. Although the look on Brigitte’s face strongly reminded her more of Paul in one of his digging-in-his-heels moods.

  “Mother.”

  The emphasis in drawing out the syllables warned Jeanette that her daughter was getting ready to step over the fairly flexible line of parental tolerance she’d created since Paul had died. Being both a mom and a dad was hard work.

  “Yes?” Jeanette hoped the tone and the lifted eyebrow would be enough warning.

  “I don’t see why I have to go to school so that I can play volleyball. After all, it’s a travel team and isn’t even a part of the school. Besides, Angie stayed home last week and she still played volleyball that day.”

  The unuttered so there, conveyed by an abrupt nod, caused dark curls to fly about her daughter’s shoulders.

  Biting her lips so she wouldn’t laugh, Jeanette trotted out one of her mother’s favorite comebacks. “Well, you aren’t Angie, and I’m not Angie’s mom.” Thank the Lord. “In this household, in order to play in after-school sports, we go to school.” Sensing imminent whining on the horizon, Jeanette held up her finger. “And, if I keep getting this kind of grief from you, you will still go to school, have to confess to Sister Mary Cecille about your behavior, and tell the coach you are grounded for the next week. Is that understood, young lady?”

  Sniffing loudly, Brigitte whimpered a “Yes, Momma,” and turned to pick up her backpack from the floor where she had thrown it just prior to her minor rebellion.

  God, why did she feel so mean? Being both good and bad cop was the pits.

  ———

  A chagrined Brigitte got out of the car in front of the school.

  “Honey, look at me,” Jeanette called out before her daughter could scurry away.

  The little girl turned around, her face carefully blank, her eyes looking at a point past Jeanette’s shoulder.

  “I love you, Little Bits. I’ll be here at 4:30 to drive you and the other girls to the match. Okay?”

  A loud sniff and a short nod was all the answer she got before one of Brigitte’s classmates yelled at her, “Hurry up Brigitte! Sister Florence is handing out warm cinnamon rolls.”

  Brigitte brightened up, then turned to run after the others. Hesitating, she turned back and yelled, “Love you, too, Momma. See you later, alligator.” Then she was off.

  “After a while, crocodile,” whispered Jeanette. Suddenly, it wasn’t so bad being a parent.

  ———

  Sally Parker wasn’t having a good day.

  First, her car broke down on the causeway. She had to leave it on a narrow layby and accept a ride from someone who recognized her from the hospital. At leas
t, she wasn’t late. The cost of getting the car towed and fixed would mean macaroni and cheese out of a box for weeks.

  The second omen of a bad day getting worse was running into Alex Randolph. He ignored her completely, as if it was all her fault that she carried his child. She didn’t break the condom. Heck, she hadn’t even bought the condoms — he had. She also seemed to remember him participating quite enthusiastically in the sexual act that had created the life within her. He could deny it all he liked. He was the father and she would make him support the child. She didn’t make enough money to take care of herself, let alone a baby. And the abortion he offered to pay for was out. She was a good Catholic girl. She may have gotten pregnant out of wedlock, but she wasn’t going to compound it by killing her unborn child.

  And finally, the piece de resistance of an arguably all-around corker of a day was the fact that she’d been lying to her supervisor, Jeanette, ever since the lady started. Sally moaned under her breath. Even confession after Saturday evening mass hadn’t made her feel better. Father Xavier advised her to wrestle with her conscience and ask God for guidance in correcting the problem. All weekend Sally had wrestled and prayed. Which was why she stood outside her supervisor’s door.

  “Shit.” Sally was sure God would forgive her one little swear word; after all it wasn’t blasphemous. Knocking on the door, she waited, hoping Jeanette was busy, or better yet not even there.

  “Come in.”

  Sally pulled open the door, then entered, closing the door quietly behind her.

  “Sally. Good morning.”

  Jeanette’s face lit up, which made Sally feel lower than a cottonmouth, if that was possible. “Mrs. LaFleur, I…” Well heck, where should she start? The beginning? Or since her supervisor came on board? She hadn’t lied to anybody prior to that. The others didn’t have a clue about what was going on, but Sally had known and kept her mouth shut. She needed the job. Silly fool that she was, she thought Alex Randolph was going to marry her and take her away from all this. By keeping quiet, she was helping him make more money. Greed, one of the worst sins.