“I ran into James at the country club this morning,” Walt said.“We both had 6 a.m.tee times.”
“Early morning habits don’t die easy,” James said.“Walt and I got to talking and he mentioned Josephine had come to you asking for help.I have to admit it took me by surprise at first.Henry was my best friend in this world.His suicide was an awful shock to this community, and to me and my wife.We were all very close.Henry and Charlotte, and Edie and myself.We never believed he took his own life, so I’m elated to see you’re looking into things.”
Chowder padded out from behind the counter now that traffic had died down, and he hopped into my lap.
“Oh, what a handsome young fellow,” James said, speaking directly to Chowder.“Very regal.And the bow tie is a nice touch.”
Chowder tilted his head appreciatively then turned two circles in my lap before settling in.
“He thinks so too,” I said.“Don’t compliment him too much or he’ll be impossible the rest of the day.”
James laughed and scratched Chowder under the chin, and Chowder allowed it with the air of a king permitting a subject to kiss his ring.
“Tell me about Henry,” I said.“I never had the chance to know him.I keep hearing he was a good man, but good is a word people use at funerals when they can’t think of anything else.”
“Good is a lazy word,” James agreed.“Henry was the man you called at two in the morning when your baby had a fever and you didn’t know whether to panic.We split the night calls between us, and I’ll admit there were plenty I prayed would land on his week instead of mine.He never minded them.I minded them plenty.”He smiled.
“We opened the practice together in 1976.Two island boys back from medical school, certain we knew everything worth knowing.I ran the business end.Henry ran the part that mattered—he took the patients who couldn’t pay and the ones nobody else had patience for, and he’d have seen every one of them for free if I’d let him.”
“He didn’t have a lick of business sense,” Bea said, and took a sip of her sweet tea.“I remember that.I covered every charity gala on this island for thirty years, and Henry Wainwright was the only man in the room who’d rather talk about his free clinic than his portfolio.My second husband used to say he was the only doctor in the low country who’d lose money on purpose and call it a calling.”
“Your second husband was right,” James said.
“My second husband was right about exactly one thing in his life, and that was it.”Bea set her glass down.“Lord rest him.”
Dottie sat with her hands folded on the table, watching James over the top of her green cat-eye glasses with the flat, assessing patience she usually saved for a body on a slab.
“I was still working for the state when Henry died,” she said.“Senior medical examiner.He sat in on a few of my autopsies over the years, the only physician on this island who’d read my reports all the way through instead of skimming for the cause of death and signing where I pointed.”She paused.“He’d have known better than anyone that a left-handed man doesn’t shoot himself in the right temple.”
“Exactly,” James said, nodding.“I asked to see the body, and I was denied because Milton said I was too emotional.But I called Vernon Keats on the phone and asked as a professional courtesy if he could tell me anything.I can’t believe Milton used that fool to look at the body and sign the death certificate.The man barely got out of med school, he was a drunk, and he makes all his money pushing pills on rich women.”
James’s neck and cheeks had flushed with anger at the memory.“Anyway, Keats told me the gunshot was in the right temple and I knew right away Henry didn’t kill himself.I told Milton that too.”
“And what did Milton say?”I asked.
“He told me to take a chill pill and then laughed himself into a coughing fit at his cleverness.Moron.I encouraged Josephine to write letters to the district attorney, but that was Jentzen Walton at the time, and he and Milton were like peas in a pod.I hope Milton meets the same fate Jentzen did.”
Jentzen Walton died when his catamaran capsized during a storm and he got caught beneath the hull.
“What about the months before he died?”I asked James.“Was he himself?Anything that seemed off?”
James was quiet a moment, deciding how much to say.“He was distracted.I’d put a chart in front of him and he’d be a thousand miles off.I think he was seeing a woman, but I couldn’t tell you for sure.It was just my hunch by the way he was acting, but he hadn’t confided in me.I wish he had.Maybe he’d still be here.”
He drank the last of his coffee and then sat back with a sigh.“I closed the practice the spring after he died.Retiring early wasn’t the worst thing in the world, and I just couldn’t see myself continuing as a healer without him.
“I don’t have his personal things,” James said.“Those went to Josephine, as they should have.But we were in practice together for twenty-five years.I have all the financial records, the old appointment books, the files from the medical mission work we did together overseas.When I closed up I couldn’t bring myself to shred it and I couldn’t bring myself to keep it in the house, so I put it in my attic, and that’s where it’s been since I closed the clinic.”
“You still have all of it?”Deidre asked.
“I won’t pretend there’s anything too useful in there,” he said.“I don’t have secret diaries or anything.It’s just old records and some photos, but you’re more than welcome to whatever I have.”
“We appreciate it very much,” I said.
“I’ll coordinate with Walt to get them to you.I’ll have to call my grandson to get up in the attic for me.Last time I tried my daughter yelled at me for ten minutes.”
“They do that once you get past a certain age,” Hank said, and the others agreed.
“Well, I’ve got to be off,” James said.“I need a nap before I go to my daughter’s house for dinner.”
