That week was the annual fish fry. Sarah and Mike were going, but only because it was a social thing. Sarah had pestered Mike into going. He was not into seafood, but he did it to please her. Mike did a lot of things to please her. He was always hoping it would keep her busy and out of trouble. This didn’t always work, but he kept trying anyway.
When they arrived at the club Ann had saved a place for them at one of the long tables. Several of the women who hiked with Sarah were there and a few were sitting at the same table. Others kept dropping by to talk about the murder and to find out if anyone had seen anything the day before. Clair Ann was there and so was Olivia, although Sarah didn’t spot her at first. She looked around, but didn’t see Jan or Judy either. She couldn’t have blamed them if they hadn’t come. With everyone acting as if they had been the ones to find Maggie’s body, she wondered if she had made a mistake showing up. After several people had come and gone, Sarah really did wish she had stayed at home, too. It didn’t take that long before telling the story was beginning to get old and tiresome. Not only was it tiresome, but the attention was starting to become embarrassing.
Eventually she saw Olivia. She pulled her aside before telling her what she had learned from Barbara and asked, “Have you heard anything more since we talked on the phone this morning?”
“No,” Olivia said, “But I’ve been in the house cleaning out closets. I haven’t heard from anyone, and I don’t know anything other than what I read in the paper. It doesn’t look like they know much of anything either. The sheriff, if he has found out anything new is not telling the papers about it.”
Sarah told Olivia about the conversation she had had with Barbara St John that morning.
Olivia almost laughed as she heard about Barbara and her thinking Sarah wanted her to go shopping. At any other time it really would have been funny. Right now she wasn’t thinking funny about much of anything.
“Well, you know Lucy Martin works in Dr. Thomas’s office. Maybe we can find out what it was that made Maggie so upset the day Barbara saw her there. That’s one of the only things that didn’t sound right. Why did Dick Potter not like being recognized by Maggie? For some reason her introduction of him to Barbara made him uncomfortable. Maybe it wasn’t Barbara at all, but just the fact that Maggie recognized him. She did say that there was something that she couldn’t quite remember about him, but it would come to her later;” Sarah added.
“Now, Sarah, you know Lucy’s not going to break her patient confidence oath to tell us what Maggie was doing in Dr. Thomas’s office. She’s one of those people who play by the rules, no matter what. Are YOU going to be the one to ask her to break that confidence?” asked Olivia raising her eyebrows in a questioning way.
Sarah turned around toward Clair Ann. “Don’t look at me,” Clair Ann said. “I don’t know any more than I did when we left the pool.”
They all knew she really would have liked to know more about what went on. But then she was married to Vince, and there was no way he would put up with her doing some of the things Sarah was known to do. Mind you, nothing illegal. She was just a bit troublesome for Sheriff St. John.
It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with Vince except he was so laid back. He was reported to be the quietest fellow married to any of the women in the entire group. No one could tell you much about him because he didn’t talk about himself much. In fact, unless you came right out and asked a direct question, he never volunteered a thing. All anyone knew was that he was from the northeast. He was married to Clair Ann and he was a good husband, ready to volunteer for a good cause. He was a very good neighbor. That was Vince. Hell, he could have been an ax murderer for all anyone knew. No, not really, not Vince.
They hadn’t seen Lucy Martin there so they supposed she hadn’t made it to the party. They would see her the following week for the hiking group’s fall kick off. Sarah would ask her about what went on in the doctor’s office then. This would give her time to figure out how to question her without compromising her ethics. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy. How could she ask her to go against all she believes? About the oath she took when she became a nurse? How could she ask Lucy to give her information about the encounter when you don’t even have a valid excuse for asking her to do this? Good questions.
The better question, “If I’m a good friend, do I even ask?”
Sarah and Olivia both knew for sure that Lucy wouldn’t say a thing that would compromise her job or her reputation as a nurse. Damn, Sarah thought, they weren’t going to ask for Maggie’s records or anything like that. Just a tiny bit of a hint would help her know why Maggie had been so upset after seeing Dr. Thomas. Now Sarah was grinning. But wouldn’t it be nice to have a little peek at those records? That was the devil talking now. No way was she going to ask that.