it.
“Fine,” he said. “But don’t wait too long.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
We left my apartment with me riding in his SUV. I had told him I would meet him there, but he refused. My second offer had been to follow him. Again rejected. Spencer Norwood was a very stubborn man. I gave in for now.
“We’re talking to Grace Jacobs,” Spencer informed me. “She was one of your clients.”
“Is that a question?”
“No. Her photos were on the computer, several sets with different dates.”
I cringed. “This might sound weird, but how do you know whose is whose?”
His color rose, and I hid my amusement. “He added their names to the file and the dates. Convenient for us.”
“Have you considered someone else might have set the doctor up? That he might be innocent?”
“Do you have evidence to the contrary?”
“No.”
“Then we proceed this way for now. Besides, we already spoke with Lissa Russell. She indicated he was attached to the pen and refused to see a patient without it.”
“I spoke with Allie Kate Brinlee. She said she had been a patient of his years ago, but she wasn’t on the list you gave me.”
He nodded and turned onto the road where the main branch of the library stood. Grace worked as a librarian. While the place was quiet, and we could go to a private room to have our discussion, having the interview there still felt inappropriate.
“The dates go back only six months,” Spencer explained. “We couldn’t find anything older. So we were able to set aside any patients that had stopped seeing him before that.”
“Set aside? Don’t you mean eliminate?”
“A friend finds out her new doctor is taking pictures of her without her permission. She shares the information with another friend who had stopped seeing him. That other friend might assume she was also a victim. She or her significant other could have decided to take matters into their own hands without proof. It happens. We focus on those we have for now, and if it turns up nothing, we work backward.”
I almost moaned at the tedium but pulled myself together. This was an urgent and important situation. I needed all my wits about me to be of use to the investigation. “So I’ll do the talking?”
“Only if she gets jammed up and embarrassed.” He pulled to a stop at the curb in front of the library and threw the gear shift into park.
Before he could get out of the car, I reached to touch his arm and changed my mind. He saw and paused. I might have seen something in his gaze, but couldn’t be sure. I turned away. “Spencer, try not to be too hard on them, okay? Gently.”
That same nerve in his jaw jumped, but he nodded, and we got out of the car to head into the building. The scent of old leather and musk met my nose when I pushed through the revolving door into the Briney Creek main library. A wide expanse of marble flooring encompassed the lobby and continued on toward the Information Desk. To the right and left of that were the entrances to the children’s section and to the reference section. If you took the curving staircase to the right or left of the front door, you reached the second floor, which housed other fiction and young adult. I had visited countless times and enjoyed the quiet solitude of the place. Of course, unless you hid behind one of the tall bookshelves, you weren’t likely to remain alone long. Spencer and I saw evidence of this when a couple of the older ladies from Edna’s group spotted us and burst into smiles, ready to head on over. My grumpy companion’s expression gave them pause, and the moment passed when Gloria appeared to greet us.
“Sheriff and Makayla, thank you for meeting me here and not making me come down to the station. I’m embarrassed enough as it is.” Gloria was a slender woman of about five foot four with curious green eyes that had struck me with their beauty the first time I’d seen them on film. Now the same gaze was filled with trepidation.
She
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