Denton - 01 - Dead Folks' Blues by Steven Womack Page B

landscaping, cleaning lady, and the assorted paraphernalia that go with maintaining that kind of lifestyle.
    I pulled left onto the road almost by instinct, crossed the I-440 bridge, and found myself heading back toward the university hospital. I kept thinking that there had to be some way, some contact, somebody I could put the bite on to find what was really happening with the dear departed Dr. Conrad Fletcher and his professional life. If he was in hock to his bookie, maybe he told someone. A friend, perhaps, if he had any. Judging from the reactions of people I’d met in the hospital, Conrad Fletcher wasn’t a man with a wealth of friends. On the other hand, maybe I could find somebody he’d hit on for a loan, or a shoulder to cry on, or just somebody he’d shoot the breeze with. He was human, right? Even doctors need somebody to talk to, rather than at, every now and then.
    Then I remembered. I’d been concentrating so hard on Conrad and Rachel that I forgot to put any connection from their life into my own. My father’s closest friend, before my parents retired to Hawaii, was a doctor: Dr. Eugene Hughes. Dr. Gene, we called him. Dr. Gene was a pediatrician, and he and his wife had a surprise late baby after the rest of their children were nearly grown. And that surprise late baby, James, was now in medical school himself.
    Guess where? I could have slapped myself as I drove toward Hillsboro Village. And Dr. Hughes lived about ten minutes away. I jerked into the left-hand-turn lane at Wedgewood Avenue, which becomes Blakemore, then changes names again and becomes 31st Avenue. I turned left on West End Avenue, which becomes Harding Road a mile or two down. I drove out past St. Thomas Hospital and turned right onto White Bridge Road, which is Woodmont Boulevard on the other side of the intersection before it becomes Robertson Road the other side of the interstate. What a town.
    I lost track of the street names chugging around the steep curves and wandering roads of the part of town called Hill-wood. Dr. Hughes’s house was a big gray one; I remembered that much. But it had been years since I’d been there. The last time was my father’s retirement party. My father and Dr. Hughes had flown in the war together and had been lifelong buddies after that.
    There, on that corner, I thought, as I pulled into a steep downhill driveway and coasted to a stop. This looked like the right place. If not, I’d just have to hope they didn’t keep many shotguns around.
    Dr. Hughes raised dogs, some of the finest hunting dogs I’d ever seen. I must have smelled like squirrel that day, or maybe they got a whiff of Shadow. Anyway, the dogs went crazy as soon as I got out of the car. I headed away from them, back up the drive to the walk that led to the front door.
    I had to ring twice. Dr. Hughes opened the door, stood there holding a newspaper in one hand, his glasses tipped down on his nose, trying for a moment to recognize his dearest, most lifelong friend’s son.
    “I’m Harry, Dr. Gene. Harry Denton.”
    He paused for a moment, more astonished than anything else. “Well, of course you are, son. I recognized you. I was just trying to figure out if it was really you after all this time.”
    He held the metal storm door open for me, and I walked in. The difference in lifestyle between a pediatrician and ahot-rod surgeon was acutely obvious here; Dr. Hughes’s house was large and comfortable, but it was definitely lived in. The furniture was old, most of it from the Fifties and early Sixties, with plenty of evidence that when no one else was looking, Dr. Hughes let the dogs in.
    “Good to see you, Harry. It’s been too long.” His voice was jovial, yet with the distinguished edge that educated Southern men start to take on when they get old. It’s as if they live under some compulsion to sound like gentlemen farmers at that stage in life, as if all their great-grandfathers had been Civil War generals. If everybody who