Heads You Lose - Lisa Lutz [74]
“This lawyer who drafted the complaint. You know anything about him?”
“No. He was just a small-time ambulance chaser. From what I gathered, my father did most of the investigating, ’cause we were hard up on cash. I think he and Holland were trying to work something out on their own.”
“Doc Holland and your father spoke after he consulted an attorney?” Lacey asked, knowing that any lawyer worth his salt would have discouraged such activity.
“I think so,” Ilsa replied. “I remember driving to Holland’s office one time while my mom was still in the hospital. I sat in the waiting room while he and my dad talked.”
“Where was the lawyer?”
“He wasn’t there.”
Lacey searched through the file, page after page. She found a photocopy of a medical license under the name of Herman Holland and then looked at the doctor’s date of birth: 1921. That would mean Doc Holland was pushing ninety. Despite his haggard appearance, the Doc Holland Lacey knew was no more than seventy.
“Your dad must have figured it out,” Lacey mumbled.
“Figured what out?”
“Doc Holland wasn’t a real doctor. In fact, he probably wasn’t even a Herman Holland, as far as I can tell.”
“He’s a phony? He’s been treating patients since I was a girl.”
“And he was willing to do whatever it took to maintain his front.”
“What are you saying?” Ilsa asked.
“I think he killed your parents to keep them quiet. My folks just got caught in the crossfire.”
“But my father was trying to settle with him,” Ilsa replied.
“I think that was your dad’s only mistake. He must have decided not to file the attorney’s complaint when he found out Holland wasn’t really a doctor. An attorney would have had to file a report with the AMA. Your dad probably thought Holland would offer a better settlement if he kept quiet.”
“Still. Was it worth killing over? Why didn’t Holland just move?”
“It would have torn down everything he’d built up. If he wanted to practice medicine somewhere else, he would have had to create a whole new persona, including references. He also would have had to co-opt another medical license somehow. It must have seemed easier to just make the problem go away.”34
“We have to turn him in,” Ilsa said.
“We have to find him first. He’s not here anymore. Doc Egan took over his practice last week.”
“So how did he con an entire town for twenty years?”
“He didn’t con everyone,” Lacey replied.
After Lacey’s meeting with Ilsa, she drove straight to Tulac to get to the bottom of another equally mysterious matter. She rang the bell.
“Who’s there?” Brandy shouted from the other side of the door.
“Lacey.”
“You alone?”
“I’m alone.”
Brandy opened the door and invited Lacey inside. She was wearing a pink bathrobe and the smell of bleach was in the air, which made sense since a strip of it was covering her upper lip. A shower cap covered her head, beneath which, Lacey could only assume, chemicals were performing their magic.
“Please excuse my appearance,” Brandy said. “I swear if it weren’t for bleach and silicone, I’d look like a twelve-year-old boy.”
Lacey refrained from comment.
“I take it Paul told you,” Brandy said.
“Uh . . . right,” Lacey replied.
“I don’t know why Hart made me keep it a secret.”
“That seems obvious to me,” Lacey said.
“Why? Was he ashamed of me?”
“Where I come from, a man doesn’t tell his fiancée that he’s dating a stripper on the side. That’s just common sense. Of course, not dating the stripper in the first place is even more common sense.”
“Dating?” Brandy said, raising a well-plucked eyebrow.
“Whatever you want to call it,” Lacey replied.
“Good lord, you’re just a blind pickle in a jar of information.”35
“Which Brandy am I talking to now? Dim-bulb-stripper or genius-too-smart-for-MIT?”
“Which one do you want to talk to?”
“The one that’s going to tell me the truth. How long were you and Hart . . . seeing each other?”
“Do you and Paul even talk anymore?” Brandy asked.
“Not so much.”
“Hart was my