Page 66 of A Rose of Steel
Maybe Mr. McDougal had been wrong. He hadn’t looked up any records, just gave me information as he remembered it. But when people are familiar to you, sometimes that’s all you need. Still it seemed Doc Westin would have something on Bumper, he had it on everyone else.
I started to put the folders back in the box, take it back and grab the next one when I noticed a spiral notebook. It was opened and had Medicare Scam written across the top of the sheet of paper, underlined twice.
“What is this?” I said.
There was a list of names written down one row of the paper. And dates and times in consecutive rows. The dates were more than two years old.
The names matched a lot of the ones that he had file folders for, and notated next to them was JOY. That must be the senior club, I reasoned.
The first entry was almost three years ago: Two club members, J.D. and M.C. spoke to me about Medicare Part D calls they received. They sent money for insurance coverage, but hadn’t received a card. Doesn’t sound right!
I read the next one: M.C. told me she had several friends who were approached the same way and paid $500 for Part D insurance.
There were at least a dozen entries like that over the next few pages and when they stopped, Doc Westin had begun making notations that to me seemed to be a detailed account of an investigation.
One of the investigatory notes caught my eye:I was able to find out a phone number and a name—Chase Turner.
Chase Turner.
That was the best man’s name.
Or maybe not. It might be a common name.
Currently away in military,was written a few entries down.
Well that cleared that right up. I remembered that Chase Turner had worn a military uniform to the wedding.
What did he have to do with a Medicare scam?
I just didn’t understand where he fit into all of this, or why he lied to me about not knowing where the inhaler was.
I was sure one didn’t have anything to do with the other. And while it might be a good thing to tell Pogue about a Medicare scam, I needed to look for information on ricin and evidence that Doc Westin had written scripts for inhalers for Bumper.
So I closed up the box, took it back and picked up the next one. That box turned out to be what I was looking for.
Inside were at least ten albuterol sulfate inhalation aerosol canisters. The red plastic encasing gave me flashbacks of Bumper holding one to his lips and trying to get his asthma medicine inside of his lungs.
What was Doc Westin doing with all of these inhalers?
There was a big brown paper bag folded at the top. I took it out and sat it to the side.
Underneath the inhalers and a prescription pad was one of those old-time diaries that young girls used to have. I clicked in on the snap to open it, it was locked. I shook my head. The lock was easily picked, and it was funny that he thought it could hold his secrets from anyone who wanted to know what they were.
Like me.
I opened the desk draw and retrieved a letter opener and jimmied the lock. Once the pages were free to be searched, I turned to the first page. The heading was: Alternative Cancer Treatments. The next line read: Cancer type: non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Five Year Survival Rate: 70%.
I guess he did have cancer.
I flipped through the book. He had different sections labeled: Food. Exercise. Herbs. I started with herbs. After all, plant information was what I was after.
He had three columns, every line filled, some were starred. Only a few I recognized:HuaChanSu, milk thistle, amygdalin, curcumin, ricin...
I stopped reading. There it was. Ricin. It was one of the entries that was starred. I don’t know why I thought it wouldn’t be there, Auntie had told me that he’d considered using it to help cure his cancer. Who knows, he might have even tried it.
I sat the diary aside and moved stuff around in the box. No Bumper file. No mention of him anywhere. Still, in that box was everything that had been used to kill Bumper. I didn’t have to look any further. I’d found the murder weapon.
Now what was I supposed to do with this information?
