“I know I can count on you, Harvey.”
“I’m making no promises,” he said prissily. “You’re no longer with the police department. That changes things significantly.”
“This is very important.” She scooted forward on her bench and whispered confidentially, “I’m working on the Pettijohn murder case.”
He gaped at her, absently thanked the bartender who delivered his drink to the table, and took a quick sip. “You don’t say?”
“It’s very hush-hush. You can’t breathe a word of this to a single soul.”
“You know you have my confidence,” he whispered back. “Who’re you working for?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“They haven’t made an arrest yet, have they? Are they close to making one?”
“I’m sorry, Harvey. I can’t discuss it. It would violate my client’s confidence if I did.”
“I understand the necessity for confidentiality, I do.”
He wasn’t all that disappointed. The intrigue kindled his unappeased sense of adventure. Being let in on a secret, to any extent, gave him a place in an inner circle when he was excluded from most. It twinged Loretta’s conscience a little to manipulate him this way, but she was willing to do just about anything to please Hammond and make up for her past mistake.
“What I need is everything you can unearth on a Dr. Alex Ladd. Middle initial E. I also have her Social Security number, driver’s license number, and so on. She’s a psychologist who practices here in Charleston.”
“A shrink? Is that her connection to Pettijohn?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Loretta,” he whined.
“Because I don’t know. I swear. So far all I’ve got on her is the run-of-the-mill stuff. Income tax returns, banking records, credit cards. Nothing out of joint on any of them. She owns her home, has no major debts. No one’s suing her. She hasn’t even had a traffic ticket. Her university and postgrad transcripts are impressive. She was an excellent student and had offers to join several existing practices. However, she opted to set up her own.”
“Just starting out? She must come from money.”
“She inherited a wad from her adoptive parents, one Dr. Marion Ladd, a general practitioner in Nashville. Wife Cynthia, a teacher turned homemaker. They had no other children. They were killed several years ago in a commuter plane crash during a skiing trip in Utah.”
“Was foul play suspected?”
Loretta hid her smile behind a sip of her club soda. Harvey was getting into the spirit of the project. “No.”
“Hmm. It sounds to me as though you have quite a lot already.”
Loretta shook her head. “I know nothing about her early life. She wasn’t adopted until she was fifteen.”
“That old?”
“Oddly, that’s when it seems her life began. The circumstances of her adoption and her life prior to it are a black hole. It’s giving up no information, and I’ve had no luck trying to penetrate it.”
“Huh,” Harvey said, taking another quick slurp of his drink.
“She attended a private high school. The people I talked to there—and I worked my way up the chain of command—were nice and polite but tight-lipped. They wouldn’t even commit to sending me a yearbook of her graduating year. Very into protecting the Ladds’ privacy and wouldn’t talk about them at all.
“According to everything I read about them, they were highly respected and above reproach.
Cynthia Ladd was awarded Teacher of the Year before she left the profession. Dr. Ladd’s patients mourned him when he died. He was a church deacon. She… Never mind, you get the idea. No scandal or even close to one.”
“So what can I do?”
“Get into the juvenile records.”