LITMIR.BIZ

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policy was policy, and rules were rules. There was simply no way around that. She clicked Play on the remote. The sound was exceptionally loud, as well as irritating, Bella thought, too loud for this small box of a room.

      Faster than greased lightning, Bella had her iPhone in hand and was recording what was playing out right in front of her. It was the next best thing to actually getting the tape, she told herself. Recording it herself was the only way to prove it wasn’t her image on the tape. And she would have something in hand, not just a bunch of words to show and to prove to Alexis Thorn she was telling the truth when she showed up at her office in the next few hours.

      “Stop that right now! You cannot record this tape,” Dr. Petre said. Bella thought she looked like a marionette the way she was hopping about and waving her arms as she tried to block the big screen behind her. Her colleagues just stared, their jaws dropping.

      “Yes, I can, and until you can show me one of your rules or something in your policy manual that says I can’t, I will continue. Whatever you do, do not try to stop me. We could call the police if you want to make an issue of this; then we all get to see ourselves on the evening news. And by all, I mean not just the four of us but all your clients who watch the evening newscasts. What do you think a police investigation of your clinic, playing out on the evening news will do to your continued existence as a functioning enterprise? Do you really want to test the loyalty of your clients like that? If so, be my guest.

      “Look close now. Now, look, that woman is not me! Does that look like me? No, it does not! The woman on the screen has to be at least fifteen pounds heavier than I am. I am five foot three. That woman is at least five foot seven, and she’s wearing sneakers, not heels. You cannot dispute height. She has black hair. I have ash-blond hair. The facial shape is nothing like mine. Look! Look! She chews her fingernails!” Bella waved her own hands in front of the three doctors, with their acrylic nails and French manicure. “The last time I bit or chewed my fingernails, I was six years old. Do you hear me, that is not ME! You turned my property over to an imposter, and now it’s gone. Gone! How could you be a party to something like that? Just tell me how. You are evil people. What you did was evil. Every one of you is evil. Answer me, damn it! How?”

      Suddenly, the silence in the room was deafening. No one would look at her. Suddenly, it seemed, the floor and the ceiling were where the action was.

      “Stop! Stop! Freeze the tape!” Bella shouted. Petre was so startled at Bella’s command, she actually obeyed the order. Bella made sure she got the full-face likeness of the person on the tape onto her phone. “That’s a pretty good shot of the woman. It’s a full-frontal face shot, almost as if she’s daring the camera to capture her. I can see defiance in her eyes. It’s clear as a bell. Open your eyes and look at her, then look at me! There is nothing similar about either one of us.

      “Why aren’t you saying something? You damn well need to say something right now! When I’m done with this place, I will own it. Now I want to see the original of the release form I signed, and don’t give me any of your crap about your policy and the rules. If I signed my name, then it’s mine. Or at least a copy is mine. Like now would be good!” Bella thundered, as she felt her insides start to curdle. The time for being nice to these officious fools was long gone.

      Dr. Peabody quickly opened the folder he had in his hand. He riffled through the papers, his hands trembling, until he found the one he wanted. He held out the paper to Bella, who immediately screeched, “That is not my signature! Even idiots like you would have known that if you had compared the signatures. You didn’t do that, did you? Hell no, you didn’t, I can see it written on your faces.”

      Bella shook her head; she was losing it and knew it. She had to stop with the shouting, screeching, bellowing, and speak normally. She needed to stay in control. “Now I want you to compare my original signature on my original contract when I signed on here. See, see, that is not my signature!” Bella snapped a photo, and snapped and then snapped some more. She felt confident that she had enough material now for the Quinn Law Firm to start an all-out investigation of these doctors and the Samaritan Clinic.

      Dr. Petre turned off the television and slipped the remote into the carton, along with the surveillance tape. Bella continued to video everyone’s movements. “You better not lose that tape. You might want to think about doing something about your security while you’re at it,” Bella warned.

      “You can’t blame us for this insane debacle,” the fussy little doctor bleated. “Nothing like this has happened in the thirty years we’ve been in business. We have an exemplary reputation. There were no red flags. No warnings of any kind. Your account was dormant, as most are. We had no reason to think or believe that the person who showed up to collect the materials wasn’t you. Thousands of people come through this clinic on a weekly basis. Surely, you can’t expect us to remember someone from years ago. Obviously, as we can all see, the woman on the tape is not you. Mistakes happen. We, none of us, can unring the bell.

      “Having said that, we will, nonetheless, help in any way we can. You said you contacted a lawyer, so I guess we should let the lawyers handle matters. I don’t know what else to tell you other than we’re sorry. I know sorry is just a word to you right now, but right this moment, it’s the best we can do. We will cooperate and do whatever we can to see this through to a satisfactory conclusion. I give you my personal word on that, and I’m sure that Dr. Petre and Dr. Donaldson will do the same.” Both doctors nodded in agreement.

      Bella watched as Dr. Peabody’s shoulders slumped as he finally clamped his lips shut. For a few seconds, she almost felt sorry for him. She knew she was being unreasonable, but only to a point. These doctors had no way of knowing an imposter was stealing from them. Right now, the big question for Bella was, how did the imposter get a copy of her updated driver’s license?

      * * *

      Dr. Petre looked like she was sucking on another lemon. Her eyes sparked. She’d been challenged, her authority usurped by these two ninnies who called themselves doctors. It’s true, they were doctors, but not medical doctors like she was. This was all going to come back on her—now, when she’d just bought into the clinic as a partner. She had put in her ten years, saved up the buy-in money, and was now a full partner, which entitled her to a share of the profits, along with all the perks that went with a full partnership. If Bella Nolan was right, and Samaritan Clinic was sued, Bella Nolan could very well end up owning a controlling interest, if not the whole shooting match, and she’d be out in the cold. Suddenly, she wanted to slap the silly little twit for upsetting her world. She told herself to make nice, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that. Instead, holding the box with the tape in a death grip, she almost ran from the room to the safety of her newly refurbished office, refurbished at the clinic’s expense, where she could vent her frustration. After doing so, she had to call her new partners to apprise them of what was about to go down. She looked around at her pricey new digs and wanted to cry.

      But if she cried, her makeup would be all over the place, and she would look like a raccoon. No, she had to stiffen up her lips, straighten her spine, and take a deep breath as the old ditty went. Which was just another way of saying pull on your big-girl panties and get on with it. She shivered when she remembered the name of the law firm that was representing Bella Nolan. The Quinn Law Firm. She knew all about that firm because dozens of the clinic’s clients used it. As one client said, they don’t come any better than the Quinn Law Firm, and then went on to say she knew for a fact that the members of the firm called in their lead hired gun for high-profile cases, the famous or infamous, as some put it, Lizzie Fox, also known as the Silver Fox, who mainly practiced in Las Vegas. Petre could feel her blood running cold. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that Lizzie Fox would be on the red-eye tonight, because no case could have a higher profile than this one was going to have. There would be no shoving this under the carpet anytime soon.

      “Son of a bitch!” Dr. Candice Petre seethed. “What did I do to deserve this?”

      * * *

      Bella stepped out of the cab and onto the curb. The streets were busy for this time of day, but then again, tourists didn’t really care what time it was when they were on vacation. The Quinn Law Firm was just five blocks from the

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