Urgent Vows

“What was the doctor doing…counterfeiting prescription forms?”

Quinn didn’t miss the caustic bite of her question. This was not the type of conversation Hope would want served up daily around a family meal. But at least she was entering this marriage with her eyes wide open. She wouldn’t expect more than he could give. “Actually, Dr. Chavez had counterfeited the medical diplomas that lined his office walls. Somehow he got his hands on some original diplomas and he fabricated his medical schooling and training. He’d never even been to medical school. There are a lot of phony certificates floating around—especially in undeveloped countries where much of the population is illiterate. The Dominican Republic police asked us to assist them with their investigation after they received a number of complaints from families who’d lost someone under Juan Chavez’s care.”

“That’s terrible.”

“If that’s not bad enough, Chavez has so much money and influence that he’s been able to delay the proceedings a number of times. I’m supposed to testify for the prosecution in mid-May. It could be he’s angry he’ll actually go to trial, and he doesn’t like the idea of me explaining to a packed courtroom how he counterfeited those diplomas.” Quinn’s fingers tightened around the coffee mug. “People will go to extreme measures to save face, which is why I told the police that Ross Linville might bear a grudge against me worth killing over.”

“You were involved in that? It was all over the news and in the papers—the fall of the house of Linville. Toronto old money and all those department stores his family owns across the country. I remember it was some big bank-loan scandal. Aren’t the police looking for him? He skipped bail or something?”

“That’s right. His case was supposed to go to trial on Monday—that’s one of the reasons I happened to be in town this week, but he skipped bail and disappeared. The police suspect he’s somewhere in the Caribbean, but that could just be a rumor.”

“But what does a counterfeit specialist have to do with bank loans?” Hope asked, a frown inching across her forehead.

“Well, his family might have money, but Linville had made some bad investments, and his personal coffers were running dry, so he counterfeited some stock certificates and used them as collateral to obtain a bank loan fraudulently to keep his life-style afloat. The bank got suspicious and hired me to examine the stock certificates to make sure they were genuine. They weren’t. The bank decided to contact the police and go public with the information.”