Bad Ideas (First & Forever 4)

“I’m trying my best.”

After visiting with my friends for a while, I went to my room and refilled my backpack with some new toiletries and the last of my clean clothes. “I need to get going,” I said, as I returned to the kitchen. “Yolanda, I’ll see you at work later. And I plan to be home bright and early for our brunch tomorrow.”

Yolanda said she’d walk me out, and on the way to the front door she said, “Even if you’re not calling him your boyfriend yet, it seems like you and Koenig are getting close.”

“We are.”

“Please be careful, Casey. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“He’s not the same with me as he is at work, Yo. He’s incredibly sweet and loving, and he can be so vulnerable.”

She asked, “Doesn’t that strike you as odd, though? The whole Jekyll and Hyde thing? How do you even know which is the real Theodore Koenig?”

I felt guilty for thinking of him in exactly those terms at one point. “The real Theo is the angel who curls up in my arms at night and just needs to be held. I don’t know the whole story yet, but he’s clearly been through a lot of bad shit in his life. I’m not surprised he’s put up some walls, especially at work.”

“It’s more than just being cold and emotionless on the job. I’ve known quite a few doctors who aren’t exactly up for Miss Congeniality, but this shit with Koenig is above and beyond. Haven’t you heard the stories about him?”

“No, and you shouldn’t believe a bunch of rumors.”

“Come on, Casey,” she said. “You know me. I don’t repeat gossip, but I think you should hear this. I’m worried you’re going to get hurt by this guy.”

We’d reached the front porch by that point, and I sighed and turned to her. “Fine. Tell me what you’ve heard, so I can tell you it’s bullshit.”

She shut the door behind us and lowered her voice. “This came from a doctor named Layla Sandoval. She got a job at Stanford Medical Center last December, but we worked together for a couple of years before that and were pretty tight. Layla did her residency with Koenig and had close friends who went to med school with him, so that’s how she knew about this.”

“Okay.”

“Long story short, she said Koenig seduced one of his professors while he was in med school, a man named Doctor Martin Gaultier, who was thirty years older than him. Then Koenig manipulated Gaultier into rewriting his will and leaving him a house that was worth millions, along with the man’s family fortune. Right after that, Gaultier died and Koenig got everything.”

I shook my head and told her, “That can’t be true.”

“So, Koenig doesn’t have a fancy house and a lot of disposable income? He only finished his residency three years ago, so at best, Cal West would be paying him about a hundred and fifty grand a year at this point. Granted, that’s a great salary, but it wouldn’t cover the mortgage on a multi-million-dollar home. In fact, if he was like most doctors, he’d be drowning in student loan debt right now and probably living pretty frugally.”

“He does have a nice house, but that doesn’t prove anything. You know how much your Victorian is worth. Think about how easy it would be for people to make up stories about how you got it.”

“True enough,” she said.

“So, who at work has heard this rumor about Theo and the professor?”

“Pretty much everyone. I thought it was important for you to know about it too, in case it’s true. If he’s really the type to sleep with or manipulate someone for material gain, that’s a person you should watch out for.”

I frowned at her and pointed out, “You know, none of that adds up. If you’re saying he did that while in med school, he would have been about twenty-three or so, and if that professor was thirty years older, that’d put him in his early fifties. That’s not old! The way you told the story, it sounded like he went after some vulnerable ninety-eight-year-old in a nursing home and tricked him into signing over his life savings. Don’t you think a fifty-something medical school professor would probably be sharp as a tack and not easily manipulated?”

Yolanda nodded. “Valid point.”

“But you just don’t like Theo, so it’s easy to believe stories like this about him.”

“Honestly? Yeah, it is. I’ve worked with him for three years, and he’s never shown me even a glimpse of the man you’ve described. It makes me wonder if he’s manipulating you, too.”

“To gain what, exactly? My ancient Honda Civic? My collection of pun T-shirts?”

“I’m not saying he’s running the same scam on you. Maybe he just wanted to get you into bed, or maybe he felt like he needed an ally at work or something,” she said.