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Chapter 528 Margo Without an X

Margaret was sitting in Dr. Namid's home office. The dark mahogany paneling, highly polished mahogany desk and the oxblood leather chairs screamed money. Only the best for the good doctor.

Neither Carl Namid nor Margaret was happy although Margaret was beginning to feel a little less stressed as she sipped her second Scotch. He did have the finest single malt she'd ever tasted.

"That bitch Dr. Knowles was supposed to get locked up for killing the ATF agent. How the hell could you reinstate her?"

"The county did an independent investigation and the ADA found she acted in self-defense. If I didn't reinstate her, she would have filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the hospital for wrongful termination and intentional harm to her professional reputation. She's a competent surgeon. No malpractice suits. Great record. As soon as she files the lawsuit, the hospital board investigates, fires my sorry ass, reinstates her and gives her buckets of bucks to say sorry. That isn't going to help us. I thought you had some great plan to take care of her."

"I had a friend of mine Eric meet her and date her to distract her. When she got arrested, he ghosted her. We both thought she was going to go down for that killing and he didn't want to be around her anymore. She was more into romance and he was more into being gay."

Margaret had worked around doctors too long to be surprised that Carl would get a gay man to romance Tara. People who think doctors are smart, haven't worked around many of them. And of all the doctors she'd worked with, Carl Namid was the dimmest. He had shit for brains and she was being kind.

She was the one who found the infants for him. That was no easy task; a fact he seemed to forget most of the time. He was a medical butcher. Nothing more.

The only thing he had going for him was an unquenchable greed. With his career in decline—because who else would come to work in small town Charming—he'd gotten creative about making money. That was the only thing she liked about him.

She dreamed of a future that involved leaving her dull as hell husband and their whiney, entitled kids and running off where they couldn't find her. When she had enough money, she was sending them on a trip to Disneyland or Knott's Berry Farm. When they got back, she would be gone. She'd leave a note so they would know she didn't want to be found. Her husband could have the house and all the joint accounts. She'd been siphoning off money from their join accounts for years and her husband trusted her. Fool.

Soon she was going to ditch the boring, conservative hairstyle, grow her hair out, go blonde, get Lasik surgery so she could trash her glasses and buy a wardrobe of sexy clothes. She was sick to death of the boring suits she had to wear to work. She hated being Margaret the stodgy, bureaucratic minion of St. Thomas. She was going to be Margo a carefree, sexual temptress who was looking for a good time. No kids, no husbands, no pets.

If she'd known married life with kids was going to be so soul crushing, she would have been more diligent about taking birth control pills. She was so damned tired of cooking, cleaning and parenting. Society led her to believe that to be happy, she needed a husband, kids and a dog. Well, she got those things, but they hadn't made her happy. She never wanted to get tied down again. She was going to be the free spirited Margo.

"Ever thought of using a straight guy?" Margaret asked unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. "Plan might have been more successful."

"You have someone in mind?" Carl asked with some sarcasm of his own.

"You were the one that came up with the plan. It was on you to find the guy."

"Charming's not exactly filled with eligible straight men that I can trust," he snapped.

"Your plan. Not my problem," Margaret retorted hotly.

"It will be your fucking problem if we don't do something about Knowles. She's been digging around my cases. Can't keep her out of the patient files because she's consulted on them. As much as I'd like to dismiss her as just another stupid bitch, she's smart. For some fucked up reason, she sees me as an enemy and is really looking over my cases. She's going to figure out the bad surgical outcomes. Business is booming. There's no reason to shut down now especially since I started the . . ." he broke off abruptly.

"What? Started what?"

"Having Eric help me," he lied smoothly.

"Eric is part of your network?"

"Yeah," Carl Namid said without elaborating. "He could call her try to strike up a romance with her again."

"After ghosting her?" Margaret snorted derisively.

"He's an attractive man. He can give her some bullshit excuse."

"Well, there is the gay thing too that's the real problem," Margaret said with thick sarcasm.

"The only fucking problem is Knowles."

"How much longer can we keep this up?" Margaret demanded. "We need to put an end date on this." She needed at least three more months before she would reach her money target and blow this crappy little town.

"Why? No one except Knowles is suspicious. We need to come up with a way to deal with her."

"Can't you give her some kind of poison that looks like she died of natural cases?"

"Sure, I can do that. You get the poison and I'll give it to her."

"I don't know what kind of poison," Margaret said coldly.

"Well, I was trained to save lives, so I'm a little short on training on how to kill people with poison. Besides, if we get busted for what we've done, I don't think I'd get much if any prison time. We kill Knowles and that could get us real jail time. Killing her is too damned risky."

Margaret thought that over for a few moments. She never really considered getting caught. She was careful, but killing Knowles was risky. There would be an investigation and she didn't like talking to cops. As much as she would have preferred to disagree with Carl, he was right. Murder was off the table. Too risky.

"How about an injury to one of her hands? She can't work until she recovers. It looks like an accident."

Namid leaned back in his chair and studied the ceiling as he thought over Margaret's idea to injure Tara.

"If we do it right, it could be a permanent injury. Ruin her surgical career. No more Dr. Knowles playing amateur private eye looking into my surgeries. Why don't you take her to lunch and slam her hand in the car door hard?" Carl suggested.

"Why don't you find someone to do it for us?" Margaret countered. "Stage it as an attempted kidnapping. Women are always getting kidnapped. Her hand gets slammed in the door of a car or a trunk or a heavy door during the attempt. She gets roughed up a little and the kidnapper flees. We're going to need to find a couple of people."

"Who do you have in mind?" Carl asked.

"Maybe your friend Eric knows of a couple of friends who could do it. Just don't do it in Charming. One of the MC thugs would probably come by and shoot the kidnappers," Margaret said. "They think it's their job to protect the town. In exchange, Chief Unser looks the other way for everything the MC does."

"You think we could get the MC to do it?"

"That idea is even dumber than getting a gay guy to romance Knowles. The MC isn't going to kidnap and beat up a woman who lives in Charming especially not Knowles. I heard a couple of the nurses who went to high school with her talking. She and Jax Teller the MC's vice-president were together for a couple of years."

"Don't try to insult my intelligence. I'm a neonatal surgeon. That requires real brains, not like your little BS degree in hospital admin. OK. So, the MC is out. Eric might know of a couple of people. If I can line up the people to do it, you are going to have to get her out of town. How about some kind of training or conference? Send her to San Francisco or San Jose. Soaring crime rates. No one will suspect."

"I'll find something to send her to alone to get her out of town."

"Let me know when. Give me a couple of weeks to get some guys to do it."

Carl topped off Margaret's Scotch before lighting one of his Cuban cigars. Margaret took a sip of her Scotch once more savoring the smoky flavor.

When she became Margo, she was going to go back to being the wild child she'd been in her youth only this time she'd have money and the wisdom that age brought all she needed to do was find an out of town conference or training seminar for Knowles to attend and her problems would be over.