Something shady, p.29
Something Shady, page 29
part #2 of Stoner McTavish Mystery Series
“You don’t know the half of it,” Marylou said. “I type up Kesselbaum’s notes, you know?” She rolled her eyes. “There’s stuff in her file you wouldn’t believe.”
“Yeah?” the woman said.
“The kind of things she’s into...” Marylou shook her head. “Can’t even bring myself to say it.”
The receptionist swiveled around and stared at her.
Stoner pretended to be engrossed in the almanac.
“Listen,” Marylou said, “if she ever writes her autobiography, run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore.” She pulled a tin Band-Aid box from her purse and dumped the contents. “Ditch the butt in here when you’re through.”
“Thanks again.”
“ ‘S nothing.” She jumped down from the desk. “Us working girls have to stick together.”
She marched into the conservatory and planted herself in front of Stoner’s chair. “Well, if it isn’t Stoner McTavish, unkempt.”
“What?”
“You look as if you dressed for a fire drill.” She patted Stoner’s hair into place. “Tuck in your shirt, for heaven’s sake. You have company.”
“It’s the drugs,” Stoner explained as she rammed her shirt tail into her belt.
“So now you’re on drugs? Really, we leave you unattended for 48 hours and you go completely to pieces.”
“I try not to swallow them, but I’m not very good at it.”
Marylou surveyed her critically. “Should I bring you some uppers?”
“I feel rotten enough. Marylou, what are you doing here?”
“Checking up.” She plopped into an arm chair. “Tell me everything.”
“How’s Gwen?”
“Wretched. She languishes about the agency for hours on end picking at her cuticles. I don’t know what we ever saw in her.”
Stoner found herself grinning. “She misses me?”
“We all miss you, Pet. Life without you is dreary, dreary, dreary.” She leaned forward. “What have you found out?”
“Claire disappeared last Saturday. Before that she’d been strange, withdrawn, maybe hallucinating.”
“Do you suspect foul play?”
“I always suspect foul play, remember? But we think she’s still on the grounds. We have to look around more. Some patients have left suddenly, and there’s a list of names we found in Claire’s room.” She dug it out of her pocket and handed it over. “My guess is they’re fugitives from the law, being smuggled out from here.”
“That’s the American way,” Marylou mused. “Ship our problems to Third World countries. Want Max to run this through the computer?”
“Does he have access?”
“Old FBI agents never retire, they just take up organic gardening.” She glanced at the list. “Have you committed this to memory?”
“As well as I can. I don’t really trust my memory these days.”
Marylou drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “You don’t look well, Stoner, not well at all. Poor color. Hesitant speech…”
“Really? I wasn’t aware of it.”
“Withdrawn, strange. Are you hallucinating?”
“If I am,” Stoner said with a thin smile, “I’m hallucinating you.”
“Sure you don’t want uppers?”
“Positive. Marylou, please don’t tell anyone you saw me like this.”
“I have to, Pet. Otherwise I’d have no credibility in the future. Is there anything you need, other than a haircut?”
She shook her head. “We may be able to wrap this up soon. We’d better...”
“ ‘We-ing’ again. That doesn’t bode well.”
“Jerry and I,” she explained.
“Jerry!” Marylou eyed her sharply. “Stoner, just because you’re stuck out here, cut off from everything you know and everyone you love, is no reason to cheat on Gwen.”
“Jerry’s a boy.”
“So much the worse. It’s an old story, you know. Two women having a perfectly lovely time, when along comes some muscle-bound stud spouting poetry and feigning sensitivity. And before you know it, it’s all shot to hell.”
“Wherever did you get an idea like that?”
“I’ve started reading. It was your suggestion.”
“Only because TV makes you crazy. What do you read?”
“Whatever I can grab off the shelf at the Public Library. I have a card, you know.”
“Well, take something from my bookcase.”
“Oh, my God!” Marylou squealed, her eyes turning big and round. “Don’t tell me Nancy Drew’s like that!”
“Only if you read between the lines.”
“All right, but it seems a little juvenile.”
“You don’t have to read the Nancy Drew’s,” Stoner said with a sigh. “I keep them around because they remind me of my childhood.”
“Which was unspeakable.” She glanced at her sideways. “I have to tell you, Stoner. I consider what you’re doing very tacky.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You and Gwen have been together less than a week, and you go running off to the boonies to get involved with God-knows-who-or-what…”
So Marylou had found her place in all of this: having come to grips with The Relationship, she was going to make by-God-sure everyone behaved properly. “It gets tackier. I have a date tomorrow night.”
“You what?”
“Have a date, with a woman.”
“What woman?”
“Millicent Tunes. My therapist.”
“That’s unethical!” Marylou sputtered.
“Unethical for her, not for me.” She grew serious. “To tell you the truth, I don’t like it. I think she’s coming on to me.”
“Of course she’s coming on to you. The woman obviously has no scruples. What’s her part in this scam?”
“She’s in it all the way.”
“Does she suspect you?”
“I think so. I may have given myself away.”
“I’ve told you a million times,” Marylou said, “don’t give it away, sell it.” She frowned. “Look, Stoner, in all sincerity I think you should get out of here.”
“I haven’t accomplished anything.”
“So what? People fail every day. Some fail their whole lives, and you don’t hear them complaining. Edith’s first husband made a career of failure.”
“I heard.”
“So pack it in.”
“I can’t do it, Marylou. I’d never be able to look in the mirror.”
Marylou sighed. “I suppose not. How’s the food?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Jerry strolled by the window and caught her eye. He shook his head. Catching sight of Marylou, he hunched his shoulders and scurried off.
“Who was that?”
“Jerry.”
“He’s an infant. You’re trusting your life to an infant?”
“He’s a good kid, and he knows his way around.”
“Humph,” Marylou humphed.
“He’s in love with Claire.”
“Well…”
“You’d better go,” Stoner said. “I’m trying not to attract attention.”
“I suppose so.” Marylou shrugged into her coat. “By the way, we have a lead on Cassie Papa... Delia’s daughter.”
Stoner perked up. “Really? How?”
“It’s too complicated. Sign the damn insurance forms so I can bust out of this puke-hole.”
“Are you going back to Boston?” she asked, picking up the pen.
“I thought I would. Why?”
“Because...” She glanced up at the marble mantled fireplace and suddenly knew... something.
“Because...”
Because I want to come with you. I want to get away from here. I’m afraid. Something terrible is going to happen here, and I don’t think I can stand it.
The fireplace opening was black and cold and pulled at her. The book cases shifted slightly.
“Stoner?”
Don’t you feel that, Marylou? That gripping, pulling? Don’t you see the house moving? My God, am I the only one who feels it?
“Earth to Stoner.”
There was movement at the edge of her vision. A bird. No, the shadow of a bird. The idea of a bird.
“Look, Pet,” Marylou said, “I don’t like the way you look. Do you really think you’re in any shape to...”
Of course she doesn’t see it. This is my nightmare, not hers. My very own monogrammed, personalized nightmare. Lucky me. How many people have their very own personalized...
“I mean it, Stoner. I think you should get out of here.”
She looked up. “Sorry. Spaced out. I think I’m allergic to thorazine.”
The idea of a bird settled on the mantel and began cleaning its feathers.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Stoner forced a laugh. “Sure, I’m sure. It beats cruise reservations.”
“Well...” Marylou stood for a moment, awkward and indecisive.
Stoner smiled and handed her the pen and insurance forms. “Tell Edith, if she decides to rip off the insurance company, I get half.”
“I get a third, for my trouble.” She gripped Stoner’s hand. “Come through this in one piece, that’s all I ask.”
She turned quickly and sashayed from the room, coattails flying.
Stoner watched her go, forcing herself not to look at the bird. Because, of course, it wasn’t there.
Depression settled over her like a cloud.
***
“Missed you in O.T.,” Ione said as she sat down to lunch.
“I had things to do.”
“Things like gallivanting around with Millicent Tunes?”
Stoner buttered a slice of harmless-looking bread. “She thought if I saw the attic I’d forget the rats.”
“And did you?”
“I never believed in them in the first place.”
Ione laughed. “You have to stop taking those drugs. You’re not making any sense at all.”
She picked at a shred of limp carrot embedded in a mound of decomposing lemon jello. “I can’t get the hang of this ‘cheeking’ business.”
“Takes practice,” Ione said. “Of course, they watch you closer than most.”
Stoner put her fork down.
“They’ve pegged you as a trouble-maker,” Ione went on. “You won’t be able to take a deep breath without someone coming down on you.”
They suspect. They know. They’re only biding their time, waiting for me to make a mistake.
But maybe, as Edith Kesselbaum often pointed out, she wasn’t as transparent as she thought. “A common error among introverts,” she would explain. “Your inner life being so real to you, you naturally assume everyone else knows what you’re thinking.”
And Shady Acres isn’t overly endowed with staff. Other than the kitchen help (unseen but certainly heard), the receptionist (permanently glued to her swivel chair and non-union), Lefebre, Tunes, Social Service, Becky, and Jerry’s therapist (who might be a figment of his imagination), the place is apparently run by Hank, Mario, two nameless and unremarkable young male aides, and the redoubtable Gladys Grenier. Who is worth her weight in rhinestones, what with her superior training and intellect.
“What do you have to do,” she asked Ione, “to be labelled a troublemaker?”
“Offend Gladys Grenier.”
“Well,” she said. “I’ve certainly done that.”
She tried the soup. It tasted like sugar and acorns. “God, what’s this stuff?”
“Peanut butter soup.”
“That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard of.”
Ione smiled in sympathy. “Take my advice, shove it in and don’t think about it.”
Hank loomed in the doorway with his tray of little white cups.
“Here we go again” Stoner muttered.
Ione reached for the ketchup. “When I get his attention, ditch the pill.”
He was making his way around the room.
“What are these things supposed to do for us, anyway?” Stoner asked, watching him.
“Make us upstanding and manageable citizens. Don’t you feel upstanding and manageable?”
“I feel sullen and moody.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ione said. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me since I got here.”
He was at the table next to theirs, plunking down his little white cups of manageability.
“Thank you. You’re very kind to say it.”
“I said it because it’s true, not so you’d nominate me for Mental Patient of the Year.”
He came to roost beside her.
Stoner smiled.
Hank didn’t smile.
She held out her hand.
He dumped the pill in it and waited.
“Hank, honey,” Ione said in a syrupy, un-Ione-ish voice, “can you get the top off the ketchup for me? I’m weak as a cat today.”
He hesitated, torn between duty and flattery. Flattery won. He turned to Ione and concentrated on the bottle.
Stoner slipped the pill down the front of her shirt and finished off her water.
Hank grunted, muttered, and cursed. Giving up, he slammed the bottle down on the table. “Do without,” he growled, and stalked away.
“Thanks again,” Stoner said. “Lucky that cap was stuck.”
“It wasn’t. I just screwed it good. My husband says it’s what I do best.”
“Capping bottles?”
“Screwing.”
Stoner laughed. “I’ll bet you’re a riot of a mother. Do you have many kids?”
“Not a one. I screw and screw, but it doesn’t take.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Just as well,” Ione said. “I’d probably screw that up, too.”
“You’re going to a lot of trouble for me.”
“Well, you need looking after.”
“I do?”
“You’re kind of pitiful.”
“I am?”
“Like you don’t know what to make of this place.”
Stoner made hard little balls of chunks of bread. “It’s not quite what I expected.”
“That’s a fact,” Ione said somberly.
“I appreciate your kindness. It’s in short supply around here.”
“That’s another fact.”
“But I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“Being in here’s trouble.”
“I know, but... well, with the staff feeling about me the way they do…”
Ione grinned. “You surely do keep them riled up.”
“It might be safer for you to stay away from me.”
“Want me to butt out?”
“That’s not it…”
“Seems to me you need a friend, Stoner.”
“It could be dangerous.”
“You carrying a contagious disease?”
“Look, you’ve stuck your neck out for me enough,” Stoner said. “Don’t do it again, all right?”
“You’re cranky. Have a bologna sandwich.”
“I don’t…”
“It’ll take your mind off your problems. Believe me, next to these sandwiches, everything else is small potatoes.”
“Ione...”
“Too bad you weren’t around during the early Fifties,” Ione reminisced. “That was the nadir of American cooking. Everything we ate was pre-cooked, pre-canned, pre-frozen, and pre-posterous.”
“Ione, listen to me.”
“You don’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.”
“Ione.”
“You know, I’ve never liked that name, it’s so gray and mousey. Stoner. Now, there’s a good name. Straight forward, has character. Where’d you get a name like that?”
“I was named for Lucy B. Stone. Ione...”
“My first grade school teacher’s name was Miss Olmstead. She lived with her blind mother. Third grade was Miss Kellogg. She boarded with the doctor’s widow and Miss O’Donnell. Miss O’Donnell was sixth grade. Mr.Fox was fifth - no, fourth. I missed eighty days of school that year. Six weeks for measles. There were complications. I had to stay in a dark room, because sometimes measles ruined your eyes. You lay around and listened to the radio. They had good pro- grams, not all music and sports and preaching like now. ‘Stella Dallas,’ ‘Lorenzo Jones and his wife, Belle,’ ‘Our Gal Sunday’.” She laughed. “ ‘Can a girl from a little mining town in Colorado find happiness as the wife of a wealthy and titled Englishman?’ The answer’s ‘no,’ in case you hadn’t guessed. In the morning we had ‘The Breakfast Club.’ They broadcast from a hotel in Chicago, and in the middle of the program everyone would get up and march around the Breakfast Table. Guess they thought it would be good for digestion.”
Stoner gave up. Anyway, there was no way she could explain to Ione why she should stay away from her. Not without revealing her plans. And that knowledge could be dangerous in the long run. “Maybe we should introduce marching around the breakfast table here,” she said.
“Those two...” Ione tilted her head toward the two old men. “...would fall plumb off their perches.”
“You know,” Stoner said, “it’s amazing how much you remember.”
“It comes over you at middle age. You start to notice how fast everything changes. Makes you want to hang onto what was simple.”
“On the way up here I saw some tourist cabins that brought back memories.”
“Well, don’t get too caught up in it. Proust smelled a cookie and ended up with seven volumes of literature.” Ione glanced at her. “Do you mind my running on like this? There aren’t many people to talk to here.”
“I’ve noticed.” She launched an assault on the jello.
“I see you’ve hooked up with Jerry. Sweet kid. He’s compulsive, you know.”
“I know.”
“Too bad he’s not female. He’d make my husband a great wife.”
“You ought to ditch that guy,” Stoner said. “He sounds like nothing but trouble for you.”
“Oh, I’m too timid to go without. And you can’t get a job at fifty, even if you’re trained to do something, which I’m not. Can’t even go back to the notions counter. They don‘t have notions any more. Or clerks. Just kids at cash registers by the door. The big hardware chains are the worst. Guys that don’t know beans about hardware. If they can’t find what you’re looking for, they tell you it doesn’t exist.”
