A Side Order Of Murder

by Nancy Skopin

  “Come on, Cliff. A little manual labor never hurt anybody.”

  I opened the bedroom windows and laid drop cloths against the wall. Cliff helped me move the furniture into the center of the room and we covered it and the rest of the floor with additional drop cloths.

  We both put on the transparent coveralls we had purchased at the paint store. I started Cliff off washing the walls and ceiling in the bedroom with a sponge mop while I prepared the paint trays and assembled the rollers. He looked awkward at first, but once he got the hang of it I think he actually enjoyed the work.

  When everything was clean and dry, I showed Cliff how to tape off the trim around the windows, and he did the right window while I taped off the left. Next we taped off the molding, using the step stools to reach the ceiling. Then we each took a long handled roller and started painting. The Cafe Au Lait color looked great on the bedroom walls. Very rich and warm. We didn’t talk much while we were working and whenever I glanced over at Cliff he appeared to be totally focused on what he was doing.

  By 2:00 p.m. the bedroom was finished except for the molding and the window trim.

  Cliff beamed as he looked around the room. “It looks amazing,” he said.

  “Don’t sound so surprised. You’re good at this.”

  We stripped out of our plastic coveralls and I washed up in the kitchen while Cliff took the bathroom. Five minutes later we were both feeling refreshed and hungry.

  “Let’s go for a drive,” I said. Cliff immediately shifted from self-satisfied to apprehensive. “It’ll be all right, Cliff. I’ll be right there with you.”

  I grabbed my purse and Cliff’s arm and, after locking his suite, we headed for the stairs. We didn’t encounter any staff or family members on our walk through the kitchen. I figured Anna and Cliff Senior must be out and Mrs. Peterson and the cook busy elsewhere.

  The Lexus was alone in the garage. I climbed into the backseat and scrunched down on the floor before Cliff used the remote to open the overhead doors.

  “Keep talking to me while you’re driving,” I said. “That way I’ll know everything’s okay. If you see or hear anything unusual tell me immediately.”

  Cliff backed slowly out of the garage, clicked the remote to close the doors, and started down the driveway.

  “What should I talk about?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Tell me about your childhood. What does your dad do for a living?”

  “He used to work for the government,” he said. “He’s retired now.”

  Score one for Jack.

  “Which branch of the government?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure exactly. We moved around a lot when I was a kid. I think he was some kind of a foreign affairs liaison. Which way should I go?”

  “Turn left on El Camino,” I said. “Where did you live the longest?”

  “D.C.,” he said.

  That figured. “Did people from your dad’s work ever visit him at home?”

  “Sometimes. But they’d always go into his study or talk outside on the patio. I never actually met any of them.”

  “Didn’t that strike you as odd?”

  “Yes, it did.”

  “How long were you in Washington?” I asked.

  “We lived there when I was little. Then we traveled abroad, and moved back when I was sixteen. Mom and Dad stayed in D.C. until two months ago. I went away to college when I was eighteen. After I graduated we moved here.”

  “And in all that time your dad never invited his co-workers over for dinner?”

  “Not that I remember, no.”

  This sounded more than a little suspicious to me.

  “Maybe he just isn’t the social type,” I offered.

  “I think that’s a safe assumption,” Cliff said.

  There was an undercurrent of anger in his tone. I decided to go with it.

  “How do you and your dad get along, Cliff?”

  “Why do you need to know that?” Now he sounded defensive.

  “That comment you made about your father hiring Mrs. Peterson to spy on you for one thing. What makes you think he would do something like that?”

  “He’s very secretive. Like with his job. He never talked about it. And Mrs. Peterson’s always lurking around somewhere. She reminds me of a cat waiting to pounce.”

  On behalf of cats everywhere, I was offended.

  “Do you think he talked to your mom about his work?”

  “I doubt it.”

  I risked a peek out the side window. We were on El Camino, almost to Burlingame.

  “Turn right on Broadway,” I said, crouching back down.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Do you like Mexican food?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He didn’t know. I was beginning to catch on to one of Cliff’s problems. He’d been sheltered to an astonishing degree. No wonder he still lived at home.

  “So why did your family move to California?”

  “Dad took early retirement and they wanted a change, I guess.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Fifty-seven.”

  “Why retire so young?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. He came home from work upset one day, and the next morning over breakfast he announced that he was going to retire. He asked Mom where she’d like to live and she said she’d always wanted to live in California, so here we are.”

  “Wow. That’s a pretty dramatic change. So, tell me about college,” I said. “Where did you go?”

  “Berkeley.”

  “What was your major?” I asked.

  “Physics,” he said.

  Huh. “Nice campus,” I offered, wondering what he’d been doing since graduation. It must be nice not to have to worry about supporting yourself.

  “Yes it is.”

  It took me a moment to realize he was responding to my comment about the Berkeley campus and not to my thoughts about his family’s financial well-being.

  “Did you have a favorite professor?”

  “Leon Matzek,” he said without hesitation. “He was incredible. He passed away three months ago,” he added, in a more somber tone.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. How did he die?” I asked, just making conversation in an effort to keep him talking.

  “The newspaper said he committed suicide, but I don’t believe it. He would never have done that. It must have been some kind of an accident. He valued life more than anyone I’ve ever known.”

  Limited frame of reference, I thought. “How’d it happen?” I asked.

  “They said he jumped from the bell tower at the top of the Campanile building.”

  “And you don’t believe he would do that?”

  “I can’t imagine someone like Professor Matzek, who spent his whole life learning and educating others, killing himself. No.”

  At that moment I realized I hadn’t checked Cliff’s car for bugs. As I was digging in my purse for the detector I felt the car swerve slightly to the right.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  Silence.

  “Cliff?”

  When he didn’t respond I sat halfway up and tried to get a look at his face. His jaw was slack. His eyes were open but the one I could see looked unfocused, and he wasn’t blinking.

  “Cliff? Can you hear me?” I shouted.

  Still no response. I scanned the dash for the speedometer. The sun was in my eyes so I shaded them with my hand. We were doing about forty-five miles an hour, and traffic was heavy. Cliff hadn’t made the lane change to turn right on Broadway, so we were still in the left lane. A little swerve and we’d hit southbound traffic head on. I heaved myself over the seat. Somehow Cliff was keeping it between the lines, so far. I gently gripped his right arm and squeezed.

  “Cliff?”

  There was a little stream of drool running down his chin.

  “Oh, shit.”

  I focused my attention on the direction the car was going and tried to take control
of the steering wheel. Cliff suddenly jerked to the right, almost hitting a transit bus before he corrected his course. The bus driver honked loudly and flipped us off. I quickly scanned the steering column for the emergency flasher button, located it, and depressed it. Next I tried to turn off the ignition. You can do that with older cars, turn off the key while they’re still in gear, but not with a Lexus. The key wouldn’t budge.

  “Fuck!”

  I reached for the gear shift in the center console, and Cliff suddenly veered left into oncoming traffic. As I dove for the floor I heard brakes screeching, then I heard the deafening crash and felt the bone-jarring impact.

  CHAPTER 11

  EVERYTHING WENT BLACK for a minute, but I could still hear tires squealing, horns blaring, and people shouting. When my vision cleared I was twisted up like a pretzel, jammed against the floor of the car on the passenger side. I carefully pulled myself up onto the seat and did a quick inventory of body parts. My neck and left shoulder were wrenched and my lower back felt bruised, but nothing felt broken.

  I turned to see how Cliff had fared, wincing at the pain in my neck. Luckily he’d been belted in and protected by the airbag. He was just sitting there now with the collapsed airbag in his lap, staring straight ahead. His jaw was slack and his eyes were glassy.

  I risked a look through the windshield. We had driven head-on into what I later found out was a 1978 Mercury Cougar. Cougars were built like tanks in ‘78, but Cliff had still managed to cave in enough of the hood to cause the radiator to rupture. The driver was out of the car moving around, and I could see dollar signs in her eyes. Cliff’s insurance would undoubtedly cover any aches and pains she might be experiencing, as well as the new car of her choice. When she noticed I was watching her, she sank down onto the asphalt and moaned.

  I reached into the backseat, found my purse, and dug out my cell phone. As I was dialing 911, I heard a siren. I told the operator to disregard the call because help was already on the way. Then I shifted the car into park, removed Cliff’s keys from the ignition, and slipped them into my bag.

  The police arrived on the scene only a few minutes before the ambulance, and blocked traffic in both directions. I gave them my name and Cliff’s, told them what had happened, and said I would arrange for a tow truck immediately. They jotted down the license plate number of the Lexus, and then questioned the woman who had been driving the Cougar. I called AAA on my cell and arranged to have the Lexus towed to the marina parking lot. I wanted a chance to look the car over before Cliff’s insurance company got hold of it.

  The paramedics eased Cliff out of the car and checked his vitals. He appeared to be unharmed, and they assumed he was in shock. They put my left arm in a sling and wrapped my neck in a cervical collar before driving us both to the emergency room.

  At Mills-Peninsula Medical Center I was X-rayed, poked, and prodded, and finally informed that my left shoulder had been dislocated. They popped my shoulder back into its socket with a minimum of screaming on my part, and said I’d have to wear the sling for at least two weeks if I wanted the muscles around the rotator cuff to heal properly. No broken bones or spinal fractures. My neck and lower back hurt like hell, but it was all soft tissue damage. I should wear the cervical collar whenever the pain was bad. The ER doctor prescribed a muscle relaxant and some pain meds.

  I stuffed the prescriptions in my purse and went looking for Cliff. I overheard a couple of interns talking in hushed tones near the nurses station. What I was able to overhear led me to believe that while I was being examined the doctors had looked Cliff over and couldn’t find any reason for his catatonic state, other than shock, of course. What they didn’t know was that his fugue had begun prior to the collision.

  I found Cliff behind a closed set of curtains. He was resting on a padded gurney and covered with two light blankets. He was alone for the moment, so I tried again to rouse him. He was still unresponsive. While I was there, the ER doctor in charge of Cliff’s case returned. He was in his thirties, of Indian or Turkish descent, with thick, straight black hair and amber eyes. The ID tag on his jacket read Nahdi, which I assumed was his last name.

  “What are you doing?” he snapped. “You’re not allowed in here.”

  “I was in the car with him,” I began. “Have you run an EEG?”

  “Are you a relative?” he asked. “We need some release forms signed.”

  “No. I’m a friend,” I said. “Actually, I’m his decorator. About that EEG?”

  “Do you know his family?” he asked.

  I looked at my watch. “They weren’t home an hour ago, but I can give you their telephone number.”

  He nodded. I set my purse on the table next to Cliff’s gurney and leaned against it as I dug around with my good hand. I located my smartphone and read Nahdi the number Cliff had said was for the downstairs phone. He scribbled it on an Rx pad.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, ducking through the curtain.

  While the doctor called Cliff’s family, I called Bill. He wasn’t at his desk but another detective in the back room picked up. I told him who I was and that I’d been in an accident and needed to talk to Bill. He asked me to hold. About a minute later Bill came on the line.

  “Nikki? What happened? Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Car accident. Cliff was driving. I’m at Mills-Peninsula in Burlingame. I don’t have a ride home and I don’t know how long I’ll be here.”

  “Are you injured?”

  “Dislocated shoulder. A lot of soft tissue damage. I’ll be fine in a few weeks.”

  “You want me to come and get you?”

  That was why I had called. I needed to know that someone cared what happened to me.

  “No, but thanks for asking. I’ll call Jim. I just wanted you to know where I am. I’ll probably be here for a while yet. You’re coming by the boat tonight, right?”

  “Nine-thirty.”

  “Great.”

  “I can be at the hospital in twenty minutes.”

  “No, it’s okay. I need to talk to Jim anyway.”

  “If you say so. Call me back if you change your mind, and I’ll expect a full report on the accident tonight.”

  “I’ll tell you everything. See you at nine-thirty.”

  Dr. Nahdi was back a few minutes later, saying he’d reached Anna and that she was on her way.

  “Why did you ask if we’d run an EEG?” he asked, eyeing me suspiciously.

  “Because Cliff was acting weird before the accident,” I said. “He looked dazed, or drugged, only he doesn’t take drugs. His mouth was open, his eyes were unfocused, and he didn’t respond when I spoke to him. Just like he is now.”

  “Could be some kind of a seizure, I suppose.”

  “Without convulsions?” I asked. “And his driving was fine until I tried to take control of the car. That’s when he veered into oncoming traffic.”

  I had him thinking now.

  “When his mother arrives we’ll see how much testing she’s willing to allow. Meanwhile, you shouldn’t be in here with him.”

  “Why not?” I asked innocently.

  “Hospital policy,” he said. “You’re not a relative.”

  “Is there someplace I can wait that’s nearby?” I asked. “I want to speak with his mom when she comes in.”

  He gave me a grave look, then picked up a chair and set it just outside Cliff’s cubicle.

  “Thanks,” I said, easing myself into the chair.

  The doctor rushed off and disappeared behind another curtain. I was dying for a cigarette. It’s how I cope with stress and emotional upsets. When the anxiety level gets to be more than I’m willing to deal with, I smoke. I decided to call Jim instead. As I was hunting for his number on my cell I heard a moan behind me. I dropped my purse on the floor and lunged through the curtains.

  Cliff was propped up on his elbows looking dazed. “What happened? Where are we?”

  “Mills-Peninsula emergency room,” I said. “How do you feel?” />
  “Emergency room? How did we get here?”

  “You don’t remember anything?”

  I know. Stupid question.

  “I remember we were going to Burlingame for lunch. Mexican, right?”

  “That’s right, and we were talking about your favorite professor at Berkeley. Then you zoned out on me. We were in an accident.”

  “Oh my God,” he said, sinking back onto the examination table.

  At that moment Dr. Nahdi flung open the curtains and glared at me. Then he noticed that Cliff was conscious. Anna was right behind him. She looked at me quizzically as she rushed to Cliff’s side. I retrieved my purse from the floor before someone could trip over it.

  “Cliff,” she said taking his hand, “are you all right?” She put a hand on his forehead, as though checking for a fever.

  “I’m a little confused,” he said. “My neck hurts and I have a headache.”

  “What happened, honey?”

  “I don’t know. We were going to Burlingame for lunch. Nicoli says we were in an accident.”

  Anna looked at me accusingly. “Who was driving?” she asked.

  “I was,” Cliff said.

  “You’re probably just in shock,” Anna said, holding onto Cliff’s hand as she turned to the doctor.

  Nahdi took that opportunity to offer her the consent forms. “We need to run some tests,” he said. “I need either you or your son to sign these.”

  “What kind of tests?” Anna asked, as she looked over the forms.

  Nahdi glanced at me, then met Anna’s intense gaze. “We need to take X-rays, an MRI for soft tissue damage, and an EEG.”

  Anna let go of Cliff’s hand and dug in her purse for a pen, scanned the pages quickly, and signed.

  Nahdi visibly relaxed. “I’ll schedule the tests. We should probably keep you here overnight,” he said to Cliff, and disappeared through the opening in the curtains.

  Cliff turned to me with a panicky look on his face.

  “I think it’s a good idea,” I said. “The paint fumes in your room probably wouldn’t be the best thing for your headache anyway.” I looked at Anna. “I’ll need to pick up a few things that I left in Cliff’s suite, if that’s all right.”