“Anyway,” I continued, “the dinner was a waste of time. We parted amicably, and I thought it would help us get along, at least while we were at the club. Except then, the next night, Sandra started in on me and clued me in on Robert’s extracurricular activities.”
“This ‘argument’ you and Prescott had. It was in public?”
“More or less. Sandra made a scene inside the club, but Robert and I stepped outside. We were right on the sidewalk, though. Anybody could see us by looking out the window. In fact, someone did.”
“What? Who?”
“Well, another member, Paul, came out when we were arguing. He kind of intervened when Robert grabbed me, and Robert pushed him down.”
“So Prescott grabs you, and then some other guy jumps in? What’s this Paul-guy’s last name?”
“I don’t know—anonymity and all—but you can ask at the club. Somebody might know,” I said doubtfully. Aside from Chad, I couldn’t imagine who might, but the police could ask. Despite my misgivings, I felt strangely protective. My nerd.
Or… my crazed, psychotic stalker-killer, which put it in a slightly different perspective.
Blodgett folded his notebook.
“Um…” I said.
Blodgett opened his notebook.
“This might not be connected, but I’m still getting weird messages from an anonymous…” I paused, searching for the right word. Stalker? Psycho? Freak? “…person. Even after Wayne was killed, so it’s obviously not him.”
“Obviously,” Blodgett said, deadpan. “What kind of messages?”
“Another sonnet,” I said, while chanting don’t think about the knife . . . don’t think about the knife in my head, just in case Blodgett could read minds. “I got the first one a little over two weeks ago, pinned to a cloth doll with a knife through its back. At the time, I thought it was another one of Wayne’s stunts, although the sonnet did seem a bit of a reach.”
“A knife?” He stiffened, eyes sharp.
“A fillet knife. You guys have it. I mean, Officer Durrant took the report and the knife.
“The second sonnet came after Wayne had been murdered.” Don’t think about the knife . . . don’t think about the knife… don’t think about the knife . . .
“And you don’t think it could it have been Mr. Preston?”
My mind blanked for a minute. Preston? “Oh. You mean, Robert. I guess I’ll find out.”
“I guess you will. When you do, you call me right away.” He handed me another card.
“Detective?” A uniformed policewoman stood at the side of the Sterlings’ house. Sandra, looking pale and wan, huddled next to her. They must have picked her up at the club and brought her here to interview. I almost felt sorry for her.
Then she went and ruined my magnanimous moment by sneering at me, making me hope her prison cellmate would be especially attracted to buff biceps. For all I knew, she could be the killer. She had the heart—or lack of—for it.
Blodgett turned, giving them a just-a-sec finger. Eyeing Sandra, I was tempted to gesture with a slightly different digit.
“You’ll be available if we have more questions, won’t you?”
“Is that like saying ‘Don’t leave town?’” I laughed.
He didn’t.
I cleared my throat, pretending the laugh had been an allergic reaction to lilac bushes or blond hussies. Either/or.
We left it at that.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I had the feeling that if Sandra and Paul hadn’t been equally plausible suspects for Robert’s murder, I’d have ended up in jail. Finally found a use for those two.
On the ride home, I kept waiting to fall apart, but I didn’t. The beginnings of a migraine crept up my neck, but I couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around the need for grief.
Guilt, yes. Lots of guilt. I couldn’t believe I’d been searching for reasons to prove Robert had murdered Wayne, even as he lay dead in the dirt a few miles away.
Worse, if it weren’t for me, Robert would still be alive.
My apartment felt dreary and empty, all the fresh promise of spring sucked away. I flopped on the couch, burying my face in the cushion. Maybe I would suffocate. Instead, I sneezed.
Images of Robert’s savaged body kept sneaking past barriers, which I expected and was prepared for. But wondering why I wasn’t crying disturbed me almost as much as the memory. Was I heartless? Even if I hadn’t been in love with Robert, I’d certainly been close to it. At the very least, I’d been deeply “in like” and willing, eager, for a deeper relationship. If only he hadn’t been such a self-centered jerk.
Maybe I was in shock.
I thought back to when we’d first met, he’d been so charming and persistent. I could almost feel the jealous eyes cutting in our direction whenever he made his way to my side or sat next to me at meetings. I’d felt so lost and emptied just then, hollowed out of everything I’d valued about myself, and he’d seemed strong and sure. His arrogance, which I’d interpreted as confidence, had been as alluring as his cologne. And now he was dead, horribly dead, and I felt nothing. Maybe I was the disturbed one.
But I hadn’t killed him. I just hadn’t loved him.
I sneezed again. Dust and car hair interfered with self-destruction, so I rolled on my back and waited for Siggy to curl up on my stomach. And waited.
I sat up. “Siggy?”
The apartment felt. . . empty? I stood, looking in his usual kitty haunts. Nothing. I assured myself there was no need for worry. He was sure to be curled up on my bed, snoozing. The bedroom was dark and quiet. The curtain rustled just as I walked in. I smiled with relief.
“Are you still in here?” I pulled the curtain back, revealing an empty void where the screen should have been. A soft breeze tickled my face.
I finally cried. Cried all night. For Robert, for Siggy, for myself. Roaming the neighborhood, I walked blisters on my feet, juggling pepper spray, a flashlight, and an opened can of smelly, gourmet cat food. I walked until my legs ached. Finally, long after the rest of the world made peace with their day, I dragged myself back up the stairs, falling onto the couch.
The phone rang, pulling me out of a slumber that seemed closer to a swirling black hole than a period of rest. I’d fallen asleep after all. I grabbed for the phone, irrationally hoping that it was news about Siggy.
“H’lo?” The primitive instinct designed to mask the deep vulnerability of sleep made me try for one of those alert, “of-course-I’m-wide-awake!” tones. It never worked.
“Sorry to wake you, Letty, but we have a problem here.” A briskly efficient voice told me.
“Um…” I rubbed puffy eyes.
“Letty, wake up. This is serious. Someone broke into the clinic. I’ve got to cancel all the clients, and this place is absolutely trashed. Can you come in and help us get things in order? We might have to call a temp service, because I just don’t see—”
“Lisa?”
“Good morning, sunshine. Have you caught up yet?”
“No.”
“I bought donuts.”
“I’m coming.” I banged the phone down. There’d better be sprinkles.
Makeup couldn’t unpuff my eyes. I threw some clothes on, ran a brush through snarly hair and, forty minutes later, pulled in the clinic lot where yet another police car sat parked. I was tired of police and their cars. Then it occurred to me that perhaps the break-in might not be a coincidence. But what could Shakespeare want from the clinic? We didn’t prescribe medication; notices stating that hung both inside and out to prevent this very thing. And what did Lisa mean by needing to hire temp services?
When I walked through the front doors, I saw right away that yes, indeed, we needed extra help. Heart thudding, I suddenly realized what Shakespeare had been after. Grief was going to have to wait, because this asshole wouldn’t.
Manila files and paper covered every flat surface of the front office and the lobby, cascading in a white and tan fountain from its primary source: th
e file room. Drawers had been ripped out of desks and cabinets, their contents upturned and scattered, adding to the chaos. It looked like an office supply store had puked all over the clinic.
Lisa stood by the shell of her desk next to the pudgy cop, who’d taken my report the night of the knife-and-sonnet incident. A box of pastry sat in isolated splendor on her desk, but I’d lost all appetite. I waded through a pool of papers, skidding as they slithered under my feet.
“What happened?”
Lisa raised an eye brow at my disheveled appearance. “I could ask the same of you.” Turning back to the officer, she said, “Letty Whittaker, one of our counselors.”
“Yeah, we’ve met,” he said.
I squinted at his name tag since I couldn’t very well call him Officer Pudgy.
“Hello again, Officer…um…Putzke.” Well, that wasn’t any better.
“Ma’am,” Putzke said.
Lisa rolled her eyes as Putzke folded his notebook and stuck it in his back pocket. Her system had been fouled beyond recognition and she was in… a… mood.
“Like I was saying, the guy got in through the back window,” Putzke said, pointing down the hall. “Third office on the left. You need to make a list of all the damage and anything that’s missing. If you stop by tomorrow sometime, we should be able to get you a copy of the report for your insurance.”
“But are you going to do anything?”
He stayed patient. “Somebody will be over to test for prints, but it’s gonna make a heck of a mess. I wouldn’t count on anything. Between the staff and all your clients, there’s got to be a million prints and no way to separate the vandal’s from the ones that are legitimate. But we’ll check around and see if other businesses have reported any problems like this. Maybe it was teenagers or something unrelated to the…uh… mental stuff here.”
“Officer, could I have a minute?” I interrupted before he could twirl his finger next to his ear in the universal “cuckoo” sign. Lisa looked ready to bite.
We slithered to the door, stepping outside.
“You might want to check with Detective Blodgett,” I said. “This might be connected to the guy that’s been stalking me or with the two murders.”
“You think so?”
“I don’t know. It’s just worth checking, is all I’m saying. It seems strange that all these things could be happening without a common denominator. And, no,” the denial tumbled out, “I am not that common denominator.”
“I wouldn’t have said that, ma’am.” Which was probably true, because I doubted the words “common denominator” were an active part of his vocabulary. “But it’s more likely that one of your clients”—a raised eyebrow indicated I should replace “client” with “wacko”—“got a little upset and decided to break in for some payback.”
He leaned back through the door and needlessly reminded Lisa to leave the mess untouched until the crime scene tech, or whomever, showed up.
Back in the office, I found Lisa wandering from office to office checking the damage. Hannah and Bob were already in, each of them in their own offices, with equally disgusted looks on their faces, although on Hannah, it was a new expression and for Bob, it was standard. I expected my office to have received the brunt of the damage, but to my surprise the vandal had been even-handed.
“Marshall’s on his way in,” Lisa said. “Regina’s on vacation, and Carol’s in the Cities shopping with her daughter-in-law. She said to just shut the door to her office and pretend the mess isn’t there; that’s what she did when her kids were teenagers. I’m trying to get a hold of some of our part-timers, but most are working.
“I don’t know,” Lisa continued, throwing her hands up in the air. “I just have no idea where to start. Has anyone discovered anything stolen? We need to make a list.”
“Whoa!” Hearing Marshall’s opinion of the mess from down the hall, we went out en masse to turn the problem over to the boss.
He stood stock-still in the center of the office, which was probably wise since he was precariously balanced on a lumpy pile of documents. His hands were on his hips, chin raised as he surveyed the damage. I fake-coughed a laugh into my fist at the adventurer-in-the-new-world image he unknowingly portrayed. Lisa must have had the same thought because she made a beeline for the bottom drawer in her desk, apparently having forgotten that all that was left were five gaping metal cavities.
“Damn,” she muttered.
“Don’t worry. Whatever it is that’s missing, we’ll find it when we start to go through all this.” Marshall meant to be comforting, but Lisa just looked crankier.
“I told you to get rid of that thing,” I told her. Maybe a little too smugly.
“I’m not worried. After all, it’s your name on the address label.”
“Damn,” I muttered.
Marshall clapped his hands together, rubbing them briskly. “Okay, here’s the plan.” He sounded like a camp leader, but we were all grateful for direction. “Lisa, you start calling clients and reschedule them for next week. Don’t mention the break-in. We don’t want people freaking out over somebody rustling through their confidential files.”
“What if the media gets hold of the story?”
“We’ll cross that bridge if we get to it. Don’t lie to anyone, but don’t go into details either. I’m going to call corporate and fill them in. They might be able to spare some of the hospital staff so we don’t have to worry about bringing in anyone new. At the very least, they’ll have to approve the expenditure if we get some temps.
“The rest of you,” he spoke to us all but looked directly at me, “I suggest you start gathering files. Try to set up a system. Maybe divide the rooms up amongst yourselves.” He waved a hand aimlessly over the mounds.
“Office Poopsie told us to wait until they get someone over here to fingerprint,” Lisa informed her boss.
“Okay, but we can at least work up a plan of action while we wait.”
“I’ll take the file room,” I said. “If I get that cleared, we’ll have the space to re-organize the files in their proper place.” And I’d be able to hunt for the Harmon file and its lethal contents. How had the stalker known?
As soon as Marshall disappeared into his office, Bob started bellyaching. “So, does he expect us to put all this together?” He glanced from me to Hannah, pointedly ignoring Lisa, whose natural province he assumed included filing already. A legend in his own mind, Bob felt above all this. He tried stomping around to illustrate his masculinity and ended up shooting his legs out from underneath himself, landing smack on his pompous and overly wide ass.
Cheered us girls right up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Stingy, paranoid corporate decided that they “really preferred that the matter be handled in-house,” which meant no temps. Bob claimed he’d injured his back when he fell on his butt, spending the rest of Monday morning moaning and wincing whenever anybody looked in his direction. He skipped out just before lunch, claiming to have made a chiropractic appointment, leaving us even more shorthanded. The toad was probably sitting at Denny’s scarfing up lunch and admiring his own cleverness.
Most of the other counselors were part-timers, working at other jobs. Some were able to pitch in, but most could only spare a few hours here and there. Marshall finally resorted to calling each of the interns we’d just said good-bye to. Not surprisingly, Mary Kate was thrilled to drop everything and come in. Marshall made her promise to finish her finals, forbidding her from lending a hand until after her last test Wednesday afternoon. She vowed to show up as soon as she was done and indicated she could work through the night. Probably by candlelight.
Another officer showed up about twenty minutes later, took one look at the drifts of paper, and decided she’d limit the fingerprinting to the window where the intruder broke in.
“And maybe the desk drawers,” she added, “but it’d make a god-awful mess if I try all these papers. It’ll ruin the documents, too.”
She got
busy, and I scurried to the file room, heart thudding, suddenly imagining the knife magically materializing to implicate me. It hadn’t, but unfortunately, neither had the Harmon file or the Marshall-the-pirate porn magazine, for that matter.
The task of gathering and matching the appropriate records with their matching file jacket was incredibly daunting. The intruder had cleared the shelves entirely; stacks of files pitched to the floor, others presumably grabbed by the armful, hurled from one end of the clinic to the other. Our offices had received similar treatment, with the added bonus of personal items smashed or otherwise destroyed. Even the impoverished interns’ room had been ransacked, the spines of the old textbooks broken, pages ripped in chunks and cast about like educational confetti.
I set to work, although it was difficult to concentrate between cold sweats and bouts of shaking that verged on seizures whenever I thought about Shakespeare finding the Harmon file and using the knife on poor Robert, because that would effectively rule Paul out and rule in Marshall.
Very little progress was made until Lisa got over her shock, reasserted her inner office-dominatrix, and began slinging orders around like a whip. She arranged a simple system of alphabetized piles and decreed that we’d tackle sorting each pile later in the week.
Good enough. I was in no shape for complications anyway.
Blodgett showed up that afternoon, banging on the locked front door as if we should have been expecting him. Maybe I was. He looked fresher than usual, but a closer examination told me he was just on high alert, probably running on reserve energy. Drab brown eyes scanned the mess, picking their way across each section of the chaos, touching on each of my co-workers briefly, but with a frightening intensity, before landing on me. I waggled my fingers at him.
He didn’t return-waggle.
Repressing a sigh, I motioned him back, picking my way down the littered hallway while he shuffled behind. In my office, I picked my chair up from the floor and let him deal with his own seat, which he did by the expedient method of tilting the client chair, letting everything slide to the floor.
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