At the same time Libby, in the sort of perfect reflex action only the young brain can produce without thinking, nearly put them in the trees on the other side of the road and in a 180. All this before Charlie could blink away her tears to see it happen. The oncoming car, too, must have escaped oblivion because the dirty blue pickup careened up the road behind them, unscathed.
Then they were off again, but something wasn’t right. The Toyota began to smell almost as bad as Charlie. “Oh, boy.”
“What’s that smell?”
“You forgot to release the emergency brake. It’s this cute little handle here between us.” Charlie released it and the Toyota leapt into the air. “You’re going to have to shift sometime. You can’t stay in first.”
“I just want to stop. But I can’t remember how. And I can’t let you down. You’re all sick and I need to—”
“Honey, I’m feeling lots better.” Actually, Charlie was feeling lots more frightened. “Now let up gradually with your right foot on that pedal, but keep an eye on the curves. We’re going to make it, don’t worry.” We have to change drivers before the pickup turns around and catches up with us, is what we have to do. “Okay, now move that right foot over to the next pedal, and get that left one working the clutch and ease into that paved turnoff ahead. If you can’t make that, no big deal, there’ll be another soon.”
Libby killed the engine again, but not before she had them pretty much off the road. She did it without hitting a tree, ditch, or embankment. Charlie pulled her stinking T-shirt off and flung it at the darkness at the side of the road while she and her daughter raced to exchange places.
“Mom?”
“I can’t stand the smell. Neither can you. I’m wearing a bra.”
“Just get us out of here. I sure hope you’ve sobered up.”
Me too. “No problem.”
Automatically scanning the lighted dials on the dash, Charlie changed her plans and swung the Toyota around, heading them back the way they’d come. She blinked her contacts back into place and squinted at the road ahead.
“You’re taking us right back into trouble. Jeez, I thought you were sober.”
“Libby, I don’t know what’s up there. Not much I think. We’re running low on gas, and this way leads back to safety and to the police, I hope.” Someone must have called them by now. “When I came to, it was night. What happened all that time I was out?”
“You kept talking crazy stuff. You seemed like you were awake a lot.” Marvin had decided that if Charlie inhaled the proper mixture of exotic herbs, her natural psychic ability would overcome her right brain, and she’d be able to contact both Mary Ann and Gloria.
“Did I contact them?”
“You went on mostly about the funny things you were seeing and about why you and grandma don’t get along and how you were afraid I’d turn out like you. You even started singing some embarrassing song, and you can’t carry a tune when you’re high, either. What were those herbs?”
“Sounds like nature’s own psychedelics. Libby, they didn’t do anything to you, did they? While I was out of it?”
“They were too busy getting high themselves and then getting mad at each other. And then getting mad at you because you wouldn’t get to the point. You’re starting to drive kind of funny.”
“I know.” The double center line wiggled like a snake, and a tree walked right into the middle of the road.
Libby reached over and jerked the wheel, and the tree stepped aside. And bowed. “Pull over and rest a minute. Let’s think about this, okay?”
“I’m afraid to stop. I’ll just go real slow. How did you get away to hide upstairs?”
“The geek with the nose hairs stuck me in the bathroom and held the door open a little so I couldn’t lock it.” When Marvin rushed downstairs in answer to Roger’s call, Libby ran into a bedroom. “I hid on a closet shelf behind some blankets and pillows. When that Roger guy came banging around looking for me, he checked out the closet floor and the wall behind the hanging stuff. Didn’t even look up on the shelf. That closet smelled bad like Grandma’s house. Mom … I think he wants you to pull over.”
The flashing lights and the siren were the last things Charlie remembered before she found herself trying to walk in a straight line down the road in her bra. Libby was shouting at a police officer, “She’s not drunk, you moron. We’ve been kidnapped. She’s drugged.”
Charlie lay flat on her back looking up at Maggie Stutzman’s devilish smile, trying to remember why. “I knew you were faking it, Greene.”
“How’d you get out here?”
“We’re in Canoga Park Hospital, and you’re going to be okay.”
“Where’s Libby?”
“Asleep over there in the chair. She’s in a lot better shape than you are, but I can’t get her to leave.”
“My throat’s so sore.”
“That’s because they stuck a tube thing down it to fix a little hole in your tummy. Not to worry.”
David Dalrymple leaned over Charlie. “Feeling better, Miss Greene? Not to worry. We have Roger Tuschman under lock and key. We have some leads on Grunion. And there’s a guard outside your door.”
“But Marvin was going to go for help.”
“Afraid he headed for LAX instead.”
“But he tried to talk Roger out of taking us.”
“Maybe Grunion’s psychic powers told him he was getting in too deep with kidnapping.”
“Did he go off to the airport in a dirty blue pickup?”
“Seventy-nine Ford, blue, well worn. Why?”
“We thought it was Roger. That’s why he didn’t come after us.”
“We found Roger stoned in the grove, talking to his dead wife.” Neighbors had called police when the commotion finally interfered with their dwindling leisure time.
“Where is Libby?”
“Gone home with Miss Stutzman for a much needed rest.”
“Do you know where Mary Ann was the week before she died? Was she kidnapped?”
“Roger Tuschman claims she spent that time at his condo. That she drove up the night of the memorial séance after everyone had left, demanding he take her in and hide her. Apparently, she was delusional. She had to get away from personal demons. He claims her car was parked in the lot behind his condominium complex the whole week we were searching for it. But the night of her death he came home to find it gone. He says he helped her hide because he hoped she could help him contact the dead Mrs. Tuschman.”
“But she was having problems with the Tuschmans. They wanted some of the money from Shadowscapes. If she wanted to go away, she could go home to her family.”
“Again, according to Mr. Tuschman—Mary Ann Leffler suffered from mid-life symptoms that had left her family fed up. One of the reasons her husband was in Canada, in fact. She insisted they were the last people she’d go to for help.”
“Keegan said she was afraid of L.A., too. Had anxiety attacks.” And Libby said that closet smelled like her grandmother’s house. Neither Tuschman smoked, but Mary Ann and Edwina were heavy smokers.
“Well, Miss Greene,” Dr. Williams had replaced Dalrymple when she woke next, “I wish we hadn’t needed to be so precipitous with your treatment, but it looks as if the cauterization was a success. You had a tiny perforation of the stomach lining, which we have sealed. You’re young and healthy. If you keep your stress levels down and alter your life-style appropriately, you should be home free.”
He patted Charlie’s shoulder and was gone. Three minutes later she could barely remember what he looked like. Generic medicine, generic doctors.
32
Richard Morse, Irma Vance, and Maurice Lavender stood around Charlie’s bed the next morning. Richard was saying, “So what’s it going to be, Charlie? You want Maurice here put in jail and Medora Lavender left to her own devices in that nursing home? You want Irma in prison for just trying to save his tush and thwart a blackmailer? She’s had her problems under control for years. They got g
reat drugs for that stuff now. The Scarborough House thing is history. Hey, you’re calling the shots, babe. You heard the tapes.”
“Why didn’t Lieutenant Dalrymple? If I could find them, his men could.” Then again, they couldn’t find Mary Ann’s rental car parked in the Tuschmans’ parking lot—if one could believe Roger. As much as she didn’t want to, Charlie did.
Now the boss was saying, “But they didn’t find them. Old Charlie did, though. If she could just keep Irma and Maurice out of jail for pulling a stupid but well-intentioned stunt—which on the face of it wasn’t a bad idea. Irma had noticed some unsavory types hanging out in the alley, so some bum doing in Gloria wasn’t that far-fetched. They thought they’d wiped all trace of Gloria off the railing.”
“Richard, tapes or no, the Beverly Hills P.D. probably has both deaths about solved. They and the courts will decide who goes to jail and who doesn’t. Besides, somebody was whispering up or down the stairwell and trying to sound like Gloria, someone who kept saying she was in the trash can.”
“Who would pretend to be Gloria and do that? Not Irma or Maurice. Who else knew she was even dead till the next day?” He raised his hands toward the ceiling like a TV evangelist. “Wouldn’t it be the mother of all ironies if Gloria herself managed to tip off the Beverly Hills P.D. that way? God, talk about your concept.”
“But she wasn’t even in a trash can.”
“Hey, for goofy Gloria, that’s close enough.”
“We did not put Gloria in the bushes.” Irma rubbed enlarged knuckles in an odd, nervous gesture Charlie had never seen before.
“You put her in the dumpster, which is more logical. Why do I have the feeling there were more than two of you? Did Mary Ann help?”
Maurice sat on Charlie’s bed to hold her hand in one of his and stroke it with the other. It was the most natural thing, and yet he’d chased the office witch out into the hall in a rage so awful she fell and struck her head. And then he helped stuff her into the bag on the janitor’s trolley and later in the day—in fact shortly before security and the police searched the entire building for her—helped carry her down the back stairs and out to the alley. Something didn’t wash.
“Far as I know, Mary Ann was nowhere near the agency at the time,” Maurice said.
“Okay, then who was the third culprit here? You and Irma may have stuffed Gloria into the bag, may have even gotten her body down the back stairs in that bag. I just wondered if you had help tossing her up into the dumpster?”
Maurice and Irma slid each other a hasty glance. Maurice’s stroking paused. “And Maurice, you might have been the reason, but I think Irma was the one who scared Gloria.” Always the gentleman. In one way your poor Medora is a lucky lady. “I heard the tapes, remember? Why didn’t somebody destroy them?”
“When the cops didn’t find them, Irma decided that was the safest place for them. Those guys were dropping in whenever they felt like it. That way nobody’d catch her trying to get rid of evidence,” Richard said. “Simplicity always works best. These two just explained the whole thing to me on the way up here. First I knew the tapes existed.”
“Are they covering for you, Richard?”
He pulled long fingers through short hair and then ran them down the back of his neck before he met her eyes. “I knew Gloria was getting information over the phone lines, didn’t know she was taping it. Irma found the tape machine when she felt it with her foot while working the reception desk after Gloria died.”
“Who was bugging my office, then?”
“Irma. Charlie, I had to know how things were coming with your snooping. I’m responsible for the whole agency. I knew Dalrymple would be talking to you about things he wouldn’t let you share with me. I knew you were ornery enough not to share them anyway. I had to have that information. Think about it. Makes sense, babe.”
“If Larry loses his job because of your stupid mistrust, I will never forgive you, Richard.”
“No stress now, remember?” Maurice gently pushed her back into the pillows and patted her hand instead of stroking it.
“I like The Kid. Hell, I like Stew Claypool. But I admit if Larry’s new career leads him elsewhere I’m gonna be relieved. He comes back from wiggling his buns on the beach and takes up his old job, I don’t say anything to the agency insurance company unless they come say something to me. Best I can do.”
Charlie still wasn’t satisfied. “I have trouble believing Dalrymple’s people didn’t find Gloria’s recording machine. Now you’re telling me they didn’t find Irma’s? I know they searched her office.”
“Yeah, but they didn’t search my partner’s. At least not very well.” Richard allowed a slow, satisfied grin. He’d always resented Dalrymple’s coming in and taking over.
“You hid the recorder in Mr. Congdon’s office?”
“Right, but we accessed it through your wall. So there were no footprints in the dust in his office. Looked like nobody’d been in there to set it up, see? Irma’s idea. Sharp lady, Irma.” Richard nodded emphasis and then kept on nodding.
“Through my wall … there’s no hole in my wall.”
“I sort of cut one, Charlie dear. Behind that garish bookstore poster you insisted upon installing. On the other side of it, in Mr. Congdon’s office, there’s an enclosed cupboard with shelves but no backing. The drywall could be cut, lifted out, and slid back in after the recording device was inside. No one had to disturb the dust on Mr. Congdon’s floor. So the police assumed no one had been in the office, which was true, and they therefore did not make a very thorough search.”
“But the hole’s still there, right?”
“Let’s say it’s no longer apparent. If you insist upon pointing it out to the police, I’m sure they’ll find it.” Irma’s demeanor said that if the police made a big deal of this, Larry Mann and probably Charlie Greene could go whistling for work in this town, even if the executive secretary had to arrange it from a jail cell.
Richard turned to the door. “Just get well fast and wrap things for us, will ya? So we can all get back to work.”
Irma gave Charlie a calculated look before she followed him.
Maurice lingered a moment as if not quite sure she should be left alone. “I’m sorry for all this, sweetie.”
“Maurice, how could you let Irma talk you into moving Gloria?”
“Scarborough House housed only the most violent and dangerous of the mentally ill, Charlie. Irma’s life was completely turned around by a new drug twenty years ago. Dr. Podhurst still administers it. She would have been a prime suspect if it was deemed a murder. And you know how much the agency means to her. Me, too. But Charlie, neither of us had anything to do with Mary Ann Leffler’s drowning, I swear.”
Sheldon Maypo was Charlie’s next visitor. “Your hunch was right. I even managed to interview one of the culprits. They hadn’t been questioned by the police yet, either. We’re ahead of dippy Dalrymple, my dear, even though we’re denied his sources of information. And without the use of psychic powers, too.”
“I just can’t factor Mary Ann into it. It seems like too much of a coincidence that the two deaths weren’t connected.”
“I’ll keep snooping around, drop in earlier in the day, talk up more people.”
“The thing is, I don’t want it to be anybody I like, Shelly. I’m already sick that Maurice is involved. He might get some kind of a deal. But I think Irma’s in big trouble. After all she’s been through, she finally has some luck and wins big in Vegas, and then has to go to jail instead of enjoying it. And if Luella is involved I’ll slit my wrists. And if it’s Richard, well, that’s the end of everything. Why couldn’t it be Dorian the Jerk? Or even Tracy? And if it’s Keegan.… I even fantasize that it was Roger and Marvin Grunion who killed Mary Ann because I don’t like them.”
“Promise me you’ll never go into police work,” Shelly chided her and took his leave.
Charlie was sent home that day, told to rest a week before returning to work. Right. S
ure.
Doug Esterhazie dropped off a large, elegantly wrapped package practically the moment she arrived. It was from “Ed and Dorothy.”
“Doug says it’s really from Mrs. McDougal, which means it’s food. Mom,” Libby’s hand stopped Charlie’s still trying to untie a six inch wide ribbon. “Do you mind a lot?”
“God no, Mrs. McDougal is probably among the ten best cooks on earth.”
“No, I mean about Dorothy. Here I got you and Ed together and he goes back to her. I feel bad. Now that I’ve thought about it I think you’re better off, but still it was wrong to get your hopes up if—”
“Honey, I like Doug’s dad.” Charlie clasped the hand that had been over hers for a rare, intimate moment and even got in a squeeze before it withdrew. “He’s a nice guy, but there was no … we didn’t feel uh—”
“Sexual attraction?”
“Welllll yeah, for starters.”
Charlie’s condo mates all showed up to get the latest news on the murders and to pay for it with gifts and opinions.
Mrs. Beesom handed Charlie a tuna casserole. “It was those two warlocks that kidnapped you and Libby. They look like murderers.”
Charlie so wished Mrs. Beesom could be right. But as Libby pointed out, “If they already knew, why would they tie us to chairs and ask mom all those questions?”
“Maurice might be able to plea bargain his way out of an actual prison term if he agrees to testify against Irma,” Maggie offered on the death of Gloria when she brought over a fruit basket.
“The D.A. will say it’s murder instead of an accident. Whoever chased the witch down the hall will be accused of murder, the other one an accomplice,” Jeremy predicted. “Probably settle for manslaughter or something.”
David Dalrymple gave her until the next afternoon. He brought Detective Gordon. They settled out on Charlie’s patio with tall glasses of iced tea.
Marvin Grunion had been traced to San Francisco and arrested for kidnapping and for selling illicit drugs to the Tuschmans’ coven. They’d charged Roger with kidnapping as well.
Death of the Office Witch Page 24