I was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping coffee, reading the New York Times headlines on my cell phone, when it buzzed and I answered.
After she introduced herself, I said, “I thought I was supposed to call you? I wasn’t sure I was going to.”
“Understand,” she said. She had a nice voice, and I couldn’t help but imagine that she was lying in bed as she called, nude, nice-looking. For all I knew, she was seventy-five years old, sitting on the toilet working out a big one, and that gave her the throaty sound, but I liked the other idea better. Of course, even if my gal let me date, I probably couldn’t get it up with a rope and a pully.
“I’m not sure I need a doctor,” I said.
“That’s up to you, and frankly, it’s not why I called.”
“What else could you be calling for?”
“You’re a private investigator, right?”
“I work for an agency and I’m private, and I investigate with my boss, Brett Sawyer, and my brother, Leonard Pine, so I guess I am.”
It was still hard for me to think of myself as a private eye. In my mind, real private eyes, they actually knew something about investigation. All I knew was persistence. Also, unlike private eyes in stories, I didn’t drink or smoke cigarettes or chase women. I had the woman I wanted. I looked at the supplies and fantasized about it now and again, but I wasn’t shopping.
“That’s why I’m calling. I need your services. Maybe we could find a way to trade our expertise. If not, I can just pay you. But I need someone.”
“To do what?”
“To make sure I don’t get killed.”
(6)
“Who’s trying to kill her?” Leonard asked.
Me and Leonard and Brett were at the office. They were seated. I was standing at the big glass window that looked out at the parking lot, two stories down.
“She doesn’t know,” I said.
“But someone is?” Leonard said.
“That’s what she wants us to find out,” Brett said.
I had already told Brett about the call, and what Carol Cotton had told me.
“We go over there around eleven, have an early lunch at her house, and she’s going to give us the whole nine yards and a fat retainer,” I said. “She has had threats and she doesn’t know who it is. She said she had a whole roster of patients, some of which might want her dead, simply because they are disturbed, or have somehow latched onto her in an unhealthy way.”
“Disturbed means crazy motherfuckers, right?” Leonard said.
“It just might,” I said. “But she doesn’t know it’s a patient. That’s merely a possibility. She may just want a bodyguard for a while. It could be nothing. I mean, the threats might be real, but then they might be idle. She thinks that’s possible too, but reasonably, she wants that sorted out. She said someone killed her cat.”
“That’s low,” Leonard said.
“Could be it merely died, she said, but she thinks it was poisoned. She admitted that because the cat is dead and the threats are real, she decided they were connected, but they might not be.”
Brett glanced at the clock on the wall.
“We better saddle up,” she said. “Hope she’s serving something good. I’m hungry.”
(7)
Carol Cotton’s therapy business looked to be booming. Had to be. She lived behind a high wall with an electronic gate. When I leaned out of my open window and told the speaker who it was, the gate snapped open instantly, and I drove us inside.
First thing we saw was a very nice three story house only a little smaller than Buckingham Palace, but maybe with a better lawn.
We drove up the winding drive that curled around to the back of the house and parked next to a tennis court. On the other side of the court there was a pool house about the size of the house where Brett and I lived, and there was a large heart-shaped pool near the tennis court full of bright blue water. Between the pool house and the pool there was a gazebo with a table and chairs inside, a curtain of netting around the gazebo to keep out flies and mosquitoes.
Inside the netting a woman sat at a table. She had on a white pool robe and as we parked and got out of the car, she stood up, came through the netting and started walking around the pool to meet us.
As she walked toward us, the robe swung open and I saw she was wearing a two-piece bathing suit, and both of those pieces were having quite the workout. The bottoms were light on material and hid only the main goodie. The top barely contained her breasts the way a thimble contains a cantaloupe. Her hair was short and black and shaped her face beautifully. She had tanned skin and long legs. Perhaps there is a god after all.
“That can’t be her,” Brett said. “She looks to be in her twenties.”
“Maybe she is real smart and got through college quick-like,” I said.
“Has she cured your problem already?” Brett said.
“Very funny, dear.”
As she got closer she pulled the robe together and tied it with the cloth belt. Woman like that could make a eunuch grow balls.
“Pardon me for the informality,” the woman said, extending her hand to Brett. “I let the time get away from me.”
She and Brett exchanged names, and she was in fact Dr. Carol Cotton. She shook hands with me and Leonard. She had long fingers, warm to the touch, that wrapped around my hand like a sweet little spider.
“If you would like, you can wait under the gazebo and I’ll dress and be right back out.” I will say this, she didn’t have that nice throaty voice I had heard on the phone, but it wasn’t bad.
We agreed it was fine that we would wait for her. She sashayed to the main house and we trucked on out to the gazebo.
Inside the netting, Brett said, “She let the time get away from her? Shit. I think she just wanted to show off the merchandise.”
“It is nice merchandise,” I said.
“You think you aren’t getting any now,” Brett said, “keep at it.”
Leonard said, “How about them Mets?”
“She isn’t what I expected,” Brett said.
“I’ve decided you don’t need therapy,” Brett said. “Not with her, anyway. I had in mind someone like Doctor Ruth.”
“She’s dead,” I said.
“Better yet.”
Leonard said, “Aren’t we here about something else other than Hap’s pecker? Threats?”
“She doesn’t look all that scared to me,” Brett said. “Sitting out here in her underwear.”
“That’s a high-priced bathing suit,” I said.
“How would she have felt had I worn mine to this meeting,” Brett said.
“Jealous,” I said.
“Oh, you are winning back some points,” Brett said.
It was then that Dr. Cotton came out of the main house and headed toward us. She had put on jeans and a white tee-shirt and was still wearing the pool shoes.
When she pushed aside the netting and stepped into the gazebo, she wore a big smile but no bra; she bounced under the shirt. This was either a woman comfortable in her own skin, or something of an exhibitionist.
“Thanks for coming,” she said. “Linda is bringing out lunch.”
Linda was a short, stocky Mexican lady whose birth name was probably not Linda. She came out with a younger woman who looked like a younger version of her, minus the stocky. She was cute and had a nervous smile, and like Linda, she had a tray with food on it. She said her name was Mindy.
The two women looked at Dr. Cotton, both with expressions that were hard to read, except to say they were uncomfortable.
“Thanks so much, ladies,” Dr. Cotton said.
The women put the trays on the table and we thanked them and they smiled.
“They are so sweet,” Dr. Cotton said.
The sweet ladies stepped off quickly and went into the house while Dr. Cotton told us about how much she liked tennis and swimming, and then from the house a woman dressed in jeans and a loose, blue top, blonde hair swinging around her sho
ulders, was walking fast toward us.
Leonard had just picked up a finger sandwich when the woman came through the netting carrying a tote bag. She looked at Dr. Cotton, and said, “Katherine. Sugar Muffin. You know better than this.”
Dr. Cotton, a.k.a., Katherine giggled, got up and nodded at us, walked by and touched my face with the back of her hand, and then she was through the netting and heading toward the house.
The blonde lady, who was a fine-looking woman herself, probably in her forties, said, “So, sorry. You might say that’s one of my patients. I’m Dr. Cotton.”
(8)
“Does this mean we’re still having brunch,” Leonard said. “I’m damn sure hungry.”
The real Dr. Cotton laughed, and sat down, “Of course. That woman is my niece as well as a patient. It’s a long story. She was supposed to be in her room. She isn’t really sick, she just has…well, a need to be noticed.”
“Don’t we all?” Brett said.
“Not like her. She has to be the constant center of attention. I probably shouldn’t tell you much about her condition, but, since she’s my niece, and not really an official patient, I can say it. She’s sexually dysfunctional, or what they used to call an exhibitionist with nymphomaniac tendencies.”
“Is that a bad thing?” I said. “I mean, it sounds functional.”
Brett slapped me on the shoulder with the back of her hand.
“Don’t mind him,” Brett said. “I rescued him from a wolf den, where he was raised.”
The doctor laughed, and she had an even throatier voice than on the phone; it seemed to come from someplace dark but sweetly nasty. “I’m really more of a caretaker, and I am her therapist as well, but not in an official way. It’s personal, and I’m aware that I have limitations when I’m dealing with my own family. She has an official therapist for that.”
“Is it helping?” Brett asked.
“Sometimes you don’t know until you do know,” Doctor Cotton said. “I know that sounds vague, but that’s how it works.”
Leonard was eating another sandwich when Carol said, “Go ahead. Dig in.”
We ate and drank ice tea for a bit, and then I said, “Doctor. Seems to me you’re playing it pretty loose here if you’re being threatened.”
“The wall around the house is reasonably high, and there are cameras and alarms. So, I don’t know there’s much more I can do as far as normal security. That’s why I want to hire your agency.”
She said that like we were part of some big network of investigators.
“Tell us about the threats,” Leonard said. He had moved onto the cookies by this time. He ate one delicately, nibbling around the edges. Had it been a vanilla cookie, especially a vanilla wafer, he’d have been all over it like a termite on rotten wood.
“I have my office here, and I’ve decided to put my practice on hold for the time being–briefly, I hope. I have inherited money, so that’s not the problem, but wanting to get back to my patients is, but right now I’m scared to let anyone in that isn’t vouched for. Doctor Sylvan was your voucher. But, frankly, I’m just being cautious. I don’t think it has anything to do with my patients. I don’t have any with violent tendencies, nor have I ever felt any of them pose a threat. What happened was I began to receive things in the mail…A dead rat in box. A letter with a photo of my face attached to a nude fold-out from some men’s magazine. And then it got worse. Notes made from letters cut from magazines or newspapers, very crude notes saying what they wanted to do to me.”
“You have them?” Brett said.
Doctor Cotton picked up the tote bag and rummaged through it and came out with a fist full of letters. She handed them to Brett. They were all copies.
“Where are the originals?” Brett asked.
“Police. I went to them first.”
“Wise idea,” Brett said, and she began splitting up the notes, handing me and Leonard a few. “They didn’t find prints, anything like that?”
“Nothing,” Doctor Cotton said.
I looked at the notes. They were all vulgar and said things about what they’d like to do with her, and maybe they were sexual, and maybe they were just mean, and maybe they were lots of things I couldn’t figure, but one thing was certain, they were indeed threating. Some had photos taken of Doctor Cotton in public, and they had arrows drawn through her body, and one spelled out how the note maker would like to cut Doctor Cotton’s head off and shove it up her ass, and how there was a way to do that if the ass was cut open wide enough. It was more than a prank, that was sure. Were they meant merely to unsettle Doctor Cotton? Maybe, but she was wise to take them seriously.
“When did you get the last one?” Brett said.
“Yesterday,” she said.
Doctor Cotton leaned over her bag and came out with one last note, as if it were the saved piece de resistance, and handed it to Brett. “I copied it, and had it sent to the police as well.”
It was a note like the others, only it had a photo stapled to it. It wasn’t a very good photo, but it was of the area where we now were. It had been taken at night, and as I said, not a good photo, but clear enough to recognize the location. Someone had been inside the walls.
“Damn, girl,” Brett said. “And what did the police say about this one?”
“They came in, took a look, and they have a patrol car drive by, but that’s it. Something to do with their budget.”
“Yeah, chief before Marvin Hanson, who’s there now, spent all their money on riot gear, as if that’s our big problem here in LaBorde,” I said. “They even have a military assault vehicle. I think it did get used once to take everyone at the cop shot to Dairy Queen for ice cream. All that money was eaten up for stuff like, you know, but not real police work.”
“All I know,” Doctor Cotton said, “is I’m scared. I have a gun in this bag. I carry it in my purse when I go out, and frankly, I rarely go out. I have it on me at all times. And I hate guns. I’ve become paranoid.”
“Being paranoid don’t mean they ain’t out to get you,” Leonard said.
“Popular therapy joke, actually,” she said. “What I figured is maybe you could find out who this is, and in the meantime, give me some protection. I can pay whatever you require.”
“You know,” Leonard said, “I don’t want to be a jackass about this, but did you consider maybe your niece?”
“I knew that might be your thought. Police had the same one. But she’s harmless. I love her, and she loves me. I take care of her since my sister couldn’t. She became very ill, and then died.”
“All right,” Leonard said, but like me, I knew he was thinking just because you don’t think a person is dangerous or incapable of a thing, didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous and capable. But, on the other hand, the doctor struck me as someone who knew her business.
“What we can do,” Brett said, “is start by giving you a bodyguard, and in the meantime, we can see if we can figure out what’s what.”
“I still don’t know why the police couldn’t do it,” Doctor Cotton said. “Budget or no budget.”
“Because they have a number of crimes to attend to, bureaucracy, and we don’t,” Brett said. “We can devote pretty much full time to it.”
“Thing I figure,” Leonard said, “is I’ll stick around first, as a bodyguard, and I’ll need to look through the house, get the lay of the land, that sort of thing.”
“Of course,” Doctor Cotton said.
“I will need a couple boxes of vanilla wafers.”
“We’ll provide those,” I said.
“You know, I think I have a box, for banana pudding,” Doctor Cotton said.
“If I wasn’t gay,” Leonard said, “you’d be the woman of my dreams.”
(9)
Leonard stayed behind with a pistol of mine he took from the glove box, and me and Brett drove over to the police station, caught Chief Marvin Hanson in.
“Hey,” he said after we were buzzed into his office, “one of my favorite
people, Brett Sawyer, and one of my least favorite, Hap Collins.”
“It never grows old,” I said.
We were in his office and we all took chairs, and Brett told him we were taking the job with Doctor Cotton.
“Ah. Well, I hate we couldn’t do more. I tried to have a cop put there for a week, but the money folk didn’t like that idea. They agreed to having a car drive by a couple times a day. I send it a little more than that, a lot more than that, but it depends on someone trying to do something bad while they’re driving by, and being visible while they’re doing it. She’s got a good rock fence and all, but frankly, someone wanted to get over it and inside, it’s not that hard. Course, she’s got the alarm and the cameras, but that wouldn’t stop someone determined and didn’t care if they were seen, and from the nature of those notes, I’m thinking it’s a nut. It could be someone merely trying to scare her, get her goat, but I recommended you guys to her.”
“As did Doctor Sylvan,” I said. “Well, indirectly.”
“We were wondering if you had any ideas,” Brett said. “Thought we’d start with you, and also so you can let your drive by know we’ll be around. We don’t want to get shot doing our job, cops thinking we’re someone else.”
“I’ll do that the minute you leave,” he said. “As for anything else, we had the original notes dusted for fingerprints, but they only had Doctor Cotton’s on them, her niece, who is a piece of work, and her servants. The niece ended up opening a couple of the letters herself. Doctor Cotton says she does that. She invades privacy, among other things. I’m afraid that’s all I got. Other than saying it all feels screwy. Since your main man isn’t with you, I assume you left him at the doctor’s place.”
“Good assumption,” I said.
“Well, that’s a good choice,” he said.
“Did you consider the kooky niece could be behind this?” I said.
“Did, but nothing led there. Then again, as you know, we were sort of in and out.”
“That’s what she said,” Brett said.
“Really, Brett,” Hanson said.
Cold Cotton: A Hap and Leonard Novella (Hap and Leonard Series) Page 2