Dead Crazy

by Nancy Pickard

  Since she was in a hurry, I didn’t waste her time.

  “Did you locate your brother, MaryDell?”

  “What?” She started, but recovered herself and gave me a meeting-chairman smile. Then she began to talk in an odd, nervous, herky-jerky fashion that was quite unlike her usual smooth, hyperbolic patter. “Oh, yes. Yes, I did, Jenny. It’s so kind of you to inquire. I did locate him. Yes, I most certainly did. That was excellent advice you gave me last night; I simply must say it just helped me so much. As it turns out, there wasn’t any need for me to be upset at all. I just can’t imagine why I was so upset when the solution was just so simple. Why, I called the mission, just as you suggested, and there he was, he was there, all right; he was there perfectly safe. Thank you, Jenny. I’m just so very grateful. It was such a help, really it was, such a help. Ah, Anita! Tea, wonderful! Wonderful tea, wonderful sweet rolls. Here, Jenny, have a—”

  “The police will check, MaryDell.”

  Anita raised her eyes and stared at me over the tray she carried. MaryDell, who had started to lift a teacup from the tray, put her hands back in her lap, as if withdrawing them to safety. In a cold voice, she said, “Thank you, Anita, just leave the tray on the table; I believe that’s all we’ll be needing now. You may go right on back to the kitchen. There’s a good girl. Thank you so much, Anita.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  We both waited, two gamblers unwilling to blink, until we heard the swinging doors slap back against the kitchen wall.

  14

  “The police will check what, Jenny?”

  “They’ll check the mission, MaryDell, to see if your brother really was there.” I was trying to leaven the truth with kindness, or at least with a gentle tone of voice, but, damn, the woman annoyed me. I explained: “You know, or perhaps you don’t, that they lock the doors of the mission after ten o’clock. No one gets in or out after that, at least not without being noticed. And they don’t unlock the doors again until six in the morning. So it will be very easy for the police to find out if Kitt was there. That’s what you call him, isn’t it? Kitt?”

  She nodded. Her lips were tightly compressed, as if they dammed a flood of sentences with which she wanted to drown me. That, and the constant stroking of her fingers on her pant legs, were her only sign of nervousness; otherwise she appeared completely calm, even unconcerned.

  “What does he call himself, MaryDell?”

  Open Sesame. Open MaryDell. The floodgate parted, releasing words of a very different sort from the niceyniceys with which she usually sugar-coated her speech.

  “That’s none of your damned business! Who the hell do you think you are coming here to my house, asking me questions that are none of your damned business!” Here was a woman who lacked originality, even in her indignation. She made a sudden, visible effort to get herself back under control, drawing her small body up into its meeting-chairman posture. She even managed a forgiving, yet contrite smile. Her next words might have come off a Gracious Lady tape: “I’m so sorry, that was unforgivable of me. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Jenny, but I expect that it’s simply that I’m upset about the recreation hall, you see, plus I’m very busy this morning. I don’t mean to be rude, but really, I’m afraid you came at an especially bad, that is to say, busy time …”

  “He calls himself Mob,” I said firmly. “If I understand it correctly, and you’d know about this better than I, he calls himself that because he thinks he was possessed by a mob of demons. MaryDell, your brother returned to the basement after you showed it to him yesterday; don’t you think that’s probably what happened? And somehow he got into the building, where he probably intended to spend the night. Now the police are looking for him. Or they would be, if they knew who Mob really was. He’s Kitt—what’s your family name, MaryDell?”

  I waited, though I didn’t think she’d answer me.

  “Blackstone,” she said, after a moment.

  “Kitt Blackstone?”

  She nodded as if her neck were weighted with stones.

  “If you don’t want to call the police, MaryDell, I’ll do it for you. That’s why I came out here, so you wouldn’t have to do it and feel like a traitor to your brother. Do you know where he is now?”

  Her false calm disintegrated, and she began to cry, but they looked like angry tears, and she sat up very straight to cry them.

  “If I couldn’t find him last night,” she said, enunciating carefully, “how do you think I could possibly find him today, especially today? Call them, damn you, but let me call my husband first. It’s the least he deserves. The man deserves some warning before this new humiliation from my brother. I suppose I should thank you, Jenny. But I’ll never be grateful to you for what you’ve done this morning. Never.”

  “I wouldn’t be grateful either,” I said.

  I pushed myself out of the wicker basket and walked over to a wicker-and-glass table that had a telephone on it. A sunny yellow telephone. I picked it up, carried it over to her, and put it on her lap, as if she sat in a wheelchair. She did seem paralyzed. Her movements, when she punched in the number, were stiff; her words, when she spoke to her husband, sounded as harsh and controlled as notes played on a harpsichord. When she was finished breaking the bad news—it was a very short conversation—I lifted the phone off her lap and called Geof at the police station. He said he would immediately send detectives to interview her.

  “MaryDell, I’m sorry.”

  She nodded, not looking at me.

  “Maybe they’ll find he didn’t have anything to do with it, MaryDell. And in the meantime, we won’t give up on the recreation hall. If we can’t have that site, we’ll look for another—”

  “Do you think I care?” she hissed at me, her eyes gone hard, like two black pits. “Why should I care now that Kitt can’t use it. It was only for him. It was always for him. I don’t give a damn about all those other stupid, dirty, crazy people. Don’t mention it to me again—ever. I don’t care about it. I don’t care about them. I don’t care about you. Get out.”

  I was more than happy to do that, although, I thought, how will I get that report of hers now?

  On my way past the kitchen, I looked over the swinging doors. Anita the maid was seated on a high stool, unmoving, hands folded in her pink lap, staring at nothing, doing nothing. I walked faster, down the hallways, through the foyer, retrieving my coat from the closet, putting it on, opening and closing the front door behind me, trotting back down the brick walk—escaping from this authentic house with its reproduction people.

  Before I stepped into Faye’s car, I reached into my coat pocket for her keys. I pulled out instead a roughly cut circle of stiff white paper that was probably only about an inch in diameter. Curious, I turned it over and found that it was the back of a black-and-white photograph of the head, shoulders, and upper chest of a young man. He had a pale, pudgy face with an odd, questioning expression. He was squinting into the camera. It looked as if someone had snipped it out of a larger photograph, perhaps for a wallet or a locket. Or maybe to excise it from a larger scene. Or maybe only to give to me. I ran a finger around the edges; they didn’t have the sharp, rough feel of a recent cut. They had, instead, the soft dull feel that time imparts. One thing was certain, I hadn’t brought it with me. So unless there had been somebody else in MaryDell’s house, it meant the maid had planted it in my pocket.

  “Kitt,” I murmured to it, certain of his identity.

  He looked so young and so puzzled. What’s it all about? he seemed to ask, squinting painfully at me. What does it mean? Why is this happening to me?

  I put it back into my pocket to save for Geof, although I didn’t imagine that this old photo would be much help in identifying Kitt now. How old had MaryDell said her brother was? Forty-five, forty-six? The boy—man—in the picture didn’t look over thirty, if that. Was he already Mob by then, I wondered? When, exactly, did Kitt Blackstone become Mob, the man of many demons? And which one of those demons killed Rodne
y Gardner?

  That was a creepy thought, like sensing monsters in the shadows. I had a sudden impulse to lock the car doors. I told myself not to be foolish, and then I locked them anyway.

  The sun had gone behind the clouds, taking the snow’s sparkle with it and leaving behind only a flat, gray-white landscape and bitter cold. In the short while I’d been in MaryDell’s house, Faye’s car had frosted over and chilled like a metal flask in a freezer. The outside temperature was dropping again, as if it were January instead of October. When it’s cold in Port Frederick—with those Atlantic “breezes” freezing us in our tracks—it’s cold. As we natives say, but quietly so the tourists won’t hear, if the salt don’t halt ya, the breeze’ll freeze ya.

  I backed up the Volvo in the big driveway and turned it around so that I could slide down MaryDell’s driveway nose first, in first gear.

  15

  My old friend Marsha Sandy was on my mind, and because of that I swung by her office before returning to my own. Marsha and I had been close friends for so long, and were so open to each other’s thoughts and needs, that whenever she came suddenly and persistently into my head, I knew it probably meant she was nearby or thinking about me. If my thoughts of her were strong enough to block out images of murder and mental illness, I was willing to tackle snowy side streets and another half-block trek in the cold to find out why.

  It was five minutes to the hour of one o’clock, which meant she was between patients, when I opened the door to her reception area. She almost never ate lunch, a trait that seemed like a character flaw to someone who liked to eat as much and as often as I did. More than once, I had suggested she might want to get counseling for it. Her reply was usually to glance at my hips and smile. As usual, my timing for these intuitive meetings was impeccable. Involuntary but impeccable.

  Sure enough, she opened the door to her inner office just as her receptionist told me that Dr. Sandy didn’t have enough time between patients to see me. The patient in question, an anorexic-looking young woman, glared at me over the People magazine she was reading, as if daring me to eat up a moment of her rightful share of Marsha’s expensive time. If I seemed to be concentrating overmuch on food, it was because I was hungry.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” Marsha said, and smiled.

  “Do you have time to tell me why?”

  “Four minutes. Come in.”

  I followed her back into her office, and she shut the door behind us. Marsha waved me to a nubby, many-cushioned couch that was upholstered in pretty, light, peaceful shades of pink, yellow, and green. We sat down at opposite ends of it. I was tempted to remove my shoes and put my legs up on the couch, but I wasn’t sure how my feet smelled after sweating under various car heaters.

  “Sometime I imagine I’m a fly. Doc,” I said.

  “What a problem it must be for you finding sunglasses that fit,” she replied.

  Marsha was groomed to look efficient instead of gorgeous, but her basic beauty still shone through. I wondered how she handled it when her male patients fell in love with her. She probably dismissed the phenomenon by calling it transference, but I thought that theory failed to take into account that most men tended to fall in love with her. Considering the sort of woman she was, I thought that was a highly sane move on their part.

  “I’m so proud of you,” I said.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Listen, Jenny, I’ve heard the news about that murder at the site where you wanted to put the recreation hall for the former mental patients.” She was talking fast and succinctly. “And I’ve been worrying all morning that you’d give up the idea because of it. I want to plead with you not to do that. This town really needs a place like that, and I’d still love to see it in that old basement you described to Joe and me last night.” She paused long enough to smile slightly. “The symbolism appeals to me—basements, you know, are dream symbols of deep, subconscious feelings.” A hint of frown lines appeared in her smooth forehead. “I have a deep, subconscious feeling that you may be giving up. Are you giving up?”

  “Well.” I sighed, feeling pressured. “We’ve probably lost the neighbors’ support, public relations have surely gone to hell, and we’ve also just lost the support of the woman who started the whole thing in the first place. I told you about MaryDell Paine and her schizophrenic brother?”

  Marsha nodded.

  “Well, Marsha, he’s the one the cops are looking for.”

  She shook her head so hard that wisps of her dark hair flew out of the chignon in which she had restrained them.

  “We can’t talk about that,” she said, disappointing me, because I wanted so badly to gossip about the morning’s events, and my small part in them. But then, I knew she didn’t have much time, and she had a point to make. In fact, she was saying, “We’ve got to talk about the recreation hall. Jenny, look at the weather outside! If this is the kind of winter we’re going to have, we’ve got to provide some shelter, we’ve got to, and you’re going to do it through the foundation. I feel absolutely inspired by this project of yours, and I want to inspire you.”

  “Oh, Marsha.” I put my hand over my eyes, feeling exhausted.

  She stood up, but then bent over to tug at my sleeve.

  “You have to go, I’ve got to see my next patient. But there’s somebody I want you to meet. Here.” She removed from her skirt pocket a piece of paper that she pressed into my hands. “Here’s her name and address. She’s expecting you. She’s very sweet and vulnerable. It will be terrible if you don’t show up. I’ll never forgive you.”

  “Thanks a lot. Stop pulling at me. I’m going.”

  “Oh, good! Thank you!”

  “To the door, I mean.” I waved the piece of paper in her face. “Is this one of your patients, Marsha?”

  “Go see for yourself. Please? Okay?”

  As I let her shove me out, I said in a martyred tone, “All right. All right. As there’s no phone number on this, I suppose you even told her to expect me at a certain time, too?”

  “Whenever you show up. Bye.”

  As she shooed me away, I groused, “Next time, don’t call me, I’ll call you.” When the outer office door whooshed closed behind me, I looked at my watch. She would make her appointment—it was straight up one o’clock. I was hungry, and damned if I’d let some damned-fool psychiatrist bully me into missing lunch. Her patient—or whoever “Rosalinda N. Mclnerny” was—might have a psychotic episode if I didn’t show up, but I knew I’d have a low-blood-sugar attack if I didn’t eat soon. Then we’d both be raving.

  The Buoy Bar & Grill—with its crab-and-lobster-salad sandwiches, its curlicue french fries, and its incomparable cole slaw—was near enough to make my mouth water just thinking about it. I walked the three blocks over to it, out of some perverse urge to make the reward sweeter by delaying it. When I got there, however, I found that I couldn’t sit down and eat without feeling guilty about the Mclnerny woman who was waiting for me to show up. Psychiatrists are supposed to be reliable. If your psychiatrist says something is going to happen, it’s supposed to happen and you’ll probably suffer a relapse, at the very least a crisis of faith, if it doesn’t. So what if the psychiatrist made promises before getting permission from all parties? That wasn’t Mclnerny’s fault. It was the fault of the psychiatrist’s friend, for being such a renowned patsy. I ordered a second sandwich, and potato chips instead of fries (figuring they’d travel better), and more slaw.

  “And two large coffees,” I instructed.

  While I waited for them to put the order together, I used a pay phone to call the office.

  “Faye,” I said, when she answered. “Do you need your car.”

  “Oh, no, Jenny, I knew I wouldn’t want to go out in this weather, so I brought my lunch today. You can keep it as long as you like. But say, I’m so glad you called in. Jenny, you’ll never guess who’s back in town and called you this morning!”

  “Michael Laurence.”<
br />
  She laughed a little. “Honestly, you’re no fun. Well, anyway, he called—oh, he’s still just the most charming man, isn’t he?—and he left a kind of strange message.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “It says, Better Luck Next Time.”

  “Yes, he certainly is charming.”

  “I’d just love to see him again. I hope you’ll get him to come in to the office to say hello, Jenny.” As an afterthought, she added, “If Geof wouldn’t mind, I mean.” Faye liked my husband well enough, but she had swooned over Michael’s more refined handsomeness. Geof’s looks had the kind of hard edge that makes mothers nervous; Michael was more the son-in-law of their dreams.

  “Any other calls, Faye?”

  She reeled off a list of ten or so, concluding with, “Oh, and your husband called, but he asked to talk to Derek.”

  “Geof did? What did you tell him?”

  She stuttered a bit over the awkward subject. “I—I just said, well, I said, Derek wasn’t in today. I—I just didn’t know what else to say …”

  “I understand, but if he calls back, go ahead and tell him the truth, Faye, and find out what he wants. Maybe you can help him with it. All right?”

  “Okay.” She sounded subdued. “Yes.”

  “I’m going to an appointment that I think concerns the recreation hall, Faye. Then I’ll drive by Derek’s place to see if I can pin him down. I’ll see you after that. And thanks again for the car, it’s better than a snowmobile.”

  “It’s a beast,” she said fondly. “Bye, Jenny.”

  I got off the phone in time to hear my name called for my order. They had wrapped everything and stuffed it in a big white paper bag. I picked it up and trudged back through the snow to Faye’s car, with lunch for two.

  I ate my share of the potato chips while I drove.

  The address Marsha had given me was 23 North Eighth Street, which would place it near downtown, fairly close to her office and to the Buoy. I turned north on Eighth, at the 100 block, and slowed down, looking for it. I passed an abandoned filling station, a red brick Catholic church with an attached rectory, both of them boarded up, and the west side of our downtown municipal park. Wait a minute, I thought, where was 23? I went around the block and drove more slowly this time. There was no number on the filling station, but I peered above at the various doorsills of the church and rectory until I located an address: 21 North Eighth. The next stop was the park. Huh? I checked for traffic and backed up to make sure I hadn’t missed an alleyway or something. No, there was nothing between the rectory and the park. Well, shoot. Thanks, Marsha, old pal, you’ve given me the wrong darn …