Dead Crazy

by Nancy Pickard

  “You don’t need one.” He looked down at his lap, which was covered by a white sheet. “I’m providing one.” His fingers released mine and began to walk up my right leg, starting at my knee.

  “Your legs are cold,” he said.

  I stopped his hand, under my dress, at mid-thigh.

  “Momento, Señor.”

  “Que?”

  “I’m late because I went back to Tenth Street to find out how the neighbors feel now about the idea of the recreation hall—only I found out some other things.”

  He sighed, withdrew his fingers from under my skirt, and folded both his hands circumspectly in his lap. As naked police lieutenants go, I suppose he managed to look fairly alert and efficient.

  “Such as?” he asked.

  “First, have you located Derek? Or Mob?”

  “No. I’m sorry, Jenny.”

  My chest constricted, and I experienced a moment of stark, panicky fear for my missing colleague. I found myself talking faster, as if that would help the police to find him sooner.

  “Geof, when Derek and I met Marianne Miller, the young woman who is the neighbor just to the south of the church basement, Derek was attracted to her. When I went back tonight, I remembered that, and so I stopped by her house to ask her if she saw him last night. She says she did. She says he came in for a couple of beers, and that he left about nine-thirty. She says that Derek told her he had to get home to type up his interviews. Does that help you at all, Geof?”

  His smile was brief but kind. “To tell you the truth, we already knew that, Jenny. The detectives asked the immediate neighbors about their activities last night, and she mentioned Derek.”

  “Did she tell them that she knew Mob and that he used to hang around the neighborhood, cadging food?”

  “She didn’t, but others did.”

  “Oh.”

  He patted my hand. “What else have you got?”

  “Either something or nothing.”

  “Is this multiple choice?”

  I smiled, which was the point of his joke.

  “I also saw the neighbor on the other side of the church, a Mrs. Grace Montgomery—”

  “The pigs.”

  “Right. She’s completely nutty. But in the middle of a lot of other nonsense she said something about the devil driving a red car—”

  Geof’s grasp of my hand tightened, then relaxed.

  “—and that she knew what the devil looked like, and that the devil was afraid of the light. All I got out of her after that was that the car was a cherry red and that she saw somebody driving it just before, or maybe right around, sunrise. Now I’m probably putting one and one together and getting three, but I will remind you that Derek’s Toyota is a bright cherry red. Maybe Marianne Miller told a little white lie. Maybe Derek didn’t leave her house until the next morning—before the kids woke up.”

  “Did she describe the person in the car?”

  “No.”

  “Man or woman?”

  I shrugged. “Sorry. Does this help?”

  “I don’t know. But I do thank you, Officer.”

  “Was it worth waking up for?”

  He studied me for a moment, seemed to sense that I was over my brief anxiety attack, and clamped a hand over my knee. “We can make it worthwhile.” Momentarily, his conscience overtook him. “But not if you’re too tired, or if you’re feeling too bad about Derek. It’s up to you.”

  I did feel leaden with worry and fatigue, but I lifted the sheet off my husband’s lap anyway.

  “How can you think so clearly when there’s no blood left in your head?” I inquired.

  “That’s it,” the lieutenant declared as he grabbed me and pulled me down on top of him. “She has just waived all rights. Frisk her, boys.”

  * * *

  It was hours later, but still sometime in the night, that I woke him up again. I had shot up in bed myself, feeling unaccountably disturbed by an innocuous dream about photo albums. When I connected it to the photograph in my coat pocket, I got out of bed, pulled a robe around me, and padded downstairs to retrieve it. I was staring at it as I walked back upstairs, pondering whether this was worth waking Geof over, when it occurred to me that Kitt is sometimes a nickname for Christopher. That decided me. I shed the robe and crawled back under the covers, but I also turned my bedside lamp on low beam.

  “Honey,” I said, shaking him a little. “Wake up.”

  He did, quickly, blinking at the light.

  “What’s wrong this time?” Geof said.

  “Look at this picture.” I handed it to him.

  He frowned and squinted at it, until his sleep-fogged vision cleared. “So?”

  “I think it’s Mob when he was a younger man. Somebody put it in my coat pocket while I was visiting MaryDell Paine this morning. Will it help?”

  He shook his head and handed the picture back to me. “No, too old. The detectives got a recent one from his sister. Who gave this to you?”

  “The maid, I think, don’t ask me why.”

  “Maybe we’d better talk to the maid, then.”

  “Good luck, she’s a shade taciturn.”

  He gazed speculatively at me. “Then maybe you’d better talk to her first. Simple curiosity, of course. You’re merely wondering if she gave you the photo, who it’s of, and why she’d do a thing like that. Wouldn’t hurt to ask. And it wouldn’t put her on guard—or endanger her job—the way it might if we were to ask her. You want to try?”

  “Sure, why not.”

  “I can think of a lot of reasons why not,” he said dryly, “and if they happen to occur to you, feel free to change your mind about doing this. The truth is, I shouldn’t get you involved in a case—”

  “I’m—”

  “Already involved, I know. It’s practically a way of life with us, isn’t it? Listen, if you get anything useful out of her, I’ll fix dinner one extra night next week.”

  “Two nights.”

  “Hey, it’s not that risky.”

  “Okay, one dinner and one vacuuming.”

  “Are you kidding? Listen, at those prices, I’ll talk to the maid myself.” But he laughed. “All right, all right, you tough negotiator, you. I’ll fix the two goddamned dinners. But one of them’s going to be your leftover chili that I put in the freezer tonight.”

  “Not fair!”

  “Okay, I’ll add a salad. Listen, it was good chili.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you had to eat it alone.”

  “I think maybe chili is one of those foods that’s better eaten alone.” He smiled at me. “All those beans. Now, may I go back to sleep?”

  “No,” I told him, apologetically. “There’s something else. I met a woman today, a patient of Marsha’s, who mentioned having a friend named Christopher. I’m wondering now if that might be Kitt Blackstone?”

  “Why should it be?” he asked, reasonably enough.

  “It’s possible, that’s all.”

  “They’re both crazy, you mean?”

  “Well, yes, but more than that—they’ve probably both been institutionalized, and I suspect they’ve both spent a lot of time on the streets. I think they could have met, so what I’m saying is, maybe she could help you to find him.”

  “What’s her name and how do I find her?”

  “Her name is Rosalinda N. Mclnerny. Try the phone book, Cop, and if you don’t find her there, call Marsha Sandy, and ask her for Rosalinda’s address. If Marsha goes all doctor/client privilege on you, then go look at the benches in the city park, because that’s where she spends her time.”

  “Jesus.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  “Is that it? Don’t you have any leads on any other crimes?”

  I laughed. “I’m working on a B&E, but I don’t have anything for you yet.” I turned off my light, then scooched closer to him, and whispered, “If you’re not too sleepy, I’d kind of like to commit another bit of assault upon your body. Whatdaya say, Copper?”

 
; He reached rather aggressively for me.

  “Oh, mon capitaine,” I teased him.

  “For a snitch, you’re remarkably cooperative,” he observed a moment later.

  It should have helped me sleep, but I was too wideawake by then. As I lay beside Geof, my worries about Derek grew into full-fledged fears that pressed at me in the dark until I felt sick with them.

  24

  In the morning, I rolled over and went back to sleep for another half hour after the alarm sounded, which meant that Geof was already gone by the time I arrived downstairs.

  He’d left a note, with my phone messages from last night: “I forgot, Marsha Sandy called, call her back”; “Council for the Blind wants to pick up our old clothes next Friday”; “Time magazine wants you to renew your subscription”; “Your sister called, nothing important”; “Your boyfriend called a couple of times, hung up when I answered.”

  Damn, I thought, smiling at that last message, and here I’ve told him never to call me at home.

  But I remained jumpy, a state of mind that coffee didn’t help. I knew I was overtired. I knew I’d best keep a tight rein on my emotions, and be wary of trusting my own judgment that day.

  The first thing I did at the office was to call Marsha to assure her that I would continue the crusade for a recreation hall on Tenth Street. My rationale for overriding the neighbors was that by the time we closed the deal, the murderer would probably have been apprehended, and the fear would have diminished. I spent most of the rest of the morning preparing for the board meeting the next day and worrying about Derek.

  Faye wasn’t much help; she was so concerned about him that it was all she could do to staple the minutes of the last meeting together, and finally she even gave up on that. Typing was beyond her capacity that morning, and answering the phone and pretending to be cheerful caused her voice to tremble so much that I started picking up all the calls myself.

  At one point, I asked her to file the original copy of the minutes and the meeting agenda. Later, when I asked her to pull them out again to insert an addendum, she couldn’t find them. We looked under “B” for Board, “T” for Trustees, “F” for Foundation, and even “M” for meeting. On a hunch, I found them under “D” for Derek. That’s when I finally said:

  “Faye, we have to talk.”

  She was sniffling into a tissue and didn’t look up.

  “Come into my office, please,” I requested.

  I didn’t want to do this now; we were both too strung out, and it seemed to me that it was unwise for either of us to have a confrontation of any sort with anybody that day. But finding the board minutes under “D” for Derek signaled the full extent of her distress, if nothing else, so I decided to risk it.

  She followed me and sat down in Derek’s usual chair, but kept her nose in the tissue and still didn’t look up at me. Faye, who was normally a rather youthful-looking fifty-two, appeared all of that and more this morning. Her usually neat hair—which was short and a natural-looking brown—appeared unbrushed. Lately, she’d been wearing suits and high heels, but today she had gone back to wearing her old uniform, which was a simple skirt, blouse, and flat-heeled shoes. Maybe the suit had signified ambition, and maybe she had decided that ambition was dangerous. Derek had been assistant director, and look where it got him. She’d been barely civil to me all morning.

  I began bluntly.

  “I am not the enemy, Faye.”

  That startled her into looking at me.

  “Oh, Jenny, I don’t—”

  “I think that at some level, you’re blaming me because Derek is missing. You are probably thinking that if I hadn’t fired him, he wouldn’t be gone, and, of course, you’re right about that, Faye.”

  “I—”

  “If you were the boss, would you have fired him?”

  She blinked and her mouth tightened. “That’s not fair.”

  “Sure it is.” I spoke sharply in spite of myself. “So, would you have fired him, Faye? Knowing his work record? Knowing about his performance evaluations? Knowing what the job demands and what he supplied? And if not, why not?”

  “I’d have given him another chance!”

  “How many chances, Faye?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged irritably, angrily. “As many as he needed!”

  “Even when he continually failed to do jobs right, or on time, so that the work fell on you?”

  “Yes!”

  “Even when they fell repeatedly on your secretary?”

  “My … ?” That seemed to put it in a new slant for her, but she rallied anyway. “Yes, if she didn’t mind!”

  “How nice for her,” I said, sarcastically. I felt my temper slipping away from me and tried to clamp it down again. “In other words, Faye, you didn’t mind it that Derek’s failings caused more work for you.”

  “No.” But she was too honest to maintain that line for long. “Well, I didn’t mind much. I understood—”

  “What? That he was incompetent, or that he was lazy?”

  ‘Jenny! He’s missing! He might be dead!”

  ‘And it’s all my fault,” I said, flattening out each word.

  She looked shocked, as if she had been brought face to face with the really terrible thing that she had, at heart, been silently accusing me of, but she still wasn’t ready to admit it. Instead, she stood up and said, in what for Faye was a truly nasty tone of voice, “Everything in the world doesn’t revolve around you, Jenny!”

  She stomped out of my office then, leaving me staring, openmouthed, at her stiff back. Good grief. Talk about misjudging a situation, talk about using the wrong approach—Faye wasn’t angry at me because she blamed me for Derek’s disappearance … she was mortified at herself, for the “sin” of coveting Derek’s job!

  It all made sense now—the upscale dressing she’d been doing, the willingness to take on whatever jobs Derek dropped, and now the guilt when it seemed that because of his misfortune she might actually get her wish. And it was true—she was doing most of his job anyway, and I had been thinking of promoting her instead of hiring somebody new to replace Derek. Poor Faye.

  I got up quickly from my desk and practically ran to hers to say, “Faye, I’m sorry,” to say anything to paper over our argument, so that no irreparable space opened up between us before we had a chance to figure out a way to salvage things. I didn’t want her to quit, and, heaven knows, I didn’t want her to step over some line of attitude or behavior that might force me to let her go. But I got there just as the outer door to the foundation offices was slamming shut behind her. The closet door hung open, revealing an empty hanger—that was still swinging—where her coat had been.

  Tired, I sank down in Faye’s swivel chair.

  “Gentlemen,” I rehearsed saying to my bosses at the board meeting tomorrow, “it seems we’ve suffered a little attrition on the staff this week….

  “Of course none of it is my fault, gentlemen.”

  Oh, hell, no, of course not.

  It was while sitting at Faye’s desk, pondering the impenetrables of management—of people, that is—that I remembered to check on Mrs. Montgomery. I was curious to know how she’d made it through the night and what the family would do with her now. Actually, my better judgment told me not to call, to let it alone, in fact. But my better judgment didn’t seem to be in good working order that day, so I opposed it.

  After looking up Mrs. Montgomery’s number in the phone book, I dialed. I let her phone ring ten times before I hung up. Maybe they’d already taken her to a hospital to be committed, or at least to be examined. I felt myself smiling a little cynically: to have her head examined. We all ought to have our heads examined now and then, starting with me this very day. I looked up the niece’s number again and dialed it.

  “Hello,” a lumbering, sleepy female voice said.

  “Anita?”

  She grumbled an affirmative.

  “This is Jenny Cain, the woman who was at your aunt’s house last night.
I apologize if I’ve gotten you out of bed. I’m just calling to see how she’s doing. Did you have a long night with her?”

  “You wouldn’t have any idea,” she said in a disgusted but more wide-awake tone of voice. “The old bitch woke up not half an hour after you left, shrieking and carrying on, and when I tried to calm her down, she just batted at me like I was hornets or something. I couldn’t get near her. So I called my husband—he’s her nephew, after all, ain’t me that’s related to her—but he couldn’t be bothered, oh no, not her own flesh and blood. So I figured what the hell, if he don’t care, why should I break my back trying to help the old bitch? I was just gettin’ a bunch of black-and-blue marks from it, and no thanks from her, you can bet your life on that, so I just said the hell with you, old lady, and I came on home. Only it was one in the morning by that time, and then my husband and me, we had to fight about it when I got home, and I never got to bed until about, I don’t know, what time is it anyhow?”

  “Eleven-thirty. You left her alone?”

  “The old bitch near drove me out!” she shouted.

  “She doesn’t answer her phone, Anita.”

  “That’s because she’s too damn crazy to hear it,” she shot back. “Probably thinks it’s church bells or something, or the damn bats bangin’ in her belfry. Listen, she ain’t my care. I don’t want nobody botherin’ me about her again. I’m tired, thanks to you and her. I’m going back to bed. Good-bye.”

  I quickly moved the receiver away from my ear so that my eardrums would survive when she slammed down the phone.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” I said aloud.

  For one thing, I hadn’t had lunch, and for another, driving over to check on Grace Montgomery was the responsible thing to do. It would also give me just the excuse I needed to join the other rats who had abandoned ship.

  25

  The snow had stopped, but the most recent cold front stayed with us. In fact, the white-gray sky looked as if it might dissolve at any moment, and the air smelled like more snow to come. Poor Fred natives know that the best defense against the weather is to ignore it, but it’s usually February before we manage to do that, and then only because we’re so numb we no longer give a damn.