Dead Crazy

by Nancy Pickard

  “I’ll manage, thanks anyway, Roy.”

  “Well, all right, but—”

  “Jenny,” broke in Jack Fenton, “I wish you’d send our best wishes along to Faye and Derek. If you think they’re going to be sick much longer I’ll have my secretary order some flowers—”

  “That’s sweet, Jack, but I expect they’ll be back tomorrow, or Monday at the latest.”

  “All right, but—”

  “Come along, Jack,” Edwin Ottilini said. “And Roy, Pete. Let us now return to our own businesses, and let Jenny get back to doing so well what she allows us to think we do—which is to run this place.” He tipped his felt hat toward me. “Good-bye, my dear.”

  I was embarrassed. “You give me too much credit.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Jack Fenton, the banker, corrected me in a fondly stern manner. “This bunch has never granted ‘too much’ credit to anyone. Isn’t that right, Edwin?”

  “You certainly never have, Jack.” The old attorney wheezed out a dry laugh as he departed. The other three followed him, rumbling together about interest rates, college tuitions, and golf handicaps.

  “Bye, boys,” I murmured as the door closed behind them.

  I remained standing for about a second, and then I slumped down to the carpet, where I stretched out on my back and simply lay there in my suit, heels, and all. If anybody had walked in at that moment, I might have found it very difficult to explain myself, although the reason was as simple as exhaustion. I closed my eyes and felt myself going limp.

  There are beds made for this, I reminded myself.

  So I struggled up and drove home. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. I slept until the next morning, my dead slumber interrupted only once, by a telephone call at three o’clock in the morning.

  Geof was in bed next to me by then, and he picked up the receiver but quickly replaced it.

  “Whoozit?” I mumbled at him.

  “Hung up,” he said.

  I was asleep before he had a chance to curse.

  I dragged around the house the next morning like a bear coming out of hibernation—stumbling, bumping into things, grumbling to myself, feeling hungry enough to eat a tourist. It was Friday, always my favorite day to make deals because people are eager to get things over with, to get their business settled so they can begin enjoying their weekend. On Mondays, they don’t want to give away anything, but with each succeeding day in the week, they’re a little more anxious to close that deal, make that quota, earn that commission. By Friday afternoon, they’re ready to make the sale, along with concessions. “Oh hell,” they’ll say, “let’s do it.” To which my reply is, “Fine. Sign here.”

  George Butts, the landlord, had promised me until noon to make my offer on the basement, and I took nearly all of that time just to come awake. Gradually, my hollow-feeling limbs filled with blood again, and my brain cells started cooperating in an effort resembling intelligent thought.

  By eleven-fifteen, I was ready to buy real estate.

  31

  Tenth Street was a quiet, sunny, cheerful place on this morning, even taking into account its general shabbiness and the snow on the ground.

  I parked directly in front of the basement.

  When I had called Butts that morning, he had offered to meet me at his office, but I wanted to visit the basement again before slapping a check in his palm. The truth, which I didn’t confess to him, was that I wanted to see if I felt any different about this building because a murder had occurred in it. Perhaps it would seem dark and depressing to me now, maybe it would spook me; at worst, it might feel more like a grave than a basement. If its effect on me was unpleasant, I was afraid it might seriously affect the former mental patients. Their sensitivities and paranoias would surely be more vulnerable to atmosphere than mine.

  So it was with some feeling of trepidation and suppressed hope that I navigated the path to the double front doors, and pushed them open.

  The lights were on throughout, almost as if somebody else had been spooked. But the effect, I was glad to see, was a happy one. The place was somewhat cleaner than when I had seen it last, too. That’s a macabre happy effect of homicide—it results in a good washing down afterward at the scene.

  I walked to the door of the large meeting room, which must have been horribly bloody very recently, and discovered that I didn’t feel any horror. A curiosity, yes, and the head-shaking wonderment that sudden death brings to the spectators on the sidelines, but nothing much more than that. I hadn’t really known him. I hadn’t liked what little I had known. Perhaps it was callous to care so little, but I discovered that I was more interested in the living who might inhabit this place for a long time to come than in the dead man who’d been here briefly.

  I walked off in search of the landlord. That old lecher was probably the only thing I had to fear in this place; he had struck me as being grabby in every sense of the word.

  I found him in the kitchen.

  “Morning, pretty lady,” he said jovially, and pointed me toward a chair at one end of a large, rectangular wooden table. “Thought we might conduct our business right here.”

  I smiled. “Fine with me. And, by the way, feel free to call me Ms. Cain.”

  He grinned. Old George may have been horny, but he was not slow.

  Murder didn’t seem to have brought the price down.

  I laid out my offer on behalf of the foundation.

  I expected him to be primed with an automatic counteroffer from Michael Laurence’s construction firm, but I was ready for that. Sure enough, Butts leaned back in his chair, hooked his thumbs through his belt loops, and grinned at me. “Well, now. My other buyer, he called me just this morning after I spoke to you, and told me he’d come up a full thousand over your first offer.”

  I looked across at him and smiled knowingly until he laughed. He didn’t know it, but he and I were the only players in the game now, and we certainly weren’t going to play it by Michael’s rules. Michael knew what Butts didn’t, which was that as a representative of the foundation I could keep topping Michael’s thousand-dollar raises until he folded. And that if I had to, I’d sweeten it with my own money and write it off as a charitable deduction. I certainly wasn’t about to let Butts know that, either. It was only Michael’s bluff, anyway, his last shot at me. But I wouldn’t let him goad me into an unnecessary spending war that wasted foundation funds. Or my own. There were other, quicker ways to skin this old bobcat who was leering across the table at me.

  “What are his terms, Mr. Butts?”

  “Five percent down, a third of the remainder on closing, a third in six months, the final third in a year.”

  “Twenty percent down,” I countered. “The rest on closing.”

  He gazed at me a moment, looking frankly appreciative and not, I think, of my beauty. “All of it? Cash?”

  “Yes.”

  I was gambling on two things: that Michael’s fledgling firm couldn’t match those terms; that Butts would be more interested in getting money in his pocket now than in keeping his fingers crossed that it would trickle in over the next twelve months or more. And it was Friday.

  He leaned forward and, with the forefinger of his right hand, he tapped one of my hands, as if to make a point—or to close the deal.

  “Well, now,” he rumbled in a self-satisfied voice, “I think you folks just bought yourself a basement.”

  It took me a moment to comprehend that he had not tried to boost my offer any closer to his asking price. Granted, my terms were good, but I was still surprised that he basically took my first offer. Had I come in too high? Were my terms too good? In my rush to beat the winter weather—and Michael—had I squandered foundation funds?

  “Subject to appraisal, and so forth,” I warned, moving my hand away.

  “Oh, hell.” He leaned back, and blithely waved the question away. “Sure.”

  Feeling a little less confident now, I took out a foundation check and my pen. No, I thought as I signed
the check, this is a good deal for the foundation. I was positive it was. Old George was greedy, that was all; he obviously wanted to grab some fast cash. I was able to grin as I handed the check to him.

  “It’s a pleasure doing business with you, George.”

  “Likewise.” He smirked. “I’ll walk you out.”

  Since that was exactly what I was afraid of, I kept my guard up all the way to the front hall. He tried to guide me out with his hand on my back, but I walked faster. He tried to grab my elbow, but I jerked it away, ostensibly to dig for my keys in my purse. Finally, exasperated, I turned toward him in the foyer and stuck out my right hand.

  “Good-bye, George.”

  He took my hand, but then tried to tug me into the meeting hall where the killing had taken place. He was a strong man and a determined one.

  “I had it cleaned up real nice,” he said. “Let me show you—”

  At that point, when I was actually beginning to get a little nervous, I pulled out my best weapon:

  “Cut it out, Mr. Butts. Remember, I can always have that check canceled.”

  We looked at each other with perfect understanding. Instantly, his grasp turned into a legitimate handshake. I quickly pulled my hand out of his. I was no longer finding him either amusing or harmless. In fact, I was greatly relieved when he backed away and promptly left by the back entrance.

  I started to go out the front door.

  But then, with Butts gone, I changed my mind: one more look at the place, I decided, and then I’d leave.

  I stood in the hallway thinking: Here … they’ll place a reception desk, with maybe one of the clients to attend it … a bathroom for the men, one for the women … they’ll probably be in charge of keeping their own recreation hall clean, and I bet they’ll do a good job of it … meetings in here, and food service … could put in a piano, maybe a coffee bar … down here, the director, maybe a counselor, or would it be a social worker? Too bad there’s not more office space, but you can’t have everything … back door …

  I pushed it open and leaned out to look in the alley, partly to see if Butts had really left. He had. I breathed deeply, and felt myself relaxing in spite of the cold. Nothing had really happened, I reminded myself, so don’t go making a big deal out of it. He wasn’t going to rape you, for God’s sake. Old George was just after whatever he could get. Determined not to let him get the best of me in any way, I forced my thoughts back to the recreation hall.

  A little space for staff parking, that’s good….

  Had Rod Gardner’s killer gone in and out this way? Had he run down the alley behind the houses? No, I remembered that the police thought not, since all the bloody footprints—Mob’s footprints?—led out into the front yard. But the police had made a mess of any prints there might have been out here in back. This door had been jimmied; the front one had been left ajar.

  I ducked back into the basement and walked quickly back to the front door. All right, I thought, as I made sure it was locked behind me when I left, so it spooks me a little, so I have an overactive imagination, big deal. But more important, I thought, pushing images of murder away from me, how would Rosalinda feel if she were leaving this place today, after spending a few hours with her friends?

  In her place, I thought I felt contentment. It warmed me as I walked back out into the cold.

  32

  Rodney Gardner’s widow was backing down her driveway in front of me as I pulled away from the curb. She was driving a classic green MG with the top down. A lamp stuck up out of the seat beside her, and two other lamps without shades protruded behind her. Either she didn’t look behind her or the lamps blocked her rearview mirror, because she pulled right out in front of me so that I had to slam on my brakes. My car fishtailed on a slab of ice while my heart performed the same maneuver in my chest. At the sound of all the screeching, she turned to look in my direction. She grinned insolently, waved, completed her turn out into the street, and proceeded on down Tenth Street at a sporty clip.

  Absentmindedness I can forgive, especially in a new widow. It was the “screw you” grin she had given me that goaded me into speeding after her. Anyway, she was heading downtown, which was my destination, too. When I turned at the corner, there were only two cars between us, but she was now going slowly enough that they grew impatient and went around her, leaving me right behind the MGB. She speeded up again. When she glanced back in the rearview mirror once, I found myself looking directly in her eyes. For an instant, there was something taunting in them, as if she was laughing at me. I told myself I was imagining it, but as I followed her, left down Jefferson, I had the definite feeling of being led somewhere. My initial anger at her rudeness slipped away, but I still felt annoyed, and uneasy, for some reason. Where was she taking me?

  By the time she, and then I, turned right onto Fourth Street, it was clear she was luring me along for some kind of ride. Whenever cars came between us, she slowed until I caught up; whenever she turned, she carefully signaled, waiting to speed up until I’d made the turn, too.

  What the hell?

  In the middle of Fourth Street—which was one of a cluster of gentrified streets that were mostly populated by single people, childless couples, and well-to-do retirees-she turned left into a brick-paved driveway. I pulled over to the curb across the street and let my engine idle while I watched her pull in beside a red car. All right, I thought, show me. I wished I could remember her name. Susan? Saddie? Sallie? Sammie. That was it.

  She parked, got out of her car, and began to haul one of the small lamps out of the backseat. Now I could see what she wore: a tight-weave orange sweater dress that clung to her pregnant belly like marmalade to a roll, black tights, and high-heeled black leather boots. No coat. No hat over her tousled, fallen-angel hair. The lady was tough, I thought; she didn’t hurry, she didn’t look as if she felt cold. She did, however, look down the driveway directly at me, and one side of her pretty mouth curled up.

  What, I asked myself, is your game?

  I rolled down my window, grinned at her, and waved.

  It didn’t faze her. She merely tossed her curls as if to say, so what? and picked her sexy little way across the snow to the front door of the elegant brick condominium. Somebody inside opened the door, let her in, and the door closed behind her. And that was that.

  That was what? I put my car back into drive and slowly moved away, wondering what she was trying to pull or to show me. Because that’s the feeling I had had, that she was triumphantly showing off something to me. But what? Her new condo? And why me?

  I drove another block before it hit me: She had shown it to me—I just hadn’t recognized it. I accelerated back to her block. This time, I pulled right into her driveway. I got out of my car. I walked up to stand behind her MG. It was a beauty, all right, a real classic, but it wasn’t the car of interest at the moment. It was the red car—the red Toyota beside it that riveted me.

  The Toyota had a “Ski Stowe” bumper sticker, and the license plate was framed in metal that said, “I’d rather be skiing.” It was Derek’s car.

  I abandoned all dignity then—I didn’t give a damn if she taunted, flaunted, vaunted, or even why—and ran to the front door and rang the bell repeatedly, like a crazy woman. Please, I thought desperately, I don’t care why you’re here, just be here!

  The door opened to reveal Derek, who looked absolutely stunned to see me there.

  I slumped against the doorjamb. “You’re safe.”

  “Jenny,” he said, in a low, surprised voice, and then fell silent. Behind him, the pregnant blonde was leaning against a wall, her hands pressed behind her back, grinning that half-grin at me. Derek didn’t ask me to come in.

  “We’ve been worried about you,” I said, stumbling over my words. Why was he looking at me so strangely, and what in hell was he doing here, in this elegant condo, with this slatternly girl? I wanted to ask him that; I wanted to pull him out the door with me, and tuck him safely into my car, and drive him home, and
lock his door for him. But I didn’t do any of that; I just stood and stared back at him. Finally, I asked, “Are you all right?”

  He blinked, then nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Derek, the police want to talk to you.”

  He looked back over his shoulder at the girl and then at me. I thought I had never seen him look so discouraged, so unhappy, but all he said was, “I guess you’ll tell them I’m here.” Derek sounded so resigned, so lifeless.

  “I’ll have to,” I said.

  He nodded. “Tell Geof I’ll call him.” And then Derek closed the door in my face. Gently, but nonetheless in my face.

  There wasn’t anything I could do but leave, which I did, feeling as if I could cry from relief but also from a deep sadness that welled up whenever I thought of Derek’s blue eyes. They were now the dull eyes of a dead leprechaun. The old Derek would have laughed at the very idea—“Leprechauns can’t die, Jenny!”—but this new Derek looked like a very mortal man with no laughter left in him. I thought: The good news, Faye, is that Derek’s alive; the bad news is that he isn’t.

  33

  The Nordic Realty building, where I stopped on my way to the office, looked even more alpine this afternoon, like a warming house on a ski slope. I felt as if I should prop some skis against the porch railing and stick my poles in the snow in the front yard. Instead, I merely knocked snow off my boots and walked inside.

  “Congratulations.” Michael Laurence looked up from where he sat at the reception desk in the outer office. He wore a black-and-red-checked Pendleton shirt over a black cotton turtleneck, a combination that set off his dark, romantic coloring. He looked like a logger, I thought; no, I amended, he looked like the Eastern-educated son of the owner of a logging camp—who was looking at the person who lit the match that started the fire that burned him out. “The Swede wins again. Did you come to gloat?”