Cat in a Bag

by Angela M. Sanders

  “He broke your heart,” Warren nearly whispered.

  “Yes, but that wasn’t it. I thought it was, but I was wrong. He told me I could never be a real artist. And I believed him.”

  “You believed him? How—?”

  Adele held up a hand. “Let me finish. I didn’t understand what was going on until tonight, actually. I thought” —she shook her head— “I thought I was ashamed of the messages, and I didn’t want to hurt him. That’s why I had to destroy the paintings before I died. Now I know that, yes, I was ashamed, but I was still really angry with him. Some part of me thought I had no talent, but another part refused to believe it.” She caught his gaze. “Do you understand?”

  “Go on.”

  “So, tonight, at his apartment, I realized that he didn’t have power over me anymore. I finally believed in myself. Once I knew that, my anger vanished” —she snapped her fingers— “just like that. I was done with him.”

  He didn’t respond, and she couldn’t read his expression.

  “You see?” she prompted.

  He dropped his arms. “All right.”

  She waited for more, but he kept silent. If he’d said something, anything, she might have told him that he was part of her new strength. But he didn’t say a word. Finally, she laid out the blankets. “Do I get a pillow?”

  “No.”

  She untied her shoes and sat on the mattress, pulling up her knees. “Okay.”

  “Turn off the light?”

  “I guess.”

  He pulled the light’s chain once again, and absolute darkness choked the room, except for the minuscule flicker of the boiler’s pilot light. She didn’t hear him move for the door.

  “Aren’t you going?”

  “No.” His voice was as icy as ever. The armchair squeaked. “I’m staying here to make sure you don’t leave again. Once you’re out of surgery, you’ll be too out of it to slip away. Until then, I’m not leaving your side.”

  “You don’t have to stay down here. I won’t leave. I promise.”

  Again, silence.

  After a few minutes, she stretched out on the mattress and pulled up a blanket. At least it was warm down here with the Villa’s mechanical system ticking efficiently around her. After a few muffled creaks as Warren shifted in his armchair, he was quiet. But she didn’t hear the deep, even breathing of sleep.

  She hated this coldness between them. But she understood it, too. She turned away so she didn’t face the armchair barely an arm’s length away.

  “I should have known better,” he said. His voice was still cool, but quiet.

  She waited to see if he’d elaborate, but he didn’t. What the hell. She risked it. She rolled onto her back so her voice would reach him loud and clear. “If I wasn’t going to die, you wouldn’t have looked at me twice.”

  It was the truth, and he had to know it. Warren liked reading about adventure and living romance through a novel. He could never handle it in real life.

  “Tonight you proved what a bad idea it would have been. I’m lucky you’ll be gone soon. We’re all lucky.”

  If she wasn’t mistaken, his voice cracked.

  32

  Gilda set down her coffee cup. “Grady, turn off that television.”

  This was the day they took Adele in for surgery. Gilda had been up all night turning it over in her mind. The plan had been risky enough—taking a prison escapee to a hospital under an assumed name for surgery by a doctor who was only doing it to get back something that was rightfully his. She counted three felonies right there.

  Certain things were taken care of. Adele’s fake ID was in the bag, and Doc Parisot had moved all the medical equipment he’d need after the surgery into the Villa. Gilda would accompany Adele to guard the dog bed and be ready to destroy it should the surgeon welch on his part of the deal.

  What she worried about was Ellie. Ellie was smart and cold-blooded. John, the bartender from the Women’s League, had told her all about how Ellie had suckered him into helping her escape. That hadn’t been enough for her, because two days later, the Bedlamton Arms had fired him, citing an anonymous note. Cold hearted, she was.

  Now Ellie was gunning for the Villa as a way to get at the Booster Club. The Booster Club had to outsmart her first.

  “I need some of you here,” Gilda said. “Father Vincent, you sit there. Grady, Bobby, Mort, and Red. I need you, too.”

  They gathered at the cafeteria’s far wall, away from the windows. Gilda knew Ellie was watching them. Exactly where and how, Gilda couldn’t say. They’d been lucky so far. The police hadn’t made a third visit.

  “You’re worried about Ellie, aren’t you?” Father Vincent said.

  “She won’t rest until she’s taken us down,” Gilda said. “This morning, we’re going to be vulnerable. If she’s paying attention—”

  “How could she know what we’re up to?” Bobby asked.

  “How did she know about Adele and about the dog bed?” Gilda said. “We have to seal up this hospital visit tight, and I’m going to need all of your help to do it.”

  They all looked at her. Grady even held his speared piece of grapefruit mid-air.

  “Adele went out last night,” Red said. “I saw her with my night vision goggles.”

  “Ah, jeez. What was she doing that for?” Bobby said.

  Warren had told Gilda about Adele’s midnight adventure, and Gilda didn’t look forward to calming down the others, too. “That’s over, and she’s safe. Now, let’s move on.” Shoot. She hadn’t wanted them to find out about Adele. If they were going to pull this off, she needed their cooperation.

  “She put us all at risk,” Mort said. “She didn’t care enough to stay in just one more night.”

  “It wasn’t about us. We’ll talk about it later.”

  With priestly authority, Father Vincent clasped his hands in his lap. “The girl is ill. We must forgive her. God is calling on us to help her heal. Now, Gilda, you were saying?”

  Father Vincent’s words shut them up. Mort sat back in his chair, and Bobby took his ever-present deck of cards from his shirt pocket and began to shuffle. She cast the priest a grateful glance. “Before we go any further, tell me. Are you up to it? If not, say so now. It’s been a while since any of us have pulled off this complicated a maneuver. This is more complex than boosting the painting or the dog bed.”

  Even in the old days, they’d rarely worked together. Gilda remembered an early morning in the nightclub’s back room back in the early 1960s when they—less Red, she was a secretary at the Dictaphone shop at the time, and Father Vincent, who was in seminary—had huddled to plan a poker room sting. Bobby with his mop of black hair and no arthritis in his hips, Mort moving with the elegance of Fred Astaire. Gilda had helped organize the heist as a way to make her friends some money, plus please the police commissioner, who was keeping her in a comfortable hotel suite at the time. She flashed to seeing him in the golf club’s locker room. Times had changed for all of them.

  “I’m in,” Bobby said. She thought she caught an edge of excitement to his voice.

  “Me, too,” Father Vincent added.

  “Why not?” Red said.

  “Then listen up.”

  * * *

  It was going down this morning. After her conversation with Mitzi, Ellie was certain. She’d tidied up the attic, preparing to leave for good, and dressed herself in the housekeeper’s uniform. While school bells sounded recess and children laughed and yelled in the halls, she kept the telescope trained on the Villa’s front entrance.

  At last, action. The priest—their driver, she’d figured that out already—strolled toward the street and unlocked a white minivan.

  Ellie darted for the attic door and flew down the stairs, scattering grade schoolers around her. As she burst out the side entrance, she caught sight of Josiah.

  “Princess!” he yelled.

  She couldn’t stop, but she smiled and waved. One last smile. She wouldn’t be returning to the schoo
l. Her ticket was waiting at the airport.

  The priest pulled the minivan up to the Villa’s entrance and kept the engine idling while he walked inside. Ellie looked up and down the street. In her studies at the Bedlamton Arms, she hadn’t learned how to hotwire a car, so she was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. But what car? Later on, parents would be idling in the streets to pick up their kids, but now?

  Around a corner, an ice cream truck trundled into view, playing “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Not ideal, but it would have to do. Now, if she could get the timing just right….

  The priest led a small woman wrapped in a large scarf to the minivan. The escapee. Another woman—looked like the old redhead—followed, pushing a walker. She carried a boxy object covered with a blanket. The corner blew back, and Ellie glimpsed gilding. The dog bed.

  Ellie almost laughed. As if it were the real dog bed. The Booster Club wasn’t stupid enough to risk that.

  The ice cream truck, crawling at a speed easy enough for an eight-year-old to overtake, was twenty yards from the Villa’s parking lot. Now fifteen. Kids in the playground ran to the fence and yelled at it.

  The priest hoisted himself into the driver’s seat. The smaller woman and the redhead were now in the minivan’s backseat.

  Ten yards.

  The minivan pulled back.

  Now! Ellie ran for the ice cream truck. Using strength that had simmered for days, she yanked the driver, a skinny guy in a Snoopy T-shirt, from his seat. She pulled herself up to the driver’s seat and stepped on the gas.

  “Hey!” he yelled from the pavement. “That maid just stole my truck!”

  The minivan was a block ahead. The ice cream truck bounced at a decent pace, given that it was probably used to a consistent diet of second gear. She shifted up and swatted at a switch. “Pop Goes the Weasel” switched to a Joplin rag. Shoot. She flipped the switch again, and the music slowed to a stop.

  The minivan drove steadily on, and, as far as she could tell, was unaware of being followed. A couple of kids waved at a street corner, and, frowning, dropped their arms as she raced past.

  Now the minivan was turning on to the artery that led to the highway. Could the ice cream truck take highway speeds? She wasn’t sure. It wasn’t exactly her BMW at home.

  Then another thought crossed her mind. Why was the Booster Club headed for the highway at all? The hospital where Lancaster was a neurosurgeon wasn’t out that side of town. It was south. Up on the hill. The minivan was going in the opposite direction.

  Ellie slammed on the brakes, unleashing the sound of a dozen sidewalk sundaes hitting the freezer wall. The Booster Club was on to her. They knew she was after them, and they were leading her on a wild goose chase. At this very moment, the real art forger—and the real dog bed—was on her way to the real hospital.

  Ellie yanked the wheel, whipping the ice cream truck into a parking lot and spinning it to the opposite direction. Gas pedal to the floor, she merged into traffic, bringing a cavalcade of honks behind her. For the first time in her life, she flipped the bird.

  They thought they could fool her. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. A cocktail of excitement and anxiety flooded her veins.

  Her hunch had been right. The dog bed was ransom. This was the moment she’d been waiting for, planning for. She’d had a few false starts, but at last it was coming together.

  33

  Adele bumped and swayed with the sedan as they barreled toward the hospital. Beside her was the Marie Antoinette dog bed. It was supposed to be some kind of relic, but Gilda hadn’t even bothered to toss a blanket over it. Adele pressed her hands to her temples and rubbed. You’d think that the fact she was on her way to get her head sawed open would at least inspire an anxious hum. But, no. Nothing but the tom-tom in her skull that had kept her from sleep last night.

  After her fiasco, she’d handed herself over to the Booster Club. Whatever they wanted was fine. If things went well, her aneurysm would be gone, and she would leave the Villa to find a new life undercover.

  But she didn’t have to think about that now. She didn’t have to think about anything.

  “For chrissakes, Bobby, can’t you go a little easier on the corners?” Gilda clutched the dashboard.

  “You said to hurry. I’m hurrying.” Despite his Indy 500 foot on the gas pedal, Bobby drove with one hand on the wheel and one stretched out on the seat behind Gilda.

  Gilda glanced behind her, as she had every few seconds during their ride. “It’s okay. She took the bait. She even heisted the ice cream truck as planned. No one’s following us.” Gilda shifted her gaze to Adele. “What’s eating you, honey? Feeling bad about last night, or just nervous about the surgery?”

  She didn’t want to respond. She didn’t want to do anything but ease the throbbing in her head and the ache in her chest. If she felt anything at all, it was the desire to be put under. Bliss.

  “I’m okay.” The flat words didn’t even sound like her own.

  Gilda turned toward the windshield. “You haven’t eaten. Lack of protein. You’ll be better once the operation is over.” She hummed a few bars of “Bad Case of Lovin’ You” as the sedan traveled up the hill.

  At last, Bobby slowed the car and pulled into the hospital’s cement parking structure. He eased the sedan into a handicapped parking spot and hung the tag over the rearview mirror.

  “Hang on a minute,” Gilda said. Once again she scoured the road behind them. An ambulance, lights flashing but siren muted, was pulling into the emergency area, but otherwise all was clear. “We’re good.”

  Bobby retrieved Gilda’s walker from the trunk, snapped it into position, and wheeled it toward her. He opened the car’s rear door and slid out the dog bed.

  “What do you want me to do with this?” he asked Gilda.

  “Set it on top of the walker. I put a cloth in the trunk to cover it—yeah, that’s it.”

  Bobby wafted a card-table-sized cloth over the dog bed. Underneath was eighteenth-century workmanship. On top was a dance party of apples holding knives and forks. “Are you sure you want to do this? It’s not too late to take her home. We might be walking straight into a trap.”

  He was whispering, but Adele heard every word. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat.

  “It’s the only option to save her life. Besides, I’m the one at risk. If anyone asks, the whole thing was my deal.”

  Bobby patted her on the back and set the dog bed on Gilda’s walker before opening the sedan’s rear door.

  “Come on, darling,” Gilda said. “It’s time.”

  Adele lifted her head. “Okay.” Whatever. She just wanted it to be over with.

  “I’ll wait in the car, unless you need help with the dog bed,” Bobby said.

  “No. I’ve got it.” Then, to Adele, “Come on, honey.”

  As they moved closer to the hospital’s entrance, reality began to set in. Soon, she’d be lying on the operating table. At some point, she’d wake up. If all went well, she wouldn’t have to worry about dying. At least, not immediately. Yet, the struggle would continue. She’d turned Warren against her for good. She’d have to find a way to survive financially. But—and this was a tiny flicker of hope—she could continue to paint. Even if she had to live in the back of Uncle Larry’s TV repair shop, she could paint. That was something to live for.

  “That’s the spirit, darling. You hang in there.”

  They crossed the hospital lobby and took the elevator to the third floor. Gilda, Adele at her side, pushed her laden walker to the admissions desk.

  “We’re here for surgery with Dr. Lancaster,” Gilda said. She pushed Adele’s fake papers across the counter.

  “Your name, please?” the nurse asked.

  “It’s not for me, it’s for Gloria, here. Gloria Curtis.”

  Adele only half heard her. The waiting area was painted in a yellow that had probably been intended to lighten the mood, but instead gave the room the air of a downmarket lau
ndromat. A gray-faced woman knitted while a kid squirmed over the chair next to her. The scene might have been a painting in the California realist tradition named “Dusk at the Sanitarium.”

  “I have Miss Curtis seeing Dr. Lancaster in his office, but no surgery scheduled for today.”

  Adele’s sluggishness dissolved that instant. What was going on?

  Gilda pushed the walker up against the counter. “That can’t be right. Check again.”

  “It’s right here.” The nurse pointed to the computer screen. “Gloria Curtis, 2 p.m., Dr. Lancaster’s office. A half hour meeting. Nothing about surgery prep.”

  Adele had never seen Gilda so alert. Gilda’s eyes widened and mouth pursed into a mauve-tinted O. This couldn’t be good. In the space of a second, she took in Adele, then the lobby, then her head swung toward the elevator.

  The elevator’s doors opened, and a disheveled brunette in a housekeeper’s outfit emerged. She locked eyes with Gilda, then Adele, and a smile widened across her face. It was not a friendly smile.

  Sucking in her breath, Adele turned to Gilda. “What—?”

  Hands planted on her walker, Gilda said, “Run!”

  34

  Gilda gave Adele a shove. Eyes wide, the girl stumbled, then took off down the hall.

  Gilda froze in place. Ellie advanced in slow, determined steps, hands hovering over her hips like a gunslinger in a spaghetti western.

  “They force you to work as a maid in the institution, eh?” Gilda said. What a change that woman had been through. She’d always been so well groomed. Now her eyes were sunken and dark. And if Gilda weren’t mistaken, she’d been into the rum.

  “I’ve got you this time. You’re not slipping out of this one,” Ellie said.

  Really? She couldn’t come up with anything better than that? Gilda kept her expression placid but adrenaline burbled in her veins. She glanced right and left. The halls were busy with patients in wheelchairs. A gurney wheeled by.