Pink Balloons and Other Deadly Things (Mystery Series - Book One)

by Nancy Tesler

  Horty had settled himself on my side of the bed and was alternately twitching and growling, probably pursuing Norwood’s entire squirrel population in his dreams. I shoved him over in an effort to make room for Allie. He shifted slightly and quieted down, his snout and one brown and white paw hanging precariously over the edge. Not having the heart to push him the rest of the way, I crawled into my quarter of the bed and spooned myself around his ample rump. The last thought that passed through my conscious mind as I dozed off was, Could Allie be right? Now that Erica was out of the picture, could this mutilated marriage possibly be saved?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Monday, May 24

  THE KIDS WERE SUBDUED at breakfast, wondering, I supposed, how they were going to field the questions about Erica at school. Matt would probably relish the limelight. At least at first. Allie would have a hard time of it.

  “Who has car pool today?” I inquired brightly.

  “Mrs. Rubin,” Allie mumbled.

  “Better hurry, then. She’s always early.” Matt gulped the last of his juice, planted a wet kiss on my cheek, and took off out the door.

  Unenthusiastically Allie retrieved her knapsack and followed. “Bye, Mom.”

  I caught her hand. “Allie, it’s going to be okay.”

  She avoided my eyes. I followed her to the door and stood waving until Ellen Rubin’s car pulled away. Then I showered and dressed, selecting a plain cotton suit with a skirt to the knee, and a tailored blouse. I was dressing for a part in a play, “working mother, extremely solid citizen.” No way could this woman be a murderer, right?

  I was thinking clearly this morning and was disgusted with myself for the half-wish I’d allowed myself last night. It made me painfully aware that I was still not free of Rich.

  As I downed the coffee, I planned my day. After seeing my morning clients I was going to Rich’s office. Pumping him for information wasn’t going to be easy. Most of the time we kept our conversations to subjects concerning Matt or Allie, but even those had deteriorated of late. The support checks came on schedule; he was good about that. I had not, like some women I know, had to deal with missed payments. He took the kids on his designated weekends, went with them to museums and movies and even an occasional show, but it seemed more duty than desire to spend time with them. They felt it and were confused. It was as though unconsciously he had gone back to being a bachelor. The father role held no attraction for him anymore. Seventeen years Erica’s senior, maybe he thought it made him look old in her eyes.

  This morning I was going to be all tea and sympathy, because it seemed to me that Rich or one of his friends or business buddies might have been a witness to Erica’s demolishing someone’s life or career. People like Erica, who adhere to the “end justifies the means” philosophy, make enemies. Who were her friends? Their friends? Rich’s stockbroker and his wife were frequent dinner companions. I made a note to call Gary on the pretext of asking about switching my IRA to a Roth. There were the guys Rich played racquetball with on Tuesdays. I didn’t know if the wives were friendly with Erica or not. I realized I didn’t know anything at all about their social life. I didn’t know if Rich still saw any of our old friends, because I rarely saw them. I now lived in a different town, and as a single woman, I moved in different circles.

  Then I remembered Herb Golinko.

  Herb was one of the company ad men, a scrawny little chain-smoking guy with only one eye and a twisted mouth made lopsided from nerve damage he’d sustained in the first Iraq war. He wore an eye patch but, unfortunately, without the Moshe Dayan dash. He was talented though, and a hard worker. He’d been in the marketing division since the inception of Your Face Is My Fortune, fifteen years earlier. I liked him and I’d never heard Rich say a bad word about him.

  Until Erica.

  Erica had humiliated Herb in front of the entire staff. It had happened at a marketing meeting. The story I heard later was that she was in a foul mood that day. Nothing anybody had presented was satisfactory, but when she got to Herb, she was in rare form. It was a crucifixion.

  “Christ Almighty, Golinko, that ad's so fucking cockeyed, I should know it’s yours! It might look fine to a Cyclops like you, but let me remind you, most of our customers have two eyes!” And then she’d proceeded to inform him that she didn’t want to see any of his copy until he’d run it by some college kid she had just hired.

  Herb quit the following week. I never heard what happened to him. Maybe he hadn’t been able to get another job. The economy was bad and jobs paying decent money in advertising were hard to come by. Maybe he was homeless, living out of garbage pails on the unfriendly streets of New York City. Maybe he had hated Erica even more than I had.

  The motive for the murder hadn’t been robbery; apparently nothing except the necklace had been taken. Erica hadn’t been molested, so a sex crime was out. A crime of revenge or rage was the only explanation that made sense to me. And to the cops, I was sure. And at the moment there was no question in my mind that I remained numero uno on their list of candidates.

  AS I OPENED the door to the lobby of my office building, my path was blocked by a short wiry guy with a jutting Adam’s apple and stringy unwashed hair that hung down to his shoulders. He was wearing dirty sneakers, a washed-out rumpled plaid shirt, and faded skin-tight jeans. He identified himself as a reporter from The Phoenix, a tabloid I recognized from the supermarket. I wondered if it was a condition of employment that its reporters look as grungy as the content of the paper they worked for.

  He planted himself in front of me. “Mrs. Burnham, is it true that Erica Vogel broke up your marriage?”

  When I tried to push past him, he grabbed my arm, leaving red marks on my skin. His nose pressed into my face. “Was she sleeping with your husband while he was living with you? Did he leave you for her? How long had the affair been going on till you found out?”

  His breath was as offensive as his words.

  “Let go of me!” I jerked my arm free. “I don't have anything to say to you.”

  “Wouldn’t you like your story told?” he persisted. “You're the wronged woman. Talk to me. I’ll tell your side.”

  “Let me by. I have to get to my office.”

  He cornered me, pushed up against me. “She stole your man, and you whacked her, right?” His eyes pinned me, paralyzed me. “You were fighting for your family. Who could blame you? What jury would convict?”

  Everything blurred. My throat closed up, and all I could manage was a shake of my head. “No comment, no comment,” I got out finally. Not original, but it gave me the impetus to shove him out of my way. I ran to the stairwell, pulled open the door, and fled up the three flights of stairs to my office.

  My overeaters were standing around my reception area, little clusters of plump grapes, when I arrived, panting like a marathon runner at the finish line. I managed a shaky smile, told them I’d be right with them, and slipped into my office. I saw Ruth-Ann start toward me before I closed the door, but I waved her away.

  “I’m calm, I can cope with this. I'm safe now,” I said out loud. I dropped into my chair, struggling to put the unpleasant scene in the lobby out of my mind.

  There was a timid knock at my door. I knew it was Ruth-Ann, but I ignored it. It wouldn't do for her to see me looking frazzled. I’d have to lie, tell her I'd been in the bathroom and hadn’t heard the knock.

  I’m usually very careful not to do anything to damage Ruth-Ann’s self-image. Only five foot two, she weighs a hundred and fifty pounds. But two months ago she weighed a hundred and sixty-five.

  When she started in the group, she’d spent weeks sitting by herself, unwilling or unable to participate. That was when I suggested she come for private sessions on Sundays. We started out doing breathing and relaxation exercises. Then I taught her imagery where she would visualize herself as slim and self-confident. After several sessions I switched her to EEG biofeedback training, which involves my attaching sensors to the head and earlobes, with the clien
t getting auditory and visual feedback from the computer in an effort to balance the brain waves. The client learns to play computer games, not with a joystick but with his or her brain. Addictive personalities like Ruth-Ann generally produce very little of the dreamy theta brain wave, so I put her on an alpha/theta protocol to help her increase production. At her fourth session she had what is known as an abreaction—-a reliving of a past, heretofore repressed memory.

  She was sitting across from me, keeping the beeps from the software program pretty constant, which meant her brain was accomplishing the task I'd set for it. I was watching the monitor and saw her theta amplitudes on the graph shoot up above her alpha in what’s called a crossover, the time when a client can begin to experience spontaneous imagery.

  Her muscle tension measurement suddenly went off the screen. Shaking from head to foot, she emitted an almost inhuman wail like an animal caught in a leg trap.

  “Where are you, Ruth-Ann?” I asked softly.

  “In—-his car. In his car,” she sobbed.

  “Whose car?”

  “Mr. Woolensky. Mr. Wool—-he's giving me a ride home. But he's turning down the wrong street. He's stopping the car!”

  “What's happening? What're you experiencing?”

  “He's—-he's touching me! I want him to stop, but he won't. He has my hand—-he's making me touch his...on his...oh, God, he's got his knees between my legs!

  I can't—-I can't get him off! Daddy," she screamed. "Daddy, help me!”

  That day in my office, Ruth-Ann relived every horrific moment of the rape. She was sixteen at the time, a rabbi's daughter. She never told her parents what their neighbor had done to her--never, given her fear of authority figures--considered reporting it to the police, and ultimately forced herself to pretend it was all a dream. After a while her conscious mind believed the story.

  But she began to eat. In one year Ruth-Ann went from one hundred and ten pounds to a hundred and forty. The next year she gained twenty more pounds. In her subconscious mind, wrapped as she was in layers of fat, she was safe. The heavier she got, the safer she felt. She had stopped dating, refused to apply to college, and after high school had taken a job as a file clerk, where she was safely hidden away in the back recesses of a musty office. Her parents were distraught. When she came to my overeaters group at the age of twenty-three, Ruth-Ann had given up on having a life.

  “Ruth-Ann,” I'd murmured when her sobs had abated,

  “if Mr. Woolensky were here now, if you could talk to him, what would you like to say?”

  She had clenched her fists, and her body went rigid. Tears streamed down her face. “I’d tell him...I’d tell him I hate him.”

  “Tell him,” I encouraged her. “Go ahead and tell him.”

  And then she was screaming. “I hate you, Harry Woolensky! I hate you! I hope someday somebody does this to your daughter! Or your sister! Or your wife! I hope you die!”

  Venting her grief and anger was the catharsis Ruth-Ann needed. In the weeks that followed, we worked on several guided imagery exercises in which Ruth-Ann visualized Mr. Woolensky leaving her life. Once we put him in a rocket ship and shot him into outer space. Another time he sailed away in a boat, becoming smaller and smaller until he disappeared.

  Ruth-Ann went on a diet, kept to it, and within two months had lost nine pounds. She’s doing it herself, but on her list I'm right up there with God. Nice, but there’s a downside. I'm not comfortable being God, and Ruth-Ann’s attachment to me is beginning to make me uneasy.

  Another knock. “Ms. Carlin?”

  I pulled myself together. “Be right there. I was in the bathroom,” I called out.

  Ruth-Ann opened the door, closed it softly behind her. “I heard what that reporter said to you,” she whispered.

  Damn!

  “That's what the police were here for yesterday, wasn't it?”

  I nodded. What could I say?

  Her brow furrowed. “I heard about your husband leaving you.”

  “It’s almost two years now, Ruth-Ann. I'm okay.”

  “He must be stupid!”

  In spite of everything I laughed. “I certainly think so.”

  “Do they—-do the police think you...had something to do with it?”

  Oh, God. “They have to question anyone who might’ve had a reason to—-dislike her—-you know?”

  “You mean a motive. They think you had a motive. So does that reporter.”

  I got to my feet, walked to the door. “He’s just looking for a juicy story.”

  “He’s a pig!” Her face flushed. She followed me to the door and whispered in my ear. “My cousin’s taking karate. I could get him to beat the guy up for you.”

  I had to smile at the image of Ruth-Ann’s yarmulke-clad cousin slaying my dragon. “Thanks for worrying about me, but I think there's been enough violence.”

  “She shook her head. “People like us-—we have to fight back. Tell them ‘Never again!’ Like the Israelis!”

  I put my arm around her. “You can't change other people, Ruth-Ann. Only how you react to them. Come on, the others are waiting.” As I opened the door, I asked casually. “Did anyone else hear that?”

  “No. I was walking up. Getting exercise. They all take the elevator.”

  “Don't say anything, okay?”

  She pressed my hand. “I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

  TWO HOURS LATER I nearly put a dent in a black Camry that was straddling two spaces as I parked in the lot outside Rich’s building. The executive offices overlook the Hudson River. The view from Rich’s window of the city skyline could be used for an “I Love New York” ad.

  Erica had redecorated his suite of offices in modern antiseptic, using humongous amounts of glass and marble and white paint, with only occasional splashes of color in the geometric paintings on the walls. It has received much oohing and aahing from her yuppie friends, but I miss the warm wood tones of his old office.

  Speaking of warmth, I was greeted decidedly without any by Rich’s gal Friday-and-every-other-day, Dot Shea. Old Faithful. Several years earlier she'd seen the light and was “born again.” In my opinion once was enough, but if you were Dot, I suppose you’d feel you deserved another shot. Since the advent of Erica, she’s tucked her tummy, tightened her tits, de-cellulited her thighs, and bleached her hair; the “born again” conversion clearly more physical than religious.

  Dot had detested me on sight. It took me three years to figure out why; once I did the feeling became mutual. She’s been with Rich since he started the business. Probably knows more about it than he does, but in her eyes he’s God, or at least Billy Graham, and she’s made it her mission to protect him from all of life’s annoyances. Enter “number one fly” in Rich’s ointment: me.

  “He isn’t here,” she snapped without glancing up from her computer.

  My heart sank. Rich was my only hope. A place to start. I tried to keep my voice casual so Dot wouldn't suspect how desperate I was, wouldn't guess that I had come for anything other than my monthly check. “When will he be back? I need my check.”

  “He hasn’t been in today. He is in mourning, you know.”

  Rich hasn't missed a day of work since I’ve known him. That includes the day Matt was born and the day his father died.

  “Probably left it on his desk,” I mumbled as I walked nonchalantly toward his office. I don’t know what I thought I’d find there, maybe his appointment book or Erica’s employee evaluation sheets—-some clue to give me something to go on.

  Dot’s voice stopped me. “It's not the first. Your check's not due.”

  I looked at the smirk on her face and something clicked. Could she possibly imagine she would have a chance with Rich if Erica were out of the way? Could her jealousy finally have driven her to murder?

  “Terrible about Erica,” I mumbled insincerely, watching her from the corner of my eye.

  She hit the print button and turned to me as the printer hummed into action. “I�
�d say it’ll be a boon to business.”

  Dot’s an equal opportunity hater.

  “I can't believe you're hanging any flags at half mast either,” she added.

  “I never wished her dead.” That was a lie, and we both knew it. I felt the stirrings of guilt again. “Anyway, wishing is one thing. Acting on it is something quite different.”

  Dot laughed, a rasping unpleasant sound. “Whatever you say.” She swiveled around to her desk, her fingers flying over the keyboard like a tornado over dry land. Dot’s a very capable secretary. I was beginning to wonder just what else she was capable of.

  My heartbeat began to outpace her machine as I considered that I might be chatting with a killer. I looked for a place to sit before my knees gave out, perched on the edge of a chair that reminded me of a banana with a shovel on top. “Weekend sure was a scorcher, wasn’t it? You manage to get out of town?”

  Dot didn't break her rhythm. “No.”

  “Had to work, huh?”

  “I'll tell Richard you were looking for him when he calls in.”

  I made believe I hadn't heard the implied dismissal. “Yeah, thanks.”

  “Anything else you want?”

  I tried to lean back on the shovel chair and almost fell off. I could see Dot enjoying my discomfort and had an almost irresistible urge to grab that keyboard and smack her over the head. “Come to think of it, there is. Where were you Saturday afternoon?”

  “At my sister's the entire weekend. I have an airtight alibi. How about you?”

  I never said Dot was a dope. Maybe she’d persuaded her sister to cover for her so she could hang this murder on me. Killing the proverbial two birds with one stone.

  My brow misted with real perspiration. “I don’t need an alibi. Rich is out of my life. Erica wasn’t worth killing.”

  “Spoken like a true woman scorned.” Her fingers resumed their fandango. “You know, one of the perks for me from your impending divorce is that I don't have to be polite to you anymore. So why don't you piss off?”