78 Keys

by Kristin Marra

  “It’s uncanny, Devy, I can’t find anything on Stratton.”

  “I’m not a Devy. What do you mean ‘can’t find anything on Stratton’?” I realized I was speaking loudly and lowered my voice in case Laura was done with her bath and within hearing distance. “Stratton should be easy. She’s a public figure. Her biography is an open book, isn’t it?” I continued to pace.

  “One would think, but it’s no open book. At least no open book with appendix or footnotes. Her history definitely starts at late childhood in Boulder, Colorado. Any further back from then, it’s murky.”

  “Her parents?”

  “Deceased. Killed in a car accident when Stratton was eight years old. No immediate relatives, so she’s raised by a family friend. A nondescript schoolteacher who died when Stratton was twenty-one. Stratton has no surviving family that’s traceable.”

  “Any school or medical records?”

  “Well, yeah, they were easy to find. Too easy. They popped right up with barely a hack, like they were put there for me or anyone else to find. And then they are cursory, as if to hide other things.”

  “So what do they say?”

  “Good grades, sound health, nothing interesting. No teacher notes or comments. No comments by doctors, not even a prescription. Nothing personal, like most of the narrative of her young life was painted over, leaving nothing to capture anyone’s attention. In short, it’s too boring. And I don’t think a dynamic character like Stratton would have a colorless childhood. I think all this information is a plant, a screen to keep the researcher from collecting the facts about Stratton. It’s a testament to the laziness of the media that nobody has tried to dig deeper. They just accept what’s supplied.”

  “What about college and law school? Anything there?” I lay down on the office couch and kicked my shoes off over the arm.

  “A little bit more, but still only an outline of a life. She skied in college, but everyone does that in Colorado, don’t they? She was a member of the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority, but only barely. She’s not portrayed as an active member. She’s in only one of their yearbook pictures, and it looks like she never even lived in the sorority house. She was a member of a pre-law club where she was a little more active but not gung-ho. It was in law school where she became visible, but all those activities are part of her bio. I don’t have any reason to doubt them, but I do have reason to doubt the completeness of her official biography.”

  “What about her relationships, the ones before her shmegegge husband? Any pictures from sorority formals or other sorts of activities. Because I just learned that she and Laura Bishop had a two-year affair.” I told her Laura’s story and how it was all chronicled in the scrapbook.

  Fitch started chuckling, an evil gotcha kind of chuckle. “Oh, now you’re talking. Some red meat for old Fitch to sniff out. Pegging Stratton as a lez just made my job easier because I was looking for male attractions. And I wondered why there were no signs of any girl-boy relationships. She’s a looker, so I imagine she attracted some attention from those randy mountain lesbians, but if she ever reciprocated, I can’t find it yet. And I do mean ‘yet,’ because now they have the Fitch on the trail. Something is hinky here, and I’m determined to find out more. It’s going to take more than me hacking in everywhere. I have to go to ground.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Get my hands dirty. I’ll close my dungeon for a few days, make phone calls, and travel to Colorado at least. The more information we can get on Stratton, the better.”

  “While you’re there, look for other threads, not only about Stratton but about Greenfield. I suspect they share some history, some commonality. Check it out, would you. Oh, and one more thing, there’s more than Bishop is telling me. I just have a feeling she’s leaving something out of her story. In short, be thorough.”

  “Anything to save our country from those two weasels. I’ll call you when I find something, Devy.”

  “I’m not a Devy.” But she had already hung up.

  “Who are you talking to at this hour?” Laura had opened the door of the office and was standing there looking like she’d just stepped off the half-shell and donned my robe.

  “I, uh, that was just my, uh, my research assistant.”

  “At this hour? Sure it wasn’t your girlfriend or maybe a boyfriend?” She took a few steps into the room. She was holding a small tube of something that looked like it had come from my medicine cabinet. She had removed the hospital’s bandage from her cheek and replaced it with two flesh-toned bandages. The spot on her skull that had been hit by the giant vase was covered by her hair only. The previous large wrap bandage was gone.

  “Uh, no, no, there’s nothing like that in my life. A girlfriend, that is. That’s what I’d prefer if there were, um. Well, let’s get the guest room ready for you, shall we?” For being a hospital escapee, she looked luscious, bruises and all. “We might as well catch some sleep until the banks open and we can store your evidence.” I eased around her and walked into the hall, but she had me so farmisht that, in my confusion, I walked past the guest room. I recovered and turned around without losing face. “Oy, must be tired.”

  She followed me into the guest room and stood patiently while I avoided her eyes and turned down the bed. I fluffed her pillows, then turned to leave. She blocked my way to the door.

  “Devorah, I need to thank you. I don’t know what I could ever do to repay you for all this help.”

  Any truthful answer to that would have earned me a whack across the head, so I said, “It’s my pleasure, and probably my mission. So get some sleep. We’ll be up and going all too soon.” I walked to the door and looked back. Her pallor was losing its post-bath pinkness, becoming sallow. “Did you find the pain medication in the cabinet?”

  She nodded. “It should take hold in another half hour. In the meantime, I’m going to use up all your arnica cream on my cheek and a few other bruises I found on myself while I was bathing. That all right?”

  “Please, help yourself to anything you need. I’ll wake you in a few hours.”

  *

  I went back to my office, plugged in the heating pad, placed it on the small of my back, and stretched out on the couch. If I got into my comfortable bed, I would never wake up. And Laura’s life depended upon me waking up and getting her out of there.

  I thought about how weak but determined she was in that hospital room. We had created a convincing body of circumstantial evidence that Elizabeth Stratton could be involved with the deaths of the security guards and the attack on Laura. Eliminating Laura would eliminate a problem Stratton could face trying to become president. Her dewy-eyed constituents wouldn’t want to vote for an ex-lesbian, would they? Would Stratton’s affair with Laura really be that much of an impediment to the presidency?

  Laura Bishop. Who was she? Some recipient of an embryonic do-gooder urge in me? My feelings about her were confusing. I had an inconvenient attraction for her, and that made this whole situation more complicated and frightening.

  Stratton. She was my problem, and she was my client. She could destroy my career, or she could make me rich. When I followed that thought thread, however, I also had to accept that I was another one of Stratton’s liabilities. If she could brutally have innocent people killed, all to further her sickening career, I would be just another piece of collateral damage for Stratton. That meant that Laura’s scrapbook and the voice recorder were my life insurance.

  I rolled on my side, attempting to make the couch feel at least partially comfortable. I propped the heating pad between me and the couch’s back and pulled an afghan my mother crocheted over my chilled shoulders. I didn’t savor the thought of what we had to do the next day. Every move we made could be dangerous. Laura was being hunted. I was certain of that. Anyone accompanying her was also prey to the hulking Nazi thug. I wished I knew who he was. Knowing something about him might help us protect ourselves. I should have sent Fitch on his trail too.

  What really worr
ied me was Elizabeth Stratton’s power. She was a senator, so she probably had allies everywhere. She was also a hero to people who adulated her as God’s messenger. A messenger with a manufactured biography, a bio as fabricated as the Theater that Pento created to send me his little messages.

  The messages from the Theater were proving to be prescient. They had warned me of Laura’s danger in the tower and the importance of the scrapbook. But what about the sword-wielding knight? Was that the skinhead who attacked Laura or the guy I saw outside her condo building? I assumed he was the same character, along with being one of the jackasses that harassed Fitch when she was on Lopez Island with me.

  Or could that Knight of Swords be someone else? Stratton? Someone not yet identified? The tableau of Laura tied up on the beach was perverse in a way I couldn’t understand. Her helplessness and vulnerability contrasted appallingly his unambiguous lack of mercy. Laura was not to be spared.

  The few hours I’d spent with Laura Bishop turned something in me. I had a rare twinge of compassion for a client’s target. I didn’t pity Laura because she was so obviously capable. Her plan to use the scrapbook, voice recording, and photographs to expose Stratton was the best anyone could have done in her compromised situation. She was logical and determined. But if she made it off Lopez Island, where I planned to stash her, she could bring down the whole Elizabeth Stratton / Jerry Greenfield machine. My job, according to Stratton, was to stop her from doing that. Without Stratton’s knowledge, though, I was going to make sure Laura wasn’t hurt.

  I measured, balanced, weighed, even sniffed any idea that could help me achieve Elizabeth Stratton’s aims and keep Laura safe. And I still had to decipher why I was going to the Theater and what I was supposed to learn there. What did the High Priestess and Pento expect me to do?

  I was getting more frustrated as I discarded one idea after another. Stratton’s desire for power was really a mockery of our political system; worse, it was a mockery of the deluded people who believed in her. They gave her their money, time, and their integrity, like little children who kowtow to the popular kid on the playground. Anger began to seethe through me. I huffed and turned the other way on the couch, pinching my eyes closed to force sleep.

  “Does your head have an ache, damsel?” Pento’s clipped speech made me open my eyes to find myself lying atop a hill overlooking the synthetic ocean of the Theater. A few birds fluttered overhead, but they looked more like rubber Halloween bats.

  “Hey, I just realized something, Pento. It doesn’t hurt as much to visit you anymore. Why is that?” I turned onto my back and looked up at him. I was becoming used to seeing him from that angle.

  “I rebuilt the portal. I am sorry, damsel. I had built it too narrow. An old habit from a long time ago. Humans used to be smaller.” His mostly inanimate face didn’t project much remorse. “But happily I have fixed your ache of the head problem.”

  “Yeah, at least that much in my life has been fixed. Not that I asked to come here in the first place.” I hiked myself to standing and peered out at the ocean. Staring at Pento’s too-smooth face made me uneasy. “What are those things on the water? Are they boats?”

  “Oh, yes. Do you not recognize where you are? Look around.”

  I looked to my right. One long staff was staked into the ground. To my left were two more. Me standing on the hill with the staffs, the ocean with boats all added up to the tarot card the Three of Wands: trade, commerce, but what else? Discovery? Self-discovery? My prodigious knowledge of the cards wasn’t working. Dizziness washed over me, and I grabbed one of the wands for support, making myself part of the card’s tableau.

  “Nice arrangement, Pento, but I don’t see what this has to do with my real problems.” My socks were collecting bits of the “dirt” that Pento had created. “Why me? Why tarot? You and the High Priestess act as if I should understand everything that happens to me here.”

  “You are learning who you are. You are of the line. You are who we must communicate with, and you are the intermediary. This is your destiny, your fulfillment. Without you, the Malignity gains strength. It already has in too many parts of the human world. You are the expert at hindering as you were planned to be. Now you are being called upon because we cannot go where you can. And we cannot give you specific instructions, so we use what you know.”

  “I think I’ve already figured that last part out. For some cosmic reason you can’t give me direct orders, just hints. Why? Why not tell me to go redirect someone specifically? I do it, and we’re all happy.”

  “You know the rules of earth learning, damsel. Choice. For you humans, in your world, all the lessons are about choice. For us in the Theater we must offer, maybe suggest, choices without interfering. We prefer certain choices over others so that the Malignity does not get too strong or too weak, for that matter. There must be balance. Look there.” Pento pointed behind me, away from the ocean view. Desperate human wailing and keening assailed the air. I felt like maggots squiggled over my skin.

  About fifty feet away, two people were turned away from me. They were dressed in rags; their bowed, heaving backs projected utter misery. Their cries and whimpers were of heart-wrenching loss. Far to my left slid a smirking little man. He was clad in rich brocade that was sewn with silver thread glinting in the light of the Theater’s sun. He was confiscating five large swords, pleased with himself for being the source of such devastation. The scene was permeated with gothic grief and terror.

  “The Five of Swords. Degradation, infamy, and dishonor in all their forms,” I whispered while I watched the dispiriting scene melt away and disappear, leaving only the imitation dirt and weeds for me to gaze at. “So you are telling me the loss of choice brings sorrow, the Malignity, to humans? Is that what you want me to understand? And does this have anything to do with Laura Bishop and Elizabeth Stratton?”

  “As you say, damsel,” Pento said from behind me.

  “What does that mean? ‘As you say’?” I turned to him but, as was now his habit, he’d disappeared. “You’re a coward, Pento. Can’t you ignore your asinine rules and give me some answers? We are running out of time here.”

  I had turned around and started down the hill toward the ocean when someone grabbed my shoulder from behind. I spun around, and my face was six inches from Laura Bishop’s.

  “It’s time to get going, Dev.” Her voice was singsong and muted. We were in my office. I was still on the couch and she was fully dressed in her sweats and shoes. Her silken hair hung loose around her shoulders. Her breath smelled like toothpaste. Instead of moving away, her face, her lips, actually, moved closer to mine and gave me the lightest peck. “That was to wake you up and out of that dream. Did you know you mumble in your sleep?”

  Before I could answer, she was heading out the office door saying, “I made coffee. Want some?”

  “Uh, did you brew the decaf?”

  “Not on your life,” she hollered from down the hall.

  Chapter Eleven

  Before we left for Tranquility, we had to do something with the scrapbook and voice recorder. I called my bank and reserved a safe deposit box at the branch I planned to take us to. I decided to keep my phone with the photographs with me, but I wasn’t so generous with Laura.

  We were standing before Laura’s opened orange bag where it sat on the kitchen counter. “They’ll be watching your bank branches, not mine. In fact, from now on, all our expenses go on my credit card. Your credit card transactions are probably being traced. And give me your phone.” I took the memory card out of Laura’s phone and broke it in half before Laura could figure out what was happening.

  “What about all my contacts? My apps?” Laura was livid. I supposed so much of her identity had already been assailed. She couldn’t abide one more indignity.

  “All those are replaceable. You, however, are not. Your phone is a giant beacon sent to how many satellites we’ll never know. Sorry, but it’s unavoidable. We can’t afford to underestimate Stratton’s power.
She could have this traced.” I scissored the SIM card into miniscule pieces.

  “I think breaking it in half did the trick.” Laura watched me dump the twenty teeny pieces of SIM card into the garbage. “Do you think you’re a little obsessive sometimes?”

  I threw Laura a glance. “Not any more than someone who collects tchochkes and uses them to record her whole life in scrapbooks.” I rinsed my coffee cup and left in the sink.

  “Touché, I guess.” Laura clonked her un-rinsed cup next to mine. “Shall we go to your bank then?”

  “First, let me make a few calls to get my house on Lopez Island ready for us. I want to make sure it’s safe there before Stratton’s minions figure out we’re together.” I gathered our few travel bags and some water bottles from the refrigerator.

  Laura was fidgeting as if she couldn’t wait to get moving. “Why would they suspect us being together? We only came in contact last night, and I don’t think anyone saw us together, except maybe a nurse’s aide who had no idea who you are.”

  “Those kinds of people have ways.” I interrupted myself when I noticed Laura was watching me with mounting anxiety and some distrust. “Oh, hey…really, I’m here for you. I’m committed to doing what it takes to get you out of this safely. Can you believe that?”

  She weighed my words. “I will for now. But if you aren’t what you say you are, a friend, then I’ll have your butt in court when all of this is over. When I’m through with you, you’ll be sitting on the street out there trying, without success, to peddle pencils. Okay?”

  Her show of force delighted me. She was feeling better. “Whoa, now I see why you’re a hotshot attorney. Even with the bandage and cast, you’ve morphed into Mighty Ms. Litigation.”

  “I want you on notice, that’s all. I don’t like doing the intimidating attorney thing, but I can do it when necessary.” She winced and cradled her wrist. “I need another of your codeine pills. I’m only taking half a dose because I don’t want to be knocked out. I have a feeling I’m going to need all my faculties today.” She removed the bottle of codeine from her orange bag and helped herself to one.