by Jan Burke
I glanced at the paper, saw that it had been torn from something typewritten, but not much more, because Frank was calling me to the phone, I was bleeding from the cat attack, and the pager had moved up against a glass bowl and was ringing it like the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. That made the dogs bark.
“Could she call you right back?” I heard Frank say as I picked up the glass bowl and set the note beneath it — out of Cody’s reach — then shut off the pager. As the dogs settled down, I heard him say, “Oh.” I looked up to see him holding a hand over the mouthpiece, extending the receiver toward me, a kind of concerned apprehension in his eyes that made me forget everything else that had just happened, even the stinging on my arm. “It’s your friend the doctor,” he said.
“Becky?”
He nodded, and I moved around the counter, somehow seeing on his face that I didn’t want the counter between us when I took this call.
“This is Irene.”
“Irene, Becky Freedman. They brought Roberta into our emergency department a couple of hours ago.”
“Roberta? Why?”
“Head trauma. Someone attacked her in her office. She’s been in and out of consciousness. I did all I could, but I’m not sure she’ll make it,” Becky said, her voice breaking.
“You mean you were on duty when they brought her in?”
“Yes. The neurosurgeon’s working on her now. No neck or spine injury, but the head trauma…” She paused. “I’m off duty now, but… I guess it’s just now sinking in.”
“Oh, Becky—”
“Ivy’s here. Can you come down here, too?”
FRANK INSISTED WE DELAY only long enough to wash off my arm. As he tenderly put an antibiotic ointment on it, he frowned. “Nothing too deep, thank God. That damn cat is a menace.” He looked up into my face, read my look of alarm, and said, “Oh, come on, you know I’m too attached to him for that.”
Jack came over just as we were leaving, offering to pet-sit while we were at the hospital. “No rush,” Jack said. “I’ve got no plans this evening.”
Frank lifted my arm, covered with bright red marks. “Watch out for Cody.”
We went in the Volvo. He drove. Becky was an emergency physician at Las Piernas General Hospital, which was on the other side of town. I spent most of the ride thinking about Roberta.
In spite of the minor incidents of irritation between us, I admired her. She was tireless, someone who gave of herself in a time when that sort of generosity was treated with suspicion. She had put up with being called a do-gooder, a chump. More than once, she had been forced to listen to the same people who referred derisively to “psychobabble” tell her in the next breath that she must be working off guilt. As if the alternative — being as greedy as possible — was a superior way to live.
“You never told me what happened to your car window,” Frank said, drawing me out of my thoughts. I told him about the Karmann Ghia.
“Do you think it was Two Toes?” he asked.
“No. Did Reed Collins tell you about that?”
“What do you think?”
“That fink. I should have known.”
“You should have known better than to park in an isolated place — let alone an alley — especially when you knew this guy was looking for you.”
“Not now, Frank. You want to yell at me later, fine. You want to talk to me like I’m five years old after we get back home, great. But right now, I’ve got other things on my mind.”
He was angry, but he didn’t say anything more. I looked down at my arm. Didn’t smart as much as Frank’s absolute silence.
When we pulled into the hospital parking lot, I said, “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to snap. I know you just want me to be safe.”
He just held on to the steering wheel, not looking at me, but he sighed, which could be construed as encouragement. My eyes went to his hands on the wheel, the place where his starched white dress shirt cuffs contrasted with his tanned hands. There was something about that place where his wrists met his cuffs that made me wish my eyes were a camera, that I could somehow hold the image forever in my mind, and for a very brief moment there were no injured friends, no wrongs to be made right, no unanswered pagers or notes left unread on kitchen counters. It was a purely selfish moment.
When I looked back at his face, he was watching me, and I knew he had caught me, knew he knew exactly where I had been looking. The angry expression was gone. He smiled a little and reached up to stroke my hair. “I’m sorry, too,” he said, and sighed again, just as softly, but this was a completely different sigh.
I understood it, glanced anxiously at the hospital buildings, and quickly said, “We’d better not.”
He laughed and opened the car door. “Let’s go, Catholic girl.”
BECKY WAS SITTING on a bench in a hallway, head in hands. She was dressed in street clothes. Ivy Vines was sitting next to her, talking in a low voice. When Becky looked up at us, I saw her eyes were red-rimmed. I introduced Frank, and we moved to a set of chairs where we could all sit down together.
“They’re getting her set up in intensive care,” Becky said. “I decided to wait out here with Ivy.” She looked at me more closely. “What happened to your arm?”
“Cat. It’s fine. Tell me about Roberta.”
“She was attacked in her office at the shelter. I don’t know any details — I just saw the aftermath. The cops were here, tried to talk to her, but she never came around for long. Maybe I just asked you to be here for my own sake, but I also thought it would be good for her… familiar people around her, you know.”
“I’m glad you called me,” I said.
“Do you know the name of the detective who has the case?” Frank asked.
Becky searched through her pockets and handed him a business card with an LPPD detective’s shield embossed on it.
He glanced at the card and handed it back to her. He excused himself and went off to a pay phone.
“She had your numbers — yours and Ivy’s on a slip of paper in her shirt pocket,” Becky said. “I called Ivy, and when I got another minute free, I called your home number. Ivy called your pager, too, but I guess you didn’t have it with you.”
“It went off at the same time the phone rang,” I said. “Once I talked to you, I forgot all about the pager.”
“Oh, God, I’ve got to call Lisa!” Ivy said, looking at her watch. “I guess she’d still be at Jerry’s house. Lisa, Roberta, and I were going to try to catch a movie tonight. Lisa won’t know what to think when I’m not home.” She headed for the pay phones as well.
“Tell me about Roberta’s injuries,” I said to Becky.
“It looks like she took one strong blow to the back of her head and suffered some minor injuries from a fall — as if someone hit her from behind and she struck some furniture or some object as she fell forward. But her head injury — it’s severe.”
Frank came back and said, “I’ve talked to the detective who’s handling the case. They don’t know much at this stage, but apparently she walked in on an intruder. Matsuda — the detective I talked to — suspects the intruder was looking for money. Desk drawers were open, file cabinet was jimmied. Went through the secretary’s office, too. Could be one of Roberta’s clients, or someone from the shelter, since they seemed to know her schedule. That part of the shelter is pretty empty by late afternoon. The secretary was gone. The people at the shelter are pretty upset about it. Matsuda thinks Roberta came back early from a meeting, walked in on the burglar.”
“No idea who it was, I suppose?” Becky said.
“Not really. But they’ve had some luck — turns out the offices were vacuumed while Roberta was out. Matsuda said that helped them to figure out there was one intruder. All kinds of people had stepped in Roberta’s office — paramedics, people from the shelter. But in the secretary’s office, there were only the intruder’s footprints. They found some of the same prints in the places in Roberta’s office where not so many other peop
le had been walking. He’s small, and he left some kind of pulp or seeds — something from some kind of plant in his footprints. The evidence technician thought it was something that had been stuck on the bottom of the intruder’s shoes. The lab guys will work on it.”
Ivy came back. “Lisa’s really upset,” she said. “She wanted to come down here, but I think I’ve convinced her to stay home. I told her we would call her if anything changed.”
“Andre’s in this hospital, isn’t he?” I asked.
“Yes,” Becky said. “Over in the CCU — Coronary Care Unit.”
There was an uneasy silence, then Frank said, “Tell me about this group you’re in. This SOS.”
I let Becky and Ivy give him the explanations. They talked about the shelter, the fund-raisers, the amount of support the group provided.
“I understand all of that,” he said. “About the women’s shelter, and so on. Irene has told me that much. But what about Selman himself? How did he manage to inspire all of you to get together?” He studiously avoided eye contact with me when he asked this.
So it’s been bothering you after all, I thought.
“Old history,” Becky was saying.
“Okay, so it’s old history,” he persisted. “Fill me in.”
Again I let the other women do the talking. Frank would look my way every now and then, but I could see that he was beginning to understand something about Andre’s patterns, about the humiliation each of us had felt. “You have to remember,” Becky said, “none of us had reputations as doormats.”
Frank smiled. “I don’t imagine you did.”
“At first,” Ivy said, “a relationship with Andre was mad love. He was head over heels for you. He was passionate and generous. It was impressive, especially to a twenty-year-old — maybe women that age are more sophisticated now. I don’t know. In any case, he chose younger women. You didn’t have to be naive, except perhaps in one area — you had to be a romantic at heart.”
“As if that leaves a lot of women out of the running,” Becky said. “Besides, let’s face it, we were all students, he was a professor. Talk about feeling sophisticated in your twenties!”
“Yes,” Ivy said, then went on in the tones of a radio ad. “Young woman of today, you don’t have to settle for those immature boys who are your peers! You’re woman enough to have a man!”
“Exactly!” Becky said. “And Andre would want you all to himself during that time. What you wouldn’t realize was that he was isolating you from your friends and family. You lost touch with anyone who would have been able to help you keep your balance.”
Frank looked over at me.
“My father hated him,” I said. “We all but stopped speaking to one another when I was dating Andre.”
“It was the same with everyone. Stage two, he started the criticism bit,” Ivy said. “Small things at first. How you made the toast that morning? A little too dark. The brand of spaghetti sauce you bought? Not really his favorite. What you chose to wear to a party? He hoped you’d never wear it again.”
There were nods of agreement from Becky and me.
“I take it the criticisms increased?” Frank asked.
“Until that’s all you were hearing,” Becky said.
“Not all,” Ivy said. “You’d have about six bad days with him, and one really incredibly good one. Then you’d have eight bad days, and one really incredibly good one.”
“Right,” Becky said, “but the bad days would be getting worse. Now it wasn’t the way you wore your hair, but what went on in your head. Your opinions were groundless, just about every decision you made was a poor one. He had this saying—”
She looked at Ivy and me, and together we chorused, “Surely you don’t mean…”
Frank laughed. “That bad, huh?”
“And worse. You liked the way an actor performed a part? ‘Surely you don’t mean you admire that mugging imbecile who ruined the second act?’ he’d say.”
“You’d like to see some of your old friends?” Ivy said. “‘Surely you don’t mean those people who made that awful gaffe at the Beesoms’ party? Surely not the ones who’d never read Nietzsche?’”
“By the time Andre broke up with you, at best you doubted your ability to choose men, and at worst you were severely depressed,” Becky said. “He does the same thing every time.”
Becky went on to tell him of Andre’s breaking-up ritual, which made Frank wince, and repeated the fishing pole story, which made him grin.
“Andre never varied from that breaking-up pattern,” Becky said.
Ivy and I exchanged a glance. “Yes, he did,” I said. “With Nadine Preston.”
“August of 1977,” Ivy said.
Frank caught my look of surprise, but Becky spoke up before he could say anything.
“Wait!” she protested. “I don’t know about this!”
Ivy gave a brief account of Andre’s one known deviation from his script.
“How do you know it was August of 1977?” I asked.
“Jeff died that year,” Ivy said. “Andre and I got together in early August, just after Andre and Nadine had their brief second fling.”
“Jeff?” Becky asked.
“Jeff McCutchen, Andre’s best friend. I dated him for a while before I got together with Andre. Up until the end, Jeff thought the world of Andre.”
“I remember Jeff,” Becky said. “But it must have been before you were dating him. Sort of a loner. I think Andre was his only — no, wait — Lucas Monroe knew him, too, didn’t he?”
Ivy nodded. “After I started dating Andre, Lucas and Jeff used to go drinking together. Jeff did a lot of drugs, too, but Lucas was never into that scene.”
The news that Jeff McCutchen and Lucas Monroe were friends shouldn’t have surprised me — at one time, Lucas had thought the world of Andre, too.
Frank was watching me, and I could see 100 percent unadulterated curiosity on his face. I wanted to talk this over with him, but it would have to wait.
“Lucas was the one who brought Jeff to the hospital the night he died,” Ivy said. “I wasn’t with Andre or Jeff by then. It was about a month after Andre and I split up. Jeff came by to see me one night; he looked like hell, as if he hadn’t shaved or showered or slept in days. He asked me if I was ever going to get back together with Andre.”
She looked away from us, talked as if she saw some other listener.
“I said no, but then I added that I wasn’t going to get back together with him, either. He said he didn’t blame me for that, he just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going back to Andre. He made me promise it was true. It wasn’t a difficult promise to give. He smiled, gave me a hug, and said that was all he asked of me. He went home and killed himself.”
“Oh God,” Becky said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that Jeff had died. I must have been at med school when this happened. I’m sorry, Ivy.”
Ivy looked at her, as if surprised to hear another voice, then said, “Don’t feel badly about what you said. As I told Irene, it was a long time ago. I wonder now if Jeff really knew what was going on when he acted as Andre’s messenger. It’s hard for me to believe he did. I don’t know… He left a note for me and one for Lucas. I never saw Lucas’s. Mine just said, ‘If you ever loved me, keep your promise.’ I felt incredibly guilty. Andre felt left out, I guess. In fact, the cruelest thing Andre ever said to me was that I caused Jeff to kill himself.”
“That son of a bitch,” Becky said. “Pure projection on his part. Ask Roberta.”
The minute she said it, she clasped her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she said, “I’ll check on her,” and left.
Frank stood up and stretched. “Thanks for telling me about Selman,” he said to Ivy. “I know it wasn’t easy for you and Becky to dredge up the past.”
“No problem,” Ivy said. “If I hadn’t moved on with my life, I suppose it would all be very painful. But if you look at the women in SOS, you’ll see that we al
l kept going. We survived, we learned, we went on to better things.” She smiled. “And in Irene’s case, definitely on to a better man.”
He actually blushed. “Well, I think I’ll get a drink of water,” he mumbled.
Ivy watched him as he walked off, and I could tell that she was eyeing his really great ass.
Well, I didn’t care if she looked at the menu, as long as she didn’t ask to be served.
“I have that information on Nadine for you,” Ivy said, jolting me out of my own appreciation of his physique.
“Here?”
“No. At home. My friend just made a printout of her computer records. Should I fax it to you at work?”
I thought about this. “Sure, but call first so that I can pick it up as soon as it comes over. God knows what obscure corner of the Express it will end up in otherwise.”
“Okay.”
I thought about Roberta. “Ivy, did you know that Lucas died?”
She nodded. “Roberta told me.”
I told her about the plans for Lucas’s funeral, then added, “I’m going to say something that will sound a little strange, but it’s really important. I think Lucas was murdered.”
She drew in a breath, but didn’t interrupt.
“I think he was murdered and I don’t think Roberta was attacked by a burglar. Not a run-of-the-mill thief, anyway. Today my car window was bashed in, and the more I think about it, the more I’m sure it was by someone who hoped I’d left information in my car. There are other things I’m starting to wonder about, too, but — listen, what I’m saying is, be careful, okay? And don’t tell anyone — and I do mean anyone — that you’re helping me out with this, okay?”
She nodded, her eyes wide and fearful.
Frank came back and saw that look, and was about to ask something when Becky called to us. “She’s in a room. Sorry, but the neurosurgeon will only give us a few minutes with her.”
Frank took my hand as we walked to the intensive care unit, but said, “I’ll wait here for you,” when we reached the door.