Sweetheart Deal

by Claire Matturro

  The peacock had an advantage. It could fly.

  As it turned out, I couldn’t.

  Fortunately, I landed on the sleeping bag.

  Fortunately, the man was Demetrious.

  Fortunately, the peacock respected authority and flew back up into the tree with only minor squawks after the chief of police spoke sternly to it, shooing it with his hands.

  And then he knelt over me, and graciously asked, “Are you all right?”

  Other than embarrassed and itchy and a tad sore in the bottom, I figured I was okay, and said so.

  “Well, don’t get up until you’re sure you aren’t hurt,” Demetrious said.

  I popped right up on my feet as quick as I could. “I’m fine. Really.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine. Really.”

  “Well, then…” And he paused, and I swear, in the moonlight and the faint reflection of the streetlight, I saw a bit of a grin on his face.

  Above us, Free Bird let out another scream, as if to say Shut up.

  But I had to wonder: was Free Bird, the errant peacock, the physical embodiment of some of my bad karma coming back after me? I mean, the bird caused me to hit not one but two cars my first hour in town and to fall on my butt smack-dab in front of a man I had meant to hide from.

  Why couldn’t Eleanor just have a pet cat or dog, like everybody else?

  chapter 9

  Though my experiences in the last few years had taught me that cooperating with law enforcement officers probably is the best way to go when involved in a murder investigation, those old habits of mine ran deep.

  Keep your mouth shut around Official People being an old habit.

  A lesson learned in the house of my parents and carried over to the years with Delvon and Farmer Dave, when a casual misspeak could have landed Delvon and me in some godforsaken juvenile detention home, and Dave in jail. Of course, Dave ended up in jail anyway, but later on and not because I’d blabbed anything, and instead of juvie hall, I made it out of the back forty of Bugfest and into law school, but I’d still held with that lesson.

  So there I was, stuck with it: Keep your mouth shut around Official People.

  While I rubbed my butt and scratched a few mosquito bites and kept my mouth determinedly closed, Demetrious asked me a few questions as he checked the cooler and felt the fake ice, just like I had. From his pocket, he pulled out one of those mini-lights and flashed it on the sleeping bag. After studying on it a moment, he picked the heavy fabric up and felt around under it, and put it down.

  Finally, Demetrious seemed satisfied, and I was ready to breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Somebody’s been hanging out here,” he said, as if somehow I’d failed to notice that.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, and scratched some more, for all the good it was doing. Apparently, I was on the local night menu as after-dinner treat for a thousand mosquitoes. I was taking that citronella natural bug repellent I’d dabbed on back to the health food store and getting my money back.

  “Got any idea who?”

  “Nope, not me. I don’t live here. You remember? Only drove up today, to help Dan. That’s all.”

  “What are you doing up here, in the tree house?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking around, thinking,” he said.

  “Yeah, me too. While I got you here,” I said, as if I had summoned him to my office, “could you tell me what kind of gun Willette had?”

  “Just a .38, a standard, what you could easily call a Saturday night special, unregistered and as far as I am concerned, untraceable.”

  “You tried to trace it?” Never assume people actually do their jobs being a lesson I’d learned in defending professionals against malpractice suits.

  “Yes. I do know how to investigate a crime.”

  Oops, a tad snippy. Topic change in order, I thought, and asked, “What do you think Willette meant about those ‘jelly eggs’?”

  “Don’t know. She was hallucinating that night in the ER, could be she just hallucinated the jelly eggs.”

  “Hallucinating? Like seeing things?”

  “That’s what it usually means.”

  I never knew Willette to hallucinate before, but then I hadn’t been keeping up that closely with her, and I made another mental note to ask Dan about this.

  “She say anything to you? At the house? On the way to the hospital?”

  “She was hysterical. I think I mentioned that. She screamed a lot.”

  Demetrious either didn’t know any more or wasn’t going to tell me any more—I knew that as surely as I knew I was tired, bone-tired. “I think I’ll go on back to Dan’s.”

  “I’ll be leaving now too.”

  Like a gentleman, he went down first, then held my flashlight on the crude plank ladder to guide me until I was safely on the ground.

  “Walk you home?” Demetrious offered. “Make sure Free Bird doesn’t attack you again?”

  This time I could see the grin for sure.

  “Well, if you hadn’t scared me, sneaking up like that, I wouldn’t have climbed up the tree.”

  “I’m sorry I scared you. Really. Now, may I walk you home?”

  As it seemed both impolite and suspicious to say no, I thanked him, and side by side, under the streetlights, we walked down the old sidewalk to Dan’s house.

  “Shalonda thinks the world of you,” he said. “I hope you’ll come out and visit us, we’d like to show you our place, and you can visit my mules.”

  “Your mules?” As in, visit them?

  “Yep, got several mules out at my place. I train them as well as keep them for other folks. Plus I own a couple. My best one, Big Beauty, we call him BB, is entered in just about every category at the mule rodeo, at Mule Day. You did know that’s this Saturday? Maybe you can find time to go? See Big Beauty in the rodeo?”

  Man, I thought, you need to be fighting crime, not running a boarding school for mules. But I hadn’t missed the lilt of enthusiasm in his voice, so what I said was, “I’ll sure try.”

  At the door, Demetrious offered me his hand, and we shook.

  Great, the police chief was busy training mules instead of solving crimes.

  I added solve the Willette-shoots-Ray-Glenn case to my mental list of things to do.

  And soon, before my stash of organic foods gave out.

  chapter 10

  Well, damn.

  Someone had turned on a radio, and it was blaring. I opened my eyes and for a moment couldn’t figure out where I was and why there was a Georgia Bull Dog flag on the wall, staring back at me.

  The radio announcer screamed out the time of day, that being morning, and the station, that being 93.3, its slogan “Real Country for Real Country Folks,” and then damned if he didn’t play “Sweetheart Deal,” Big Lonnie Ledbetter’s only hit.

  Unable to escape the noise, I rolled over and listened. It was kind of catchy.

  On the shady side of Shreveport in a crooked bar and grill

  With nothing but a losing streak and a lot of time to kill

  A hopeless hand before me and my luck was slipping fast

  And I was face to face with the greatest gamble of my past

  She laid down her cards like I laid down my lies

  Taking all my money and all I had inside

  She beat me before but she came back for more

  She’s winning all my money like I once won her heart

  It’s a tough game when my Sweetheart deals the cards

  My Sweetheart deals again, another losing hand

  My Sweetheart deals the ace and I just can’t understand

  Luck can’t be a lady ’cause I’m not lucky at all

  Now I’ve lost it all with the luck of the draw

  And now I feel the loss with every hand she steals

  I just can’t win the game when my Sweetheart deals

  “You up?” Patti shouted at me from the doorway, drowning out the deejay
’s comments when the song finished.

  “Coffee,” I bleated out, in a begging tone wholly unbecoming.

  “On the stove,” she said. “Got a percolator with fresh coffee you are welcome to,” and she disappeared.

  By the time I was dressed and showered and had fixed my own fair-trade, shade-grown organic coffee, Patti was leaving her instructions. “Go through Willette’s papers,” she said to me. And to my bleary-eyed nephew, she said, “Help your aunt and then get to school. Come over to Willette’s after school.” She kissed him while he squirmed, then out the door she went.

  Not one to shrink from either doing or delegating work, Patti Lea was wildly successful in running her own small-engine repair shop. Still, I made a mental note never to be reduced to being her employee, even if she did hire folks like Sam, the man who went off his meds and wrecked things.

  “So,” I said, looking at Bobby.

  “Whatever,” he said.

  “You miss your brother, now that he is off at college?”

  “Naw,” he said. “I got more room.”

  “Still.”

  “Whatever.”

  “So. All right, let’s get those papers out of the box and into the strong sunlight.”

  He shrugged.

  Despite his lack of enthusiasm for the chore, Bobby helped me weigh down the papers on the back deck in the bright sun of morning, then we took turns spraying Lysol on them while we held our breath, as I didn’t think inhaling Lysol would be any healthier for us than breathing in the mold spores off the old papers.

  Patti Lea was right, of course. I did need to study these papers. Why, I didn’t know, but that’s what lawyers do, study paper. I looked at Bobby. “As the family lawyer, I’m appointing you to be in charge of them,” I said. “Turn them over in the direct sun as soon as you get home from school, and wash your hands after you touch them. Please?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  My next chore was to check on Willette. But before I left for the hospital, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the ornate marijuana pipe and confronted Bobby. “This yours?”

  Bobby gave me one of those perfectly innocent Who, me? looks that I had also perfected by his age. “Not mine,” he said.

  “Ever seen it before?”

  Bobby stepped closer, squinted at it, then shook his head.

  “Found it in the tree house,” I said.

  “Yeah? Cool,” he said.

  After another round of talented denials—I mean this boy could join a Broadway play right now—I told him we needed to have a serious talk about drugs and stuff.

  “Naw, Mom and Dad already did that. And the one about safe sex and abstinence and just about everything else.” Bobby’s tone suggested he was not the least interested in having similar talks with me.

  Yeah, trust the good parents to have done all that. But unlike Delvon and me, Dan and Patti could not speak from experience on matters of drugs and sin.

  “We’ll talk later,” I said, and winked like it might be fun. I put the pipe back in my pocket and dashed off to the hospital, where Rodney was sitting in a chair, doing his best to look alert.

  “Were you here all night?” I asked, after a proper greeting.

  “Oh, no, ma’am. Otis Lee Tate took over the night shift. I had me a good night’s sleep. Don’t you be worrying none,” Rodney said.

  “Any problems?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am, she’s not much of a flight risk.” He grinned.

  “Anybody bother her?”

  “Not that Otis Lee mentioned, nope. But she’s got a doctor in there, a psychiatrist.”

  “Great,” I said, and slipped into Willette’s room. A man was staring at my mother and didn’t look around at me. I greeted Shalonda, and noted the flowers and pound cakes appeared to be reproducing.

  “Dr. Hodo,” Shalonda said, “I’d like to introduce you to Lilly Cleary.”

  The good doctor turned around, and I studied him like I would a prospective expert witness. Older, of course, than the last time I’d seen him, before Willette banished him from our house. Slender, wavy white hair. Elegant, actually. I had either forgotten that or it hadn’t registered on my child’s brain. My father’s old friend was an elegant-looking man.

  “I don’t like this situation at all,” Dr. Hodo said.

  “Well, me either. So, we agree,” I said.

  His bluntness actually comforted me. Then I remembered my manners, stuck out my hand, tried to smile, and said, “Oh, how good of you to come. I’d have been here sooner this morning, but I had to disinfect a bunch of legal papers.”

  The look of scrutiny he gave me suggested I might have been better off not mentioning disinfecting paper.

  But what he said was “She is far too sedated. The dose of Thorazine that’s been prescribed should keep her calm, not comatose.”

  “Dr. Weinstein told me he thought she was in some kind of shock, like a coma ’cause she was so traumatized,” Shalonda said.

  “Yes, he shared that same theory with me,” Dr. Hodo said. I was relieved to hear a little tartness in his voice. Tart appreciates tart being one of my theories.

  “You actually saw this Dr. Weinstein?” I asked.

  “Briefly.”

  “Me too,” Shalonda said. “Real briefly.”

  “I asked him about her tox screen,” Dr. Hodo said, “even suggested running another one. But Dr. Weinstein assured me he was on top of things, and that to tell me anything else would be a violation of her privacy.”

  “We’re the family and we’ve called you in on a consult. I’ll make sure Dr. Weinstein and the nurses know that. Now, can you un-prescribe the Thorazine? She needs to wake up, eat, and tell us what happened,” I said.

  “I don’t like to cancel another physician’s orders until I’ve had a chance to discuss it with him fully. Legally, I have no authority over Willette. But I will call him and initiate further discussion.” Dr. Hodo studied me as if he were gauging my inner resources or something. “Did anybody tell you she nearly died in the ER the evening they brought her in?”

  “Shalonda and my brother mentioned an OD.”

  “So the hospital never told you about this?”

  “Not the hospital per se, no.” Having practiced as a medical malpractice defense attorney for thirteen years, which I hoped wasn’t an unlucky, bad-karma-generating time frame, I wasn’t surprised that nobody officially connected with the hospital had bothered to mention this. I mean, why highlight your negligence to the family attorney, right?

  “Well, we might want to look into it. Those bruises around her mouth, you saw those?”

  “Yes. I asked, but no one seems to know where they came from.”

  “Dr. Weinstein was adamant that your mother came into the ER with near toxic levels of narcotics in her system, and with those bruises.”

  “I guess his practicing CYA wasn’t a violation of her privacy rights,” I said.

  Dr. Hodo grinned at me then, just a quick flitter of a weary little smile that he quickly controlled, and said, “CYA. Cover your ass. The new guiding principle of medical care.” Then he turned back to my mother and measured the bruises with his wide hands. “You see the pattern?”

  “Yes. And I’ve had plenty to say about it, really,” I said. “And despite what Dr. What’s-his-face said, the police officer that brought her to the ER said he didn’t see any bruises on her at her house.”

  Actually, I think what Demetrious said was he couldn’t be sure. I’d have to ask him again. But I didn’t mind tossing the conflict into play, because one thing trial attorneys know is that if you pit two sources against each other, sometimes the real facts will emerge from the contest.

  “I can’t say on that, then,” Dr. Hodo said, “since I wasn’t there. Meanwhile, would you like to know what I’m thinking so far?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Your mother is probably a severe agoraphobic, possibly with a clinical depression complication, and suffering from an obsessive-comp
ulsive disorder. I understand she is quite the list maker.”

  List maker? Uh-oh, was that a gene-pool thing?

  “With severe agoraphobia, it isn’t unusual for a person to be so afraid of leaving their house that they can’t reach outside for the mail, or the newspaper,” he said.

  Or to take out the garbage, I thought.

  “While there are milder forms, where fear of things like malls and airports can cause panic attacks, and a person, with help, can still leave their home, your mother has a more acute case.”

  Uh-oh. Fear of airports? Panic attacks? Making lists wasn’t bad enough?

  While I was cursing my DNA, Dr. Hodo scribbled down something and said he had to leave, as he had other patients, but would be in touch if I’d give him a number.

  I pulled a business card out of my purse, wrote down my cell phone number and Dan’s house phone, and handed it over.

  “Take some advice?” he asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Offer the pound cakes to the nurses,” Dr. Hodo said. “Helps build goodwill, and prevents waste. Doesn’t look like your mother is going to eat them.” He glanced at me. “Thin as you are, I’m guessing you do not eat much pound cake either. Maybe the flowers too, your mom isn’t likely to miss them. At least let the nurses enjoy them.” He sniffed at a pound cake.

  “Would you like to take one?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, and patted his flat belly. “Past thirty, you have to be careful about consuming foods like that.” But his eyes said he sure did want one of those pound cakes.

  Yes, I knew about the seductive evils of pound cake. What I was more interested in discussing was the myriad of things I didn’t know. “I don’t understand why she is so…catatonic,” I said. “And Dan said she was psychotic, that’s why they’re keeping her drugged. To my knowledge, she’s never been psychotic before. What would cause that…that change?”