Watching the Detectives

by Julie Mulhern

  “I suggested Mrs. Schlafly.”

  “You don’t support women’s rights?” It was like poking a bear. I knew better. I knew better and I did it anyway.

  “Hell no. Most women are just like Cora—in need of a firm hand.”

  “Mother would be surprised to hear you say that.” That sounded so much better than you are a chauvinist pig. No. Ass. You are a chauvinist ass.

  “Your mother is an exception. She’s a fine woman.”

  And Cora wasn’t? Cora was his wife.

  Mr. Coffee finished dripping. I pulled three mugs out of the cabinet and poured coffee into one of them. “Do you take cre—?” What was I doing? I was a guest in his house, but because I was a woman I was serving him?

  “The cream’s in the fridge.” Thornton pointed at the refrigerator. Thornton was big on pointing. My back stiffened and I bit my tongue.

  I’d come here to apologize, not instigate more family drama. I suppressed the urge to pour hot coffee in Thornton’s lap, fetched the cream, added a dollop to his cup, and handed it to him.

  He didn’t thank me.

  Next I poured coffee into the other two cups. “Does Cora take cream?”

  His brows lifted as if the question surprised him. “I don’t know.”

  They’d been married how many years?

  “You think your daughter’s done apologizing?”

  I took a sip of coffee. It didn’t taste as good as the coffee at my house. A bitter taste lingered. “I’ll go check.”

  Thornton pushed away from the table. “I’ll come with you.” His meaning was clear. He wanted us gone.

  We walked down the hall to the foyer and heard voices coming from the living room.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting—” I held up the mug I’d poured for Cora “—but I brought you coffee.”

  “You’re not interrupting.” Cora’s voice was faint.

  “Here.” I put the mug into her hands. “You sound as if you could use this.”

  Cora took a sip and made a face.

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure if you took cream or sugar.”

  “Both.” She took another sip and offered me a sickly smile. “But this tastes wonderful.”

  “Cora, you look as if you should lie down.” An understatement. That she was standing was a miracle. She was beyond pale and the hands holding her coffee mug were shaking. “We’ll get out of your hair.”

  “I am really sorry, Cousin Cora.” Grace sounded genuinely contrite.

  Behind me, Thornton made a low noise, suspiciously close to a growl.

  I had all I could take of Thornton. “Let’s go, Grace.”

  “I’ll see you out,” said Cora.

  “Don’t be silly. We’ll see ourselves out. You go rest.”

  Grace and I stepped outside and were met with rain mixed with ice. We hurried to the car.

  I turned on the ignition and the heat.

  “Cousin Cora…” Grace’s voice trailed off.

  “Cousin Cora what?” I pulled away from the curb.

  “Are you sure she’s okay?”

  No. “Why do you ask?”

  “She flinched when I hugged her.”

  “Sometimes when people are upset, they feel it in their muscles and bones.”

  Grace did not look convinced. I didn’t blame her.

  “She flinched as if I’d hurt her,” Grace insisted. “I didn’t even squeeze.”

  “We’ll check on her tomorrow.” I gazed out the windshield at the horrible weather. “I’ve got to go and visit Jinx in the hospital.”

  “In the hospital? What’s wrong with her?”

  Whoops. I rubbed the end of my nose in anticipation of the itch. “Food poisoning.”

  “But she ate at our house last night.”

  I drove slowly, all too aware of the ice pellets hitting the street and how poorly the Triumph handled in inclement weather. “How do you know that?”

  “I heard her voice.”

  “Really? There were a lot of voices.”

  “Only when everybody was getting there. This was later. She was telling Mr. George to get out of the dining room.”

  The car hit a patch of ice and spun. With one hand I clutched the wheel, turning into the skid. The other arm flew in front of Grace, blocking her from hitting the windshield.

  We completed a circle and came to a stop.

  Neither of us said a word. I, for one, couldn’t. My heart was too firmly lodged in my throat. My mouth was as dry as a sand trap in August, there was a real possibility my left hand was fused to the steering wheel, and the slick pavement in front of us appeared to be at the end of a tunnel.

  “Are you all right?” Grace spoke first.

  I nodded. “You?”

  “Fine. Maybe you should go see Mrs. George tomorrow.”

  I nodded again. It had been a long day. Jinx would understand. And I’d have questions for her. So many questions.

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  That was just what I needed. To be stressed and tired and in the passenger seat with a teenager behind the wheel during an ice storm. There was a lot to be said for being in control. “No. I’m fine. Let’s go home.”

  seventeen

  The institutional white of the sheet that covered Jinx turned the vestiges of her summer tan a jaundiced yellow.

  Her face, wiped clean of makeup, looked older and softer and sadder. Her eyes were closed. Was she sleeping?

  I paused just inside the door, clutching a copy of Joseph Heller’s new book, Something Happened, and a bag of pastries from the patisserie on the Plaza.

  The window sill held two enormous arrangements of roses. Hot house roses. No floral scent combatted the smell of hospital.

  Jinx’s eyelids fluttered open. “Ellison.”

  I stepped all the way into the room. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like hell.” She shifted her gaze to the window, sleet pinged against the glass. Her lips thinned. “They pumped my stomach.”

  I was torn between sympathy and a desire to throttle her. She had scared Libba and me half to death. But she looked so pale, no makeup, and her hair a mess that sympathy won.

  “That sounds horrible. I don’t suppose you want these?” I held up the bag of croissants. Why hadn’t I thought about her stomach? I should have brought flowers or a plant.

  “Are you kidding? As soon as I’m cleared for solids, I’m eating every single morsel in that bag. They don’t feed you in this place.”

  I put the bag down on the L-shaped table next to her bed. “I also brought you this.” I held up the book then added it to the table. “It’s a new bestseller.” Jinx liked staying au courant with the latest books.

  “Something Happened,” she read out loud. “It sure as hell did.”

  “What? What happened?” I took off my coat and sank into the chair next to her bed. Many naugas had given their hydes for that chair. It made an embarrassing squeaking sound as my bottom met its surface.

  We giggled. Nervous, avoid-the-elephant-in-the-room giggles.

  There wasn’t enough room in the room for an elephant. “I mean it.” I shifted my gaze to my friend in the hospital bed. “What happened?”

  Her gaze slid back to the window, a mere pane of glass protecting us from the elements. “I took too many pills.”

  She made it sound as if she’d miscounted. How did that happen? Why was she taking any pills at all? “Why?”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose.” Now she sounded peevish. “It just…happened. I made a mistake.”

  I wasn’t buying it.

  “Who was it that said there are no mistakes?”

  She gave up on watching the weather and settled her tired ga
ze on me. “Freud. But he was a misogynistic ass.” Jinx had studied psychology in college—Freud and Jung and Lord knew who else. To argue with her meant an hours-long discussion. Besides, for all I knew, Freud might have been a misogynist. I kept quiet.

  I looked down at my lap again. I wore gray flannel pants. One of Max’s hairs had migrated to the fabric and I picked the tiny length of soft gray off my leg and let it drift into the trash can. “What happened on Thursday night?”

  The air in the room stilled. The only sounds were the low hum of machinery, the encroaching weather, and the distant voices of a few nurses.

  “Nothing.” The pitch of Jinx’s voice was high—squeaky high—and her cheeks paled until they were whiter than the bleached sheets. Any idiot could tell she was lying.

  “The truth.” I clasped my hands in my lap, ready for the worst. “Please.”

  Jinx stared at the ceiling. Hardly scintillating. “I don’t know how you do it.”

  “Do what?”

  She rubbed her eyes. “Find bodies.”

  “I don’t do it on purpose.” No matter what Mother thought, that was God’s truth.

  “Neither did we.”

  The hospital sounds, the roses that didn’t smell, the naugahyde waiting to rub against my bottom and make another rude noise—they all faded away. “You found Stan?”

  Jinx’s nod was barely perceptible. “Preston wanted another egg.” She shuddered. “Why did you serve those awful things?”

  Why had Preston wanted a second one? That was a better question.

  “Mother picked the buffet items.” Under normal circumstances we would have commiserated over Mother selecting the menu at my house. These weren’t normal circumstances. “About Stan?”

  “I went with Preston to get the egg and we saw him.” Her eyes widened as if she could actually see Stan on my dining room floor, the pool of blood, the candlestick, the matter. She crossed her arms over her chest. “It was awful.”

  No argument. “Why didn’t you go for help?”

  “We panicked.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “I’d spent the past few weeks telling my friends that Khaki overcharged for services. I told them she broke up her clients’ marriages. I told them to watch their own husbands. And now Khaki’s husband was dead.” A single tear escaped her shuttered lids. “One of us—both of us—would have been suspects. We saw Stan there on the floor and we froze.”

  “Froze?”

  She nodded emphatically. Even opened her eyes and stared at me as if I’d be able to read the truth in her irises.

  “And then?”

  A few more tears meandered down her cheeks. Could I believe in those tears?

  She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. “We turned out the lights and left him. We went back to the living room and acted as if nothing happened.”

  The person who’d killed Stan had done the same thing—returned to the living room or the family room, reclaimed their plate or drink, and pretended like nothing happened.

  “I couldn’t sleep Thursday night. I saw Stan every time I closed my eyes, so I took a few pills. Preston woke me yesterday morning and told me I had to act normally. He went to work. I sat at my kitchen table and got more and more anxious. So I took more pills.”

  I withheld judgment. Sort of. Surely she could find a better way to handle stress than valium.

  “I can tell what you’re thinking, Ellison, and I don’t have a problem with drugs.”

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  “You didn’t have to,” she snapped. “Besides, they’re not drugs. They’re prescription medication.”

  It wasn’t an argument I’d win. “Why did you go to Libba’s?”

  “It made sense at the time. Libba and I were supposed to have lunch, and I was trying to lead a normal day.”

  Normal? By showing up at Libba’s at nine in the morning zonked out of her mind? Or had Jinx counted on the fact that of all her friends, Libba, who seldom rose before ten, was the one guaranteed to be home, to get her help? Was Jinx that calculating?

  “Did you see anything on Thursday night? Anyone in the front hall?”

  “You mean before we found Stan?”

  No, before the caterer served coffee. “Yes, before you found Stan.”

  “There was no one around.” The words came so fast they tumbled over each other.

  I sat in silence, thinking. My friend was addicted to pills. My friend found a corpse in my dining room and left it there. My friend might be a killer.

  “If you don’t believe me, ask Preston.”

  I intended to. I stood. “I’ll let you rest.”

  “Ellison.” Jinx’s voice was as raw as the weather outside. “You and Libba saved me. Thank you.”

  I leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You’re welcome.”

  The parking garage at the hospital was a country mile from the patients’ rooms. The walk gave me time to think.

  About Jinx and Preston. I had to talk to Preston.

  About Khaki.

  About Stan.

  About…The conversation I had with Karen still niggled at me. Everyone told me that Khaki had a tendency to overcharge. The fact that many of her clients’ marriages ended in divorce was indisputable. Yet Karen, who was presumably overcharged and had seen her marriage end, adored Khaki. Why?

  This had to stop. I was running out of rooms for people to be murdered in.

  Karen didn’t live far away—one of the poet apartment buildings on the Plaza. Was it the Robert Browning or the Washington Irving? Maybe the Henry Wadsworth? I pictured the page in the Junior League directory. She lived in the Washing Irving. Fifth floor. I was sure of it.

  I drove to the Plaza, parked in front of her building, and, gathering my coat around me and sinking my neck into its collar, negotiated the frozen concrete of the front steps.

  No door man. Just a locked door.

  I found Karen’s name on the list of buttons next to the door and pushed.

  Nothing.

  I poked at the button a second time.

  “That’s not working.” A young man in a leather jacket and jaunty scarf pushed the door open from the inside. He jerked his goateed chin at the open door. “Go on in.”

  I went and was grateful for the wave of warmth that welcomed me.

  Five-twelve.

  Karen’s building was not luxurious, but it had a certain old-world charm. A charm that mixed well the scents of aged iron (the bannisters) and ancient carpet. The elevator looked as ancient as the carpet. I climbed the stairs. Five flights. This place was a far cry from the home Karen had shared with her husband in Sunset Hills.

  I stopped at the top of the stairs. The landing was dim. And quiet.

  Five-twelve.

  Down the hall.

  I knocked and the door swung open.

  Dread seeped into the hallway, wrapped around my ankles, and twined its way up my legs. My heart, which was already beating at a decent clip after five flights of stairs, sped up. A sinking feeling lowered my stomach to my knees. “Karen?” My voice shook.

  No answer.

  I stuck my head inside the apartment. There was no foyer. The front door opened directly into the living room. Or what had been the living room.

  A porcelain lamp had been smashed into shards, an upholstered chair was upended, and there was blood. Everywhere. Painting the lamp’s shards. Splashed on the wall. Spattered across the floor.

  “Karen?” I yelled this time.

  No answer.

  The idiot girl in the horror movie who goes into the dark house where the axe murderer hides—the one about whom every woman in the audience is silently thinking, “No loss. She’s too stupid to live.” That was me.

  Except it wasn’t a creepy
house. It was a mid-priced apartment. It wasn’t dark. I saw all too well the potential danger. And it wasn’t some imaginary kid in peril. It was a real woman. Me. “Karen?”

  I stepped into the living room

  Did the idiot girls get not-alone, creepy-crawly feelings on the backs of their necks? The kind of feeling that trickled down their spines and tightened every nerve. I sure did.

  The smart thing to do was go to another apartment and ask to use the phone. I was not too stupid to live.

  I backed toward the hallway.

  A moan stopped me in my tracks.

  “Karen?”

  “Help.” The word was faint, barely a word.

  But I’d heard it. There was no backing out now.

  “Karen?” I stepped into the living room and climbed over a ladder back chair that had been reduced to matchsticks.

  “Help.” The voice came from the next room.

  I rounded the corner and stopped.

  Holy Mother of God. I covered my mouth—a futile attempt at stemming sudden nausea. I swallowed, breathed through my mouth, closed my eyes. After a few seconds, the storm in my stomach subsided.

  I opened my eyes.

  I’d seen dead people that looked better than Karen Fleming.

  Her face was so swollen and purple it hardly looked like a face. Her left leg bent at an odd angle and there was blood. So much blood it seemed impossible that there could be any left in her body. I knelt next to her and took her hand. “Hang in there. I’ll call for help.”

  The telephone was on the floor next to me, ripped from the wall.

  “Is there a phone in your bedroom?”

  She didn’t answer me.

  “We need help.” Mistress of the obvious, that was me.

  She didn’t answer me. Imagine that.

  I released her hand and rushed down the short length of the only hallway. The bedroom had to be at the end.

  The place where Karen laid her head at night was untouched. The bed neatly made. Her brush set placed with precision on the dresser. A phone sat on the nightstand.

  I snatched the receiver from the cradle and dialed the number.