Rohn Federbush - Sally Bianco 03 - The Recorder's Way

by Rohn Federbush

  Helen felt intimidated. She was glad Max insisted they should both approach the good doctor. She remembered the gun in her briefcase and backed away from the man to keep her balance. If he intended to attack her like Marilyn had, she could deal with him.

  “I expect you owe Helen an apology for manhandling her?” Max demanded.

  Helen cocked her head, letting Dr. Handler know her unguarded moment had passed.

  “Yes, yes, of course.” Helen half-expected to see oil drip from his mouth. “You surprised me.: Dr. Handler motioned for both of them to sit back down. “Please tell me what has happened to Marilyn Helms?”

  “Besides blackmailing you, Dr. Whidbey, and Dr. Cornell, she pushed an elderly detective off a cliff in Waterloo.”

  Dr. Handler looked ill. He pushed a button on the wall next to the door and a fully assembled bar swung into view. “Excuse me,” he said, as he poured and drank a quick shot of bourbon. “Would you like a drink?”

  “Do you admit to paying blackmail?” Max asked.

  Dr. Handler slung back another shot of whiskey before taking his time to walk around his desk and sit down in his leather chair. He leaned his head against the back. “Marilyn Helms is a young woman I tried to help out financially. After her involvement in the deaths at St. Anthony’s, no one would hire her. Did you know she is a drug addict?”

  “Yes.” Helen decided to sit down, too.

  Max took out his notebook. “The victim, Sally Bianco, met Marilyn in Adrian at a recovery retreat at St. Anthony’s convent.”

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Dr. Handler said.

  “I don’t think so.” Helen consulted Max.

  “I mean the hospital and the convent both being named for St. Anthony.” Neither Max nor Helen responded. Helen could see Dr. Handler’s mind was racing around inside that handsome old skull, looking for believable excuses. “Marilyn Helms was my lover,” Dr. Handler proffered.

  “We’ve met Marilyn,” Max said.

  “Oh, I’m not saying she was attractive,” Dr. Handler stoked his chin. “Just convenient.”

  Helen felt as if a sewer had opened at her feet. Her nose twitched and she needed to bathe, to change her clothes as soon as possible. Max stood and Helen followed him to the door. The fresh air from the hall helped revive her.

  “Captain Tedler will be contacting you,” Max said with his back still turned away from the doctor. Helen didn’t want to see the man alive on earth, either. ‘God forgive me,’ she prayed for her violent thought.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  Seven wives married that guy?” Max opened the passenger door of his Mustang for Helen.

  “Will Captain Tedler ask the wives to testify against Handler?”

  Max banged the steering wheel. “I wonder how long number seven will last.”

  “Does money make women blind?

  Max knew Maybell used money to justify her actions. “I’d like to meet the present Mrs. Handler.”

  Helen seemed to read his mind. “Alone?”

  “I might find a different angle on the case.”

  “I agree, Max. She’ll be inhibited with me tagging along.”

  “I think I should go now, before Handler gets a chance to prepare her.

  “Just drop me at home, Max.” Helen fastened her seat belt. “It’s on the way.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  Second Friday in May, 2008

  Dr. Handler’s Home

  Dr. Handler’s wife inserted her key into the front door, as Max Hunt strolled up behind her. “Mrs. Handler?”

  “Yes. You’re not allowed to solicit in this neighborhood, young man.”

  Max flashed his detective badge. “The police are interested in Dr. Handler’s association with Marilyn Helms. She’s a nurse who works for him. We have her in custody for the murder of a colleague of mine, Sally Bianco.”

  “You’ll need to wait for him.” Mrs. Handler opened the unusual front door. The doorway wasn’t double, but it was wider than most. The home was white-painted brick. A ‘1909’ historical plaque was displayed prominently near the recessed entrance.

  Max stepped over the threshold. “This is wide enough for a coffin and pallbearers.”

  “The house has been owned by doctors since it was built.” Mrs. Handler led the way to the right of the entrance past a chiming clock. “My husband should be home in ten minutes.”

  The entrance rug was zebra skin. The floors were tiled white, the stairway facing the doorway was carpeted in white, the walls, the latticework on the windows, the piano, the couch, the lampshades, and all the knick-knacks were white. In the main room, the mounted heads of a white buffalo, an African elephant, a horned rhinoceros, and a Dall long-horned sheep marred the innocence-claiming, immaculately white decorating scheme.

  In Dr. Handler’s den at the back of the house where Mrs. Handler deposited Max, the walls were a deep maroon. Max was tempted to touch the textured material on the walls, which looked like tanned hides, dyed to match each other. Fifteen more animal heads of antelope, moose, and deer were hung two and three high around the stuffy room. “Could you open a window?” Max felt he might pass out from the lack of oxygen or the surrounding horrors.

  Mrs. Handler swung open the French doors. A breeze wafting over a wall of red roses entered the room, but its sweetness reminded Max of the smell of fresh blood in Iraq. Instead of taking the chair Mrs. Handler pointed to, Max stepped out into the small garden. A stone bench served him well. Max wished he smoked. He could cover his queasiness better by lighting up. “Could I ask for a drink of water?”

  “You look quite ill, young man. I’ll be right back.”

  When Mrs. Handler returned, Dr. Handler accompanied her. “We have already spoken at my office,” Dr. Handler explained to his wife. He pointed the way out for Max. “I’ll have to ask you to leave.” Max stood up, held onto the frame of the French doors and wobbled past the doctor and his wife. “Have you been drinking?” Dr. Handler shouted after him. Max managed to find the front door, but his knees failed him. He fell head first across the threshold.

  “Call 911, Margaret!” Dr. Handler knelt beside Max. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Max thought he might have broken his nose on the pavement. Blood gushed everywhere. He tried to sit up, but the blood threatened to ruin his clothes. Still on all fours, Max gained access to his handkerchief to stop the nosebleed. “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” he managed to say before passing out from the sight of his own blood.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  Second Friday in May, 2008

  Costello Residence

  “But, Mother.” Helen shook her head at the plethora of empty boxes in her bedroom. “I like my clothes. You have been busy today. I know you like me in emerald green now but I don’t want to give any more of my things to Purple Heart.”

  “Of course you don’t.” Mother sat down on Helen’s single bed. “I’m sorry. You know I’ve managed this household with an iron fist for so long, I don’t know how to stop.”

  “You were never a tyrant.” Helen joined her mother on the bed. “You know Dad and I love you.”

  “But you are getting too old for me to manipulate.” Mother smiled, but then handed Helen the housing section of the newspaper. Three advertisements were circled in red.

  “Oh, Mother.” Helen thought she might break down in childish tears. “You want me to move out?”

  Mother hugged her. “I want you to be happy, as happy as your father and I are.” They could hear the phone ringing downstairs. Julia’s new social life included an unusual increase in calls. Helen’s extension rang only when customers called The Firm. Dad would answer the house phone.

  “With whom will I be as happy as you and Dad?”

  “Why Max, of course.”

  “I don’t want to move in with Max.”

  Mother stood and dusted off her hands. “I should hope not! I moved from my parents’ home into Andrew’s apartment after we married. But I think you should learn
how to live on your own. Decorate your own house, buy groceries, get a cat.”

  “Like a spinster?”

  “Like someone who needs a pet to warm up a place.” Mother lined the boxes up under the windows. “Something to come home to.”

  “I guess I could use the boxes to pack. Sister James Marine is taking ten of my dollhouses for the convent. She thinks an abuse shelter will take the rest.” Helen tapped the roof of her blue Victorian dollhouse. “I’m keeping this one.”

  “I bet you and Max will end up in an old house like this.” Mother bent over to move one of the tiny chairs away from the miniature dining room table. She set it on the floor outside the house.

  Helen saw the action as a metaphor for moving her chair away from the Costello table. Did her presence reminded her mother too much of the first George Clemmons? Her injury of rejection by the Clemmons family and by the man she had loved must be fresh in her mind.

  Mother asked, “Did I ever tell you Sally Bianco and I tried to volunteer at the Safe House?” Dad came up the stairs and stood in the doorway. Mother saw him, too; but continued her story. “The shelter fired us because Sally told the women to wait until their husbands fell asleep, then to take an iron skillet and beat them around the head and privates.”

  “No wonder they asked you to leave.” Helen rescued the discarded dollhouse chair, repositioning it under the table in the miniature dining room.

  Dad tried to interrupt. “That phone call was from…”

  Helen did not want to concede her point. “You were supposed to let women gain back their inner strength before they moved out on their own.”

  “While they were penniless and so beaten up no one would hire them?” Mother clicked her tongue. “Didn’t make sense to Sally and it didn’t make sense to me.”

  “The hospital!” Dad finished his bit of news.

  Helen hugged her mother. “Okay, we can look at the places you picked out for me.”

  Dad coughed as he stood at the door. Mother laughed and pointed at him. “Your dad circled those apartments.”

  Helen’s mouth dropped open. “Et tu Bruté?”

  Her dad took the offending paper. “This condo is just two blocks from Max’s, walking distance. You could cook for him, invite him over.”

  “Max?”

  “He’s at the hospital?” Dad limped over to her, shook her shoulders. “Max loves you but doesn’t think he’s good enough for you.”

  “Max?”

  “Anyone else been sniffing around you?”

  “Dad!”

  Mother asked him to repeat himself. “Max is in the hospital? That’s what you said?”

  “Yes. We have to go.” Dad herded the two women down the stairs.

  Once in the car, he said, “Max collapsed at Dr. Handler’s home. The ambulance took him to the university hospital.” He turned slightly to speak to Helen who sat as if stunned in the back seat of the car. “Helen, your mother and I are not blind. We know you care for Max.” The three of them drove in silence until Dad added, “By the way, your condo has three trees and flowering hedges. The window boxes are filled, now, with daffodils.”

  “Each unit has its own laundry room.” Mother said.

  Dad slowed the car to ask, “Did Max’s PTSD cause his vomiting the other day?”

  Helen discovered she could speak. “Max had previously told me his shell shock was hardly noticeable because of his parents’ deaths.”

  “His dad strangled his mother,” Dad explained to Mother. “then shot himself.”

  “I’m sure the war could trump that,” Julia said. “Is he under a doctor’s care?”

  “He will be from now on,” Helen promised them. She tried to explain why Max was not seeing a therapist currently. “We both studied the symptoms for shell shock at school. PTSD is just the new name for war injuries to the soul. The smallest thing can trigger a bout of debilitating fear.” Helen remembered Max’s shock and shame at hearing Dad mention Mrs. Brent’s pregnancy.

  She had Google’d his symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to find if a cure existed. EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, sessions might allow Max to distance himself from his memories and set up defense mechanisms to cope with reoccurrences. “I wonder what happened at the Handlers.” Helen asked.

  “Something must have triggered the episode?” Dad said, rubbing his bum leg.

  Chapter Nine

  “Therefore their days did he consume in vanity and their years in trouble. When he slew them, then they sought him: and they returned and enquired early after God.” Psalm 78: 30-34

  Third Monday in May, 2008

  Ann Arbor Police Station

  Dr. Handler wore designer jeans with a black silk shirt for his visit to the police station. Max priced out the sneakers on the doctor’s feet. Three hundred dollars was a lot to pay for a pair of shoes. Dr. Handler’s attire telegraphed he was not destitute. When the newspapers reported Dr. Whidbey had been arrested in connection with a blackmailing scheme, Dr. Handler decided to make himself available to the police. “I’ll be glad to authorize handing over all my bank records.” Handler spoke to Captain Tedler, who stayed in the hall closing the interrogation room door without commenting. Max spread the doctor’s file contents onto the metal table. Dr. Handler refused to take a seat. “Isn’t Tedler joining us?”

  Max pointed to the stack of accounting records. “He’s recording our session with a visitor on the other side of the mirror. We received a warrant yesterday for the information. Why did you find it necessary to pay Marilyn Helms $30,000?”

  Handler hid his curiosity about the mystery visitor by becoming overly chatty. “I’m glad you’ve recovered so quickly from your bout of PTSD.” Dr. Handler refused to examine the file Max thrust to his side of the table. “I know Dr. Whidbey and Dr. Cornell didn’t match my outlay. They paid Marilyn blackmail for keeping their slip-ups secret. I, however, was not included in the debacle. I paid Marilyn for sexual favors.”

  Max raised one eyebrow. “You think a jury is going to believe you paid over $30,000 for sex?”

  Dr. Handler tapped his delicate fingers on the metal table. “I admit when Marilyn first started, her prescriptions were easier to finance. I’ve kept detailed financial records and a few videos before Marilyn became so enormous. My journals are very explicit.”

  Max realized the doctor might slip away from them. He remembered Sharon Daley and Helen cautioning him. “Your wives … ?”

  Dr. Handler rubbed his hands together. “Were seven. Every time Marilyn needed a raise, she would threaten to expose us. I always told her to go ahead, no one would believe her. However, six of my very wealthy wives did take her side in the affair. Apparently, their sensibilities were outraged I would pay for serves rendered.” Handler stared unflinchingly at his reflection in the two-way mirror. “I merely countered with the fact each of them paid my bills to enjoy being with me.”

  Max nodded in a state of shock. “Of course, the whole truth and nothing but the truth always ended the relationships.”

  “However,” Dr. Handler raised one ringed hand for Max and the secret visitor to examine. “My seventh wife and I are no longer interested. So the issue is moot. We like to travel. We’ve been married for three months.”

  Max remembered why he didn’t enjoy the detective business and why Helen declined to interview Handler. He opened Larry Schneider’s file folder. “Your patient, who died at St. Anthony’s Hospital …?”

  Dr. Handler condescended to sit down. “Larry’s parents were very negligent. They never told me about the boy’s rash. I personally had not examined the boy when he was taken to St. Anthony’s emergency room. I was no longer employed with the hospital. The attending doctor was apparently quite busy with a flurry of panicky mothers bringing in their children to be tested for spinal meningitis. If Larry’s mother had bathed him the night before, she would have seen red skin eruptions. It’s a wonder he lived as long as he did, before Marilyn gave him an overdose
of morphine.”

  “Is your lawyer expected soon?” With those words, Max scooped up the files and fled the room as if to search for Dr. Handler’s lawyer. He wasn’t sure Dr. Handler even considered needing an attorney. Mostly, Max needed an excuse for leaving the room without admitting to Dr. Handler that there might not be enough evidence to extract any punishment for his neglect in Larry Schneider’s death. Captain Tedler and the fictitious visitor could show Dr. Handler the door.

  Driving down I-94, Max clamped his right arm down on the file of Dr. Handler’s bank statements. When the wind had flipped open the folder, pages had taken flight behind the convertible. Max tucked the bank records under the passenger seat, without a thought about retrieving the lost documents. Max wished his thoughts of Helen could fly away as easily. He wanted the woman, needed her close, missed her whenever they were separated. He berated himself for his deception to her father. Andrew needed to know all the facts about his affair with Maybell (Anita Brent) and the impending birth of his child. “My child,” he said aloud and acknowledge for the first time all the pride he felt.

  “Also …,” Max felt the weight of his next idea. “Helen and I need to talk to Larry Schneider’s parents.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  Tom Schneider’s Apartment

  Tom Schneider’s stark penthouse was unrelieved by the ambiance of books or fabrics. No rugs were scattered about the slate flooring. Leather pillows perched on the black leather couch and chairs. Vertical blinds with mirrored slats blocked out the fading light of the spring day. Black brass sculptures of men and prancing horses were tastefully placed about the living room.

  Helen wondered if Max’s studio apartment would feel like this negative block of space, too. After Tom asked them to remove their shoes, a mangy, longhaired black mutt sniffed Max’s gigantic loafers and Helen’s high heels. Max let the dog lick his hand. “What is your dog’s name?”

  “I fixed her after her last litter, but I failed to name her.” Tom stretched out his arms to offer Helen and Max glasses of iced tea wrapped in a paper towels.

  Helen wanted to spoon feed the discouraging information about Dr. Handler’s case with a compliment about Tom’s apartment. Her mind drew a blank. Instead, she heard Max say. “You haven’t lived here long.”