Unfit to Practice

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “No.”

  So, where could he be? Where was he now, her wandering boy, the boy of her tender care, the boy who was her joy and light, child of her love and prayer-then she realized where Bob must be. Resisting the impulse to stick her head out into the backyard and scream bloody murder, she ran upstairs to change into jeans and a sweater. She ran outside and fired up the Bronco.

  She drove the couple of miles to the Bijou, parked across from the dilapidated cabin, and got out. Straightening her shoulders, she thought, well, I’m a Mom, I spell M-O-M. Mom.

  She knocked on the door.

  “Nina!” Daria Zack, eyes wide, her blouse open almost to her navel, answered the door, Hitchcock drooling beside her like a huge, black witch’s familiar. “Wow, did I not expect you.”

  “Bob here?” Nina asked.

  “Um. I don’t know,” Daria said. “Maybe.”

  Well, Nikki had always described her mother, Nina’s former client, as a flake. Nina now knew what extremes of flakiness were possible, as she walked inside the sparse living room and greeted a man in his twenties, half dressed, sprawled across a few pillows near the fireplace.

  “Hi,” he said feebly. Holding one hand across the fig-leaf area, he put his other hand over the smoldering joint in the fifties ashtray, as if he could hide these things behind six-inch hand spans.

  Politely greeting him, Nina thought, Bob better not be here. At least Hitchcock remembered his manners. Since her arrival, he had stuck close to her heels.

  “You could check her room,” said Daria, some small recognition of the seriousness of the situation dawning.

  “Okay,” Nina said, heading toward one of the two bedrooms.

  She tried the door and found it locked, so she knocked. There was no answer.

  “Maybe they left,” Daria offered from a few feet behind, buttoning up the middle button on her blouse.

  Nina knocked again. The door opened. Nikki, entirely too relaxed-looking, stood in front of her. “Oh, hello, Nina.” Behind her, Bob loomed, a worried look plastered across his mug.

  “Ms. Reilly to you,” she told Nikki. She grabbed Bob’s arm and propelled him through the living room, out the front door, and into the car. Hitchcock jumped into the backseat.

  “What’s your problem!” Bob asked as she pulled away.

  “Why aren’t you home?”

  “You said you’d be late. We wanted to practice-”

  “Do not, please, do not give me that. She was high. I could see it in her eyes.”

  Silence, then, “It was just really dark in the room. She doesn’t get high, far as I know.”

  Really dark in the room. Reassuring words. “Are you?”

  “What? Mom, I’m not even fourteen!”

  “Are you,” she repeated, her voice steely, her hand on the wheel curled rigid as pipe, “high?”

  “No.”

  “Bob, we’ve talked about this.”

  “About what?”

  “Drugs.”

  “I don’t do that stuff. I have zero interest. I told you!”

  “Daria’s boyfriend was smoking pot in that house while you were there. That’s not only unacceptable, it’s illegal.”

  “She told him to quit it and so he put it out. She’s not pushing a drug agenda, Mom.”

  “Would you have taken anything if she was? Because my impression is that these people have a hold on you.”

  “Nobody’s got a hold on me,” he protested.

  Unfortunately, that included her. She decided to use Paul’s frequently stated solution: Nail his feet to the floor. She told him there would be no further practice of any kind, music or otherwise, with Nikki. Bob folded his arms, stared straight ahead, and no doubt hated her all the way home.

  After Paul dropped Nina at her cabin, he called Wish, who needed to tell him all about the terrific spinning restaurant he had found at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco before agreeing to meet him in half an hour.

  “Hey,” Paul said, pulling up next to him in the parking lot of the Starlake Building.

  “Hey.” Wish climbed in beside him. “Where to?”

  “Ever heard of this outfit?” He handed Wish a piece of paper Nina had written for him.

  “Big Lake Sport Fishing,” he read. “Sure. They’ve got an office at the Keys.”

  Turning right onto Lake Tahoe Boulevard, Paul glanced over at him. “You look sleek.”

  “I do?” Wish wore a brown leather jacket over his jeans.

  “So you had lunch in the city.”

  “Yeah, after walking up to Chinatown and playing around for a couple of hours. I found a couple of Japanese animes I’ve been looking for.”

  “Didn’t you drop Nina off this morning at nine? Strikes me as funny, you being in the same vicinity several hours later. So I surmise a special reason for hanging around. Hmm.” He tapped his chin. “Whatever could it be?”

  Wish grunted.

  “Lunch with a lady.”

  “You caught me red-handed, Copper.”

  “How was the food?”

  “Good, like I told you already.”

  “Brandy after?”

  “Huh?” said Wish.

  “A joke. You had lunch with Brandy Taylor, didn’t you?”

  “She asked me.”

  Paul turned toward the Keys.

  “She just needs a friend.”

  Paul turned the radio on.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me what we talked about?”

  “No.”

  “She told me something.”

  “She did?”

  “Yeah,” Wish said, unaware of the sensation he had caused. “You remember the sex-problem thing with Bruce? She told me what was going on. I guess she told her sister, too, and her mom, and maybe other people, but she just can’t bring herself to tell Bruce.”

  Paul sighed and put the car back where it belonged on the road. “Okay, so what did she tell you?”

  “It’s a secret. I do have a question, Paul. If you know something about a guy, and if you told him you could maybe help mend a relationship, but it means you’ll ace yourself right out of the love picture, plus it isn’t the kind of thing you ever want to talk to another guy about, especially not a stranger, what do you do?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Plus there’s this added issue, which is, um, I, um. Aack. I have the same problem.”

  Johnny quick draw? Johnny no comeback? Johnny shoot blanks? What in the world had Wish in such a tizzy?

  “I like her, but I’d have to love her a whole lot,” Wish went on glumly. “A whole, whole lot.”

  “Do the noble thing.” She wanted Bruce, not Wish, that much Paul knew. Poor Wish.

  “Is that like, your personal wisdom, how you live your life?”

  “What have I ever done to make you think a thing like that?”

  Up ahead, lights illuminated the white-lettered sign for the sports-fishing business. They parked and walked up some outside stairs toward a second-story office that overlooked the marina. Paul had been told John Kelly often worked a late shift, doing paperwork and accounts in the office. Sure enough, the windows shone with lamplight. Wish raised his hand to knock.

  Paul pulled it back. “Shh.” He looked around the side of the building into the window. “He’s in there, all right.” He led Wish back to the car. “Now we wait.”

  Wish settled back against the car seat. “Who is this guy?”

  “Cody Stinson’s best friend.”

  “And we’re following him, why?”

  “I checked with a guy I know at the Tahoe jail. Late this afternoon, Cody gave his old pal John Kelly a call. Nina was hoping he just might lead us straight to Carol Ames, and I think it’s a definite possibility.”

  “Cody’s alibi? Why would he lead us to her?”

  “Nina thought Cody might call on him to track Carol down tonight. John Kelly knows Carol and Cody both. He used to pal around with them back in the days when they were together.”

  �
�Sounds like a stretch.”

  “Well, maybe it is. But you know, Wish, in this business we feed on unsubstantiated rumors, innuendo, and gossip. Why not plain old hope now and then?”

  A few minutes later, Kelly came out, locked the door behind him, and hopped on a motorcycle.

  “Well, look at that.”

  Paul followed at a discreet distance as Kelly wound his way around the parking lot and back out to the boulevard. He rode on for a little more than two miles to Ski Run, turned left again, toward the lake, and parked in a lot by the marina.

  Kelly walked out toward one of the docks, stopped at the locked gate, and let himself in. A dozen boats floated in the black water, creaking as they bobbed on the crests. Kelly walked past several large cabin cruisers and stopped at a sailboat on the right side. He looked from side to side. Presumably satisfied no one else was taking an interest, he stepped aboard.

  “Is she there?”

  “Let’s find out,” Paul said. Moving quietly, they tried the gate, which Kelly had kindly left open, and walked up the dock toward the sailboat. A cold March wind winnowed its way inside Paul’s light windbreaker, and the marina lights danced like fairies over the water under a pale yellow moon.

  A window cracked in the sailboat cabin made the two voices intimately accessible to Paul and Wish, who were crouched, as if that position might make them less visible.

  “How’d you find me, John?” a woman asked, her voice nervous, but warm and mellow on the cold air.

  Kelly said, “I called the apartment all day. Your roommate told me you weren’t expected, but I remembered your dad’s boat. Carol, Cody’s concerned.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “He called me from San Francisco today. He’s at that hearing about the attorney who’s caused so much trouble. What’s strange is, your name keeps popping up.”

  “You shouldn’t have come.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re scared of me, Carol. That would hurt my feelings. I just want to pass along the word. Cody wants you to stay hidden, in fact, he’s gonna insist.”

  “I have work, you know-”

  “I know all about that. Take it with you. This is just for a couple of days, ’til things die down. He’s worried they’ll try to call you and ask you about that night at the campground.”

  “He was with me that night! Those girls were wrong, saying they saw him there.”

  “Yeah, sure. So I heard. So everybody heard. But at this hearing today, he admitted he was there that night. He now says you were asleep and didn’t hear him go.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “You’ve been out of the loop.”

  “He told me to lay low and not to contact him. Oh, he’s such an idiot. Shit. We had him covered. If he had just stuck to that we could have gotten him off!”

  “Oh, well. At least the police believe that you sleep heavy and had no idea what he was up to that night. Cody’s not so sure about these lawyers. He says they’re thinking too hard, digging too deep.”

  “Tell me Cody didn’t admit to killing Phoebe.”

  “No. He’s an idiot but even he’s not that stupid.”

  “Why’d he cave in like that? Those women can identify him in court. He could go to jail for life, John! He had a good alibi. If he had just kept his mouth shut-now these silly girls are going to get up in court and get him put away-”

  “Look, that can’t be fixed. But we can prevent them from dragging you into this any further. Now, since it was so easy for me to find your dad’s boat, maybe we can come up with someplace a little harder, at least until this hearing is over. I thought, maybe my sister’s place.”

  “I’m fine here.”

  John Kelly convinced her otherwise, and since his persuasion involved no physical urging, Paul let him. When Paul and Wish understood the two would be leaving the boat soon, they slipped back up the dock to the car and got in. After a few minutes, Kelly climbed on his bike and Carol Ames, small, dark-haired, and skinny, took the wheel of a Saturn. Kelly followed her as she pulled out, and Paul followed him. Ten minutes later, the bike and the Saturn pulled up to a house off the Kingsbury Grade. Kelly escorted Carol to the door, rang the bell, and saw her inside. After a few more minutes, he left.

  “Well, now we know where she is. What are we going to do about it?” Wish asked.

  “Wait,” Paul said.

  Wish closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the Mustang’s headrest, where a dent that fit perfectly was forming.

  By midnight, most of the lights in the houses on the street were dimmed. Even the crickets seemed to be sleeping.

  “It’s quiet,” Wish said, startling awake. “Too quiet.”

  “Very funny,” Paul said.

  Moments later, the door to the house opened. Out came Carol Ames, dressed all in black, thin as a fork. She unlocked her car door quietly, got inside, and released the parking brake, rolling down the street in neutral until she was well past the house.

  “Did you know she would leave again?” Wish said. “Who are you really, Mr. Psychic Hotline?”

  “I didn’t know.” Paul started up his car and flipped it into gear. “I just didn’t know how we were going to get her alone. I thought we might have to wait until she left for somewhere in the morning.” They drove down the hill, well behind the blue Saturn. “This is good. I like the darkness.”

  “Now you’re really scaring me,” Wish said. “Okay, I give up. Where is she going in the middle of the night? Only place I can think of is the casinos, but here we are going the other way, west.”

  “I have an idea,” Paul said. He didn’t like the idea, but it was borne out soon enough, when the blue Saturn parked a few doors down from the Guillaume residence.

  “Isn’t that where Angel lives?” Wish asked. “But I don’t understand. If she’s going to see Angel and Brandy, she better hit the road for San Francisco, because I happen to know they stayed there tonight.”

  She got out of the car and unlocked the trunk, pulling something heavy out. She approached Angel’s house, unscrewing the lid of what appeared to be a fairly large can. At the edge of the house she stopped and listened, then moved closer and peered quite methodically through windows. All windows dark. No car in the carport. Quiet fir trees, a dark Tahoe night. Stopping at the back corner of the house, she wadded a piece of paper around a rock and hurled it through a kitchen windowpane. Then she tipped the can.

  Paul and Wish grabbed her. For a small person, she fought big. After landing a light punch to Paul’s sternum, forcing him to stop breathing momentarily, she dropped the can on the ground. Wish sneaked up behind and pinned her while she scrambled for it.

  “Out of gas?” Paul asked. “Let us help you with that.” He swooped down and wrenched the can from her grasp. “That’s strange. It’s full.”

  “Who the hell are you?” she asked, keeping her voice to a guilty whisper. “I’ll scream for the cops! You can’t do this to me!”

  Paul showed her his identification and introduced Wish. He explained who they were. “Want me to make that call for you?” he asked.

  She hung her head.

  “Seems to me, you owe us an explanation. What was your plan here?” Paul asked. “I have to say, it doesn’t look well conceived.”

  “I wasn’t going to burn the house down. I just wanted to show them I meant business. I was only going to burn a little.”

  “Well, take your pick,” Paul said. “The police or us for company.” He explained who they were and that they were working for Nina Reilly in a hearing only distantly related to Cody’s case.

  “Don’t call the cops, please. It was just insurance,” she said. “Something serious to scare them off so they wouldn’t want to testify in Cody’s case when it comes up!”

  “You ought to be ashamed,” Wish said.

  “There was nobody home.”

  Paul sent Wish through the window to retrieve the rock. “Reach inside to unlock it. It should be easy to open now.”
>
  Wish came out complaining, sucking on a tiny cut on his finger. He handed the uncrumpled note to Paul, and the rock, which Paul stuck into a paper bag under the seat of his car.

  “Testify in the Stinson case and you’ll see some real damage done,” the printed note said.

  “What is your relationship with Cody Stinson?” Paul asked, pocketing the note.

  “Old friends.”

  “Nothing more?”

  Silence.

  “I understand you two were close once but he left you for Phoebe. That must have been a shock.”

  Carol said slowly, “Yeah. It was.”

  “You’ve been a good friend to him, Carol, considering he dumped you. Giving him that fake alibi.”

  “I wish I hadn’t.” She pushed back some loose hair, and Paul saw water forming in her eyes. “Aw, shit! This has been the worst nightmare!”

  Paul didn’t ask her any more. Nina had a plan, and he would stick with it, and that involved getting Carol Ames to the California State Bar hearing tomorrow.

  So Paul blackmailed her into joining him for the long haul all the way back to San Francisco. No police, just a long midnight ramble.

  The night passed in a blur of black trees, moonlight, and splashed puddles. After dropping Wish at home so that he could get to his classes the next day and allowing Carol Ames to pick up her bag from Kelly’s sister’s house, they hit Highway 50 and started the long descent to the flats.

  Carol, who asked to be called Carol and “not Ms. Freaking Ames,” asked Paul some questions: Would Cody be there, who else might be there. He told her Cody would be there but Brandy and Angel would not, lies. As for what she would be expected to do, well, Paul told her, she would tell what happened that night. Now that everyone knew Cody had been at the campground and she couldn’t provide her old friend a real alibi, she had to tell that to the court to back him up, further nonsense, but he was tired and couldn’t come up with a better story.

  Fortunately, she, too, was tired, apparently too tired to dispute his illogic, and of course she really didn’t want him talking to the police or anyone else about her little excursion through the trees with a gas can in the night. In spite of it being the middle of the night, she couldn’t shut up. “Oh, hell,” she said at intervals, and “Oh, God. I can’t believe this is happening after all these months. I can’t take it.”