“Carole Brant?” Sadie blinked in surprise. “Your neighbor’s daughter?”
“Yeah,” Mimi replied, holding her hand out for another treat. “Carole Brant’s troubles were our troubles.” She snapped her fingers. “More!” she demanded.
“Sorry, that’s all I’ve got,” Sadie told her, and just then the orderly arrived.
“We’ve got to get you back to your room now, Mrs. W.” He helped her to her feet. “Say bye to your friends.”
Mimi offered Sadie a demure smile and said, “Bye bye,” in a childlike voice.
Marvin returned. He gave Sadie a two-finger salute as a good-bye and then chatted amiably to Mimi as she was led out of the room.
Petrovich ended his call and motioned for Sadie that it was time to go.
“It’s weird how she seemed perfectly fine the last time,” Sadie said as she walked shoulder to shoulder with Petrovich back to the parking lot.
“That’s how this shit works,” the detective replied. “When my dad had Alzheimer’s, it was always a crapshoot whether you’d find him in the present or the past. Sometimes I was Dean his son the cop, and the next time I was my dad’s kid brother and he was yelling at me for stealing the marbles he hid under their bunk bed. It sucks. Maybe we’ll come back tomorrow and find she’s back.”
“Maybe,” Sadie said.
“Yeah, or this time could be the time she’s gone for good.”
Petrovich walked Sadie to her car and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Things are rough for you right now, what with Bowman being a shit and your dad just passed. If you want to come over for dinner tonight, I’ll impress you with my pasta primavera.” When Sadie would’ve protested, he held up a hand. “Nuthin’ romantic. Just two people in the same biz sharing pasta.”
Sadie started to say no but she realized that Petrovich was willing to put her ghostly talents behind him and pretend she was normal. He was offering the olive branch, and she felt obligated to accept. She told him yes but then quickly added, “But I’ve got that stabbing to clean up at the Ocean View School in the morning, so it’ll be an early night.”
“Great. Come by around six,” Petrovich said, and then he practically ran off as if he had a million things to do.
Sadie didn’t run. Instead, once she got to her car she hesitated with her keys poised at the ignition. With a shake of her head, she climbed out of her car and walked back toward the building.
Noreen greeted her with, “You again?”
“Sorry,” Sadie said. “I just thought of something else I wanted to tell Mimi.”
“Huh. Well, the orderly brought her back to the lounge because she insisted she’s waiting for the chocolate lady.”
“Um, chocolate lady?” Sadie asked.
“Yeah.” Noreen narrowed her eyes. “Don’t suppose you know anything about that, do you? On account of Mimi can be a bit of a sugar nut so we’re trying not to overindulge her sweet tooth.”
Sadie shrugged and started to walk in the direction of the visitors’ lounge and then stopped. Over her shoulder she asked Noreen, “How often does she get like this?”
“Like what? Like she doesn’t know anyone or anything?”
Sadie nodded.
“Dementia is like a rockin’, rollin’ roller-coaster ride. You can’t never tell when it’ll be an up day or a down day. One day Mimi remembers every detail of her life and everyone in it, and then the next day she’s back to being a little girl and thinking you’re her mama.” She shook her head slowly. “You could come back tomorrow and she’s good as gold. Or this could be it. Sometimes it’s a slow decline and other times it’s a sudden drop to hell.”
“I should give you my card.” Sadie pulled a business card from her pocket and handed it to Noreen.
She gazed down at Sadie’s Scene-2-Clean trauma cleaning services card. “Gee. Thanks.” She flipped over the business card to read the services offered on the back. “Trauma clean, unattended death cleans, and suicides, huh? Hope I never need your services.”
Sadie fully realized most people didn’t plan on hiring a trauma clean company. She nodded toward the visitors’ lounge and headed in that direction. She saw Mimi sitting on the same purple sofa with a look of utter bewilderment on her face along with a small smudge of chocolate. Sadie approached her, walking around the two ghosts still playing the same invisible card game, but now they were arguing about which one was cheating.
Marvin was walking away looking sad, but Mimi brightened the minute she saw Sadie and waved her over.
“Hi, Mimi.” Sadie sat down on the chair next to the sofa. “Thought I’d try talking to you a bit more.” Sadie cleared her throat. “Can we talk about the house on Sunnyside?”
Mimi said with a quick smile, “Whenever I come here to school, I like walking past the house with the blue shutters best.”
“School?”
“You must be new,” Mimi said. “Don’t worry about Mr. Patterson. He’s really a nice principal. He likes to yell but his bark is worse than his bite. Just make sure the hem of your skirt doesn’t creep up too short and you’ll be fine.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Sadie paused. “Can we talk about Paula?”
Mimi Wicks pursed her lips in thought. “I think she’s in Mr. Smith’s homeroom.”
It was useless. Sadie sighed and wracked her brains for a way to shake Mimi back to the here and now. Then the orderly was there to take her back to her room.
“You ready to go back now, Mimi?”
“George!” Mrs. Wicks exclaimed. “I thought you’d stood me up. You didn’t sit with me in the cafeteria at lunch. I thought maybe you’d given another girl your pin.”
“I’ve only got eyes for you, Mimi.” He winked at Mrs. Wicks, causing her to blush. Then he reached out his hand to help her to her feet. To Sadie, he whispered, “Sometimes she thinks I’m her high school boyfriend. It’s easier to just go along.”
“That’s really nice of you.”
Sadie got to her feet and watched Mrs. Wicks slowly saunter off with her hand in the orderly’s until they were about ten feet away. Sadie was about to turn and go herself when suddenly Mrs. Wicks tugged her hand from the orderly’s grasp. With the agility of a woman half her age, she whirled around and strode back to Sadie in long, leaping strides.
“He got what he deserved!” Mimi sneered, and shook an angry, gnarled finger in Sadie’s face. “He got what he deserved!”
“Who?” Sadie asked, taken aback by the sudden change in demeanor. “Who got what he deserved?”
“What’s up, Mimi?” the orderly asked, rushing to take her hand in his. “Why are you so upset?”
She turned slowly, and then the anger and pent-up energy in her body seemed to evaporate, and she gave the orderly a slow, demure smile and a gentle tap on the chest.
“George, shame on you! You didn’t show up in the cafeteria for lunch. I hope you weren’t thinking of giving Edna Farly your pin. “She leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “She’s fast, you know. Not a lady like me. You deserve someone much better than that.”
“You’re the only gal for me,” the orderly said, patting her hand.
Sadie watched them leave. Marvin drifted into the room and slowly shook his head when he saw Mimi.
To Sadie he said, “I hate seeing her like that.”
“It must be tough.” Sadie nodded in agreement. “Are you two close?”
“Sugar Bottom and I are like this.” He twisted two fingers together. “She tells me everything.”
“Good,” Sadie said, walking a little closer to him. “Then maybe you’d know what she meant when she said, ‘He got what he deserved.’ ”
“It’s nothing,” Marvin said with an abrupt shake of his head. “She just says that sometimes. I think she’s talking about the guy who used to work in the cafeteria. He got fired for always being overbudget and under quality in the kitchen. Mimi was a fine cook in her day and she was disgusted with the cook’s sawdust meat loaf and leathery
chicken, so she got everyone to write complaints and get the guy fired. Of course, that was on a good day.”
“Hmmm.” Sadie had watched Marvin as he’d spoken. His words had come out quickly and he’d scuffed his feet nervously while looking down at the ground. Marvin was definitely not telling her the whole truth.
“You best be careful, though,” Marvin said, and this time the old man looked Sadie directly in the eye. “Mimi was just saying this morning that a big ugly guy at the house wants to bury you.”
13
Marvin chuckled a little as he walked away. “I know it sounds crazy. Who knows what Mimi’s remembering when she talks about big ugly men. She also believes she’s going to the prom in a few days.”
Sadie was too stunned to speak. There was only one big ugly guy at the house, and Sadie knew he’d bury her if he could. By the time she thought to question Marvin about what Mimi was talking about, Marvin had strolled off around the corner and into an area that was off-limits to visitors.
Sadie returned to her car, and it wasn’t until she put her hands on the wheel that she realized how badly they were shaking. Mimi Wicks knew something about the Sunnyside Avenue ghost, but Sadie had no idea how to get the woman to talk about it.
She was still thinking about it when she went home and traded her Honda for the Scene-2-Clean van. She’d been corresponding with the school’s insurance company via e-mail and was expecting a message, so she decided to bring her old laptop along on the job and check for messages on a break.
Sadie returned to the Ocean View School, anxious to go to work and stop her mind from thinking of Zack, Dad, or ugly ghosts in green boxers. She used Principal Tu’s office and dressed in her biohazard suit, and then she headed to the end of the hall to go to work cleaning the blood and body fluids of a sliced-and-diced janitor.
She started in the art center since it was the area of with the largest amount of work required. Sadie didn’t want to deal with Virgil Lalty. He looked at her with beseeching eyes, and the flap of skin from the cut in his neck wiggling every time he moved. It was tough, but Sadie had made up her mind to ignore the ghost. She didn’t want to send someone over today. Her heart, aching with loss, just wasn’t in it.
But the more Sadie pretended Virgil Lalty didn’t exist, the harder it was for her to concentrate on her job. She went to spray emulsifiers onto the dried tissue and dropped the entire bottle, spilling it everywhere. She attempted to cut away the carpet that was damaged by dried blood, and she sliced the tip of her glove off with the X-Acto knife and barely missed her finger. It wasn’t like Sadie to make mistakes on the job, but she finally had to admit her head wasn’t in it. She went back to Principal Tu’s office and doffed her gear. There was a small private washroom off the office, and Sadie used the bathroom first and then decided to make use of her laptop to check her e-mails.
The e-mail checking turned into a two-hour run playing FreeCell. Her fingers clicked the mouse and her brain emptied of anything but the cards flipping in front of her. When her cell phone rang, Sadie jumped, swore, and skittishly fumbled the phone on the desk. It skidded across the polished wood top and onto the floor through a small space between the desk and the wall.
“Damn,” Sadie groaned.
She got down on her knees, lowered her head, and looked around. She spotted the phone banked against the wall in the farthest corner. The ringing had stopped and there was a short beep indicating a voice mail message. Sadie reached her arm for the phone and attempted to grab it, but there were cardboard file boxes stacked neatly on both sides under the desk, and she wasn’t small enough to squeeze between them. Even after shoving an arm way to the back, she came up short. Now she was annoyed. She’d have to pull the heavy desk away from the wall.
Getting to her feet and straightening, Sadie looked around as if seeing the office for the first time. Principal Tu was obviously very organized. Sadie breathed in and took in the scent of furniture polish and an underlying smell of ammonia. As clean as it was, the office was a feng shui nightmare. It just looked wrong.
“Who the hell would want to look at a wall all day?” Sadie grumbled.
Sadie walked around to the side of the desk, preparing to put her back into it. As she grasped the wood edge to tug it away from the wall, she glanced down. Immediately she noticed four round dents in the carpet over to her right. The desk had recently been moved. It never used to face the wall. According to the imprints in the carpet, the desk used to face the doorway to greet whoever entered. When Sadie worked as a grade school teacher, that was exactly how she recalled the principal’s desk. That location was all the better to intimidate young children arriving for disciplinary action. Perhaps Principal Tu would return the desk to its original position when she had to face that first brat of the school year.
Sadie heaved on the corners of the desk so that the heavy piece of furniture slid a few inches away from the wall. Then she walked around and blindly reached between the desk and wall and grappled along the floor for her phone. Her fingers finally found their target.
“What are you doing?” snapped a female voice.
Sadie squeaked in surprise and bumped her head when she tried to straighten. She slowly got to her feet and turned to face Cheryl Tu, who looked utterly perturbed.
“I, um, came in to use your office, like you so generously offered, and—”
“I said you could use my office, not rearrange my furniture.” Cheryl Tu strode over, and with more strength than Sadie had expected from the petite woman, she thrust her hip at the edge of her desk, shoving it back to its position against the wall.
“I wasn’t rearranging anything. I just dropped my phone.” Sadie held up her cell phone as proof.
Principal Tu walked around to sit behind the desk in her chair. She glanced at the FreeCell game on Sadie’s computer screen and frowned over at Sadie.
“You’re winning your game, but how are things coming at the other end of the hall?” The razor-sharp look in her eyes had no doubt sent shivers down the spine of many a student.
“Things are going well.” Sadie blushed at being caught slacking off and rushed to cover up. “I was just taking a break while I waited for the insurance company to e-mail me back regarding a question.”
“Couldn’t you be cleaning while you waited?” Principal Tu asked.
What? And blow a FreeCell winning streak of a dozen games in a row?
“Actually, I’ve done all I can for now. I have to wait until tomorrow to start the next stage of the clean and—”
“Oh.” Ms. Tu’s face fell and she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Sorry. I was really hoping you’d have this done this evening.”
“It’s going to take at least a couple of days. You have to understand that due to the amount of dried tissue alone, I need to allow the emulsifiers to soak in. Plus some of the drywall will actually need to be removed as well as some carpeting.”
“Damn.” Cheryl Tu drummed her fingers on the desktop, and Sadie noted her nails were chewed down to nothing. A naughty habit for a school principal.
“I should manage to get a lot of the work accomplished tomorrow but, of course, there’s the matter of repairs. Some of the carpet company and drywallers could provide estimates tomorrow, but I have no idea how quickly they’ll be available to do the job.”
Ms. Tu continued drumming her no-nail fingertips on the desk. “I guess we won’t be using that classroom immediately. That’s a shame.” And she looked genuinely disappointed and disheartened by the whole thing. Sadie was surprised to see the woman was blinking back tears. “I just really want the kids to return to school without any reminders of this horrible event.”
“Well, school doesn’t start for another week, so it’s entirely possible. And you know that even if the drywall and carpeting isn’t repaired, the contamination will be contained so classes could still go on,” Sadie said. “Push one of the easels in front of the damaged section of wall and put a small rug down on the missing section of
carpet, and nobody will know.”
“Sure,” Principal Tu said, but her look said that Ocean View School wasn’t used to covering up renovation nightmares, or murders.
“I’m going to pack up now so that I can get an extra early start tomorrow.”
Sadie gathered up her belongings and left the principal with a promise to follow up with a status report at the end of the day tomorrow.
It wasn’t until she was back behind the wheel of her van and another telltale beep sounded from her pocket that Sadie remembered the missed call. She took out her cell phone and glanced at the display. The missed call was from Zack, but that wasn’t what caused Sadie to pinch her brows together in concentration. In the corner of the display screen was a small but distinct smudge that looked a helluva lot like blood.
Sadie never took her phone with her into a contaminated area. It remained with her supplies in the safe zone, so there was no way it could’ve gotten anything on it from the crime scene. Narrowing her eyes, she examined the smudge. Definitely looked like blood but she needed to be sure.
Sadie got up from the driver’s seat and walked to the back of her van. First she used her digital camera to take a close-up photo of her phone. Then she opened one of the many storage containers in the back and took out an eye-dropper and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. A few seconds later she carefully squeezed a drop of the hydrogen peroxide onto the smudge on her phone. The immediate fizzing, bubbling reaction confirmed her suspicions. Blood.
Sadie guessed that her phone somehow got the smudge when it fell behind Cheryl Tu’s desk. So what the hell was blood doing behind her desk?
If her phone had been in the contaminated area, Sadie would’ve had to throw it in with the medical waste and have it destroyed. Since it was merely a small drop, she used disinfectants and a cotton swab to thoroughly clean the screen.
Her phone rang again just as she’d completed the task.
“Just checking to see if we’re still good for six,” boomed Petrovich’s voice.
Sadie looked at her watch. “I’m just wrapping up,” Sadie told him. “I’ll go wash up and be at your place by about quarter past.”
Dead and Kicking Page 16