Voices in the Wardrobe

by Marlys Millhiser

  “Someone who just now saved your tush. Like for the second time. But then I’m still young.”

  “They weren’t going to kill me. They were trying to get me out of here because it’s so dangerous. But I couldn’t go because you, Maggie, Mitch, Kenny, Brodie, and Keegan are here. Why did you bring them?”

  “Because they wouldn’t let me come alone. You set them up for this. And I had to save you from your stupid female hero fantasies. I promised Grandma. Mom, I think you’ve been in showbiz too long. You’ve lost your perspective.”

  They whispered in such intense angst at close quarters they were spitting on each other—is that how the noun “spat” evolved? In the real world where people lived normal lives, Charlie would have blown her cool and let the kid have it. But the kid was one more person here who would not have been if it weren’t for her and for Maggie. Poor caring Maggie who rescued bees trapped inside window panes, for godsake … How could all this crazy be happening? In the context of the last week, Libby almost made sense.

  Okay, Greene, get a grip. You can’t let Libby’s involvement throw you off. You could well be responsible for a whole bunch of people who may still be alive. We settle family feuds when we know we’re still going to have one, right?

  “Okay, we’ve got to figure out how to find some of these people, Libby. Tell me what you saw and heard when you and Keegan and Brodie got here. Didn’t anyone try to stop you from coming in?”

  “We didn’t see anybody when we parked. Didn’t see your dumb truck even. That really jerked me. The guys wanted to turn and get out of here the minute they noticed, but I wouldn’t do it and I had the car. Told ’em they could walk back to Del Mar.”

  There’d been no problem entering through the wrought iron gate. Most of the lights inside and out were not on, which made it easier to sneak around. “It was like nobody was home and then you’d hear somebody like clear his throat or sniff. We’d freeze. And people with flashlights would go racing around like they had a rabid Doberman biting their butts. And then everything’d go quiet. There was some shooting and some screaming and everything went quiet again and you could hear cell phones, people talking on them, and then quiet again. Where’s the Ram?”

  “Down the hill in a cul-de-sac.”

  “So you came up alone?”

  “No, with Kenny and Mitch. What else did you see? I heard Brodie and Keegan talk about looking for you but the sheriff’s department and ambulance arrived before I could get out to them. Hope they haven’t been captured too. I saw Mitch and Kenny get caught.”

  “Do you know what’s going on?”

  “Sort of, I think. I have a hunch it’s more than one thing and that there’s going to be some heavy damage control applied here. Seems to be a lot of drugs around.”

  “You mean like meth?”

  “Prescription drugs like Maggie was on and Mrs. Beesom and somehow about off-shore money laundering and different government entities either not aware of what the others are doing or simply unable to modernize fast enough to keep up with technology and graft and crime—”

  “Mom, you’re whacking at too many trees at once. Just relax and think things through. I mean, why would anybody want to wash money?”

  “Hey, Brodie-man, what you doing up here?” a male voice said aloud on the other side of the door and Libby grabbed her mother, held a hand over her mouth. What was with this kid? Jeez.

  “Wish I knew, man. Hey, read about your award in the paper today. Congrats.”

  “Oh yeah? I haven’t seen the paper yet. You a Fed in disguise, man?”

  “I wish. Then I’d be armed too.”

  “You got a problem there, man,” Jerry Parks said in a satisfied tone.

  Charlie was in the midst of the irrelevant, irreverent thought-flash that this was not the first time she’d questioned the progress of human dialogue when there was a crunch and a grunt and somebody’s body hit the floor.

  “Jesus, where you been, Monroe? Took you long enough.” Libby let go of Charlie and opened the door. “Hi, guys, like what are you up to? I got Mom here in the closet. Is he dead?”

  They left Jerry Parks in the closet, tied at wrists and ankles and gagged with hand towels in case he wasn’t dead. Brodie had the gun when they crept to the stairs instead of the elevator.

  Keegan was the only one protesting. “What if he’s hurt?”

  “Of course he’s hurt, but I’m not dead. Makes up for a lot in my book. That reminds me, Charlie, did you ever read my treatment?” After the long silence, Brodie continued with a Broadway sigh, “I know. You’ve been too busy. Now what do we do?”

  “Try to find Maggie, Mitch, and Kenny, and get us and them the hell out of here before the murderers and different authorities-that-be stop us.” Even their whispers echoed in the stairwell. They had checked out the exercise gym and therapy-pool room where no one was floating or tied to a machine and then headed for the stairs rather than the elevator.

  “You ever doubt yourself, Charlie?” the aspiring screenwriter asked.

  “Always and ever.”

  “Yeah, right. Now Mom’s into parables. How do they force people to take medicines?”

  “Good question. Offer them drugged water or food? Knock them out and give them a shot? Not a lot of finesse involved—people in that basement room were really sick.”

  “Looks like whoever got to the fuse box didn’t finish the job,” Keegan said when they reached the main floor. Some rooms were lit, others not.

  One lit up as they passed it and they flattened against the wall of the hallway, Charlie leaning around to peer into the kitchen. It appeared empty until a shadow moved from behind the partition where Deputy Saucier had made them coffee.

  “You realize, do you not, that you are helping the bad guys here? Obstructing justice by your actions? Have you no loyalty to your great nation and your church and your flag and everything we all hold dear?” a male voice said, seemingly from several different directions at once. Charlie ducked back away from the door to see Brodie holding the gun out in front of him in both hands swinging his head from up the hall to down, trying to determine which way to open fire and Keegan slipping down the hall toward the office and auditorium, head and upper torso bent forward as if following something he saw or maybe heard.

  “Careful, VanZant,” a different male voice said. “You can’t reason with the righteous. They know the only real truth is what they believe in—whatever it may be. And that only the weak and the evil waffle.” That voice sounded a lot like Mitch Hilsten in All The President’s Buddies, a flick that deserved to go nowhere and achieved that destination, even in straight to DVD.

  At least Brodie had the gun aimed at the floor now. Libby nudged Charlie and pointed up to a round ventlike thing—the light was too poor to be sure. No, it was too small for a vent, more like a PA system.

  Raoul’s was the next voice. “Butt up, Margar-r-r-eet. Now looooose yourself in the floating, warma universe.” Then a gargling, gagging, choking—a slapping at water and Maggie’s scream which tore at what little composure Charlie had left. She shouldn’t have left Maggie here in this place to begin with. Just like Libby said, everything was Charlie’s fault. Had Dashiell recorded Raoul’s death?

  “It’s time for your medication, Caroline,” Warren VanZant said softly, tenderly.

  “What every woman needs is a fighting chance against the ravages of menopause and estrogen is the answer. Countless supposed scientific studies blame everything from God, Mother Nature, the devil, and drinking coffee for the debilitating sickness of hot flashes and the misery of sleeplessness and memory loss that affects mood and appetite. The right dosage prescribed personally by your doctor for you and without the progesterone will keep you happy and safe, sexually active, and free of breast cancer. But there is a conspiracy to keep you or any woman from ever becoming President of the United States.” Startled laughter from a captive audience. And Dr. Judy said, “I can’t say that, can I?”

  “You’re
doing fine, Dr. Judd,” Ruth Ann Singer snapped, condescendingly. “Please continue with the script as written. We will edit out that last line.”

  Charlie peered around the door once more. None of the shadows moved this time, as if the whole place had paused to listen to the voices on the PA. It reminded her again of how illogically riveting were the voices hiding behind the closed doors of wardrobes.

  Charlie turned to find Brodie and even Libby looking at her as if for direction. It was a strange mix of messages on the PA. Charlie put her finger to her lips and nodded in the direction Keegan Monroe had headed. Someone was sending out mixed messages from either the office or the control room in the auditorium.

  But they’d gotten only a few steps before Margaret Mildred Stutzman said, “Charlie? Please help me. Please? Hurry.”

  Charlie was at first awash in helplessness and guilt. But then she rejoiced in the fact that her best friend in the whole world was alive, as she’d been stubbornly maintaining all along. Yes! But then she’d heard Raoul’s voice too. She had no reason to think she’d been lied to about his death and the next voice on the PA further dashed that brief hope.

  It was Dashiell’s voice. And Charlie knew that he was dead.

  Thirty-Six

  “You going to make it?” Libby whispered in Charlie’s ear.

  And the gruesomely dead Dashiell Hammett said from the grave and the PA system, “I love my mother, God is my witness. She will protect me from my cravings and from those who try to steal my sanity. For her I would kill, but for no one else. I’m recording this so—”

  “Because she loves me. The only person in the world who can say that,” he said after a pause as if the other person in the conversation was talking to him on the phone.

  The sounds came from the direction of the auditorium where Judith Judd had taped shows for worried, aging health nuts and pharmaceutical companies anxious to pitch to them. They sidled down the hall toward it, Charlie of two minds about Brodie packing a gun. He seemed to be too and uncertain whether to cover their front or their rear. She worried he might shoot his foot or Charlie and Libby by mistake if startled.

  Charlie shivered in her clammy wet clothes and hair. Even in the intermittent and dim light Libby looked as if she’d been dragged through a drain pipe—smudged and soggy. Keegan seemed to have disappeared. The office was dark as they passed. How could she persuade Libby and Brodie to take off for the Wrangler so she’d have two less to worry about? Probably about as easy as Roy-to-the-rescue had in getting Charlie out of here.

  “What does Washington say about this? We have to do something soon.”

  “Which part of it and who? My instructions say the White House gave us the authorization here and you and your bean counters can come in for the cleanup.”

  “Right. After you’ve removed all the records we need to investigate,” the second voice said. “Leave us to take the blame for the coverup.”

  “I thought I made myself clear. There is nothing to cover up. You people just don’t listen.”

  “You people just don’t read the papers.”

  Dr. Judy looked a lot better on the big screen in the auditorium than she had in person. She never turned her back on the audience or the cameras so her hump didn’t show. She merely highlighted points on the small screen with a clicker and turned her head toward it as she spoke. She wasn’t glamorous but she was compelling and convincing—at least when you couldn’t hear what she said. It was disconcerting to be hearing other people on the sound system instead.

  “We happen to know that you, as her Hollywood agent, had intimate knowledge of Dr. Judd’s financial dealings, Ms. Ridgeway. If you cooperate we could perhaps—”

  “You’ll have to take that up with her lawyer, her accountant, and financial advisers. As an agent I have knowledge only of her performance contracts and commitments and am not permitted to discuss such unless subpoenaed in a court of law.”

  “Oh, come now. Hollywood is hardly known for its integrity, morality, or sincerity. You can’t expect us to—” This was the guy who’d dripped condescension at the coffee gathering in the dining room last night. Okay, one of the guys.

  All the while Dr. Judy motioned, stepped from side to side, nodded and squinted knowingly, tilted her head, mouthing words with studied lip, tongue, and teeth coordination you probably wouldn’t have noticed had there been sound.

  Libby nudged Charlie’s arm and pointed down into the auditorium seating where a shadow man sat, with his back to them, not watching Dr. Judy. By the exaggerated tilt of his head, he was either asleep, unconscious, or dead like the doctor.

  Charlie feared it might be Keegan but was afraid to slip down and take a look because she didn’t know who else might be in the fringes of shadow left by the flickering of the screen on the stage or who was running this show from the control room.

  “So, Charlie Greene, what do you think of the show so far, humm?” Ruth Ann Singer asked and if you looked closely at the window of the control room you could see blonde hair in the colored glow of flashing monitors and blinking consoles. There had to be another door into it from outside the auditorium.

  Didn’t there? The one behind the screen wouldn’t hide traffic to and from and would be a distraction for an audience being filmed. Of course they could edit the videos—still, it would be very handy to have direct access. There had been so much money lavishly wasted on this place, hard to believe that would have been overlooked. Symmetry didn’t appear to be a high priority.

  Charlie backed out of the auditorium tugging Brodie and Libby with her, then putting her index fingers on each of their lips as her daughter had done to her a short time ago. Her inner voice was not so easily stilled, however.

  Do we have a clue what’s up? That anyone is safer out here than in there? I have the feeling that wasn’t Keegan Monroe slumped over in the theater seat, don’t you?

  Charlie wasn’t about to answer herself at all. Someone could be picking people off or out of the halls one by one. If it was the federal types why was snappy number running the show from the control room? Charlie so wished she had the mind of a detective and at the same time so wished she didn’t need to. Her calling was not danger and weirdness, violent people doing unexpected things.

  Which reminded her of her vibrating cellular. What if Kenny or Mitch was trying to contact her? She should be able to listen to her messages without making noise. She motioned to Libby and Brodie with the cell in hand that she wanted to hide behind them to reduce the glow of the screen.

  There was a message from Kenny. She slid her shirt up over her head to hide any sound. He was lost in the walls someplace, trying to get out. “Stay away from the main building and Jerry Parks, the reporter. Try to get out of here and get help. Don’t know what happened to Hilsten.”

  She couldn’t return the call without making noise. How did he get lost in the walls? Had he been drugged too, didn’t really know what he was saying? He’d sounded tired, but not slurred or incoherent. The other messages weren’t worth opening now.

  Charlie came out from under her shirt to hear the PA system over the exaggerated drumming of her heart and to see Libby walking down the hall into the shadows.

  “You do see the futility of refusing to cooperate with the full might of the United States Government, surely,” some guy said from the speaker overhead.

  “I don’t see the United States Government. I see one dumb-ass bureaucrat where last night I saw three,” Kenny Cowper said. “Things aren’t going so good for you guys either, huh?”

  Charlie followed Brodie who had crept off in the same direction as had Libby. They mustn’t get separated. But they did. When she caught up with Brodie, he’d already lost Libby.

  “Did she say anything?” Charlie whispered.

  “She wondered why the PA system wouldn’t be in the office instead of mixed in with the auditorium sound system. What we were hearing came from speakers in the halls. I don’t know if I can take much more of this.”

/>   “Charlie? Why did you leave me?” Maggie said. She was crying.

  “I’m not sure I can either, Brodie.” About the time they reached the office, the lights came on. Everywhere. It was blinding. Somebody must have found the switch.

  “Caroline, come out now. Stop this madness,” Warren VanZant pleaded with his wife. “Just leave the rifle and come to the office. We’ll help you, I promise.”

  Charlie saw no sign of a PA system but there was one shoe in the air above the desk with a pant leg attached. Charlie walked around to see the rest of the Fed sprawled across the tipped-over desk chair instead of Warren VanZant. Charlie wondered if he had been part of “we” with VanZant. Hard to tell which of any of the broadcasts were new or just prerecorded. If they were both, there must be two systems or two or more accesses to the one.

  “Oh God.” Brodie turned away from the body on the floor. “Who’s that?”

  “A federali. If my hunch that the guy slumped over in the front row of the auditorium is one of them and is dead—all three that questioned us last night are dead plus one way out back I’d never seen—you’d think they’d send in the marines by now. And at least two members of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department were real close to being fatally poisoned. There are deputies on the premises and last I knew an ambulance sitting out in the parking lot. Seems like everybody’s waiting for word of what to do and meanwhile sweet little Caroline VanZant is running around killing people with a rifle and my daughter’s here somewhere.”

  “Plus your two boyfriends. And your star client, don’t forget. Me even.”

  “I didn’t forget all you guys, it’s just—”

  “I know, it’s the mom thing. Sure glad my mom’s back home. If we get out of this alive, will you—”

  “I promise I’ll read your treatment.”