Whipped Cream and Piano Wire

by Winnie Simpson

  “I’m working on that. I’m her best friend and—well, we’ve been friends for a long time.”

  “You should go home and get some rest. She’s going to need you.” He reached out and patted my arm before turning away.

  26

  Suicide?

  I sat back down on the plastic chair. A familiar figure exited the elevator at the end of the hall, greeted the doctor in passing and made his way to stand in front of me.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Official business,” said Detective Bristol.

  “You are NOT going to arrest Theo in the hospital.” I stood up to confront him.

  “Take it easy. The Glynn County Sheriff’s Department passed along the information about Mrs. Humphries. They knew I’d be interested.”

  “You had them watching her.” I’d suspected that Theo and I had been under surveillance. I’d noticed more Glynn County sheriff’s vehicles than usual around the island. It hadn’t bothered me, in fact, I welcomed it, since I knew there was nothing for them to report—until now.

  “Sort of.” Without waiting for an invitation, he sat down next to the chair where I’d been a moment ago, stretching out his long legs into the hall. From where I stood, I could see more silver in his dark hair.

  Oh, what the hell. I returned to my seat, and we both stared at the opposite wall.

  “What kind of official business?” I asked, after he made no attempt to open a conversation.

  “Glynn County wanted me to ask you about your presence at the scene when the ambulance arrived.”

  “What about it?” I was on high alert at the question. What was Bristol implying?

  “The EMT’s reported two people were with Mrs. Humphries. Freddie Somerset, who lives there, and you. There is some confusion about what happened. Glynn County wants me to ask you.” Bristol’s voice was low, inviting me to confide.

  “Ask me what, exactly?” I knew I was being unfair, but I was tired, angry at the doctor, and frightened for Theo. I was taking all that out on him.

  He sighed. “Been a long day, has it?”

  “She might not make it, Mike. Even if she does….”

  At my use of his first name, he turned in his chair and looked at me. After a minute, he said, “She’s in the best place she could be. This hospital handles complicated cases every day.”

  I clamped my jaws together to keep from crying in front of him. I blinked and looked away toward the elevator. “I was there because I couldn’t contact Theo. She left me a note that she’d gone to meet Sissy Mead. When she hadn’t come back, I got worried and went looking for her. You can ask the next-door-neighbor.”

  “Glynn County can do that, if it’s necessary.”

  “There isn’t anything else I can add.” I knew he was just doing his job, but I was still angry that he had sought me out in this hospital corridor to ask these questions.

  “Can you throw any light on why she did it?”

  “Not you, too!” Now I was furious at him—and anyone who was crazy enough to think that about Theo. I spelled it out for him. “Theo did not try to commit suicide. This is a setup.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and appeared deep in thought. He leaned back and spoke to the fluorescent lights over our heads.

  “How did she react to your idea that her husband might have been murdered?”

  I was caught flatfooted. Bristol knew Flynn and I suspected Theo’s husband might have been murdered, maybe by Cutler. The detective assumed that I’d shared that notion with Theo. The truth was Flynn and I had agreed to keep our theory about George’s death from Theo. Our silence was a clear indication we thought she wouldn’t react well to the news. Flynn and I were anticipating that Theo would go ballistic, maybe seek out some form of revenge. We had not considered for a minute that the news would cause Theo to kill herself. But people who didn’t know Theo like we did—the police, for example—might believe she would, and overlook other possibilities for how she’d gotten into that garage. Under the present circumstances, I decided to sidestep Bristol’s question.

  “I don’t know. We’ve mostly been talking about Freddie.” I kept talking to divert Bristol from asking further questions about what Theo knew about George’s death. “I interviewed Freddie Somerset, after I found out Cutler had left him the house.”

  “Go on.”

  “Freddie didn’t know about Cutler’s will.”

  “You believe him?”

  “I do. He was shocked—stunned, actually—when I told him.”

  “Anything else?”

  “A surprise. Freddie Somerset is an up and coming artist. A sculptor. He carves beautiful animals out of wood. He has commissions for the next two years.”

  Bristol absorbed this news a minute, before he shrugged. “Back to Mrs. Humphries. Did you see her or talk to her this morning?”

  “No,” My brain began to stir. I’d been so overwhelmed with Theo’s condition I hadn’t given enough thought to how she’d gotten in this state. “Someone left a note for Theo that purported to be from Sissy Mead, asking Theo to meet her at Cutler’s house. Maybe it was from Sissy. But the note was on drugstore-quality paper and written in block print. I was—I am, suspicious about whether Sissy actually sent it.”

  “Where’s this note now?” Bristol asked, his voice quickening with interest.

  I reached under my chair for my purse, opening it wide and combing through the mess. “I must have left it at Theo’s.” What an idiot, I thought. Why didn’t I toss it in my purse when I left?

  “There’s no evidence of anybody else having been at the scene,” he said, voicing what I feared. I remembered there was only one wine glass at the table.

  “It’s a setup,” I said again. “Why did Theo go there? If she were going to do herself in, why not stay at her own home?”

  “Maybe she didn’t want you to find her.”

  “Then why did she leave me that note?” My voice was rising along with my panic that he wouldn’t believe me.

  Bristol drew in his feet and dropped his elbows to his knees. “One more thing to consider. Glynn County found a note from Theo in her car.”

  “I didn’t see any note.” I thought back, but all I could remember was Theo slumped over the wheel.

  “You weren’t looking for it. And I’m guessing the exhaust fumes were affecting you at the time.”

  I sat up straight and raised my chin. “What did it say, this note?”

  “’C, I’m so sorry. I miss you so much,’” Bristol said, making air quotes.

  “That’s all? That doesn’t sound like a suicide note. She could have been apologizing for a missed date. If Theo were writing a suicide note, it’d be a dissertation of everyone she loves. Trust me.” I considered what he’d said. “Is it Theo’s writing?” I asked.

  “Appears to be.” When I didn’t respond, Bristol said, “the DA thinks he can use it to show she was overcome with remorse and couldn’t bear the guilt.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I’m not going to arrest a woman who’s unconscious and….” He stopped.

  “And may not be mentally or physically able to defend herself even if she wakes up.” I finished for him. “That would make the Atlanta PD look bad, wouldn’t it?” It was a cheap shot, but I was furious at the whole screwed up situation, and my inability to turn him around. I glared at Bristol and stood up.

  “Has it occurred to Atlanta or Glynn County’s finest that someone tried to murder Theo by drugging her and leaving her locked in that garage with the car running? Maybe the same person who killed Cutler? Maybe the same person who killed George Humphries?”

  Bristol took his time rising to his feet. “It has occurred to some of us. It’s also occurred to us that the deaths of two men she was close to might have pushed her to harm herself.�
�� He put both hands gently on top of my shoulders and spoke softly. “You have to consider it, Ann Audrey.”

  “It’s impossible,” I said. “You don’t know her the way I do. And those notes don’t make sense. Pay attention. Do your job and investigate. Stop accepting the obvious.”

  He dropped his hands. “Okay, Okay. But stop hanging around here. You need some rest. We can talk about this later.” He turned and left me watching him walk away.

  * * *

  When I got home, I called Flynn to update him on Theo’s condition. He insisted on coming over to talk about what happened.

  “I still don’t get it,” Flynn said. He paced up and down in my living room. “What the heck did she think she was doing going over to Cutler’s house to meet Sissy by herself?”

  “I don’t know.” I poured myself a cup of coffee, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows toward the Georgia mountains. They were fogged with murky gray smog, just like my brain at the moment. I rubbed my forehead.

  “You got a headache?” asked Flynn

  “It’s probably leftover from the exhaust fumes in the garage.” To say nothing of what I’d been through in the last 24 hours.

  “I’ll get you something.” Flynn disappeared down the hall, and I heard him open the medicine cabinet. He emerged with a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water.

  “Thanks.” I sat down and took the pills. I propped my feet up on the coffee table and put my head back against the cushions. Flynn sat across from me in the oversized club chair and matched my foot position.

  “We need to decide how to play this,” I said. “Bristol thinks our theory about George’s death tipped Theo over the edge. I didn’t tell him that we kept that from Theo because we thought it’d be too much for her.”

  “Um, well, Audrey—we didn’t exactly keep it from her,” said Flynn. He stared into his coffee mug like he was searching for a hidden exit.

  I recognized a look I’d been seeing since high school. It usually presaged a confession about some illicit encounter or Flynn’s worry that he was about to be outed.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “She figured it out,” Flynn said.

  “How?”

  “I called her yesterday just to see how she was doing, and she asked me what you and I thought about that squabble between George and Cutler.”

  “Flynn, no. You did not tell her we think Cutler killed her husband,” I dropped my feet to the floor and sat up.

  “Didn’t have to,” Flynn said. “She came out and asked me if it was a possibility. I had to say, yes.”

  I put both hands over my eyes and flopped back against the cushions. “Oh my God.”

  “I’m sorry, Audrey,” Flynn said.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “I’m always forgetting that instinct of hers. She was bound to guess it. But it feeds right into the DA’s claim that Theo was unhinged enough to kill herself.”

  “Where were you when she left the cottage?” Flynn asked.

  “Oh, that’s right. I hadn’t had a chance to tell you. I spent some quality time with Drew Littlefield and heard what happened to those guys in Vietnam.” I laid it out for Flynn. He was a good listener. When I’d finished with Drew’s tale, I closed my eyes. I would so love to go to sleep and make this all go away.

  “Whew,” Flynn whistled. “That sort of widens the field of suspects for Cutler’s murder. What did Detective Bristol say when you told him about that?”

  I shifted with unease. “Um…I didn’t tell him.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “I wanted to talk to Theo first,” I said. “Before you lecture me on hiding important evidence from the police, hear me out.”

  Flynn sat tight lipped, but indicated I should continue.

  “I don’t want to be the one to name those guys as wartime murderers. I don’t have any evidence, and they’re going to close ranks and deny everything.”

  “Didn’t Drew tell you that Cutler had hard evidence?”

  “Drew would believe anything Cutler told him,” I said. “It’s even possible the evidence doesn’t exist anymore. Cutler could have been blowing smoke for years. Anything’s possible at this point. Who knows?”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Flynn. “I think it’s real. Cutler hid it somewhere that no one’s found yet. But even if you could find it, would it help Theo? Audrey, we have to keep asking ourselves that.”

  27

  Ann Audrey Rethinks the Scene

  The days that followed blurred together. The hospital was as pleasant as such places can aspire to be, at least in the minds of their administrators and corporate type decorators, the walls painted in soporific colors, neutral tiled floors, nursing staff slipping in and out in rotating pastel scrubs. At the end of the hall past the central nurses station was a small lounge, giving a view from our top floor over the black-topped flat roofs of the enormous medical complex, in the distance the thick green canopy that surrounds the Emory University campus. Flynn and I sat there sometimes, bringing one another cups of hospital cafeteria coffee, but mostly we took turns sitting at Theo’s bedside accompanied by the constant beep of her monitors. On the phone, I discouraged George’s children from coming, telling them there was nothing they could do until Theo woke up. She was in ICU, her bed a clearing in a forest of poles hung with bags. At her head, liquid dripped through tubes into her veins. At her feet more tubing filled bags with yellow swill.

  We passed the time by dissecting what we had found out in the wake of Cutler’s murder. I kept returning to the same point: if the key to Cutler’s murder was dropped decades ago in the muck of Vietnam, why did the killer target Theo now? Did Theo know something that endangered the killer? Or was there a second murderer—one who hadn’t killed Cutler, but who’d made this attempt on Theo’s life? We were missing something. One evening when I was alone with Theo, I began to wonder what the Atlanta police had found out while I’d been on Sea Island. Maybe Mike Bristol would have some ideas. The more I thought about Detective Bristol, the more I wanted to see him. Maybe I just needed a dose of his self-confidence after all these days of uncertainty in the hospital. I rose and went to Theo’s bedside. I wrapped my hand around hers—warm, thank goodness—and squeezed.

  “I’ll be back, hon,” I said.

  I rubbed my hands together and pinched the tips of my ears, aching from the arctic chill that the hospital inflicted on patients and visitors. I took the elevator down to the ground level, jogging the long serpentine route from the wing housing the ICU to the visitors’ parking lot to warm up, I emerged into a sweltering twilight. Within seconds my numb hands were sweating. No sense turning the thermostat to a higher temp to save on the electric bill tonight. If I did, I’d be stuck to the sheets, peeling them off my back in order to turn over.

  I got in my car, cranked the AC, and turned out of the hospital lot toward downtown. I decided to go through Lullwater Drive, a beautiful old residential neighborhood, beloved by Emory profs, mostly those senior enough to afford the substantial brick houses, and solidly upper middle-class families. It was one of my favorite drives in the springtime when azalea bushes two stories high bloomed pink and lavender in the deep front yards. No McMansions, thankfully, on Lullwater. The route would cut over to Ponce de Leon, the “Ponce” part of the name given heavy emphasis when spoken by locals, a wide boulevard designed by Frederick Olmstead of New York’s Central Park fame, with landscaped parks set between the lanes.

  At this hour, traffic was skimpy in the direction I drove, those commuters still on the road headed the other direction, out of town. I worked my way down Ponce through some of the City’s grittier blocks, past the red neon art deco sign above the 24-hour Majestic Diner (Open 24/7 since 1929), and the Clermont Lounge, Atlanta’s first and longest continually operating strip club. Finally the road dove under a railroad crossing and City Hall East loomed up
on my left. The massive building formerly housing the Sears store and warehouse had sat unused for decades before Mayor Maynard Jackson decided to buy it and fill it with assorted City departments, including a police station that moved in in 1992. Even with the City’s presence, the place was half empty and downright spooky.

  I parked the car and made my way to the lobby. I had taken a chance that Mike Bristol would be in, and I was in luck. The sergeant on duty handed me a visitor’s badge and waved me through steel turnstiles toward the elevators. I slumped against the Formica panels until I remembered where I was. God knows what had been rubbed off in this elevator. I straightened up as the doors opened onto a broad hallway of gray walls and darker gray carpet. Bristol stood waiting, hands in his pants pockets, his jaw clamped shut. The muscles in his jaw moved as he ground his teeth at the sight of me.

  “How is Mrs. Humphries?” he said as a greeting.

  “About the same, as far as I can tell,” I said. “The docs say she’s holding her own.”

  “I’m glad.” He looked relieved at this report, as if he’d expected bad news.

  “Thank you for that.” I was oddly warmed by his interest in Theo, the policeman’s mask slipping aside for a brief minute.

  “What brings you here?” Bristol asked, as he led me down the broad hall, fluorescent light fixtures humming overhead. We passed offices with doors open and closed and one big open area filled with desks, occupied and empty. Despite their number, the police officers headquartered here seemed to be rattling around in the huge box of a building.

  “I wanted your help,” I said. “I want to go over everything about what happened—both to Cutler and the attack on Theo.”

  He came to an abrupt halt in front of a door marked Lt. Bristol. He’d stopped so suddenly I bumped against him.

  “Sorry,” I said, trying to ignore the rush of heat I felt against him.

  “No harm done,” he said, showing me into his office. He closed the door, shutting out the sounds of one-sided telephone calls, male jibes, and passing footsteps. Pulling a greige, once teal, chair away from a metal file cabinet to alongside his desk, he motioned for me to sit down.