The Man on the Washing Machine

by Susan Cox

I felt a wrench that was like physical pain. And then realized she had stopped talking. Mendocino is only a hundred and fifty miles—about three hours’ drive—north of San Francisco. Los Angeles is seven hundred miles to the south.

  “He told me he was going to L.A.,” I said. I tried frantically to think of a reason for Ben to lie. I needed some relief from the pain in my chest or I was going to die.

  “I don’t know if I have confederates falling out, one liar, or two,” she snapped. “But be careful, Ms. Bogart. If you’re telling the truth, then he’s lying to you.”

  She hung up and my thoughts flew backward, like a vehicle veering into an unavoidable boulder. Ben had been alone in the living room.

  I spun around to look at the firewood basket. The gym bag lay on the hearth, not safely hidden under the logs. I skidded over to it, grabbed it, and pulled open the zipper. The CD was gone. I dug around frantically in the bag. It had to be there. Had to be. The telephone chirped again as I stood stupidly in the living room, staring at the empty bag in my hands. I answered it like a robot.

  “What is the matter with your voice?” Grandfather said as soon as I said hello.

  “I’m coming down with a cold,” I said, and sniffed miserably.

  He made an impatient noise. “Tcha. Nonsense, Theophania. What is the matter? I assume you felt no ill effects from the earthquake?”

  What earthquake? Oh, right. Probably because he didn’t sound in the least sympathetic, I poured it all out about the gunshot and the cleaned-out garage. After an intake of breath and a second’s silence, he only said: “You were lucky, Theophania. I have warned you not to be so impulsive.”

  I barely heard him. “He lied. He wasn’t in L.A. He could have been here in San Francisco last night when my garage was cleaned out.”

  As I talked, I thought of something so damning that it took my breath away. I felt something go very still, deep inside me.

  “Theophania?” Grandfather said sharply. “Are you still there?”

  I felt physically ill. “I found a lapel pin in the garage,” I whispered. “I didn’t say it was a shamrock, but Ben knew. How would he know?”

  Grandfather remained quiet until I had talked myself into silence. When I began to repeat myself, he said austerely: “I am seldom wrong about people. Men, anyway,” he added, in a rare flash of insight. “The most direct solution to a difficulty is usually best. He might have had a good reason for changing his plans and not going to Los Angeles. It’s possible that he has an explanation for all these things,” he added with more compassion. “Ask him, m’dear.”

  Just because it was simple advice didn’t mean it was a bad idea. But Ben wasn’t at the shelter—where AnaZee told me they didn’t have a computer—and he wasn’t downstairs in the studio apartment.

  Ben had disappeared.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I telephoned Ruth D’Allessio, still feeling like hell. Haruto answered their phone and told me that Ruth was at her husband’s bedside at St. Francis. “I’m only here for a few minutes to pack her a bag and to field phone calls,” he said. He sounded as if he’d been crying.

  “Give her my love when you talk to her, and let me know when he can have visitors. Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Ruth said he told her he’d be home for lunch—he said he was going to talk to someone about—about the compost pile.” His voice cracked. “Ruth went out to find him when he was late for lunch. She thought he’d had a heart attack at first, until she noticed he was bleeding. The paramedics said he’s lucky she found him so fast.”

  “He hasn’t been able to say who did it?”

  “I guess we won’t know until he comes out of his coma. If he does.”

  “There’s some doubt?”

  “More than a little. It’s serious, Theo.”

  I hung up feeling even worse than before.

  The meeting almost immediately afterward with Inspector Lichlyter gave me no time to recoup. It took place in the presence of a surly Basque locksmith in a black wool beret, who worked stolidly to replace my back-door lock and install a safety chain. He insisted on being paid in cash. I had to borrow five dollars from the inspector. She handed over the five dollars with an exasperated smile, but the depressed-looking lines in her face returned when I gave her the torn gym bag. She punctiliously folded it into a see-through evidence pouch, but I could tell that the absence of the CD was a sore point.

  “This CD you say you found—”

  “I did find it. Ben Turlough and I found it together,” I said through my teeth.

  She took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. She looked at me with those odd eyes and the skepticism in her expression was indisputable.

  “And where is Mr. Turlough now?” She replaced her chic glasses and her eyes rested briefly on Lucy, curled up and fast asleep on Grandfather’s Oriental rug.

  “I don’t know.”

  She drew her skirts aside, figuratively speaking, and left through the back door. I engaged the new door chain emphatically. And that was another thing—didn’t anyone ever use front doors anymore? As if to prove that no, they didn’t, there was a decisive knock on the back door. I opened the door the few inches the new chain allowed.

  “Theo, let me in; it’s me, Kurt.” He looked nervously down the stairs to where the top of Lichlyter’s head was disappearing. A lock of his pale hair fell over one eye. For Kurt, always conscious that his wealthy patients preferred a doctor with dignity, it was the height of dissipation.

  “Sorry, Kurt,” I said firmly, “I’m not in the mood for company.”

  He pushed against the door. It never even occurred to me to be concerned about a threat until he grabbed the edge of the door. The hand that curled around the edge of the door was heavily bandaged. I vividly remembered smashing down my heavy cane on the hand of my shooter and leaped away from the door as if it had suddenly sprouted cobras.

  “What happened to your hand?” I shouted wildly.

  He yelled back furiously: “To hell with that! Nothing. I’ve been worried about you—”

  “What do you mean? And what did you do to your hand?” He rattled the door again. “I swear, I’ll slam your hand in the door. I’m counting to three. One—”

  He hastily withdrew his fingers. “For Christ’s sake, what’s wrong with you women!”

  “What women? For God’s sake, Kurt, do you mean Sabina?”

  “To hell with Sabina,” he said furiously.

  “Nice.”

  “I meant Helga—she’s a problem I don’t need.”

  “You’re worried about someone having a little crush on you?” I said incredulously.

  “It’s more than a little crush, she’s sending boxes of croissants to the office,” he said sulkily.

  “Poor you,” I snapped. “With all that’s been going on, that’s what you’re thinking about? What about Professor D’Allessio—”

  “That miserable old bastard! What did he say? I told him this morning I’d—”

  I felt cold. “What? Why?”

  “I told him to keep quiet and mind his own goddam business or—nothing. I didn’t tell him anything.”

  I slammed the door and shoved on the dead bolt. After shouting my name a few times and rattling the doorknob ineffectively, he stamped down the stairs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I fled through the front door and half ran up to Nat’s. It was nearly four o’clock and I had to dodge around middle schoolers who were taking up the sidewalk in little clumps.

  “Girl, you look as if you need a hug and a cup of tea. Which would you like first?” Nat greeted me, looking handsome and immaculate, the twin-rings pendant nestled against pale yellow cashmere.

  “Neither,” I growled. He took care of the first anyway, which must have been like hugging a telephone pole, and after giving me a searching look, took care of the second by putting on the kettle.

  “You know you shouldn’t drink, Theo. Gin
ruins the complexion and puts bags under your eyes,” he said kindly. I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about—and then I remembered last night’s binge. It felt like a long time ago.

  “You’re not looking so hot yourself,” I said, knowing it sounded bitchy and not caring. Besides, it was true. He looked as if he hadn’t slept. He ignored me, which is what I deserved, and I sat moodily on a tall stool at the breakfast bar. Watching him fuss around the kitchen was oddly soothing, and as he flitted around putting things away and finding a tray to hold the cups, I started feeling better. My suspicions, which had been growing every moment, began to seem like the stuff of bad dreams.

  And yet Tim Callahan and Nicole had been murdered and Professor D’Allessio was near death.

  “How about that earthquake, hmmm? We lost a couple of wineglasses. How about you?” he said.

  “What? Oh, nothing. I guess the new shear walls worked.”

  The big kitchen had a professional stove against one wall, and copper pans and exotic-looking cooking hardware dangling from an enormous pot rack. He and Derek shared cooking duty and were inclined to appear at potlucks with things like Thai spicy beef salads or Cajun peanut sauce with batter-fried catfish rolled in parsley for dipping. They showed up once with a gigantic lobster lasagna, using phyllo dough for the layers. Everyone fell on it like locusts.

  He cleared away several bright and shiny pans and utensils from a drying rack. “Lamb brochette for lunch,” he said, waving the stainless steel skewers like a picador. “Derek wanted to try out a recipe from Gourmet. Earl Grey okay?” he added, beginning to fuss with a milk jug and sugar bowl.

  “You know you’re a compulsive neat freak, right?”

  “Like that’s news,” he muttered.

  “And I love Earl Grey, you know that,” I said, then added, a little shamefaced: “How do you stand me when I’m like this?”

  “Because you never are like this,” he said. “You know about Professor D’Allessio?”

  I nodded glumly.

  “I refuse to talk about it. Look,” he said, waving a small white paper bag, “cookies from the patisserie on Union Street; somethin’ to take our minds off our troubles. Don’t tell Helga.”

  He tipped the contents of the paper sack out onto the tray. Each cookie was sheathed in its own little sealed paper bag. I knew from experience that they’d be fresh, spicy, and delicious. My stomach protested at the mere thought. I climbed off my stool to help him. The raw skin around my wrist stung. It was getting more painful as the hours passed and I grimaced to myself.

  “Ooh! What’s that?” he said, catching sight of the scrapes and the bracelet of torn skin as I reached to take the tray. He carefully lifted the edge of my cuff and looked up, appalled, as I winced.

  “Jesus, Theo.”

  “Part of the long, sad story of my life—or at least the last few hours of it,” I said. “Do you have any antiseptic cream? Real antiseptic cream,” I added hastily, “not one of Derek’s nostrums.”

  “In the bathroom. Second shelf in the medicine cabinet. Are you goin’ to tell me what the hell happened?” He followed me down the hall and I found the antiseptic cream exactly where he said it would be. It was an almost new tube with Derek’s name on the pharmacy label. “Is this the stuff?”

  “Yeah. Those cuts from the broken mirror got red and swollen. Dr. Kurt told him the cream would take care of any infection.”

  I squeezed a little on the worst patches and cautiously spread it around, catching my breath as I did so. The stinging intensified. It wasn’t just my wrist; my whole hand was black and blue. I wiped the excess cream off my fingers with a tissue and dropped it in the empty wastepaper basket. It reminded me of the soap wrapper I had put there only the night before. Time was telescoping lately; it seemed a week ago. The wrapper had gone. There wasn’t so much as a dried water drop on the faucets.

  “So Derek heads straight for Western medicine when he’s hurting, huh?” I said as we got back to the kitchen.

  “I was teasin’ him about that earlier,” Nat said. Then he blurted: “Damn, that looks painful.”

  “It’s okay,” I hastened to reassure him. “No permanent damage.”

  His eyes filled with tears. “God, I already felt terrible. I couldn’t go back in to work this afternoon.” He looked suddenly stricken and sniffed into a handkerchief. “I’m being self-centered again. I know it; don’t try to spare my feelin’s. What the hell happened to your poor hand?”

  “Nat—”

  “No, I mean it,” he said staunchly. “I’m just depressed. And don’t tell me I’m oversensitive; events around here lately would depress Mother Teresa. Tell me what’s botherin’ you first. And tea isn’t what you need.” He poured white wine into two glasses and added them to the tray. He carried them into the living room, where I settled into a corner of the couch and he sat in a plump, oatmeal-colored armchair.

  “Let’s see. Shall I start with being robbed, coshed, handcuffed, shot at, or betrayed?” I said, sipping my wine and helping myself to a cookie, to please him.

  He blinked. “All that since last night? What’s this about bein’ betrayed? It has a nasty, biblical sound.”

  I gave him an edited version of how Ben and I had spent the afternoon.

  “Soooo,” he drawled. “I hope you were a good girl and took advantage of my little gift. Fluorescent orange is so your color, and like I said, it’s a dangerous time of year in the North Atlantic.”

  “Idiot,” I snorted. I told him about the CD and Ben’s disappearance.

  “And I thought he’d be good for you!” he wailed. “God, I’m a worse picker of men than I thought. One good thing about havin’ Ben in the flat this afternoon—you should pardon the pun—you can alibi each other over the attack on the professor for that miserable inspector. Fortunately Derek and I were cookin’ lunch. At least I can explain to the police what I was doin’.” I looked at him over my wineglass. His frivolity was covering some real disquiet. Before I could ask again, he went on: “What about the rest of your menu of woes?”

  “Let’s see. Nicole had some crates of rhinoceros horn that ended up in my garage and it was stolen last night. I interrupted the robbers and so did Haruto and they handcuffed us, which is where my wrist got mangled. I escaped and staggered up to bed, whereupon a gunman—”

  “What?” he yelped. He had been listening with growing amazement and now his eyes were wide and horrified.

  “Luckily I heard him coming and hid behind the door and managed to jam his hand in the door. He dropped the gun, thank God, and ran for it. That’s it. Oh, not quite. The gun he used was my own gun. Pretty neat, eh? Lichlyter thinks I invented it all.”

  His facial expression ran arpeggio-like from incredulous to furious. “Someone shot at you?” He hesitated. “How did he get hold of your gun?”

  “I have no idea!”

  Of all the incidents, I expected the rhino horn, being the most surreal, to appeal to him the most. But the gunman staggered him even more.

  “Tell me again how he shot at you,” he said. He was wearing a slight frown.

  “It was so dark—of course if there’d been more light, I probably wouldn’t be here telling you about it.”

  “At least you got a few blows in. Was he right- or left-handed?” he asked suddenly.

  “Right-handed,” I said without thinking. “Good for you, Nat; Lichlyter didn’t ask me that.”

  “It’s not much help. Just about everyone is right-handed,” he said uneasily.

  “It would have been better if he’d held the gun in his toes,” I agreed gravely. “Now that’s unusual.”

  Nat giggled and I joined in, until we were both chuckling feebly, less because we were amused, than to let off some steam.

  “I think the crates of rhino horn are the strangest thing of all,” I said as I wiped my eyes.

  “I don’t get it, Theo. What’s the big deal with it?”

  “Ben said the shipment was worth about a million.”
/>
  “Dollars?” he blurted. Then he added: “Ben? How does he know about it?”

  “We found the stuff together.”

  A small frown appeared on his lovely face and he stopped meeting my eyes. “We don’t know much about him, and there’s the CD or whatever…” His voice slowly trailed off and he sat looking at me like a scolded puppy.

  “It’s okay,” I sighed. “I’ve already tried to fit him into things and the whole mess fits him like a glove. He sure showed up at the right time. Tim Callahan discovers the rhino horn, so he gets thrown from the window. Nicole and Ben argue about the profits or something, so he kills her. The professor sees him burying Nicole in the compost pile and so he has to be eliminated. And I swear there’s some connection between him and Charlie O’Brien.” I fell back on the couch, feeling about as miserable as I sounded.

  He grimaced. “I guess I’m ignorant, but the rhino horn isn’t illegal to own, right? I mean, why is it worth so much?”

  “How do you know it’s not illegal, you fluffy head?”

  He looked confused. “I guess Mr. Choy must have told me when we were talkin’ about Derek’s medicines. Is he right?”

  I nodded. “Apparently the big money comes in because it has to be smuggled into the port of entry. I assume that means bribing people and generally getting your hands dirty. Once it’s in the country it’s not illegal to have. Screwy, huh?”

  “That’s what he said,” Nat said.

  “Who?”

  He hesitated. “Mr. Choy.”

  “No one’s had a sudden big boost in income lately, have they?” I asked him abruptly. “At a million dollars a shipment, even with paying bribes and what all…”

  “Kurt was talkin’ about buying a Porsche,” he said doubtfully.

  “Great. Of course, he’s a doctor,” I added thoughtfully. “Although come to think of it, I guess a Western-trained doctor would be the last person to use a rhino horn medicine.”

  Nat looked ever more doubtful. “I don’t know, Theo. Some of the new research has found good in alternative therapies. Look at Derek and his hair tonics.”

  “They’re not working!”