Adjusted to Death

by Jaqueline Girdner

  “Kate, is that really you? Or are you a machine?” asked Maggie.

  I looked down and saw no metal, only quivering flesh. “It’s me all right.”

  “Oh wow! I’m so glad. I need your help.”

  “What kind of help?” I asked cautiously, sinking into my old yellow naugahyde comfy chair. C.C. hopped into my lap and began to sniff my new pantsuit.

  “With this murder thing. It’s such a bummer, and I’m sure you can figure it out better than me. It was really neat the way you figured out that last one.”

  “Are you saying this in front of the police?” I asked.

  “No, they sent me home. And once they’ve interviewed everyone, they’re going to seal my office. Jeez, I mean, my office! Do you know what this is going to do to my business?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” I answered honestly. I was glad for Maggie’s sake that the police weren’t listening. I had grown accustomed to her brand of artless insensitivity over the years, but I suspected that Sergeant Udel would find her selfish words more brutal than endearingly outspoken. They made me a little queasy myself, though Maggie did have a point. Who was going to go to a chiropractor whose patients came out with broken necks? Poor Maggie. But poorer Scott Younger.

  “I thought maybe you could talk to people, see what you think,” she continued.

  “The police will take care of it,” I said. But even as I said it an old feeling of dread arose. What if the police couldn’t take care of it?

  “I’m scared, Kate.” Her voice was small and childlike. “The police are frantic. They don’t know any more than us.”

  “Maybe they’ll discover some physical evidence,” I suggested.

  “What if there isn’t any?” she replied. “What then?”

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled. What I wanted most of all at that moment was to obliterate all memory of my discovery of Younger’s dead body, and of its aftermath. I felt sick and frightened.

  “Please, Kate, help me. My business is going down the tubes if we can’t solve this. They’ve already turned away most of my afternoon patients, and they’re telling the rest to leave as they show up.”

  I looked at my watch. It was almost three.

  “At least come over to my house, and talk to me about it,” she said, her voice thick with tears.

  I can be assertive, but only if I have prior warning. Dump a tearful request on me suddenly, and I fall for it as fast as sunglasses sliding down a tourist’s nose and off the Golden Gate Bridge into the churning water below. “Please, Kate,” she repeated. “It can’t hurt to come over and talk about it.”

  I did need to talk. Anything to shake off the sick dread that was lodged in my stomach. I found myself agreeing, and wondered if I would regret it. She gave me directions to her home. I told her I’d be over in an hour or so.

  After I hung up the phone, I sat huddled in my comfy chair while C.C. purred, clawed and shed ecstatically on my peace pants. I had tried to convince myself that I had no responsibility for her bad habits. She was, after all, a used cat.

  Just before my husband, Craig, had come back home, my accountant had moved to a condo where no cats were allowed, leaving C.C. a potential orphan. So I adopted her, name and all. My accountant told me he had named the cat C.C. because of her markings. C.C. was a small black cat with white spots, one shaped like a goatee on her chin and another shaped like a beret rakishly balanced over her right ear. When she squinted her eyes just so, she looked ready to wail out the blues on a miniature saxophone, or at least smoke a tiny joint. Thus the name Cool Cat, or C.C. for short. At least C.C. had staying power, she was still with me. Craig was gone again, this time for good.

  I considered hiding with my cat in that comfy naugahyde haven for eternity, or at least until she had completely shredded my pantsuit. But murder or no murder, I needed to eat, and so did C.C.

  I got up and fed her some chunky kitty stew. C.C. was no vegetarian. Then I forced down a bowl of leftover brown rice before unenthusiastically approaching the telephone. I was late in making my daily call to the Jest Gifts warehouse.

  November was not turkey-time for me. It was the season of mail-order madness for Jest Gifts. Everyone wanted a Christmas gag gift for their favorite professional, and Christmas ornaments too. For instance: Santa’s stethoscope for the doctor; the tooth fairy to go on top of the dentist’s tree (comes complete with tooth, only $7.95); festive shrunken heads for the psychotherapists; or our red and green shark sleighs for those members of the bar with a sense of humor.

  I have two invaluable employees (actually I pay them nine dollars an hour), Jean and Judy, who fill the orders in my Oakland warehouse. I also had a couple of temporary part-timers to ease the seasonal crush. I do my sixty hours per week of designing, correspondence, promotion, payroll and bookkeeping from my home, and contract out the manufacturing. I only visit the warehouse to pick up paperwork, drop off paychecks and remedy disasters. It was Judy who picked up the phone when I called that day.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded impatiently. I considered explaining, but she plowed ahead before I could. “Ed called from Ceramico. They still haven’t finished the extra faw-law-law mugs. He promised he’ll have them to us next week, though.”

  “Fine,” I said, my mind on Scott Younger as he had been, alive in the waiting room. “I’ve already sent out back-order notices to the October customers.”

  “Wait a minute. Let me close the door,” she said. I heard it slam, shutting her into the 9 by 9 sales office. “That new guy, Nate, you got from the employment office?”

  “Yeah, what about him?” I remembered Valerie’s words when she heard Younger’s name.

  “He doesn’t think our stuff is funny!”

  “That’s his tough karma.”

  “Can I tell him that?”

  “If you want to. He only has to pack the stuff. He doesn’t have to appreciate it. Don’t worry about it. Any other problems?” Wayne’s scarred face appeared in my mind.

  There were, of course, more problems. But all in all, it was a low disaster count for a November day at the Oakland warehouse. Better than in Mill Valley.

  Once I had hung up, I sat staring down at the patch of beige rug between my Reeboks. Suddenly I could see Scott Younger’s bloodied neck superimposed. I could even feel his limp shoulder in my hand.

  A surge of brown rice and fear rose in my throat. I barely reached the bathroom in time to vomit. Then I shook and sweated for a few minutes more before picking myself up to brush my teeth and wash my face. It was time to visit Maggie. I needed to be with someone and it might as well be her.

  The address that Maggie had given me was in one of the more affordable sections of Mill Valley, outside the city limits. I drove through the architectural hodgepodge of houses which characterizes the area. Modern, post-modern, and pre-modern cottages, mansions and apartment buildings nestled together democratically amid jungles and manicured gardens. Maggie’s home was a modest white stucco box that looked as if it might have been built in the forties. Its simple shape was colorfully clothed in magenta bougainvillea and yellow roses.

  Maggie opened the door when I was halfway up the brick walkway. I stopped in mid-stride. My chiropractor had turned into a bag lady. It wasn’t just the undersized ratty orange sweater stretched over the baggy and tattered lavender jogging suit. It was her hair sticking out in frizzed red clumps, her crooked lipstick and her swollen eyes. Even her posture was cockeyed. One shoulder was pulled higher than the other.

  “You look terrible,” I blurted out.

  “My back’s out,” she said. “Jeez, it hurts. I hope they finish questioning Eileen soon. She knows how to fix it. Anyway, come on in.”

  She led me into a living room that exploded in primary and secondary colors against a backdrop of white walls and a maroon carpet. I had never seen a bright green sofa before, nor shelves enameled red and blue with taxicab-yellow polka dots.

  The posters on the walls looked right out of
a Crayola box. Large orange and purple pillows were flung invitingly on the floor. I plopped down on a purple one. Maggie carefully lowered herself onto the green sofa.

  “Where did you get the neat pantsuit?” she asked.

  “At Nellie’s. I forgot. I should have changed.”

  “No. I like it.” I wasn’t sure how to respond to fashion approval from a woman dressed in lavender and orange rags.

  After an awkward silence, I asked her what had happened in the waiting room while I was being grilled. That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to rant and rave about the shock of death, but I didn’t know how to begin. “Oh boy, everyone in the world came. The chief, and the captain and a woman from the coroner’s office, and a bunch of uniformed officers. They kept going in and out of the back room. They brought out the bar from the lumbar traction unit wrapped in paper.”

  “Was that the metal bar I picked up?”

  “Yeah, why did you pick it up?” she asked.

  “First, I tripped over it. Then, I sat on it.”

  “Oh.” She lowered her glance.

  “Yeah. ‘Oh.’ Speaking of ‘oh,’ what was that stain on your sweat shirt?”

  “My sweat shirt?” Her swollen hazel eyes came back up, opening wide.

  “There was a brown stain on your duck sweat shirt.”

  “Oh boy, the coffee.” She hit her face with her hand and winced at the blow. “I spilled coffee on it. The police took it. They’ll be able to tell it was just coffee, won’t they?”

  “Of course they will. Look Maggie, I’ve got to ask you two things. One, how come you don’t think I killed Scott Younger. And two, why should I think you didn’t either.”

  “I just know you didn’t,” she said vehemently. “And I know I didn’t. Sheesh, Kate, I couldn’t do something like that. And even if I could, there’s no way I would jeopardize my chiropractic practice. It took too long for me to build it up. Even if I got away with the murder, my business would be ruined.”

  “All right,” I said, considering. I understood full well the primacy of business survival. “You know these people. Who do you think killed Scott Younger?”

  “Well, it wasn’t me,” she faltered. “Not you or Eileen—”

  “How about Renee?”

  She flinched. “Is it okay with you if I let Doc and Hound in?” she asked.

  “Who the hell are Doc and Hound?”

  “My dogs.”

  “You think it’s Renee, don’t you?” I said.

  Instead of answering, she got up from the couch painfully and limped out of the room. I could hear her footsteps across a bare floor, and the opening of a door. Then the sound of yips and skittering nails. Two dachshunds danced around her feet as she returned slowly to the room. They spotted me and dove, squirming, sniffing and licking, onto my unprotected body. One lapped my face while the other shoved his nose in my armpit and then in my crotch.

  “Doc, come to Mommy,” Maggie said. The crotch-sniffer obediently trotted over and jumped in her lap. The licker settled down onto mine, rolling over on his back to stare at me with trusting brown eyes. Maggie finally spoke.

  “I don’t think it’s Renee, but I guess I’m afraid it might be. She dated Scott for a while. But then she broke it off. She said dating him was just too weird.”

  “Weird how?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. You should ask her. That guy Wayne always went with them, I know that.”

  “That’s pretty strange,” I agreed slowly. Why would Wayne go with them? But I refused to let Maggie derail me from her receptionist. “Could Renee have done it, physically?”

  “She’s strong. And she gets so pissed off all the time.” Maggie stopped and thought for a moment. “But it wouldn’t take much strength anyway. About as much as swinging a baseball bat. Anyone could do it. But, Jeez, Renee really is an okay person. She works hard and sticks by me—”

  “How about opportunity?” I asked, cutting her employee recommendation short.

  “The police asked me about that. I think all of us had the opportunity. All of the rooms, except for the bathroom, have connecting doors. Renee went back into the records office while you and I were talking. She could have gone out the other door into the hall, without our seeing her.”

  I nodded. I remembered that.

  “Wayne always stays with Scott for a bit after Eileen gets him settled. Eileen and I were in and out. Devi and Tanya were wandering around.”

  “What about Ted and Valerie?”

  “Valerie’s room adjoined Scott’s. All she had to do was walk through the door. And Ted could have gone through the connecting door from his room to the X-ray room, and from there into the hall. And you were there on the spot. Jeez, any of us could have done it.” She nuzzled Doc sorrowfully. “It’s hopeless. How can the police figure it out? And if they don’t find the murderer, no one will ever come to my office again.”

  “Maggie, it’s not hopeless. The police know what they’re doing.”

  She just stared at me with swollen, disbelieving eyes.

  “All right, how about motives?” I asked finally. I could feel a prickling of curiosity through the numbness of my shock over Younger’s death. “You know these people, I don’t.”

  “Eileen didn’t particularly care for Scott, but she didn’t know him outside of the office. Nor did I, for that matter. Wayne seemed to really like him.”

  “Why did Wayne stay with Scott all the time? What was their relationship?” I asked. The prickling was growing.

  “Renee thought maybe he was a bodyguard. I know that sounds a little far-out, but that was the impression she had. Renee’s kids actually liked Wayne. I don’t know anything about him really. He’s never been my patient. But he doesn’t strike me as a killer any more than you do.”

  “Somehow I agree with you. But, besides Renee, he seems to be the only one who knew Scott well. Though Valerie seemed to know and hate Scott,”

  “Really?” Maggie said, raising her eyebrows.

  “She accused him of being a drug pusher this morning.”

  Maggie’s mouth fell open. “Wow!”

  “And Devi wouldn’t even let Scott talk to Tanya. Apparently Devi knew Scott in college. He must not have made a very good impression.”

  “See, Kate. You already know stuff I don’t know. That’s really neat.”

  “There is nothing ‘neat’ about it. I just heard them talking this morning in the waiting room. I am not a detective.” I must have jerked my body when I spoke, because Hound slid off my lap and trotted across the rug to jump up on the green sofa. He began pushing Doc off Maggie’s lap.

  “You know,” said Maggie, absently positioning one dog on each thigh. “I guess it’s okay to tell you. It’s not a medical secret.”

  “What, for God’s sake?”

  “Valerie said something once about learning yoga in prison,” she whispered, as if the dachshunds might overhear. “I wonder what she was in prison for?”

  “You could ask her.”

  “Not me. I couldn’t. But I could get everyone who was there together again at my office. Then you could ask them questions.” She smiled at me with childlike confidence.

  “Maggie, this is no game. We’d be dealing with a murderer. Anyway, how could you get them to come?”

  “Jeez, Kate, this is Marin. I’ll just tell them that we need to share our feelings to integrate the experience. I mean, it’s really true. I feel awful about it. Not just the loss of business, but a death like that…” Her skin paled underneath her freckles. “Everyone must be traumatized. It’ll do us good to get together and share.”

  “Except for the murderer.”

  “Even the murderer. God, the killer must feel just terrible.”

  I looked at her open face and saw only sincerity. She pitied the killer. Maybe she was right. Maybe whoever broke Younger’s neck did feel terrible. I shuddered.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked suddenly. “Because I am. Let’s get something to eat
.”

  She got up without waiting for an answer. Doc and Hound and I followed her into a sunny kitchen. She began flinging open lime-green and lemon-yellow cupboards, pulling out boxes, cans and jars.

  “I’ve got some tuna, but you don’t eat tuna, do you?” she said, closing that cupboard.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said.

  “How about peanut butter?”

  “Maggie, just feed yourself, all right?” I sat down at her orange-lacquer table.

  “I’ve got it. Peanut butter on apple slices!”

  I found I was hungry. The rich, crunchy apple slices were a feast, but getting more information out of Maggie was no picnic. Not that she wasn’t wretchedly eager to help. But she refused to divulge any medical secrets and she just didn’t know much else. She did tell me everyone’s age. Ted was sixty-nine, as he was apparently fond of telling her with a wink and a leer. Tanya was fifteen and everyone else was in their thirties or forties. She also guiltily revealed that Devi was seriously ill, but refused to tell me the nature of her illness. Confidentiality. I was surprised Maggie knew the meaning of the word.

  One thing became clear. Maggie had disliked Scott Younger. According to her, he was the only one of us capable of murder. When I pointed out that he couldn’t have broken his own neck, she merely shrugged her shoulders and let Hound lick some more peanut butter off her fingers. Scott was cold and slimy, in her opinion, and rich too, as evidenced by the new bottle-green Jaguar he rode in to his appointments.

  I also learned that Eileen’s parents were Philippine immigrants, and that she was studying for her own doctorate in chiropractic. Renee was the divorced mother of a fourteen-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl. And Maggie thought Valerie had a daughter floating around somewhere too.

  “So who do you think it was?” Maggie asked me hopefully when the last apple slice was swallowed and the last piece of information painfully elicited.

  “I have absolutely no idea,” I answered.

  Maggie began to sob. She put her face into her hands and squeezed more tears out of her already swollen eyes. Doc and Hound rubbed against her legs and whined their concern. I put my arm around her. What could I say?