by G. H. Ephron
Cautiously, I lifted the lid an inch. Nothing jumped out. No ticking. No white powder. I took the lid off the rest of the way. It had sounded like what it was. Shards of pottery. I brought the box back into the kitchen and put some of the pieces on the table. They were pale gray with a high glaze and deep lines incised.
My gut seized up. They looked like pieces of something Kate might have made. I dumped the rest of the thirty or so pieces on the table and found a few that fit together. I recognized the piece. It was an early work, a large round pot into which Kate had tooled the figure of a woman in outline with generous breasts and swollen belly. It had been one of my favorites.
A red fury boiled out of me, and I hurled my arm across the table, sending the pieces crashing to the floor. I howled with anger. How dare someone … Then I stopped. How the hell had someone gotten hold of this pot when it was up in Kate’s studio?
I took the stairs two at a time. The door to the third-floor studio was ajar. Inside it was dark. I closed my eyes. Please, God, don’t take this from me too.
I pushed the door open. It was still as a tomb, the light from the not quite full moon streaming in through the windows.
The shadowy outlines of the pots on shelves across the windows confirmed that they hadn’t all been destroyed. I found the switch and turned on the lights. The collection of pots was there. All except the one piece. I stared at the empty spot on a shelf.
How had he gotten in? I looked back at the doorway, around at the windows. I felt violated, suddenly unsafe in my own home. How had he known where to go, and what would inflict the deepest, most painful wound?
I called Annie and she drove right over. By midnight, the police had come and gone. They’d searched upstairs and down. The intruder had broken in through a back basement window. I had no idea when it had happened. I didn’t venture into that corner of the basement very often. And the last time I was up in Kate’s studio, I hadn’t turned on the lights.
I had them search my mother’s side of the house too, just to be on the safe side. She didn’t protest.
Next time a suspicious package arrived, an officer told us, “Don’t touch it. Double-bag it in plastic.” I wasn’t sure how I could manage to not touch it and bag it, but I got the picture. To my mother, he added, “And don’t throw it away, either! Just call us immediately.”
After they left, Annie and I sat at my kitchen table drinking coffee. “Looks as if you pissed someone off good too.”
“Ralston Bridges,” I said, convinced that this had to be his handiwork.
“What makes you so sure? You’ve worked on lots of cases, Peter. Who knows who’s nursing a grudge? Why assume it’s Bridges? After all, he’s not Houdini.”
I agreed. It was one thing to get yourself into Bridgewater for observation, quite another to get yourself to Central Square and back before lockdown. “He doesn’t have to be,” I said. “All he needs is someone on the outside who’ll do his bidding.”
“An accomplice?” Annie sounded skeptical.
My coffee was black but I stirred it anyway. I fingered one of the pottery shards I’d swept up and deposited on a sheet of newspaper on the table. I pressed my thumb against the sharp edge until it almost cut through.
Annie stood behind me and rubbed my shoulders. She ran her hands up and down, over my back. “You’re all knotted up,” she said as she worked her thumbs around my shoulder blades, down my spine.
I tried to relax and feel her touch. It was more than my muscles that were tight. My stomach was tied in knots too.
“How about a hot shower to help you relax?” Annie asked.
I stood, turned to face her, and took her in my arms. Her smile barely masked her concern. “Only if you’ll take it with me,” I said.
“Mmm.” Annie pressed her hips into mine, and I could feel myself getting hard. “Sounds good. You’re feeling more relaxed already.”
“Only parts of me.”
I followed Annie up the stairs. I took off my clothes while Annie started the shower. But even as I did it I was scanning my room, wondering whether the intruder had been in here, gone through my things.
“Ready!” Annie called out.
The bathroom was filled with steam. I stepped in behind Annie. She had her face full into the stream of water. I took the soap and sudsed Annie’s back. Her skin was soft and smooth. I put my arms around her and ran the soap over her breasts, her belly, between her thighs. She turned to face me and we kissed, long and deep.
I wanted to lose myself to the sound of the water beating against the porcelain tub, to the water’s heat. I wanted to fill my lungs with steam and to abandon myself to Annie’s touch as she took the soap from me and ran it all over my body.
We dried each other and left the towels on the bathroom floor. Such a promising start. But in bed, my mind wouldn’t turn off. All I could think about was how devastating it would have been if the intruder had smashed all of Kate’s pots. Or hurt my mother. And whether there was a video surveillance camera hidden at the top of my bookshelf.
Finally, Annie rolled me off her and rested her head in my armpit while she stroked my chest. I kissed the top of her head and held her, wondering whether I’d recognize Ralston Bridges’s accomplice if I met him in a dark alley. An adversary with a face you could recognize was one thing. Vigilance could protect you. A proxy was another thing entirely. It could be anyone.
10
THE NEXT morning, I felt as if it were me that had been smashed and broken into pieces. I’d slept fitfully, dreaming about not being able to get home in time to save Kate. The feelings of desperation, of helplessness that haunted me in the two dark years after her death returned full force. Not being able to perform the way I’d wanted to with Annie only made me feel worse.
Over coffee, Annie said what did I expect, anyway? After all, I’d had the house broken into, Kate’s pot smashed. Someone had defaced my father’s gravestone. “I’d be more worried about you if you’d been able to brush it off and perform like Casanova.”
Then she opened up the Yellow Pages and looked up security companies. She put check marks by several that she said she’d heard of. That was Annie. She wasn’t one to spend more than five minutes in morbid self-reflection. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and take action.
I called one of them. Sniffing an easy sell, they’d sent a salesperson right over. I signed the contract for an alarm system for both sides of the house and paid extra to have it installed within the week.
Then I called in and checked my messages. Nothing that couldn’t wait. By eleven, I was on my way to Westbrook Farms, the nursing home where Nick Babikian’s mother was staying. It was another of those rare, perfect spring days, but I drove in a fog, my stomach again in knots.
Westbrook Farms was a low, modern, two-story brick building set back from the main road on a rise. By the time I turned into the parking lot, I’d reassured myself that this was a temporary setback with Annie and that the house would be a fortress with the new security system. Still, I could feel the hard, sharp edge of the pottery shard from Kate’s destroyed pot pressing against my thumb. I looked at my hand. It had left no visible mark.
Double glass doors opened onto a pleasant, spacious lobby lined with comfortable chairs and sofas. Most of the seats were filled with elderly ladies, a few of them asleep. A man slowly pushed a walker across the carpeted floor toward me. I held the door open for him. The place had a slight musty, plastic slipcover smell, like my Aunt Gertie’s apartment when she wasn’t cooking. It was the smell of old age.
As I crossed to the desk, one of the women chirped, “Who’s he?” Another one said, “Isn’t he handsome?” A third added, “Who’s the lucky one, I wonder?”
I waggled my fingers at them. They tittered and nodded back at me. I checked in and took the elevator to the Alzheimer’s Unit on the second floor.
The differences between the Alzheimer’s Unit at Westbrook Farms and your standard elder-care unit were subtle. Ambient light le
vels were brighter and more natural. The music on the sound system—soft classical alternating with thirties and forties big band—would be familiar and soothing to patients. Alzheimer’s distorts how the brain interprets what the eyes see, and reflections and patterns can be confusing, so the plain linoleum floor had a dull finish instead of high-gloss.
I recognized the middle-aged nurse with gray streaks through her dark hair who was busy at a U-shaped work area just opposite the elevator. Dottie Grebow had worked at the Pearce for many years. She’d been a head nurse there on the one-time Reintegration Unit, a unit that had been allowed to atrophy under the reign of former CFO Arnold Destler. When services weren’t financially viable, Destler systematically reduced their budgets and reassigned staff until those remaining couldn’t stand it any longer and jumped ship.
“Peter!” she said, greeting me with a wide smile.
“Long time no see.” I gave Dottie a self-conscious hug. The half dozen patients sitting around the nurses’ station watching made me feel like a circus act.
“I heard they gave Destler the old heave-ho. Sorry I missed his going-away bash,” Dottie said with a wry smile.
“We all missed it, I’m afraid. Though Gloria celebrated by dancing the fandango on the press release announcing his resignation.”
Dottie laughed. “I’d liked to have seen that.” Then she turned serious. “So, what brings you here?”
“You have a resident? Mrs. Babikian?” A look of concern washed over Dottie’s face. “How’s she doing?” I asked.
“Better.”
“Were you here when she was admitted?”
“I wasn’t on. But I heard all about it. I guess her son tried to leave her on the doorstep at Oakvale. They transferred her to us. When I got in that morning, she was still getting settled. We’d just get her calmed down, and then she’d erupt. Agitated, screaming. Took us a while to figure out what was setting her off. Turned out she was getting upset every time she saw a man in any kind of uniform. We’ve had to disguise our maintenance staff when they go into her room.”
Dottie pulled a chart off the rack and handed it to me. I realized she thought I was Mrs. Babikian’s doctor and would be authorized to see it. “Dottie, I’m here because I’m working with the team defending her son. She was at the house the night her daughter-in-law was killed. I have her son’s permission to speak with her, and her son is the legal guardian.”
Dottie pulled back Mrs. Babikian’s chart. “But she’s in no condition …”
“I know that. But the police will interview her, condition or no. She may have seen something.”
“It’s taken us two days to calm her down,” Dottie said.
“I’ll try not to undo.”
Dottie gave me an appraising look. She looked down at the chart but didn’t hand it to me. Instead, she opened it, scanned it quickly, and closed it again. “She’s seventy years old. On a small dose of Risperdal”—that would be to calm her and try to mitigate the delusions—“plus some trazodone to help her sleep. She’s suspicious, isolative. Takes her meals alone and refuses to leave her room. She has to be coaxed into taking her medication. Always mumbling under her breath. And her clock’s a bit off.” Dottie smiled. “At three in the morning, she decides it’s breakfast.”
“What do you do?”
“We get her a bowl of cereal, of course,” Dottie said as she hung up the chart, “just like you taught us when you gave those lectures.”
“Sounds like a challenge.”
“Thank goodness she’s connected with one of the nursing staff.”
“Maybe I should talk to her before I try to see Mrs. Babikian?”
“Yes. Actually, I’d like her to accompany you,” she said. I was grateful, though I knew for Dottie it was damage control. “Here she comes now.”
The plump, energetic young woman seemed to bounce along on the balls of her sneakered feet. She had long blond hair pulled back with a barrette at the nape of her neck. The large, block-printed name tag on her pocket said CAROLE.
“Carole, this is Dr. Peter Zak. Here to see Mrs. Babikian,” Dottie told her.
I offered my hand. She gave me a firm shake. “You’re a relative?” She sounded delighted.
“Mrs. Babikian doesn’t know me.”
Carole did a deep inhale, then exhale. I knew she was afraid I was about to upset all the work she’d done to stabilize her patient.
“It’s okay,” Dottie said. “He works with patients like ours every day of the week.”
Carole looked me up and down. “Why don’t you take off your jacket and tie and leave them here.” I did as she suggested. “And roll up your shirtsleeves. She has an aversion to anyone who looks official.”
Carole led me down the hall. In the middle of the corridor, an elderly woman was asleep in her wheelchair, slumped over an open, upside-down New York Times. Carole gently pushed the wheelchair to one side.
We passed patient rooms, singles and doubles. On each of the doors hung a clear plastic pouch containing a photograph of the room’s occupant and a yellow card with the name printed in large block letters. Some of the doors were open. The rooms were painted in pleasant pastels, and I could see touches of home alongside the institutional beds—a rocking chair in one room, a Victorian dresser topped with a lace table scarf and photographs in another.
The place was color-coded. Each bathroom door was purple with a picture of a toilet painted on it. The activity room walls were painted in bright primary colors to distinguish them from other rooms and to help patients remain alert.
We paused in front of Mrs. Babikian’s room. The Polaroid hanging on the door showed a wide-eyed, startled face. “How is she?” I asked.
“She’s adjusting. It seems like I’m the only person she trusts, although everybody here is like me.”
“I know,” I said. Westbrook Farms was as good as it got when it came to overall patient care and staff morale. Of course, it was private, and patients paid for the care they got.
“Maybe you should go in first,” I said.
Carole pushed the door open. In this room, there were no personal touches—only institutional furniture. Mrs. Babikian whipped around as Carole entered the room. She’d been standing, looking out the window. Her pale green house dress hung from her narrow shoulders, and skin hung in pale crepey folds around her neck. Her head was surrounded by a frizz of thick dark hair, salted with white. She seemed older than her seventy years. Dark, intense eyes strafed us.
“Home,” she told Carole. “I want to go home.”
Mrs. Babikian picked up a battered black vinyl pocketbook and a pale blue terrycloth bathrobe from the end of the bed, clutched them to her chest, and started marching to the door. When she saw me, she stopped short, as if she’d run into a pole. She opened her mouth, mute at first, and then a howl started to grow from somewhere in her stomach. Quickly it turned to a muttered growl. “Brrgrr, brrgrr …” She made the sound over and over, her eyes riveted on me.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Babikian,” Carole said, coming between us. The muttering faltered. “This is Dr. Zak. He’s come to talk with you.”
“I’m a friend of Nick’s,” I said.
Like a faucet being turned off, the growling stopped. Mrs. Babikian approached me, her head tilted to one side, her eyes bright. “I have to get home to Nicky. Mama’s at the bakery and Nicky’s due home from school. He’ll be waiting for his milk and cookies.” She walked past me and stepped into the doorway, peering up and down the hall, as if she were getting ready to cross a busy street. “Where’s Nicky?”
“I just saw Nicky,” I said, entering her fantasy. Mrs. Babikian turned and blinked at me. “He’s not home yet. But he’s on his way. I saw him at the candy store buying some gum.”
Mrs. Babikian smiled and clucked. “He knows gum is bad. He’ll get mouth holes.”
“Sugarless gum,” I said.
Mrs. Babikian’s arms relaxed and her pocketbook and robe dropped to the floor. I picked t
hem up and put them in a chair, noting as I did that the hem of the robe had a faded brown stain around the bottom edge. I wondered if it had been soaked with Lisa Babikian’s blood, and the efficient staff at Westbrook Farms had laundered it.
“Why don’t you sit down,” Carole said and gently led Mrs. Babikian to a chair.
“Can I get anything for you?” I asked. “Are you thirsty?”
Mrs. Babikian ran her tongue over her thin, dry lips. “Juice would be nice.”
Carole caught my eye as I headed off to find some. “Can of juice. Unopened. Bring a straw.”
I returned with a can of tomato juice and offered it to Mrs. Babikian. She looked to Carole for reassurance before taking it. She carefully wiped the top with the hem of her dress, then opened the can. Carole dropped the straw into the opening. Mrs. Babikian took a long drink. Then she gave a quiet sigh.
I pulled a chair up alongside her. “Have you had a good rest?” I asked.
Mrs. Babikian nodded and took another sip. Then she set the can on the floor. “I want to sleep in my own bed,” she announced.
“I can bring you something from home. Would you like me to do that?” I asked.
She thought about that. “Nicky?”
“When was the last time you saw Nicky?” I asked.
“This morning. I sent him off to that school where he always gets beaten up.” Lines of anxiety etched her forehead. “He was supposed to come work at the bakery but he didn’t get there. I have to get home. I hope he didn’t get into another fight.” She started to rise out of her chair, knocking over the tomato juice. Then sank back down. Juice spilled from the can, forming a puddle on the floor.
“What about before this morning?” I asked. “Did you see Nicky and Lisa?”
Carole pulled some towels out of a dispenser in the corner of the room. She crouched alongside Mrs. Babikian and started to mop the spill.