Burying Ben (24 page)

Chapter Twenty Six

I leave four messages for Mark, all urgent. When he finally calls back I’m outside, hauling a garbage can full of broken dishes to the curb. I sit down to listen to his message.

“Sorry, babe. I should have called you earlier. I don’t know where the time went.” There’s a pause. I can hear him breathing. “I really wanted to tell you this in person but I guess that’s not going to happen. Melinda’s pregnant. We’re thrilled.” He coughs. “About covering for you at the PD? Think of me as Mark the bookmark, holding your place until you get back.” Evidently he doesn’t know I’ve been fired. “I can’t believe I just said that. I know this isn’t funny. My point is, chin up, this will all blow over soon. Try not to worry, okay? Talk soon. I gotta go. Oh jeez, I almost forgot about Ben’s psych screen. We finally found it, but under the circumstances, my lawyer thinks I should keep it strictly confidential. Sorry about that. Well, I guess that’s all. Talk soon, babe. Stay strong. Melinda says hi.”

Mark’s offices are on the top two floors of a Victorian house that he had bought and renovated when we first started the practice. I love this building, the burnished mahogany banisters and wainscoting, the stained glass windows with prisms that splinter light over the walls. Even now, in the dark, the colored glass panes sparkle with light from the street.

I peer through the etched glass window in the front door looking for tell tale lights indicating that Mark has installed an alarm system. I don’t see any. A large white board with the words ‘in’ and ‘out’ stenciled across the top rests on our antique oak credenza. Staff names are written down the side and there is a small round magnet for each. All the magnets have been moved to the ‘out’ column.

I walk around to the back entrance, sneaking like a thief. I can see a small nightlight through the coffee room window. I rattle the door and hold my breath waiting for an alarm to blare. There’s a light rustle in the backyard garden and a flutter of birds choruses briefly, irritated by the disturbance. I take out my key. Mark had never thought to ask for it back.
The old brass lockset is still the same. I insert my key and turn it. The door opens with a familiar creak and I am inside.

The locked file room is on the top floor. I go upstairs, sliding my hand along the banister, savoring the silken feel of worn wood on my palm. Mark had always hidden the file room keys in a secret drawer in his roll top desk. I turn the doorknob to his office. Nothing happens. A glow of light comes through the frosted glass pane. I give it a little push and it opens slowly, dragging across the nap of newly installed carpeting. I step inside.

Everything is changed. The old Persian rugs are gone and the beautiful bare oak floors are covered wall to wall with off-white carpet. A cordovan leather sofa, matching chairs and a steel and glass coffee table stand where the old antique sofa and overstuffed chair once stood. In place of the roll top desk and oak banker’s chair is a long metal table and an ergonomically designed mesh chair with a gnarly thicket of knobs and levers under the seat. A photo of Mark and Melinda on vacation in some tropical resort sits next to the computer. I turn it face down on the table.

I am perspiring. My heart thuds in my chest. Where is the damn key to the file cabinet? I find the roll top desk in the second floor waiting room, pushed against a wall, the crown jewel in a ring of identical black leather office chairs with chrome frames. There are worn spots on the carpet, where anxious applicants sit on the edges of their seats, waiting to be called for their interviews. The roll top opens with a clatter and I feel underneath the cubbyholes for the secret drawer. It pops open easily. The keys are inside.

Twelve file cabinets jam the small room. Mark wasn’t just boasting. The practice has grown. He now employs two office staff, two part time psychologists and Melinda, the consort intern and soon-to-be-mother of his child.

The file drawer groans heavily on its sliders. There are nearly one hundred buff colored files in this one drawer, alphabetically arranged behind plastic tabs. I find Ben’s folder and, in my eagerness to read it, I slam the drawer shut. The sound reverberates through the house with a shudder. I am transfixed by my own recklessness, frozen to the spot with fear until silence settles back into the room. I return to Mark’s office. It is after midnight. Lights play across the fluted glass window as a police car
drives slowly down the street on a lonely prowl. This is the time of night when normal people sleep and criminals are just starting to work.

There is a copy machine on the back wall. A digital sign warns me to wait until the copier warms up. I walk back to the desk and right the picture of Mark and Melinda. They look healthy and adoring. Even their names link harmoniously. I wonder if she makes him happy or if she is also destined to be tossed aside for someone younger and more beautiful.

The copier beeps in readiness. I open the file. There is a copy of the letter confirming Ben’s appointment and a signed consent form indicating that he understood the process and made no claim to confidentiality. All boilerplate. There are no protocols, no reports, no letter of recommendation.

I can’t face walking into my dark house, alone, in the middle of the night. I drive to Gary’s house and park in front. I don’t want to ring his doorbell at this hour. The weather is balmy. A light breeze carries the fragrance of roses. I crawl into the back seat, cover myself with a blanket, and fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Someone is talking to me, tapping his fingers on the window glass. “Go away,” I say. “I’m sleeping.”

“I see that.”

I shake myself awake, my feet tangled in the unfamiliar blanket. I sit up. I’m stiff and my left hand is pulsing painfully. Frank is staring at me through the rear driver’s side window.

“What are you doing here, Frank?”

“I’m working on Gary’s house, remember?”

He waves a thermos and a coffee cup in the air. I unlock the door and he slides in the back seat with me. I pat my hair. My breath is atrocious. He hands me a cup of coffee.

“What time is it?”

“6:30 a.m. Contractors get started early. What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to Gary.”

“At 6:30 in the morning?”

“It’s important.”

“Must be, if you slept here all night.”

“I haven’t been here all night, just a few hours.”

“Why aren’t you sleeping at your house?”

“This is my car. I can sleep in it if I want.”

Frank sighs. “Answer my question, please.”

“I was scared to be home alone.”

“Why?”

“Someone broke into my house.”

He takes a swig of coffee from the thermos. “Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t know or don’t want to say?”

“Don’t know.”

“Were you home?”

“I was having dinner with you, remember?”

He opens his mouth and then closes it again. His hands tighten around the thermos. The unshaven parts of his face are turning red. “What did they take?”

“Nothing. They just trashed the place. Look, I need to get going.”

Frank opens the car door and starts to get out.

“Don’t tell Gary I slept in front of his house.”

“Are you kidding? That’s the first thing I’m going to tell him.”

Gary is dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Janice is still in her bathrobe.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Frank says. “I found Dot sleeping in her car in front of your house when I got here. I’m going out back to work on the addition. Maybe you can figure out what’s going on.”

He tromps off, his work boots thumping through the kitchen. I hear a door slam.

I shove Ben’s folder at Gary.

”Where did you get this?”

“From Mark’s office.”

“Did Mark give it to you?”

“No, I asked him, but he refused.”

“So, how did you get it?”

“Better you shouldn’t know. I’ve got a lot riding on this. I’ll do what I have to, to protect myself.”

“Give me that.” He snatches the folder out of my hand and sits down. “There’s coffee in the kitchen. Help yourself.”

The muffled sound of Frank’s drilling drones in the background. When I come back from the kitchen, Gary gives me a puzzled look.

“There’s nothing in here, no protocols, no scoring sheets.”

“No inkblots?” Frank’s voice is behind me.

He pulls out a chair and sits down, coffee in hand. “I’m taking a break, Boss.”

“At least you bring your own coffee.” Gary closes the folder. “Our girl here is working up a rap sheet. Like they say, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

“Remember what the Buddha said.” Frank sets his coffee cup down and places both hands on the table. “Before you seek revenge, first dig two graves.”

Gary and I look at him.

“I mess around with philosophy. Contractors can read, you know.”

Gary lights his pipe with all the precision of a Japanese tea ceremony. “I keep two sets of folders, one clinical and one process oriented.”

“How’s that?” Frank asks.

“Clinical folders contain progress notes, topics I discuss with the client, medication notes, changes in mental status, et cetera. They’re basically checklists. My process notes have all the gory details. I might check off that a client discussed relations with his mother and in my process notes I’d write that she forced him to eat spoiled food when he was a child. My clinical files can be subpoenaed, but process notes are my property.”

Gary turns to me. “Sorry to say, Dot, you went to a lot of trouble for nothing. Let’s hope you don’t also go to jail. You got the wrong folder. The real folder must be somewhere else.”

Gary has a patient waiting, so Frank takes me home to collect some clothes and bring them back to Gary and Janice’s house. I protest, but the two of them inform me that I have no vote on the matter. I was not to spend another night alone until whoever had broken in was caught. I could have told them how infrequently the police ever solve a cold case, but I don’t.

This is the first time Frank has been inside my house. It’s still pretty trashed from the break-in. We go up to the bedroom. I had turned the mattress over, slashed side down and made the bed. Given my current state of unemployment, I don’t dare spend money on a new mattress. I start packing a suitcase.

“What’s this?” Frank asks. He is holding my good luck sweater with the hole in the middle. I had draped it over a chair as a reminder to take it to a tailor and ask if it could be repaired.

“I tore it on something. Isn’t that awful? It’s my favorite sweater.”

“Damn it, Dot. I’m not an idiot. Somebody stuck a knife through the middle of this.” He holds the sweater up in the air, pulling the slit apart so that light shows through. “Is this ex-husband of yours crazy? Maybe you need a protection order.”

Before I can tell him that I can take care of myself, thank you, he reaches for me and kisses me, not an air kiss, not a kiss on the cheek, but a full-on frontal kiss. I pull away, acutely discomfited by the nearness of my bed and the sudden rush of hormones storming my body.

We sit across from each other at the kitchen counter. I am tempted to tell him that Mark isn’t the one who broke into my house. The person who is stalking me is far more dangerous and deeply damaged than Mark could ever be.

“I think you need a lawyer. You’re going to wind up hurt or in a worse position than
you’re already in. If I understand what’s going on, you just broke into your ex-husband’s office and took a confidential file. Isn’t that against the law?”

“I didn’t break in, I had a key.”

“You don’t belong there. It’s not yours anymore, key or no key. You’re not thinking straight.”

“When did you get a license to practice psychology?”

“Anybody could see that you’re in trouble.”

“Stick to hammering nails, Frank. Please.”

He winces and stands up.

“Get what you need,” he says. “I’ll wait for you in the car.”

First kiss, first fight. Things are speeding up. We drive in silence back to Gary and Janice’s house. Gary, Baxter, Patcher, the missing Eddie, even poor Ben from his grave
are buffeting my life into a whorl of tangles and snarls. Meeting Frank complicates things even further.

Chapter Twenty Seven

I’m too antsy to spend the day sitting alone in Gary and Janice’s house, twiddling my thumbs and watching daytime TV.

Not to mention that sharing an empty house with Frank, as he works bare-chested in the heat, is very distracting and not much company. He’s been noticeably frosty to me since our little spat.

Gary and Janice, on the other hand, are really worried about me, always telling me to be careful.

I feel a stab of irritation at their possessiveness. Being careful
is what got
m
e
into this situation.
W
hy had I been so cautious with Ben?
If I had been more gutsy, I would have dug deeper, gone to his house when he didn’t return to work, asked him
outright, are you thinking of killing yourself?

I second guess
m
yself all the way from Gar
y
’s to Fran’s restaurant. Fran is rhyth
m
ically flipping eggs and flattening r
a
shers of bacon under an iron press,
m
oving her bulky b
o
dy from
griddle to cou
n
ter with the
g
race of a ballerina.
W
hen she bends over, the fleshy folds around her waist pop from between her t-shirt and the elastic waistband on her pants. She doesn’t seem
to
care what she l
o
oks like. D
o
esn’t e
v
en try to tug her shirt down. Despite all the sexual banter and innuendo she exchanges with her custo
m
ers, it strikes
m
e that Fran never
again expects to be seen naked by a
m
an.

I sit down on a stool. She shoves a mug of
coffee at
m
e, its porcelain edge worn with age. “
T
here’s still no answer on
E
ddie’s ho
m
e phone. Has he called you?
I’ve been to his apart
m
ent three ti
m
es. He’s not there, and his neighbors don’t know where he went. I called you last night. Why haven’t you called
m
e back
?
”

“No, he hasn’t called me. And I wasn’t ho
m
e last night.”

“He’s going to kill hi
m
self, I know it.”

“Eddie isn’t going to kill hi
m
self, Fran.”
I say this like I haven’t been worried about him
myself. “He’s probably
just so
m
ewhere drinking beer.”

“I don’t thi
n
k you’re in a position to judge
who is or isn’t suicidal.” She freezes, spatula in t
h
e air. “That was a terri
b
le t
h
ing to say. Forgive
m
e?
I’m
so worried about Eddie, I don’t know what I’m
saying half the ti
m
e
. If he turns up alive, I’m
going to kill him
with
m
y
bare hands
.
” She reac
h
es over the c
o
unter and h
u
gs
m
e. “I didn’t
m
ean what I said. What can I do to
m
ake it up to you?
Are you hungry
?
”

“Give
m
e a job.”

“That’s
ridiculous.”

“I need so
m
ething to do or I’ll go crazy.”

“Tell your friends that
you need clients. “

“I’m
under investigation and being sued. That makes
m
e
m
o
r
e of a liability than a hot prospect for referrals.”

“Then look for Eddie.”

“I’m
not a cop, Fran. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Have you ever cooked or waited tables
?
”

“No, but you could teach
m
e.”

“Do you really want people to know
you’re working here?”

I don’t know the answer. On the one hand, it’s e
m
barrassing. On the other, I’d feel a lot safer surrounded by cops.

Fran peers over the counter looking at
m
y feet. I am wearing boots with stacked heels. “Lesson nu
m
ber one, comfortable
shoes.
C
o
m
e back when you get so
m
e.”

I go ho
m
e to get the new walking shoes I had stowed in the back of
m
y closet. My yard needs watering and the house could use a good
airing out. Before we had our little argu
m
ent, Frank offered to install a fancy
m
onitored alarm
system
in
m
y house, one that auto
m
atically rings do
w
n the police and has
m
o
tion activated lights in the front and back yards and panic buttons in the garage
and in
m
y bedroom. He
m
ay have changed his
m
i
nd about
m
e, but I hope he hasn’t changed
his
m
ind about the alar
m
. I told him
I couldn’t pay him
and the way he said he’d f
i
nd a way to collect
m
ade
m
e go weak at the knees. I open several windows and go upstairs.
My good luck sweater is still draped over the chair where Frank left it. The
m
emory of
our kiss leaves
m
e feeling spongy and soft. I lie down on the bed and close
m
y eyes. Outside my window, a
m
ocking bird engages in noisy discourse with itself.

So
m
ething wakes
m
e – I’m not sure if I
’
ve been sleeping for a
m
inute or an hour – a noise, unfa
m
iliar and
o
ut of place, a scra
p
i
ng
s
ound like s
o
m
eone pushing open a sticky window. I lay frozen with fright, listening to
the creak of feet p
a
dding softly across the bare floorboards in the dining room
and then up the carpeted stairs.

I drop
m
y f
e
et over the edge of the b
e
d and stand. My heart is pounding, and I can hear the rush of blood in
m
y ears. There is
an open window about six feet away. I could scream
for help but
m
y neighbors are all at work. I pick up the cordless phone. The dial tone sounds like a klaxon. The soft steps stop.
I move toward the open closet door.
T
here is a set of unused hand weights on the floor. A little collection of unfulfilled pro
m
ises I
m
ade to
m
y
s
elf and then abandoned in a
m
ia
s
m
a of post-divorce
m
elancholy. I elbow my way into the hot airle
s
s
s
pace behind my win
t
er clothes and raise the weig
h
t
. Plastic storage bags stick to
m
y sweaty skin. I have never before hit another hu
m
an being in
m
alice, and I’m not sure I can do it now.

A shadow falls into the roo
m
. I hesitate, then lunge forward, swinging the weight in a downward
arc
like
a
hatch
e
t. A large hand stops
m
e in
m
i
d-air, tears the weight away
and turns
m
e around, yanking
m
y h
a
nd behind my back and up between
m
y shoulder blade
s
. Pain streaks down my ar
m
.

“Are you fucking trying to kill
m
e
?
”

Eddie throws the weight across the roo
m
, splintering the baseboard with a loud crack.
My legs collapse, I fall on hi
m
, and he catches
m
e
a
s I hit the floor and leans
m
e
against the wall. My whole body is shaking.

“
W
hat are you doing sneaking around
m
y
house?” I barely have enough breath to speak. “
W
hy didn’t you ring the doorbell
?
”

“There’s a fucking window wide open downstairs. I thought
m
aybe you were being burglarized.
W
hat did you want
m
e to do, ring the bell and announce
m
yself to the crook
?
”
I’m
cradling
m
y ar
m
. “Hurt? Probably a little strain.
N
othing serious.“

He helps me to
m
y feet and we walk do
w
nstairs into the livi
n
g roo
m
.
My heart is still pounding in
m
y ears. He goes into the
kitchen, pours
m
e a glass of ice water and brings it back with a bottle of a
s
pirin that was sitting on the counter.

“Take two. Call
m
e in the
m
orning. I always wanted to say that.”

“Fran
’
s going out of her
m
i
nd worrying about you.
W
e both were.
W
e thought you were off so
m
e
where drinking yourself to death.”

“You were worried about
m
e?
Five
m
i
nutes ago you were ready to knock
m
e into the next century.” He looks around. “Where’s all your stuff
?
”

“Spring cleaning. I’m
going to buy so
m
e new fu
r
niture.” Now is the per
f
ect ti
m
e to tell him
about Patcher breaking into
m
y house and trashing everything. But then I would have to tell him
about the incident
in Sacra
m
ento and about April.

“You’re shitting
m
e, right
?
”

He
m
akes a pot of coffee
and we
m
o
ve ou
t
side to
m
y tiny patio. The sun is warm and the air s
m
ells of fre
s
hly cut grass.
Hum
m
ingbirds dart through the shrubs, their iri
d
esce
n
t r
u
by thro
a
ts glinting in the sunlight,
their wings droning softly.