C is for Corpse (5 page)

She stared at me and I stared back. I remembered doing this sort of stuff in sixth grade with my mortal enemy, Tommy Jancko. I forget now why we disliked each other, but stare contests were definitely the weapons of choice.

She looked back at Bobby. “He wants me hospitalized. D'I tell you that?”

“You going?”

“Hey, no
way
! Get all those needles stuck in me? Uh-un, no thanks. I'm not interested.” She swung her long legs over the side of the bed and got up. She crossed the room to a low dressing table with a gilt-edged mirror above it. She studied her face, glancing back at me. “You think I look thin?”

“Very.”

“Really?” She seemed fascinated by the notion, turning slightly so she could see her own flat behind. She studied her face again, watching herself take a drag of her cigarette. She did a quick shrug. Everything looked fine to her.

“Could we talk about this murder attempt?” I said.

She padded back to the bed and flopped down again.
“Somebody's after him. Definitely,” she said. She stubbed out her cigarette, with a yawn.

“What makes you say that?”

“The vibes.”

“Aside from the vibes,” I said.

“Oh balls, you don't believe us either,” she said. She turned sideways and settled against the pillows, folding an arm under her head.

“Is someone after you too?”

“Nun-un. I don't think so. Just him.”

“But why would someone do that? I'm not saying I don't believe you. I'm looking for a place to start and I want to hear what you have to say.”

“I'd have to think about it some,” she said and then she was quiet.

It took me a few minutes to realize she'd passed out. Jesus, what was she on?

 

 

 

 

 

 

I waited in the hallway, shoes in hand, while Bobby covered her with a blanket and tiptoed out of the room, closing the door gently.

“What's the story?” I said.

“She's O.K. She was just up late last night.”

“What are you talking about? She's half dead!”

He shifted uneasily. “You really think so?”

“Bobby, would you
look
at her? She's a skeleton. She's doing drugs, alcohol, cigarettes. You know she's smoking dope on top of that. How's she going to survive?”

“I don't know. I guess I didn't think she was that bad off,” he said. He was not only young, he was
naïve
, or maybe she'd been going under so gradually that he couldn't see the shape she was in.

“How long has she been anorexic?”

“Since Rick died, I guess. Maybe some before that. He was her boyfriend and she took it pretty hard.”

“Is that what Kleinert's seeing her for? The anorexia?”

“I guess. I never really asked. She was a patient of his before I started seeing him.”

A voice cut in. “Is there some problem?”

Derek Wenner was approaching from the gallery, highball in hand. He was a man who'd been good-looking once. Of medium height, fair-haired, his gray eyes magnified by glasses with steel-blue frames. He was in his late forties now, by a charitable estimate, a solid thirty pounds overweight. He had the puffy, florid complexion of a man who drinks too much and his hairline had receded in a wide U that left a runner of thinning hair down the center, clipped short and brushed to one side. The excess pounds had given him a double chin and a wide neck that made the collar of his dress shirt seem tight. His pleated gabardine pants looked expensive and so did his loafers, which were tan and white, with vents cut into the leather. He'd been wearing a sport coat earlier, but he'd taken it off, along with his tie. He unbuttoned his collar with relief.

“What's going on? Where's Kitty? Your mother wants to know why she hasn't joined us.”

Bobby seemed embarrassed. “I don't know. She was talking to us and she fell asleep.”

“Fell asleep” seemed a bit understated to me. Kitty's face had been the color of a plastic ring I sent away for once as a kid. The ring was white, but if you held it to the light for a while and then cupped your hand over it, it glowed faintly green. This, to me, did not connote good health.

“Hell, I better talk to her,” he said. I had to guess
he'd had his hands full with her. He opened the door and went into Kitty's room.

Bobby gave me a look that was part dismay and part anxiety. I glanced in through the open door. Derek put his drink on the table and sat down on Kitty's bed.

“Kitty?”

He put a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. There was no response. “Hey, come on, honey. Wake up.”

He shot me a worried look.

He gave Kitty a rough shake. “Hey, come on. Wake up.”

“You want me to get one of the doctors from downstairs?” I said. He shook her again. I didn't wait for a response.

I slipped my shoes on and left my handbag by the door, heading for the stairs.

When I reached the living room, Glen Callahan glanced over at me, apparently sensing that something was wrong.

She moved forward. “Where's Bobby?”

“Upstairs with Kitty. I think it might be smart to have somebody take a look at her. She passed out and your husband's having trouble rousing her.”

“I'll get Leo.”

I watched while she approached Dr. Kleinert, murmuring to him. He glanced over at me and then he excused himself from his conversation. The three of us went upstairs.

Bobby had joined Derek at Kitty's bedside, his face
creased with concern. Derek was trying to pull Kitty into a sitting position, but she slumped to one side. Dr. Kleinert moved forward swiftly and pushed both men out of the way. He did a quick check of her vital signs, pulling a penlight out of the inside breast pocket of his suit. Her pupils had contracted down to pinpoints, and from where I stood, the green eyes looked milky and lifeless, apparently responding little to the light he flashed first in one, then the other. Her breathing was slow and shallow, her muscles flaccid. Dr. Kleinert reached for the telephone, which was sitting on the floor near the bed, and dialed 911.

Glen remained in the doorway. “What is it?”

Kleinert ignored her, apparently talking to the emergency dispatcher.

“This is Dr. Leo Kleinert. I'm going to need an ambulance out on West Glen Road in Montebello. I've got a patient suffering from barbiturate poisoning.” He gave the address and a brief set of instructions about how to reach the place. He hung up and looked at Bobby. “You have any idea what she took?”

Bobby shook his head.

Derek responded, addressing the remark to Glen. “She was fine half an hour ago. I talked to her myself.”

“Oh Derek. For God's sake,” she said with annoyance.

Kleinert reached over and opened the bed-table drawer. He sorted through some junk and then hesitated, pulling out a stash of pills that would have felled an elephant. They were in a Ziploc bag, maybe two hundred capsules: Nembutals, Seconals, blue-and-orange
Tuinals, Placidyls, Quaaludes, like colorful supplies for some exotic cottage industry.

Kleinert's expression was despairing. He looked up at Derek, holding the bag by one corner. Exhibit A in a trial that had been going on for some time by my guess.

“What are those things?” Derek said. “How'd she get them?”

Kleinert shook her head. “Let's get people out of here and then we'll worry about that.”

Glen Callahan had already turned and left the room and I could hear her heels clipping purposefully toward the stairs. Bobby took my arm and the two of us moved out into the hallway.

Derek was apparently still having trouble believing this was happening. “Is she going to be O.K.?”

Dr. Kleinert murmured a reply, but I couldn't hear what it was.

Bobby steered me into a room across the hall and closed the door. “Let's stay out of the way. We'll go downstairs in a bit.” He rubbed at the fingers of his bad hand as if it were a talisman. The drag in his voice was back.

The room was large, with deep-set windows looking out onto the rear of the property. The wall-to-wall carpeting was white, a dense cut-pile so recently vacuumed that I could see Bobby's footprints in places. His double bed seemed diminutive in a room that was probably thirty feet square, with a large dressing room opening off to the left and what was apparently a bathroom beyond that. A television set rested on an antique pine blanket-chest at the foot of the bed. On the wall
to my right was a long built-in desk with a white Formica surface. An IBM Selectric II and the keyboard, monitor, and printer for a home computer were lined up along its length. The bookshelves were white Formica too, filled almost exclusively with medical texts. There was a sitting area in the far corner: two overstuffed chairs and an ottoman covered in a plaid fabric of rust, white, and slate blue. The coffee table, reading lamp, books and magazines stacked nearby suggested that this was where Bobby spent his leisure time.

He went to an intercom on the wall and pressed a button.

“Callie, we're starving up here. Could you send us a tray? There are two of us and we'll need some white wine too.”

I could hear a hollow clattering in the background: dishes being loaded into the dishwasher. “Yes, Mr. Bobby. I'll have Alicia bring something up.”

“Thank you.”

He limped over to one of the chairs and sat down. “I eat when I'm anxious. I've always done that. Come sit down. Shit, I hate this house. I used to love it. When I was a kid, it was great. Places to run. Places to hide. A yard that went on forever. Now it feels like a cocoon. Insulated. But it doesn't keep bad stuff out. It feels cold. Are you cold?”

“I'm fine,” I said.

I sat down in the other chair. He pushed the ottoman over and I put my feet up. I wondered what it must be like to live in a house like this where all of
your needs were tended to, where someone else was responsible for grocery shopping and food preparation, cleaning, trash removal, landscape maintenance. What did it leave you free to do?

“What's it like coming from money like this? I can't even imagine it.”

He hesitated, lifting his head.

In the distance, we could hear the ambulance approach, the siren reaching a crescendo and then winding down abruptly with a whine of regret. He glanced at me, dabbing self-consciously at his chin. “You think we're spoiled?” The two halves of his face seemed to give contradictory messages: one animated, one dead.

“How do I know? You live a lot better than most,” I said.

“Hey, we do our share. My mother does a lot of fund-raising for local charities and she's on the board for the art museum and the historical society. I don't know about Derek. He plays golf and hangs out at the club. Well, that's not fair. He has some investments he looks after, which is how they met. He was the executor for the trust my grandfather left me. Once he and Mom got married, he left the bank. Anyway, they support a lot of causes so it's not like they're just self-indulgent, grinding the poor underfoot. My mother launched the Santa Teresa Girls' Club just about single-handedly. The Rape Crisis Center too.”

“What about Kitty? What does she do with herself besides get loaded?”

He looked at me carefully. “Don't make judgments. You don't know what any of us has been through.”

“You're right. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound quite so righteous. Is she in private school?”

He shook his head. “Not anymore. They moved her over to Santa Teresa High School this year. Anything to try to get her straightened out.”

He stared at the door uneasily. The house was so solidly constructed there was no way to tell if the paramedics had come upstairs yet.

I crossed the room and opened the door a crack. They were just coming out of Kitty's room with the portable gurney, its wheels swiveling like a grocery cart's as they angled her into the hall. She was covered with a blanket, so frail that she scarcely formed a mound. One thin arm was extended outside the covers. They'd started an I.V., a plastic bag of some clear solution held aloft by one of the paramedics. Oxygen was being administered through a nose cone. Dr. Kleinert moved toward the stairs ahead of them and Derek brought up the rear, hands shoved awkwardly in his pockets, his face pale. He seemed out of place and ineffectual, pausing when he caught sight of me.

“I'm going to follow in my car,” he said, though no one had asked. “Tell Bobby we'll be at St. Terry's.”

I felt sorry for him. The scene was like something out of a TV series, the medical personnel very deadpan and businesslike. This was his daughter being taken away and she might actually die, but no one seemed to be addressing the possibility. There was no sign of Bobby's mother, no sign of the people who'd come for drinks. Everything felt ill-planned somehow,
like an elaborate entertainment that was falling flat. “You want us to come, too?” I asked.

Derek shook his head. “Let my wife know where I am,” he said. “I'll call as soon as I know what's going on.”

“Good luck,” I said, and he flashed me a weak smile as if good luck was not something he'd had much experience with.

I watched the procession disappear down the stairs. I closed the door to Bobby's room. I started to say something, but Bobby cut me off.

“I heard,” he said.

“Why isn't your mother involved in this? Are she and Kitty on the outs or what?”

“Jesus, it's all too complicated to explain. Mom washed her hands of Kitty after the last incident, which isn't as heartless as it sounds. Early on, she did what she could, but I guess it was just one crisis after another. That's part of the reason she and Derek are having such a tough time.”

“What's the other part?”

His look was bleak. Clearly, he felt he was equally to blame.

There was a tap at the door and a Chicano woman with her hair in a braid appeared with a tray. Her face was expressionless and she made no eye contact. If she knew what was happening, she gave no indication of it. She fussed around for a bit with cloth napkins and cutlery. I almost expected her to present a room-service check to be signed off with a tip added in.