Partners In Crime (27 page)

The enormous nurse was
ensconced behind her desk, a box of cookies open beside her. She
was reading the latest issue of the
National Enquirer
and looked guilty
at being caught.

"Belongs to one of the orderlies," she
explained, pushing the paper away on her desk. "It's quite
amusing."

"Young lady," Auntie Lil interrupted
somewhat sharply. "I asked Mr. Peabody about a number of cherished
items I gave him." She lowered her eyelids and added more softly,
"We were once very good friends, you understand. I'm talking about
souvenirs of some very special times. Why aren't they in his
room?"

The nurse looked bewildered. "Whatever they
bring, within reason, they can display," she said.

"He is most upset he does not have
them."

"Perhaps he left them at his house. He was
already a bit forgetful by the time he arrived." The nurse looked
vaguely uncomfortable, as if expecting Auntie Lil to accuse the
staff of stealing.

Auntie Lil's manner changed abruptly to one
of extreme graciousness. The nurse's relief was obvious.

"But of course,'' Auntie Lil said. "He must
have left them in his home. I'll go by and speak to his daughter.
I'm sure she won't mind my bringing them to him."

"Suit yourself," the nurse replied as she
reached for the box of cookies.

"Could you save me some time and trouble and
give me her address?" Auntie Lil asked sweetly. T.S. stood to one
side, staring studiously down the corridor. He found it difficult
to look the nurse in the eye.

"I couldn't do that," the nurse explained,
her mouth stained dark with chocolate cookies. "It's against our
regulations."

"That's silly. I'm not going to burglarize
the place. I'm only going to talk to his daughter." Auntie Lil
paused and no one spoke in the silence. "I could go and ask him but
he drifts in and out so. For a moment there, he thought I was his
daughter. It would be so nice to have those souvenirs for him to
look at and remember. During those precious few moments when he's
lucid." She sounded positively enraptured at the thought of a
contented and lucid Ralph Peabody. "It wouldn't be hard to find out
somewhere else, but it would save us so much time."

The nurse shrugged her roly-poly shoulders
and gave them a final close look. T.S. took the hint and handed her
a ten-dollar bill. She palmed it quickly and stashed it in her
enormous bosom. "Look, only because you're the only ones to take an
interest in him. Might do the poor man good." She pulled open a
file drawer and rummaged around for a few seconds, emerging with a
thin brown folder. She flipped this open expertly and copied down a
name and address on a piece of paper.

"You didn't get it from me, of course," she
said in reply to Auntie Lil's thanks.

"No, of course not." Auntie Lil tucked the
paper away in her sweater pocket, then leaned and clasped the
nurse's hammy paws in her own elegant hands. "You're so very kind.
I feel better just knowing that Ralphie is in good hands."

T.S. mumbled his own thanks and gently
dragged his aunt to the elevator. They rode alone down to the
pristine lobby.

"Ralphie?" T.S. asked. "A bit thick, don't
you think?"

"Of course not." Auntie Lil sailed through
the empty entrance room. "They think all old people are either
sentimental or senile. Why not take advantage of their
ignorance?"

He opened the car door for her and she slid
in. "Get me out of here, Theodore," she commanded. "This place
gives me the creeps."

Ralph Peabody's former home was a narrow,
white clapboard house on a quiet tree-lined street. The yard, while
small, was lushly green and the lawn was carefully trimmed. Bushes
grew in rigid rows and rimmed the property precisely, proclaiming
to all that intruders were not welcome. The lawn was steep and T.S.
had to help Auntie Lil up the meticulously bricked stairs. They
rang the bell and heard chimes reverberating inside. They could
hear someone running lightly down a staircase.

The heavy wooden door practically exploded
open and a young boy appeared in front of them, standing warily
behind the screen door. He was wearing a set of headphones and held
a half-eaten banana in one hand. He stared at T.S. and Auntie Lil
without comment.

"Hello, young man," Auntie Lil said. "Is
your mother home?"

"She's shopping," he volunteered willingly,
his mouth full of banana. "I'm supposed to be doing my
homework."

"With your headphones on? Can you
concentrate?" Auntie Lil had a tendency to be sidetracked by
situations where she felt her interference was needed.

The child shrugged. "Who are you?" he asked
abruptly.

"We're friends of your grandfather's," T.S.
explained.

"He's not here anymore. He lives in a home."
The child was blissfully unconcerned about his grandfather's
whereabouts.

"Yes, we know. We've just come from visiting
him." Auntie Lil erased all traces of the sweet tone she usually
adopted when speaking to children.

"You went to see Grandpa?" he asked.

"Yes, he seems in good health," Auntie Lil
volunteered.

"He's confused," the young man said,
settling the subject in his own mind.

"Yes, well, that's why we're here. Your
grandfather said he had forgotten to bring some special items of
his to the nursing home with him. He asked us to stop by and see if
we could find them."

The boy stared curiously at Auntie Lil as
she spoke. "Do you always wear hats like that?" he asked.

She touched the brim and pushed a drooping
flower out of her face. "This is my visiting hat. Your grandfather
liked it quite a lot."

"It looks like the hat the horse wore when
Mom took me for a carriage ride last Christmas. We went around
Central Park and everything."

Auntie Lil looked discomfited. T.S. decided
to take charge. "Your grandfather seems very anxious about his
things. Would it be all right if we just took a look in his room to
see if they're there?"

The boy chewed the last of his banana
thoughtfully. "Mom turned it into a sewing room."

"Are his things in the attic?" T.S.
suggested.

"He doesn't have very many things. And we
don't have no attic." He laughed heartily, as if this were a great
joke.

"We don't have
an
attic. Could we take a
look around? Under your supervision, of course," Auntie Lil
offered.

"Under my supervision?" The child considered
this. "I guess I could do that." He opened the door and they walked
into an overstuffed home filled with rugs, too much furniture and a
profusion of framed oil paintings of the kind sold in a suite at
the Holiday Inn twice a year. T.S. noticed that the couches and
chairs were covered in plastic. Ralph Peabody's style had not been
inherited by his daughter.

"It's upstairs," the young boy said, and
they followed him obediently up the narrow stairway. T.S. tagged
along behind Auntie Lil, ready to give a push if needed. But she
stepped lightly forward, craning her head from side to side as she
absorbed the house about her.

The boy led them to a small room next to the
bathroom. Only one tiny window admitted light. If Ralph Peabody had
been banished here, he probably was better off at the nursing home.
A sewing machine and table took up most of the space, though a twin
bed was pushed against one wall and a low set of shelves held some
paperback books. "Not much to look at," the child said. "Unless you
like patterns and junk like that." He kicked a cardboard box full
of carefully preserved sewing patterns with his foot and pushed a
heap of material to one side of the table. "Mom is teaching Mary
Beth how to sew. I think it's dumb, myself."

Auntie Lil picked up a pattern, looked at it
critically, and tossed it back in the box. "I quite agree, young
man," she said cheerfully. She began lifting up fabric and peering
beneath it. T.S. moved to the closet and opened the door, sending a
faint smell of mothballs wafting through the room.

"Grandpa will probably die soon," the child
said suddenly.

"Why do you say that?" Auntie Lil opened the
top drawer of a small wooden dresser and rummaged around
inside.

"Mom says so," he replied confidently.

"That's too bad, dear." She started in on
the second drawer and found nothing more than fabric scraps.

"This house is really his. It won't belong
to us until he dies."

"That's nice," Auntie Lil said absently.
T.S. had found nothing but a collection of old boots and shoes and
some moth-eaten winter coats in the closet. He knelt on the floor
and peeked under the bed.

The young man grew weary of his supervisory
role. "Could I go finish putting the wheels on my truck?" he asked.
"I've nearly finished and if Mom comes home, she'll be mad I'm not
doing my homework."

"By all means," T.S. agreed heartily. The
thought of the boy's mother coming home gave his stomach a slight
jump. Ralph Peabody had been grouchy enough. Suppose his daughter
had inherited his temperament?

"This is easier than I expected," T.S. said,
once they were alone.

"I know," Auntie Lil interrupted. "That's
the advantage of being so old. Everyone trusts you. But just the
same I'd like to get the hell out of here before his mother comes
home, wouldn't you?"

"Exactly." There was plenty of dust and a
pair of old socks beneath the bed. He was idly looking behind a
framed portrait of Jesus when Auntie Lil uttered a triumphant hoot.
He turned to find her kneeling in front of the low bookshelves. A
stack of paperback books surrounded her, but she held a heavy
cardboard box file in her hands.

"I've found it," she said. "This has to be
it."

"Where was it?"

"He'd pushed it flat against the wall,
behind the books." She flicked dust off the cover fastidiously. "Do
you suppose anyone in this house reads books?"

"I doubt it." He knelt beside her. "Are you
sure that's it?"

"Of course not." She pried the rusty clasp
open with her thumb and lifted the lid up. It was attached to the
box by a heavily taped spine that had been torn away at the top.
"This is pretty old."

He looked carefully at it. "It looks
familiar," he admitted. "I think Archives has some old file boxes
like that."

She ran her finger down the first paper.
"Who is Francine Claremont?"

"I have no idea. Why?"

"She stole $200 from the United Way fund box
in 1956."

He grabbed the file from her. "What is
this?" He paged quickly through the papers and blinked.

"What do you think, Theodore?"

"I think the old buzzard went through the
personnel files before he left and pulled out every embarrassing or
incriminating memo he could find. Why, most of these people aren't
even partners! They're clerks or messengers. Why would he do
that?"

"An attack of conscience," Auntie Lil
suggested. "Perhaps he was tired of being Big Brother."

"Perhaps." He snapped the lid shut. "This is
it. Let's get out of here."

She reached and tried to tug it back. "Let
me just take a quick peek right now."

"Absolutely not." He held it out of her
reach. "Let's get out of here immediately."

They quickly straightened the books back on
the shelves and tried to leave the room exactly as they had found
it. With the goods in hand, both of them had been seized by an
impulse to flee as quickly as they could move. They scurried down
the stairs and over the porch, hopping quickly down the brick
steps. T.S. forgot to open the car door for Auntie Lil and simply
slipped behind the wheel in a mild panic. He stuffed the dusty file
under the front seat. Auntie Lil climbed in slowly and gave him the
evil eye.

"In a hurry?" she asked.

"To get out of here," T.S. muttered back. He
pulled out of the driveway with a screech and took several
unnecessary turns simply to be away from the house. Then he made
his way back to the main street.

"You're making me nervous, Theodore," Auntie
Lil complained.

"I'm making
you
nervous?" He turned
to look at her and narrowly missed colliding with a bus. "You want
to know what makes
me
nervous? The way you can lie so easily and be absolutely
convincing. Now that makes me nervous."

"I've found it," he said simply, holding a
batch of papers of various sizes and colors in his hand. He sat on
the floor in the middle of Auntie Lil's living room, while she sat
on a small footstool nearby. They were surrounded by loose papers
and memos, stacked in piles on the sofa and on nearby chairs and
tables.

"What is it?" Auntie Lil produced the hated
pair of eye glasses and put them briskly on without a thought to
her vanity. She reached out a hand. "Let me see."

"Not so fast." He held up a hand and smiled.
"I'm the one who found it. I'll read you selected portions."

"For heaven's sakes, Theodore." She blew a
strong gust of breath out of her mouth and clutched her hands
together. "You can really be quite annoying."

"That's all right. You were right about
Ralph Peabody, so I get to be annoying."

He looked at the cover sheet and read aloud:
"Memo to the Partners. From Ralph I. Peabody, Personnel Manager.
Date: February 27,1959. Re: Patricia Ann Kelly. Gentlemen: After a
thorough investigation and discussion with all parties involved, I
have come to the conclusion that there is no basis for Miss Kelly's
continued allegations. In fact, I believe that her actions and the
recent flurry of disturbed letters and correspondence clearly
indicate that the young lady in question is suffering from a severe
case of mental illness. I would suggest that we extend her health
coverage for an indefinite period of time in an attempt to aid in
the treatment of her troubles, but I do not recommend that action
be taken against any of the other parties involved. There is no
proof of poor judgment or misbehavior on anyone's part, other than
Miss Kelly's word, and that word clearly is cast in doubt by the
strange and irrational manner she has adopted.—R.LP. "