Sammy Keyes and the Kiss Goodbye (5 page)

What was wrong with his department?

Didn’t they understand how important this was?

It also bothered him that the area looked as though nothing had happened. Even the bushes appeared to be unscathed, seemingly denying that a girl had crash-landed into them.

Finally, he began up the fire escape, slowly and meticulously inspecting each level and trying each door to see if entry was possible.

He found nothing. And at each level the door was latched and locked until the fifth floor, where the door was just as Sammy had rigged it—locked, but not latched.

With the sigh of a man caught between justice and heartache, Gil Borsch took a last look around, then went inside.

The Highrise wasn’t a typical tenement building where residents scurried to their corners like guilty rats when a man with a badge appeared. The tenants in this apartment complex were more like mice—nosy and twitchy, curious but wary.

And although the hallway was quiet, with all the doors closed tight, that changed after Sergeant Borsch knocked at Sammy’s grandmother’s old apartment.

“She moved,” a voice behind him said, and when he turned toward the sound, he saw a slice of a pale, wrinkled face peering at him through a barely opened door.

The lawman already knew that Rita had moved, so he couldn’t really say why he’d knocked. Perhaps he was longing to go back in time—longing for Rita to open the door and pretend Sammy wasn’t there, when in fact she was hiding in the closet.

“No new tenant?” Sergeant Borsch asked.

The wrinkles moved side to side. “Supposedly this week.”

“And supposedly a
man
,” another female voice said through a door that had inched open across the way.

The first door opened an itty-bit more. “That’s been the rumor for a month.”

“But Violet’s moved into Rose’s place,” a third woman volunteered.

“Anyone remember Daisy?” squeaked a fourth voice, from yet another barely opened door.

“Oh, she was a piece of work,” the first voice said.

“
She
was?” the third voice said, and her door opened a crack farther, too. “Rita’s the one I always thought was hiding something.”

“Yeah,” came the second voice. “And look—cops are
still
knockin’.”

Perhaps it was the aches and pains of age that had these women up early. Or maybe they’d just fallen asleep in front of their televisions at six-thirty the night before and were full up on sleep and looking for some excitement. (Or, at least, gossip.) Regardless, it was not yet eight a.m. and Sergeant Borsch was already in the thick of it, surrounded by twitching noses and squeaking voices. Under normal circumstances he would have insisted that the associated faces and bodies show themselves, but he suspected he was probably better off with this limited view of things. So he simply asked, “Did any of you hear or see someone come down this hallway last night?”

His question was met with twitchy silence.

“It would have been sometime after nine o’clock,” he added.

The twitchy silence continued until the wrinkles behind Door #1 finally said, “I was asleep,” which brought a chorus of similar comments from the others, and a bonus remark from Door #3: “Haven’t seen nine o’clock since they removed my gall bladder.”

And after another minute of conversation that went nowhere, the voices came together in one final piece of advice: “Go see Mr. Garnucci.”

Gil Borsch was not a fan of Vince Garnucci. Garnucci
was the building’s manager, and although he did seem to know all the residents, he shouted when he spoke, he injected off-topic stories about his wacky grandmother, and he was skinny.

Gil Borsch wasn’t comfortable around skinny.

But he had a job to do, and that trumped any annoyance he might feel over a loud, skinny fella whose ninety-five-year-old grandmother still rode a bicycle.

So after inspecting both the stairway and the elevator for clues (and determining that, like the exterior of the building, the interior didn’t offer a single surface from which he’d be able to lift fingerprints), he found himself in the lobby.

“Officer Borsch!” the manager shouted from behind his desk.

The greeting was clearly meant to convey warmth and welcome, but the lawman noted the underlying nervousness that always seemed present when he dealt with Vince Garnucci.

Part of that whole skinny thing.

Plus, Gil Borsch was no longer an officer. His promotion to sergeant had been over a year ago, and Vince Garnucci knew it.

The lawman let it slide. “Morning, Garnucci. I understand you gave a report on the events of last night, but I’m just following up.”

“Sure, sure,” the manager said, and then proceeded to spend the next five minutes talking his way down a long, winding road to nowhere.

“So to sum up,” Sergeant Borsch finally said, “nobody
came through the lobby, you heard nothing either inside or outside, and none of the residents reported anything.”

“That sums it up, yeah,” Mr. Garnucci said, then cocked his head a little and asked, “Has the victim died? And what were they doing on the fire escape?”

Sergeant Borsch sucked on a tooth for a moment, debating whether to break the news of the victim’s identity. He knew the manager was fond of Sammy, but she was a minor and there were rules. Laws, even. Besides, something about the man’s demeanor was … troubling.

Instead, he simply said, “We don’t know.”

“But … wait … how did you get inside the building?”

“I used the back entrance,” the lawman said, surprised by how easily the lie had slipped off his tongue.

“It’s unlocked?”

Sergeant Borsch moved toward the front door. “Have a good day, Garnucci.” And before the manager could protest, he was gone.

So where were Sammy’s mother and father in all of this?

Rita did try to reach Lana while she was waiting at the ER, but couldn’t connect to her daughter in person and couldn’t bring herself to leave a message that said more than “Call me as soon as you can.”

Which Lana, being Lana, didn’t.

So after Rita and Hudson returned to their Cypress Street home around midnight, Rita steadied herself and tried once again to reach her daughter.

This time, Lana answered.

There’s a certain level of disbelief that occurs when a person’s hit with bad news. Questions like Are you sure? Is she okay? What happened? shoot from the mouth.

Unless, of course, you’re Lana Keyes. Then your disbelief comes out this way:

“Are you a tabloid reporter trying to get a reaction out of me?”

And if you’re
Rita
Keyes and your daughter’s pulled one too many diva reversals on you (where somehow the drama became all about her), and you’re exhausted from hours at the hospital and feel the weight of the world on
your shoulders, what might (and very well
should
) shoot from your mouth is, “No, you self-absorbed ditz. This is your mother and you need to get here
now
.”

But that’s not what Rita said.

As you probably already know, Rita Keyes is a class act. And although her trigger finger was twitching, she managed to keep her fully loaded arsenal of retorts holstered. “Lana,” she said wearily. “I am not a tabloid reporter. I am your mother.”

“Prove it.”

Rita’s tired eyebrow perked to life.

Lana had asked for it.

So Rita shot straight to the heart. “You were born in the year—”

“Stop! Fine! Okay!” Lana sputtered, clearly worried that some tabloid reporter might be listening in. But with the legitimacy of the call resolved, the urgency behind it seemed to finally sink in. “Now, what happened to Samantha?”

Rita was through trying to break the news gently. “She fell three floors off the side of the Highrise. Fortunately, she landed in a thick hedge.”

“So … is she all right?”

“We don’t know.”

“You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know? How can you not know?” And then with a sudden gasp she asked, “Was there
blood
?”

The pitch of Lana’s voice had risen considerably, and since blood was one of those faint-inducing triggers that seemed to plague the actress, Rita did not fire off with,
“She fell three floors! What do you
think
?” She instead struggled to remain calm and stick to the big picture: Sammy was in the hospital, unconscious. Lana needed to get to Santa Martina right away.

And Darren needed to be told.

“Do you want me to call him?” Rita asked, and in some ways she dreaded the thought of breaking the news to Samantha’s father more than breaking it to her own daughter. Darren had only known Sammy (or that he even
had
a daughter) for a few months, but in that time she had become the sunshine of his life, the high harmony of a song that now played in his heart.

Witnessing this had brought great joy to Rita. Especially since it seemed that, for Lana, Sammy had been more like the stormy cloud
covering
the sunshine, the dissonant chord in the movie score that crescendoed through the life she had always imagined for herself.

A life that she was, ironically, finally realizing now that she’d told the truth and reunited with Sammy’s father.

“Lana?” Rita asked, because her question had been met with silence.

“He’s in the middle of a show,” Lana replied. “It’ll be two or three a.m. before I can reach him.”

“Is he in Las Vegas?” Rita asked.

“No, he’s here in LA. Is Samantha at Community?”

“Yes. In ICU.”

“In ICU?!” Lana gasped.

To which Rita could easily have snapped, “She fell three floors! Be glad she’s not at the morgue!” but she didn’t. She instead gave Lana the hospital’s number and visiting
hours and told her to get to town as soon as possible, then went to bed.

She could not, however, fall asleep. So when the phone rang an hour later, she snatched it up right away, praying it was good news about her granddaughter. “Yes?”

But it wasn’t news about Sammy. It was Lana, and she was in full diva mode. “I can’t get information out of anybody!” she cried (without so much as a hello or an I’m-sorry-if-I-woke-you). “All I can get out of the hospital is that she’s stable!”

“Has she woken up?”

“No!”

Hudson was wide awake now, too, and asked Rita, “Is that the doctor? Has she woken up?”

Rita’s rapid head wobbling and verbal reply into the phone answered both his questions simultaneously. “But stable is a positive thing, Lana. Calm down.”

“Calm down?” Lana cried. “Calm down? I can’t get through to anybody! Marissa’s number is disconnected—”

“They’ve moved, Lana.”

“Nobody told me that! And that police officer? The one Samantha was a bridesmaid for? His first name’s Gilbert, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, he’s not listed—”

“He’s a police officer, Lana. Of course he’s not listed.”

“Well, I couldn’t find a number for Casey, either! And I sure wasn’t calling Warren or Candi! So I tried the Doggy Den, but it’s not listed, either! It’s a business! Why isn’t it listed?”

“Because it’s the Pup Parlor, not the Doggy Den, Lana. And what good would that have done you? No business would answer the phone at this hour!”

“But her friend who saw what happened lives there!”

“She lives in the apartment
above
the Pup Parlor, Lana. It’s a separate number.”

“WHY DON’T I HAVE ANYBODY’S NUMBER?”

After it was safe to put the phone back to her ear, Rita did so and said, “I think that’s a question you might want to ask yourself,” and hung up with a
hrmph
.

Of course the phone rang again five seconds later, but this time Hudson picked up, giving his wife a gentle “Let me.”

And Hudson, being Hudson, managed to defuse the situation and help Lana focus on what
could
be done (like packing and making travel plans) instead of what served no purpose (like calling people in the middle of the night). He also promised her she’d be the first person they’d call if they got news about Sammy, and asked her to do likewise. “We’ll meet you at the hospital,” he told her. And after a small hesitation during which he tried to balance the reality of the situation with the needs of a desperate mother, he added, “She’s got a strong spirit, Lana. We all just have to pray that she pulls through this.”

Once off the phone, Hudson assured his wife that Lana and Darren would arrive as soon as possible and that the best thing they could do for Sammy was to get some rest so they wouldn’t be too exhausted to be useful when Sammy awoke. Then he went to the kitchen, rummaged through the herbal teas Rita had moved in with her, and selected
chamomile (as the box boasted calming properties and showed a cozy bear in a nightcap).

Unfortunately, the brew had no effect on either Rita or Hudson, and by five-thirty, both had given up on sleep and were on their way to St. Mary’s Church.

Having never gone to pray at this early hour before, the couple were a little surprised to find the door to the main church unlocked. Inside, there were a few candles burning at the altar, but the lights were off and the large room was ominously still.

Rita whispered, “Let’s just go to the side chapel,” but then through the darkness came the
ticky-tack
ing of toenails on tile.

Hudson let out a soft whistle and whispered, “Gregory! Here, boy!” Soon a Welsh terrier appeared from between the pews. “Where’s your master, huh?” Hudson asked as the dog approached.

“Why, good mornin’,” came a voice that instantly conjured up visions of rolling green hills and four-leaf clovers. “What brings you two here at this hour?”

“Father Mayhew!” Rita cried, and suddenly she was in tears. “Oh, please. Pray with us.”

“My dear, what is wrong?” the priest asked, hurrying over (while Gregory took the opportunity to fetch his favorite chew—a carrot).

And so it came out. About Sammy and the fall and the stranger on the stairs and her condition in the hospital.

Father Mayhew had had his own escapades with Sammy and knew her to be the sort of girl you wished were your own (well, if you weren’t a priest, and you didn’t mind all
the trouble that seemed to follow her). So he got on his knees beside Rita and Hudson and prayed with an earnest heart (and a lilting Irish brogue), begging God for mercy and compassion and reason.