The Best of Sisters in Crime (9 page)

The next day was
Saturday, and I would have dozed happily into mid-morning if Rob hadn’t phoned
at eight. “You know the sinister white powder?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Baking soda.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s it. No
heroin, no cocaine, not even any baby talc. Baking soda. Period.”

I thanked him
and turned over, but the next couple of hours were full of vaguely disquieting
dreams. I woke upset, feeling oddly tainted, as if I’d collaborated in Gary’s
crimes. It wasn’t till I was in the shower—performing my purification ritual,
if you believe in such things—that things came together in my conscious mind.
The part of me that dreamed had probably known all along.

I called a
doctor friend to find out if what I suspected made medical sense. It did. To a
baby Laurie’s age, baking soda would be a deadly poison. Simply add it to the
formula and the excess sodium would cause her to develop severe, dehydrating
diarrhea; it might ultimately lead to death. But she would be sick only as long
as someone continued to doctor her formula. The poisoning was not cumulative;
as soon as it stopped, she would begin to recover, and in only a few days she
would be dramatically better.

In other words,
he described Laurie’s illness to a
T.
And Stephanie, the world’s greatest mother, who was there around
the clock, must have fed her—at any rate, would have had all the opportunity in
the world to doctor her formula.

It didn’t make
sense. Well, part of it did. The part I could figure out was this: Gary saw
Stephanie put baking soda in the formula, already knew about the high sodium
reports, put two and two together, may or not have confronted her. . . no,
definitely didn’t confront her. Gary never confronted anyone.

He simply came
to the conclusion that his wife was poisoning their child and decided to kill
her, taking his own aimless life as well. That would account for the hurry—to
stop the poisoning without having to confront Stephanie. If he accused her, he
might be able to stop her, but things would instantly get far too messy for
Gary-the-conflict-avoider. Worse, the thing could easily become a criminal
case, and if Stephanie was convicted, Laurie would have to grow up knowing her
mother had deliberately poisoned her. If she were acquitted, Laurie might
always be in danger. I could follow his benighted reasoning perfectly.

But I couldn’t,
for all the garlic in Gilroy, imagine why Stephanie would want to kill Laurie.
By all accounts, she was the most loving of mothers, would probably even have
laid down her own life for her child’s. I called a shrink friend, Elaine
Alvarez.

“Of course she
loved the child,” Elaine explained. “Why shouldn’t she? Laurie perfectly
answered her needs.” And then she told me some things that made me forget I’d
been planning to consume a large breakfast in a few minutes. On the excuse of
finally remembering to take Stephanie’s clothes, I drove to Gary’s house.

The family was
planning a memorial service in a day or two for the dead couple; Jeri had just
arrived at her dead brother’s house; friends had dropped by to comfort the
bereaved; yet there was almost a festive atmosphere in the house. Laurie had
come home that morning.

Michael and I
took a walk. “Bullshit!” he said. “Dog crap! No one could have taken better
care of that baby than Stephanie. Christ, she martyred herself. She stayed up
night after night—”

“Listen to
yourself. Everything you’re saying confirms what Elaine told me. The thing even
has a name. It’s called Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. The original syndrome,
plain old Munchausen, is when you hurt or mutilate yourself to get attention.

“‘By proxy’
means you do it to your nearest and dearest. People say, ‘Oh, that poor woman.
God, what she’s been through. Look how brave she is! Why, no one in the world
could be a better mother.’ And Mom gets off on it. There are recorded cases of
it, Michael, at least one involving a mother and baby.”

He was pale. “I
think I’m going to throw up.”

“Let’s sit down
a minute.”

In fact, stuffy,
uptight Michael ended up lying down in the dirt on the side of the road, nice
flannel slacks and all, taking breaths till his color returned. And then,
slowly, we walked back to the house.

Jeri was holding
Laurie, her mother standing over her, Mary Cooper sitting close on the couch. “Oh,
look what a baby-waby. What a darling girly-wirl. Do you feel the least bit
hot? Laurie-baurie, you’re not running a fever, are you?”

The kid had just
gotten the thumbs-up from a hospital, and she was wrapped in half a dozen
blankets. I doubted she was running a fever.

Ellen leaned
over to feel the baby’s face. “Ohhh, I think she might be. Give her to Grandma.
Grandma knows how to fix babies, doesn’t she, Laurie girl? Come to Grandma and
Grandma will sponge you with alcohol, Grandma will.”

She looked like
a hawk coming in for a landing, ready to snare its prey and fly up again, but
Mary was quicker still. Almost before you saw it happening, she had the baby
away from Ellen and in her own lap. “What you need is some nice juice, don’t
you, Laurie-bear? And then Meemaw’s going to rock you and rock
you . . .
oh, my goodness,
you’re burning up.” Her voice was on the edge of panic. “Listen, Jeri, this
baby’s wheezing! We’ve got to get her breathing damp air. . . ”

She wasn’t
wheezing, she was gulping, probably in amazement. I felt my own jaw-drop and.
looking away, unwittingly caught the eye of Mary’s husband, who hadn’t wanted
me to see the anguish there. Quickly he dropped a curtain of blandness. Beside
me, I heard Michael whisper, “My God!”

I knew we were
seeing something extreme. They were all excited to have Laurie home, and they
were competing with each other, letting out what looked like their scariest
sides if you knew what we did. But a Stephanie didn’t come along every day.
Laurie was in no further danger, I was sure of it. Still, I understood why Gary
had had the sudden change of heart about her guardianship.

I turned to
Michael. “Are you going to try to get her?”

He plucked at
his sweater sleeve, staring at his wrist as if it had a treasure map on it. “I
haven’t decided.”

An image from my
fitful morning dreams came back to me: a giant in a forest, taller than all the
trees and built like a mountain; a female giant with belly and breasts like
boulders, dressed in white robes and carrying, draped across her outstretched
arms, a dead man, head dangling on its flaccid neck.

In a few days
Michael called. When he got home to Seattle, a letter had been waiting for
him—a note, rather, from Gary, postmarked the day of his death. It didn’t
apologize, it didn’t explain—it didn’t even say, “Dear Michael.” It was simply
a quote from
Hamlet
typed on a piece
of paper, not handwritten, Michael thought, because it could be construed as a
confession and there was the insurance to think about.

This was the
quote:

Diseases desperate grown

By desperate appliance are relieved,

Or not at all.

I didn’t ask
Michael again whether he intended to take Laurie. At the moment, I was too
furious with one passive male to trust myself to speak civilly with another.
Instead, I simmered inwardly, thinking how like Gary it was to confess to
murder with a quote from Shakespeare. Thinking that, as he typed it, he
probably imagined grandly that nothing in his life would become him like the
leaving of it. The schmuck.

Back to table of
contents

Gillian
Roberts introduced Amanda Pepper in
Caught
Dead in Philadelphia,
which won an Anthony.
Eight more hooks followed, including the latest,
The Bluest Blood,
featuring the clever, perceptive, and charming Mandy and C.K.
Mackenzie, her attractive and astute policeman/paramour. Gillian Roberts is a
pseudonym for Judith Greber, whose novels, including
Mendocino
and
As
Good As It Gets,
reflect her concern for how
ordinary people deal with intimacy, the challenges of life, and contradictions.

In “Hog
Heaven,” an aging Romeo can hardly believe his luck when a beautiful woman
approaches him. Gillian says, “I heard about the event that resulted in “Hog
Heaven” twenty-five years ago, and it’s still a pleasure to fantasize revenge,
after all these years.”

Harry Towers walked out
of his office building
and blinked in the
late-afternoon light. The sea of home-bound bodies divided around him as he
deliberated how, and with whom, to fill the hours ahead.

The redheaded
receptionist had other plans. Lucy, his usual standby, had run off to Vegas
with a greeting-card salesman. Charlene was back with her husband, at least for
tonight. Might as well check out Duffy’s.

He stood a
little straighter, smoothed his hair over his bald spot, and sucked in his
stomach. Duffy’s was a giant corral into which the whole herd of thirty-plus
panic-stricken single women stampeded at nightfall. Duffy’s Desperates, he
called them. Not prime stock, but all the same, the roundup saved time.

He walked
briskly. Everything would be fine. He didn’t need that stupid redheaded
receptionist.

“Harry? Harry
Towers?”

The sidewalks
were still crowded, but Harry spotted the owner of the melodic voice so easily,
it was as if nobody but the two of them were on the streets.

He had seen her
a few times before, recently, right around this time of day. She was the
blonde, voluptuous kind you had to notice. A glossy sort of woman, somebody you
see in magazines or on TV. Not all that young, not a baby, but not a bimbo. And
definitely not a Duffy’s Desperate.

She repeated his
name and continued moving resolutely toward him. He tried not to gape.

“You
are
Harry Towers, aren’t you?” A small, worried
frown marred her perfect face.

He smiled and
nodded, straightening up to his full height. He was a tall man, but her
turquoise eyes were on a level with his.

“I thought so!”
Her face relaxed into a wide smile. “Remember me?” Her voice was so creamy, he
wanted to lick it.

“I. .
.
well—” In his forty-five years, he had never
before laid eyes on this woman, except for the sidewalk glimpses this week.
Harry did not pay a whole lot of the remembering kind of attention to most
women, but this was not most women. This one you’d remember even if you had
Alzheimer’s.

She was using
the old don’t-I-know-you-from-some-where? line, and it amused him. She’d even
gone to the trouble to find out his name. Flattering, to say the least.

“Does the name
Leigh Endicott sound familiar?” she prompted.

“Oh!” he said
emphatically, nodding, playing the game. “Leigh . . . Endicott. Sure . . . now
I—well, it must be—”

“Years,” she
said with one of those woeful smiles women give when they talk about time. “Even
though it seems like yesterday.” She shook her head, as if to clear away the
time in between. “I’ve thought about you so often, wondered what became of you.”
She put her hand on his sleeve, tenderly.

If only the
redhead hadn’t left the building before him— if only she could see him now!

“I always hoped
I’d find you again someday,” she purred.

She was
overdoing it. Should he tell her to skip the old-friend business? They didn’t
need a make-believe history. He decided to keep quiet, not rock the boat,
follow her lead. “Why don’t we find someplace comfortable?” he said. “To, uh,
reminisce?”

She glanced at
her watch, then shrugged and smiled at him, nodding.

“There’s a place
around the corner,” he said. “Duffy’s.” The Desperates would shrivel up and
turn to dust when they saw this one. Then they’d know, all those self-important
spritzer drinkers, that Harry Towers still had it. All of it.

They started
walking, her arm linked through his. Suddenly she stopped short. “I just had a
wonderful idea. I have a dear little farmhouse in the country. Very peaceful and
private. Would you mind skipping the bar? I’m sure it’s too noisy and crowded
for a really good . . . talk. My car’s over there. I can drive you back
later—if you feel like leaving.”

What a woman!
Right to the point! He hated the preliminaries, the song-and-dance routine,
anyway. He followed her to the parking lot, grinning.

I am in hog
heaven
,
he thought.
Hog heaven.

The ride was a
timeless blur. Harry was awash, drowning in the mixed perfumes of the car’s
leather, the spring evening, the woman beside him, and the anticipation of the
hours ahead. When Leigh spoke, her voice, rich and sensuous, floated around
him. He had to force himself to listen to the words instead of letting them
tickle his pores and ruffle his hair.