The Saint Louisans (10 page)

Saul approached.

“Lee,” he said quickly, “sorry I was delayed, but I got a call from Barrett.”

“The private eye? He has a lead on the missing Desouche?”

Saul led me to the main gallery. We strolled to Beckmann's
The Dream
. “Barrett said the kids are operating at full speed to find the missing heir.”

“They know who it is?”

“No, but he said they know he, or she, is in St. Louis.” We stopped at the painting. Saul looked it over.

“They're going to contact the heir. Make a deal, I guess.”

“This certainly complicates things. If he or she is Hoosier, I suppose they'll write a check for said missing sib to sign along the dotted line.”

“Yeah.” He stared at my doppelganger on the canvas. “Can you talk to Margot?”

I drew in a deep breath. “She doesn't seem to want to talk about her kids, but yes. I think it's important for her to deal with this. By the way, while I was out people watching—”

“Sorry, I neglected you. You missed a scintillating discussion about zoning.”

I raised my plate and readied a broccoli puff. “Sonia Sauvage. You know her?” Saul's mouth almost soured as if he'd eaten a vinegar crepe.

“Sure. Celebrity archaeologist. A Jacques Costeau of dirt. Regular tomb raider. Once, she started a tribal war so she could sneak in and rob some artifacts—”

“She's here.”

Saul turned and stared. “Sonia? Here?”

“Mixing it up with the locals. Apparently, she's going to lecture on Cahokia, and in your rather unsordid past, didn't you meet her?”

Saul's dark frown said it wasn't a pleasant memory. “Yeah. I told you about that when we first met. When Dad took me to Persepolis. You know, the Shah's big shindig in '71. We met. She stole an artifact, and socked it away in her daddy's diplomatic pouch. She suckered me into going with her to pick it up.”

I recalled Saul mentioning it in an offhanded way while we sipped wine before one of the outdoor opera performances we attended early in our relationship.

“A good little Jewish boy and a French adventuress doing a number on the Shah. We must talk more about these sidebars of your past, my love.”

“Sure,” he said in a distracted way, “but … she's really here?”

“Dressed in black and sarcasm. Shall we go strike up a conversation? Renew your friendship?”

Saul was quick. “No. Let's go. I've had enough.”

A last, furtive look at
The Dream
and he led me to the exit. Avoiding the crowd and, I presumed, Sonia. Saul, who is usually quippy and charming
Cary Grant when he gets in the conversational mode, was all quiet and moody Gary Cooper after we left the museum.

The next day I drove to North County to visit some of my patients, a trickle of butterflies in my stomach readying myself for Margot's dinner. But now there was work. I went to a nursing home off a cluster of aging ranch houses. In colonial days the area was called
Marais des Liards
, the black poplar marsh. Its bottoms susceptible to floods, but its rich soil rewarded farmers in dry years. The land was renamed Bridgeton. Now, like most of North County, it's a maze of interstates and strip malls that crisscross like asphalt and concrete spaghetti.

The nursing home was hidden from the main roads, and with reason. Places like this frighten us. It's our last stop.

Before I passed the foyer to the cinder block walls painted institutional bland, before I threaded through narrow passages around residents stagnating in their wheel chairs like so many stones in a stream, there was the aviary.

It covered the wall with birds perched and hopping from one end to the other, their colors from orange to powder blue. They peered and jerked in splashes of fluttering wings, a few residents staring with sagging heads and opened mouths, the birds a three-dimensional nature channel they were unable to switch off. One man moaned. The skeletal woman next to him wore a poorly fitted wig on her small skull. A caramel colored nurse in wrinkled scrubs waddled over and turned the man to face the TV and its electronic porthole of news folk pattering away.

I visited three women. Mrs. Prackel had fallen down four times, finally giving up her walker. I helped her look at new photos of her grandchildren, helped her remember who they are. I checked for infection from her pneumonia. Because her lungs are too fragile to keep steady, Mrs. Prackel's breath trudges along, in and out, like she's climbing the side of a mountain.

Mrs. Jankowski is more coherent, at least as much as her second stroke allows. I made sure she'd been eating, and that she is moved from one side of the bed to the other so bedsores don't start. I cleaned the dribble from her mouth as her jaw opens but doesn't shut the way it's supposed to. Her body is in a holding pattern, waiting for final descent.

Mrs. Fraser has emphysema. It's a lousy way to go. The lungs seem to shrink to a thin pouch, making you suck in air, mouth pursed like a fish. Now she's on morphine and fades in and out. I cleaned her bowels because she can't strain anymore.

As I finished dressing Mrs. Fraser in a clean gown, Sister Ursula poked her head around Mrs. Fraser's door and we chatted. She was making her weekly rounds for residents transferred from nearby DePaul Hospital. Her modified veil scarcely hides the wispy iron-gray hairs on her head. We catch up on who's holding on, who surprises us by surviving. Life does surprise. Even after the mind clocks out and medications fail, the body keeps fighting. I thought of this as I bid Sister Ursula goodbye, having finished attending to my patients. The stink of cabbage and Tater Tots crept through the halls, and the clatter of trays and metal racks reminds me half of these meals will be uneaten.

Margot Desouche will be like this. I will watch her progress from a strong, determined matriarch to a faded whisper of life lived. I prepare myself for this, as I do for all my patients. I have met some wonderful people in my line of work, people who had once been full of vigor and purpose. I learned something from each one of them and did my best to be a caring shepherd for their last months and weeks. For their last days and hours. But Margot was getting under my skin in ways I couldn't define. When I walked past the line of wheelchairs and their frail passengers inching to the dining room like a gerontological traffic jam, my cell phone rang.

“Hey,” Saul said, “hope I didn't freak you out last night. I was, I admit, a little freaked out myself.”

“Understandable. Sonia Sauvage has a real Transylvanian charm. Anything more on our missing heir?”

“No. Cold case right now. Just want to wish you good luck for your dinner at Margot's. Pierre and Terri might go all Borgia on you.”

“I'll sharpen my fork.”

That evening, lights from the Desouche mansion glittered like tips of electric frosting as I walked to the front door. Before it was parked a Mercedes and Hyundai, the Mercedes chauffeur shooting the breeze with the security guard assigned to the block. A wisp of rustling wind swayed the bushes and made me pull my cape tighter to my throat. When I rang the bell, the door opened. Rainer's gaze meant he'd already taken his snoot pill. Maybe a double dose.

I offered him my cape. “How is she?”

“The best of spirits.” He gave an approving nod to my dress and necklace. “She's ready for the fireworks. Come.”

Conversation in the dining room was inaudible but peaking into shrillness like a jet piercing the sky.

Rainer's eyes glazed like barbed wire. A woman's raised voice caught our attention and we looked toward the dining room. “You see, Mrs. Bridger. The attack begins.” He leaned closer. “Go to your patient.”

I nodded at him and entered the dining room.

The silver service on the table glinted like sparks ready to ignite the table. Margot sat at the head, and of the three others seated, I recognized Pierre and Terri from high society TV and newspaper coverage.

Pierre Desouche was slender with silver hair combed in neat layers. He looked like an older actor stuck doing soaps, and his impatient grimace showed he wasn't fond of playing Margot's son, dutiful or otherwise.

Terri Praxos, just finished with her third marriage, the most recent being to a Greek financier, was a younger if distorted mirror image of Margot, her hair a matron's shag with glittering jewelry and a frame just shy of buxom.
Well, she did like her booze. Her eyes glanced between Pierre and Margot like a wrestler on the sideline of a tag team match. Pierre, in the middle, continued the argument I'd walked in on.

“Mother, this is idiocy. You need a second opinion. I have a doctor in L.A. who has done wonders with cancer.”

Margot's riposte was swift. “He's got autographed pictures on his wall of all the celebrities he's treated and misdiagnosed. I've done my own research. I trust Dr. Kemper completely.” She looked in my direction, lowered the drawbridge with her wide smile.

“Ah, Lee. Here you are.”

Terri turned and narrowed her eyes. “The specter at the feast,” she muttered, then swallowed her drink. A young woman next to her could have been Eurotrash, but it was probably Phoebe, Terri's daughter. Phoebe's eyeliner attempted Cleopatra but widened into raccoon eyes. Her dress was fashionably slutty. I politely smiled to Margot, waiting for it to happen. It did. Before there was even a hello.

“Mom,” ruffled Terri, “that woman's wearing your necklace.”

She exchanged a sympathetic glance from Pierre. Margot ignored this as she indicated I sit next to her.

“Thank you for not disappointing me.” She turned to her family. “This is Lee, my nurse. Just to remind you she has a name. Lee, you probably recognize Pierre and Terri.” Her slender fingers raised to the girl. “This is my granddaughter, Phoebe.”

Phoebe stared at me as if I was a particularly strange looking attraction at the zoo. I sat, knowing I was a thorn in the kid's side. Rainer stared dead ahead, a ship's captain unable to change the direction of the vessel even as it plowed into dangerous waters. Terri frowned at Pierre's pained indifference.

“Tell me,” Terri said, “was the necklace for services rendered?”

Margot smiled a serene and patient smile. “For kindness given. Terri, where are your manners? You're as rude as when you were a girl.” Her eyes softened when she turned to me. “Are you hungry? We're having medallions of venison with a mushroom sauce
au perpignan
.”

Pierre raised his finger and sighed. “Mother, nothing vegetarian?”

Margot chuckled and patted Pierre's hand. “Don't worry. There's a broccoli lasagna. Anya always takes care of you.”

Pierre's vegetarianism, so I was told, was part of a commitment to spiritual peace, which certainly wasn't on this evening's menu. A chagrined Phoebe thought to speak, then whispered to Terri and returned to her Dubonnet on the Rocks. I drank deeply of the burgundy Ranier poured for me, deciding it would be a good anesthetic for the evening.

Much to everyone's relief, Rainer brought in dinner as soon as I was seated.

We supped in genteel caution like different species at the waterhole.

The venison was excellent, with a spinach soufflé that thrilled, the potatoes boiled and garnished with oregano and a glistening skin of butter. They ceased being vegetable
proles
and became cuisinary
aristos
. Talk was polite and guarded. We did the weather ad nauseum. Everyone's weather.

After Rainer scooped up plates, he brought in dessert, a walnut cheesecake whose nut aroma tingled my nostrils. If we'd had a flambé, the tension alone would have triggered it. Phoebe reached for a cigarette, but Terri's glance forced the pack back into the girl's sequined purse. Margot cleared her throat.

“Now that we've eaten in peace, we can discuss why I asked you here. All of you.” For a moment I thought to leave the table, but Rainer's Gothic stare made it clear if I made a dash for the American sector, I'd be gunned down before I got to the wall.

Pierre spoke. “It's about the estate. You've said—”

“Threatened, more like,” said Terri with a snarl.

Pierre's glance warned his sister back. “So tell us, Mother, why did you destroy the will?”

“Because neither of you deserve it.” Margot was plain. “Neither of you have worked or even attempted to make a living for yourselves, to contribute to society, to leave the world a better place. You've siphoned off money year after year, and with my death, you'll eat it up and give nothing back. Enough is enough.”

Phoebe's voice was high and bored. “Please, Grandma. Don't be this way. We … like know you're sad—”

“Yes, Phoebe, because of all the money spent on clinics putting you in rehab. And I know you're still doing dope.”

“I'm not. I've been clean—”

“Don't lie to me. Lying's something you're very bad at.”

Phoebe rolled delicate shoulders. “Grandma, I'm not lying, okay. I'm clean. I did counseling, boot camp, and I'm—” she heaved. “Clean.” Terri nudged her. “For you.”

I was familiar, but uncomfortable with Margot's dark stare at her granddaughter. God knows, it reminded me of my bouts with Jama. Terri spoke.

“Mother, you're not well. You're frightened, and making irrational decisions. Work with us. We want to help.”

Pierre leaned forward. “You need us now more than ever.”

This gave Margot an excuse to narrow her eyes in lofty disdain.

“Yes, Pierre. Even though you ran off time and time again to find your ‘inner peace,' you've been gracious enough to return and spend everything in sight. All of this Buddhist nonsense.” She glared. “You have the church.”

“Mother, this isn't the time—”

“And you want to destroy the mansion.”

Terri was exasperated. “Oh, for heaven's sake. It's a white elephant.”