Authors: Thomas Cater
She took another swallow of her drink and prayed I was
lying.
“Apples fall not far from the tree,” she said. “Is
there a second Mrs. Case lurking somewhere beyond the horizon?”
My shoulders trembled as if from a chill. “Not at this
point,” I said. “I can only afford one mistake at a time.”
The drink had limbered up her tongue. She was flashing
her legs, having a hard time keeping them under control.
“Can you think of any reason why we should prolong
this conversation?” she asked in a voice husky with innuendo.
I didn’t think about the question. She was closing in
on me with her flyweight figure and a mouth that could suck the pit out of a
peach. I was getting old, opportunities were whizzing by at the speed of light,
and I was too tense and uptight to ignore them.
“I think I like you, Miss Pennington. What kind of
name is that, English?”
She pulled a few pins out of her hair and it cascaded
down and around her shoulders. She shook it loose, extended her legs on the
couch and began to gulp the contents of the bud vase.
“I don’t know,” she said, stretching and yawning down
to the tips of her toes. “I’ve gone round and round with my family on that.
Daddy says English, but he looks like a ‘wop,’ so I think he’s Italian. But if
you look at me, a mousy blonde with blue eyes and a complexion like flour, it’s
hard to imagine.”
“There’s only one way to tell for sure,” I said.
“Oh, how’s that?” she asked.
“Flagrante delicto,” I said, “during the blazing of
the crime. All English women have a style that is distinctively different from
Italian women. It has to do with one’s clitoral heritage, or
marital cltiorage
.”
“And you are acquainted with both?”
“I have made a casual study.”
“An interesting proposition,” she said, tossing back a
little more gin.
“I thought you might think so.”
“You can guarantee results?”
I hesitated for a moment, tried to remember the last
time the Jolly Roger was unfurled.
“You really need a guarantee?”
She was trying to talk herself into taking off her
clothes, but the dialogue was having the opposite effect on me. Any woman who
needed that kind of fortification was not following her instincts, but trying
to put them to sleep.
“What if I find out later you are wrong and I’m not wh
at
you say I
am?”
“I am seldom wrong,” I said, not too convincingly.
She walked around in a small circle in the middle of
the room trying to find the bottom of her glass.
“I’ve never gone this far on the first drink before,”
she said.
“It’s a no brainer,” I said and wished again I’d kept
my mouth shut.
“Well, in that case,” she upended the glass and
swallowed hard. Half a bud vase full of gin vanished down her throat. “Let’s see
what you’ve got; I’ve been dying to find out. Is there a powder room in this
vehicle?”
I led her to the facility, an extravagantly
over-decorated little cubicle with a shower and a red fiberglass tub barely
large enough to accommodate one of the Alberichs.
“If you get lonesome…” I said, declaring my
willingness to serve as a diversion.
She smiled patronizingly. “I think you’re jaded.”
I returned her smile, but with too much temerity. She
eased passed me and slowly closed the door. The gin and her smile were working
miracles on my ego.
“Another drink!” I shouted, knowing that I needed one
more than she did.
“If you don’t mind,” she replied from the bathroom.
I poured two more and wandered back to the door. “How
long did you say you have been working at the hospital?”
“More strange years, more than I care to admit,” she
said.
“Strange? Why strange?”
She opened the door, much to my surprise, with the
towel wrapped around her like a sarong. Her hair fell down and over her
shoulders. Her shoulders and legs were opulent compared to the pale whiteness
of her complexion.
“Come on in,” she said easily. I squeezed into the
bathroom, balancing the drinks in my hand. “Have a seat.” She directed me to
the commode upon which I gratefully nested. The towel fell suddenly away from
her and before I could focus my eyes, she vanished into a cloud of foamy bubbles.
“Where did the bubbles come from?” I asked.
She glanced toward her open purse.
“You never know where or when,” she replied.
I tried to conceal my naïveté by recalling bits of our
previous conversation.
“Why strange?” I croaked, losing some of my voice to
nervousness.
“You’re not jealous, are you?” she asked, glancing at
the purse and bubbles again.
“No,” I said, a little too defensively. “Why should I
be jealous? I’m a man of the world, a Washingtonian, in the springtime, maybe
summer, of my life, and a Floridian in the winter. Why should I be jealous?”
She slid a little deeper into the bubbles, and her
eyes took on a delightful shine. Women, who invest in illusions created by ads
in magazines, are privy to all the wrong kinds of information about men, but
insist upon it being correct, even to the detriment of their own understanding.
“Why strange?” I asked again.
She started thinking about my question and stirring up
more bubbles. Her mouth was almost covered and her arms and shoulders had
vanished beneath the soapy effervescence.
“Well, it’s a strange place,” she said calmly. “You
never see anyone, administrators or board members, Payroll checks come in
regularly from the state. Patients come and go. Everything works without them.
The food and supplies show up. The vendors submit bills. I forward the bill to
a computer. It’s a strange place. There is no one in charge. Machines and
computers control the system. I have more authority than anyone does, as far as
administration is concerned.
“Once or twice a week, a psychologist comes in to test
someone. A lawyer or a doctor will commit someone. A sheriff’s deputy will
bring someone in and
the machinery
take
s
over. Cooks, food service, nurses, orderlies,
maintenance, paper shufflers and that’s the way it works. Doesn’t that sound
strange to you?”
I nodded. “Yes it does.”
It was hard to concentrate on her words while soap
bubbles kept rising and falling around her like foamy surf. It had been a while
since I shared such close proximity to such a pleasing and compatible body.
“I have one more question?”
“Can it wait till later?” she replied.
“Why can’t I ask now?”
“Because I want you to join me,” she said
“You mean, right now?”
She nodded and did something sexy with her mouth and
eyes.
“Is this some kind of ‘damned if you do and ‘damned if
you do not’ quiz?”
She shook her head, and I decided to give it my best
shot.
*
It was after nine when I began to feel restless. I
think she felt it too, my restlessness. Like a curtain call on a high school
drama, everyone tried and deserved a standing ovation, but the end was
anxiously awaited; it was not the real thing.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, “Jeffrey will have
exhausted his sitter’s patience.”
“Where does a woman, who is not the mother, find the
patience for another woman’s child?”
“She’s his grandmother,” she said.
“Then you are fortunate. Grandparents make better
parents than their children. Does she live in?” I asked.
“Yes, and she is a ‘grand’ parent.”
“Like her daughter,” I suggested, but it sounded too
insincere, which it was, so she ignored it, for which I was grateful.
“Will you be back this way?” she asked.
The question was so direct and to the point that I had
difficulty speaking. I was accustomed to more subtle and evasive dialogues
filled with innuendo. I had to pause and search for the right words.
“I’ll be back,” I said, sounding like a retreating
McArthur. “I’ve only begun my investigation. I will be back in a day or two. I
want to talk to those little people in the basement. I think they might be able
to provide background on Samuel and Elinore.”
Her legs were dangling carelessly over the edge of the
bed, while she guided one foot after the other into her panty hose.
“I could use some help,” I said, “especially from
someone who knows how this place works.”
“Are you asking me to become a snitch?” she replied.
“If it’s no skin off your nose, why not try?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“See what you can unearth about Samuel Ryder and what’s
available on Elinore. I read her file, but it is incomplete. Could there be more?
Is it possible that some student may have misplaced them?”
“Isn’t that the truth,” she said slipping into her
skirt. “No one ever questions anything and there is no accountability. You
could load up a dozen patients and put them to work painting red and green
stripes through the center of town and no one would ask why.”
“Can you help me?” I asked.
She thought it over for a moment.
“Sure, why not? You helped me.”
“I did?”
“You helped me resolve my identity crisis.”
“Of course I did.”
“Should I call you?” she asked.
“I’ll return in a day or two and you can fill me in. I
would also like to know more about the Alberichs. You say they have a disease that
prevents them from growing old. Is someone researching, or keeping records?”
“There was a grad student in Morgantown interested in
them years ago. He was taking blood samples and glandular secretions all the
time, weighing and measuring. I think he wrote a paper and sold it to
Psychology Today. I think his research ended up on the back pages of a
supermarket tabloid. He has not been back in awhile. I guess he got his Ph.D.
and decided to make money, not history.”
She was nearly finished dressing, standing by the bed,
holding one shoe in her hand.
“Do you remember his name?”
“I can get it,” she said. “We keep records on those who
use our facilities when connected with the university.”
“If you can find a phone number, I would appreciate
it.”
“So would I,” she said. “He was a good looking guy.”
She put her shoes on, checked her clothes and makeup to
see what she had overlooked. As an after-thought, she said, “I don’t see what
the Alberichs have to do with the Ryders, or the wall?”
“I don’t know, either, but I think it’s related. If it
is not, there is no harm done. Where do the Alberich’s live?”
“They live in the basement,” she said, sounding as if
another location would have been unimaginable.
“Do they ever leave, go shopping, or take a vacation?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“That’s what I mean. That particular wall was raised to
keep something out, not someone in, or so I have been told. The Alberichs may
know more than we do, especially about the Ryders.”
“Now you’re starting to worry me,” she said, folding
her arms. “Are you sure you didn’t come here to commit yourself?”
“Give me a helping hand with this, Connie, and I won’t
forget you.”
“Does that mean you’ll send me a Christmas card every
year?” she said testily.
I was trying to think of ways I could express my
gratitude, something I wasn’t good at doing.
“New Years and Easter, too,” I promised.
“Thanks,” she replied, taking a few short and
impatient steps before turning. “I know you mean well, so I’ll help. Besides,
I’m anxious to see the inside of the Ryder house. I’ve heard a lot about it.”
I wanted to kiss her, to take her into my arms and tell
her how much I appreciated her, but I was afraid of what might happen, so
I nailed down our agreement.
“You help me desacrilize that mausoleum and I’ll give
you a guided tour on Halloween.”
Chapter Nineteen
It was early evening when I reached the parking lot
behind Virgil’s office. All the lights were off, not only in the building, but
also in town. I owed Virgil at least the courtesy of a phone call. I walked to
the booth in front of the courthouse and called his home. Violet answered. Virgil
was attending the high school football game.
“We’re undefeated this year,” she said. “We’re a
shoo-in for making the playoffs.”
She wanted to know if I was a football fan. I lied and
said I was, without going into details over my armchair injuries.
“The school is two miles out of town going south. You
can’t miss it, cars will be parked on both sides of the road and you’ll see the
field lights.”