Killer Commute

  “Hey, boss, did they release you from the hospital?”

  “I released me. And see, I got home and I could hear. So it was the right thing to do. Did you tell Detective Amuller of my suspicions?”

  “You won’t believe this, Charlie Greene,” J. S. answered for himself, “but the Long Beach Police Department was actually capable of coming up with some suspicions of their own.”

  “I knew you would.” Charlie backtracked fast. “I just didn’t know it would be this soon. Maggie, what are we going to do about the gate? Jeremy would have taken care of it. I’m hungry again.”

  “She may be hearing,” Larry said, “but she’s not tracking. My vote is we get her back to the hospital.”

  People talk about you and not to you when they think you have no control and they must make your decisions. The panic began to bubble again, and Charlie’s heartbeat wasn’t racing like Maggie’s but it was sure getting forceful.

  “Now, don’t scare her, you.” Betty Beesom pulled Charlie toward Maggie’s house. “First we feed the poor woman. She must be recovered if she’s hungry.”

  Charlie truly hated being perceived as helpless, but sat meekly at the table while Maggie warmed the mushroom pizza that had been the communal feast in her absence and Libby shoveled some leafy salad onto a plate for her. Betty poured a glass of milk. She could only consume half the meal, but it tasted wonderful.

  “Before I send you back to the hospital, Ms. Greene,” J. S. Amuller said when he stepped through the door, “I’d like to know where you think all this cash could be hidden.”

  “I’m sleeping in my own bed tonight. I’m not leaving my child here alone—”

  “I’m going to the Esterhazie’s,” Libby said.

  “—and I have no idea where he’d hide the money. But, since all the houses are the same, it must be someplace I’d know. And have you checked his computer? There has to be some way to trace him on it or get information about him from it.”

  “Tanya told me everything on Jeremy’s computer was encrypted,” Libby said and tugged a string of cheese off the cardboard box. She dangled it for Tuxedo, who was partial to cheese.

  “Tanya,” Betty said, wiping her teary eyes with a tissue stuck under her trifocals.

  I can hear, Charlie thought. I can work, commute, talk to New York, support my child.… “Was she one of Jeremy’s girls?”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” Detective J. S. said.

  “You didn’t ask.” Libby’s tone had grown dangerous.

  “I didn’t know you knew any of Jeremy’s girls,” Charlie said.

  “I knew most of them. Some of them went to Wilson.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.” Charlie might be hearing again, but it wasn’t as good as before.

  “Mom, you don’t talk about things like that with your mother.” Libby’s disgust made Tuxedo look around for someone to bite.

  “I can’t leave Betty and Maggie here.…”

  “I’m going to the Grangers,” Betty said.

  “And I’m going to Mel’s.”

  “And I’m taking Tuxedo with me, so you have no excuse not to go back to the hospital.”

  “Before you go anywhere, Miss Libby, I want you to tell me all about these girls.”

  “We don’t talk to cops about our friends, either.”

  “Libby, they weren’t your friends. Jeremy was murdered, you can’t—”

  “They could have been my friends. We don’t rat on our own.”

  “Own what?”

  “Our own generation.”

  All Charlie could do was shrug helplessness at Amuller.

  “What, you don’t know the people in your neighborhood?” He turned on Charlie. “Even Fiedler, who lived within these electrified walls, and you don’t even know your own kid? You do not make a very reliable witness. Murderers don’t, either.”

  He continued to speak. Charlie could see it. But unfortunately, those were the last words she heard before the terrible silence enshrouded her with batts of cotton again. It was devastating. Very much like dying.

  Outside, Officer Mary Maggie Mason gave her a hug but drove her and her silent world back to the hospital prison. And loner Charlie had been so surprised and grateful to have all these friends and people on her side.

  CHAPTER 12

  WHEN CHARLIE AWOKE in the morning, the world was still lost in deafening silence. But her mood was not as murky and hopeless because the sun was outside her window. Because she had once again cheeked the pills and spit them out. Because she’d slept like a tank from exhaustion and the knowledge that her fortress and loved ones were guarded.

  And an inkling of an as-yet unplanned revenge.

  This attitude of yours is the normal grief and denial of your condition, the therapist reassured her right after the gag-awful breakfast. You have issues to deal with now that you’ve never faced before. This assurance came by written word and than by a series of hand signals suggesting orangutan foreplay. I’ll come back when you’ve resigned yourself to your horrible fate. Okay, that last sentence wasn’t her exact words but it certainly was the meaning she conveyed. It fed Charlie’s angst.

  Hospitals were wonderful places to visit other people.

  You couldn’t tell nurses from aides from housekeepers from the boy next door anymore, but the doctors you can, and the one who arrived next brought a person whose handwriting was legible to translate his garbled message into script for the newly hearing-impaired who’d not yet had the chance or the right attitude to learn to sign.

  The wonderful irony of this was that her hearing returned again and she actually heard what he said to the person chosen to be the interpreter. God didn’t slap her up the side of the head this time, but it did hurt for a second and she used every muscle in her face to hide that fact from her well-meaning but busy tormentors. Hell, Charlie knew busy.

  What he said in effect, although she wasn’t to read it this way when he left—interpreters are probably worth gold—was that, since she’d had no recurrence of reinstatement of her auditory faculties since being bludgeoned by the explosion, she should hold out little hope of recovering her hearing. And should cooperate with those who could teach her how to cope with this loss and lead a productive and satisfying life, as most do when they learn this coping thing.

  She read the pad, which put it a little less bluntly, and motioned for the translator’s pen to pen a question. Life as what? What occupation can I pursue to support my child now?

  “Oh shit,” he said clearly, “tell her there’s government help for the handicapped and any number of vocations she can pursue but I’m just the doctor and that information will be available from other specialists and social workers. What time is it?”

  * * *

  No one had bothered to tell the doctor that Charlie’s hearing had returned for a short period when she arrived home. Maggie was right. Specialized information didn’t travel well, particularly when everyone was so preoccupied with their own business.

  Charlie had no idea if her problem would return or for how long or when, but she did know that the only expert she could count on was herself. She’d been involved in crimes and murder before, but this was the first time it had hit home, and she was angrier than she’d ever been in her life. All she could think of was revenge.

  You sound like a guy movie.

  “Shut up,” she told her good sense.

  She didn’t trust the hearing return to be permanent, so she made a quick call to the compound, where her daughter actually picked up. “Hey, Mom, can you hear again? That’s great.”

  “I don’t know how long it’ll last, so be quick and tell me what happened last night.”

  “Nothing. Except the police are taking Jeremy’s house apart looking for that cash. Mr. Amuller’s here, want to talk to him?”

  “Wait a minute, why aren’t you in school?”

  “Because Detective Amuller wanted to talk to me. Gotta go, bye. Here, it’s my mom.”

  The
re was some background shouting and then Amuller came on the line. “You know Charlie Greene, next to you, your daughter’s the most exasperating, uncooperative female I’ve ever met.”

  “I’ve been totally cooperative. Where’d she go?”

  “Off to school, I guess. She refuses to identify any of Fiedler’s girls. Called me a snot wad. Couple nights in a jail cell ought to do her a world of good.”

  “You’ll only make it worse. Trust me. I’ll work on her. She said nothing happened last night?”

  “Nothing, and we can’t find any cash stashes either. Maybe your theory was wrong. Imagine that.” And he hung up on her.

  Sounded like she’d have to make another escape. Maybe she could get home before her ears gave out again. And before they served lunch here. Charlie picked up the Press Telegram that had come with her breakfast tray, noticing a familiar name toward the bottom right side of the front page because the paper was folded that way.

  Long Beach Police are looking for information on this man, the murder victim at the Belmont Shore condo complex, found in his car last Friday night. He went by the name of Jeremy Fiedler but might have other names.

  A hotline number was listed along with one of those drawings you often see rather than a photo because there isn’t one, and witnesses are trying to remember features, etc. This time it was probably not a composite but a sketch of a dead man with the artist imagining how he’d look alive. Charlie didn’t think it looked much like Jeremy, but the name ought to bring a few angry daddies out of the woodwork—and did Jeremy always part with the young nubiles on good terms? Maybe a few of them would surface, too, so J. S. wouldn’t feel the need to put Libby in a jail cell.

  But it would also attract more attention to the defenseless compound, which Charlie doubted Amuller and company would want to continue to guard against intruders.

  Charlie was dressed and on her way down the hall with the newspaper tucked under her arm when a nurse met her with a wheelchair and an already written note: You are being discharged. Here is the card of the specialist, Dr. Rodney, who will take over your treatment.

  Well, Charlie’s insurance company came through after all—wouldn’t pay for another night of observation. Charlie took Dr. Rodney’s card and sat in the chair. Down at the front desk, another note read, Who should we call to come and get you?

  Charlie looked the nurse right in the eye and said, “A cab.”

  Like Charlie had a raft of caregivers who sat home all day instead of working, waiting to pick her up. Made her feel like an old woman. It was insulting.

  * * *

  Betty Beesom sat at her ancient redwood picnic table with Art and Wilma Granger when Charlie entered the compound, her hearing still unimpaired. They waved her over and made her eat a tuna-salad sandwich with real mayonnaise and real potato chips, as in fried and salty. Charlie figured that making people feel guilty about buying real food is what made them eat out so much.

  “Think your hearing will last this time, Charlie?”

  “I don’t know. It comes and goes without warning. I’m afraid to get my hopes up.”

  The breeze was a little cool for a picnic today, but the absence of the fourth trunk of the sentry palm left the patio open to the sun and the high fortress wall radiated back the heat, making it quite pleasant. “Eventually, something good comes of everything,” Charlie’s mother, Edwina, always used to say. At least until her daughter got pregnant at sixteen and her husband died six months later.

  “Art’s brother had something like that happen to him back in Iowa,” Wilma said cheerfully.

  “Wasn’t either like that. No explosion. Ned fell off a tractor. Landed on his ear.” Art hit himself up the side of the head. “Hearing came and went for about a week, then was gone. Deaf as a post the rest of his life.”

  “What’d the doctor say?” Betty passed the bag of chips around again.

  “Said to go to a specialist.” Charlie pulled out the card. “Dr. R. Rodney. Wonder if that’s Rodney Rodney. Richard Rodney. Rupert. Rufus.”

  “Probably isn’t pretty, or he wouldn’t just use his initial,” Art said.

  “Don’t forget to ask Charlie about the eye specialist.” Wilma never quit smiling, even when she chewed.

  “I thought your eyes had been bothering you lately, Mrs. Beesom.” The way the light hit Betty’s face out here Charlie thought she detected a smoky film on one of them.

  “She’s been scared to death it’s macular degeneration.” A fragment of the leaf lettuce protecting the bread from the juicy filling stuck to Wilma Granger’s smile. “Then she read about cataracts and how easy they are to fix.”

  “He was a laser doctor you went to, wasn’t he?” Betty asked. “They do cataracts too now, I hear.”

  Charlie had to admit she hadn’t gone to see that doctor yet. Friends and family had been after her for months to see about laser surgery for her myopia. Mitch Hilsten and Edwina had even sent clippings and pamphlets on this wonderful new procedure that cost two to three thousand dollars an eye. The office manager at Congdon & Morse, Ruby Dillon, assured Charlie that insurance wouldn’t cover it.

  “I haven’t had the time or money to look into it. And people who do it seem to be putting drops in their eyes all the time.” Charlie didn’t like to go to doctors. But she still had this ophthalmologist’s card in her purse, too. She handed it to Betty and Wilma grabbed it.

  “But you bought all that stock,” Betty protested.

  “Well, Libby might want to go college after all. And that commute is wearing out the Toyota and I don’t have medicare.” Charlie was sitting next to Art across from the two women. Wilma was still smiling, but her eyes and Betty’s were beseeching.

  Jeremy would have done it.

  Charlie looked over at his house—the crime-scene tape much in evidence—but the search damage must be all inside. There was a seagull posing on the pitch of his roof again.

  You owe it to Jeremy and to Betty.

  What if I go deaf and can’t drive us to the doctor?

  “Tell you what, I’ll make an appointment for both of us to go in and see if he can help us. How’s that?”

  Wilma closed her smile on the lettuce, nodded, and bit her lip.

  Betty Beesom broke into tears. “I just can’t face it alone, somehow. Guess I’m getting old.”

  The seagull on Jeremy’s roof took flight and Charlie savored the whumping sound of his wings.

  Charlie choked on a potato chip when Jeremy Fiedler’s red Ferrari came slowly down the alley, paused at the back gate, and drove on.

  CHAPTER 13

  WHEN CHARLIE WALKED the few steps back to her house, Leroy Gonzales was pinching dead blooms off the plants in one of her flower boxes.

  “Leroy, did you take care of the broken trunk on Mrs. Beesom’s sentry palm?”

  “Si. Hall in thees place needs much help.”

  Boy, you can say that again. Something weird about a guy named Leroy talking pidgin, though. But an even bigger surprise waited inside.

  Kate Gonzales was having a personal chat with Tuxedo. And an even bigger surprise than that—Tuxedo was paying attention. Charlie did not understand the conversation because it was in Spanish. Kate spoke softly, waving a finger in front of Charlie’s nemesis. Both knew she was there but ignored her, and Charlie would not have dared interrupt.

  Tuxedo Greene might be a royal pain in the ass, but Kate Gonzales was a legend in her own time. Tuxedo perched perilously atop a pile of stacked junk mail on Charlie’s dining room table, looking down at the legend who spoke with her voice and with her index finger. That cat followed the movement of that finger back and forth for entire pages of foreign script, and when it and the voice stopped, the cat reached out and brought the finger to his face and bit it.

  The feline and the house cleaner stood that way forever. The magazines and pleas from hard-up banks—companies who could go under without Charlie’s fee for usurers and all the other crap she tossed these days—trembled. Hell, mo
st of those poor companies needing her so badly could afford glossy. It was a wonder how that slippery pile stayed upright with an impressive-sized tom on top.

  The bite had not been a hard one like he would have delivered to Charlie and then run off, but Tuxedo continued to hold on to Kate’s finger with one paw. Finally, Kate laughed low in her throat and looked away. The devil cat moaned warning and leapt into her arms as the plastic wrap slipped from under him and the whole pile tumbled to the floor.

  Kate Gonzales, the legend, turned to look at Charlie over Tuxedo’s head, the smile still on her lips. “Cone-grat-u-lations, Sharlie Greene. You haff made thee top of my list.”

  * * *

  Officer Mary Maggie Mason arrived as Charlie was enduring the telephone run-around trying to get a hold of J. S. Amuller to tell him about Jeremy’s Ferrari. So she hung up and told the woman cop instead.

  “You can hear again. What did the doctor say?” was the out-of-context response.

  “Said I was to see a specialist and come to terms with the probability of permanent hearing loss. Test results aren’t back yet. What about Jeremy’s computer? Was it really encrypted?”

  “Results aren’t back yet. So where did Mr. Fiedler keep this Ferrari, and how do you know it was his?”

  “I don’t. It’s just that it was red. Have you to talked to Kate yet?”

  “Kate who? And did this doctor know that your hearing had returned for a while before I took you back to the hospital last night?”

  “I didn’t tell him, did you? And Kate was Jeremy’s cleaning lady.”

  “Jeremy had a cleaning lady? Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “I told J. S. Wouldn’t he have written it in a report somewhere? What does J. S. stand for?”

  By now they were out at the back gate. There was no red Ferrari in the alley, but Charlie had seen Jeremy’s there any number of times. He had a special key to the lock and would drop off things or little girls at the back gate. He never left the car there for long, though.

  Officer Mary Maggie drooped, tucked her hair behind her ears. “I haven’t had time to read the reports. We got a backlog of homicides and victims’ families demanding the justice they got coming. You know, you help me out of a little bit, I just might tell you what J. S. stands for. I could use a little fun. It’ll be months, maybe years before Fiedler’s computer comes back from the FBI. And the lab tests, too. Everybody’s swamped these days. So where did Jeremy keep this Ferrari?”