C Is for Corpse

  "She's grown up pretty fast from what I've seen."

  She crossed her legs restlessly, wrapping one around the other. "I don't understand why you're pursuing this point."

  "I need to know what was going on. He was anxious about her tonight and more than relieved when he found out she was all right. I wondered how deep the connections ran."

  "Oh. I see. A lot of his emotionalism is the aftermath of the accident. From what I'm told, it's not uncommon for people who've suffered head injury. He's moody now. Impatient. And he overreacts. He weeps easily and he gets very frustrated with himself."

  "Is part of that the memory loss?"

  "Yes," she said. "What makes it hard is he can never predict where the losses will occur. Sometimes he can remember the most inconsequential things, then he'll turn around and forget his own birthdate. Or he'll blank out on someone altogether, maybe someone he's known all his life. That's one of the reasons he's seeing Leo Kleinert. To help him cope with the personality changes."

  "He told me Kitty was seeing Dr. Kleinert, too. Was that for the anorexia?"

  "Kitty's been impossible from the first."

  "Well, I gathered that much. What was it about?"

  "Ask Derek. I'm the wrong person to consult about her. I did try, but I don't give a damn anymore. Even this business tonight. I know it sounds cruel, but I can't take it seriously. She does it to herself. It's her life. Let her do anything she wants as long as it doesn't affect the rest of us. She can drop dead for all I care."

  "It looks like her behavior affects you whether you like it or not," I ventured carefully. This was clearly touchy stuff and I didn't want to antagonize her.

  "I'm afraid that's true, but I've had it. Something's got to change. I'm tired of playing games and I'm sick of watching her manipulate Derek."

  I shifted the subject slightly, probing a question I'd been curious about. "You think the drugs were actually hers?"

  "Of course. She's been stoned since she walked in my front door. It's been such a bone of contention between Derek and me I can hardly speak of it. She's ruining our relationship." She closed her mouth and composed herself, then said, "What makes you put it that way?"

  "About the drugs? It seems odd to me, that's all," I said. "I can't believe she'd leave them in her bed-table drawer in a Ziploc bag for starters and I can't believe she'd have pills in that quantity. Do you know what that stuff is worth?"

  "She has an allowance of two hundred dollars a month," Glen said crisply. "I've argued and cajoled until I'm blue in the face, but what's the point? Derek insists. The money comes out of his own account."

  "Even so, it's pretty high-level stuff. She'd have to have an incredible connection somewhere."

  "I'm sure Kitty has her little ways."

  I let the subject pass and made a mental note for myself I'd recently made the acquaintance of one of Santa Teresa High School's more enterprising drug dealers and he might be able to identify her source. He might even be her source, for all I knew. He'd promised me he'd shut down his operation, but that was like a wino promising to buy a sandwich with the dollar you'd donated in good faith. Who were we trying to kid here?

  "Maybe we should let it go for now," I said. "I'm sure this day has seemed long enough. I'd like to have the name and telephone number of Bobby's old girl friend if you have it, and I'll probably want to talk to Rick's parents, too. Can you tell me how to get in touch with them?"

  "I'll give you both numbers," she said. She got up and crossed to a little antique rosewood desk with pigeonholes and tiny drawers along the top. She opened one of the large drawers below and took out a monogrammed leather address book.

  "Beautiful desk," I murmured. This was like telling the Queen of England she has nice jewels.

  "Thank you," Glen said idly, while she leafed through the address book. "I bought it at an auction in London last year. I'd hesitate to tell you how much I paid for it."

  "Oh, give it a whirl," I said, fascinated. I was getting giddy hanging out with these people,

  "Twenty-six thousand dollars," she murmured, running a finger down the page.

  I could feel myself shrug philosophically. Hey, big deal. Twenty-six grand was as nothing to her. I wondered what she paid for underwear. I wondered what she paid for cars.

  "Here it is." She scribbled the information on a scratch pad and tore off a leaf, which she passed to me.

  "You'll find Rick's parents rather difficult, I suspect," she said.

  "How so?"

  "Because they blame Bobby for his death."

  "How does he handle that?"

  "Not well. Sometimes I think he believes it himself, which is all the more reason to get to the bottom of this."

  "Can I ask you one more thing?"

  "Of course."

  "Is it 'Glen' as in 'West Glen'?"

  "The other way around," she said. "I wasn't named for the road. The road was named for me."

  By the time I got back in my car, I had a lot of information to digest. It was 9:30, fully dark, and too chilly for a black gauze tunic that ended six inches above my knees. I took a few minutes to wiggle out of my pantyhose and hunch into my long pants. I dropped the high heels into the backseat and pulled on my sandals again, then started the car and put it in reverse. I backed around in a semicircle, looking for a way out. I spotted the second arm of the drive and followed it, catching a glimpse of the rear of the house. There were four illuminated terraces, each with a reflecting "pool, shimmering black by night, probably giving back sequential images of the mountains by day, like a series of overlapping photographs.

  I reached West Glen and turned left, heading toward town. There'd been no indication that Derek had gotten home and I thought I'd try to catch him at St. Terry's before he left. Idly, I wondered what it'd be like to have a city street named after me. Kinsey Avenue. Kinsey Road. Not bad. I figured I could learn to live with the tribute if it came my way.

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  Santa Teresa Hospital, by night, looks like an enormous art deco wedding cake, iced with exterior lights: three tiers of creamy white, with a square piece missing in front where the entranceway has been cut out. Visiting hours must have been over because I found a parking space right across the street. I locked my car, crossed, and headed up the circular driveway. There was a large portico and covered walk leading up to double doors that shushed open as I approached. Inside, the lobby lights had been dimmed like the interior of an airplane on a night flight. To my left was the deserted coffee shop, one waitress still at work, dressed in a white uniform almost like a nurses. To my right was the gift shop with a window display done up with the hospital equivalent of naughty lingerie. The whole place smelled like cold carnations in a florist's refrigerated case.

  The decor had been designed to soothe and pacify, especially over in the area marked "cashier." I moved to the information desk, where a woman who resembled my old third-grade teacher sat in a pink-striped pinafore with an expectant look on her face.

  "Hi," said I. "Can you tell me if Kitty Wenner's been admitted? She was brought into the emergency room a little while ago."

  "Well, now let me just check," she said.

  I noticed that her name tag read "Roberta Choat, Volunteer." It sounded like one of a series of novels for young girls that was now sorely out of date. Roberta must have been in her sixties and she had all sorts of good-conduct medals pinned to her bib.

  "Here it is. That's Katherine Wenner. She's on Three South. You just walk down this corridor and around these elevators to the bank on the far side. Third floor, and you'll be turning to your left. But now, that's a locked psychiatric ward and I don't know that you'll be able to see her. Visiting hours are over, you know. Are you family?"

  "I'm her sister," I said easily.

  "Well now, dear, why don't you repeat that to the charge nurse up on the floor and maybe she'll believe you," Roberta Choat said just as easily.

  "I hope so," I said. It was actually D
erek I wanted to see.

  I moved down the corridor, as instructed, and rounded the elevators to the bank on the far side. Sure enough, there was a sign that read SOUTH WING, which I found reassuring. I punched the "up" button and the doors opened instantly. A man entered the elevator behind me and then hesitated, eyeing me as if I were the kind of person he'd read about in a rape-prevention pamphlet. He punched "2" and then stayed close to the control panel until he reached his floor and exited.

  The south wing looked better than most of the hotels where I've stayed. Of course, it was also more expensive and offered many personal services that didn't interest me, autopsy being one. The lights were all on and the carpet was a blaze of burnt orange, the walls hung with Van Gogh reproductions; a curious choice for the psycho ward, if you ask me.

  Derek Wenner was sitting in a visitors' lounge just outside a set of double doors that had small windows embedded with chicken wire and a sign reading PLEASE RING FOR ADMITTANCE with a buzzer underneath.

  He was smoking a cigarette, an issue of National Geographic open on his lap. He glanced at me blankly when I sat down next to him.

  "How's Kitty?" I said.

  He started slightly. "Oh. Sorry. I didn't recognize you when you came around the corner. She's better. They just brought her up and they're getting her settled. I'll have a chance to see her in a bit." His glance strayed toward the elevators. "Glen didn't come down with you by any chance, did she?"

  I shook my head, watching a mixture of relief and momentary hope fade out of his face.

  "Don't tell her you caught me with a cigarette," he said, sheepishly. "She made me quit last March. I'll toss these out before I go home tonight. It's just with Kitty so sick and then all this stuff –" He broke off with a shrug.

  I didn't have the heart to tell him he reeked of tobacco. Glen would have to be comatose not to notice it.

  "What brings you down here?" he asked.

  "I don't know. Bobby went off to bed and I talked to Glen for a while. I just thought I'd stop by and see what was happening with Kitty."

  He smiled, not quite sure what to make of it. "I was just sitting here thinking how much this felt like the night she was born. Waiting out in the lounge for hours, wondering how it was all going to come out. They didn't let fathers in the delivery room in those days, you know. Now, I understand, they practically insist."

  "What happened to her mother?"

  "She drank herself to death when Kitty was five."

  He lapsed into silence. I couldn't think of a comment that didn't seem either trivial or beside the point. I watched him put out his cigarette. He worked the hot ember loose, leaving an empty socket like a pulled tooth.

  Finally, I said, "Is she being admitted to Detox?"

  "Actually, this is the psychiatric ward. I think the detoxification unit is separate. Leo wants to get her stabilized and then do an evaluation before he does anything. Right now, she's a little bit out of control."

  He shook his head, pulling at his double chin. "God, I don't know what to do with her. Glen's probably told you what a source of friction it's been."

  "Her drug use?"

  "Oh, that and her grades, her hours, the drop in her weight. That's been a nightmare. I think she's down to ninety-seven pounds at this point."

  "So maybe this is where she needs to be," I said.

  One of the double doors opened and a nurse peered out. She wore jeans and a T-shirt. No cap, but she did wear a nursing pin and a name tag that I couldn't read from where I sat. Her hair was ill-dyed, a shade of orange I'd only seen before in marigolds, but her smile was quick and pleasant.

  "Mr. Wenner? Would you like to follow me, please?"

  Derek got up with a glance at me. "You want to wait? It won't be long. Leo said five minutes was all he'd permit, given the shape she's in. I could buy you a cup of coffee or a drink as soon as I'm done."

  "All right. That's nice. I'll be out here."

  He nodded and moved off with the nurse. For one brief moment, as they passed into the ward, I could hear Kitty delivering some high-decibel curses of a quite imaginative sort. Then the door closed and the key turned resoundingly in the lock. No one on 3 South was going to sleep tonight. I picked up the National Geographic magazine and stared at a series of time-lapse photographs of a blowhole in Yosemite.

  Fifteen minutes later, Derek and I were seated in a motel bar half a block away from the hospital. The Plantacion is a rogue of a drinking establishment that looks as if it's crept to its present location from some other part of town. The motel itself was apparently built with an eye to sheltering the relatives of the ill and infirm who come to St. Terry's for treatment from small towns nearby. The bar was added as an afterthought, in violation of God knows what city codes, as it is smack in the middle of the residential neighborhood. Of course, the area by now has been infiltrated by medical buildings, clinics, convalescent homes, pharmacies, and various other suppliers to the health-care industry, including a mortuary two blocks away to service folk when all else fails. Maybe the city planning commission decided, at some point, to help ease the pain by making eighty-six-proof alcohol available along with the other kind.

  The interior is narrow and dark, with a diorama of a banana plantation that extends behind the bar in the space that usually supports a long mirror, liquor bottles, and a neon beer sign. Instead, arranged as though on a small lighted stage, scale-model banana palms are laid out in orderly rows and tiny mechanized laborers go about the business of harvesting fruit in a series of vignettes. All of the workers appear to be Mexican, including the tiny carved woman who arrives with a water barrel and a dipper just as the noon whistle blows. One man waves from a treetop while a wee wooden dog barks and wags its tail.

  Derek and I sat at the bar for a while, scarcely speaking, we were so taken by the scene. Even the bartender, who must have seen it hundreds of times, paused to watch while the mechanical mule pulled a load of bananas around the bend and another cart took its place. Not surprisingly, the house specialties run to cuba libres and banana daiquiris, but no one cares if you order something adult. Derek had a Beefeater martini and I had a glass of white wine that made my lips pull together like a drawstring purse. I'd watched the bartender pour it from a gallon jug that ran about three bucks at any Stop N' Go. The label was from one of those wineries the grape pickers are always striking and I pondered the possibility that they'd peed on the crop to retaliate for unfair labor practices.

  "What do you think about this business with Bobby?" I said to Derek when I finally got my mouth unpuckered.

  "His claim about a murder attempt? God, I don't know. It sounds pretty farfetched to me. He and his mother seem to believe it, but I can't figure out why anybody'd do such a thing."

  "What about money?"

  "Money?"

  "I've been wondering who benefits financially if Bobby dies. I asked Glen the same thing."

  Derek began to stroke his double chin. The excess weight made him look as if he had one normal-sized face superimposed on a much larger one. The jowls were just leftover flesh hanging out the sides. "It'd be a fairly conspicuous motive, I should think," he said. He wore the skeptical look of a man in a stage play: an exaggerated effect for the audience twenty-five rows back.

  "Yeah, well forcing him off the bridge was conspicuous too. Of course, if he'd died in the wreck, nobody would have known the difference," I said. "Cars go off the pass every six months or so anyway because people take the curves too fast, so it could have been passed off as a single-car accident. There might have been some damage to the rear bumper where the other driver made contact, but by the time they'd hauled Bobby's car up the mountain, I don't think anybody would have suspected what really occurred. I take it there weren't any witnesses."

  "No, and I'm not sure you can count on what Bobby says."

  "Meaning what?"

  "Well, he obviously has a vested interest in having someone else to blame. The kid doesn't want to own up to the fact that he'd been d
rinking. He always drove too fast anyway. His best friend gets killed. Rick was Kitty's boyfriend, you know, and his death threw her for a loop. I don't mean to cast doubt on Bobby's version of the story, but it's always struck me as self-serving to some extent."

  I studied Derek's face, wondering at the change in his tone of voice. It was an interesting theory and I got the impression that he'd been thinking about it for some time. He seemed uncomfortable, though, pretending to be casual and objective when, in fact, he was undermining Bobby's credibility. I was sure he hadn't dared mention his idea to Glen. "You're saying Bobby made it up?"

  "I didn't say that," he replied evasively. "I think he believes it, but then it gets him off the hook, doesn't it?" His eyes slid away from mine and he signaled to the bartender for a repeat, then glanced back at me. "You ready for another one?"

  "Sure, why not?" I hadn't actually finished the wine I had, but I hoped he'd be more at ease if he thought I was matching him drink for drink. Martinis will make you say anything and I was curious what might come out once his tongue was loosened. I could already see that look in his eyes, something slithery and pink that hints of alcoholic tendencies. He fumbled in his shirt pocket and took out the pack of cigarettes, his gaze riveted to the diorama. A tiny mechanical Mexican with a machete was climbing up the tree again. Derek lit a cigarette without looking at it and the gesture took on a curious air, as if it couldn't count against him if he ignored it himself. He was probably the kind of person who eats while watching TV and tops off his Scotch so it will always look as though he is only having one.

  "How was Kitty when you saw her? You haven't said."

  "She was... you know, she was upset, I guess, to find herself hospitalized, but I told her... I said, 'Now look, kid. You're just going to have to shape up.'" Derek had shifted into his parental persona and he seemed uncomfortable with that, too. I could just imagine how effective he'd been to date.

  "Glen didn't seem very sympathetic," I said.

  "Well, no. I can't blame her for that, but then Kittys had it rough and I don't think Glen understands the toll it can take on a kid like her. Bobby's had every advantage money could buy. Why shouldn't he have it made? I tell you what bothers me. I mean, anything Bobby does is excused. Anything Kitty does is the crime of the century. Bobby's screwed up. Don't kid yourself. But when he fouls up, Glen can always find a way to rationalize what he's done. Know what I mean?"