Voices in the Wardrobe

  And the pain of a weather change in her neck where dwelt a titanium plate placed there by surgeons after a nasty auto accident on the 405 commute to work. Charlie was reminded of her own frailties and needs and terrors. Who was she to judge Margaret Mildred Stutzman, who had been steadfastly there for Charlie when she was losing it? Charlie had to be sure not to let her blood sugar get too low, or blood pressure too high.

  The weatherman in the wardrobe began to describe an interesting weather front as Charlie’s cell decided to tinkle in her purse. She stood up too fast and nearly lost what was left of the nachos looking for that purse. Maybe it was the lawyer for Maggie.

  “Charlie?” It was Luella Ridgeway. “Watch your tush, girl. This is a lot bigger than we thought.”

  “The Celebrity Pit?”

  “The Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol. Where are you right now? And Maggie?”

  “You just said it. But we’re expecting a ride out of here any minute. Heading for the Islandia. Where are you?”

  “In my car on the way. I’ve booked a room at the Islandia, too. And Charlie, get Maggie out of there.”

  “Luella says we have to get out of here.” Charlie turned to Maggie who was stuffing her underwear back into a drawer. She paused to stare over Charlie’s shoulder.

  “Did Ms. Ridgeway say why?” Caroline VanZant asked from the doorway to the hall. She hadn’t even knocked.

  “I think it’s pretty obvious. There’s a killer loose in this place and it’s not Maggie. And Caroline, where’re all the drugs you took from this room?”

  “This was all I could find.” She flopped down in a brocaded, fringy chair and held up a small plastic bottle. “It’s Verapamil, a calcium blocker to regulate the heartbeat if it gets wacky. Probably the most benign drug in that bag we emptied on the bed there the other night. Somehow, I misplaced the rest. This has been a trying week. And we don’t know for sure that these aren’t accidental deaths. At least not yet. And if they are murder—your friend was there and she is unstable—”

  “Yeah Greene, you sure you want to be alone with me at the Islandia?” Maggie made a ghoul face, difficult to describe but convincing. “Charlie, what are you doing?”

  Charlie was hanging onto a bedpost. “You got anything to eat around here besides dirt? I’m getting giddy.”

  “Yes, of course.” The Spa manager pulled a cellular out of her pocket and punched the pad. “Sue? Is there anything left of those fruit platters? Could you bring one up to the Victorian room? Thanks. Charlie, did you know a good colonic rinsing would give your food a better chance to feed you without having to go through all that sludge keeping the nutrients out of your blood stream?”

  When Rippon brought in the platter there were, thank God, crackers and cheese with the strawberries and kiwi and melon squares set out for day spa guests who weren’t on the gut-reaming program. Charlie would have loved a cup of coffee but didn’t even hope. “Thanks, I didn’t gauge my intake.”

  “Diabetes?” Sue leaned against the door jamb, considering Charlie.

  “Appetite,” Maggie said. “Only person I know who can forget to eat.”

  “My appetite is huge. It’s my capacity that’s trouble.”

  “Well, I’d like to say I don’t envy you, but …” Caroline VanZant studied Charlie too and like Sue, in a strange sort of creepy way. As if they were zeroing in on the same thought at the same time without having to discuss it.

  Oh come on, they’re probably just planning a new weight loss treatment—not your demise, Charlie’s inner voice cautioned rationality over paranoia. Charlie’s inner voice was dead wrong more often than not. She didn’t really trust anybody, especially herself.

  Ruth Ann Singer, the snappy number, showed up to stand in the doorway and expose the glitzy stud in her navel above her low-rider shorts and below a halter top that barely covered her bosom, all in white including her earrings which didn’t match her tummy stud. The voices in the armoire switched from Metamucil to the Celebrity Pit.

  “Someone blew up the Celebrity Pit?” Maggie still stood over the open drawer, holding a pair of her drawers.

  “You’ve been listening to the wardrobe all this time and didn’t hear that?” Charlie said.

  “Why doesn’t she open the doors so she can see it?” Ruth Ann had to ask. “It’s a TV, not a radio. It actually has moving pictures, duh.”

  “Don’t you talk about Maggie like that.” Charlie bristled, literally, her skin and hair follicles tweaking. “She’s a practicing attorney and has even been a judge.”

  Three pairs of eyes now moved from Charlie to Maggie.

  “Smarter they are …” Caroline said.

  “Yeah,” Sue answered.

  This was getting creepier than a hotel full of testosterone-enhanced aspiring screenwriters.

  “Deaths from the explosion at the once famous Celebrity Pit are confirmed at thirteen, with seven in critical condition and eleven with moderate to minor injuries,” the armoire said. “Damage is less than at first reported and there are rumors of plans under consideration to re-create the popular venue, rebuild it as a museum venerating Hollywood and cinematography past and present, or to tear it down and replace it with affordable housing, heh heh—that last, of course, being a joke.”

  Charlie noticed again how much attention the voice in the wardrobe commanded when you couldn’t see the picture. Because you were imagining what the picture would be or had to concentrate on that? It went totally against the common knowledge that one picture was worth a thousand words. Maybe that was just written words.

  Charlie’s cell beckoned. It sounded tinny.

  “That’s why we outlaw those things,” Caroline said, unaware she was waving her own cell phone in the accompanying gesture.

  It was the local lawyer, Nancy Trujillo. She sounded tinny too and Charlie’s tweaking follicles were building to a painful rhapsody.

  Funny, she’d never heard Maggie scream before. But she recognized who was doing it without having to think even. Way weird.

  “I don’t know,” Charlie told Nancy Trujillo. And then wondered what the question was she’d answered that to. But it was Maggie she must protect.

  Seventeen

  “I’m not sure she should be released to Miss Greene’s care. She’s obviously under the influence of something—Miss Greene, I mean.”

  “Ask them who Raoul was.” Charlie had meant to ask that herself but if she had, she’d forgotten the answer.

  “Charlie?” Luella Ridgeway said. “This is a lot bigger than we thought.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Tell you about what?” Kenny asked. “Charlie, open your eyes.”

  “How did you get back so fast? Did you unload Jerry? Where’s Luella? Why is Maggie screaming?” Charlie opened her eyes. “Oh.”

  Maggie stood there not screaming. Kenny held Charlie upright. And the female deputy of the clipboard stared at her hard. Caroline VanZant and Sue Rippon finished filling up a room already choked with furniture and fringe.

  “Asking serial, unrelated questions without waiting for an answer is a sign of confusion,” Sue Rippon of the aging ponytail said.

  “Charlie always does that,” Kenny and Maggie explained in near-sync, Kenny adding, “Have you had anything to eat or drink since happy hour at the Bahia?”

  “Just fruit and cheese and crackers here from a platter. But I do feel sort of a buzz on.” Charlie, embarrassed, pulled away from her client to stand on her own. “And I seem to have lost track of some time here. Did I pass out?”

  “Are you on medication?” The deputy moved in to search Charlie’s eyeballs.

  “Just Pepto Bismol. And then only when I have to listen to the Rocky Horror Pitches Show or my daughter.”

  “Fruit platters. Like the ones that litter the lobby and halls downstairs in the late afternoons?”

  “I didn’t even know they had edibles here. In the dining room they serve dirt. On linen tablecloths.”

  “The fruit
and cheese are compliments of the Sea Spa and offered to day clients to enhance their sense of euphoria after the pleasures of grooming, toning, relaxing, massage, being spoiled,” Caroline VanZant explained, sounding like a brochure.

  The deputy looked from Caroline to the chandelier dripping with beads, took a deep breath, and ordered them all to stay put while she stepped into the hall, closing the door behind her with one hand while punching the key pad on her cellular with the thumb of the other.

  The marina slept under the balcony of Charlie’s room at the Hyatt Islandia. The moon lit some things, shadowed others. Charlie felt like she’d been awake forty days and forty nights. She and Luella Ridgeway sipped hot coffee ordered up from room service, dined on strawberries and another fresh baguette from yet another gift basket left in the room. Maggie had a chocolate. And then another.

  Kenny sat just inside at a dining table large enough for four, sipping wine and reading the contents of some of the manila envelopes that had been slipped under the door, groaning, chortling, sighing—but quietly. He and Luella apparently decided they had two nut cases on their hands now and were afraid to leave either alone.

  A jet erupted from the palm tree and then relative quiet returned. Something disturbed some birds in the foliage below and they set up a chatter. Both Charlie and Maggie were taking deep breaths for some reason. They’d been escorted to a small clinic just off the coastal highway to leave blood and urine samples and then Kenny was allowed to drive them here. Luella had been waiting in the lobby. Maggie’s new lawyer promised to be here first thing in the morning. And the wardrobe in the room behind them remained blessedly silent.

  “The unofficial word on Wilshire,” Luella explained, “is that the explosions at the Pit were set up either by homegrown terrorists—read drugs and alcohol—who decided to make a statement and it went wrong, or local gangs decided to pick on the poor addicts camping out there and things got out of hand, or those invested in the property hired thugs to clean the place out. Whatever, it erupted into fire and gunshots and people died. The Pit came through it a lot better than did the outcasts camping there.”

  The sea lion’s “ork” was answered by another on the other side of the marina. It startled him into silence. There was a good sized party going on over there with lights and music and voices—more of a wedding or relatively sedate gathering but with many guests. Not the kind Libby attended for sure. Probably more like the one Charlie was invited to on Sunday.

  “Hey, get this. It’s perfect for you, Charlie,” Kenny reported from the other side of the screen. “Lost priest finds pot of gold at the end of rope hanging from a cloud and passes it by.”

  “Why?”

  “Doesn’t say. But there’s more, want to hear it?”

  “No.” Moonlight cast long shadows from tethered sailboats below. Two sea lions orked now, but on the other side of the lagoon. “Luella, why did you tell me to get Maggie out of the Sea Spa right away?”

  “Is your buzz off?”

  “Pretty much. I’m just tired.”

  “I’m not really authorized to tell all, Charlie. Not yet. And I’m not positive that all I can tell is true, at least the whole truth. But there is, apparently, an investigation underway or just beginning, into the holdings, conflict of interest, and fraudulent accounting practices of Royal Pharmaca and Arthur Douglas, Inc.”

  “Which is?”

  “Arthur Douglas is either an offshore holding company, a front for terrorists, or a scam to cover up the fact that research into the efficacy of Redux offered by Royal Pharmaca and touted by Dr. Judith Judd on her televised women’s health series, and filmed at the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol, found it to be little more than very expensive aspirin but with a lot more side effects.”

  “Who’s investigating?”

  “The SEC and FBI and I assume the FDA. FBI showed up at Congdon and Morse this morning and wanted to see all data on where Judith’s royalties came from.”

  “Cooking the books?”

  “Cooking the research results at least. I don’t think Congdon and Morse is under that much of a cloud. Our books have been open and regularly scrutinized since you and Richard Morse got mixed up with Evan Black and your neighbor was found murdered with no recorded identification. Sounds like there’s a scandal about to explode whether the VanZants know about it or not. It just seemed to me that since Maggie’s under suspicion already, someone could find something else to blame on her so I wanted her out of there until we have an idea of what this is about.”

  “I don’t want to hear false accusations about the Sea Spa or Dr. Judith. You’re trying to turn me against everything.” With that, Maggie Stutzman flounced off to the shower so Kenny came out onto the balcony. The chocolates were gone, Maggie was crying.

  “I really can’t see what all this would have to do with drugging a fruit platter.” Kenny poured himself some coffee. Some of the sheriff’s investigators had nibbled on the proffered fruit and cheese littering the lobby and reported weird reactions. It was thought Charlie might have suffered the same and they checked Maggie’s fluids as well for good measure, or because she was a suspect—no one said, but that’s why the side trip to the clinic before coming here.

  “What are we going to do? Maggie’s gone cold-turkey on scads of medications and on nourishment altogether. She’s simply not stable,” Charlie worried.

  A sweet flower scent changed places on a breeze with the slimy marina smell and decaying fish scales for a few seconds. A large fishing boat with lights glided into a berth below.

  “What we need to know is the connection between Judith Judd and Raoul,” Charlie said.

  “Why?”

  “They both were murdered presumably by the same person for the same reason.”

  “Well, Charlie’s back on line. I’m going to bed.” Luella gathered the food and drink receptacles onto one tray, then stopped to think a moment. “Kenneth, why don’t you all change rooms for the night? They’re close together.”

  “Thought the murderer was at the Sea Spa,” Kenny said.

  “But Maggie’s here.” Charlie looked at her colleague with even more respect. “And if someone’s trying to pin the murders on her …”

  “Exactly.”

  “So what difference would it make what room Maggie was in? If she wanted to murder someone she could come from any room.” The proprietor of Viagra’s Pool Hall in Myrtle, Iowa ran his hand through close-clipped hair and rubbed the back of his neck.

  Charlie’s neck got sore looking up at him. Did his do the same when he looked down at everyone else? “But if someone wanted to pin it on her and assumed she slept in this room—”

  “Oh, let’s just put big ol’ Kenny in danger. He won’t mind. Need I explain that I’m a big ol’ wimp?”

  Charlie and Maggie ended up sleeping in the same bed again, but in Kenny’s and he in theirs.

  Charlie slept hard again and woke to Maggie in the shower again, Kenny’s shower this time. They’d moved most of their things with them, as women will. Kenny, Charlie happened to know, slept in the buff. When she stepped out of his shower in his terrycloth hotel robe, he sat on the balcony with Maggie, in a hotel robe from their room, hair still wet from a shower, but face in need of a shave. He’d left his utensils here.

  “I’ve ordered you the seafood omelet special,” he said with that smug look guys get when they think they know you. “And hold the cheese.”

  He’d brought the caffeinated coffee packet from their room and all three had a cup before room service arrived with a splendid roll-in table and a huge breakfast for all. More than enough to share with Luella when she knocked timidly and slipped in when Charlie opened it, relieved to see Kenny across the room through the sliding glass door.

  “Thank God, how did he get away?”

  “From what?”

  “Your room. It’s swarming with official type people—no one allowed near.”

  Charlie’s hair was still dripping. Kenny hadn’t been gone lo
ng from that room.

  “So what all did you leave in our room?” Charlie yelled over the hair dryer.

  He stood behind her putting on his shorts. “My dirty panties on the bathroom floor. Socks, shirt, shoes, and slacks is all.”

  “Oh, that ought to make a fun investigation.”

  “I have replacements here. We ought to get through breakfast anyway and I did bring out my wallet. Nothing in that room to identify me but fingerprints. Want a massage?”

  “No.” She avoided the glances under raised eyebrows as she took a change of clothes from his closet, threw it in the bathroom, shut the door on his smirk.

  They soon sat at the table inside with extra plates to share everything. When Charlie took the metal lid off the seafood omelet and smelled the big pink shrimp and hunks of crab sticking out of it she couldn’t repress an, “Oh my.”

  “I love the way she says that, don’t you?” Kenny removed the plastic wrap from the rims of the large wine goblets filled with orange juice, emptied a water goblet to divi it four ways and raised the latter in a toast, “Here’s to good food, good drink, good living, and resolutions.”

  All three females automatically raised their orange juice to honor his toast whether they understood it or not and Charlie met the stares of the other two, responding with a, “Will you knock it off?”

  Charlie ate a half of a very full omelet, one piece of bacon from someone else’s plate, half a slice of toast and all her orange juice before she sat back with her second cup of coffee. “Can you hear that?”

  Kenny had sliced what was left of her omelet in three pieces, put one on his empty pancake platter. Luella and Maggie finished it off along with muffins and sausage. But there was still toast no one could eat. “Hear what?”

  “The quiet.” Charlie blinked back at blank stares. “We’re what—two, three doors away from my room? The door to this balcony is open. Luella, you said the hall, and I assume my room, was crawling with police. Why isn’t there more commotion?”

  Eighteen

  Charlie took the last of the morning’s coffee out onto the balcony to look or listen for any sign of commotion outside. Maggie dressed in the bathroom and Luella had turned on the TV in the wardrobe to morning news. No sounds from the other invisible balconies, no excitement on the walkway below either, where two groundsmen discussed something in Spanish while poking around the base of a bush with waxy leaves.