Adjusted to Death Read online

  I looked down at my Twenty-First Century Tostada. It looked disappointingly ordinary to me. Tortilla and beans with salad, guacamole and salsa on top.

  Once the waiter left, I opened my mouth to find out just who Maggie had been talking about. But Eileen’s mouth was quicker than mine.

  “I agree that’s a tragedy,” she said. “But how about another unnamed person? You know the one. Her father owned a prescription drug company and was a belligerent alcoholic.” That had to be Devi, I thought with excitement. “Then her mother O.D.’s—not on heroin or anything illegal, mind you—but on prescribed sleeping pills. So her teenage daughter is left at the mercy of a physically and emotionally abusive drunk. Not that he would be called a ‘drunk’ of course, because he was rich and had a socially approved habit. I know what she went through until she was old enough to leave home. And all because of alcohol.”

  I was convinced, if only by the bitterness in Eileen’s usually sweet voice. I took a bite of guacamole-garnished lettuce without enjoyment, imagining Devi’s ruined adolescence. It had to be Devi they were talking about. No wonder the poor woman was such a space cadet.

  “I’ve tried to get her to an A.C.A. meeting, but I guess she has enough on her plate right now,” Eileen continued sadly, picking at the veggie burger on her own plate. At least she had spoiled her own appetite as well as mine. Maggie seemed unaffected however, biting into her cheesy hamburger with an appetite bordering on ecstasy. She wiped the grease from her chin and spoke.

  “That’s alcohol abuse, hon,” she said in a surprisingly soft tone. “A little glass of wine at night is not abuse.”

  “I really know that,” Eileen conceded, her voice gentle once more. “I guess growing up with alcoholic parents has given me a skewed outlook. Not that they were as cruel as her father. And my parents kicked it, both of them. They’ve been in recovery for seventeen years now. But you’re right.” She turned her South Sea Islands smile on Maggie. “I’m sorry if I got on your case about the wine.”

  Somehow even my tostada tasted better when she smiled at Maggie. I dove into it hungrily. But my mind was churning as fast as I was shoveling beans and lettuce into my mouth.

  “Maggie,” I asked nonchalantly, mid-tostada. “Was that Valerie you were talking about earlier?”

  Maggie looked up from the remains of her hamburger with a guilty start. She obviously hadn’t thought I might guess. And she refused to confirm that guess.

  “Confidentiality,” she said. Eileen nodded solemnly.

  “But we’re talking a murder motive here,” I insisted. “I don’t see how Devi’s experience could be a motive.” Now Eileen looked startled. She had been indiscreet as well. “But Valerie—if it was Valerie, can’t you see it? Scott Younger was a drug dealer for God’s sake.”

  Maggie and Eileen looked at each other with identical expressions of concern on their very different faces.

  - Eighteen -

  I never did get either of them to confirm Valerie’s identity. Or Devi’s for that matter.

  Eileen became quietly professional. She apologized for the ethical breach and asked me to keep confidential anything that either might have let slip. Maggie exploded in a flurry of self-deprecation. She repeated “Jeez, I have a big mouth,” ten or fifteen times in between Eileen’s calm sentences. I had to agree with her on that. Though, unfortunately, her mouth was not big enough to positively identify Valerie Davis. She wouldn’t even unburden herself when Eileen left her at my mercy to go to the restroom. However, I concluded from all the uproar that I must have guessed correctly.

  I did get the name and location of Eileen’s parents’ nursery from Maggie with no resistance. She was so relieved by my change of subject that she never questioned my interest, and burbled about their sweetness, their roses and their superior potting soil until Eileen returned from the restroom and the three of us left the Starship.

  On the way back to my car I saw a familiar wispy figure puffing up the sidewalk toward Maggie’s office. It was Devi, swathed in layers of fuchsia, with a jade and fuchsia scarf knotted around her neck. As far as I was concerned, Devi had some questions to answer. Why had she been so hostile to Scott the day of his death? His “bad reputation” wasn’t adequate explanation in my book. Just how well had she really known Scott?

  I called her name. She looked up at me with a start.

  “Oh, Kate,” she greeted me, breathless as ever. “I was just going—”

  “To Maggie’s,” I finished her sentence for her. “Devi, can I ask you some questions about Scott?” I arranged my face into what I hoped was a disarming smile.

  “Well, yes,” she replied. “I mean, I guess so. I didn’t really know him. Not very well, I mean. But go ahead, if you’d like.” She peered in my direction, blinking expectantly and breathing hoarsely.

  “How did you know Scott exactly?” I asked.

  “Oh, around, at school. At least I thought I knew him, but I didn’t really. I mean, how well do we ever really know anyone? I guess God’s in all of us, but the way we manifest—”

  “About Scott,” I interrupted. “Why did you dislike him so much?”

  “Scott?” she asked, her eyes open and blank.

  “Yes, Scott,” I said, holding my smile in place with difficulty. She closed her eyes to think and then opened them again, along with her mouth.

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I mean, he wasn’t a very nice person, was he? His aura was yucky, you know, kind of dark and awful. And then there was the drug thing…” Mid-dithering she glanced down at her wristwatch and back at me in alarm. “Oh, I’m late again! I tried so hard to be on time, and now I’m late again.”

  On that note, she hurried back down the street to Maggie’s without so much as a wave goodbye in my direction. I watched her fuchsia backside disappear through Maggie’s door and breathed a sigh of frustration. It was lucky that woman had money, I told myself, because I couldn’t imagine her earning her own way in the world. Then I felt a pang of guilt-laced sympathy, remembering what Eileen had said about Devi’s abusive father—if it was Devi’s father Eileen had been talking about. I didn’t even know that for sure. I shook my head, sighed again, and got in my car to go home.

  By the time I opened my front door I had done a lot of thinking. About Valerie’s brother. Devi’s father and Ted’s wife, Bonnie, among other things. I walked over to my answering machine absently. It had one message on it.

  I thought of Wayne and smiled. I was eager to share the fruits of my investigation with him. In the seconds it took me to rewind the tape I imagined the answering smile on his battered face, and his soft growling praise.

  But it was a woman’s voice that spoke when I pushed the playback button.

  “This is Inez from the law offices of Lee and Davies,” the bland voice said. “We have a message for you from Wayne Caruso. Mr. Caruso wanted us to let you know that he may be unable to keep his date with you tonight, since he has been detained by the police for questioning.” I stopped breathing. “And he also wanted you to know that he did have time to place the ad that you had discussed.” She recited the phone number of Lee and Davies. Then I was listening to the recorded dial tone.

  I replayed the tape, hoping I had misheard, but the message remained the same. Afterwards, I stood with my hand frozen on the answering machine, a confusion of thoughts bursting like little bombs in my mind. How long could they detain him? It was only one-thirty in the afternoon and he was expecting to miss his evening with me. Would they really hold him that long? My body had gone entirely numb. Only my mind was frantically functioning to the sound of my shallow breathing. Were they really arresting him? Was that it? It couldn’t be. It wasn’t fair, my mind whined.

  I collapsed into the comforting embrace of my favorite chair and dialed Lee and Davies. Inez answered the phone. She told me she had merely relayed the message given to her by Mr. Lee. She didn’t really have any more information. But perhaps Mr. Davies could help me, she suggested. />
  Mr. Davies was more forthcoming, but no less distressing. He said that his partner, Gary Lee, was representing Wayne. Gary and Wayne had been law-school friends. When I pressed him for details about Wayne’s detention, he was initially silent.

  “They’re leaning on him,” he finally replied, his tone apologetically gruff.

  “Are they going to arrest him?” I asked, my own vocal cords squeaky with fear.

  “We can’t tell for sure at this point,” he said. But the sigh in his voice told me his estimate of Wayne’s predicament was not optimistic.

  I thanked him for the information, and hung up the phone gently. Then I cried. I cried for the injustice of Wayne’s detention, for the possibility of losing whatever our relationship might have become, and for my own inability to absolutely believe in his innocence. I paused to snatch a Kleenex, blew my nose and burst into renewed tears. Wayne’s suffering, my husband’s treachery, even memories of the family dog who had died when I was fourteen, all conspired to flood me with misery. I wetly lamented what seemed to me, at that moment, to have been a lifetime of loss and loneliness.

  There came a time, finally, when I could cry no more. I picked up the telephone and called Wayne’s number. When and if he came home, I wanted him to hear my welcoming voice on his answering machine. I told the machine that I believed in him and wanted to hear from him as soon as he was released, no matter what time. But only after I had hung up did I whisper “I love you,” and wonder if it might be true.

  I walked over to my desk. It was a time for reason. The solution to the problem was simple. I would find out who Younger’s real murderer was and deliver him or her to the police. “Right,” my internal critic commented in a voice marinated in sarcasm. But I ignored the critic and cleared my desk of Jest Gifts paperwork as a start. I hadn’t seen the bare top of my desk in years. I hurried to cover its nakedness with two pads of lined paper, one for a list of murder suspects and their motives, the other for action items. I have found that list-making has an almost spiritual power to comfort me and focus my thoughts in times of crisis. Probably a result of far too many years of bookkeeping.

  Eileen, possible motives: daughter of the boss, other unknown, I wrote. Action item: visit her parents at the nursery. It seemed very unlikely that she was the boss’s debauched daughter, but I owed it to Wayne to find out for sure, and maybe I would uncover another motive by speaking to her parents.

  Maggie was a little more difficult. But there was always her lesbian secret or some unknown threat Younger might have posed to her business. No action item on Maggie, though. I didn’t think I could handle another conversation with her right away.

  Valerie looked promising. There was her general antipathy to drugs, her daughter, and the possibility that her brother was one of Younger’s customers. Action item: grill her about her brother tonight at dinner. I was beginning to feel the faint pulse of hope as my action list grew.

  Ted, motive: jealousy of Younger’s attentions to his wife, Bonnie. Bonnie and Ted deserved another visit. Perhaps their display of mutual affection was just good acting, or maybe Bonnie’s current affection for Ted was the engineered result of his murdering Scott Younger.

  Devi, motive: some deeply remembered wrong from her college days with Younger. He had been a pretty sleazy guy. Who knew what he might have done to her? From getting her pregnant to… To what? I needed to get some real answers out of that woman.

  Tanya? What could a fifteen-year-old have against a man she had never met before? I left the space next to Tanya’s name blank.

  Then I got to Renee. My pulse speeded up. Motive: a woman scorned. I had only her word that she wasn’t irreparably wounded by her relationship with Younger. And who was there that could contradict her? Her kids, I thought in answer, that’s who. Her kids who waited for her alone after school. They would know how she really felt about Scott Younger. Action item: visit Renee’s children for a talk. And to see if either of them resembled Scott Younger, I reminded myself.

  Wayne, I wrote reluctantly. I had to complete my list. Motive, take your pick: money, freedom, mercy-killing. But I listed no action items. The Mill Valley Police Department were taking care of Wayne.

  That was it for suspects, I thought, looking at my lists. No one else had been there, excepting myself. We would have seen anyone else come in the front door. But how about the back door? The thought surprised me. There must be a back door! I even had a vague memory of having seen it.

  I called Maggie’s office, my hands tingling with excitement. Renee answered the phone. I asked to speak to Maggie.

  “Do you want to make an appointment?” asked Renee.

  “No, just to talk to her,” I responded.

  “She’s spent enough time talking to you,” Renee said. “Call back if you want to make an appointment.” Then she hung up.

  I could feel the hot flush of anger creeping into my face. I redialed Maggie’s number.

  “Now, listen,” I said as soon as I heard the receiver picked up. “I want to talk to Maggie now.”

  “Maggie is with a client now,” Eileen’s benign voice floated over the line. “Can I help you?”

  “Uh, yes,” I mumbled. “I wanted to know about your back door.”

  “My back door?” she asked, her voice gently confused.

  I decided to start over. “Hi, Eileen. This is Kate,” I said. “I was wondering if anyone could have slipped in and out of your office through the back door, the day of Younger’s murder.”

  “We do have a back door,” she answered slowly. “But it only opens onto an outside stairway to the offices above us. Because of the way the building is set on the side of the hill,” she explained. “And I think it was locked. It usually is. But I’ll check on it.”

  “Who’s upstairs?” I asked.

  “A dentist is on the top floor. A Rolfer and an acupuncturist are on the middle floor. Do you want me to speak to them?” she asked.

  “No, I’ll come down and talk to them myself,” I answered. I noted this intention in bold letters on the top of my action-items list. “But thanks for offering. And thank you for believing in Wayne,” I added softly as an afterthought.

  I could almost feel Eileen’s answering smile over the phone line. I was glad she was on our side. Once I had hung up, I gathered up my purse and my lists, abandoning my naked desk to drive to Maggie’s office for the second time that day.

  Renee was not pleased to see me. But she grudgingly announced my arrival to Eileen. This degree of cooperation was probably due to the presence of two new paying patients in the familiar waiting room.

  “Why is Renee so angry with me?” I asked Eileen as we walked down the hall toward the back door.

  “I’ve wondered too,” she said. “I think it’s because she’s afraid she might be wrong about Wayne. She thinks he killed a man, and she’s helping the police to prove it, but she’s not absolutely sure. She knows you care for him and believe he’s innocent.” Eileen turned her concerned brown eyes on me. “So, whenever she sees you she feels a surge of guilt, and she covers it over with anger.”

  A kind interpretation from a compassionate human being. Personally, I wondered if Renee’s guilt, if that was what her malevolence really masked, might have a cause a little closer to home. Her guilt over murdering Scott. I reminded myself to arrange a talk with her kids as soon as I checked out the upstairs.

  The back door was located conveniently between the bathroom and the last treatment room, the one in which Scott Younger had been bludgeoned to death. I caught Eileen’s startled look of realization.

  “But it is locked,” she said.

  It certainly was. The door was secured by a push-button lock on the doorknob and a slide chain.

  “Did the police check this door?” I asked, hoping I was the first to consider its use.

  “I know they saw it,” she answered. “They asked me if it was kept locked. I had forgotten until now. There were so many questions that day.” I remembered the day an
d the questions, and then, with a sinking sensation, Sergeant Udel. What was he doing to Wayne right now?

  “I still want to try the stairs,” I said. The door might have been unlocked and then locked later in the confusion. I wanted to know where it led.

  She nodded and pulled back the chain to let me out. The door opened outside onto a chilly narrow platform overlooking a steep muddy-looking hill. Glancing up, I saw a wooden staircase that zigzagged up the back of the building with a platform at each level. The whole structure was peeling for want of a paint job, and the stairs were warped with age. I placed my foot on the first step carefully, assuring myself that chiropractic assistance was available if I should fall and break my neck. I grasped the handrail firmly and got a handful of splinters. I jerked my hand back.

  “Are you okay?” asked Eileen from the still-open door.

  “Fine,” I lied. “Do you have any gloves?”

  “I’ll get you some,” she said and disappeared.

  I looked out onto the day as I waited. Its grey luminescence reminded me of one of Bonnie’s landscapes, filled with the threat of rain, or worse. Eileen returned with a pair of disposable clear plastic gloves. She didn’t even ask why I needed them. I liked her better all the time. I put the gloves on, hoping they were thick enough to protect my hands from any more splinters. Then I began my ascent.

  The warped steps creaked under my feet as I climbed, and the handrail wobbled in my plastic-coated grasp. But I continued upward, turning and rattling the doorknobs at the second and third platforms with no luck. They were locked securely. Then I mounted the final flight of stairs that led to the roof of the office building. I stepped onto its tar surface and turned around. That was a mistake. I was looking out into open space. And that space was suddenly whirling. I closed my eyes and sat down on the tar with a whumph.

  Keeping my eyes closed, I breathed deeply until my head stopped spinning and the feel of moisture seeping through my corduroy pants from the wet tar roof spurred me to stand back up. Then I shakily searched the roof for other exits. I found none. No murderer had escaped this way without a waiting helicopter or a pair of wings. My trip back down the stairway was made of deep breaths, quivering legs and plastic-covered sweating hands. I kept my eyes glued to the wall.