by M. M. Silva
I found myself not looking at the doc as he described what the next few months of my life were going to be like because I couldn’t concentrate when I was looking at those green eyes. They were like a vortex sucking my brain cells right out of my head, and I really needed to pay attention if I was going to opt for a major surgical procedure.
When he was done telling me about the risks and recovery times of my options, I didn’t hesitate. “Surgery,” I said with finality, and he studied me for a moment.
“You’re positive?”
“Completely. The thought of not having surgery and just letting scar tissue fuse me back together isn’t an option.” I shuddered.
The doc nodded, said he’d be in touch with an orthopedic surgeon and get back to me with a couple of options. Then he and his olive eyes left the room. After just a few seconds, he popped his head back in the door, and I was hoping he’d mention that he happened to be a Sox season ticket holder, and that maybe next spring, if I was interested…
Instead, “You’ve got a couple of guys out here who are chomping at the bit to see you. Are you up for visitors?”
I looked at my watch. 3:00 AM. “That’s okay with you?”
He shook his head. “Not really, but one of them is completely prepared to arrest me, and the other one looks ready to cry. I’m willing to make an exception.”
I beamed. “Yes, please send them in.”
Seconds later, Doob rushed into the room and practically knocked me out of my hospital bed as he enveloped me in a hug. Colin shuffled in behind him, looking sullen and tired.
“You’ve taken years off my life, dear neighbor. I’m glad you’re okay.” He hugged me harder, and I thought he might crawl into the hospital bed with me.
“Watch the leg, Doob,” I said laughing.
He jumped back about a foot, hands in the air. “Which one? Is it broken? I didn’t listen to a word the doctor said after he told us you were going to be all right.”
“Left leg. It’s not broken, no. But it’s an Achilles rupture, and it sounds like the recovery period is close to ten thousand years.”
“See what happens when you try to do a charity walk with no preparation?”
“The doctor said it happens to major athletes, and that I’m in good company. It could have happened to anyone.”
Doob rolled his eyes. “Okay, Miss Major Athlete, I stand corrected. You gonna need surgery?”
“Yep, very soon. So you’ll have the enviable job of waiting on me for the next ten thousand years.”
“Like that’s anything new,” he said without missing a beat. His eyes then traveled to my arm with the zig-zag of stitches. He tentatively walked back over to the bed and peered at it as if studying a freakish zoo animal. “That’s awesome! How many?”
“Twelve, I think,” I replied, pulling a face as I examined it. I’m not particularly vain, but I wasn’t too thrilled about the scar that bad boy was going to leave.
Doob beamed and scanned the rest of my body. “Anything else?”
I scoffed. “Not enough battle wounds for you?”
He rocked his head from side to side. “It’ll do. I just wish I could have videoed it. The number of hits on YouTube would be epic.”
“YouTube? Are you serious? Doob, I could have been killed.”
“Well, duh. I wouldn’t have posted it if you’d been killed. But it was awesome. We’d have called it the Catfight-in-Flight. Very impressive, Meg. And she definitely got the worst of it.”
“I thought the bitch shot me.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t,” Colin grumbled, finally speaking up from his chair in the corner.
I grimaced as I took in his five o’clock shadow and the dark circles under his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Colin. I really am. But what the hell was I supposed to do? You’d just been up there yourself—”
“But I didn’t walk in without permission. Save me your sob story, Maloney. You’ll make it up to me, I promise.”
“I’m having surgery. Give a girl a break,” I whined.
“I could break your neck,” he suggested.
McGreeny to the rescue, as he knocked and then entered without waiting for a response. There was an available orthopedic surgeon for late the following morning—rather, later this morning— so I signed a few sheets saying I understood the risks involved in the surgery, and soon I’d be under the knife.
CHAPTER 40
Saturday, November 16th
“DOOB, YOU READY?” I LOOKED AT MY FRIEND WHO WAS stuffing as many Fritos into his mouth as humanly possible.
Doob saluted. “Aye aye, Captain Maloney, at your service. Here to serve. Happy to help. Whatever you need. Will work for Fritos but generally work for free—”
“We got it, Doob,” I said dryly. Then I yelled toward the phone, which we’d put on speaker a minute before. “Colin, are you there?”
Colin’s Boston accent chimed through the phone. “You should demand Abe & Louie’s or The Capital Grille at the very least,” Colin responded. “It’s the least she can do. Especially at friggin’ midnight.”
“From your lips to God’s ears to my mouth,” Doob replied.
“Would it be possible to get some work done? Or do you two need a nappy?” I asked, wondering how I’d afford either of those steakhouses if Doob started making ultimatums.
“I’m fine. I never sleep. But are you sure you’re up for it?” Doob asked me.
“What else am I gonna do?” My leg was in a cast up to my knee, the size and weight of a submarine, and propped up on Doob’s couch with three pillows because Dr. McGreeny said I needed to keep it elevated.
Sampson and I had been staying at Doob’s apartment since my surgery. Doob insisted it would be easier to wait on me that way, plus, with Moira gone, I wasn’t too keen on staying at our place anyway. It was just too quiet.
Before surgery, I’d given Doob and Colin a laundry list of things we’d need to go over once I was coherent. I’d spent the first four days after surgery in a pain-killer-induced-fog and finally took myself off them after getting quite sick. Pain or no pain, I was done with the drugs.
While I was laid up in my semi-conscious state, Colin had been calling me faithfully with daily updates, and every day I remained surprised to hear that Melanie was still in the hospital. This was quite curious. Our tumble didn’t merit five days in the hospital in my humble opinion, but that was one of the reasons I’d gathered this little meeting.
“Okay, I’m going to go through my list of items one at a time—” and then stopped and pointed a finger at Doob. “You realize I can see you, correct? Rolling your eyes isn’t going to get you out of this.”
He rolled them some more. “Sorry. But do we really need a checklist? We’re grown men.”
“That’s up for debate,” I retorted. “I’m doing it as much for me as for you guys. I want to make sure we don’t miss anything.” Then I looked down at my yellow legal pad with scribbles everywhere and turned to the phone. “We’ll start with the small stuff and then work up to the psychopathic stuff. Burns, what do you have for us on Meow? How did they meet? And where the hell was she when I was getting attacked up in that office?” I asked briskly.
Colin dove in from the speakerphone. “All right, we’re starting with Meow.” Doob and I heard some papers shuffling. “From what she told me, the girls met when they were both at the, uh, boarding school—or whatever you call those places—in the southwest. That was probably about seven or eight years ago.”
“Boarding school?” I scoffed. “Don’t you mean they met at the cuckoo farm for troubled teens that I told you about?”
“You’re very politically incorrect,” he said with phony admonition in his voice.
“Sue me,” I retorted.
“It was a pain in the ass to get the information because they were juvies. I had to call in a favor from a guy who knows a guy. I’m just glad you remembered Melanie had spent some time there.”
“Sadly, I can
recite a lot of the events in her life.”
“Obsess much?”
“How can I not? It haunts me. Like you don’t do the same thing with your cases?”
“I do. Anyway, Melanie was already there when Meow arrived, and Meow was some type of mess. Melanie kinda took her under her wing, became friendly with her when she learned Meow had lived in Boston.”
“There’s probably some psychology to that. Melanie saw a broken girl from Boston; it was probably like looking at herself in some warped way.”
“I’ll leave the psycho-babble crap to you, Maloney,” Burns said through the phone. “So Melanie got out of the home about six months before Meow—”
I knew what he was going to say before he said it. “Any chance her release coincided with the cousin’s overdose? That’s been Melanie’s MO throughout.”
“Way ahead of you, kid. I remember you telling me she’d drugged people in the past. As it turns out, Melanie had been out just under three weeks when the cousin OD’d. We can’t prove anything, of course, but months later, she showed up at the facility the day Meow was released and gave her a manila envelope with nearly twenty thousand dollars in it.”
Doob whistled lightly.
“Where in the heck did she get that?” I wondered.
“Well, Meow had told Melanie at one point that the cousin was a dope dealer. Probably had a lot of cash at his place. It’s pure speculation, but if Melanie killed him, she probably took the time to find the cash.”
“That sounds reasonable,” I agreed. “I’m surprised she didn’t keep it.”
“Yeah, I thought of that, too, and I’ve got a couple theories. Number one, we don’t know she didn’t. There could have been forty grand, and she kept half. Number two, Meow said Melanie gave her the money and said she’d collect on the favor someday. They agreed to keep in touch, which they did via email, and Meow didn’t see Melanie again until about a week ago when she showed up at the bar, said she was running from a guy and needed a place to lay low for a while.”
“Playing on Meow’s sympathy,” I said.
“Yep. Meow said Melanie was ecstatic when she learned about the little apartment area above the bar. Meow offered to let her stay at her place, but Melanie claimed she didn’t want to disrupt things with the grandma and she’d just use the bar for the time being.”
“I’m going a little off the grid, here,” I said. “But it’s got to take a lot of capital to buy a bar in Boston. Even if Melanie’s seed money helped Meow out, how in the heck did she manage to buy The Cat’s Meow?”
Colin chuckled. “Good old Gram.”
“The grandmother?”
“Yep. She’s ten billion years old, and her place has been paid for forever. She put up a lot of the money and is also on the paperwork.”
“Cool,” Doob said.
I nodded. “Okay, sorry, I need to get back on track. So where the hell was Meow when I was fighting Melanie up in that office, or apartment, or whatever?”
“Meow internally freaked out when we came to the bar with Melanie’s picture, especially since she knew Melanie was upstairs. Then when I pounded up to her office to ask for the fax number, she thought she was going to be arrested. After I went downstairs, they argued. Melanie tried to convince her they should slip out via the fire escape, but Meow wanted Melanie to turn herself in. They had a little tussle, and true to form—”
“Melanie drugged her,” I finished.
“You got it,” he said. “Not enough to kill her, but enough to knock her out. We think Melanie was about to take off out the fire escape, when you walked in.”
“And the rest, as they say, is history,” Doob chimed in.
I mulled all this over. “So, I hate to say it, but it seems like Meow didn’t intentionally do anything wrong. It sounds like she crossed paths with a psycho at a rough point in her life, and the psycho recently tried to call in a chit.”
“I tend to agree with you there,” Colin said. “She answered all our questions and didn’t lawyer up, even though she probably should have. She just got scared when we showed up with that picture, and by demanding a warrant, it bought her some time to speak with Melanie.”
“Come to think of it,” I said, “Melanie fed her that bullshit story about being scared of a guy. Because of her past, Meow is probably not a trusting person; she may have suspected us of being in cahoots with the mysterious boogeyman Melanie was supposedly running from.”
“Yep, could be. Regardless, I don’t think Meow is going to get into too much hot water over this.”
I scribbled some notes on my pad. “Okay, on to the murdering bitch. Why is she still in the hospital?”
I heard a big sigh and envisioned Colin rubbing his forehead with his hand.
“Burns?”
“Yeah…I’m here. I wasn’t exactly sure when to tell you.”
Wasn’t exactly sure when to tell me? “Tell me what? What’s going on? What are you guys hiding from me now?”
“Listen, don’t bust my balls. You’ve been doped up on pain pills and—”
“Cut the shit, Burns. I’m fine, I’m awake, I’m alert, I ditched the pain pills. And my leg got hurt, not my head, so don’t protect my fragile psyche. Why is she still in the hospital? If she’s even in the hospital! If she isn’t there, I swear to God—”
“Hold your horses there, tough girl,” he responded. “I don’t want you to come after me with your crutch.”
“You’re just full of compassion, caveman. Talk to me. Why is she still there? And the cops have had to have questioned her by now. What’s she saying?”
His voice sounded muffled as if he was rubbing his face again. “According to reports, she’s not doing too great, so she’s not saying a lot.” He paused for a beat. “But her lawyer certainly is.”
“Her what?” I exploded. “Tell me I heard that incorrectly.”
“Maloney, you’re smarter than that. Every scumbag, drug dealer, murderer, and terrorist we’ve ever seen in this city has ended up with a lawyer. Think about the bombing at the Marathon and all the idiots who came to the defense of those animals. Melanie’s no different.”
“Who’d she get?” I asked, hoping it was a pimply-faced twenty-something who’d flunked the bar exam a few times before squeaking by on the final attempt.
“Bragginini,” Colin replied, aggravation in his voice.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I wailed, as my world started spinning. Maybe I would need those pain pills again after all. “Arturo-two-g’s-Bragginini. How in the hell did she manage that?”
“I don’t know, and believe me, I’m as disgusted as you are. That publicity-hound is licking his chops at this story. Artie will have her decked out in a wheelchair and a slinky dress to show the casts on both her legs, as well as a little T and A. Not to mention she’s getting tested for whatever’s wrong with her head.”
“Excuse me? Because of our fall down the stairs? I saw all the blood. Does she have brain damage?”
“I’m not sure, but something is up. Melanie’s biological brother—”
“Bobby?”
“Yeah, Bobby. He had a terminal—”
“I’m well aware of the brain tumor he had.”
“You gonna keep interrupting me?”
“As often as I need to, yeah.”
“Try to shut it until I’m done; we’ll do Q&A later.”
“I’ll ask questions when I feel like it. I don’t work for you.”
“Thank God. Anyway, Bobby had a terminal brain tumor, but as we both know, he was murdered before it killed him.”
“By Melanie.”
“Well, supposedly over the past few months while she’s been gone—”
“While she’s been running from the law—”
“Her lawyer is claiming she’s been having headaches for quite some time—”
“Could be the guilt from murdering a number of people.”
“The lawyer is further saying she was treated at that juvie home
just before her release. They told her she had some type of mysterious mass in her head—”
“That mass is her psychotic brain—”
“And they would have treated her before letting her go, but she just up and—”
“She’s making all of this up. She sold her lawyer a bill of goods. Or he’s making it up, it doesn’t matter! This is what she does, Burns. She’s taking her brother’s horrible illness and trying to use it to her advantage. She was in that home eight years ago. Wouldn’t a mysterious mass have somehow manifested itself by now, and—”
“Maloney, enough. The doctors are pissing in their pants over Bragginini’s claims, and everyone is running scared. So they’re taking every possible precaution to make sure she doesn’t have some type of health issue that might keep her from facing an arraignment and eventual trial—”
“What? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Not at all. Outside of the fact she may have a hereditary problem, she did take a vicious blow to the head.”
“She’s not sick. They’re buying time.”
“Nothing Bragginini does would surprise me. But he’s claiming she’s entitled to any required medical care before her clerk’s hearing, however long that may take.”
I scoffed. “She’s entitled? Are you kidding me?”
“Everyone’s entitled,” Doob piped up from the peanut gallery. “God bless America. The taxpayers will be footing the bill for those tests of hers until the end of time.”
I rubbed my temples. “We’re not getting into a political discussion right now, Doob.” As if by divine intervention, his cell phone rang, and his face lit up.
“It’s my mom.”
“At this hour?” I asked.
He shrugged and headed toward his bedroom. “I think they’re in France or somewhere.”
“So Burns, how long can her attorney keep up this crap? Do they really want to be under this type of scrutiny?”
“Of course they do. That weasel loves the attention. He’s telling the world how she was viciously attacked the other day and unjustly accused many months back. They’re turning her into the victim.”
