The Death in the Willows

by Forrest, Richard;

  “Do you know who made those last entries?” Rocco asked.

  Tanner opened the chart and examined the handwriting carefully. “Miss Williams made the first three. I made the final notation. I can’t tell who made the PT note. We’re all off schedule here because of the strike.”

  “All right,” Rocco said. “Let’s find out who took Fabian Bunting to the tub room and made that entry.”

  There were ten employees assigned to the second floor during the time span when Dr. Bunting died. They were a mixed group of administrative personnel, supervisors, two R.N.s, and an aide or two who chose to ignore the picket line and come to work. Most were quickly eliminated because they had been seen by others or were in other parts of the building during the thirty minutes when the scalding death would have had to occur. Four had taken a coffee break together and were in the canteen room during the crucial time period.

  Bambi Williams, R.N., sat primly before the desk that was now occupied by Rocco. She clasped her hands on her starched lap and looked intently at Rocco as if to discern some hidden meaning in his posture.

  “Where were you between nine-forty-five and ten-fifteen, Miss Williams?”

  “I was giving out midmorning meds.”

  “Anyone see you?”

  “The patients, of course. At least the ones who can still think.” There was a biting edge in her voice, a vehemence that chilled the room and made Bea immediately feel compassion for the helpless individuals served by this bitter woman.

  “And you took Dr. Bunting to the tub room during that period?”

  “No.”

  “In the rush of events you forgot about her.” Rocco’s voice was matter of fact and without any judgmental quality.

  “I certainly did not.”

  “Someone charted her for PT. The charts were in your possession during that period.”

  “They were at the nurses’ station and available to anyone while I was in the rooms.”

  “Did you see anyone take Dr. Bunting to the tub room?”

  “No. The last time I saw her she was careening down the hallway to the sun-room to make more trouble.”

  “What sort of trouble?” Bea interjected.

  “She’d been yelling out her window all morning. I had to restrain her.”

  “Restrain?”

  “Not in the physical sense. I took her away from the window and locked it. That’s when she went to the sun-room and that’s the last I saw of her.”

  “Thank you, Miss Williams.”

  The nurse rose from her chair as if catapulted and walked briskly toward the door.

  “You didn’t care for her, did you?” Bea said.

  “She was a crotchety old bitch,” Bambi Williams said as she left the room.

  “I have the feeling that the lady does not like her work,” Rocco said.

  “God help the infirm. Who’s next?”

  Rocco looked down at his list. “The last one is an aide named Mike Maginacolda.” He called out, “Mr. Maginacolda, please.”

  Maginacolda swaggered into the room. It took Bea a few moments to decipher what it was that made him incongruous in this setting. His defiant attitude initially put her off, but then she realized that it was his hospital whites. They fit too well. The usual bunch of fabric across the rear of the shoulders so usual in rented linens was missing. His uniform had been tailored.

  Maginacolda slouched into the chair Rocco indicated. He glanced over at Bea with a smile of prurient, crude sexuality.

  Rocco looked studiously at a personnel file in front of him. “It has been brought to our attention that you took Bunting to the physical therapy room.”

  “That’s a goddamn lie!” Maginacolda leaned over the desk and slapped his palms loudly on its surface. “I was nowhere near the second floor when she croaked.”

  “Is that right?” Rocco looked impassively at the man bent over the desk. “Exactly where were you?”

  The questioning continued as Rocco quietly probed at the angry aide. It seemed to go nowhere, and Bea realized it was fruitless. If anyone in the hospital had taken Fabian Bunting to PT, they were not admitting it—to anyone.

  When Maginacolda started for the door, she asked him, “Why aren’t you out on strike?”

  “Hell, I’m shop steward for the bona fide local.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My union always used to represent the workers here until Rustman and that black chick carded everyone and called an election. They’ll wise up and we’ll be back in the saddle soon.”

  “I see.”

  The aide left the room and Rocco shrugged as he closed the last file.

  The Wentworth home, Nutmeg Hill, was perched on a promontory overlooking the Connecticut River on the outskirts of Murphysville. Stands of pine surrounded the house on three sides and were parted by a long, winding drive that meandered up from the highway. A fieldstone patio at the rear of the house overlooked the river and was surrounded by a profusion of carefully tended spring flowers. Lyon and Bea had discovered the run-down house several years ago while hiking in the woods. They had purchased the decrepit dwelling and restored it with tender love. The old house’s casual mixture of early American and contemporary furnishings enhanced the comfortable aura.

  A large window in Lyon’s study above the patio gave the impression that his desk floated above the river. Banks of bookcases and large, worn leather chairs completed the furnishings in his workroom.

  Lyon was oblivious of the view as he hunched over the typewriter by the window.

  He wasn’t there.

  He walked with his Wobblies. His monsters had made their way to a wooded place and now sat before a mountain stream to rest. The long tongues of his two friends lolled from the sides of their faces as they looked toward their creator with lopsided grins. Their enemy had been defeated. The Waldoons had once again been sent into exile from which they would undoubtedly return in the next book—it was a time of peace, a time of renewal; and yet the Wobblies were elated, and Lyon viewed them with satisfaction.

  The tiny knock on the door dispelled the quiet. Lyon turned from the typewriter as his eyes refocused and he returned to reality.

  “Who?”

  “A very depressed lady.” Bea stepped into the room and slumped into a leather chair. “The day started off lousy and has gone downhill since.”

  “Woeful Bea.”

  “KNOCK IT OFF, WENTWORTH.”

  “Your hearing aid battery is low again.”

  Bea fumbled in her ear for the small device, turned the volume up, and reinserted the instrument. “I wish I hadn’t heard a word all day.”

  “That sounds like a riddle.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt your work, but I would like you to hear what happened.” She had put her thoughts in order on the drive home and now presented them in a clear and concise manner. As she talked, Lyon from time to time asked a quiet question or nodded. His frown deepened.

  He gave a sigh when she finished. “What’s Rocco going to do next?”

  “He’s ordered an autopsy over the nursing home’s objections. We expect that it will show cardiac arrest due to the scalding. He’s a little unsure as to what step to take next. There isn’t any definite reason to believe that it’s murder, but what bothers me is that no one will admit putting her into the tub. Also, what about the missing chart entry that so mysteriously appeared later?”

  “A careless aide or nurse could be covering up for his or her own protection. A shorthanded staff, a forgotten patient … negligent but not malicious.”

  “Possibly, except a few minutes before she was killed, Kim saw Dr. Bunting in the sun-room holding opera glasses.”

  “And a nurse or aide came and took her to PT. He or she put her into the tub and left on another errand.”

  “You’re making me feel paranoid.”

  “I don’t mean to. I’m just considering other possibilities. There is one other answer.”

  “What’s that?”


  “Bunting herself.”

  “Suicide?”

  “It’s not uncommon with some older persons.”

  “Come on, Lyon. You met her. You know the woman’s vitality and her zest.”

  “If she were afraid of losing her faculties … that could be devastating for such a person.”

  “But by scalding? What a painful way. If Fabian Bunting wanted to do herself in, I can see her finding a way to get into the medicine cabinet, but not into a hot tub.”

  Lyon tried to make the mental shift from his recent total involvement with his monsters to the possibility of a senseless death. For senseless is what it was. An old lady, without assets or heirs, obviously harmless to the world, had possibly been murdered.

  “Anybody home?” Kim called from the vestibule.

  “In the Lyon’s den,” Bea replied without moving.

  “Oh, funny, funny.” Kim entered the room pushing the bar cart. “It is cocktail time, right?”

  “You know it,” Bea said and began to mix martinis while Kim poured Lyon a pony of Dry Sack sherry. “A nice day on the barricades, hon?”

  Kim sipped her martini and sat down. “Would have been. Could have been. We were to begin a negotiating session with management this afternoon, but fearless leader took off somewhere.”

  “I thought this … what’s his name?”

  “Rustman. Marty Rustman.”

  “Was the Sir Galahad of the labor movement.”

  “He’s honest, militant, articulate, and flaky. Although I can’t understand why he just disappeared.”

  Lyon turned his back on the panorama of the river. “Disappeared?”

  “He was there at the home bright and early this morning when we set up the line. Sometime around ten this morning he took off. Funny thing about it is that he left his car.”

  Lyon leaned forward. “Are you sure it was ten?”

  “Sometime around then. Why?”

  “Did you call his office, the union headquarters, and so forth?”

  “Damn right I did! I was fit to be tied. We had to cancel the meeting. You know, those workers really need the money—they need to work desperately.”

  “What about his home?”

  Kim went to the telephone and dialed. It was answered on the first ring. “Mrs. Rustman? Kim Ward here. Is Marty there?… No. He left Murphysville about ten this morning and he’s not at the union hall.… Have you heard from him?… No … Thank you.” She slowly hung up: “Okay, what’s coming down?”

  “I wonder if there isn’t a connection between Bunting’s death and Marty Rustman’s inexplicable disappearance.”

  “She was last seen in the sun-room with opera glasses,” Bea said.

  “If there’s no sign of him in the morning, I think we had better talk to Rocco,” Lyon said.

  The van stopped after jouncing over several miles of dirt road. The rear doors were thrown open and he was pulled unceremoniously from the rear compartment and thrown onto the ground. He tried to mumble through the tape across his mouth, but the two men standing by the side of the van didn’t look his way. After a few moments of consultation, one of them took a shovel from the rear of the van and walked twenty yards into the woods along the side of the logging road. He watched in fascination as the man inspected the ground carefully and then stuck the shovel into the earth. The man gave a grunt as the shovel cut through the layer of forest carpet and topsoil. He put the first shovelful of earth neatly to the side. They were going to kill him. There would be no baseball bat that would allow him to live another day. They were going to bury him!

  3

  The Rustman home was a small, white ranch with dark blue shutters located in the south end of Hartford. Bea turned the Datsun into the driveway and sat for a moment looking at the house. The grass was newly mown, the yard neat, and to the rear she could see an above-ground swimming pool where two tow-headed children played. The boy appeared to be around ten, the girl perhaps eight. They laughed with that distinctive sound children make when playing in water.

  She had been elected for the trip by default. Right after breakfast Lyon had run for the safety of his study. Kim had phoned from the picket line and said that Marty Rustman had never arrived.

  She left the car and went up the narrow cement walk to the front door and rang the bell. The door was opened immediately by a thirtyish woman with washed-out blond hair that hung in stray wisps across her forehead. Her face was haggard with deep pockets of worry under each eye. She uttered a tentative “Yes?”

  “I’m Bea Wentworth, Mrs. Rustman. Kim Ward who works with your husband asked that I stop by.”

  “You know something about Marty?”

  “That’s why I’m here. To find out where he is.”

  “Oh. Please come in.”

  Bea followed Barbara Rustman through the living room into a sun-drenched kitchen. Being a haphazard housekeeper herself, she immediately recognized in their brief journey the signs of the obsessive cleaner and scrubber. She sat at a small kitchen table while Barbara Rustman prepared coffee. There was a haunted quality to the woman standing at the stove. She carried a deep burden and had for more than the few hours her husband had been missing. It was a deeply ingrained hurt that had been lived with for years, and was probably only alleviated by constant work.

  Barbara Rustman placed a coffee cup before Bea and sat across the table. “I don’t know where Marty is, Senator Wentworth.”

  Bea laughed. “Not senator anymore. In fact, I’m temporarily out of politics.”

  “Marty always admired you and agreed with your stands.”

  “It’s too bad you’re not in my voting district. Kim Ward tells me only good things about your husband. She feels that he’s a real asset to the labor movement.”

  “Let me show you the article in Time magazine.” She reached into a kitchen drawer and placed a neatly clipped article before Bea.

  Bea read the article. It praised Marty as one of the new breed of young labor leaders. At a recent national convention he had given an impromptu speech from the floor and received a standing ovation. The end of the article recounted his background. He had served in Vietnam as a medical corpsman and upon discharge had obtained a job as a lab technician at a Hartford hospital. When a union received NLRB sanction to hold an election at the hospital, Rustman had attended the organizational meeting. During the proceedings he had been elected shop steward. In a year’s time he had become disenchanted with the union and resigned in protest. He formed an independent local, and in the space of a few years his union had won election after election, which forced management recognition. Recently his locals had been admitted into the AFL-CIO.

  She looked up at Barbara sitting expectantly across the table. “He sounds like quite a guy.”

  “Does anyone know where he is?”

  “We thought you could help.”

  “I don’t know what to say. He’s stayed away before at night. All-night negotiations and things like that, but he always called and told me where he was. He made a point of speaking to the children before they went to bed.”

  A child’s laugh from the rear yard penetrated the room and Barbara Rustman seemed to cringe away from the sound. Bea realized that the woman was a permanent victim, drained and immersed in expected hurt. A woman whose vital forces had been sucked from her until she was a hollow receptacle awaiting further pain. A victim not of a specific battle but of the constant skirmishs that shaped her life.

  The truth about Marty Rustman did not lie in the mechanical pride his wife exhibited. It rested within the province of the quiet moments husband and wife spent together.

  “I’m so worried about Marty.”

  The same repetitious phrase. “Did you call the police?” Bea asked brusquely.

  “The police? Of course not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well … I … He might come home any minute.”

  Out of shame for what she was going to do, Bea closed her eyes briefly. In that moment,
as if she could hear the vital voice of Fabian Bunting, she knew she must find out the truth. She knew that she could break this emotionally frail woman sitting before her. The buttons were there, waiting to be pushed.

  “He’s with a slut again,” Bea said harshly as she knotted her fingers into fists under the table.

  There was a sharp intake of breath from the woman across the table. Words faltered and stumbled. “No … He wouldn’t do … I don’t know.”

  “He did last time.”

  “That was different. He’d won an election, he’d been drinking.”

  “And you think he’s off whoring now. Don’t you!” Bea leaned across the table and closed her hands over the other woman’s clenched fingers.

  “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

  Bea sat back slowly in her chair as Barbara Rustman’s eyes clouded and feeling retreated to some inner place. She asked softly, “Want to talk about it?”

  “There’s no one to listen.”

  Her voice softer still. “I will.”

  The words began like a small freshet trickling down from a craggy ledge. They picked up strength as they tumbled into a rushing mountain stream, becoming a torrent of words that spilled over each other in their rush for expression. Bea listened without comment and felt the hurt.

  “We grew up together. Not ten blocks from here. We lived next door to each other. Everyone always said we were meant for each other. I never dated anyone else. I think Marty did once in a while on the sly, but he always came back to me. We went to all the high school dances together and then got married a week after we graduated. It was wonderful in those days.”

  Bea nodded, although it wasn’t necessary.

  “I got a job right off, filing at the insurance company, and we had this great little apartment in a three-family house. Marty was always ambitious and didn’t want to work in the aircraft like his dad. He went to technical school. A good lab tech can always get a job. After the two-year course, he got a job at the hospital. Then he went to Vietnam.…”

  “That changed a lot of men.”

  The other woman looked at Bea as if the simplistic statement was a unique revelation. “Yes. Changed. He changed. He was one of those medical guys that went with the soldiers.”