Murder in a Nice Neighborhood

by Lora Roberts

  Drake turned on the dome light. Even its dim radiance hurt my eyes. He felt around my head, his other hand warm and wonderfully steadying on my shoulder. “You’ve got one hell of a goose egg here, lady. What were you hit with?”

  “Something heavy.” I felt the lump myself. It was big, as he’d said, just behind my right ear. He squeezed past me where I huddled between the front seats and the pull-down table. I missed the warmth of his hand. “Round and limp-looking, it was. But it didn’t feel limp.”

  “Rock in a sock,” he said, holding up his find. It was a black dress sock, bulging horribly at the toe end. “Not the kind of weapon that’s easy to trace.” His eyes traveled around the inside of the bus. I looked, too. I’d left my sleeping bag out to air the night before, and it was rumpled, as if someone had crouched back between the cupboards that flanked the bed.

  This yours?” Drake was holding a little halogen flashlight, the kind with an anodized aluminum case that I had seen at Redwood Trading Post but never felt rich enough to buy.

  “Nope.” I reached for it, and he held it back. I noticed then that he’d picked it up with a Kleenex. “Hey, just like the real Paul Drake, but he always had a nice white handkerchief.”

  “I keep waiting for the generation that hasn’t read Erie Stanley Gardner,” he grumbled. “Did you notice if the guy wore gloves?”

  I pictured again that raised arm, the strange-looking weapon, and shook my head. “Couldn’t say.”

  He used the flashlight anyway, clicking it on with the tissue between his finger and the switch, and then shining it in my eyes.

  “No sign of concussion.” He switched the flashlight off and put it, wrapped, in his pocket. “Can you walk? Mrs. Kaplan will be worried by now.”

  “I can walk.” I felt shaky, but not from being bonked. It was disturbing to think that a hostile person had been in my bus, waiting for me. “How did he get in?”

  Drake’s scowl was plainly visible in the moonlight. “Just cut a neat little hole in your cardboard, here, and reached in to unlock the door. Why didn’t you have that window replaced, Liz?”

  The window that Pigpen had punched out. I shivered. “Just didn’t get around to it. My life has been rather full lately. I’ll see to it soon.”

  “You won’t sleep in this thing another night until you do.” He was angry. I could tell. “Mrs. Kaplan’s offering you a real room in a real house. Why don’t you take her up on it?”

  I wanted to be angry also. Anger is such a purifying emotion. But all I could think about was a cup of mint tea and a session with my sleeping bag. “This is real, too,” I mumbled, glancing around my bus. “People who live in houses, or trailers, or apartments, don’t have a lock on reality, you know.”

  He didn’t say anything more.

  I scooted forward, and remembered the vinegar as I passed my cooler, which is where I keep most food staples. The vinegar and soy sauce stand with other bottles in a little plastic tub that keeps them upright while I’m driving.

  The tub had been moved.

  “Forget the vinegar,” Drake said impatiently. “if you don’t want an ambulance, I’m taking you to the emergency room.”

  “Someone’s been in here.” I stared into the cooler. “Why would anyone break into my van to give me food?”

  Drake was interested. “Good question,” he said, squatting down to see for himself. “Not a real philanthropist, since he hit you on the head. What’s different?”

  “Things are moved around.” I took out the bottle of balsamic vinegar and handed it to Drake, who tucked it absently into his hip pocket. “I can’t really tell—what’s this?”

  Drake stared at the plastic bag I pulled out. “Looks like some kind of seed or grain,” he said, puzzled. “I can see planting crack or grass to incriminate someone, but I never heard of planting granola.”

  Chapter 20

  An ice pack kept the pain in my head from exploding outward like the fireworks that cartoonists draw around those who’ve been wounded. I ate a little of the steak and felt better. Claudia ate, too, and Drake polished off what was left, bit by bit, making frequent forays outside, where a couple of uniforms were spending a fun evening scrutinizing every inch of gravel in the driveway.

  Claudia poured herself another glass of wine—Drake wouldn’t let me have any, and he’d stuck to mineral water. After his last trip outside, he’d cleared away the dishes. Now the middle of the table was given over to Exhibits A and B, the rock-in-the-sock and the plastic bag with its mysterious contents. I couldn’t figure out if those contents looked more like caraway seeds or wild rice.

  Drake had carried the bag in, using Claudia’s tongs. When she marched out, he slapped her hand gently away. “Don’t touch,” he admonished.

  “I just don’t get it. Knock Liz over the head and leave this stuff behind? Doesn’t make sense.”

  “Sure doesn’t.” I felt the lump again—my fingers just couldn’t stay away from it. I’ve been beaten up worse. Once in prison I was even kayoed while trying to break up a fight between two strong, belligerent women. But it was kind of like that childbirth pain you hear women talking about—the intensity gets lost in memory, and you don’t realize how much it hurts to be hurt until you’re hurt again.

  I could hear the sound of the bus door being slammed by Drake’s colleagues, who he had explained were fingerprinting everything the intruder might have touched. “I hope they’re neater this time,” I said, glowering at Drake, remembering the mess I’d had to clean up a few short days before. “What are they looking for, anyway?”

  “Anything that wasn’t there the last time,” he said absently, still staring at the bag. “For instance, you were clean before. This time, if there’s drugs, there’s a good chance they were planted. You want us to find anything of that nature now, when it’s attended by suspicious circumstances. Not later, when someone tips us to search you.”

  I clapped the ice pack on my head again and felt like Alice, falling down the rabbit hole. Except that I lacked her sense of detachment. There was malice here, directed at me. I felt helpless against it, which made me angry, which made my head hurt.

  Bruno Morales came to the door. I was acutely embarrassed to bring all this negative attention on Claudia’s house, but she seemed to be enjoying it. “Detective Morales,” she said graciously, gesturing to the empty chair at the table. “Please, have some coffee. Tell us your discoveries.”

  Bruno looked at Drake. “A party, Paolo?” He came closer and scrutinized the exhibits. “Strange party decorations.”

  “That’s the weapon. What do you think?” They exchanged a long look, and I was reminded of Bridget and Emery, who have been married long enough to communicate in the same way.

  “Could be.” Bruno picked up the sock with its obscene burden. “Have to let the coroner take a look. Impossible to trace, eh?” He shook the sock gently by its toe, and a rounded stone dropped out. There are hundreds of thousands just like it in the deep bed of San Francisquito Creek.

  “The coroner?” Claudia leaned forward in her chair. “So you think this might be how Pigpen Murphy was killed?”

  I looked at her with respect. It hadn’t even occurred to me to link my cracked skull with Murphy’s—maybe because his had been fatal.

  “Oh, no.” Bruno pulled his gaze away from the bag of seeds or grains and answered Claudia courteously. “That crack on the skull might have killed Murphy in time, and it was probably administered in the same way. But what actually killed Murphy was some kind of poison, Mrs. Kaplan.” He looked at Drake, again with that silent communication. “The report came in just after you left today, Paolo.”

  “What kind of poison?” Claudia’s eyes were bright with interest, but I had caught something in that look. The tension level in the air went up several notches.

  “We’re not sure just now,” Bruno answered easily. “But we wondered if you’d mind us taking a look around in your greenhouse.”

  Claudia was, for one moment, bere
ft of speech. “You can’t be serious,” I shrieked, making up for it, and setting off those fireworks again. “How in the world could Claudia have anything to do with this? She didn’t even come into it until after Pigpen was killed. She didn’t know him, she didn’t have anything to do with him—”

  “That’s true,” Morales said, gazing at me sadly. “But you did, Ms. Sullivan. And you know Mrs. Kaplan.”

  I couldn’t help looking at Drake, to see how he took my return to the suspect list. He had his poker face on, but I thought I detected a bit of discomfort behind those light-reflecting glasses.

  Claudia had her tongue back. “It’s true that Liz and I have known each other, or known of each other, for a couple of years. But it would have surprised me greatly to find her in my greenhouse before my predicament and hers brought us, of necessity, together.”

  “Nicely put,” Drake said briskly. “In this case, Mrs. Kaplan, such searches are more of a ruling out than anything else. We don’t actually expect to find the poison that killed Pigpen in your greenhouse. But we do need to take samples of anything toxic that’s there, for the lab to look at.” He looked at me, and for one instant I felt his sympathy. “It’s just possible, I suppose, that Ms. Sullivan could have staged the attack on herself. In order to rule that out to the satisfaction of the DA, we need to investigate it.”

  “I can understand that,” I said hollowly. “Perhaps the DA would like to try hitting himself over the head. I can think of better ways to divert suspicion from myself.”

  Bruno Morales came closer, peering at my head and pursing his lips in sympathy. “You should be seen by a doctor,” he said, touching the lump on my head lightly. “Not just for medical reasons, but to have the damage assessed for our reports.”

  “Right.” Paul Drake strode toward me. “I’ll take her to the emergency room now. Bruno, will you call in for me?”

  I don’t like doctors, or hospitals, or being baffled by the police. But there was a quality of relief in letting Drake pull me up from my chair and hustle me toward the door. We were almost out of the kitchen when he spoke over his shoulder.

  “Oh, and Bruno—that sack of seeds or whatever. Take it in as evidence.” He pushed the door open for me, and exchanged one more of those looks with Detective Morales. “And be sure to give the lab a sample of them.”

  I caught a last glimpse of the kitchen before we left. Claudia and Bruno both were staring thoughtfully at that innocent, sinister bag, given pride of place on the kitchen table.

  Chapter 21

  The emergency room at the Stanford Hospital is busy, but not like those stereotyped places where you slowly die while waiting for help. Maybe it was just Drake’s presence, but I was in a little cubicle within minutes of arriving, despite not having any blood pouring out all over the squeaky-clean floor.

  The white-coated person who examined me—Dr. Kavanaugh, her nameplate said—was cheerful, joking with Drake. Me, she saw only as the busted head in cubicle three. Hospitals depress me. So many people trapped there, against their will.

  I had a flashlight shone in my eyes. Dr. Kavanaugh attached electrodes to various parts of my skin while machines beeped and chattered. My temperature was taken, my pulse was taken, my knees and elbows were hit with a little hammer.

  “She seems fine,” Dr. Kavanaugh said finally. “We could do a CAT scan if you’re really worried.” She was looking at Drake when she said it. I had ceased to exist, since he’d authorized payment.

  “Why don’t you just unscrew my head and stick it in there?” My words came out with a bitterness I hadn’t really intended. Dr. Kavanaugh looked as if the organ grinder’s monkey had just spoken, and Drake managed a fleeting smile.

  “Okay, Liz. No more tests. Apparently you’ll live.”

  “Just a bump, really,” Dr. Kavanaugh agreed, abandoning the high-tech approach when it was evident no one would spring for it. “The scalp’s abraded but the skin’s not really broken, and the skull is unaffected.” She rapped her knuckles against my head, not as gently as she evidently thought. “Hard as a rock,” she said, still with her cheery smile. “You’re lucky your skull is so thick.”

  My knuckles ached to respond in kind, but I knew the rules of institutional behavior: Don’t make waves. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Above all, no sassing back the keepers. Dr. Kavanaugh didn’t really look anything like the attendant who’d had morning duty on my floor during my incarceration. But they had in common that ferocious jollity that is meant to put people in their place. Obligingly, I shrank back into mine.

  Dr. Kavanaugh was scribbling on a prescription block. “A sedative,” she said brightly. “You can get a few of them at the desk out there. In case she has trouble sleeping.” I reached for the prescription, forcing my hand past the Guardol shield in which she’d enveloped me. After a barely perceptible pause, she gave it to me. With a last beaming smile at Drake, she left.

  The hard, bright lights hurt my eyes. The periodic wail of ambulance sirens hurt my ears. I wanted to leave.

  “Next time, get your own head cracked open,” I said ungraciously, sliding off the examining table. “She likes you better anyway.” Those black spots were back, floating in front of my head. I reached for the table edge to steady myself. Drake put an arm around me—friendly, impersonal, like he’d do for any suspicious dame.

  “Take it slow, now.” He helped me out of the cubicle, pushing aside the curtain that had surrounded it. “You’re not in any rush.”

  I stopped in the doorway trying to breathe slowly and deeply. In the next cubicle there was a lot of groaning, punctuated by little metallic pings. “Sounds like they’re digging out shotgun pellets,” Drake muttered into my ear. Through a crack in the curtain I could see the metal basin with its still life of small, glistening reddish balls. A gloved hand holding some shiny tweezers appeared, and another little ball dropped into the dish.

  I headed for the exit as fast as I could, pausing impatiently while Drake got the painkillers and forced one down me. We pushed through the double doors to the outside. It was cold, with a penetrating wind that knew all the defects in my poncho. I hugged it to me, knowing the cold was as much inside as out.

  Drake stuffed me into his car, which was parked in the no parking zone right by the door. The seat was sprung, the formerly elegant leather cracked and peeling. It was comfortable, though. I yawned hugely. I would have gone to sleep right where I sat, except for the dull thumping in the back of my head, where the blood pounded through the small mountain my scalp had erected as a monument to pain.

  “Well, you’ll be fine in a couple of days.” Drake pulled out of the parking lot. I closed my eyes.

  “Wouldn’t want the suspect to be too sick to arrest,” I murmured. At the moment, all I wanted was to crawl onto any warm, horizontal surface, and sleep until my head didn’t hurt anymore. I didn’t want to think about assailants, and murders, and detectives tearing up my bus for the second time in a week. I really didn’t want to watch thirty preschoolers cavort around in costume the next day. I just wanted oblivion.

  The car didn’t ride smoothly, like a well-sprung American car, but I must have fallen asleep anyway. I jolted awake when Drake pulled up in Claudia’s drive. He escorted me into the kitchen. Claudia was still there, her arms on either side of a pile of papers on the kitchen table. Blinking, she looked up when we came in. There were no other policemen in evidence.

  “It wouldn’t be a good idea to roam around right now,” Drake said. He was speaking to both of us.

  “I, at any rate, am going nowhere until my ankle heals,” Claudia said tartly. “And Liz should go to bed and stay there, too.”

  “A lot of help I’d be to you under those circumstances.” I wanted to argue more, but I could barely force the words out. My eyes started to close without consulting the rest of me.

  “Is she all right?” Claudia’s voice was alarmed.

  “Just a little aftershock,” Drake said. His arm came around me again. I was star
ting to depend on that. His voice sounded very far away. “Where is she going to sleep?”

  I pried my eyelids open, but they wouldn’t stay. I found myself in the little bedroom off the kitchen. I was in bed. Someone tucked me in. That brief warmth on my lips must have been a kiss. Before I could respond to it, I was asleep.

  Chapter 22

  I dreamed that I was lying in my narrow bunk. The attendants were looking in at me through the peephole in the door, and I knew, the way you do in dreams, that I had to pretend that I was still asleep. My body was heavy, and I lay as straight as if in a coffin. I could hear them talking; I kept my eyes closed. Then I realized I couldn’t open my eyes, couldn’t move hand or foot. They were going to roll me off the bed like a log, take me to the crematorium, even though I wasn’t dead, because I couldn’t move to save myself.

  This is a dream, Open your eyes. It was an incredibly welcome thought, but it took a few moments before I could convince my eyelids they weren’t paralyzed. The voices I heard resolved themselves into Bridget and Claudia.

  “She doesn’t look good.” That was Bridget. “Should she be so pale?”

  “She’s fine. Maybe had a little concussion.” Claudia’s voice was bracing. “Those nincompoops at the hospital don’t know anything. Probably should have kept her there overnight.”

  “I’m fine.” The white plaster ceiling was high above my bed, instead of the low wood paneling in my bus, instead of the cold gray concrete of my dream. There were spider webs in the corners, and an ornate glass light fixture in the center, its base painted over. I was lying between sheets, not in my sleeping bag. They smelled faintly of lavender.

  Bridget sat on the edge of the bed. “Are you okay? You look uncomfortable.”

  “My head hurts.” It did. Also my throat, which felt like I’d been eating gravel. Also my teeth, which I’d evidently been grinding in the night. “Not much. I’ll be fine.”