Cat in a Bag

by Angela M. Sanders

  Now this was curious. In a second floor classroom, a little boy sat in a beanbag chair and read a book. All by himself. Gilda scanned the classrooms again but saw no adults. How did he get in, and what was he doing there? The boy had a stack of books next to him with a dirty dinner plate and fork resting on it.

  A boy wouldn’t have turned them in. No, she couldn’t see that. But there was no adult with him? None at all?

  At a split-second glimmer, she raised the binoculars. It seemed to have come from the attic. Must have been her imagination. Dirt clouded the attic’s windows. At best, it was used for storage. No one would be in there. Would they?

  Gilda lowered the binoculars and took the elevator to Bobby’s room, directly below hers.

  “What?” came his voice from inside.

  “It’s Gilda. I need to look out your window.”

  “Can’t it wait? I’m taking a nap.”

  “Let me in.”

  A moment later, the door opened, and Gilda marched to the window past Bobby’s stack of Popular Mechanics magazines and memorabilia from his honeymoon in Honolulu fifty years earlier. She raised the blinds here, too, and trained her binoculars at the attic, hoping the new angle would reveal something. Nope. The attic was just as dark, its windows just as blackened by dirt.

  It must have been her imagination. She lowered the binoculars.

  “You finished?” Bobby’s comb-over flopped to the side. “I need my beauty rest.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” Gilda took the elevator upstairs again. She wanted Red’s back-up binoculars.

  21

  Ellie lounged in the school’s attic and read the Sunday newspaper, thoughtfully delivered to the school’s front door and brought in by Josiah. A plate recently divested of trail mix and a stale ham sandwich sat next to her, along with two Hiya-Toots candy bars, a thermos of tea, and enough assorted liquor bottles to create a serviceable bar—all pilfered from teachers’ desks.

  A few shots of rum after lunch had helped her overcome her anger at watching the police go into the Villa and return to their cars ten minutes later, empty-handed. She’d given them as clean a tip as they needed: the Marie Antoinette dog bed was in the Villa’s cafeteria. She’d watched as they’d examined it. And she saw them point and laugh. And leave.

  Beneath the rum’s haze, her blood simmered. All those months of planning down the toilet, then this. Why? She’d given the police a hot lead. Either they’d blown it, or the dog bed was bogus.

  She gripped the newspaper so tightly that a fistful ripped away. Sucking in a deep breath, she turned the page and ran her gaze over the local news. A headline drew her attention. Someone had escaped from the Carsonville Women’s Correctional Facility. Ellie remembered John the orderly mentioning it. He’d actually been concerned for her, the chump. She drew the paper nearer the lamp she’d taken from the faculty lounge. The mugshot showed a fine-boned woman with long, wispy hair and huge eyes. She looked scared witless. Yet she somehow had the moxie to escape. Go figure.

  Facing the article about the escapee was a story on the Marie Antoinette dog bed. Its accompanying photo matched Mitzi’s description exactly, except that it didn’t appear to be dampened with bitter tears. B. E. Lancaster was offering a fifty thousand dollar reward for information leading to its discovery.

  “I don’t care,” she said aloud. “Why should I give a damn?”

  “What?” Josiah said.

  She’d almost forgotten he was there. He was an easy kid to hang around. “Nothing.”

  She shook the paper between her hands to straighten it and turned the page to international news. War, unemployment, environmental crisis, famine. Famine. The article about families going hungry showed ridiculously thin children. Not even the Blaylock sisters at the Women’s League wanted to be that thin. Ellie glanced at Josiah. He still had fat on his bones, but shouldn’t a kid his age have a little extra padding on the cheeks? He was awfully pale, too. And his pants were practically capris at this point. Well, he wasn’t her problem.

  “Food insecurity,” the paper said, and went on for half a page peppered with words including “malnutrition,” “dysentery,” “anemia,” and “bone loss.” Someone should do something about that. She was no bleeding heart liberal, but dang it, kids needed to eat.

  She tossed aside the paper’s front section and picked up the society pages. The Carsonville Women’s League was holding one of its infernal fundraisers tomorrow night. Betsy would be swanning around like a pasha, so proud to be president of the club now. That loser.

  Ellie stretched her arms and let them flop to her side. What was she going to do now? She couldn’t live here forever eating elementary school gruel and sleeping on a couch. It crossed her mind that she could return to the Bedlamton Arms. She could go back and say that she’d learned her lesson, and she knew she was better off with them. They’d take her back in a heartbeat, what with the hefty fees they charged. Plus, they wouldn’t have to admit that she’d escaped. The mattresses were comfortable. She sighed at the memory of her featherbed. The food wasn’t bad, either. She could wait out her time.

  But the Booster Club would have won. It would have had the last word. Her resolve steeled. She shoved the society section aside and picked up the telescope. Down in the Villa, the regulars doddered around in the cafeteria. The skirted man polished a vintage Mercedes’s hood. The old redhead was doing something in her room. She had the shades up, too. That was unusual.

  Ellie moved away from the window. She couldn’t have caught on to her, could she? No. Impossible. She took the telescope to the window again and trained it on the redhead’s window. The old woman had moved back now, but there was no mistaking the binoculars on the nearby vanity, right next to a giant bottle of cologne.

  Now the woman—Gilda, Ellie reminded herself—was back, but she was facing the room, not the window. She had someone with her, a smaller, younger woman with short hair. The smaller woman went to the window and looked out, her wide-eyed gaze sweeping the parking lot, the street, and up to the school, before the old redhead yanked her back and closed the blinds.

  The girl looked very familiar.

  “Josiah, bring me that paper.”

  “This one?” The boy had folded the front section into a hat.

  “Give it here.” Ellie hastily unfolded the paper and smoothed it on the couch. She held up the photo of the prison escapee and gasped. It was her, no doubt about it. She now had shorter hair, but the woman she had just seen at the Villa was the woman in the newspaper. There was no mistaking those eyes and the shape of her chin. Plus, Gilda had tried to hide her.

  The Villa was harboring a fugitive.

  Adrenaline streaked through Ellie’s body, exploding into joyous fireworks. She leapt to her feet. She’d call the police right this minute.

  “Princess, are you okay?” Josiah asked.

  “I’m better than okay.” Laughter sputtered from some unknown internal fount and poured out. At once, she frowned at the strange eruption.

  “Are you sure?” The boy, a book about dinosaurs in one hand, stared at her.

  “Yes, you’re right,” she replied to her own thoughts, not the boy’s words. “You must be careful.”

  “Careful about what?” Josiah said.

  Ellie sat on the couch. “Hush. I’m thinking.”

  She could call the police again. They’d be suspicious about another tip about the Villa, especially when the first one had been a dud. She snatched up the paper. Adele Waterson, the escapee’s name was. It was possible that Adele was simply passing through. Merely dropping by to visit the redhead or pick up supplies to leave town. But Ellie thought this was unlikely. As she herself well knew, you didn’t run off from a lockdown facility and publicly take the air afterward. Once you went to ground, you stayed there until it was safe. It was not yet safe.

  Ellie leaned back. She wadded her shawl and stuffed it under her derriere to soften the jab of a sofa spring. She needed to be sure Adele was hiding out at the Villa
, and she needed details. Then and only then would she call the police.

  The plan started to fall into place. School would be in session tomorrow, but she had the rest of the day and all night tonight to work. Ellie relaxed, a feeling more mellow and satisfying than Miss Morris’s bottle of rum had provided. Luck favors the prepared, they always said. No one was more prepared than Eleanor Whiteby.

  “I’m hungry,” Josiah said.

  “You just ate.”

  “I’m still hungry.”

  With purpose and direction, Ellie rose. “Come on, kid. I’ll fix you an extra large bowl of chili and a hamburger.”

  “Can I have another chocolate milk?”

  “Sure. But then you’re going home. Princess has work to do.”

  22

  The weekend had been a big one for breakups, Gilda noted. She tucked a branch of teasel into an especially elaborate bouquet ordered by a woman who’d told her, “Spare no expense. The uglier and deader the better.” She was sending a messenger to pick it up in a few minutes. Gilda carefully glued a dead fly, harvested legs up from the cafeteria’s windowsill, to the teasel’s spiky globe. She didn’t like to brag, but she had a knack for this.

  “Gilda,” Grady said, coming in the door, “we got back a reply from the brain surgeon.”

  “And?” Her old blackmail sangfroid was back. She was the conductor of this orchestra, and Grady was letting her know the violins were tuning up.

  “He says no can do.”

  “What?” She pricked herself with the teasel and dropped it on the table. “That can’t be.”

  “Here, let me read it.” Grady slipped on a pair of thick-lensed glasses. “No salutation.”

  She nodded. “Go on.”

  “‘You cannot expect me to operate on a patient without knowing his medical background and without the proper tests and scans, particularly a CT scan.’”

  “What’s a CT scan?”

  “That picture we showed Doc Parisot. I’m not finished. ‘I want the Marie Antoinette lit de chien returned.’” Grady looked up. “That’s got to mean ‘dog bed.’”

  “What else?”

  “‘However, I cannot violate the Hippocratic oath by taking my scalpel to an innocent’s skull.’”

  “Good grief,” Gilda said.

  “What do we do? He’s right, you know.” He swiveled toward her. “I could send him her medical file.”

  “You could. Then, on top of everything else, they could bag us for stealing private info. Plus, we don’t know exactly what the surgeon needs.” Giving herself a moment to think, Gilda returned to her floral arrangement. They hadn’t worked this all the way through. She fluffed a branch of dead oak leaves. “I’m sure Dr. Lancaster has to get records from other doctors all the time. He can get these.” As the words came out of her mouth, she realized what they meant.

  So did Grady. “He’ll know who she is. He’ll know he’s operating on an escaped prisoner.”

  “Will that matter to him?”

  A minivan pulled into the parking lot outside the cafeteria window, and Warren went out to greet it. Gilda tensed. She was still on edge from the police’s visit that morning. She still wondered if they were being watched.

  Warren appeared in the cafeteria with a man chewing gum. “I’m here for the floral arrangement,” the man said.

  “Here’s a Bad Seed original for you.”

  The man’s jaw froze for a second before resuming chewing. “Got it.” A dead leaf fell off the bouquet and skittered in his wake as he left.

  Warren frowned. Whether it was because of Adele’s presence and risk to the Villa, or anxiety left over from the police’s earlier visit, Gilda didn’t know. “Don’t be upset,” she told him. The aroma of coq au vin wafted from the kitchen. Cook would want to set the tables soon. “It won’t be for long. We’ll have the business with Adele wrapped up soon, and Larry will get our relicensing taken care of. We’ll be clean again.”

  “I know.” He turned toward his office, but Gilda grabbed his shirtsleeve.

  “How are things with Adele?” she asked.

  His expression softened. “Fine. I’m giving her a tour of the Villa after dinner.”

  “Enough of this romantic nonsense,” Grady said. “What are we going to tell the surgeon? I need a reply.”

  They didn’t have much time. They needed to get Adele to the surgeon the sooner the better—for a lot of reasons. If Adele were captured after the operation, at least she’d have the possibility of living. Larry the Fence would certainly rather she be alive in prison than dead on the streets. They’d have to gamble that the surgeon cared more about his fancy dog bed than he did about the law. They had no choice.

  “Tell him Adele’s name and the prison’s. Then say the rest is his problem.”

  * * *

  “Adele? Are you ready?”

  Dinner was over, and most of the Villa’s residents were playing cards in the cafeteria or watching The French Connection—again—in the TV room.

  She’d eagerly said yes. She’d had a good day painting and still felt the exhilarating combination of exhaustion and amped-up energy she remembered from her days in the studio. The portrait was really coming along. As tired as she was, she wasn’t ready for bed. And she’d been looking forward to Warren’s company. The Villa’s residents were great—caring, funny, sweet—but with Warren she felt she was with a real friend.

  Warren, ever the gentleman, waited in the hall while she exchanged the too-large slippers Red had lent her for her own prison-issue sneakers.

  “Ready,” she said.

  “Follow me. We’ll start in the basement.” Warren led her down the stairway at the far end of the hall.

  Even after the police’s visit that morning and hiding under the bed, she felt safe at the Villa. Warren would protect her. “How did the Villa get started?” she asked once they were in the stairwell’s quiet.

  “After World War II, a few members of the community—”

  “The criminal community,” Adele ventured.

  “Right. Well, they started pitching in one percent of their earnings into a kitty for their retirement. Not everyone would be using the Villa, but it was a way they could look after each other. Art Mandenheim, an embezzlement consultant—he’s passed now—did the investing and bought the Villa. Hank Dupin, also passed, managed it.”

  “Was it a house before?” The Villa didn’t quite feel like an old mansion, but it didn’t feel like an institution, either.

  “An old hospital, actually. Abandoned during the Great Depression.”

  “It doesn’t seem like a hospital.” The Villa’s walls smelled of old wood, not antiseptic. Plus, it was so small.

  “They used to be like this, I guess. Some were smaller, more like homes.”

  They reached the heavy basement door. Warren selected a key from his crowded key ring and unlocked a deadbolt. “Here’s the building’s heart and soul.”

  “You keep it locked?”

  “You’ll see why.”

  Adele might have called the cafeteria the Villa’s center, not the basement. At the sight of the pride radiating from Warren’s face, she didn’t contradict him. She shifted her gaze to the basement. “It looks so tidy.”

  They stood in a large, open room with the usual machinery Adele expected in a basement—water heaters, boiler, a workbench—but it might have been a salon for its cleanliness and faint scent of roses. The cement floor and the pipes running along its ceiling were whitewashed and scrubbed.

  “Thank you.” He gestured toward a bulky machine connected to pipes and vents. His pit bull tattoo rippled over a bicep. “Here we have the furnace. I’m a licensed boiler operator, you know.”

  “This is yours?” She touched a framed certificate. “That’s terrific.”

  “It’s not an easy boiler, either. Original to the building. But I bet you haven’t heard a single clank in the radiators.”

  “I barely even knew they were there,” Adele said truthfully. “I
see you have a reading spot. Looks cozy.” In the corner was an armchair and reading light with a stack of paperback novels next to it.

  “During the day, I stick to my office to keep an eye on comings and goings. I like some time to myself, though. It’s quiet down here.”

  She understood why he might find the dim light and occasional hum of the furnace comforting. If she half-shuttered her eyes, she could pretend she was in a gentleman’s den with the curtains drawn.

  “How did you come to the Villa?”

  He looked at the ceiling and touched a valve before replying. “I used to be a prison guard.”

  “Oh.”

  “I, well….”

  She waited.

  “It’s kind of embarrassing.” He crouched to straighten the stack of novels. “I accidentally helped someone smuggle in plans to escape.”

  “By accident,” Adele said.

  “I thought they were love letters.”

  For a moment, their gazes met. For such a tough-looking guy, he had the soft brown eyes of a Labrador puppy. He looked away first.

  “Love letters,” Adele said softly.

  “That’s what they told me. They didn’t want the guards reading their, um, sentiments, so I said I’d deliver them, bypass the other guards. I guess I was a sucker.”

  “Or a romantic,” she said.

  Seeming embarrassed, he gestured toward a door. “Let me show you the laundry facilities. I installed energy efficient front-loading washers last fall.”

  For the next hour, they roamed the building. Warren pointed out the heavy safe built into a closet’s wall. He spun its dial. “It was here when the residents moved in. It gets cracked at least once a month for practice.” He opened the linen closet to stacks of white towels and the scent of lavender. He pointed out the old morgue, now Grady’s air-conditioned server room.