The Last Blue Plate Special

by Abigail Padgett

  The politically correct credentials were clearly important to her. So why had she stayed on the staff of the politically incorrect Rainer Clinic for fifteen years?

  “Is the clinic definitely closing?” I ventured. “Dr. Rainer seemed to hold out hope that his daughter might take it over.”

  “Megan,” Isadora said coldly, “hates the money with which she supports a husband and two children. She wants to go live among towering pines and eat tuberous begonias. She will not take over the practice when Jen … when Dr. Rainer retires. Which will happen in a matter of days, thanks to you and this demented crap about one of us killing our patients. Once a rumor like this gets out, the clinic is finished. Jennings isn’t ready to broadcast the information, but yes, the Rainer Clinic will close this week. He and Megan and I have already canceled all procedures scheduled after tomorrow, when the story will hit the press. The police said this interview would take about fifteen minutes. Your time’s up.”

  “Mind if I use your bathroom?” BB asked, already moving toward a hallway off the main room. “Gotta—”

  “Just use the bathroom and then get out of here,” she snapped, really angry now. She didn’t want BB in her house, especially in her private space. I could see that his request to use the bathroom was, to her, an invasion. Women don’t react to men the way Grecchi did for no reason.

  “We’ll be gone shortly,” I said. “I know this is unpleasant for you.”

  With BB out of the room there was a difference in the woman facing me. A sliver of openness. And a look.

  Don’t go any further, it said.

  I wanted to put a hand on her shoulder but there was something about Isadora Grecchi that wouldn’t be touched. Instead I suggested that she return to her painting while BB and I made our exit. She agreed, and as we left I saw her dabbing at the canvas with the brush in her left hand, while with her right she held up the middle finger at our retreating backs.

  Outside, BB said, “Computer in the bedroom with a phone line, so our lady of the bad hair can send e-mails. Lotta pills in the bathroom.”

  “Pills? Did you get any of the names?”

  He rolled his eyes and then said, “Klonopin, Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, Neurontin, Nardil, Parnate.”

  “Write them down once we get in the truck. I don’t know about the rest of them, but Prozac’s a popular antidepressant. Rox will know what they are. Looks like we might have a suspect. Grecchi’s a ticking bomb.”

  “The lady don’ like men, tha’s for sure,” he said while writing. “But she ain’t no dyke. Hard to get a call on that one.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to get a call on Isadora Grecchi, in whom something painful lay tightly curled. Then I remembered my conversation with Roxie when Rathbone first asked us to work on the case.

  “What if we’re tracking down a woman?”

  What if we were?

  Our next appointment was for three-thirty with Thomas J. Eldridge, the surgical assistant, at his home in Carlsbad. To reach the northern coastal suburb we had to go back up 1-5 past La Jolla and a sequence of beach communities. By Del Mar, the first village beyond La Jolla, BB’s stomach was growling.

  “We’ll find someplace in Del Mar to get a sandwich,” I said. “I need to call Rathbone anyway.”

  Del Mar’s main street, Camino Del Mar, is part of the old Coast Highway, originally a horse path with breathtaking views of the Pacific. The current population far exceeds what the street can offer in the way of parking spaces, so I headed for Del Mar Plaza. The new and relentlessly upscale shopping center has an underground parking lot. My satisfaction at being able to park obscured my judgment, however. I’d forgotten that BB and I looked as if we’d wandered off the set for a movie involving black ghetto criminals in Jane Austen’s England. The mâitre d’ at my favorite restaurant tried valiantly not to scream when we approached his podium at the door of the restaurant.

  “Two, please,” I said.

  BB pulled his pants up to his waist, although since they weren’t supposed to be there, they didn’t stay.

  “Of course,” we were told, and then escorted to a table in the rear near a small bar not currently in use. The bar acted as a wall between us and the other patrons.

  “I’d prefer a table with a view,” I said.

  “I’ll see if one is available.”

  At two-ten in the afternoon most of the tables were empty.

  “Look like about sixty available,” BB noted, giving the man a sizing-up look I was sure he’d learned in prison. “The lady want a nice view.”

  The mâitre d’ sighed in a way which suggested that escorting people to tables in restaurants was an exhausting job with weighty philosophical ramifications.

  “Will this do?” he said into a space of thin air between us, indicating a window table with a presentable view of the Pacific Ocean.

  “Sho nuff,” BB said. Menacing grin. Lots of teeth.

  “Don’t overdo it,” I told BB, and then ordered the restaurant’s signature salad—a salmon jerky Caesar with wonton croutons.

  BB ordered a salad of greens, apples, caramelized walnuts, sun-dried cranberries, and balsamic maple dressing topped with goat cheese fondue. We decided to split the entree, barbecued sugar-spiced king salmon with garlic mashed potatoes. BB was impressed with the food.

  “Don’t get nuthin’ like this in prison,” he joked. “Or nowhere else. What kinda food is this, Blue?”

  “California cuisine,” I told him. “What that means is a creative chef and a mix of styles ranging from Tex-Mex to Pacific Rim. I’m going to call Rathbone, see if there’s anything new we need to know before the Eldridge interview. I wish I knew what I’m doing.”

  “Two outta five,” he said. “So far my money on Grecchi. Somethin’ off about her.”

  I agreed with BB. Isadora Grecchi was wound as tightly as the mile of rubber band inside a golf ball. Had something cracked the tough surface, causing her to unravel? And even if so, would a woman to whom the plight of women is so important threaten and possibly kill women?

  Rathbone wasn’t in when I called but had left a message. “Background checks on Rainer personnel indicate the following,” I was told by a clerk. “Isadora Grecchi made ward of family court in Denver, Colorado, 1958. No further details, as juvenile files are sealed. Jeffrey Alan Pond, suspicion of rape, San Diego, 1997, charges dropped. Megan Rainer, suspicion of carrying concealed weapon, Riverside, California, 1999, charges dropped. A ceramic plate with a blue oriental design was dusted for fingerprints and was clean. Detective Rathbone wants to talk to you after you’ve interviewed all suspects,” the clerk concluded.

  So at least three of the Rainer employees had come to the attention of legal authorities, two of them recently. Accusations of rape and of carrying a concealed weapon. The operating room manager and Rainer’s daughter, respectively. And of course the plate Sword left at my door had no fingerprints, I thought. He, or she, wasn’t stupid. Unless driving for hours through mountains and deserts in order to prop a cheap plate against the door of a stranger could be construed as stupid.

  Which it couldn’t. Unusual, yes. Strange and threatening. But nothing connected to this case or the people involved in it seemed particularly harebrained. With the exception of Sword’s bad spelling, so far I felt as if I were wandering in a symbolist play written by somebody whose native language is not English. That jarring sense that all the lines being read are awkward translations of something that might otherwise make sense.

  BB and I arrived at the Eldridge home at precisely three-thirty, reeking of salmon. Eldridge’s wife, Kara, met us at the door.

  “I took the children to a neighbor’s because I was afraid something like this might make them afraid of the police,” she said. “I think it’s so important that children understand the policeman is their friend, don’t you?”

  At his post by the door BB stifled a laugh. I remembered that Jennings Rainer had said his wife regarded Kara Eldridge as perhaps a little slow and h
ad tried to help her navigate social situations. She did seem childlike, with wide hazel eyes under a mop of long blonde hair parted in the middle and held at the back of her neck with a sparkly pink clip. She was wearing no makeup and a white sweatshirt with a painted cat on the front, its left front paw on a ball of chartreuse yarn. Instead of pants she wore navy blue culottes, which, as is invariably the case with culottes, made her look heavier than she really was. I couldn’t pinpoint why she looked familiar to me until I realized that she resembled the girl on the library bas-relief, forever unaware of anything but her book. That sense of oblivion.

  “We aren’t police,” I explained as I took a seat at the end of a pink and green plaid couch. “I’m a social psychologist consulting with the police on a case involving patients at the Rainer Clinic. Mr. Berryman is my bodyguard. I’d like to speak with your husband, Thomas Eldridge, please.”

  If Kara Eldridge felt any discomfort at BB’s presence, she didn’t show it.

  “He’s in the garage,” she said. “Let me get you some coffee and I’ll call T.J. I made some lemon bars, too. Low-fat. The kind you mix with applesauce instead of the cooking oil. T.J.’s very careful about what we eat. I mean, he’ll only eat things I make for him special except for his baloney and cheese and crackers. Has to be cheddar, extra-extra sharp. T.J. never goes anywhere without his little Baggie of extra-extra sharp cheddar I cut up for him, and baloney and some crackers.”

  I had no idea what to say to that, so I just smiled.

  “But you don’t look like you need to worry about your weight,” she said to BB. Perfectly at ease with an apparent street savage in her living room.

  Then I remembered Rainer saying Kara had gone to a community college, just finished a two-year degree in something about computers. San Diego’s community colleges are melting pots, drawing students from diverse ethnic populations. Kara Eldridge would have been around plenty of people who looked just like BB there, as well as Vietnamese fishermen, Latina hair-dressers, and Iraqi cab drivers getting degrees in hotel/motel management.

  “Lemon bars sound good,” BB said, eyeing the mantel, which bore a collection of studio photos of Kara, a man with short brown hair, and two blonde children.

  In the space above, normally reserved in American homes for a single piece of art that embodies the taste of those who live beneath it, was a small framed poster. One of those lists of aphorisms urging adults to like children. “No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child” kind of thing. Around the little poster were pale rectangles of paint, their edges clearly defined. A collection of pictures had hung there until recently, then been removed. The cardboard poster was a stopgap measure.

  ”Gonna check around,” BB said pointlessly, since there was no one there but me. Then he loped into the kitchen and I heard a door opening. To the garage, I thought. Then a rumbling conversation I couldn’t hear.

  “My wife will serve us in the living room. Please follow me.” Door closing, firmly.

  The man who preceded BB into the room was the man in the mantel photos. Close-cropped dark hair, slight build, brown eyes with heavy, drooping lids. The plates from which Kara served the lemon bars were plain white with an embossed leaf pattern on the rims. The cups and saucers matched.

  “I have no ideas about this business you’re here to investigate,” T. J. Eldridge said from a standing position before the fireplace, his arm on the mantel. “But of course we support the police in any way possible. What is it we can do for you?”

  “I understand you were in the Army, Mr. Eldridge,” I said, having as usual no idea what I was doing.

  “Medical corpsman.” The answer was itself snappy, military. Next? it implied.

  “How long have you and Mrs. Eldridge lived here?” This question is common on credit and loan applications and was at one time a good indicator of stability. Now people move around so often that it’s meaningless, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Four years. Our daughter, Ann, was six and we wanted a good school district.”

  Kara’s look when he said “Ann” was strange, as if he’d forgotten their child’s name. But she quickly covered it and continued to smile at her husband.

  “Tell me what you do at Rainer,” I went on, and then pretended to listen as he detailed his schedule and responsibilities, which largely involved assisting in surgeries, clamping, “tying off bleeds,” he said, as well as post-operative monitoring and follow-up appointments. After five minutes I turned to Kara and said brightly, “Does Ann collect miniature tea sets?”

  “Who?” Kara Eldridge answered.

  “Your daughter.”

  “Oh, Namey’s such a tomboy she’s more interested in action figures and soccer than tea sets,” Kara began. “Of course, T.J. insists that the children be home-schooled, but she’s allowed to play soccer with a girl’s team at the Y. She has practice on Thursdays, and—”

  “You don’t need to know about our children,” T.J. interrupted defensively, rocking back and forth on military-style black leather shoes equipped, I noticed, with lifts. T.J. wanted to appear taller than the five-six or so I guessed him to be in his bare feet.

  In the next ten minutes BB gazed piercingly out windows and into bookcases full of ceramic kittens as I learned the Eldridges were members of Memorial Methodist Church, volunteered at a food bank once a month, and enjoyed hikes and rock collecting along Carlsbad’s beaches. There was no television in the family room where we were talking, and I mentioned it.

  “Oh, T.J. thinks—” Kara began, and then stopped as her husband finished the sentence.

  “There’s so much junk on television,” he said. “We want the children to enjoy reading, develop their imaginations that way instead.”

  It was a noble thought, but there wasn’t a single book visible in the room, either. Not even a magazine.

  “Mr. Eldridge, is there anyone connected to the Rainer Clinic who in your opinion might be capable of the terrorist acts we’re investigating?” I asked.

  “Absolutely not,” he answered, glancing at a clunky watch that dwarfed his wrist. One of those Swiss-Army-knife-type watches that also has a compass and a stopwatch, tells you what time it is in ten world capitals as well as everywhere the U.S. has military installations, and hides a tiny manicure kit in the case. “We have plans, so if there’s nothing else … ?”

  “One more thing. Do you own a computer, Mr. Eldridge?”

  “Three,” he answered proudly. “The children have one which they use for their schoolwork. Some years ago I gave Kara an old one of mine, and she’s developed quite an interest in them, even gotten some training. Of course I have one as well. We’re all on-line. Why?”

  “So many people find them useful,” I answered vaguely. “Thank you. We’ll be going now.”

  The Eldridges stood on their steps as BB and I drove away. They seemed posed, standing there as if they expected to be photographed.

  “The pictures that was over the fireplace before they took ’em down?” BB began.

  “Yeah?”

  “They out in the garage, hung on a wall over T.J.’s computer setup. Buncha pictures of his wife. Pretty nice. Wife in the kitchen, cookin’, mostly. Wife sayin’ prayers with the kids kneelin’ beside their beds. Wife all dressed up and smilin’ with a corsage on her dress, look like Easter. Guess he love her, take all them pictures. Glass broke in the one with her prayin’. Guess they took ’em down to get it fixed. Maybe he’s got some new ones. These looked like from a long time ago, kids just little chubby babies.”

  “There’s something weird about those people,” I told BB. “Like T.J. called their daughter Ann and then Kara called her Namey. Seems like an odd nickname, doesn’t it?”

  “I got a cousin called Namey,” he replied. “Her real name Naomi. She got two brothers name Joshua and Nehemia, too. Whole family get baptized every year at Easter. They mama, my aunt, she say it wear off after a while, have to keep doin’ it. You think that’s right?” />
  “Fine with me if it works for her,” I answered. “But the traditional thing is to just do it once. Isn’t it strange that a mother and father don’t call their daughter by the same name?”

  “Nah, my daddy call me Bernard when I used to see him, ’fore he got killed. Mama, she always call me Bernie. And what strange was the lemon bars. Taste like water and paper.”

  “Must have been the applesauce,” I said, wondering for the hundredth time that day what I was doing.

  15

  Shadows

  Jeffrey Pond came to the door of his apartment in a blinding Hawaiian shirt and navy blue sweatpants. His bare feet were still pink from a hot shower and he smelled like Dove soap.

  “I’m Dr. Blue McCarron and this is Mr. Berrryman,” I began.

  “Dude,” Pond said to BB as if they were surf buddies. To me he said, “Hey,” as he gestured for us to enter. I remembered that he was forty-one. Why was he speaking in the one-syllable code used by teenagers?

  “Thank you,” I pronounced slowly, hoping to introduce the idea of two-syllable speech. Otherwise, I thought, this interview could take all night.

  BB stood by the door as usual, eyeing Pond’s overdeveloped muscles. The biceps pushing against the man’s flowered sleeves as he picked up an upholstered chair and set it down facing the couch were the size of softballs.

  “So,” he said amiably, flopping into the chair and grabbing what looked like a huge wad of Silly Putty from the coffee table, “what’s this about?”

  I watched as he crushed the Silly Putty in his right hand, making all the muscles in his forearm stand out like an anatomy illustration.

  “The police will have explained to you that someone has threatened to kill at least four women who were patients of the Rainer Clinic,” I said. “Two of these women are dead. Can you spell the word, ‘encyclopedia,’ Mr. Pond?”