“What is it, Mrs. Archer?” Bigbutt asked. She gave Renato the once-over, looking at him from stem to stern.
Ivy grasped her throat again, then she pointed to Renato’s. She looked around at each of us like we was playing charades but none of us got it, so she did it again. Patted her own throat, pointed to Renato’s.
“I don’t understand,” Bigbutt said. “What are you trying to say?”
She deserved an Oscar. Ivy gasped like she’d just crossed the Sahara. She croaked, gulped, contorted her face, and finally rasped, “My necklace. He’s wearing my necklace.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said, falling back in my chair. “You ought to go onstage.”
I must have been the only one who made out what she said because both Carolyn and Bigbutt turned to me.
“What is it?” Carolyn asked.
“What did she say?” Bigbutt said. “I didn’t catch it.”
Krol went back to eating his roll. The mash in his mouth sloshed around like laundry in a washing machine.
“She says that boy is wearing her necklace,” I said, pointing to Renato. “Looks like her mind is wandering again.” I flapped my hand at Ivy. “She’s lost another marble.”
Wouldn’t you know it, Ivy found her tongue. She leaned over the table and practically spit toward me, “You keep quiet, Cora Sledge. No one asked your opinion. Everybody knows you aren’t in your right mind.” Then, just like Dr. Jekyll, she turned back to Bigbutt and said in a whisper loud enough to be heard across the ocean, “He’s wearing my necklace. The one that was stolen.”
Everybody looked at Renato. He’d been standing there the whole time with that straw basket in his hand. His big fawn eyes were startled. He raised his hand and laid it over the necklace, like he was trying to hide it.
“That Mexican stole my jewelry!” Ivy screeched. “He came in my room and robbed me blind! There’s the proof, right around his neck!”
“I’m not Mexican,” Renato said in a voice so soft and breathy we had to lean forward to hear him.
“Chinese then! Whatever you are, I don’t care. You’re a thief, that’s all that matters! Taking advantage of the people here! Stealing from underneath our noses!”
“Mrs. Archer, there’s no need for that,” Bigbutt said, laying a hand on Ivy’s shoulder.
“That’s right, Ivy. Hold your tongue,” I couldn’t resist scolding. “No need to show your true colors.”
“You are just like a dog, Cora,” Ivy sneered, “attacking with the rest of the pack.”
“Ladies, please,” Bigbutt said before she turned to Renato and asked, real stern, “What is your name?”
The way he tucked his long black hair behind his ears before he answered made me remember the first time I’d seen him, that night I’d journeyed upstairs to Vitus’s room. It seemed like ages ago. Thinking about how I was then—struggling to walk a few feet, scared to death of my own shadow—it dawned on me how comfortable I’ve got here, how I’ve learned the ropes and got to know people. By God, I’m a different person! This is the first time in my life I’ve done anything on my own, with no one around telling me what to do.
“My name is Renato,” he said softly. “Renato de la Cruz.”
“My goodness!” I exclaimed. “Sounds like a movie star.”
“I’d know that necklace anywhere,” Ivy said. “It’s one of a kind.”
For the first time I gave it a good look. It was silver, but not shiny—more like pewter. The links were rectangles, about the size of a grain of rice. It laid real pretty, each link adjusting itself separate from the others, hugging the curves of Renato’s throat like a road snaking over bumpy terrain. Poor Marcos. I could see how he might get hooked on that boy. Everything about him made you want to peel his clothes off to get a look at what was underneath.
“I didn’t steal this necklace,” Renato said. “It’s mine.”
His voice stayed low and soft, but his eyes looked scared. Knowing how he’d treated Marcos, I thought he might be capable of anything.
Ivy smelled blood. “Check the clasp,” she snapped at Bigbutt. “There’s a cloisonné bead on either side of it, taken from a strand that’s been in my family forever. They’re crimson, about the size of a peppercorn.”
Bigbutt’s upper lip was sweating. Old Krol had lost interest long ago and was shoveling stew down his gullet, but me and Carolyn were on the edge of our seats. You could have heard a pin drop as Bigbutt raised her eyebrows at Renato, asking him if she could check the clasp.
He nodded.
She stepped around behind him. He bowed his head. She hesitated a minute, then moved the hair off his neck. It was better than the movie theater. Carolyn and I held our breath while Bigbutt looked down at the clasp.
“I’ll stake my life on it,” Ivy said.
Bigbutt was wearing a blue-and-white-striped dress that looked like a sailor suit. The top fit tight across her big boobs. It was V-neck, with a bow that tied at the bottom of the V. Soon as she saw the clasp a spurt of color squeezed out of her cleavage. It spouted across her chest, shot up her neck, and flooded her face, turning it bright red.
“Notify the police!” Ivy growled. “Right this minute!”
Bigbutt took a deep breath.
Renato shook his hair back in place and turned around to look at her. “This necklace was given to me,” he said. “It was a gift.”
Oh no. Unless that boy was a good liar, I had a fair idea who’d given him the necklace. The bottom dropped out of my stomach. I saw then how much I cared about Marcos, and how I’d looked the other way whenever something suspicious turned up. I hadn’t wanted to believe he’d be capable of something like that. But as I cast my mind back on how he’d acted—how mad he got when I called him on that money he kept, how he knew every corner of my room, how he’d buttered me up with cigarettes and snacks—I felt like a fool. It broke my heart. I’d trusted him and look what happened. All for that boy. He loved him the way I loved Vitus. He’d do anything—lie, cheat, and steal—to win him back.
Ivy made all manner of fuss. I got to hand it to Bigbutt. She kept things under control. “Mrs. Archer, we’ll take care of this, I assure you,” she said. Then she turned to Renato. “Would you please come with me to the office?” Before we knew it, the two of them headed off across the dining room, that boy following Bigbutt like a little lamb.
QUESTIONS
The day after Ivy’s fit here they come again from the office. They marched me back to Bigbutt’s.
Her henchmen were gone. She was all alone, sitting at her desk. “Please, Mrs. Sledge, have a seat.”
“What is it this time?” I asked as I plopped down in the chair across from her. “Somebody get murdered in their sleep?”
She gave me her tight-ass smile. “I just want to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Sledge. We’re trying to get to the bottom of things here.”
“Wasn’t me,” I said by way of a joke.
She pressed her lips together like she wanted to cuss me out. That mood passed, though, and after a minute her smile fell back in place. “I’m sure you know we have a situation here.”
I sucked my teeth. “I’ll say. More’n one, if you ask me.”
Her desk was full of fussy things—a vase of silk flowers, a froufrou bowl of paper clips, Kleenex, hand lotion in a pink pump bottle, and a figurine of a girl swinging on a swing. She had a lot of framed pictures, but they were turned toward her so I couldn’t see what they were. The room was filled with stink from one of those things you plug in the wall.
“Mrs. Sledge, I’d appreciate it if you cooperated with me. We have a few leads based on what some of the other residents have told us.”
“Well, maybe I can help you. Let’s see. I’ve had money stolen from me here, plenty of it. I lost a keepsake that cannot be replaced, a gift from my father, a one-of-a-kind object. I pay good money for this room and I shouldn’t have to guar
d my possessions like I’m living in a ghetto!”
Her smile got tighter and tighter. You could tell I was working her nerves. “All right, then. Do you have any ideas who took your things, Mrs. Sledge?” she asked in a voice you’d use on a half-wit. “Does your woman’s intuition tell you anything? Have you noticed anything suspicious?”
“Nope.”
“Nobody at all who raises an alarm?”
My hackles went up. She meant Marcos, but he’s like my kids. I can bellyache about them all I want, but don’t let anybody else bad-mouth them, or I’ll come out swinging. I wanted to throw her off the scent ‘til I could talk to him myself, but at the same time I wanted to know what she had on him. I figured the roundabout route was best.
I leaned across her desk and pointed right at her. “You listen here. I caught somebody red-handed, taking something off my dressing table right under my nose, but I guess that ain’t good enough. People come and go all the time. Those girls are in here changing my sheets and cleaning my sink—not to mention the half-assed job they do—and I can’t tell them one from another. At night people I don’t know from Adam are up and down the halls. Most of them look like they’re straight out of Sing Sing, or living on the streets, or just stepped off a boat or sneaked across the border, but if you need—”
“What about Mr. Dominguez?” she interrupted.
“Mr. who?”
“Dominguez.”
“I don’t know anyone named that.”
“Mr. Dominguez, the gentleman who administers your treatments during the week.”
“You mean Marcos?”
“Yes, Marcos,” she said through gritted teeth.
Once her sweetie-pie routine wore thin, you could see how tough a cookie she really was. I was glad I wasn’t working for her, mopping floors or cooking meals. I bet those that did hated her guts.
“You think he’s the one doing the stealing?” I asked, like the thought had never entered my mind.
“I didn’t say that,” she answered in a way that told me it sure as hell was what she meant.
“Well, has somebody said something? Did you catch him red-handed?”
“We haven’t caught anybody,” she said, real snotty. “We’re just trying to put two and two together.”
I hate a person who acts so important. Her perfume was putting me in a bad mood, too, reaming out my nose holes like the Roto-Rooter. “Until you tell me what’s going on, I can’t do a thing for you,” I said.
All this was bad for my blood pressure.
“We have reason to believe that Marcos Dominguez might be involved in what’s been going on. Have you ever given him any money, Mrs. Sledge? Have the two of you exchanged any personal items?”
“I’m not saying. It’s nobody’s business but my own.”
“Did Marcos give you that fountain pen?”
“No, he did not!”
“Are you aware of the, um—” She paused and crooked up her nose like she smelled something nasty. “Of the relationship between Marcos and Renato de la Cruz?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Maybe I am and maybe I’m not.” I glared at her. “And since there seem to be so many questions flying around, I got one for you. What happened to that boy after Ivy Archer had a conniption fit about her necklace the other day?”
“I’m not free to discuss that,” Bigbutt snapped.
“Well, here’s another one, then,” I said. “What about my rock? Did you find that?”
She gaped at me like I was speaking in tongues. “What are you talking about, Mrs. Sledge?”
“My rock. My crystal that was stolen out of my room. Did Renato have that, too?”
She huffed. “Well, I can see you can’t be of any assistance, Mrs. Sledge.” She got up and came around her desk. I followed her big caboose to the door. “Thank you for your time. Let me know if you have any more concerns.”
I wasn’t about to let her cow me. “You just remember who’s working for who here,” I said as I walked out the door. “Next time you get your paycheck, you think about where it’s coming from.”
I TALKED TOUGH, but inside I was quaking. I wanted to give Marcos the benefit of the doubt. After all we’d been through, he deserved one last chance to explain himself. I started down the hall toward my room, but when I looked down at that cloudy white linoleum the most horrible fear took hold of me. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it. The sheen from the lights overhead made the floor look like dirty ice, and all of a sudden I felt like I was walking on a frozen pond. I was sure that something lay at the bottom of it, a monster in the murky water, whose shape and size I couldn’t rightly see. I was terrified it was going to rise up, come crashing through that ice, grab me, and pull me down to the bottom. Lord knows what came over me. Sweat poured down my sides, my knees trembled, and my teeth started chattering together.
I had to make an emergency stop in the lobby, which was right on the other side of Bigbutt’s office. I sat there bug-eyed and tried to get my senses back. After a while I was able to look around, to get my breath and my sweat under control. An old woman in a robe was sleeping in her wheelchair over by the door. She had a stuffed white kitten on her lap, poor thing. The only other person there besides the receptionist was Old Man Speck, the one who has to wear a bracelet around his ankle so he can’t escape. He was pretending to read the newspaper but his eyes were on the entrance. When he saw me watching, he grinned and gave me the thumbs-up.
You won’t believe what happened next. One of those girls who works in the office doing paperwork and whatnot shot into Bigbutt’s office. Guess who was right behind her.
Marcos.
Well, I just couldn’t believe it, but I guess it made sense. The office girl came out and shut the door, leaving Marcos inside. I leaned closer to the wall and strained my ears. Sure enough, I heard a murmur. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I could hear Marcos’s voice—his Mexican accent and the showy way he talked, like he’d watched too many of them soap operas. His voice rose and fell, then I heard somebody who had to be Bigbutt gurgling like a rainspout.
I decided to wait there so I could talk to Marcos when he came out. I had to hear his explanation—no matter what it was—with my own ears. The receptionist, a bottle blonde chomping on a wad of gum, glanced my way. One of the cooks was outside on the walk, smoking. Drops of rain sparkled on the glass door. Beyond that was the parking lot, then the street, then the wide world beyond. Hard to believe I’d soon be out there, coming and going at will, a free person like everybody else.
The front door opened and in walked the UPS man pushing a handcart loaded with cardboard boxes. On top sat a gift basket just like the one Vitus brought to my room the night he proposed. My asshole pinched down to the size of a toothpick. The deliveryman went to the reception desk, leaned way over, and commenced to bill and coo with the receptionist. Maybe Vitus was planning another surprise picnic in my room, or maybe he was on one of those plans where you get some treat—apples or candy or dried fruit—in the mail once a month. Maybe his nephew sent the gift basket or maybe—a cold chill went through me—he had a lady friend on the outside. Now what made me think that? You put those thoughts right out of your mind, I told myself. My hackles went up, though. I couldn’t help it.
Soon as that UPS man went on his way, I hoisted myself up and went over to the receptionist.
She popped her gum. “Yes, ma’am?”
“I’m in room 136. Cora Sledge. That basket wouldn’t happen to be for me, would it?”
That jaw of hers never slowed down. She worked the gum over while she looked at the tag. “Nope,” she said. “Sorry.”
“Is it for Vitus Kovic, then?” I asked, real innocent. “I know he’s expecting one.”
She squinted at me. “You the one who was expecting one last month?”
“What?”
The phone rang. “Never mind. It’s not for m
e to say who it’s for,” she said before she picked it up. “We have rules here, you know.”
I was getting ready to tie into that girl when Bigbutt’s door flew open and Marcos charged out like a bull. He stomped past the reception desk and bolted out the front door. I liked to kill myself running after him.
Old Speck dove for the open door. The alarm went off and the receptionist came running. I didn’t heed nothing. While she tried to drag that old fool back in, I trotted after Marcos, yelling his name at the top of my lungs.
He had nice clothes on. Black slacks and a white shirt, pressed to perfection. He was all the way to the curb before he turned around.
“What are you doing out here? What do you want?” he snarled.
“I need to talk to you, Marcos.” I grabbed hold of his hand. “Right now! You got some answering to do.”
He shook my hand off like it was something nasty. “I’m leaving this place, Cora. I just quit,” he said, and made to walk away. “Go back inside. You shouldn’t be out here.”
He stepped off the curb and started into the parking lot, but I grabbed hold of him again. “Don’t you walk away, Marcos! I’m asking you, now. I’m telling you!” Lord knows why I felt so desperate. “What happened, Marcos? What’s going on?”
“I’m sick and tired of this place. It’s crazy! I’ve had enough!” he shouted. He looked at me a minute, and his face softened. “I don’t need this kind of treatment. Now let go of me, Cora. Don’t make a scene.”
“Marcos, wait!” I panted as I stumbled after him. “Stop, please! Listen, stay a little! Talk to me! Just a minute!”
We must have walked down half a row of cars before he finally stopped and turned around. Droplets stood on all the cars. The colors looked brighter, the reds and blues.
I still had feelings for him. I just couldn’t believe he was the culprit.
“What happened, Marcos?” I reached out toward him. “I don’t understand. How can you leave without saying good-bye? How can you go, just like that, after all we been through? Can’t we at least have a cigarette together?” I saw them in his breast pocket. “For old time’s sake?”
Breaking Out of Bedlam Page 26
