by Lori Avocato
Good question. I looked at Jagger for the answer. How was he going to tell her and keep our investigation a secret?
In order to avoid an explanation, he began interrogating Ruby.
“Who had you sneak into Pauline’s room?”
Ruby looked at me as if I could help her. She must have felt as if she sat in a locked room with a bright light shining directly on her while Jagger, smoking away, stood over her.
I shut my eyes a second and said, “Just answer. You’ll be better off. Believe me.”
She started to get up.
“Lieutenant Johnston is very interested in the drug use that goes on around here,” Jagger said.
His voice held more threat in it than if he’d pointed a 357 Magnum at her. I also figured that Ruby was well aware of who Johnston was—and that he knew about her drug habits. Maybe he was the reason she’d ended up at the Institute.
Jagger recognized when to hit below the belt—and he did his homework.
“Look, I never did anything like breaking into anyone’s room before. I was told that if I did that one time and only to scare you, Pauline … ” She looked at me with a pleading glance and her fingers started to dance on her glass.
I wanted to reach out and comfort her, but held back. Of course Jagger’s steely glare had something to do with it. “Go on,” I said as firmly as I could.
“If I scared you, then I could get out early.”
I looked around the room. Smart girl. Guess I would have done the same, and she actually hadn’t hurt me that badly. But could we trust her? If she’d gotten the chance, would she have smacked me more?
“You could have really hurt me with that broom handle.”
She looked like a little child. Reminded me of my niece.
“Pauline, I never had a broom handle with me. I punched only with my fists and only that one time. I swear.”
For some reason I believed her, although now I had more to worry about.
“Really,” she pleaded. “They said I’d get out early so I only did it that one time. Then I was out.”
“Who told you that?” Jagger asked in a no-nonsense tone.
I almost felt like that light was shining on me. Soon Ruby was telling us everything she knew, which, unfortunately, wasn’t much. Spike had been the messenger yet again.
“I don’t know who they are. They only communicated by leaving me notes. What the hell did I have to lose?”
“Great,” Jagger mumbled.
“Who are you people, anyway?” she whined.
Jagger said it didn’t matter, cursed, stood and reached for my hand. Damn. No massage, I thought, until a husky woman of Scandinavian descent walked up to us. “I’m Greta and will be doing your hot stone treatments.”
“We’re all set. Thanks anyway,” Jagger said.
Greta looked him in the eye. “You. You need it. You look angry about something. Come.” She yanked on Jagger’s sleeve. His robe opened to reveal his chest.
I swallowed and mumbled, “Please. You owe me some R & R.”
In this classy spa, couples were treated together in special “partner” rooms if they arrived together. Probably half of them were wealthy businessmen and their “secretaries.” So Jagger and I were treated as Dr. and Mrs. Plummer so our hot stone treatments were on twin tables.
I silently prayed that we wouldn’t have to remove our robes.
“Take off that robe, Mrs. Plummer,” Greta ordered like a Marine sergeant.
I turned to see Jagger already prone on his table with a sheet up to his waist—his head turned toward me. Even his naked back looked luscious.
I stared him in the eye while saying, “It’s a bit cool in here.”
“The stones will warm you. I have other clients coming soon. I need to start.”
Put in my place, I kept staring at Jagger until he had the decency to turn his head the other way. My robe dropped. I was prone on the table in seconds. Greta must have used some kind of Swedish karate move to get me there. She did have the decency to cover me to my waist too, and soon something hot touched my back.
“Ouch!” I almost sprung up but glued myself to the table instead.
“Relax,” Jagger muttered in an almost dreamlike state. Guess he was enjoying the sweltering rocks on his back. Well, they weren’t really sweltering, more warm and very smooth. This just wasn’t a situation in which I could relax.
Jagger moaned.
Not like a moan of pain, but one of sensual feeling. Me, I could barely stay still while Greta went back and forth sticking hot stones on my back and then on Jagger’s. That’s when he’d moan again. The next thing I knew, she was pressing the damn rocks into my spine. It might have felt good if I was alone in there, but having to listen to Jagger moan, groan and all out ah, I couldn’t relax worth a damn.
With my senses heightened, I heard everything, felt every pressure point of the warm stones and inhaled pheromones that filled the air so thickly, I think Greta herself moaned.
I wondered how much Jagger was paying for this torture.
Soon, she had us slathered in some herbal cream that smelled to me like tuna with basil, but Jagger remained silent, breathing so softly, I wasn’t sure if he was asleep or awake.
When I refused to turn over, I found out Jagger was still awake. He said, “Enjoy it, Sherlock, before you have to go back. You deserve it.”
Greta agreed, although she had no idea where I was going back to and why I deserved it.
But I felt wonderful having Jagger admit that.
“Fine. Do your massage, but I’m not turning over. My back hurts if I lie on it flat like that,” I lied, feeling like some senior citizen instead of a healthy thirtysomething without any back problems.
Greta started at my lower spine, circling her thumbs in a motion that had me nearly asleep. She continued on, and my body soon felt like Jell-O. Wonderfully relaxed Jell-O without a care in the world. Without a tense muscle in my body.
Greta whipped my sheet off, revealing my naked bottom!
I tried to reach out to grab it back, but didn’t want to lift up too much to reveal more. I couldn’t think of an excuse to make her cover me back up—and Jagger lay there watching.
I sucked in a breath and, holding my head up as high as I could while plastering myself to the table, let Greta continue. Jagger would see just as much if we were at a beach where women wore those thong bathing suits.
Only not this woman. No thongs for Pauline Sokol.
I’m not sure which came first, Jagger’s chuckle, Greta’s yanking of his sheet off—or my gasp.
I swallowed back the next one, deciding when all else fails to resort to humor. “This job keeps getting better and better.”
Silence.
On the way back to the hospital, Jagger and I remained quiet. I shifted in my seat, thinking about being naked in front of him, and then him being naked too.
At the age of thirty-five, I had my first hot flash.
“Hey, you missed the turn onto 91 North,” I said.
Jagger kept silent and then took a left. Without a word, the white, metal-sided house with the familiar black shutters came into view.
The St. Clair Spa was a mansion, but my parents’ house looked a gazillion times better to me right then.
Jagger pulled into the driveway and got out. When I followed him to the front walkway, I said, “Thanks.”
He rang the doorbell and a Brahms lullaby rang out.
Mother never had changed the tune since we children were born, and each time I heard it, I got sleepy. She always sang it to us at naptime.
The door swung open a few seconds later. I knew Mother had first peeked through the peephole in the door. “Oh, my! What a surprise!” She reached out to hug Jagger. “It’s so good to see you, Mr. Jagger.”
“What am I, Mother, chopped liver?”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Pauline. You I can see anytime.” She stepped aside to let me in. “Anytime that is, when you are not on some horrendo
us, dangerous case.”
Ah, so that was it.
I hugged her and decided not to argue. “Actually, Mother, I just had a wonderful day at a health spa.”
“Health spa shmealth spa.” She still held on to Jagger. “Michael, we have company, and Pauline is here too.”
I had to laugh to myself, then hugged her again. “It’s good to see you, Mother.”
She let go of Jagger. “See?”
“See what?” Daddy said as I hugged him and kissed him on the cheek when he came into the foyer.
“See how she behaves now since she left nursing? Since she took this foolish, dangerous job? Away on some secret mission. She can’t even tell her parents where she goes! Telling me it’s good to see me. Ha! Where would that come from unless she was in danger? She’s never said anything like that to me before. Come, eat.”
Jagger chuckled.
Once again my magician mother put out a spread the likes of an army platoon’s buffet. And she did it in seconds, before I could help or even see what the heck she was doing. Oh, she’d order me to do things like set the table, get Mr. Jagger a drink or go wake Uncle Walt—to which she added, “So he gets to see you before it’s too late.”
I don’t think she was talking present time here.
Poor Mother. It pained me to see her worry. I’d have to allay her worries. Somehow.
Uncle Walt came into the room and gave both Jagger and me a big hug. I hoped that he wasn’t concerned about me too.
Earlier Mother had served her usual Thursday meal of roast pork, so Jagger and I got to have the leftovers. Only when Mother fixed any leftovers, they tasted as if freshly made. She did have a way with cooking.
Made me love her even more.
“Yeah, Mother, we spent the day at the St. Clair Health Spa. We got massages and the woman even used warm stones on our backs.”
She looked at me as if I were nuts. “The yard is filled with rocks, Pauline. You want them heated, there’s the microwave.”
Jagger chuckled. “Actually, Mrs. Sokol, it is a wonderful experience. Someday I’ll treat you all to a day at the spa. It’s good for the soul.”
“Church is good for the soul,” she said, ladling more gravy onto his pork and oven-baked potatoes without even asking. “But, if you treated, Mr. Jagger, I’m sure … ”— she laughed, then patted him on the shoulder—“that I’d enjoy it.”
Oh … my … God.
Was Mother flirting with Jagger?
Had her hand lingered for a second?
I excused myself and headed for the bathroom.
After a few whiffs of Renuzit, I sat on the edge of the tub and told myself I was crazy. Too much influence by folks like Joanna, the red-pajama men, Kathy and everyone else had me thinking Jagger had any bearing on Stella Sokol’s thoughts. Yes, I was certifiably mad. After a few more whiffs, I heard a commotion in the living room. Then a shriek.
I scurried out and ran down the hallway into the arms of Goldie. “Hey, even though it’s been a short time, I missed you guys!”
He hugged me back and moved to the side so Miles could get in a squeeze. “We missed you too. When you coming back?”
I looked at Jagger sitting on the love seat by the bay window. Daddy was reading the newspaper in his recliner and Uncle Walt was catching some z’s on the couch. Made me smile.
Jagger looked at me. “Soon.”
“It should be soon, guys. We’ve made some great headway. I think we are about to crack—”
“As long as you don’t crack your head open,” Mother said, coming in the living room with a tray of tea. She set the pot down and slapped Miles’s hand when he tried to help her pour.
He helped anyway.
And she let him.
Goldie, dressed casually in a chartreuse velour-jogging suit, wearing his bright golden-colored wig with a barrette of chartreuse roses, chuckled. On his wrists he must have had ten colorful bracelets. Instead of common white tennis shoes, Goldie wore Nikes with springs in the heels. They were bright pink to match the camisole top he wore beneath his jacket.
Gotta love him.
Jagger excused himself and went outside to make a phone call. Through Mother’s sheer curtains, I could see him sitting on the edge of the porch banister talking on his cell. I wondered to whom, but knew I’d only find out if Jagger wanted me to.
“Pauline, go get some extra coasters in Mary’s old room. You know where I keep my stuff,” Mother said.
I turned to see she had poured all the tea, and Miles must have gone into the kitchen to make more. Goldie sat sipping away and occasionally looking at me as If I’d disappear at any minute. I was in no hurry to get back to the hospital. That was for sure. Until I thought of Margaret standing in the window as Jagger and I drove off.
“Pauline,” Mother said, shaking her finger at me. “Ever since you left your nursing job you’ve not been yourself.”
“That was the point, Mother.”
“Don’t interrupt me. You seem to be here yet not be here. Then you are saying something, and then you go running off to the bathroom. I’ve had to re-stock my pine-scented Renuzit three times since your new job.”
Goldie tried to hold back a laugh, but his shoulders shook, sending his pink dangling globe earrings a-swinging.
“Mother, I’m still the same me. Only with a more … interesting job.”
She made the sign of the cross.
I walked over, took the teacup from her hand and hugged her. When I kissed her cheek, I whispered, “Please don’t worry about me. I’m fine. Jagger makes sure.”
She looked at me. “Oh. Well. Then if Mr. Jagger is always around to watch over you, I guess I’m fine with that.” Then she walked out of the room.
I looked at Goldie. He smiled. Daddy shrugged and Uncle Walt snored.
“I’ll get the coasters,” I said and walked out.
Jagger was still on the phone when I passed by the window.
Mary, being the oldest girl had a room of her own until Janet, ten years younger and the last kid, had come along. But Janet married right out of high school so Mary got her room back after she left the convent.
I walked into the room and paused. Talk about nostalgia. Mother had kept everyone’s room pretty much the same, as if we would all move back in one day. Oh, my. I had to sit on Mary’s twin bed with the patchwork-quilted bedspread after that thought. After a few seconds I got up.
In the bottom of Mary’s closet, Mother kept a hope chest of things she had no place else for after five kids had filled the house up with their treasures. I went over and opened the closet to see if the coasters were in there. At the bottom of the left side was a set of new ones with lighthouses on them. I took the package, stood up, looked around.
I guess Mary’s education, thanks to the nuns, was part of the reason my sister was such a neat freak. She was even more organized than Miles. Being a nurse, I was way up there in the skill, but no one beat Mary. The top of her shelf was filled with books from her past. I noticed her yearbook from when she graduated high school and then went into the convent. On top was the booklet of novitiates that were in the convent at the same time. There had been a ceremony where they handed them out. I picked up the booklet.
I needed a laugh, and seeing a picture of Mary in her old habit would do the trick. When I opened the booklet and started to flip through the pages to find her though, my hands froze.
Sister Barbara Immaculatta.
There she was in all her glory, and beauty, I might add. She’d been in the same class as Mary! Talk about a small world. I’d have to ask my sister if she remembered Sister Barbie.
I sat on the edge of the bed, gently so as not to wrinkle it, and thumbed through the booklet. There was Sister Liz too! How neat. I recognized a few more of the nuns from the Institute, including Sister Janet.
When I set the booklet back on top, I paused. At least I knew these gals were the real thing.
I was still betting on Novitiate Lalli as my number-one
suspect.
“Pauline, are you making those coasters?” Mother yelled.
“Oops.” I hurried out and into the living room. I couldn’t remember If I’d shut Mary’s closet door, but I’d hear about it on my next trip here if I hadn’t.
My next trip here. I hoped it was real soon.
Miles and my mother passed out homemade chocolate-chip cookies. Mother kept saying how lucky it was that she happened to have them in the refrigerator by chance, but I knew she always had something ready for company.
Jagger took a sip of tea, winced, and finished his cookie.
I smiled to myself. How nice and polite not to refuse my mother’s tea and ask for coffee instead.
“Well, I think it’s time Pauline and I get back to … work.” He walked over to my mother and gave her a hug. “Thanks. Everything was wonderful.”
Mother turned and I felt a hitch in my throat and noticed the concern in her eyes. “You take care of her.”
Jagger nodded and kissed her on the cheek. When he went to shake hands with all the men, Mother stood there rubbing the spot.
Damn. What a guy.
I gave her a hug and kiss, and then whispered, “I’ll be fine, Mother.”
Goldie held me for several minutes while Miles stood silently by.
I slapped both of them on the arm. “Stop it, you guys. I’m only going to work. Not the gallows!” I laughed.
They did too, but theirs seemed forced.
Then again, they knew where I was working.
Jagger had stopped at a filling station so I could change into my Burberry outfit. I’d missed lunch and dinner by the time he’d sneaked me back into the Cortona Institute of Life. I wondered if Mason thought I’d stood him and Margaret up. Maybe he’d lost faith in me. Once in my room, I slumped on my bed just in time before Sister Janet made rounds to check on me.
I almost mentioned seeing her picture in Mary’s book, but caught myself. Then I touched my shoulder to make sure the key Jagger had given me was still taped on the inside of my top. Hopefully, no one would ever know about it—and more important: hopefully, I’d never need it.
I hurried out to find Margaret and Mason, but when I passed the “wet pack” room, I heard sobbing. Through the glass window I could see Margaret, wrapped in the sheets with Sister Liz at her side. Fighting the urge to yank open the door and free Margaret, I clenched my fists and turned toward the dayroom.
