Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries

by Barbara Silkstone

  “The FBI? Are you all lunatics?” Regina could only imagine what the tabloids would do with that.

  The doctor waved them away from the phone.

  “This woman has a head injury,” he said. “She is suffering from malnutrition and psychotic delusions. She belongs in a hospital, not a jail. What kind of a conspirator could she be? She knows nothing—not even where she is.”

  Regina rose on her crutch.

  “I've had quite enough of this, all of you,” she said in her most regal tone. “Of course I know where I am. I'm at the Clinic at Rancho Esperanza in Orange County, California. And I'd like you to know that as a recovery center you are overpriced and highly overrated.”

  Pink Coat let out a nasty laugh. “Right,” she said, “And I am Mrs. Betty Ford. Come on, Ida, let's put her in the TV room until the doctor can get her admitted to county hospital. We can talk to the cops tomorrow. I don't think she's gonna be conspiring against anybody tonight. Not after the Valium kicks in, anyway.”

  Regina looked from one blank face to another as the truth dawned.

  The flyer in her purse. The Sober Christian Women. The mugger; the man in overalls. He'd knocked her over and she must have lost consciousness. Whoever found her, shoeless and wallet-less, had come to the wrong conclusion. She had to get out of this place. Now.

  “The TV room?” She put on a sweetly vacuous smile. “Thank you so much. I'd really like to watch TV.” She stood and walked toward the door with what she hoped was the right show of helplessness.

  Pink Coat led her back to where the TV was now playing a game show.

  As soon as the woman was safely gone, Regina turned and walked in the other direction—as fast as her crutch would carry her—down a dark corridor with a big metal fire door. Where it might lead, she had no idea, but a lighted sign over it said “Exit.”

  That was all she needed to know.

  Chapter 12—Cady: Darkness

  Cady lay in the dark and prayed. She prayed for the roaring in her ears to stop and for the pain in her knees to go away.

  But mostly she prayed for whatever idiot had turned off the lights to turn them back on again, soon.

  She'd always hated the dark. When she was a child, she'd always imagined it was full of monsters and horrible, hungry bears. She didn't learn to sleep with the lights off until she was thirteen years old and living with the Ingrams. Regina loved the dark. It was so full of possibilities, she said. She'd made terrible fun of Cady's phantom bears.

  “Hey, could somebody hit the light switch?” Cady called out. “I can't see a thing in here.”

  She was startled by the sound of her own voice. It seemed as if it came from somebody else. Somebody far away from here. But where was here?

  Dear Lord—the elevator! Was she still in the elevator?”

  “Tyrone?” she called. “Tyrone, are you okay?”

  “Tyrone?” A female voice seemed to mock her. “That's Power Magee's real name. She's asking for him first thing. See, I told you they had to be an item.”

  Other voices shushed the speaker. Cady could hear people bustling around, but their voices were too muted for her to make out the words.

  Imagine anyone thinking she and Tyrone… still it was a little flattering.

  “No!” Another voice spoke, high-pitched and tense. “Absolutely not. I don't care who gave you permission. This is against hospital policy. Get that thing out of here! All of you. Out!”

  “Nurse, would you care to make a statement to our viewers about Reverend Stanton's chances for a full recovery?” A third woman's voice rose above the others, controlled and smooth, with a bit of Dustbowl twang in the vowels.

  It was a familiar, media voice. From the Network. Maybe that former Miss Oklahoma who did the GBA evening news?”

  “No, I would not,” the tense woman said. “Who's in charge here? Where's the doctor? I'm going to speak to Mr. Magee.”

  “You do that.” Albert's voice. No mistaking that gooey, soothing tone he used with underlings. “Guys,” he said. “You want to bring the camera around here, so we can get a shot just as Reverend Stanton comes around?”

  A camera. Anger began to clear Cady's head. She spoke, putting all her strength into enunciating in the deep contralto tones that had made her one of the most admired orators of the last Congress.

  “Reverend Stanton has already come around, Albert Sneed, so you can get your media vultures out of here.” She took a breath as she relished the gasps of surprise. “And, for goodness' sake will one of you please turn on the lights?”

  “Oh, dear Lord,” the newsgirl said. “Reverend Stanton, don't you remember? You're blind! You told everybody you couldn't see after you banged your head in the accident.”

  “Get a nice close-up on that face, now,” Albert said.

  Cady lay still in the horrible silence. Blind? She couldn't be blind. There was simply something covering her eyes. After the elevator crash she kept telling them, begging them to take it off. She could feel it now; some sort of bandage.

  She could feel people moving in close to her bed, and the cold air that came in the door with them. She tried to push them away with flailing hands.

  “Get away!”

  Blind. No, sweet Jesus, she prayed. Not my eyes. Please don't take the light from me.

  “Get away! All of you! Where am I?”

  “Calm down, now, Reverend,” Albert whispered. She could feel a steely hand grab her wrist. “Think about what this is doing for the ratings.”

  “Flo?” Cady called out. “Flo? Are you there?”

  “We sent your secretary home to Boston. We didn't feel it would be healthy for you to try to conduct any business for a while. You've been in an elevator accident. Perhaps an act of sabotage by the Christian-hating secular humanists. But you're at the best hospital in Los Angeles—getting fine care, the best care.” Albert's voice was pure oil. “Stand by now, people. We're going live. Bambi, you're on.”

  “I'm Bambi Lightener with your exclusive GBA coverage of the elevator crash at the Silver Cathedral in Los Angeles,” the newswoman said. “We are here with former Congresswoman, Reverend Cady Stanton, who came to consciousness a few minutes ago.” The girl's voice bounced with bone-chilling cheerfulness. “Cady, who do you think would be trying to kill you? Do you want to tell us how you're feeling at this moment?”

  “No. She does not.” A woman's authoritative voice broke in: deep and rich, lilting with the cadences of Africa.

  “Doctor, this is a live broadcast,” Albert said. “You'll have to leave until we're….”

  “That's right, Dr. Ojiwu,” said Tyrone, who must have come in behind the others. “You heard the little…”

  Tyrone launched a string of obscenities that would sear the eardrums of the drunkest sailor. Cady felt like covering her ears. Was the man insane? This was live on the GBA network, and those words would have got him kicked off the Playboy Channel.

  “Cut! Cut! Cut! That's enough, Mr. Magee,” Albert said. “Please. Your language. We're trying to—”

  “You're trying to exploit Reverend Stanton and this accident to promote your phony-religious network, is what you're trying to do, Sneed.”

  Tyrone's calm voice had a steely edge.

  “You're making news where there is none,” he said. “I've just talked to the cops and they say there's no proof that elevator crash wasn't an accident—probably due to Cathedral negligence—and if you turn on that mike again, you'll hear language that will make what I just said sound like a nursery rhyme. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Mr. Magee…” Albert's voice faded to a squeak.

  Everyone went quiet, but she heard soft laughter in the background.

  Cady started to laugh, too, but it hurt her face. Bandages seemed to be taped over everything but her mouth.

  “Tyrone,” she said. “I don't know whether to wash your mouth out with soap or give you a medal.” She took a breath. The simple effort of speaking was hard work. “Thank the Lord y
ou're all right. You didn't get hurt in that crash?

  “Just some bumps and scrapes. I feel like I've been on a three-day drunk, but they say I'll be fine. How do you feel?”

  “Like I was matching you two drinks for one.” She smiled in spite of the pull of the bandages. “All I want right now is sleep. Can you get these people out of here?”

  “I'm going to do better than that. I'm going to take you home.”

  “I wish.” Cady would have liked nothing more than to be home in her own bed. “But I don't have a home here, and I can't fly back to Boston, not yet. I think I probably need a doctor to look after me for a bit. I can't seem to see”

  “Yes,” Tyrone's voice tensed. “But there's no reason to think the damage is permanent. This is your doctor here—Dr. Lillian Ojiwu. You'll have round the clock care, under her supervision. I'm taking you to my place.”

  This was not an invitation. It was a pronouncement. Ordinarily, Cady would have balked at such high-handed treatment from anyone, but right now, she needed to get away from Albert Sneed and the GBA network more than she needed to practice her politics.

  She needed a quiet place to think. And to pray.

  Chapter 13—Cady: Ringworm and Caterpillar

  Everything at Tyrone's Beverly Hills home felt rich: the plush of the carpet under Cady's slippered feet—her pumps had mysteriously disappeared—the slubbed silk of the cushions on the couch, the Egyptian cotton sheets on the hospital bed he had rented for her.

  Her brain was fuzzy from the painkillers, but her body ached in spite of them.

  Dr. Lillian had explained the pain was only from scrapes and bruising, and the bandages on Cady's face covered only a few superficial cuts; ones that should heal without scarring. Her eyes were covered mostly to keep them still while they healed.

  Chances were good for a full recovery, the doctor said, although she'd suffered a head trauma when she'd fallen against the elevator control panel and possibly had something called neuropraxia. But the optic nerve, stretched by the blow, would probably heal itself, given time.

  Probably. Possibly. Chances were good.

  Cady wasn't going to let herself think beyond probability. Not right now. That was in the hands of the Lord. What was in her hands was learning to be patient.

  Patience; never her strongest characteristic. And waiting was so much harder without being able to pick up a book. After a nap, she couldn't even pick up a magazine to distract herself from her own impatience and hunger as she waited for her promised dinner of gourmet pizza in bed. Tyrone was going to pick it up on his way home from renting a descriptive-broadcast attachment for her TV.

  Finally she remembered he'd mentioned a TV remote he'd left on the bedside table. She fumbled until she found it. The evening news might be on by now. She didn't really need a description for that. She knew what the network news anchors looked like, and there was nothing wrong with hearing the news without seeing the usual accompanying disaster pictures.

  “…the body incinerated in the flaming wreck,” Peter Jennings said.

  Yes, indeed. She could do without the visuals. In fact, she could do without flaming wrecks altogether. She clicked the remote a couple of times, hoping to get some more substantive news on another network.

  “…uncanny resemblance to the accident that killed Princess Grace,” Dan Rather said. “Princess Regina bore other resemblances to the late princess of Monaco. American born, from a middle-class background, the former Regina Ingram was a fashion model who rose to fame as one of Andy Warhol's set in the late nineteen sixties. Princess Regina was forty-eight. The funeral will be held…”

  “No!” Cady screamed into the terrible dark. “No. She's not dead. It can't be.”

  No, Lord. No more. She could not take any more pain right now. God doesn't give us a bigger burden than we can carry—how many times had she told her parishioners that?

  Well, she couldn't carry this. Let it be a joke, a hoax, a stupid mistake.

  “Cady, are you all right? What is it?” She could hear Tyrone enter the room, feel his hand cool on her brow.

  She tried to calm herself.

  “I heard something on the TV—something terrible. It can't be true, can it? About Princess Regina—a car accident?”

  “Yeah. She drove her Ferrari off an Alp or something. Major crash and burn. Sorry, Cady, but you've been upstaged by a story about the white and privileged. Actually, we should be grateful. Some people have been calling our little accident an act of deliberate sabotage, so there was a media circus about to happen outside my gates. But luckily, most of the reporters are packing up for San Montinaro.”

  “Grateful? Grateful that a human being is dead?”

  Cady's felt a wave of rage that crashed into grief. She had no right to be angry with Tyrone. She had criticized Regina herself a thousand times for her self-absorption and vanity and for freezing her out of her life.

  Tears moistened her bandages.

  “You're talking about my sister, Tyrone. Regina Ingram was my foster sister. Astrid—Mrs. Ingram—was the woman who took me in after the first terrible foster home they sent me to—you know—after I got arrested. She wasn't exactly motherly, but she did her best. She'd lost her husband so young, and—Oh, Lord, poor Ringworm; how she adored her Papa! I'm not sure she ever got over losing him.”

  Tyrone took a sharp breath.

  “Ringworm? Did you call her 'Ringworm'?”

  Cady nodded. “It was a stupid kid thing. She couldn't read my handwriting when we first met, so she called me Caterpillar—that's what she thought 'Cadillac' looked like in my bad cursive script, and I said her signature looked like 'Ringworm'—which it did. She'd write 'R. Ingram', with a great big 'R', and the last name in smaller and smaller little squiggles.”

  Cady sighed, remembering those first confusing days at Regina's house in South Berkshire. She knew she was babbling, but at least the flow of words helped slow the tears.

  “She never did like that name—Ingram. It was just something her father got on a phony passport, escaping from the Nazis. Their Hungarian name was something nobody could pronounce and her grandfather was a count or something, but of course they'd lost everything. Regina used the family name for a while after college, but Andy Warhol got her to drop it and call herself simply 'Regina'.”

  Cady stopped herself and took a breath. Tyrone hovered over her in silence, politely waiting for her to finish. She had to stop the torrent of words. “I could not stand that man. Did you ever meet Andy? Now that was one white, white man.”

  Tyrone's hand touched her arm gently.

  “I have something to show you—sorry. I mean something to read to you.” His voice had gone soft and strange. “I think it's here, in my pocket. A note; written on an airline ticket. A bear gave it to me yesterday—you know, one of those obnoxious kids dressed up as teddy bears with wings. He gave it to me when we were going to the elevator.”

  She heard him smooth out crumpled paper.

  “I thought it was from a kid. It's written in some sort of crayon—purple crayon. It says: 'Caterpillar. I'm here. Please see me. Love, Ringworm.'

  Cady could hardly speak.

  “You got this yesterday? That means Regina was at the Cathedral yesterday.”

  No one else knew those childhood nicknames. The crayon was probably eye makeup. She always wore purple to bring out the lavender in her eyes.

  The grief was overwhelming. After so many years of perfunctory politeness, Regina had finally reached out, but Cady had been too busy to pay attention.

  “Couldn't be her,” Tyrone said. “According to tonight's news, the princess died early Thursday morning at 4:00 a.m., San Montinaro time, which would have been at pretty much exactly the same time that bear was giving me this note yesterday afternoon, here in California. I'm so sorry. I had no idea.”

  Cady could say nothing. Tears dampened her bandages. Tyrone's arms went around her and she wept into his rock-hard, clean-smelling shoulder.

 
; “Maybe it was a real angel in that bear suit,” he said, after a moment, very quietly, “Maybe somehow, your sister was saying goodbye.”

  Cady smiled—at the sweetness of Tyrone's thought, and the absurdity of Regina having a sentimental moment, even in spirit.

  “Oh no,” she said, “That's not likely. Not Regina; that girl didn't believe in bears.”

  Chapter 14—Regina: Satan Rules

  Regina struggled down the empty city street. She moved as quickly as her one crutch and the nurse's pills would allow, away from the dangerously well-meaning women of the La Brea Pits. She hoped they hadn't noticed her disappearance yet.

  She had no idea where she was or where she was heading, but she knew that in a neighborhood like this, especially now that it was getting dark, any appearance of purposelessness would target her as a victim.

  And she did have a purpose—to find Cady. To apologize for the horrible accident. To find out why Max was doing this and make him stop.

  Why did he hate her so much?

  She tried to move faster. Light was fading, and around her she could see only warehouse fronts plastered with peeling advertisements, a couple of seedy motels, and a construction fence spray-painted with swastikas and gang graffiti.

  The flare of a cigarette lighter illuminated the grim face of a man sitting in a darkened car in the parking lot of the motel across the street.

  “Satan Rules!” announced blood-red letters scrawled across a fading advertisement for suntan cream. Regina shuddered. A simple truth, it seemed, in this neighborhood.

  A small, wrinkled man with a scraggly mustache rushed past her from around the corner, snapping closed a threadbare New York Mets' jacket against a cold wind that scattered the trash at her feet.

  “Excuse me, sir?” she said. “Could you tell me where…” She was about to say, “where I am,” but stopped herself.

  The man was looking at her with a mixture of pity and disgust.

  “The racetrack is ten blocks that way, lady.” The man gave a jerk of his head in the direction he'd come from. “But take my advice. Stay away. Lost my whole damned stake. Do you believe this cold? I can't believe this is California. Might as well go back to Jersey.”