Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries

by Barbara Silkstone

Chapter 19—Cady: Acts of God

  Cady woke up feeling like an old-fashioned wind-up toy: Jack about to jump out of his box. She was going to be able to see again. She woke up knowing it; knowing it the way she knew the sun would come up and the world would keep spinning around. She also knew why she had needed to go blind. It was all part of the Lord's plan; His plan to get her out of Hollywood and back where she belonged.

  She lay restless in the bed, listening for the sound of Dr. Lillian's brisk step on the stairs, impatient as a child on Christmas morning. The doctor would take the bandages off, and the long dark night would be over.

  She'd had a wake-up call: the fall; the blindness; the angel-message from the dying Regina; yes, and even the embarrassment of half-falling in love with Tyrone.

  They were all God's way of telling her what a soul-killing mistake she was making with the talk show. Hollywood's money and fame were already blinding her when the elevator accident injured her optic nerve. God had taken her sight to make her see.

  She had the radio on and was half-listening to the morning news; some story about a woman renting Carnegie Hall to give a piano recital for her fiftieth birthday. Sometimes she was embarrassed to be a Baby Boomer—the generation that could never grow up.

  Then there was more about Regina and Andy Warhol. Why did all the stories about Regina have to be about her days at the Factory with Andy and Arthur Fry? Why didn't anyone mention that Regina had been an accomplished musician, a designer in her own right, a hard-working model, and the mother of two children?

  It seemed a tragedy to Cady that the daughter of such an independent woman as Astrid Ingram should be defined entirely by the men in her life: Andy, Arthur, and of course, Prince Max—all cold, remote men, none of whom had the capacity to love a woman. Cady found little to respect in any of them; Arthur Fry with his obscene, homoerotic photographs that the liberal media touted as “art”; control-freak Warhol with his soup cans; clockwork Max with his archaic kingdom.

  Cady surfed stations, hoping to hear something about her own accident at the Silver Cathedral, but the news was dominated by Regina's tragedy. Only one R and B station mentioned her own accident—as part of a debate about whether it was part of some sinister racist drama, or, as Tyrone said, a simple accident.

  He was probably right. It was an accident; an “Act of God” as the insurance companies stalwartly called them in this increasingly secular world.

  She changed a country station where some rancher from Santa Ynez was telling a reporter a preposterous story about secret U.N. forces in black helicopters kidnapping homeless people.

  He said he'd left a homeless woman hitchhiker on the coastal highway north of Santa Barbara, and felt remorse, but when he went back to pick her up, he arrived just in time to see her airlifted into a mysterious dark helicopter by men in strange uniforms.

  Cady clicked off the radio. She didn't need this nonsense. Andy Warhol had been right about one thing. Everybody wanted their fifteen minutes of fame. These days, everybody had to imagine they were in the middle of some movie. They couldn't face the fact that sometimes things are ordinary—that not everybody gets to play Carnegie Hall.

  Cady knew she was irritable. She hadn't slept more than a few hours. She'd spent the night in prayer asking God to restore her sight so she could go home—not home to the fancy hotel suite and TV fame and the media executives who saw the Lord as one more celebrity to bring in the advertising dollars—but home to Boston, to her own parish, to the poor and sick and troubled who needed her.

  And she was ready to go: the sooner the better. She needed to get packed up and onto a plane to San Montinaro for Regina's funeral on Saturday—if only she could get hold of Flo, who hadn't yet returned her call—and by Monday morning she could he back at work in Boston. The assistant pastor who had been shouldering all the administrative duties at Third Baptist would he more than happy to see her, and Flo should be ecstatic.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by noise from downstairs.

  She hoped it was the doctor coming in, or at least Lupe or some of her staff. She didn't want it to be Tyrone.

  She'd heard him come back late last night, after moving Lady Fatima to Malibu, and, in all probability, after some sweet reconciliation. She honestly hoped the girl had forgiven him.

  Tyrone was a fool—thinking that moving his mistress out of the house could change Cady's opinion of his lifestyle. Of course he had a mistress. And of course she was young and wild. He was a phenomenally rich, fine-looking movie director. He could have any girl he wanted.

  That was what men like him wanted: a girl. Grown women were too much. Too much work. Too much knowledge. Too much flesh. Too much like Mama.

  But what kind of fool had she been to imagine Tyrone's interest in her could be romantic? Getting hit on the head must have affected more than her eyes.

  She picked up the telephone and punched the redial button. She needed Flo to pack up some of her winter things and bring them to the funeral. The fancy designer wardrobe wouldn't be much use in the Alps at this time of year.

  She also needed to ask Flo what she meant in her message about sending Regina's things. When Regina's mother died, Cady had kept a few of the nicer bits of furniture and knick-knacks out of the estate sale, in case Regina wanted them, but she hadn't been a bit interested. Everything was gone now in a year of church rummage sales.

  Flo still didn't answer her phone back in Boston.

  And here, Cady heard firm, quick footsteps coming up the stairs.

  “Doctor? Is that you?”

  She prayed that finally she would be able to see again.

  Chapter 20—Cady: Blind and Crippled and Old

  The bandages came off slowly, and a bit painfully. But Dr. Lillian's hands were warm and gentle as they peeled off the layers of gauze. Finally, Cady felt the doctor stand back and heard her take a breath.

  “Now?” Cady said.

  “Now,” said the doctor.

  Cady opened her eyes and saw—nothing. Blackness, the same as before.

  “Don't despair,” the doctor said. “These things take time.”

  Cady felt the disappointment like a blow. God was still punishing her. Why?

  “Time?” she said. “How much time? Weeks, months, years? Isn't there some kind of surgery, some drug…?”

  She heard more footsteps on the stairs. Tyrone was back. With Lady Fatima.

  “I do not want the damn Mercedes,” Fatima said. “I want the limo. And I need Jamal to drive me. Why can't I have the big-screen TV from the pool house? You never watch it anyway.”

  Dr. Lillian kept talking about patience—and there was that word, “time” again.

  “Time? Time is what I do not have, Doctor,” Cady said. “I have to be at a funeral in Europe in two days. I have work to do. I've wasted so much time already. I'm nearly fifty years old.” All the plans made during the long, sleepless night spiraled in her brain. “I've got to get back to Boston.”

  “Europe? Boston? You're not going across the street, Reverend Cady. You're not going across the room. Not for some time. There's no way to heal that stretched-out nerve except by staying still. I wouldn't have allowed you to be moved from the hospital, if Mr. Magee hadn't convinced me you'd be kept quieter here.”

  This last statement was directed away from Cady, and the doctor's tone was harsher.

  “Of course, Doctor. I promise,” Tyrone said. “She doesn't have to move at all. I can make sure the nurses keep her quiet.”

  “I don't need a bunch of control-freak nurses telling me what to do,” Cady said. “I'll stay on here on one condition…”

  “Cady, you'll stay here as long as you need to.”

  “On one condition, Tyrone Magee.” Cady was fed up with his phony, caring-male posing. If he'd been honest about having a mistress in the first place, she wouldn't have been put through all those humiliating emotions.

  “My condition is that you let this girl move back into the house.”

 
She savored his silent shock.

  “I can't believe you kicked a person out of her own home on account of me. When she was just back from a concert tour, too, it sounds like. I've been on campaign tours and I can tell you, if somebody had told me I couldn't go back to my home after that, I would be as upset as Lady Fatima.”

  “You know who I am?” Fatima's voice sounded muffled, perhaps by the door. “You see, Power,” Her voice came closer. “You see, she don't mind my music.”

  “Yes, child, I do mind your music. I mind it a lot,” Cady said. “It's one thing to disrespect your elders, but it's another to show contempt for the Lord. But my feelings about that, and my belief in the sanctity of marriage, don't give me the right to let you be thrown out of your home on my account. Tyrone—I mean Power—shouldn't have done it.”

  “You see! You see!” Fatima said.

  “But Babe…” Tyrone said.

  “Out, both of you,” said the doctor.

  ~

  By afternoon, Cady still hadn't reached Flo's Boston number. Maybe she'd gone ahead and flown to San Montinaro. That was just as well. It looked as if Cady wasn't going.

  “Looked as if”—so many expressions she said without thinking. Now she might never look at anything again. That was the real truth Dr. Lillian was skirting.

  The damage to the nerve could be permanent. Cady might be blind forever.

  Should she be learning Braille? Getting herself one of those dogs? Selling her car? She still had that Jack-In-The-Box feeling, but now the box was locked up tight.

  Locked up and trapped—in a luxurious trap, but still in a box, still in the dark.

  She heard a sharp knock at the door.

  “You gotta sign for this, Reverend Stanton.”

  More knocking.

  “You alive in there or what? I know Power says I'm not supposed to disturb you, but this guy wants you to sign for this package now or he's gonna take it back to the Post Office. I told him you blind and crippled, but he don't care. You can write, can't you?”

  Blind and crippled and old. Dear Lord.

  “Yes, Fatima,” Cady said. “Please come in. What is it I need to sign for?”

  “Express package. Return receipt required. From Boston, ma'am. Florence Adams.” The voice was male. Hurried. He put a paper and pencil in her hand. “I told your daughter she could sign —”

  “No way is she my mama.” Fatima gave a harsh laugh.

  Cady hastily scribbled something she hoped looked like her signature.

  “What's in the package?” she asked after the man had left.

  “You want me to open it? Oh, I guess you can't be around scissors and stuff, can you? You'd be a regular menace.” Fatima tore open paper and cardboard. “There's nothing in here but a bunch of kid's books and papers.”

  “Children's books?” This had to be the box of Regina's things she'd kept for her, but Cady couldn't remember what was in there.

  “Like diaries and stuff. Here's a pink plastic one, with a picture of this 'fifties white girl with a ponytail talking on the telephone. It looks real old.”

  Regina's diaries. Cady had found them in the attic when she cleaned out Astrid's house and brought them to the office along with Astrid's papers when she was settling her affairs. But Regina never seemed to want them back.

  “Open it. Is there a key?”

  Cady remembered how, all through Junior High, Regina used to keep the key to her diary on a chain of real gold she wore around her neck—like some magic talisman that kept anyone from knowing her true heart.

  “I don't see any. You want me to cut it with the scissors?”

  Cady hesitated. Even now such a desecration seemed like a violation of trust. But she could already hear the snip of the scissors—and Fatima's laugh as she began to read aloud:

  “April 10, 1962

  “1/2 grapefruit—35 calories

  “1 hard-boiled egg—78 calories

  “dry toast—80 calories

  “V8 juice—35 calories

  “Cottage cheese and pear salad—250 calories

  “2 devil dogs, 2 peanut butter cups, malted milk balls, chocolate milk —A Million Calories!!!!!

  “I wish I was dead.

  “Cady says I shouldn't say that or I might really die and it would be suicide and I'd go to Hell. But I told her Linda O'Reilly says everybody who's not Catholic is going to Hell no matter what.

  “Cady says if all the Baptists are going to Hell, Satan is not going to be having a good time.”

  Fatima stopped, laughing so hard she couldn't go on.

  The bedroom door opened. Tyrone. Cady could feel his presence with some sense that went beyond smell and sound. Her heart jumped around way more than it should. She wondered if Fatima's was doing the same thing.

  “Hey, LadyFat,” Tyrone said. “I told you not to disturb Reverend Stanton… What's going on here? What's in the box?”

  LadyFat. Had Tyrone really called the girl that?

  Chapter 21—Cady: LadyFat

  Tyrone came into Cady's room later that evening. He said he had to leave—he had a meeting with some people in New York. A great possible deal had come up; collaborating with a wildly famous actor-filmmaker on a big budget mainstream film.

  “Do you mind staying her on your own? I mean, with the staff and, um Fatima?”

  He still wouldn't admit he was sleeping with the girl.

  “It's fine,” Cady said. “She's a little rough around the edges, but I can see she has a good heart.”

  “I let her move in here after she got out of rehab,” he said. “But it's time for her to be on her own. She's come a long way. She was turning tricks on Sunset when I first cast her in Hey Mikey! Now she's clean and sober and has a major hit record. I know she comes on pretty raw, but she has some major gifts.”

  Cady could imagine what those gifts were. So Fatima was a street hooker he'd cast in one of his X-rated films. She'd heard about the Svengali side of Power Magee's reputation.

  “You've been real tolerant with her,” he said. “You are one gracious lady, Miss Cadillac.”

  He took her hand as he sat on the side of her bed. She thought it would be rude to pull away, although she was sure the electricity she felt in her fingertips must be giving off sparks. She had to stop feeling this way around him.

  “Gracious?” She mimicked him. “Isn't that an awfully Republican word for you?”

  He had to be the single best-smelling man in the world.

  All he did was laugh and come closer to kiss her on the cheek.

  “Be good,” he said. “No phone calls. Don't let anybody stress you out. I'll take care of everything when I get back. Do what Dr. Lillian says. She wants you back in the hospital for tests next week if your eyes haven't improved by then. She's going to fix you up, Babe, one way or another.”

  One way or another. That was his way of saying the damage to her eyes might be much more than a stretched nerve. Surgery might be required. Cutting. Inside her head. The thought terrified her.

  She had all weekend to think about that. And to think about Regina's funeral, which must be over now, since it was already Saturday evening in San Montinaro. She hoped Flo was there. She'd had no word from her yet.

  ~

  By noon on Saturday, Cady still hadn't heard from Flo.

  She was also ravenous. She'd had Lupe send up a little oat bran cereal with skimmed milk for breakfast and now she was starving for lunch. She missed the pills, no matter what Dr. Lillian said.

  The reminder of Regina's childish diet blues reminded her that she had to stay on a diet of her own, if she wasn't going to blimp out again.

  Fatima breezed into the room—a cloud of chlorine and Bain de Soleil. She must have come from the pool.

  “You want me to turn on the TV?” she said. “It's on CNN. The princess's funeral.”

  Before Cady could speak, she heard a blast of sound. The TV played somber, primitive music; bagpipes and hunting horns and ominous military drums. />
  “Oh, sh… oot, it's over,” Fatima said. “They're running the credits.” She clicked the TV off again. “Sorry. That music is way too white for me. Sounds like a bunch of farm animals on downers.”

  Cady couldn't help letting out a laugh.

  “Regina would have agreed with you. She used to say the San Montinaro hunting horn should be registered as a lethal weapon. They played them endlessly at her wedding. Too bad. She should have been sent off with Hungarian Gypsy violins or something gorgeous and romantic by Franz Liszt.”

  The thought triggered a long-dead memory.

  “Regina used to be crazy about Liszt, back when she played the piano. She was a fantastic pianist when we were growing up, but one day, she stopped—and never played another note, as far as I know. Nobody knew why. Her mother was a music teacher. It nearly broke her heart.”

  “Yeah, well, people usually got their reasons,” Fatima said. “Besides, anybody can play keyboards. Power says you used to play the violin. Now that takes some grit.”

  Cady had forgotten she was talking to a musician of sorts.

  “That was a long time ago,” she said. “But music was my ticket out of poverty. Yours too, I guess.” She smiled, summoning up her Christian charity. Fatima probably couldn't help what she was. Some of these girls were sent into prostitution by their own families.

  “Na. My ticket out was Power Magee. Lots of girls got more talent than me. Power liked my look. Luck, that's all. Like the lottery. Wasn't for Power, I'd probably be an O.D. by now. That or dead of some disease.”

  She bounced down on the bed.

  “I gotta thank you that you didn't let Power make me move out there to Malibu. The beach is nice, but they are so damn stuck up around there—all those skinny little white girls hunting for rich husbands. It would have been lonely as hell, um, heck. You know, Power didn't tell me until last night that you two were raised together—you and that princess. So I guess that box of papers can help with your grieving.”

  Grieving. Like it was her job or something. Maybe it was.

  “You want me to read some more?” Fatima said. “When my mama died, it helped me to go through her things. Until I did that, it was like I didn't really know she was dead. I kept expecting her to walk in on me. I mean, when she didn't show up and hit me upside the head for going through her stuff, I knew she was gone. Then I could miss her—miss the good parts, anyway.”