P.J. Morse - Clancy Parker 01 - Heavy Mental

by P. J. Morse

  “I love him! I need him!”

  “Get in line, sister,” I said, thinking of how eager Sabrina was to see him after Rosa died and how much I enjoyed talking to him at the coffee shop. Then I let go of Peggy’s middle and went for her throat. That slowed her down, but she was a fighter, and she had an advantage on me because I was trapped in her caftan.

  Then she shrieked, and the tent collapsed. The fabric pulled away from me, and I was left standing. I saw Hans, my mom’s massage therapist, holding a limp Peggy in his arms. He was smiling. “I neutralized her,” he said.

  Then, without any ceremony whatsoever, Hans dropped Peggy on the ground. He made a gesture with his large hands that made him seem half-man, half-lobster.

  Mom climbed out of the driver’s side of the car. “Good job, Hans!”

  “Are you some sort of German hitman?” I asked.

  “Massage doesn’t always feel good.” He shrugged. “Sometimes, it is a weapon.”

  Mom was clapping. “I always said you were my secret weapon, Hans!” Then she turned to me. “Honey, are you okay? What is going on?”

  Peggy’s eyes opened, and she sat upright. She stared at me and said, “He kissed me, too.”

  “What?” Mom asked. “Who kissed you?”

  In a steady voice, Peggy repeated her words. “Dr. Redburn kissed me, too.”

  Mom turned to me. “What does she mean by ‘too,’ honey?”

  I shuddered. “He said I was different,” I told Peggy.

  Peggy chuckled. “He told Sabrina she was different, too. I guess he says that to all the girls.”

  Then Peggy lunged for me, and Mom jumped into the fray, yanking at Peggy’s caftan and shouting, “That is the last time I invite you to my holiday party, Peggy Sanford! Don’t you touch my daughter!”

  Peggy reached out and grabbed my mother by the fingers. She twisted Mom’s hand, and Mom’s brittle bones crunched. Mom screamed. Scientists declared that redheads felt more pain than anyone with any other hair color, and I could believe it.

  I tugged Peggy’s hand off Mom’s, and Hans swooped in with another neutralizing death grip. That one knocked Peggy out cold. She slumped down on the ground, and Hans let her fall into somebody’s yard.

  Mom tried to kick Peggy and add insult to injury, but I held her back. “I’m not done with that bitch!” Mom declared.

  “No, no … you’re hurt,” Hans said. He took her hand and began to massage it carefully. I let Mom go, and she entered some sort of alpha state in which she became quite calm. This sedated state might have been what Sabrina and Peggy were looking for when they went to Dr. Redburn, only Hans’ fingers were far more effective than Dr. Redburn’s methods.

  Even though Mom’s fingers were twisted funny, Hans managed to get them into a relatively straight shape. “Two Tylenol!” he said. “You might need a splint. Do you want me to drive you back?”

  Mom nodded and said to Hans, “Go, go ahead. Take a taxi. Expense it. We can get home ourselves.”

  “Call me if you need anything,” Hans said. He walked away, as calm and peaceful as could be. Mom made a move toward her car, which she parked illegally so Hans could rescue me from Peggy and her caftan.

  “Uh, Mom?”

  “Yeah,” she turned around and was holding her fingers out. “Can you drive? It hurts.”

  “Sure. But what about Peggy?” I tipped my head toward the lump of fabric nearby.

  “A little wake-up call to reality will be useful to her. Besides, it’s Pacific Heights, not the Tenderloin. Let’s go and have something to eat. Esperanza is making lunch.”

  While Mom got in the passenger side of the car, I walked toward Peggy to make sure she was breathing. Her chest moved up and down slowly, as if she were in the middle of the world’s best nap. I wondered if she’d remember anything tomorrow.

  Mom rolled down her window and yelled, “Get in the car! I’m hungry!”

  Once I got in the car, Mom passed me the keys with her good hand and said, “I am sorry I ever gave Sabrina your business card. She never told me what she wanted, and I should have known better. Next time, I’ll just send you plain adultery cases—I promise!” She held up her hand, with one finger bent crooked. “Ow.”

  I started the car and drove a few blocks. Neither of us said anything until Mom said, “You’re crying. Oh, God. You didn’t have sex with that man, did you?”

  “No,” I replied. “He kissed me. I kissed him back, but then I got scared and ran. It didn’t feel right.”

  Mom smiled. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I have wondered before if I was a good mom.”

  “Ouch! You’re making me feel like a screw-up!” I hit a red light, and I thought a moment. “Okay. I am a screw-up. But still. Ouch!”

  “You’re taking it the wrong way,” Mom replied. “I meant that I obviously raised you to have some common sense. You liked him, but you knew it was wrong.” She smiled. “I’m proud of you.”

  “I feel like a fool,” I said, crying a little harder as the red light turned green and I hit the accelerator. “I got played.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Mom said. “You knew it was wrong before you found out Peggy had slobbered on him, too. God, what a disgusting thought. I’d love to brush out that rat’s nest hair of hers.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “It’s really ugly.”

  “Are you going to see him again?” Mom asked.

  That was a tough question. I didn’t want to see him again, but it was a possibility if I wanted to find the necklace.

  Then I remembered something important. When we kissed the second time, my jewelry remained undisturbed. And he had locked the door after we went into the office, so he could keep out his creepy receptionist/enforcer.

  So maybe Dr. Redburn didn’t steal Sabrina’s necklace. Despite that, I never wanted to see him again or listen to his old Hüsker Dü-knock-off music. If he was having romantic relationships with Sabrina and Peggy, what did that make me?

  Imagining Dr. Craig Redburn in my rearview mirror, I hit the accelerator.

  CHAPTER 26

  SPAGHETTI LEGS

  AFTER SOME QUICHE AND AN entire bottle of white wine, Mom sent me home in a taxi. As I traveled from Mom’s back to South Park, we got stuck in traffic because the baseball game had ended. The booze had loosened up my thinking, so I mulled over my ideas involving the case. It beat sulking over Dr. Redburn.

  Who took the necklace? Dr. Redburn didn’t seem likely—even though he may have been sucking face with his patients to get closer to their pocketbooks, he was with me at the Cozy Corner Café when Rosa was run over.

  As for Jorge the Receptionist, he could have left the office to run Rosa over, easy. But Dr. Redburn didn’t seem to trust the guy and locked him out of the room with patients. Then again, the receptionist could have seen the necklace and snatched it before Sabrina went into Dr. Redburn’s office.

  And why would someone kill Rosa? Maybe it was because she meant well. With her position in the household and the concern she expressed over Sabrina’s sanity, it made sense that Rosa would have returned the necklace to Sabrina if she found it. If Rosa were about to blow the whistle on a thief, that might have been reason enough to run her over with a car. Or, maybe Rosa just couldn’t fight temptation and took the necklace herself, and someone else in the house decided to take it back with force. Sabrina said that the maids were vanishing, so maybe Rosa wasn’t the first maid in the Buckner household to get into that kind of trouble.

  That brought me to Mr. Buckner. Where did he fit in with all of this? He was the one who wanted me to check out Dr. Redburn. I had wondered from the start if Mr. Buckner had hired me to keep tabs on his wife, not because he was really worried about her but because he would know where and when his wife lost the necklace.

  The drive home stretched over an hour. By the time I got to South Park, I was practically sober. After getting out of the cab, I saw Harold’s lawn chair and his bucket of cheese nibs open, but no Harold. Harold alwa
ys covered the cheese nibs if he went inside for more beer. He didn’t like the nibs to get street grit on them. Hoping he was all right, I ran inside the house.

  I found Harold standing by the short sofa outside his bedroom door, fanning a large red hat over Sabrina Norton Buckner, who was passed out. Her long legs were draped over the sofa’s armrest, like spaghetti dribbling over the edge of a colander.

  I reached for the Crackberry, already mentally dialing 9-1-1. “Is she all right?”

  Harold kept waving the hat over Sabrina’s face. He had already poured her a glass of water and pulled his trusty bag of tater tots from the freezer. He tried to find the right words to explain the situation. “She was asking for you, and then she just fell over. I dragged her inside. It just … happened.”

  I moved Harold aside slightly so I could get a better look at my client. I leaned in and gently pushed back Sabrina’s bangs, which concealed a dark purple bruise staining the left side of her forehead. I asked Harold, “Did she say someone hit her?”

  Harold shook his head no and pressed the bag of tater tots to Sabrina’s bruise.

  “Did she hit her head when she fell? When you brought her inside?” I asked.

  Harold gasped. “No! I was worried about her legs being scraped when I pulled her up the stairs. I was careful with her head.” I looked and, sure enough, Sabrina had a few minor scratches on her legs.

  “Someone attacked her! I’m calling the police!” I punched in the “9,” but Sabrina began to stir.

  “Wait! Wait!” she moaned. Then she started chewing on her lip, as if she didn’t know what to say.

  “Who did this to you?” I asked. “Peggy?” If Peggy attacked me after a liaison with her beloved Dr. Redburn, then maybe she decided to track down another rival for his affections.

  But Sabrina said, “I don’t know. I don’t know who did it. I wanted to check on your progress. So I pulled up in your neighborhood. I got out of the car, my head hurt and I passed out.”

  I did the math in my head. Did Peggy have enough time to get from Pacific Heights to South Park? And could she have made it after the condition Hans left her in? Then there was the game traffic. “Harold, did you see a woman wearing what looked like a pink circus tent?”

  “No. I would have remembered that.” Then he added, “I was reading, and then I heard a thump. I thought it was raccoons getting in the trash cans again, but it turned out to be your client. So I dragged her inside.”

  “You didn’t see anything?” I asked Harold.

  “Just this lady by the trash cans.”

  I dredged up my memories of Peggy from the morning. “Were you all wrapped up in fabric? Did everything smell like baby powder when they punched you?”

  “They didn’t punch me,” Sabrina replied. “The only thing I smelled was the garbage by the street, and then something hard and cold hit me in the head.” She blinked, and then she said, “My purse? Where is my purse?”

  “What’s it look like?” I asked.

  “A tan clutch,” she said. “Small.”

  I ran outside to the trash cans. I looked among them and in them. A tan clutch was resting on a pizza box.

  By the time I returned with the clutch, Sabrina had rolled over and was sitting up. Her head was in her hands. I handed her the clutch and asked, “Is anything missing?”

  Sabrina raised her head and dug through the clutch. I heard keys jingling. “No. Everything’s still there.” Then she looked up at me. “Are you any closer to finding my necklace?”

  “No,” I replied. “Now, do you need a doctor?”

  “No,” Sabrina said, with finality. “I’m paying you good money. If you can’t handle this, I’ll find someone else.”

  I decided to tell her everything. “I went to see Dr. Redburn,” I said. “I’m pretty sure he didn’t steal the necklace. He’s too busy making out with his patients. I found out that he kissed Peggy. She told me that Dr. Redburn kissed you, too.”

  Sabrina’s eyes flashed, and she trained her eyes on the front door. “Are you making assumptions about me?”

  Harold inserted his opinion. “Oh, lady, I already made assumptions about you.”

  “That’s it! You’re fired!” Sabrina tried to leave, but she fell back over on the couch.

  I turned to Harold. “Thank you for helping her. You might want to leave now. I’ll explain everything later.”

  “This is weird,” he muttered as he walked out the door and back to his lawn chair.

  Then it was time for my confrontation with the client. “Sabrina, do you remember the warning I gave you when you hired me?” I put my hands on my hips as if I were scolding a child.

  Sabrina gave me the look of sheer hate that children give their babysitters and nannies. She spat out, “You might see me in strange times and in strange locations.”

  I scowled. I remained standing up to make perfectly clear to Sabrina who was in charge. “Look, what you do with your psychiatrist is your business. But it seems that you two have more than the typical doctor-patient relationship. Did you lie to me when I asked if you were having an affair with Dr. Redburn? How am I supposed to believe anything else you say?”

  Looking down, Sabrina said, “It’s not like an affair. It’s not tawdry like that. He fills a gap in my life.”

  I was tempted to make a joke about which gap Dr. Redburn filled. Instead, I asked, “Will Dr. Redburn break it off if the necklace is gone for good?”

  “Yes.” Now Sabrina’s voice became high. “I need to see him! And it’s not what you think! He really makes me better. If I miss a treatment, I start losing things. I am much more aware after I see him. You have to believe me! I’m going to lose something here … I just know it … with Rosa gone, everything will disappear. Rosa found everything for me. Maybe she found the necklace, but there’s no way of knowing now …”

  I remembered how Rosa said Sabrina lost her head. “So, Rosa and the treatment got your head on straight?” I asked.

  “Yes. I’m sorry I yelled at you. You and Dr. Redburn are all I have now.”

  “Not your husband?” I asked.

  “He’s busy,” Sabrina sighed. “He loves UC Sacramento more than me.”

  “Well, that’s as good a reason as any for sleeping with your psychiatrist,” I said.

  Sabrina’s face contorted with grief. “You don’t think Dr. Redburn stole the necklace?”

  “Actually,” I replied, “I don’t. I put some bait in my bag for today’s visit, and he didn’t touch it. But some of the people around him are suspects. So I have to know everything. When did you start seeing him?”

  Sabrina covered her eyes. “A year ago. I had an accident, and then I began losing things.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “I hurt my back when a horse bucked me off and trampled me. It was terrifying. When I got out of the hospital, they just kept giving me pills. Pills and pills. And it still hurt, and I had nightmares, but no one really seemed to care.”

  I took that as a dig at her absentee husband. I continued, “Okay. Who recommended Dr. Redburn to you?”

  “Peggy,” Sabrina says. “You should have seen what she was like after she came back from India. She was a zombie, and the doctor brought her back to life.”

  I started pacing across Harold’s floor. I wanted to joke, “Dr. Redburn just made Peggy into another monster,” but I thought better of it. Instead, I asked, “Peggy was in the office the day you brought the necklace in, right? She’s pretty jealous of the time you spend with Dr. Redburn. Do you think she took it?”

  Sabrina mulled that one over. “Perhaps. But it’s hard to miss Peggy.”

  That was true. Sabrina wasn’t the most observant person in the world, but she had to have noticed Peggy’s outfits. Then I thought of Jorge the Receptionist. “But there’s a good chance it was someone in his office. I need to know how you wound up in that office and what they know about you. Someone Dr. Redburn knows might have taken it. Maybe one of his employees.�
�

  “You mean the receptionist? Jorge? Oh, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He is so sweet!”

  “He’s sweet?” I asked. The same guy who sneaky-flicked me off?

  Sabrina’s eyes showed a little life. “Yes! He always makes sure I’m first in line for appointments. He even got me flowers on my birthday! Oh, I hope it isn’t him …”

  That was interesting. I had crossed Jorge off my list because Dr. Redburn had started locking Jorge out of his office. Now Jorge the receptionist was moving higher on my suspect list just for ingratiating himself with my client. “Did Jorge have access to the doctor’s office?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Sabrina replied. “He did. I left a coat in the office once, in the evening, and he let me in to get it. He even stayed after closing until I could get there.”

  I scratched my head. Either Dr. Redburn was locking his door for no reason since Jorge already had the key or he had recently changed the locks.

  There was also one other thing that struck me about the coat. I said, “Sabrina, I am assuming that everything you tell me is true. However, you said you don’t lose things, when it is obvious that you do. You just said you left a coat behind in the doctor’s office.”

  Sabrina groaned. “Please stop. It’s making my head hurt more.”

  I continued, “Every lie you tell is going to keep me from finding that necklace and finding out what happened to Rosa. I mean it. Don’t lie, or I will be off this case. Your doctor tried to seduce me, Rosa is dead, and I’m already fed up. Who do you think would have a reason to hit you in the head just now?”

  “Peggy,” Sabrina replied. “Definitely. My appointments were cutting into hers.” Then she laughed a little. “And, if I’m not supposed to lie, then I should say my husband. He doesn’t like me all that much anymore. He calls me a ‘space case’ and says I’m so dumb we need to set up a ‘Lost and Found’ box in our house.”

  “That’s a dick thing to say,” I replied.

  “I have done my best to defend him with all the UC … incidents, but I guess I’m not doing well enough.”