I jumped a little when I caught sight of him in the door. I hadn’t heard him come up, didn’t know how long he’d been standing there, watching. His slow, sexy smile crinkled his eyes attractively, though, and I couldn’t discern whether my nervousness was due to my suspicions or because I wanted to leap on him like a wild cat on spring meat. My plan threatened to overtake me in ways I hadn’t entirely foreseen.
“Do you have plans for lunch?” he asked.
“Um,” I said, ever the sophisticate.
The crinkles deepened. “How about The Old Mill at 12:30?”
“I’ll meet you there.”
He retired to his office, leaving me shaking and Mary Kate wide-eyed. Plan A was now in motion.
And then it wasn’t.
When Lisa pried the details out of Mary Kate—which, upon Lisa’s return from the store, she accomplished by saying “Hi, what’s new?”—the word that lunch was at The Old Mill spread as quickly as Lisa could navigate the hallways. She made reservations for eight. Nonsmoking.
Mary Kate and Lisa made a game out of keeping Marshall and me apart. They each plunked down on either side of him, smiling gleefully, giving him no choice but to concede defeat and smile back. The party atmosphere continued, though, heightened by the opportunity to prank the boss. He couldn’t very well complain.
The intrusion suited my purposes, too. I needed time to collect my thoughts and remind myself that neither crinkly eyes nor round, firm buttocks were an adequate character reference in a murder investigation. After all, cute buttocks had gotten me in trouble before.
Motion, in the form of a frenetically waving arm, grabbed my attention. Across the restaurant, Paul sat all by himself, an open book propped at his elbow. Even though the last time I’d seen him had been an exercise in humiliation, he beamed at me like he’d just opened a Christmas present. Must be the sweater.
I waved—slightly—and he came bounding over like a puppy let off his leash. Next to me, Mary Kate gaped at the sight of yet another suitor. I couldn’t blame her. I felt like Scarlett O’Hara juggling beaus at the barbecue. Flushing, I made stilted introductions, hoping nobody noticed that I left off his last name or that I refrained from labeling him a friend. Or an acquaintance. Or anything else that might indicate any sort of connection whatsoever. Paul didn’t notice either.
Scared to death that he would say something about AA, I stood and tried to shoo him back to his own table. It almost worked until Paul zeroed in on Mary Kate, who was still staring.
“Oh, hey! Don’t I know you? You’re in Schneider’s class, right? Did you get that paper turned in?”
Mary Kate flushed and nodded. For a second, I considered matchmaking. Then I remembered about procreation and was suddenly remotivated to get Paul back to his green salad and iced tea. I managed to get him resettled just as our order came.
I did make sure to say good-bye before leaving, trying to ignore his sad eyes. I’d have to make it up by sitting next to him at a meeting.
Back at the office, things settled into a routine. Bob gave up on my sweater, closing himself in his office, presumably to teleconference with some clients. Either the light on the console unit was broke or “teleconference” meant taking a nap in Bob-speak.
Marshall picked up some of the slack by joining the troops sorting records in the front office. Such a helpful guy. Lisa’s eyes twinkled, but she wasn’t foolish enough to refuse the help. We had a full roster of clients scheduled for next week and a mountain of files left to reorganize. Fun time was over.
Marshall worked steadily for an hour and a half before taking a break. He returned from the lunch room carrying two cups of coffee, bringing me one. Cream and two sugars, just the way I liked it.
The file room, about the size of a large walk-in closet, already felt cramped with the rows of shelving covering each wall and the stacks and stacks of files waiting to be replaced. Marshall’s presence made it even more confining. Made my heart thud erratically, too. Whether killer or lover, I was certainly getting an aerobic workout.
“How are you holding up?” he asked. “Have you heard from the police since yesterday?”
“Not really. I guess now that they checked me out, they know there isn’t anything to find.” Mary Kate walked in with an armful of recompiled records. “Now that everything is over, I feel like I can move on.”
Mary Kate stood holding the files, a blank look on her face, searching for a place to set them down.
“Here, I’ve got those.” Marshall took the pile, setting them on top of a two-foot high stack. She looked like she wanted to hang around, but the boss’s nod of dismissal sent her from the room.
Turning back to me, he said, “Is everything over?”
“Of course, it’s not. I don’t mean to sound naïve. But I don’t have to worry about Wayne anymore, the licensing board cleared me, and the police are focusing on finding the killer rather than on me. I’m ready for good news.”
“I don’t blame you. You’ve had a long haul. I really—”
“Marshall, telephone!” Lisa interrupted. “It’s corporate.”
Sighing, he turned to go. Looking over his shoulder, he tipped me a wink. “Duty calls.”
He walked back to his office and Lisa stuck her head around the corner. Waving her hand in front of her face, she said, “Whew! It’s steamy in here.”
“Don’t be silly. He’s just concerned and checking up on me.”
“Checking you out, you mean. But enough about that, looky here.” She waved a glossy magazine so fast the colors blurred. Despite that, I knew what it was.
“Where did you find it?”
“Buried under mounds of stupid paper. Want another peek?”
I almost caved in, but held strong. I needed to keep focused; lusting over dangly pirate parts wouldn’t help. Interesting, but not helpful.
Lisa laughed out loud. “Don’t want to be disappointed by the real thing, huh?”
Pulling my shoe off, I chucked it at her head. She was too quick, dancing over to her desk, stuffing her cherished treasure back in its bottom drawer.
“Are you sure it’ll be safe there?” I asked.
“Why? You planning on taking it home tonight, or you got a back-up plan?” She waggled her hips in a bump-and-grind, and I reached for my other shoe.
Strangely, given Robert’s murder and my efforts to seduce a possible stone-cold killer, it was a fun day.
Which is why finding the next sonnet wasn’t as upsetting as I would’ve imagined.
CHAPTER FORTY
Sometime in the night, a plastic baggie filled with brown mystery goo had been shoved under the driver’s side windshield wiper of my Focus. A folded sheet of paper promised more psychotic verbiage, but since no knife materialized, I called Blodgett before touching anything else.
Well, okay. I searched the car, the glove box, the trunk, and the surrounding areas for the murder weapon, but I did not touch the baggie. It was gross.
Besides, I was wearing a cute, 1950s-style sundress with a full skirt. The blue floral made my usually flat grey eyes hint blue. Or so I’d been told. I’d paid a ridiculous amount for the shoes, but the matching shade and ankle-strap bows were too perfect. Going for broke, I’d wrestled my hair into a French twist, which was sure to give me a headache by noon. Hopefully, I wouldn’t end up smelling like the contents of the baggie.
Apparently there were matters of higher priority than poop-on-a-windshield; I was told not to expect Blodgett for about an hour. I translated that to mean “sometime before nightfall” and suggested he meet me at the clinic.
The poop traveled well.
When I got to work, I left it in situ—if anyone wanted to steal it off my hood, they were welcome to it—and walked inside. Everyone was already hard at it, and for the first time, progress was noticeable. Even Bob looked busy. In his case, it was a burst that only lasted forty minutes, but it added to the general feeling of accomplishment.
In contrast, Mary Kate looked st
ressed. Dark circles marred the pale skin under her eyes, and angry, red half-moons ringed her fingertips where she’d gnawed the nails to the quick. Understandable given all the extra hours she’d been putting in during finals’ week. I felt bad, though, because I knew she was also stewing about her career direction, and I hadn’t been very sympathetic. Technically, I’d been replaced as her internship mentor precisely because I couldn’t give her the attention she needed. But I still felt guilty.
I promised myself I’d give her a pep talk later today. With Mary Kate, a little attention went a long way.
Blodgett showed up at the clinic around 10:00. It was a half-hour later than he’d said, but a whole lot earlier than I’d expected. His normally hangdog expression brightened noticeably at the sight of my sundress snapping crisply in the breeze. A particularly wayward gust almost shifted me from “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” Audrey to Marilyn over the subway grate. At the sight of the vile baggie, however, he sobered up.
“All the other stuff you got, and this is one you decide to call me about?” Strictly speaking, it was a question, but it didn’t have that little lilt at the end that questions usually have. In fact, Blodgett’s voice was distinctly lacking in lilt this morning. Poop in a baggie will do that.
Snapping on a pair of latex gloves, he pulled the wiper blade up. With pinchy-fingers and an “ick” face, he carefully tugged the baggie’s seal open, and picked the paper out. A noxious whiff confirmed our suspicions of the brown mess; we groaned in stereo. It was nice to bond.
Instead of unfolding it on my car—an act of kindness I wouldn’t forget—Blodgett knelt on the blacktop, using a twig to hold the paper from blowing away. Of course, it was another sonnet. That was the first thing I noticed. Knowing Blodgett wouldn’t let me handle the original, I got a pad of paper out of my car and copied it out by hand.
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action: and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
Mad in pursuit and in possession so:
Had, having, and in quest to have extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads me to this hell.
The second thing I noticed was the reddish-brown smudges staining the paper. It didn’t look like poop.
“Is that…?”
“Yeah,” Blodgett said. “That’s blood. I’ll have to test it to confirm, but, yeah. And see here?” He pointed at one of the smudges, darker than the rest, more defined.
“What is that?” I asked.
“I could be wrong, but I think that’s an imprint of a knife. Hopefully, the knife. I think the killer’s doin’ a little Show-and-Tell. We’ll see.” He pulled a paper bag out of his jacket pocket, slid the sonnet in, and carried both bags over to his car. Shaking his head in disgust, he popped the trunk, stowing the stinky baggie in the back. The paper bag got the primo spot next to Blodgett on the passenger seat. Leaving the door ajar, he sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, lost in thought.
“Do you believe me?” I blurted, yanking him out of his reverie. I wanted to pull the words back as soon as they cleared my lips.
Watching his carefully expressionless face, I decided he was going to leave me hanging.
“I don’t believe anybody,” he finally said. Then turning away and starting the car, he continued, “But you don’t look like the type to take a crap in a baggie.”
I teared up, smiling a wobbly “thanks” when he glanced back.
“Don’t do that. I’m still going to test your DNA, see if it matches.” He slammed the car door. I stepped back to keep my toes from getting run over as he roared away.
I pulled a Bob, hiding out in my office, mulling over the copy of the latest literary offering. Or “psycho-babble,” as I called it. I didn’t have my book on Shakespeare, so I Googled the first line. About twenty thousand hits popped up for “Sonnet 129.” Apparently, this was one of Shakespeare’s more famous sonnets, probably because it was as wacky as a fly swatter. Professionally speaking. The perception of sexual desire, its effect on the writer, and the murderous rage it induced frightened the crap out of me. It described a person driven insane by his desire, writhing and twisting from the poisonous “bait” presumably laid by the object of his desires. Purposefully trapped, left in “hell.”
Not a lot of warm, snuggly feelings about love for this guy, that’s for sure. This person would kill again. That, also, was certain.
The black eye dots came out to dance again, and just to spice things up I started to hyperventilate. New twist on old panic. Needing a distraction, I called Mary Kate in to my office to see what was going on with her. She was the next best thing to a client, and her happiness at the invitation was balm on my psyche.
“So, you know Paul Grisko?” she asked, after settling herself in her usual spot.
“Kind of. You two had a class together, huh?”
“Yeah. Ethics. What a bore.”
I smiled, shaking my head. That explained her lackadaisical attitude about confidentiality. “Mary Kate—”
“I know, I know. But Schneider talks really, really slow and it puts me to sleep. Anyway, it was a pretty easy class for me, since I’ve been working here. I got a lot of questions from the others about what it’s like in the real world.” Mary Kate’s fingers twitched quote signs over her last words. I could imagine the cache that working in a mental health clinic garnered for her among her classmates. With her basketful of insecurities, I guessed that Mary Kate had pumped up the prestige of her position, too. “I was able to tell them about HPPA and client rights and documentation and all that. I even brought in one of our Mental Status checklists.”
Something was tickling my brain. I frowned. “You did?”
“Don’t worry. It was a blank.”
So was my mind. I let it be, knowing it would come to me if I didn’t chase it, like love, presumably.
“Have you thought more about your career path?” I asked. “You’ve seemed kind of distracted lately.”
Her fingers went to her mouth. “Not really. I’ve got a lot going on. I’m just going to wait and see.”
I nodded helpfully, but since Mary Kate didn’t seem inclined to expand, I couldn’t push her. She wasn’t a client. She wasn’t my responsibility. “Well, if there’s anything I can do…” I inched forward on my chair, secretly relieved, ready to get back to the filing.
“Well, there is one thing,” she said. I sat back. “You know how Hannah had to turn in my progress report to my adviser? I’m not really happy with her review.”
“Actually, since you spent the majority of your internship under my supervision, I did most of the review. Hannah only added to it. Is there something in particular that concerned you?” I’d filled it out as fairly as I could, listing her strengths as well as the issues that needed continued attention.
“No, your part was great! I know I need to work on boundaries. I think you really nailed it. I just don’t feel like I really connected with Hannah. Maybe she resented that.”
I didn’t think Hannah was that sensitive, but Mary Kate was right in that they didn’t connect. “Would you like me to speak to her?” Reluctance made my face squinch up.
“No. Never mind. It’s something I need to work out myself. I just really appreciate being able to talk to you about it. It helps.”
We said some awkward good-bye things, which really didn’t make sense because we still had several hours of filing to do. Maybe she was as distracted as I was. That brain tickle still bugged me.
As I bu
ried myself in the file room, I tried going over what Mary Kate and I had been talking about when the tickle commenced tickling. Ethics. Her teacher. Paul. Client rights.
Oh.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I stuck my head around the corner. Mary Kate was back at work, moving quicker. More cheerfully. Maybe our talk had helped.
“What is Paul going to school for?” I asked.
Mary Kate jumped a little, as if coming out of a daydream. “Social work, I think. Why?”
“Oh, just curious. I can’t quite picture him as a social worker, I guess.”
Or as a murderer, but the possibility raised itself again. Paul knew about client rights, records protocols, and confidentiality issues. Although it was a long shot, he could have reasoned the same way I had about where to hide the knife. Ransacking the entire clinic indicated that Shakespeare hadn’t been privy to my many trips to the file room.
Paul had certainly been threatened and publicly humiliated by both Wayne and Robert. They’d died right after.
The way they had died didn’t rule Paul out, either. Scrawny and timid, the only hope he had of overpowering a bully like Wayne or a semi-athlete like Robert would be from a distance. A shotgun would work nicely. And the stab through the heart was both cowardly and an indication of personal rage.
Paul was back on the list.
I needed to know more about Paul: where he lived and worked, his hobbies, his habits. Maybe I’d wear my coral sweater to the next meeting. It wouldn’t take much.
But that didn’t mean Marshall was off the hook, either. And I hadn’t worn my cleavage-dipping, repressed Donna Reed outfit for nothing. I needed to get back to the cabin where I could search for the knife and check out his Shakespeare collection.
The Enemy We Know (Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mystery) Page 24
