Rohn Federbush - Sally Bianco 03 - The Recorder's Way

by Rohn Federbush

  “Has Sally Bianco eaten?” Mother Superior asked.

  “Which one is she?” All the short old women looked alike to Marilyn.

  “White haired, sprightly. She’s a detective from Ann Arbor. You might want to tell her your story about the St. Anthony’s Hospital slip-up.”

  Marilyn tried to understand how Mother Superior pulled off looking so elegant, regal even. Her light blue blouse hung loosely over an ankle-length white linen skirt. Her short ash-blonde hair was tucked neatly behind her ears. Her bangs were not luxurious. No jewelry was in evidence, except for the cross, not even earrings. Her shoes were sensible sandals. Yet the gracefulness of her stance, walk and gestures made you wonder if a diamond-studded mother had raised her on a palatial estate. Marilyn nursed a comforting anti-thesis. Maybe Sister James Marine was the poised but estranged daughter of a mobster. “Mrs. Bianco won’t be interested in something from way back in 1990.”

  “She might be. Didn’t you say three patients died? Justice will be served.”

  As if summoned, Sally Bianco squinted at the food layout after acknowledging their presence with a nod. She placed a few cherry tomatoes, a boiled egg, and three pieces of Marilyn’s coveted chicken on her plate before adding a salmon roll-up.

  Marilyn compared her to Sister James Marine as the two women chatted. Mrs. Bianco was much older, but her frumpiness had nothing to do with age. She wore a navy-blue, shapeless sweatshirt over a pair of black jeans. Her sparse white hair sort of flew around her head. She walked in a fog. As if to recall herself to the real world, she would peer jerkily at objects like the table before setting her tray down with a bang, or her chair previous to moving it closer to the table. If you didn’t know better, you would think she was either blind, or drunk.

  Marilyn’s own white kitchen outfit covered up quite a few temporary lumps of fat. The apron was a godsend. She didn’t bother to tie the strings, so the wide bib and skirt hung straight down from her neck. She looked more like a nun than the sisters did in their modern clothes. She even folded her hands under the apron, resting them comfortably on her hungry stomach.

  Mother Superior nudged her, affectionately. “Fill up your tray now and go join Mrs. Bianco.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  Earlier on the First Sunday in May, 2008

  Adrian Convent

  The retreat began well enough for Sally Bianco. A lanky valet in a blinding white shirt and a green tie asked for her Honda’s keys. Stiff blond spikes of hair enhanced his cherub face.

  The convent’s double oak doors encased etched and beveled glass panels. The entranceway’s terrazzo floor welcomed Sally to St. Anthony’s Convent. According to the convent’s smiling guide, a defrocked Dominican sister, the large room to the left of the lobby served as a funeral parlor. The opposite room furnished with a mammoth table and high-backed chairs was the priests’ dining room. Only the prettiest and youngest nuns served food to the priests. All that sort of thing changed in the Sixties, when reason allowed women a few rights even if they weren’t deemed equal enough to join the priesthood.

  The sleeping rooms in the new wing were as modern as the media station in the middle of the ancient conference room. The newly built church had the pews arranged in a semi-circle around a central altar. A library transformed the older edifice. Three sides of the old house of worship’s balcony were tiered with bookshelves. Each wall on the main floor between the stained-glass windows held religious books. Attached ladders reached the uppermost shelves.

  Sally’s weekend retreat had promised peace and guidance. Five of the AA group of twenty admitted to receiving no particular message from their Higher Power during the careful stepping of the flagstones of the labyrinth’s garden walk. The tour book said the path, patterned after one in Notre Dame Cathedral, represented a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

  Sally was more interested in the placement of purses and water bottles on the lawn and benches surrounding the labyrinth than any inspired chatter in her conscious mind. Each turn in the path required letting her purse become temporarily out of sight. Her years as a practicing detective resulted in a quandary, whether to trust in the honesty of her fellow travelers or to be discreetly aware of her belongings. They tyranny of her training negated the possibility of making any friendships among the attendees. Sally lost her struggle with the AA slogan, ‘Trust to be trusted.’

  After spending too much time and money in the gift shop, Sally hurried to her room to drop off her purchases of encouraging religious books. The digital clock above the dresser read ‘12:48.’ She grabbed her keys and sprinted through the basement passages. The nuns might already be clearing away the retreat’s luncheon.

  “Just in time,” Sister James Marine said, as Sally picked out a clean food tray.

  “Time is the only terror in the world.” She smiled at Mother Superior. “I need to write a longer amends list before my time runs out.”

  The only waitress on duty smiled. A yellow hound sitting near the young woman’s feet eyed Sally’s progress down the food line. The server helpfully pulled the coffee urn toward Sally’s cup. Black, bitter-smelling liquid bubbled out.

  Sally was determined to make at least one acquaintance on her last day in the peaceful Adrian countryside. Getting older included friends dying off faster than she could replace them. In the seating area of the cafeteria, one luncheon straggler shared a table littered with dirty dishes on green and gray food trays. Sally waffled against her best intentions and chose a germ-free table near the window facing the labyrinth. As Sally set her luncheon tray down on the isolated table, the waitress from the buffet joined her with a tray positively overflowing with food.

  “I’m Marilyn.” She pulled a chair up and commanded her dog to sit behind her.

  Sally refrained from gathering up her things and moving to another table. Here, obviously, was a member of Overeaters’ Anonymous, forty pounds overweight, who needed a friendly chat. “What are your plans for the day?”

  “Another drag.” Marilyn shoved food into her mouth and began to chew.

  “If Mother Superior agrees, would you like a drive in the country? Waterloo is a lovely stretch of woodlands north of I-94. The farmers gave the land to Roosevelt during the Depression to pay their taxes. They thought the lakes and hills un-farmable.”

  Marilyn’s manners included waiting until her mouth was almost empty to ask, “Can Rufus come, too?”

  “If you keep him on a leash. I think there are rules.” Sally noticed Marilyn’s formidable frown. “Waterloo stretches twenty miles long and eight miles wide. We might never find poor Rufus again if he takes after a rabbit or a deer.”

  Rufus heard his name and slunk from behind Marilyn’s chair to nudge Sally’s hand with his wet nose. Marilyn finished off the last of her roll-up sandwich in one chomp followed by the rest of her coffee. “Could we leave right after lunch? I could get out of cleaning up for once.”

  “Absolutely.” Why shouldn’t the poor girl get a break from her chores?

  “Mother Superior told me you were a detective?” Sally nodded as Marilyn continued. “When I worked at the University Hospital in Ann Arbor, one of the doctors, who was a worse addict than me, told me a story about St. Anthony’s Hospital. In 1990, there were three questionable deaths. Why do rich doctors get away with murder and I can’t cross the street without getting arrested?”

  “There is no statute of limitations on murder. Were the doctors from St. Anthony’s or the university?”

  “The university. They were consulting. St. Anthony’s was trying to save money and stopped using them. After the patients died, the dippy guys were reinstated.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  When Sally knocked on Mother Superior’s office door, she hoped the nun wouldn’t notice her mouth was watering from her zeal to question Marilyn about the suspected St. Anthony’s Hospital murders. “The countryside is soothing. Waterloo is lovely this time of year. We’ll be back by four o’clock.”

  “Weekends ar
e hard on the live-in staff.” Sister James Marine offered. “Could you pick up a few videos in town? I’ll have someone return them on Monday.”

  Back in her room, Sally zipped up her hooded rain jacket before she dialed The Firm, the detective agency she still moonlighted for, hoping to reach Max or Helen. The phone rang too long. Sure enough, The Firm’s answering machine pleaded for her message. Sally stalled coming up with the correct wording, hung up and dialed again. “I’ve found a case. St. Anthony’s Hospital allowed three patients to die in 1990. See you tomorrow afternoon, about two. We need to find records of the deaths.”

  Chapter One

  “A river of blood…” The Egyptian Plagues

  Ann Arbor, 2008

  First Monday in May

  On the corner of Huron and Division, the smell of gasoline greeted Helen Costello each morning when she opened the front door of the detective agency because petrol fumes permeated the concrete walls of the converted service station. Helen’s father, Andrew, greeted her at The Firm’s reception desk. “Did your mother pick out your suit?”

  Helen brushed her hip, letting her fingers linger on the red silk. “She thought I should wear something for spring.”

  They both noticed a silver Mercedes stop out front to deliver Helen’s partner, Max Hunt. Helen caught a glimpse of the driver’s shoulder-length blonde hair. Once inside, Max found it necessary to comment on Helen’s clothing selection, too. “Isn’t red for fall?”

  “Pinks spring from a core of red.” Andrew leafed through the appointment calendar.

  “Mother said we should feel our blood thinning with the warmer weather.”

  Max scuffed his shoe on the carpeting. “Is that why the carpets are red, for all the blood-letting work we do?”

  Andrew roared. “Egad! Not murder. Murder most foul!”

  Helen pretended to strangle Max. The rims of his ears reddened. She let go of him, backing up to see if the stained-glass lamps had shed the rosy glow. No. Max’s ears were definitely blushing. Helen changed the subject. “Two different groups of mothers in Burns Park were airing out their children.”

  “Like pillows.” Andrew said.

  “Beat them soundly, did they?” Max poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “Never.” Andrew said, seriously. “Never teach hitting.”

  Helen wished she could hide her reactions to Max’s teasing under her hair. Instead, she touched her flaming cheeks. Yep, they were telling more than she intended. Max obviously wasn’t interested in hearing about the darling babies she’d seen toddling down the sidewalk. The mothers were saints of patience as the children repeatedly examined some treasure on the sidewalk or in the neighbors’ yards. Helen attempted to change the direction of the conversation, again. “Mother has an entire album of Ann Arbor’s spring gardens.”

  “I was with her when she accosted the gardeners,” Andrew said.

  “What did they do to stop her?” Max asked. “Throw petals?”

  “They concluded she was odd.” Andrew smoothed down a message pad. “I tried to encourage her to join a garden club.”

  “Too much work?” Max asked.

  Helen watched her father shake his head. “Let’s get to work.”

  Her father’s off-hand comments made Helen wonder for the hundredth time why she still lived at home. Truthfully, she couldn’t imagine what would fill her mother’s day if she didn’t cook, clean, and fold laundry for her only child. Unlike Helen’s gregarious father, her mother lived the friendless life of a shy hermit.

  Nevertheless, Helen prayed each morning for the strength and courage to leave their home in Burns Park. When she drove her father’s antique Oldsmobile to work, the pink-blossomed trees along the way triggered the thought. She was like a fledgling bird, not ready to be kicked out of the nest into some man’s marital bed. She’d seen first-hand how unwise the leap could be. Four of her college acquaintances were already divorced.

  Andrew grumbled into his coffee. “That persistent Sally Bianco left a cryptic message on Sunday. She acts like she owns the place.”

  “Don’t start, Dad. She’s promised to be on the look-out for new cases.”

  “Then why does she sputter about when I find work for you and Max?”

  “Mrs. Bianco thinks our goal of serving justice with the truth is intrusive.” Helen sounded like a schoolmarm to herself. “--except when there’s a violent crime involved.”

  Max checked his grin in the mirror near the front door. “Is the voice of the turtle heard?”

  Helen didn’t comment on her partner’s metaphor for truth. They initiated the concept of an ideal detective agency in the throes of a coffee jag, while sitting in the basement of the espresso shop across the street from the University’s School of Social Science. The agency would pursue the whole truth and nothing but the truth for their clients.

  Max came up with the name “The Firm” to stand for the permanence and integrity clients would rely on.

  Helen was fifteen years younger than Max, but they had graduated together. Max had returned to college after the first Iraq war. Neither of them wanted to assume the roles for which they’d trained. Eventually, as social workers, they were convinced they would be labeled as failed do-gooders. According to their shared value system, court-ordered social controls artificially manipulated marriages and intruded into the lives of innocent children.

  Helen remembered the previous June’s coffee-klatch at the agency’s inception.

  Max had pulled at the back of her tight curls. “Do you remember the cartoon with Tom Terrific?”

  She had swatted his hand away. “I think my grandfather talked about his sidekick, Froggy, and his magic twanger.”

  Max drained caffeine from the biodegradable cup. “Wasn’t Froggy with Buster Brown in a shoe commercial? Were you even walking when I was in high school?” He pulled her chair closer and whispered in her ear, “Didn’t Tom Terrific save the day with his partner, Crusader Rabbit?”

  Helen had scooted her chair back to its original position. “A rabbit is better than a cold-blooded frog.”

  She reminded herself Max liked her and claimed she was a smart cookie. They never dated, because his manners with women bordered on the obscene. She wondered what sort of woman his mother had been. He’d lost both parents before enlisting in the army.

  The glamour of working as a snoop intrigued Helen. She understood Max entertained dreams of sexual conquests along with the thrill of the hunt for truth. Helen refused to delve into Max’s bottomless pit of revenge resulting from his military service.

  Helen’s dad, an injured retired cop, sold them the abandoned gas station. The city had removed the tanks because of leakage problems; but didn’t reimburse Mr. Costello for the cost of clean landfill and re-pavement. Helen believed she was repaying her dad for her expensive education by renting the place as The Firm’s office. Andrew intended to spend his retirement providing The Firm with information from the authorities. And,because Max was a veteran, her father trusted him.

  They couldn’t get a better deal, Max agreed with Helen, an interest-free mortgage and an in-house expert. Within a month of start-up, five computers along the windowless back wall were running searches. Helen ordered the ferns and philodendrons for the side windows. Initially, she watered the plants with consummate care. When business picked up, her father took over the chore.

  Helen once looked forward to hiring a secretary for female companionship. However, The Firm relied on a sophisticated answering machine, which triggered an overhead camera and a document scanner. Few of the first thirty people in the door refused to ink their fingers to provide basic information. Walk-in clients placed their social security and driver’s license identification on the computer’s copier. The process of intake also required disclosure of gun permits.

  Both Helen’s dad and Max agreed they would not handle a client if guns were involved. Helen’s mother, Julia, did insist Andrew accompany Helen to a handgun range to wield the firepower she carrie
d. For Helen, the time lost in the noisy practice was worth the security of the gun’s weight in her briefcase.

  Money rolled in faster than Helen and Max had ever dreamed. The Firm, with Andrew’s help, connected a wealth of website data to reveal unreported income, outstanding warrants, and pending litigations in the lives of the subjects of investigations, as well as the agency’s customers. Clients needed the wherewithal to afford $400-an-hour for The Firm’s truth-finding services.

  Helen replayed Sally Bianco’s Sunday phone message for Max. “I’ve found a case. St. Anthony’s Hospital allowed three patients to die in 1990. See you tomorrow afternoon, about two. We need to find records of the deaths.”

  Max shook his mop of dark curls at the machine. A wife would have reminded him a haircut was overdue.

  Andrew pointed at Max’s peace symbol, which hung on a string of rawhide over his red-and-black striped shirt. “Hey, did you two kids call each other to wear matching colors?”

  “You don’t own a change of uniform?” Max tugged at the collar of Andrew’s black suit.

  “I do own a red tie.”

  Unlike the boys Helen had dated in college, Max’s build reminded her of a dance-club’s bouncer. But Max was not all brawn. His mind was razor keen when not dreaming about one of his consorts. Helen was surprised at the level of her interest. She trusted him about as far as she could throw him in his dealings with women. Max’s moods swung from black depressions to teenage gushing, usually over his newest female conquests. Hardly steady husband material. Helen did realize women found his muscular body attractive.

  Max met her eyes, then studied his watch. “Mrs. Bianco won’t be here until after lunch?”

  Andrew checked the appointment book. “I set up an appointment for you at ten, Max. A suit with a diamond stud in his red tie paid us a $10,000 retainer. Owns the Honda dealership. Name’s Brent.”

  Max looked back at Helen. “Andrew, Helen and I prefer to be a team. We’ll both take on Mr. Brent, won’t we?”

  Helen nodded. “Two for the price of one.”