“Sharon said University of Michigan consultants were let go during a budget crisis at St. Anthony’s Hospital.”
“A Dr. Benjamin Handler signed the death certificate?”
“After the patients died, the doctors were reinstated.” Helen’s professionalism returned.
“In time to ward off any damage suits to the hospital?” Max asked.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
In the car, Andrew Costello rubbed his bum thigh. Whenever he needed to think, his leg acted up almost demanding his attention to painful subjects. He didn’t want to talk to Tedler or Julia. He wanted to think. Helen and Max were no longer just friends. They were falling in love. He liked Max. The self-doubt Max exhibited reassured Andrew. The man owned a reflective soul. But was Helen, his daughter, his baby mature enough for marriage and children? Those dollhouses of hers, no one would want to marry a child. Raising one of your own was fine, but marriage required a mature mate.
Julia was such a treasure now. He felt his wife was showing him new aspects of her personality, more to love. The secret of Helen’s birth father must have dogged every one of her steps, censured every thought. The deception had been a plaque on her heart. The truth had set her free of the pestilence. She no longer needed to place every fork directly on top of the next. She finally agreed after twenty-one years his tee shirts did not need to be ironed. The living room could appear lived in and they could afford to eat at restaurants as often as she liked. Their lovemaking was becoming a little more exploratory, healthy. Andrew smiled. He wondered if he should talk to Julia about Max and their daughter. So much was happening; maybe he’d wait until Julia came to him about their romance from her point of view. He’d try to act surprised.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The Day of the Crime, First Sunday in May, 2008
Portage Lake
Marilyn Helms walked her dog down to the boat ramp. His muzzle and fur were drenched in red. Finding several sticks, Marilyn threw them one at a time into Portage Lake until Rufus was immaculate. “Good dog,” she said. “Time to go.”
The Honda waited for them. The weather was beautiful. Rufus needed a long walk to calm him down from his little adventure. Marilyn re-attached the leash but let it run all the way out. She didn’t feel like patting his ears. She would drive to Brighton for lunch, and keep going east. Easterners were easy to con. Once she was settled with her grandmother in Cape May, she could always phone Dr. Handler and Dr. Whidbey. They’d probably congratulate her for moving away.
She could start clean…free of her drug habit. Three weeks wasn’t much sobriety, but maybe she wouldn’t call the doctors. Penance enough for what? Maybe not for letting Rufus attack the old woman. What did the program say? First things first. First, Marilyn needed to survive.
That old hag would have seen her in prison quicker than jack snap for blackmailing the doctors. If she stayed clean, she wouldn’t need to call the doctors for drug money. In addition, the long drive out east might slim her down enough not to need her perfect diet pills.
Rufus would be a problem. Marilyn called him and undid the leash. To let him know he could leave, she threw another stick into a fern covered ravine. Rufus bounded off. Marilyn wished she could feel as happy about her freedom.
As she started Sally’s car, her mouth tasted bitter. The May-apple leaves were making her feel sick. She reached for the half-empty bag of potato chips. As she sped up, Marilyn noticed Rufus in the rear-view mirror. He was standing in the middle of Seymour Road, with the stick she had thrown in his mouth. She didn’t slow down, but it was comforting to think maybe the dog hadn’t been a parasite after all. Maybe he had liked her, a little.
If Rufus was in the passenger seat, she would have told him whenever her collections exceeded her drug habit, she bought gold necklaces. They, the necklaces, were never around her neck for longer than two months. Something always set off a binge with its requirement to increase her stash of pills by hocking the gold.
The stupid policeman Rufus had jumped thought she sold pills. Idiot. She needed each one of the blamed things or would before she reached her ideal weight. She couldn’t remember anymore what it used to be. Once 130, 150. At the rate she was going, 160 seemed her next reachable goal. The only reason she wasn’t in jail was because Dr. Handler could out talk any buzzard of a cop or judge. He should have been a lawyer instead of a doctor. Wasn’t much of a doctor anyway…and that was the truth!
When she first met Dr. Handler, he was always trying to impress her with some outlandish extravagance. Oh, they were never gifts for her. A cap from Scotland for himself, a sweater from Ireland, shoes from Italy. She kept track of the doctor’s excesses in her diet book. Who gave a rat’s ass? She didn’t, as long as she got her share of his string of rich wives’ money. The whole scam was a hoot, until she got stopped. Now she needed her grandmother’s out-of-state pad to crash in.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
First Thursday in May, 2008
The Firm
When Max first heard the knock on his office door, he thought Helen might want to persuade him to have Dr. Handler arrested. Max was still of the opinion they should wait until all three doctors’ whereabouts were known. He didn’t want any of the medical men to circumvent justice by fleeing the country. Instead, Andrew was at the door with Helen standing behind him. “What now?” Max asked. Andrew’s face was all wrong. Max tried to lighten the mood. “Who died?”
“Sally.” Helen spoke behind her father.
Max stood up. “Sorry. How do you know?”
Andrew collapsed into one of the client chairs. “A Waterloo ranger found her body.”
“Should we go out there?” Max offered his arm to Helen, to help her into the other chair. Civilians were not accustomed to sudden death. As a veteran, Max’s stoicism was won at a terrible cost. The sight of friends dropping dead in their tracks – right next to him, gained him a measure of detachment. His bout of post-traumatic stress disorder was not as severe as other veterans’ cases because of the violent history of his parents’ death.
Helen seemed to be moving into the chair in slow motion. Max’s natural tendency to assist the weaker sex triggered his sexual response to her lithe body. His next thought was for his lost dream. Maybell’s presence made a room glow with an unnatural brilliance. He grumbled to his soul. Fool, the whole set-up was a trap. You were the only one under any delusions of love. But, Max congratulated himself for his new self-honesty. He was not in love with Helen. He liked her, but she was not the girl he wanted as a life-mate.
Helen looked up at him and he stepped away. Women and their eyes. Helen’s were dark for such a towhead. Dark and mysterious. Max returned to the commanding position of his tall-backed desk chair.
“You’re right.” Helen rose. “We need to view the scene.”
Andrew was still seated. “You two go ahead. I’ve known Sally for too long. I need to call her friends. I’ll wait for the funeral.”
’Max followed Helen out of the office. “Should you wait a day before scheduling the funeral?” He spoke to Andrew over his shoulder, not wanting to lose sight of Helen. “Doesn’t an autopsy take a couple days?”
Chapter Five
“…rain a grievous hail and fire ran along the ground…barley and flax destroyed.
Wheat and rye were not smitten because they were not grown up.”
The Egyptian Plagues
First Thursday in May, 2008
Waterloo
Helen eased herself out of Max’s yellow Mustang. He had parked next to the ambulance at Portage Lake. A black and white State vehicle, a ranger’s green car, and the county sheriff’s police car were lined up along the boat launch. A perfect Michigan sky with a fresh breeze off the placid lake denied the quiet wooded area could be the scene of a vicious crime. Helen held onto Max’s shirtsleeve. Learning that someone she knew personally was the victim of a crime was devastating. She wanted to keep her wits sharp to catch the perpetrator. Helen released her partner
’s sleeve. Max rubbed his arm and looked down at her sympathetically, as if ready to excuse her from their appointed task. “I can do this.” She meant to reassure Max, but found the words helped her, too. She silently prayed, with God’s help.
The attendant opened the back door of the ambulance. Helen prayed again for strength and climbed in, next to the body bag. When she turned towards Max, she was surprised to see he was dealing with deep emotions, too.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Day of the Crime First Sunday in May, 2008
Waterloo
“Never enough time.” With the smell of spring in the air, Sally’s last words flew out of her shattered brain as her skull crashed against the rocks at the bottom of Portage Lake’s thirty-foot cliff. Her eyes beheld the blue sky’s portal to her afterlife.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
First Thursday in May, 2008
Waterloo
Max was knocked for a loop when Helen stepped into the ambulance van. Her black skirt hiked up dangerously close to her bottom, high enough for him to receive a jolt of raw lust. God, deliver us from evil. He was not ashamed of praying. He could see Helen was wondering what kept him from climbing in behind her. Max commanded himself to pull his act together. He donned his inspection gloves.
Helen unzipped the body bag and leaned back from the shock and fishy odor. The victim’s face, Sally Bianco’s face, was chalk white and bloated. Sally’s throat was torn out from her neck.
“Do we need to check her hands?” Max pulled the zipper down far enough to lift out Sally’s right hand. The fingers were locked in a fist.
The attendant leaned forward. “Rigor mortis.”
“I’ve seen this before, in the war?” Max kept his voice steady, as he pried Sally’s fingers open. In the ball of her hand was a clump of wet hair. He removed the hair and bagged the evidence. “Could you give this to the state trooper in charge of the scene?”
The attendant nodded, as he watched Helen examine Sally’s left hand. “She hung onto somebody,” the kid sighed, accepting an identical offering of evidence from Helen.
“Could a dog do this?” Helen climbed out of the ambulance, with Max’s help.
“You wouldn’t believe how my army unit’s attack dogs could make a mess of a man.”
“Maybe rabies?”
“Wouldn’t Mother Superior have noticed if anything was wrong with Marilyn’s dog? Can you remind me to call the Sister about Mrs. Bianco?” Max walked over to the state trooper to ask about Sally’s Honda.
As he stepped back after receiving an unenlightened answer, he almost knocked Helen to the ground. “Sorry.” He caught her and let go of her as soon as she seemed steady. At least he managed to control his reactions to her closeness.
“I heard the trooper say there was an all points bulletin out for the car since Tuesday.” Helen walked beside Max back to his car. “No witnesses. The dog would have been a mess.”
“They think Mrs. Bianco was attacked up there.” Max pointed through a stand of oaks to a hill of trees surrounding that section of the lake.
“And pushed over the cliff? Did the dog fall with her, or let go?”
“They haven’t found the dog, yet.” Max noticed Helen was asking more questions than he was. “We may never know what really happened.”
Max drove his convertible slowly back to Ann Arbor on Seymour Road to Pierce Road. He chose I-94 to drive into town. He couldn’t control the workings of his mind. The questions about the death of his own parents would always remain unanswered.
Maybe that was why every word out of his mouth seemed to end in a question. If he could be sure of how they died. Did his mother suffer long when his father was strangling her? Did she weep for their lost love as he was killing her? Is that why he shot and killed himself? Was it remorse? Did God accept both their souls? Would he see them in eternity? Could he trust God enough to let go of his questioning nature?
He wondered how his state of insecurity, his unsureness affected those around him. He promised to try to state only declarative sentences.
Helen was sitting next to him quietly lost in her own thoughts, probably of the recent horror of seeing Mrs. Bianco’s body.
Max wanted to comfort her, reassure her of his devotion to duty as her partner in the detective agency. “We need to work on Mrs. Bianco’s case.” He sounded like a repetitive parrot. “The evidence will tell us where Marilyn Helms can be found.”
Helen rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “We didn’t say we wouldn’t take cases with deadly dogs.”
Max stifled a laugh. “No, we didn’t.”
“It’s a good thing people pay us outrageous retainers. No one will fund our work to find Sally’s murderer.”
“But it will be our priority.”
“It will.” Helen patted his shoulder.
Max was sure she wasn’t aware of the effect her touch produced in his unprincipled body.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
First Thursday in May, 2008
Costello Home
Max wasn’t hungry, but he accepted Helen’s invitation to share an evening meal with her family. He told himself they needed to review the case, but he was more interested in staying close to Helen until he could talk himself out of his attraction to her. Good business ethics demanded he not get involved with his partner, didn’t they?
The garage door was open. Max followed Helen. She opened the door from the attached garage into the house. The kitchen aroma of cabbages and onions cooking in tomatoes sent him back to memories of his Aunt Rose’s home. Max didn’t want to think of his mother’s family, or his father. He blamed most of his foolishness and stupidity on his dad’s side of the family. After the drunken tragedy, his mother’s sister provided refuge from the age of thirteen until he was sixteen.
She had signed the agreement that allowed him to join the Army. That’s how he escaped the mess in Bloomington, Illinois. Half the people in town were afraid of him because of his violent father. The other half couldn’t treat him like a normal kid because of their pity over the loss of his mother. He had been embarrassed, even felt guilty when he was lucky enough to find something to laugh about. Orphans were not supposed to laugh.
“Smells great.” Max touched Mrs. Costello’s shoulder.
She jumped a bit and blushed at her foolishness. “Max, Max. We never see you anymore. Now that you finished your degrees, you’re both so busy at The Firm.”
Max hugged her plump figure, thankful for her welcome.
Andrew came into the kitchen from the dining room. “Grab some plates from the cupboard. And, let go of my wife. We’re about to sit down.”
Helen had shed her suit jacket. Her silk blouse enhanced her full figure. Max’s throat tightened, but he managed to say, “I don’t think I’m hungry after our Portage Lake trip.”
Helen nodded. When they were seated, Andrew said grace.
The dining-room windows faced the back garden of the house. Lilacs, apple blossoms, and redbud trees surrounded the lawn. Max relaxed. He thanked his Maker for the abounding beauty set before him. The soup was great. The bread seemed homemade. The carrots, potatoes, turnips and parsnips from the pot roast were spread out in separate serving dishes. Max noticed his hunger returned with each bite. He smiled at Helen. “Was I lying about not being hungry?”
“Julia’s cooking always does that to me.” Andrew lifted his water glass. “A toast, to the best cook in Ann Arbor.”
“Andrew, stop that.” Mrs. Costello blushed, but Max could see she was pleased. “Max might not enjoy my strawberry-rhubarb pie.”
Max groaned. “Isn’t that an unfair advantage? Shouldn’t I know the menu, before I overindulge?”
“You’ll find room.” Helen nudged his shoulder as she took away his plate.
In response, Max almost reached out to grab Helen’s leg, but stopped himself in time. That was all Andrew needed at his family’s table, a letch for a guest. Max changed the subject to give his out-of-control body a b
reak. “If we give the police our evidence for one doctor, the other might escape.”
“I thought Sally Bianco said three doctors were involved.” Andrew stirred his coffee.
“Mother Superior said Marilyn was upset because one of the doctors had died. Helen, you promised to call her when we found out what happened to Sally.”
“No,” Helen smiled at him. “You promised her.”
Max’s brain took a break to savor the flavors of the scrumptious pie. “Can she bake a cherry pie, Billy boy, Billy boy?”
“She can bake a cherry pie, quick as a cat can wink its eye,” Julia Costello sang a phrase from the old song.
Helen ended the song. “She’s a young thing and cannot leave her mother.” Max noticed Helen’s cheeks flame. Was she interested in him?
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Helen sipped her coffee, hoping Max would think the caffeine affected her complexion. “We should tail Dr. Handler. You could interview him at his office while I check out his home. His mismanagement of the Schneider’s case leaves few excuses.”
The phone rang and her dad excused himself to answer it in the kitchen. When he returned, his company smile had vanished. “Hey, Max, Mr. Brent wants to call off the investigation of his wife. He said to keep the retainer.” Andrew returned to his pie. “Seems they’re expecting a baby.”
Max lurched from the table. Helen pointed to the guest bathroom, near the front door. They could all hear him retching. “Weak stomach,” Helen told her mother. “He loved your food.”
Max re-appeared, and couldn’t stop apologizing to her mother. “The army or Iraq? If I eat a bite too much, this can happen? I guess your food was too good?”
“Never mind.” Helen’s mother brought him a glass of ginger ale. “Drink this. You boys are never thanked enough for your service to keep us all safe.”
Helen avoided meeting Max’s eyes. Unexpectedly hearing about Max’s child caused his stomach’s revolt. “We need to go over the case, Mother.”
“Of course.” Her mother nodded in her father’s direction. “We think you should invite George Clemmons to supper. We’d both like to meet him.”
Rohn Federbush - Sally Bianco 03 - The Recorder's Way Page 7
