Crazy Dead (A Cordi O'Callaghan Mystery)

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  The minister tried to interject but Jacques talked over her. “And the cure isn’t to cut back. It’s total abstinence. The only thing close to it that everybody might understand is having to give up sex forever, even masturbation.”

  “You have supports that can help you,” said the minister quickly. “I know you don’t believe in God, but I’d be happy to write up the twelve steps for you with all references to God deleted. It would be a start.”

  Jacques smiled a grimacing sort of smile at her and I thought about his lonely fight with alcohol and whether he really did have family and friends to support him. And I found I cared. I cared very much.

  When the class ended I left quickly. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, especially Jacques. I was feeling too unsure of myself. Unfortunately, to get to my room I had to pass the suicide room. There was no other way. And like people at a train wreck, I was unable to walk by without looking.

  She was out of bed, her back to me, and I had a sudden sense of unease as I watched her round shape standing there forlornly. As if sensing my eyes on her, she slowly turned around, and I felt totally discombobulated when she brought a finger to her lips and pursed them in the universal signal to keep quiet.

  It was a face I knew well. It was Martha’s.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I was equal parts confused, alarmed, and angry. What the hell was Martha doing here? Did she really try to commit suicide? Martha? No chance. Not a happier woman existed in all the world. So why was she here, then? All sorts of scenarios swirled around in my mind and I was frantic for an answer, but brought up short by her silent request to keep quiet. So I knew I couldn’t just barge into her room. The nurses would want to know why and haul me out of there.

  I loitered in the hall, knowing that Martha would have to go to the washroom sometime. I began to pace the hall and noticed that where Bradley’s poem had been there was a new notice, with no blank space for graffiti. Although Bradley’s poem was a cut above graffiti, I thought. God’s disgrace, he’d written. Why? For what purpose? And then it occurred to me what hadn’t seemed right when I was talking to Bradley. Why would a devout Scientologist write a poem about God’s disgrace? But the thought was chased from my mind because suddenly Martha was there, shuffling toward me, head down, oozing dejection. I’d never seen Martha like that and it scared me.

  She passed me by without seeming to notice me, and I turned and followed her into the washroom. I peered under the stalls to see if anyone was there, but they were all empty.

  Choosing my words carefully, I said, “What’s happening?”

  She turned to face me and I saw that her eyes were swollen, and her face portrayed pure misery.

  “Martha! What’s happening?” I asked again, in great alarm.

  And then she smiled — and had the decency to look guilty about it. “I thought you could use some help and it was the only thing I could think of to do,” she said.

  I stood there with my jaw hanging loose and wondered if her deception was a delusion.

  “You said someone was trying to kill you,” she said. “I’m just watching your back.”

  I was horrified and touched at the same time, but the horror got the better of me. “Jesus, Martha, you can’t go impersonating a suicide. What if someone else really needs the bed?”

  “You told me yourself that you’ve had an empty bed since that woman died.”

  “Mavis.”

  “Yeah, Mavis.”

  “That was you? The screaming and moaning?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where did you ever learn to act like that?” I asked.

  “From watching you,” she said.

  God, had it been that obvious over the years? Her words hit me like a kick in the gut, because I had always believed that I had hidden my pain so well. I had to hand it to Martha. She was a good actor. I couldn’t understand why she was working for me and not on stage somewhere. “Did you really try to jump off a bridge?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

  “Governor’s Bridge. There seemed to be a certain, I don’t know, synchronicity with you.”

  “And you made the police talk you down?” I asked, thinking about all the people she must have scared half to death. I couldn’t believe she’d done it.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I had to do it. I just had to. I couldn’t leave you alone in this.”

  I was too emotionally exhausted to have it out with her. She was here now and I marvelled at the strength of her friendship, that she did this for me.

  “Martha, you can’t stay, you know that,” was all I could manage.

  She avoided looking at me and said, “Maybe it’s not all an act, Cordi.”

  I must have looked pretty incredulous because she said, “All right, but I had to come and help.”

  I knew her behaviour was wrong, but I suddenly really needed a friend to lean on. I was about to give her a hug when Kit came into the room and stared at us before going into a cubicle. Martha silently saluted me and went into another cubicle and I left to nurse my thoughts.

  I decided to go swimming. There was a notice on the bulletin board that said we could use the facilities of a place nearby and I needed some exercise. Anything to distract me from myself. I signed myself out and almost signed myself back in again when I discovered how cold and windy and snowy it was outside. But I forced myself to walk the block to the community centre. I had a bit of difficulty finding the changing rooms because, while the pool was on the first floor, the changing rooms were in the basement. So I went down to the grungy school-locker-room-style change rooms to change and then had to traipse up eighteen stairs to the pool area. One wall of the pool was floor-to-ceiling windows and the light that flowed into the pool danced with the waves in undulating ripples.

  I scanned the pool to see which of the cordoned-off lanes was the least congested for doing laps and found myself looking at Jacques as he pulled himself expertly out of the pool, the muscles in his arms and chest rippling and taut like an athlete in his prime. I wondered how on earth he could look like that and be a depressive alcoholic smoker. Was it even possible for someone who is depressed to look after themselves that well? But there he was, a regular blond giant of an Adonis. Without noticing me, he walked over to the side of the pool and picked up his towel, and I felt like a voyeur with a galloping heart. Who was this man?

  Eventually he noticed me, probably because I slipped and fell and felt like a total idiot. He hurried over and helped me up. I felt odd standing there, with him half-naked and me half-naked, and I was at a loss for words. Fortunately he wasn’t.

  “Nice suit,” he said, his eyes travelling slowly down my black-and-red one-piece and up again. I felt like saying, “Nice abs,” in return because who says, “Nice swim trunks,” to a man? Instead, I hugged myself and smiled at him, wishing we were somewhere else.

  “Aren’t you taking a chance leaving the floor?” he asked. “I would have escorted you here if you’d told me.”

  When I’d decided to go swimming, all I had thought about was getting there and getting into the pool and swimming some mind-numbing laps. I had actually forgotten about the danger to my life. Was my apparent poor memory because of the ECT I’d had?

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I lied. “If I’m only in danger when off the floor, but I am in danger because of something on the floor, what does it mean?”

  “Whoever it is does not, it would appear, want to draw attention to the floor. Mavis is the key. It keeps coming down to why she died and how she died being the questions we need to answer.”

  “Well, one thing I know for sure,” I said. “The red scarf was not the murder weapon.”

  Jacques eyed me with interest. “How so?”

  “When I saw her in the morgue the scarf was gone and her neck was smooth and white. No marks.”

  Jacques towelled his head and said, �
�Interesting. So how did she die?”

  “She could have been smothered, like Austin said.”

  “Or given an overdose or a needle full of air. Any number of ways to die prematurely in a hospital.”

  “How can we ever know?” I asked.

  “We keep snooping,” he said, which was a peculiar thing to say, I thought, since I seemed to be the only one doing the snooping. It suddenly occurred to me that he hadn’t actually told me one new thing to help with the investigation. And yet he had been the one to egg me on. Curious.

  After he left I slipped into the pool. The monotony of swimming lengths was somehow relaxing, almost like meditation, with the altered sense of sound, the rhythmic breathing, the going nowhere with a purpose, which was precisely what I felt I was doing. Going nowhere with a purpose. I was really disturbed by Martha’s appearance on the scene and at a loss as to how to handle it. I had wanted to tell Jacques, but held back because Martha wanted to be incognito.

  When I finished my laps I floated on my back in the deep end for a while; everybody had left and there was no one here but me. I had the pool to myself. Then I heard the muffled sound of a door shutting and I treaded water and looked around. And froze.

  Ella was walking toward me, her large voluptuous body crammed into a tiny piece of real estate. She was staring right at me and I looked around quickly again to see if anyone else was around. No one. I looked back at her as I treaded water, realizing how easy it would be for her to overpower and drown me right here in the pool. I imagined myself struggling for air, her strong arms holding my head underwater, my legs and arms thrashing uselessly as my world slowly went black.

  But Ella surprised me and raised her hand in a little salute as she slipped into a lane and took off with an impressive crawl. I got out of the pool quickly and went down to the changing room, wondering why Ella hadn’t taken advantage of the situation. It would have been risky, but it could have been done.

  I pulled on my clothes and trudged back to the hospital through the drifting snow and the winter winds.

  I really didn’t feel like going back. Being in the hospital was such a pointed admission that I was sick, and I didn’t feel sick anymore, just a little confused by how everyone was treating me, as if I was still sick. I was almost at the main doors of the hospital when someone I recognized came out.

  Despite the cold and the snow he wasn’t wearing a hat, and as he stepped outside he drew his hood over his head. Thinning hair. Austin.

  I decided it would be more interesting to follow him than to go back to my room. He headed west and then south on Spadina, and then west again into Kensington Market. He seemed to be on a mission and he did not deviate from it, not even to loiter a little in front of a shop window. He kept his head down and walked with short fast steps, somehow avoiding everyone in his path. When he stopped suddenly at the intersection of Augusta and Nassau I had to scramble for cover to avoid being seen, although since I was covered head to toe in winter clothing I probably didn’t have to worry.

  I stood and looked at a pair of bright-pink rubber boots hanging in the window of a small shop, while keeping him in my peripheral vision. Twice he crossed the street, and twice he came back, and as I watched, a person all dressed in black, face hidden by a scarf, brushed by Austin and handed him a small bag. Austin appeared to give him something in return and the two parted company after what seemed like a choreographed dance, one that had been performed many times before.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I was frozen by the time I got back to the hospital and I crawled into bed and fell into a long deep and troubled sleep. Troubled as it was, sleep was my saviour, and the saviour of the mentally ill everywhere. Sleep dulled the pain the way nothing else could, because when you are in a dreamless sleep nothing bad can touch you. That I awoke feeling unrefreshed and groggy did not diminish sleep’s ability to soften life’s terrors — at least when the nightmares didn’t come.

  I noticed that Mavis’s bed had been used and there was a sweater I recognized dumped on top of the sheets. Martha was to be our new roommate. How weird and unnerving was that? I knew I should force her to leave, but I didn’t have the emotional strength to do it. I looked at my watch and realized that it was suppertime and I was actually hungry. I was feeling very antisocial, and so once I had got my food, I took a table far from everyone. Martha nodded at me and I nodded back. She was sitting beside Jacques, who appeared to be trying to get her to smile. Inexplicably I felt jealous as I watched Martha and Mr. Adonis Jacques connecting in some way. Head down, I ate and returned to my room and went back to bed. I must have dozed off because I awoke with a start when I heard a kerfuffle as my roommates came to bed. Then there was a long silence.

  I had my back to them and the covers pulled up over my head when Kit said, “Have you met our new roomie yet?”

  There was no answer from Lucy, although maybe she nodded or shook her head.

  “They’ve released her from the suicide room. Did you see how she just sat there all alone until Jacques moved in?”

  “Was he trying to hustle her?”

  “Dunno. She’s kind of old for him, fat too, but she kind of spent the evening in a daze.”

  “Wouldn’t you, too, if you’d just tried to off yourself and failed?”

  Another silence fell, and then I heard someone else shuffle into the room. No doubt Martha.

  “Did you really try to jump off a bridge?” asked Lucy.

  “What’s it to you?” Martha snapped.

  “Just that women don’t usually jump. They take pills or something. Men jump off bridges, but then, you weren’t successful, were you?”

  I held my breath. How was she going to respond to that?

  “You treat all your roommates like this?”

  Silence.

  “Is that why your last roommate died?” Martha asked. “You badgered her to death, made her feel two inches tall, taunted her?”

  Martha was overdoing it.

  “How the hell do you know anything about our last roommate?” said Lucy. “You’ve only been here a day. And besides, she’s not dead. Why would you think she was?”

  “I saw her lying there,” said Kit out of the blue, and Lucy jumped in and changed the subject back to Martha. I wondered about that. What had Kit meant?

  “What’s it like to stand on a bridge and contemplate a swan dive?” Lucy said.

  “What do you think it’s like?” said Martha angrily. “There isn’t a single thing worth living for. Your mind is numb, dead, hopelessly unalive. There’s nothing you want to do, say, change. All you feel is pain, and you just want the pain to stop. And I couldn’t even be successful at that.”

  Wow, I thought. Where did that come from?

  “So why didn’t you jump?”

  I was waiting for Martha to be angry with Lucy again, but she surprised me by saying, “The policewoman said there was always help, always a way out of the pain I was in. That life was precious and we only get one chance at it. I guess I didn’t want to die because I believed her and here I am now, full of meds. I still feel really shitty, but I’m glad I’m not dead.”

  She said the last part in a whisper that made me very uneasy and no one said anything after that.

  The next morning after breakfast I signalled to Martha to follow me. We went down to the end of the hall where there was little or no traffic and I was about to speak when she beat me to it.

  “There’s something fishy about Jacques,” she said, and I felt the strong urge to defend him, even though I didn’t know his crime. Turns out neither did she.

  “He’s just not … right,” said Martha.

  “Well, yeah,” I said sarcastically. “He’s here because he’s an alcoholic, he smokes, and he’s depressed.”

  “Just seems like he’s acting, that’s all,” she said. And all my misgivings about Jacques came to the fore. “
I mean, how many alcoholic smokers do you know that are in such great physical shape?”

  She was right. As well as seeing his buff body at the pool, I remembered walking up the stairs with him and he hadn’t broken a sweat. And he’d hesitated when I had asked him what his poison was. What alcoholic doesn’t know his favourite drink? And he was inordinately interested in helping me find Mavis’s murderer. I couldn’t put that down to pure interest in me, much as I would have liked to. Any beliefs on that score had been shattered when I saw him with Lucy and then with Martha. Well, maybe not “shattered” exactly. Maybe just slightly cracked. And also, he’d known about the subway. Maybe he hadn’t overheard it at the nurses’ station.

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  “That he isn’t who he says he is. That he’s acting and it’s not a seamless performance.”

  “But you can’t have spent more than ten minutes with him. How the hell could you know so fast?” I was pissed off, but it may have been because I had a sneaking suspicion that she was right.

  “I can always spot a bad actor.”

  “Why would he be acting?” I asked, but I knew she had hit on something.

  “You tell me.”

  Reluctantly I told her then about my misgivings and the feeling I had that he was hiding something.

  “Maybe he murdered Mavis and just wants to keep you close in case you break the case and then he’ll silence you before you can tell anyone.”

  “But why would he murder Mavis?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was a lovers’ quarrel? Or maybe he’s an assassin and she was stealing secrets.” Martha was going overboard again.

  I thought back with a chill to the attempts on my life.

  “So what you’re saying is if he murdered Mavis, that would mean he’s the one who has been trying to kill me.”

  “Is that so far-fetched?”

  Not completely far-fetched. But it was bad. I liked Jacques. I liked him very much.