Crazy Dead (A Cordi O'Callaghan Mystery)

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  “But I overheard Ella in the morgue saying I knew too much,” I said. “I was so sure it was her.”

  “Maybe you misheard,” she said, echoing my thoughts. “You were, after all, in a morgue drawer.” Martha had a way with words.

  “It’s not just Jacques. Some of the others are behaving weirdly,” I said. And I told her about Austin and Kensington Market.

  “Wow,” said Martha. “Do you think he was buying drugs?”

  “He was doing something that required stealth, because the transaction was furtive. Can you imagine if it was drugs?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s schizophrenic,” I said. “The last thing a schizophrenic needs is to be on some wild drug-induced high. It may be why he’s not getting better. I don’t know how long he’s been on the floor, but he was here when I arrived and is definitely having a hard time. His meds don’t seem to be working all that well.”

  “What if Mavis found out?” asked Martha.

  “He’d have been screwed. They might have kicked him off the floor, sent him to some other less lenient facility, not to mention the police would get involved.”

  “Assuming Mavis told him,” said Martha.

  “You think she forced his hand?”

  “To murder her? I suppose it’s possible, especially if he had her mixed up in some kind of delusion.”

  “Or maybe she was blackmailing him,” I said, “if he’s wealthy. But then, Mavis was wealthy, so why would she resort to blackmail? Except maybe she wasn’t so wealthy anymore. Maybe she gave it all to the Church of Scientology.”

  We thought about that for a while and then I said, “Kit said something weird last night when we were all in our room.”

  “I knew you were awake. I just knew it.”

  “Anyway, remember when she said, ‘I saw her lying there’? What did she mean by that? She was hiding something that Lucy didn’t want me to know.”

  “Could she have been talking about Mavis?”

  “You mean, she actually saw her dead, but won’t say?” I raised my eyebrows. “And Lucy was protecting her?”

  “Have they done anything else suspicious?” asked Martha.

  “Well, yeah. I caught them embracing the other day.”

  “What of it? Women hug all the time.”

  “What if it’s more than that?” I said.

  “Women do that all the time, too.”

  Martha seemed about to say more when Lucy came out of our room and called to us to come quickly. I glanced at Martha and the two of us hurried back to our room. I’m not sure what I was expecting to find — something horrible for sure, such as a dead Kit — but instead Kit was standing motionless by the window, focused on something on the window ledge.

  It was the black squirrel, sitting there and staring back at her, as if taunting us all with its odd reality. Was he our literal version of Churchill’s black dog? I wondered.

  I was glad that so many people had seen the black squirrel, which I didn’t just imagine that Ella had seen. She really had. So had I. I felt really strong and decided to go to CBT class. I was a little late and ended up interrupting Leo as he was talking about his panic attacks again, but this time he was talking specifics and not hypotheticals.

  “They just seem to come out of nowhere, but sometimes my panic attacks are triggered by people saying or doing something.”

  The instructor was a new man, slim, in his early thirties, with either a heavy beard shadow or a beard that was just growing in. Apparently the older instructor was sick. He motioned me to a seat and said, “Would you like to give us an example?” Leo hesitated while I sat down between Jacques and Lucy and across from Leo and Bradley.

  “Well,” said Leo, “there is this woman I knew. I really liked her and I wanted to send her flowers and ask her out. But I was afraid.”

  “Why? What thought comes to mind?”

  “What if she refused?”

  “You thought something bad would happen?”

  “It’d mean she didn’t like me, that she never would.”

  “And how did that make you feel?”

  “Helpless. Sad. Frustrated. Angry.” The instructor wrote everything down on the huge pad of paper propped up on an easel.

  “What would your automatic first thought be if she refused?”

  “That I’m a loser. No good. That she’ll never want me. She wasn’t exactly an amazing catch and it makes me angry that I’m not even good enough for someone like her.”

  Leo had suddenly become belligerent and I started listening more carefully.

  The instructor wrote it all down and then said, “What would your hot thought be?”

  “That she isn’t interested in me. That no one will ever love me. That I’ll die alone.” Leo looked down at his feet. I could see the sweat breaking out on his forehead and he was wringing his hands.

  “And that would trigger a panic attack.”

  “Yeah, sometimes,” Leo muttered.

  I stared at Leo. An idea began to form in my mind.

  “Are you okay to go on, Leo?” asked the instructor.

  Leo looked up and nodded.

  “Those are a lot of hot thoughts,” the instructor said. “Let’s concentrate on one. What is your evidence that she wasn’t interested in you?”

  Leo moaned.

  “Did you ask her out?”

  Leo nodded his head.

  “And how did that go?”

  “We were a couple for a while.”

  The instructor hesitated and then said, “That sounds all good. Why were you worried? Were you losing her?”

  Leo nodded, a look of misery spreading over his face.

  “Okay. So what is the evidence against your hot thought that she wasn’t interested in you anymore?”

  Leo squirmed in his seat and said nothing.

  “Okay, then,” said the instructor finally, “what would be a balanced response to your hot thought?”

  Leo sat mute and so did the instructor. Leo won again.

  “Maybe it’s not that she wasn’t interested in you, but that she was busy at work or she had indigestion the times you were together.”

  Leo cleared his throat. I could see him processing the information. At last he said, “You mean she likes me, but can’t be with me because she’s got indigestion?”

  I looked at the instructor, wondering how he would get out of this mess. He took his time answering, and I wondered if he was new at this.

  “Look at the bigger picture,” he said. “You don’t know what other people are thinking and so it’s never a good idea to tie your sense of self-worth to someone else. They may be thinking good things about you and you think they’re thinking bad things. Think of all the anxiety that can cause, and maybe for no good reason. In your case her reasons for appearing uninterested are unknown, but you decided they were bad when they might just as easily have been good. You don’t want to trigger a panic attack on a whim.”

  Leo looked confused and chagrined all at the same time.

  “But Mav —”

  He stopped abruptly, but the damage was done. I knew then. But it was Austin who suddenly said, with an incredulous laugh, “Holy shit. You’re doing Mavis.”

  Leo swung his head so quickly around to Austin that whiplash came to my mind.

  “You don’t ‘do’ your girlfriend,” Leo said, the disgust evident in his words. He lowered his voice and said again, “You don’t ‘do’ your girlfriend. That’s just rude.”

  I had a moment of doubt. Was he really talking about Mavis? But then I remembered Ella telling me that Leo didn’t like to talk about Mavis because it upset him. Enough to sometimes trigger panic attacks. And at the spirituality class with the minister, he’d talked about a panic attack he’d have if it seemed his girlfriend might leave him, s
omething he had to stop “at any cost.”

  “He’s doing Mavis,” said Austin again.

  Leo looked around wildly and suddenly stood up and left the room. The instructor quickly followed, telling us he would be right back.

  We all sat there digesting Leo’s interesting bit of information. Leo had not denied it. When the instructor came back he asked us all if we had a hot thought to discuss. He said nothing about Leo, and no one asked.

  Into the growing silence came Bradley’s voice. “It’s like landing a plane in the fog with no instruments.”

  We all turned to look at him. He was staring at a point above and to the left of the instructor but when I looked, there was nothing but a blank cinderblock wall.

  After a long moment of silence Bradley continued, “The plane is my mind trying to find solid ground, but the fog dulls all my senses. It disconnects everything and my brain is mush.” He stopped talking.

  We waited. Finally the instructor said, “And how does that make you feel?” The instructor stood by his easel, marker poised and ready.

  “Desolate.”

  “Any other emotions?”

  “When you’re desolate what else is there? It’s all empty,” said Bradley.

  The instructor sought refuge in his next question. “What automatic thoughts go through your head?”

  “I will never get better because nothing works.”

  “And the evidence for that?”

  “I’ve been medicated for two years and nothing works.”

  “And the evidence against that?”

  Bradley stared at the instructor, who gently prodded Bradley with “Have you tried every possible medication?”

  Bradley hesitated and then said, “No.”

  “So what is your balanced response to your statement that you will never get better because nothing works?”

  Bradley leaned forward on his elbows, a glint of interest, or maybe excitement, in his eyes.

  “If at first you don’t succeed … try something new,” he said, sounding as if he had just made up his mind about something. He fell silent.

  The instructor looked around and made eye contact with Kit. “Have you got a situation for us?” he asked.

  She squirmed on her seat and then said in a rush, “I can’t stop thinking that someone close to me is going to die.”

  “What happens when you think that? What do you feel?”

  “Scared. I’m fixated on it. Obsessed with it. I have to do all these rituals, or it will happen.”

  “But you know it’s an obsession.”

  “Yes, but I can’t help myself. If I step on any lines, someone I love will die.”

  “Is that your hot thought?”

  “Yes. Someone I love will die.” She was wringing her hands in her lap.

  “All right. What is the evidence that your hot thought could be right?”

  “I saw someone. She looked dead. She was my friend.” Her voice cracked on the word “friend.”

  “But she wasn’t dead, was she?” said the instructor. It was a statement and not a question.

  “I don’t know. She went away.”

  “Okay,” said the instructor. “You say she looked dead. Could she have been asleep and you just imagined she was dead, or you dreamed it?”

  Kit’s frown relaxed and she looked up and said, “Yes, that could be it.” But she didn’t look very certain.

  “Have you tried calling her?”

  “It just goes to voicemail.”

  “Have you contacted her family?”

  “She doesn’t have any.”

  “Friends, then?”

  Kit shook her head.

  “Okay, have you stepped on any lines since you had this thought about your friend?”

  Kit looked worried and said, “Yes.”

  “And did anybody you love die?”

  Dangerous question, I thought.

  “No. At least, I don’t think so,” she said, but again she seemed unsure.

  It was definitely not the response the instructor was looking for, but he was saved from having to do damage control by Austin, who was tapping his watch vigorously to indicate the session was over.

  Can Kit have been talking about Mavis? I wondered as I got up to leave.

  Bradley had scooted out of the conference room and I had to run to catch up with him. “Have to get a coffee,” he said as if that would dismiss me. But when he realized I wasn’t going to let him get a coffee all by himself, he said, “Coffee is a secret drug used by a higher order to control humans. Do you still want some?”

  I nodded and we headed toward the common room, but he surprised me and went through the doors to the elevator, instead of getting the coffee from the cafeteria. I hadn’t realized he was able to leave unescorted. He seemed so sick sometimes, but then I guess we all did. The elevator was pretty full and we were crammed into it as it stopped at every floor, and when at last it spewed us out, I was feeling quite claustrophobic. I followed him to the little coffee shop on the ground floor of the hospital. We each bought our own coffee and then went to sit at the coffee bar.

  He looked at me as though I was supremely stupid, his long black hair cascading over his face. “Have you tasted the coffee upstairs?”

  I laughed. “So it’s only some coffee that controls our minds?”

  He laughed, but his pale grey eyes didn’t. “No, it’s all coffee, but if I’m going to be controlled I might as well drink the good stuff.”

  “Why not give up coffee altogether?” I asked.

  “You don’t understand. It’s everybody. It controls everybody. And it’s addictive. So many people drink coffee that we have even named a break after it. Can’t say that about milk or lemonade. It’s synonymous with break time. And that’s why it’s so dangerous, because it’s all pervasive, all persuasive. Only kids are immune and the odd person who doesn’t like coffee. Coffee needs an antidote and I’m working on that.”

  “What sort of antidote?”

  “One that banishes delusions like mine.”

  “Is that what you gave to Mavis?”

  “What I gave to Mavis?” He was suddenly very still, like an animal sensing danger.

  “The morning of her ECT. The day before she died,” I said.

  He looked furtive, but said nothing.

  “I saw you give her something.”

  “It’s the coffee making you say that. I can tell. You’re lying.”

  “Or you’re lying.”

  We were at an impasse, so I changed the subject. “What possesses a Scientologist to write about God’s Disgrace?”

  He looked down into his coffee mug, cradled in his hands, as if something there could guide him. He was a very long time in answering, but since I couldn’t think of anything else to say to him, I waited patiently and watched as a little girl carefully carried her hot chocolate to a table with four other little girls and one harried-looking guy overseeing them all.

  Finally I prodded him. “Which are you — a believer or an atheist?” I said. “Or maybe you are an agnostic?”

  There must have been something really fascinating going on in his coffee mug because he didn’t acknowledge that I had said anything. So I answered the question for him.

  “Scientology would never let an agnostic into their midst. And why would you want to be there, anyway, if you were agnostic?”

  He blinked at me.

  “Maybe you were never a Scientologist. Maybe you were trying to get into Mavis’s good books for some reason, and just pretended you were a Scientologist.”

  He blinked again.

  “Were you in love with her? Did she refuse you? Is that why you killed her?”

  There was no charitable way to say it. Bradley snickered. Okay. So, not in love with her. I tried to get some answers o
ut of him, but he had clammed up. When he rose to leave I let him go, wishing I could have known what to say that would have unlocked him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I had wanted to talk to Jacques after the CBT class, but ihe’d seemed in such a hurry to get out of there and then I’d pursued Bradley, so that there was no opportunity to talk. But Jacques had aroused my curiosity more than ever, and when I went back upstairs after my meeting with Bradley, I saw him heading for the elevators, so I decided to follow him and find out what he was up to. If I was falling for this guy I needed to know who he really was.

  I ran and got my coat and boots. Of course, he could simply be going out to satisfy a smoking urge, in which case I could just walk to the Tim Hortons, pretend to get a coffee, and come back, so he wouldn’t suspect I was following him. Again the elevator was so slow and so crowded. When it finally arrived at the first floor I ran out into winter and the street filled with snow and looked in both directions. Jacques was difficult to miss. He was a head taller than anyone else and his blond hair was not trapped by a hat, so it was blowing around like a lion’s mane in a hurricane. He was heading east, and I followed at a discreet distance.

  We passed the architecture building and the University of Toronto Bookstore and crossed St. George Street. He turned north on King’s College Road and headed into the heart of the university. We passed the round dome of Convocation Hall and skirted the huge circular playing field that in summer was littered with people lazing on the grass or playing Frisbee or soccer.

  Jacques didn’t linger and I had to run to keep up with him. He didn’t even look at the beautiful massive building of University College. In summer its age-old stones were almost hidden by a riotous amount of ivy, but now they were barren and cold, their roughened surfaces a mass of tiny shadows. Before us was the impressive stone Soldiers’ Tower, whose bells ring out in a grand carillon in the summer months. He turned east just after the quaint little church-like building that houses the Student’s Union, and then toward Hart House, its stone edifice warmed by the brilliant sunshine. He passed the main entrance of Hart House and then opened the door to the Arbor Room restaurant and went inside.