Rehab Run

by Barbra Leslie

  “As far as you know,” I said.

  “As far as we know,” he agreed. I adjusted my position on the bed and winced. “I’ve kept you too long,” he said, as though I was going anywhere. I felt him wanting to say something else.

  “Out with it, Staff Sergeant,” I said. “We’re besties now.”

  “The only other person I’ve heard actually use that word is my twelve-year-old daughter,” he said.

  “I like to stay current,” I said. There was something he didn’t want to tell me. I felt a sense of dread creeping up my neck. I looked carefully at Lester, and he was another one who seemed like he could use a good night’s sleep.

  “Dickie Doyle released himself from the hospital earlier today. There was nothing anyone could do. He should have been under a psychiatric hold, aside from anything else, but with his physical state, the psychiatrist hadn’t got around to doing the formal paperwork. And while his wounds look awful and he should be in hospital, they couldn’t legally, physically stop him from leaving. And he was bound and determined.” He looked at his hat. “We simply don’t know where he is.”

  “Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me,” I said. All this time, and staying here to find Dickie, sitting in a hole because I hadn’t taken the opportunity to drive back to Toronto, and Dickie disappears. Again. I felt very sorry for Dickie, and I loved my brother. But I was not going on another Dickie Doyle hunt.

  “I wish.” We sat in silence for a minute, and I could almost smell Lester’s brain working. “Off the tape now, Danny. Do you swear you don’t have any more information on Dave and his people?”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I know how it sounds. Trust me. But after what we went through last fall, I just trusted him. And he wrote to me when I was in Maine, a sympathy letter about my husband.” I pushed my fingernails into my palm to stop my voice from breaking. There. Better. “But the postmark was obscured, and all I have ever known him by is Dave.” I paused. “I know it’s shady, and too James Bond to sound real. And there are members of my family who disagree with me about this. But I do think that he’s on the right side.” I hoped he was. I really did. My brain felt fried – too full and too tired to make any more sense of anything.

  If it weren’t for the fact that I was avoiding any exposure to the media, it would have been a perfect time to watch some mindless television.

  Lester said his goodbyes, and said he’d be in again to check on me when I felt a bit better. He said they’d keep me in the loop, as much as they could. He was on his way to the door when I stopped him. “Hey,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  I hesitated. “For calling Paul Belliveau,” I said. “For trusting us.”

  As soon as he left, I rang for Maureen and when she arrived, I asked her to send my brother in if she saw him. She asked how my pain was, and I lied. “Fine,” I said. “Still good.” In truth, my leg was throbbing. But I didn’t want to zone out and drift off just yet. I had to talk to Laurence first.

  They were bringing dinner trays around. Laurence walked in as I got mine. A banana and a spinach omelette. And jello.

  “I’m vegetarian now,” I told Laurence when he turned up his nose. I pushed it away. “Close the door again, will you?” He did, and came back and sat on my bed with me. I gave him a quick nutshell of my interview with Lester. I was glad I didn’t have to break the news that Dickie had done a runner; Laurence had already heard.

  “There’s something very wrong with Dickie,” he said. “This is not the man I know.”

  “Knew,” I said. Gently. “He’s a sick, broken man, who was being mentally tortured, seeing what he thought was his dead wife running around near his house.” I leaned back, letting go of Laurence’s hand. Sitting up wasn’t my favorite position.

  I was tired of thinking about all of it. As far as I was concerned, I had found Dickie. I had done what I set out to do. Lester seemed more than capable of handling things from here on out. “Laurence, you may have to just accept that Dickie is lost to you now, as a friend. We have both done more than our fair share here.”

  “Danny, you definitely have. As soon as you’re well enough to travel, we’re getting you back to Toronto. Darren and the boys are fixing up a room for you, and we’ll be getting a physical therapist. Whatever you need.”

  I nodded. What I needed was to have my family around me, and to sleep for a year.

  “But I’m going to stay here for a while longer,” Laurence continued. He grabbed my foot under the sheet and squeezed it, causing me to jump. “Be quiet. I’m not doing anything dangerous. But one thing I can do for Dickie is to help get his affairs in order so that he can at least live comfortably. Check into selling Rose’s Place, for a start. And if he’s able to – if we find him, whatever – I can find him somewhere safe and secure to live. Make sure he has help.” He looked at me. “Dickie’s lawyer contacted the police a couple of days ago. Dickie has a living will, and I have power of attorney.”

  “Don’t you have to sign something saying you agree to that? While the person is compos mentis?”

  “I did. After Rose died, when Dickie was buying the property and so on. He said I was the closest thing he had left to family, and he didn’t want things to go to hell if anything happened where he couldn’t make decisions for himself.” He ran his hand over his face. He had shaved at some point, which made him look younger, but I had sort of liked the scruffy look on him. “I’m sure he’ll be easy enough to find.”

  “Dave’s crew will help you,” I said.

  “If necessary.” Laurence was not happy with Dave and Ned. Not at all. No matter the reason, they had left his little sister badly injured in the bottom of a hole. “I’m going to get a hotel. I was thinking of staying at Rose’s, though. I don’t want any journalists or kids or whatever breaking in and photographing everything for some tabloid TV story.”

  “The Murder Rehab,” I said.

  “Drug Den of Death,” Laurence said.

  “Annapolis Valley Amputators.” I grinned. “Don’t be a putz. Hire security.”

  “Yeah. I did. We’ll see. For now, though, I’ll stay here.” His fever was gone, but I was paying extra for a private room, and under the circumstances, I’d like to see anybody try to tell me I couldn’t have my brother stay there with me.

  “Good.”

  Laurence went and propped the door open again. Nurse Maureen had complained about how much I had the door closed. Neither of us wanted to cross her.

  A minute later, Debbie MacLean walked in, out of uniform, carrying a pizza box. Laurence had mentioned that she’d stopped by a couple of times when I was sleeping, but this was the first time I’d seen her.

  “Dinner,” she said. “Half vegetarian, half pepperoni and anchovy.”

  “Pepperoni with anchovy? You’re sick,” I said with approval.

  The three of us ate and joked about the hospital staff, and nobody talked about death or killing or people being buried in holes.

  And I did my very best not to think about what could have happened to Dickie Doyle.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Four days later, I was released from the hospital, with crutches and a prescription for a small number of painkillers. As the surgeon promised, they kept me in as long as they could, but I wanted to get home, to Toronto, to all the boys. But I’d decided to stay for a few days to be in the Valley with Laurence, who was busy with lawyers, an industrial cleaning crew for Rose’s Place once the police released it, and real estate agents. Then Laurence would get me on a plane to Toronto, and I would be met at the airport by Darren and the boys.

  Dickie Doyle was, somehow, and against everyone’s predictions, in the wind. He had left the hospital in a wheelchair, holding two crutches, and had been helped into a taxi by a driver. The driver told police that he dropped Dickie off at a bowling alley in New Minas, a little town close by. He remembered, he said, because he couldn’t figure out how the man was going to bowl. The security camera outside the bow
ling alley was on the fritz, and he never showed up on the camera inside.

  He hadn’t walked in, and despite a thorough interview of each and every cab company within thirty miles – not as many as one would think, apparently; there wasn’t a lot of call for taxis in the Valley – no one had picked up any fares from there that day.

  Someone had picked him up. He had no cell phone with him. But somehow, someone had picked Dickie Doyle up from a bowling alley in a small town, and spirited him off somewhere. His bank accounts hadn’t been touched, and his credit hadn’t been accessed.

  Laurence was worried, but as he said, he was just going to focus on getting Dickie’s affairs in order, so that when he was found, things would be taken care of. It was all he knew to do. And while I was curious, and worried, I had had enough of searching for Dickie Doyle to last me a lifetime.

  Laurence had rooms for us at a local hotel, but he had stayed at Rose’s overnight for the last two days of my hospital stay.

  And me? Well, I was full of offers of hospitality.

  Dave, Ned et al. were still at the safe house. Laurence had met with them a couple of times. He heard them out, about what happened the night I went into the hole, and he said he was convinced that everything was on the up-and-up, that neither of them had any choice in how things had played out. But as much as his rational brain told him that they were on our side, that they hadn’t done anything to hurt me, because of them I had fallen into a deep hole in the ground and suffered what could have been a life-threatening wound. Laurence was not in a particularly forgiving mood.

  I had my own reasons for not wanting to stay at the safe house. I was petrified that Dave would make a profession to me that I wouldn’t know how to handle, and I also knew that I had feelings enough for Dave that I didn’t want to screw it up by doing or saying the wrong thing to him if he did.

  As far as I was concerned, staying at the safe house was not an option, as much as I wanted to. Jonas would be so much fun, and his cooking would help get me better. And I’d have a chance to talk him into leaving Dave’s employ and coming to live with me and the boys in Toronto.

  But Laurence had told me that Dave had made it clear he wasn’t going anywhere until I would see them, or at the very least until I left the Valley and went back to Toronto. He had sent more flowers and a simple note asking me to stay with them during my recovery. He reminded me that Lydia was a nurse.

  He added a smiley face, but didn’t sign the card.

  Debbie MacLean wanted both Laurence and me to stay at her place on the lake. It was June, and the weather was now unseasonably warm. She had moved in there herself for the summer as she did every year, subletting her apartment in Wolfville to a visiting professor who was teaching summer school at Acadia. She’d been in to see me every day, usually bringing food and books. We’d had the talk, one night, about the fact that she was embarrassed about kissing me. I told her not to worry, but even if I were more inclined toward women, that she should think of me as a newly fixed puppy: sore, a little sulky, and uninterested in sniffing anybody. But she made me laugh, and it was nice to have a female friend. Especially a female friend who, like me, would rather fight than shop. And Debbie said that if and when I was ready, she would take me to visit Mary in jail.

  She had refused to say anything to defend herself, and she hadn’t sought bail.

  I was talking to Dr. Singh on the phone once a day for a little while. I would be ready for things eventually, but I was taking a break from sadness. That’s what I was trying to do, anyway. Skype with the boys and Darren, talk to my brother Skipper and his wife Marie on the phone – she always talked about what she was cooking, which helped my appetite – and now that I was out, lie in the sun. Read books. Go to physical therapy.

  Not do drugs. I was having crack dreams every night in the hospital, dreams where I was sitting with my old partner in crime from my drug days, Gene, and no matter how much I pulled on the pipe, I wasn’t getting any smoke into my lungs. And in the way of dreams, I knew that if I just found the perfect rock, the perfect little crumb of crack on my living room floor or in the cushions of the couch, my problems would be over. I would get high, the angels would sing to me, and nothing bad would ever happen to anyone I cared about, ever again.

  I would wake up from these dreams sweating, my blanket on the floor. I was happy to be awake, happy that I wasn’t smoking crack, but it made the craving for the real thing almost unbearable in the mornings.

  In the end, Debbie talked me into staying at her place. Laurence said he’d stay too, if Debbie was offering, but that he would still be at Rose’s a lot. He and Debbie had become tight friends while I was missing, and I think a part of him was disappointed that I wasn’t going to jump in her bed and marry her.

  The morning I was released, Laurence picked me up in his rental – he still had the SUV – and I had the fun of getting into a car for the first time with my leg the way it was. I was just glad it was my right leg.

  “Really, Danny, if you loved me at all, you would take up with Debbie,” Laurence said as we finally pulled away from the hospital. “I am tired of being the only homosexual Cleary.”

  “You know how I feel about sexuality,” I said.

  “Yes, I know, the Kinsey scale, and you’re more on the straight side. Well, I don’t know about that. You look more like a dyke, you know.”

  “I know,” I said. “But don’t be so shallow.”

  “Debbie’s a cop. It would be so nice to have a cop in the family, the way you carry on.” It was a gorgeous day. I took off the cardigan Laurence had made me put on before I left the hospital, as though I was an old lady about to catch a chill.

  “It would,” I said. “In fact, I think that should be your mission. To marry a cop, I mean.”

  “Not me,” he said. “I’m going to marry Antonio.” I looked at him.

  “You are?”

  Laurence glanced over at me. “Beanpole, please.”

  “Oh,” I said. Laurence had never even lived with one of his boyfriends. He liked to say that his obituary would describe him as a “confirmed bachelor” like they used to say in the old days, code for gay men. “Well, probably Darren should.”

  “Yes!” Laurence drummed the steering wheel. “That is exactly what he needs! I’m going to start looking for a cop for him as soon as we get back to Toronto.”

  Laurence had taken a leave of absence from his network. He said it was a long time coming; he’d been working too hard for too long, and he didn’t care what it might mean for his career at this point. “I’ve got stock,” he said, “and a golden contract. Life is short. I should spend some time with the nephews.” Matty and Luke were excited about the prospect of having Big L coming to stay. For whatever reason, Luke had taken a particular shine to Laurence, and Laurence was the only one other than Darren who could reliably bring Luke out of his shell.

  “Ask Paul,” I said, referring to my guardian angel, Detective Paul Belliveau. “He’ll hook Darren up.”

  “Genius idea, Bean. I’m going to get on the blower with him tonight.” He looked over at me. I was rooting through the glove compartment for sunglasses.

  “Debbie took your stuff to her house,” he told me again. I could tell he was a bit nervous, bringing me back to the lake, back to the cottage where I had found Dickie’s severed finger in a box outside the back door. Back to the lake where I had been buried alive a week earlier. “How’s the pain?”

  “I can deal,” I said. I could. I’d enjoyed the morphine cloud at the beginning when I needed it, but I’d been on Percocet for a few days now, and it was nice to get my cognitive functioning back, slowly. I’d asked Laurence to hang onto the Percocet for me, just on the off-chance I took an emotional nosedive one of these days and decided it would be a good idea to get high. “I’m still supposed to be in rehab, don’t forget.” I needed sunglasses. I love the sun on my skin, but I have the photosensitive eyes of a vampire. I put my hand up before he could say anything. We’d been
circling around the issue for days. “A sober living companion. Seriously. No more rehab. It doesn’t work, anyway.”

  Laurence kept his mouth shut, and I was thankful for small mercies. I turned the radio up, and we sang together. Wilson Phillips’ “Hold On” was playing.

  “Fuck, but we’re good,” I said when the song ended.

  “Damn straight,” Laurence said. He sounded like Mary for a minute.

  I wasn’t going to think about Mary right now. Mary, lying on the dirt floor of the bunker, taking sips of water from the bottle Dickie had in his hand.

  “Step on it,” I said. I stuck my head out the window and closed my eyes. And swallowed a bug. Laurence laughed as I choked, and I thought, okay. Today is a good day. We’re alive, and we’re safe. And if I can, I’ll try and help Mary. She tried to help me, and I will try to help her.

  “I want to sit on the dock and get some sun,” I said.

  “Really? You want to go near the water?”

  “No point in being scared of everything, Laurence. Que sera sera.”

  * * *

  Debbie was unloading groceries from the back of her Honda when we pulled into the driveway.

  “Let me help you with that,” Laurence called out the window. He jumped out and trotted toward her.

  “No, that’s okay,” I yelled to him. “I can get out of this ridiculous vehicle on my bad leg by myself, you fucktards.” Debbie and Laurence rolled their eyes at each other and came over to the truck to help me out.

  “She’s going to drive you crazy, Debs,” Laurence said. Debs? I thought.

  “I’m regretting it already,” Debbie said.

  “You two should take your act on the road.” I was happy. I figured, okay, we’re going to have some fun. But my leg was also telling me that the time for sitting up in the truck and not keeping it elevated was over, for now. Laurence saw my face, which even I could tell had probably gone a bit gray as I struggled with righting myself on the crutches.