Shattered Spirits

by L. L. Bartlett

Too many emotions vied for prominence within me: pride overwhelming all else. But was pride just an emotional indulgence?

  Luckily, Brenda chose that moment to reenter the dining room, which gave me time to think about what I wanted to say next. She set a tray on the table, then handed me a glass, another to Richard, and set a plate of cheese and crackers between us. “Eat hearty,” she said before heading back to the kitchen.

  “Uh-oh!” CP said again, since she must have figured out I wasn’t up to playing the game anymore.

  I reached for a piece of cheddar and popped it into my mouth. Extra sharp. Nice.

  “So,” Richard said, taking off where we’d left off. “What do you want to do?”

  That was a hard question to answer. Part of me wanted to go back in time to when my now-dead wife and I had been so happy. Before she’d become a coke head. Before she’d been murdered. Before I’d had my head caved in. Part of me was ecstatic to have reconnected with Richard, and to have found Maggie, but part of me was resentful of both of them, too. They wanted to pull me in far too many directions.

  “I’m in a world of pain and misery,” I answered honestly. “Right now I’m not capable of making a rational decision.”

  Richard’s smile was ironic. “I think you just made one.”

  “Uh-oh!” CP said, and I noted only two blocks remained on her tray.

  Richard expected me to clarify my thoughts. I took a breath and plunged on. “I would love to please both you and Maggie, but … I’m not sure that’s possible. Who do I choose to disappoint more? You or her?”

  “We’ve had the disappointment conversation before, and you know where I stand.”

  Yeah, I did. Still…. “Maggie and I haven’t had that conversation.”

  “You guys are good together,” he said neutrally.

  “Connected? Yeah. Financially? No way.”

  “I can always—”

  “No!” We’d been down that road before. I hated the fact that he’d had to rescue me financially far too many times. There was no way I was going to ask him to be responsible for Maggie, too. He’d never said so aloud, but I knew he hadn’t forgiven her for cheating on me, which was weird, because I had. But there were times I could see it in his eyes and by the things he didn’t say. He was always too polite to vent steam, to make anyone uncomfortable, and I knew it was more for my sake than hers.

  “Uh-oh!” CP said as the last block sailed over the edge of her tray.

  I sipped my bourbon and glanced at my watch. It was only a quarter to seven. We weren’t going to eat for at least another twenty-five minutes and I was so wiped I wondered if I’d be able to stay awake long enough to get through dinner.

  Poor Herschel had been on his own for hours, which made me feel shitty for abandoning the little guy. Well, we’d probably have a minimum of twelve hours to share. Of course, if I was lucky, I’d be asleep for most of that time, but then so would he.

  I took another sip of bourbon and noticed a pile of what were obviously library books on the sideboard. Titles like Managing Your Phobia, Overcoming Anxiety, and Stop Stressing Forever. Had Richard borrowed books that might help him overcome his fear of my cat?

  “Uh-oh! Uh-oh!” CP pounded her highchair’s now-empty tray with her flat palms.

  “Okay, okay,” Richard placated, ripping his attention away from the pages that sat in front of him. He picked up all the blocks, setting them in front of his daughter once again.

  “That girl has you wrapped around her little finger.”

  “Excuse me, but I believe she’s got you pinned, too,” Richard said.

  Yeah, she did.

  “What’s on tap for tomorrow?” I asked.

  Richard’s eyes lit up. “First—you read all my notes. We can’t make any decisions until you do.”

  “And then?”

  “We go to work.”

  Work? I was in almost constant pain; I could barely move—I felt utterly exhausted … and in my heart, I knew I would somehow be ready.

  “You’ve got a deal.”

  11

  Unlike the promise of the book’s title, Richard stared at the text before him and felt anything but angst free. Just reading the last few paragraphs had caused his hackles to rise. He wanted not just a glass, but a tumbler of Scotch. He resisted that temptation—but just barely.

  Footsteps on the parquet floor heralded Brenda’s arrival. She entered the study, aimed for the couch, and flopped down.

  “Everybody tucked in for the night?” Richard asked.

  “Betsy and Jeffy—but I’m not far from crashing, either.”

  He could hear the fatigue in her voice; could see the unhappy set of her mouth; noticed how her gaze seemed riveted on the floor.

  “What’s up?” he asked, and tried to prepare himself for an onslaught.

  “It’s too much. It’s just too much,” she said and there was a bit of a tremor in her voice.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “This is a big house.”

  “The cleaners come every week.”

  “But Betsy creates a lot of laundry. She has a lot of toys that you don’t like to see covering the floor.”

  That was true. But he knew what the real problem was.

  “You know I love Jeffy—” she began.

  Here it came.

  “But he’s virtually helpless.”

  “I know having him here is a lot of work for you.”

  “It is. I haven’t worked as a floor nurse for a very long time. I’m not used to it anymore.”

  “The solution is obvious; we can hire someone to come in and—”

  “That is not going to happen,” Brenda said adamantly. “You bring in a stranger to take care of Jeffy and he’ll be crawling back across the driveway dragging his cat carrier with him.”

  “Then what are you suggesting?” he asked, dreading the answer.

  “You need to get your shit together and help out more.” She didn’t sound angry, but she was resolute.

  “I can take care of Betsy while—”

  “No. You need to attend to your brother. A: he’s your family. B: he’s skinny, and he’s kind of frail, but you’re bigger than me and better able to haul him around. And C: he’s embarrassed as hell to have me take care of his personal needs. So for God’s sake, cut the poor guy some slack and give him a hand.”

  Yeah, he’d done some of that when Jeff had been released from the hospital, but that was before the cat came into the picture.

  “You’re asking me to—”

  “Grow up,” Brenda said firmly, her level gaze cutting straight through him.

  “Couldn’t we board the cat until Jeff recovers?”

  “No.” Her voice was icy.

  Richard proffered the book he’d been reading. “I’m only on chapter four.”

  “Then you’d better take up speed reading. What do you think an eight-pound cat is going to do to you, anyway?”

  “It could scratch me—or Betsy.”

  “Not likely. Jeffy’s father had the cat declawed. I’m sure it wouldn’t be something Jeffy would have done—but there’s no chance of the cat harming anyone.”

  “It’s still got teeth.”

  “Which he won’t use unless you pull his tail or do something else to annoy him.”

  “Now you’re calling it him.”

  “Because that’s his gender. And every time you call Herschel an it you hurt Jeffy’s feelings. He loves that cat.”

  “And I can’t imagine why.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You just need to get over it—and the cat.”

  “You just can’t turn off feelings like—”

  “I know that. But we don’t have time for you to contemplate your navel for a few weeks, months, or years while you figure out what’s behind your problem.”

  “You’re not at all sympathetic,” he began.

  “None of us asked to be in this situation—least of all Jeffy or his cat, but we are where we are. That means me and
you have to do our share. You know if your positions were reversed that Jeffy would do anything he could for you.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted.

  “No one says you have to like Herschel, and I really get that he makes you feel uncomfortable, but we can’t go on like we have the past couple of days.”

  Brenda was unnerved by bugs—ANY bugs. She always yelped when encountering one. She didn’t seem to understand that Richard felt the same way about cats, only he wasn’t prone to terrified outbursts. Luckily, he hadn’t had to deal with them much. When Jeff had brought the cat home it hadn’t bothered him, but Richard never thought he’d have to deal with the animal. It had usually hidden when he’d visited Jeff’s apartment. Was it possible the cat was as wary of him as he was of it? Had Jeff acquired a cat who could read people in the same way Jeff could, or was that a trait inherent to the species?

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “If you could get Jeffy up in the morning and put him to bed at night, it sure would be a big help. That way I can focus on the baby, the laundry, and feeding the four of us three meals a day.”

  “But we could hire—” he began.

  “I am not your grandma. I don’t care how much money we have—that’s not the kind of life I want to live.”

  “Have you even considered that outsourcing those kinds of tasks would give someone else meaningful work?”

  “Are you trying to pull a guilt trip on me?” she accused.

  “Of course not.”

  “You may have grown up never making your bed or having to load a dishwasher or cut the grass, but that’s not the life I want for our daughter.”

  Though Richard had lived a life of privilege, he hadn’t turned out all that bad. He’d been a good student, had gone to college and med school, and earned his MD. He’d gravitated to the same kind of work ethic Brenda was advocating.

  “It’s just that we don’t have to struggle with this kind of stuff. It can be so much easier on all of us if we just make a few calls and—”

  Brenda practically jumped to her feet. “Time for me to go to bed.” She turned and headed out the room with no good-night kiss—no anything.

  “Wait!” Richard called, and she stopped at the open doorway, her back still to him. “I don’t understand why you feel the way you do—but I trust everything you’ve said.”

  Brenda turned around to face him, her expression guarded.

  “You’re right,” Richard conceded. “I never made my bed. I never performed any chores, and I was never as happy as Betsy is playing with a stupid set of blocks. I never want her to feel as miserable as I—and Jeff—ever did. We’re a family, and we need to act like one.”

  “No matter how painful and inconvenient it is?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said wearily.

  Brenda reentered the room, strode across the expanse of floor to his desk and walked around it. She bent down and gave him a loving kiss. “This is what it means to be a family. It isn’t always pleasant, but it’s always good.”

  Richard reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Then I’m willing to pull my weight and do what I have to do.”

  “Even if you’re freaked out?”

  “Nobody said it was going to be easy.”

  “Nothing worthwhile ever is,” Brenda said, and bent down to kiss him again. This time, there was real passion in her kiss, and he reveled in it.

  They broke apart.

  “I think I might just join you in turning in for the night.”

  Brenda’s smile was inviting, and she pulled him out of his chair. “Yes, you definitely need to come to bed, and right now.”

  Richard made no effort to stifle a smile. He turned out the light over his desk and willingly followed his wife.

  * * *

  I took Richard’s typed notes with me when I retired that evening, but my mind was toast. I took a pain pill and was in bed and asleep before eight-thirty.

  Herschel woke me about six the next morning. He was hungry, but all I had to offer was a half-empty packet of treats to dump into his food bowl until someone came to get me. Of course, Hershel didn’t mind an additional portion of his favorite snack.

  I managed to get to the john and return to perch on the day bed to read Richard’s notes and was not cheered by his sparse prose.

  Alice had been strangled. Her boyfriend had been found nearby beaten and suffering from a fractured skull. I could identify with the poor guy. And yet … somehow I felt like there should be a big question mark left after his name, and I had no idea why. And I had no idea how to pursue such an insubstantial lead, either.

  The notes weren’t as informative as I’d hoped, though I bet Richard had spent many hours pouring through old records to acquire the material. What we really needed was to read the police reports. I had a funny feeling that they might not be as illuminating as I hoped. Had Alice been seen as just a frivolous girl who’d been caught up in an at-the-time illicit activity of visiting a speakeasy with her beau and died as the result of a simple robbery?

  I didn’t know all that much about the Prohibition era. Maybe that was a starting point. I hobbled to my computer and brought it back to life. I did a Google search and found that Ken Burns had done a documentary for PBS on the subject, which might be a lot easier to digest than a ponderous tome. It could at least be a starting point. Richard would probably be willing to spring for the DVD and I was sure he wouldn’t be adverse to researching local records, either.

  Still, something in the back of my mind said we needed to delve into Alice’s father’s past—or at least his life after the death of his first daughter—and I wasn’t sure why.

  Alice wasn’t my only concern. Dave wanted me to look into the life and times of our mutual nemesis, Maria Spodina. That might actually be a much bigger challenge. I did a preliminary Google search on her and only found her address listed online. It matched what Dave had given me. She’d listed only one reference on the application she’d filled out for Tom, but that was a starting point. Unfortunately, it probably meant a field trip to the bar where she used to work.

  I was going to have to suck it up and force myself to go out and about. I was sure Richard would be more than happy to play chauffeur. After all, he wanted to establish this new working relationship more than I did. But anything that required moving and strength drained not only my energy but my will, as well.

  There were a plethora of avenues Richard and I could pursue, but I had a strong feeling that I needed to connect with Alice again before we could move forward. Then again, I wasn’t sure that she would be able to give me the kind of information I—we—needed to solve her problem. I got the feeling she was stuck at a certain point in time and might not be all that helpful when it came to talking about the circumstances of her death.

  I sat in front of my computer contemplating my—our—next move when a knock sounded on my door. Herschel looked up, instantly alert. There was an eagerness in his eyes—a strong desire to escape.

  “I’m decent,” I called, and the door opened.

  Richard poked his head inside. “Is it safe for me to enter?”

  I was surprised to see him and not Brenda. “That depends on what you call safe. Will you be charged by a raging rhino? No. But if you’re afraid of the ferocious panther across the room from me, then—yeah, you’d better run for your life.”

  “Not funny,” he deadpanned. He entered the room and offered me a can of cat food. “It’s for your—”

  “Herschel. His name is Herschel,” I reminded him.

  “Yes. Feed him so we can get you up and out of here. We’ve got a busy day ahead of us.”

  Yeah, we did.

  Richard had also arrived with a clean disposable plastic bowl and he backed off as I doled out Herschel’s food. Back at my apartment, I’d have chopped up the turkey and giblets pâté with a knife, but had to use the can to hack it into chunks, while Herschel danced all around me in joyful anticipation. I held the bowl out to Richard.
<
br />   “What do you expect me to do with it?”

  “Put it on the floor in the bathroom.”

  “Rah!” Herschel howled. The poor little guy was hungry.

  Richard looked panicked. “You do it.”

  I pointed to my leg. “Do you really think I can stand on two feet to do it with this hunk of fiberglass and a brace on my leg?”

  Richard grimaced and took the bowl from me. He walked the five steps to the bathroom. Herschel rushed alongside him and for a moment I thought Richard might just throw the bowl onto the floor and bolt. Instead, he calmly set the new bowl on the floor and picked up the old one, quickly backing away—his spine unnaturally straight. He seemed to be swallowing a lot, and sweat had broken out on his brow.

  “You done good, Rich.”

  He didn’t acknowledge my praise and instead, looked pretty damned freaked. He seemed to shake himself. “Where do you think we should start today?”

  “I’d like to reconnect with Alice, although I’m not sure she’s going to be of much help, but I feel like I need to reassure her that we’re looking into her problem.”

  “Did you read my notes?”

  “Yes. And I have a strong feeling that we need to research Alice’s father. I have a feeling that he—” I wasn’t sure how to put what I felt into words.

  “Do you think he had something to do with her death?”

  I shook my head. “No. But … I have this idea that her violent death wasn’t exactly a surprise to him.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  I shook my head. “No.” I studied Richard’s face. He’d only been a father for eight months, but if the situation warranted it, I knew without a doubt that he’d throw himself under a bus to save his baby girl. Alice had already told me that her parents had been disappointed that their only child was a girl. Had Hiram Newcomb in some abstract way been responsible for his daughter’s death? That idea was repugnant to me—but somehow not entirely unbelievable.

  Richard changed the subject. “Brenda wants you to take a shower.”

  “We’ve got to make some choices. A sponge bath and I can function for most of the day, or take a shower and I’m wasted for a good part of the day.”