“No, I didn’t mean you, Lars,” she hollered at him. “Just go meditate or get your highlights re-done.”
He stopped looking at her and squatted back down next to Derrick’s commemorative plaque.
God help her. If she saw Blondie crying again, she’d send that mean little pecker of a swan after him. Then he’d really have something to cry about.
She crouched on the dirt, pulled off her shirt and revealed a cute bikini top. She pulled skin diver goggles and a snorkel out of her backpack and placed them on her head. Rolled up her pants legs to the tippy top of her legs. She looked at the gray and green pond water that resembled a toxic soup with sprinkles of botulism and flesh eating bacteria. “I can do this,” she said. Took a deep breath. She let it out.
“I have no doubts, Cupcake,” Derrick replied as he reclined in the rowboat, arms stretched overhead. He caught a glimpse of blondie and sat straight up, startled. One of his hands flew to his chest.
The Observer crouched in Australian tea-tree bushes close to the Shrine’s pond, and watched the blonde guy who hovered over Derrick’s plaque. The Observer spotted Annie on the pond’s bank directly across from the guy. She wore a bikini top covered in daisies and waded into the pond. Bitch! The Observer had warned Dimwit the other night. But apparently she was stupid or lucky because Dimwit was always showing up in the right place, most of the time. Someone had to be feeding her info. Who? The blonde guy crying over Derrick’s memorial plaque? Annie the baker was supposed to be a patsy, a set-up and a throwaway clue for the cops to wonder about for years after Derrick’s murder investigation went cold. Or maybe, in a perfect world, an I Promise world, L.A.’s finest would get frustrated and find enough evidence to pin Derrick’s murder on Ms. Annie Graceland, soon-to-be-formerly, Piccolino.
But this ongoing chase jeopardized the big goal. Nothing mattered but the big goal. The Observer was running out of time, and definitely out of patience. Because the Observer had followed the blonde guy here, not Annie. This was all so unnecessary and exhausting. The Observer couldn’t deal with any more exhaustion, any more stress. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Time to give a major shock.
Annie waded through the pond’s murky waters about twenty-five feet out from Derrick’s plaque. If she was lucky, her engagement and wedding rings were still there, at the bottom of the pond, resting on rocks or sand. If she were unlucky, some stupid fish or bird had gobbled her baubles. She’d probably get in trouble if she had a fish fry and bird BBQ on the Shrine’s property. Especially if someone caught her. But, finding her engagement and wedding rings, and pawning them, would cover another month or two of rent and bills. Right now paying her bills and staying afloat, was month by month. It was a sad truth, but since she moved to L.A., she realized lots of people lived just that way. She took a deep breath, stuck her head in the pond water, next her shoulders, then her entire body and waded in.
She swam inches from the bottom of the pond, squinted through her mask and searched for her rings. She picked up and pocketed some American and a bunch of Euro coins. If she combed the whole pond she might get enough to pay for a couple gallons of gas. When she spotted something small, round and glimmery at the bottom of the pond just yards in front of her. Air bubbles escaped in a burst from her snorkel.
She pinwheeled her arms, stuck her head out of the water, and gasped for breath. The duck she threatened with orange sauce paddled toward her, determined, like a feathered Jaws. She looked at the rowboat—no Derrick. But the small glint twinkled again from the bottom of the pond. Could those be her rings? The ones she tossed in anger the night she conjured Dr. Derrick Fuller from the dead? What the hell, they waited for her and she wasn’t going to let them just sit there. She readjusted her mask and snorkel, took a deep breath and dove.
The Observer watched Dimwit dive again and pulled something from a knapsack. It was round, twelve inches across in length and six inches deep. It was festively colored and looked like it was made of metal. The Observer lifted it up and down several times. It wasn’t light and seemed solid. The Observer had realized Derrick lied over and over and screwed up the plan. The Observer was not left with a choice. Simply had to let go of Derrick in order to protect all that was sacred and life affirming. Now this Dimwit bitch, who was supposed to be a patsy, endangered the plan. Revenge was sweet but priorities ruled. First, beautiful blondie, then Dimwit patsy in the bikini top.
A small portion of Annie’s butt rose above the pond water and slowly swam toward the opposite shore. Her shorts were a muddy camouflage green-brown, soaking wet and almost blended with the murky water.
From his position on the bench next to Ghandi’s ash, Bob Bauerfeld jumped like when he’d been hit with the resuscitating paddles after his first heart attack. “Bootsy!” He pointed to Annie’s butt. “Look! An endangered species. A Bifurcated African Turtle. Get the camera phone.”
“Oh, Bob. So exciting!” Bootsy said, dug through her purse and pulled it out. “You’re the technical one. What do I do?”
“Aim and shoot, Boots. It’s immortality and the cincher for our new ad campaign. I promise you.”
The Observer cradled the round metallic weapon. Snuck through the beautiful bushes, the flowering plants, and stood three feet away from Derrick’s memorial plaque. The Observer surveyed the pond. Dimwit wasn’t visible. The Observer regarded the young blond man who knelt at Derrick’s plaque.
“I miss you.” Blondie stared at the plaque and his lower lip quivered.
The Observer stepped out from the bushes. “I know who you are,” the Observer said and noted the young man’s tiny, almost imperceptible accent.
Blondie looked up, wiped a tear away from one of his impossibly high photogenic cheekbones. “Then you know why I’m sad.”
“Maybe you should go with him,” the Observer said.
“I can’t,” Blondie said and stroked Derrick’s plaque. “He’s dead.”
“A tragedy.” The Observer pointed to Annie’s butt that crested in the pond several yards from them. “What’s that?”
Blondie turned and looked. The Observer took the opportunity to smash him over his head repetitively with the weapon until he fell into the pond; face down, bleeding from his head and face. The Observer threw the weapon at his back. Watched as blondie’s muscular shoulders and jeans that hugged his perfect tight butt sank in the pond. “Derrick promised me! Promised me before he ever even knew you,” the Observer hissed. “I saw the bus station pictures. I took the bus station pictures. You should never have come here, let alone stayed.”
Big statement accomplished. The Observer jogged down the path and exited through the Shrine’s front gates.
Annie was underwater. Her rings were about two feet from her grasp. Yay! She’d recover her tokens of eternal love and trust and sell them to a diamond dealer. It was, after all, Los Angeles, where diamond brokers were as common as 7-11s or White-Hen-Pantries back in the Midwest. First she’d pay her rent. Then the bills: phone, gas, electric, cell phone, internet/cable, health insurance, federal taxes, state taxes, her CPA, first credit card, second credit card, the annuity retirement thing, car payment (yes, she was still paying for that piece of shit-oops-classic automobile), a couple of trashy magazines, the outstanding balance at the vet’s office for Teddy’s health issue. She’d pay back her loans to her friends, family and the lawyer for the marital filings. Probably five more things she’d currently forgotten.
She shivered under water. Her feet tingled from the cold. But in her sight, right in front of her, just one stroke away, were her rings. She swam, grabbed them. Mission accomplished! She stuck them on her fourth finger, left hand. But they didn’t fit. Apparently stress had made not just her butt fatter, but also her fingers. Fine. She shoved the rings on her pinky finger.
But why was the water suddenly tinged in red? A large hand landed on her facemask. She screamed underwater, which was not a good thing as she spit out her snorkeling tube. Blondie sank in the water in front of her. Blood seeped from his h
ead and face. He didn’t look good, but he didn’t look dead, either. Then, she heard Derrick in her head and saw him underwater, waving his hands, apoplectic.
“You have to rescue him. Now!” Derrick hollered.
No shit, sherlock she thought as she watched Blondie sink. He looked like he weighed way more than she did. She swam as fast as she could through the muck, got underneath him and pushed him up from the bottom of the pond to the surface. Their heads broke through the water and she gasped for air. Blondie didn’t. Not a good sign.
Drenched in pond scum, covered in moss and fighting lilies, Annie towed Blondie to the shore, where he landed, still not breathing. She pushed him onto his side and pounded on his back. He gagged out water. She straddled him and pushed on his sternum multiple times. He hacked out some water, green goop and breathed, ragged, shallow. She ripped some fabric from the hem of her shorts and held it to his head in an attempt to quell the bleeding. But there was so much blood.
Meanwhile, Pimply Monk saw the crazy goings on and raced toward her. His eyes were wide and dilated.
“You. Call 911! Now!” Annie yelled. “You break your vow of silence and tell them what’s going on or I’ll personally rip out your tongue so you will never speak, again. Got it?”
Pimply turned white, pulled a cell out of his pocket and dialed 911. And told the operator in a whisper where and what the emergency was.
Annie gave Blondie mouth to mouth. His breathing was stronger, thank God. Color seeped back into his cheeks. His head was beat up, bloody, but he reached his hand tenuously across the wet dirt. He found Annie’s hand and squeezed it. In the distance she heard sirens.
She also heard Derrick, his voice low. “Tell Franco his dad loves him, but it’s not time for him to join him.”
“What? Why do you care? Who’s his Dad?” Annie asked.
“Because I love Franco.” Derrick popped up above the pond’s surface next to her. “Because he’s my son.”
Annie stroked blondie’s hand and repeated Derrick’s words. Blondie squeezed her hand again and rasped, “The pictures. Bus station,” he said and passed out.
Sirens rang from approaching police cars. Pimply Monk jumped up and down, pointing and waving. Paramedics armed with their gear sprinted toward the pond. They hooked Blondie up to an oxygen mask, put a sturdy neck brace on him, strapped him to a stretcher and took his vitals.
Annie thought that if luck were on everyone’s side, Blondie might make it.
Annie sat in the St. Cecelia’s Hospital emergency waiting room. She lowered her rolled-up board shorts back down to a decent level. There was a gaping hole in her pants where she had harvested fabric to staunch Blondie’s wounds. That hole flashed way too much of her upper right thigh. Pond goop dried in her hair. She’d told the cops who showed up at the Shrine that she was retrieving her rings when she spotted Blondie sinking in the water, and rescued him. She didn’t mention the spare change she pocketed. She also didn’t tell the police who Blondie was related to because she needed time to think about that angle. Who wanted both Derrick and his son dead. As well as the big question—Why?
The Bauerfelds and Pimply Monk had not witnessed the attack and didn’t have a lot to tell the police. The police retrieved what they thought to be the weapon in the assault. It was a round festive holiday tin that sported a label that described its contents—a two-year-old fruitcake from Country March. The same upscale deli that used to carry Annie’s baked goods.
Derrick sat next to Annie on the uncomfortable chairs in St. Cecelia’s Hospital emergency waiting room. His skin tone was a little gray. “I can’t rouse them,” he said. “They won’t talk to me. They don’t see me.”
“Who do you mean ‘they’?” Annie asked. Her eyes narrowed and she looked around the emergency room. “Dead people? Do you see dead people, Derrick?”
“God, no. The medical doctors. They’re in their own little world. They seem a little arrogant.”
She patted his dead arm. “Let me see what I can do.” She got up and walked down the hallway.
She spotted a door labeled “Intern Lounge. No Entrance.” She jiggled the door handle. It wasn’t locked. She walked inside. If they really meant “No Entrance” they should have made it a little tougher to get in.
Moments later, she walked out of the lounge with her hair in a surgical hairnet. She wore scrubs and a long white doctor’s coat with a nametag that read, “Dr. Sanjay Patel, M.D.”
Annie stood and Derrick knelt next to the ICU bedside of Franco, Derrick’s son. There were beeping machines, IV lines hooked to drips and a blood oximeter clamp on Franco’s finger. He was unconscious with multiple abrasions and cuts on his still-beautiful face. Someone had been sweet and wiped most of the blood off his face and hairline. But that person couldn’t wipe away the swelling, dark bruises and funky misaligned boney angles from the facial fractures and other traumas.
“Oh, God. He’ll be okay, right?” Derrick asked and raked his fingers through his hair. “What does the chart say?”
Annie, aka Dr. Sanjay Patel, perused Franco’s chart quickly. “Says he’s male, twenty-one-years old. His name is Franco Fennedy and his emergency contact person is Clarissa Driver? That name sounds familiar. Why didn’t you tell me you had a son?”
“It’s complicated,” Derrick said but wouldn’t meet her look.
“You’re dead, Derrick. Your son, Franco, is damn lucky to be lying in a hospital bed when he should be dead now, too. I think that’s complicated. Telling the truth will be a breeze. Details, now.”
Derrick stroked Franco’s hand. “I didn’t know until about a year ago. I hooked up with a beautiful eighteen year old girl when I was in my late twenties, and frankly, sowing some oats. Clarissa never told me she was pregnant. Her family was wealthy and politically prominent. She was a college freshman. Two months after we started dating she said her parents decided she needed a more rounded, international education. They shipped her to Argentina for a ‘multi-cultural’ year abroad. Twenty years later, Clarissa calls out of the blue. She told me in a dark restaurant, in a back booth, over some great scotch and Argentinean steaks, that on that ‘year abroad’ she had our baby and named him Franco.”
“Wait a minute,” Annie said. “Clarissa Driver? Governor Driver’s wife? Yeah, I’d say she’s politically prominent.”
“Franco was adopted by a family friend in Argentina. Now he wanted, no, demanded, to meet his biological parents,” Derrick said. “I met him for the first time at the bus station in downtown L.A. Obviously someone took pictures and twisted them. Franco’s a great kid. He’s got Clarissa’s smarts, both of our looks and his own, very sweet innocent take on the world. The modeling was my idea. He could earn some money while he decided where he wanted to go to college and what career he wished to pursue. He’s my kid, Annie. He’s a good kid.” Derrick squeezed Franco’s hand. “Come on, son. You can fight this.”
Annie hid a tear. “Look Derrick. Once the cops read his chart, they’ll track down his mom. And eventually make the connection between you and Franco. Do we need to warn Clarissa?”
“No,” Derrick said as he looked up and saw Detectives Rafe Campillio and Kyle Pardue approach the ICU nurses’ station. “Her family knows everything. They’re political mafia. I need you to call my plastic surgeon, Dr. Bronson.”
“Where’s the money coming from to cover the work?”
“What I left Franco in my new will can easily pay the bill.”
“Has your new will even been read, yet?”
“I don’t know. Jeez, I’m dead, give a guy a break. Ask Lewis Scuchiani, my attorney. He has all my wills.” Derrick pouted.
Aah, Lewis Schuchiani. Annie was headed to the little celebration for Lewis’s making Junior Partner in less than forty-eight hours. Actually, her alter ego, Duchess Myra Stoneycliff, was invited to the reception. Was Lewis the missing link in the hunt for Derrick’s killer?
When Annie overheard, “I’m Detective Rafe Campillio. Is the victim con
scious? We need to interview him.” From the sound of Rafe’s voice, he was down the corridor, just yards away.
A nurse answered. “I’m sorry, Detectives. You have to wait until Mr. Fennedy is stable.”
“I’m Detective Kyle Pardue. We need to talk to him, ASAP.”
“Perhaps you didn’t hear me,” the nurse said. “Franco Fennedy is unconscious and not responding verbally. We’ll let you know as soon as he can be interviewed.”
There was a pause. Then Annie overheard, “Oh, come on, Rafe. Chances are I pinch the guy and he wakes up. We’re here. We have to at least try. I’m going with or without you,” Kyle said.
Annie’s eyes widened as she peeked through the crack in the curtain surrounding Franco’s bed and watched Kyle approach the cubicle. “I’m out of here, Derrick,” she said as she snuck out of the cubicle and made her way down the hallway.
She wanted to bolt but forced herself to walk down the ICU hallway. She took deep breaths in and out, and strode past a hundred hospital cubicles, lots of weird equipment and mobs of white-coated professionals. They all seemed to stare at her muddy hair that poked out of her surgical cap. She needed a distraction. To appear even more doctor-like she reached into Dr. Patel’s medical jacket, lo and behold, pulled out his cell, and pretended to talk on it. “Blah blah. Yes, doctor. Sorry about the hemorrhoids. Ah, yes, the X-rays for the multiple contusions of the peripheral handicapped preakness candidates were positive for whooping cough and cantaloupes. I do believe the patient will live. No, the varicose veins must stay.”
Annie made it to the emergency room waiting area and walked out the sliding doors to the parking lot. She pulled off the doctor’s coat and tossed it into a waste can. She hustled to her car and zoomed off.
Detective Rafe Campillio had followed ‘Dr. Sanjay Patel’ down the hospital hallways, stood at the emergency waiting room doors and watched as Annie Rose left the hospital and trashed her scrubs in the garbage can. Thankfully, horn dog Kyle was still at the ICU desk passing out his cards to every female nurse and staff person.
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