The Fortieth Birthday Body

by Valerie Wolzien

  III

  “Did you get the license number by any chance?” Kathleen asked, pulling her long blond hair back and fixing it with the large tortoiseshell barrette that she had just taken from the locker reserved for her in the Field Club women’s locker room.

  “No, but didn’t you write it down after the accident?” Susan answered, pulling on her leg warmers and trying to remember that she shouldn’t hate Kathleen just because she had a great figure.

  “Yes, but I lost it,” Kathleen admitted. “I thought I had put it in my glove compartment, but when I looked for it on Sunday to get all the information together for my insurance company, it was gone. So I must have put it someplace else.”

  “It will turn up,” Susan said.

  “I hope so, my insurance company isn’t going to be happy until it does.”

  “The class begins in three minutes, ladies. Please hurry, we’re starting seven minutes late as it is,” a voice called in the door of the room.

  “Three minutes? Seven minutes? What sort of time freak is this?” Susan muttered, double-knotting her shoes.

  “New teacher,” came a voice from behind the bank of lockers.

  “Gloria? Is that you?” Susan called back.

  “Sure is.” Gloria Bower appeared in their aisle, carrying a broken blue barrette. “Look what happened,” she said. “Anyone have an elastic I can borrow to keep my hair out of my eyes?”

  “I have a whole packet of those things here,” Susan said, reaching into her locker. “I always wonder how they get lost. It reminds me of those Borrower books I used to read to the kids when they were smaller.” She handed a cellophane bag to her friend. “Here. Take a few.” She looked up smiling as she made her offer and discovered that Kathleen and Gloria were exchanging uncomfortable looks. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Kathleen was present when I made a fool of myself yesterday afternoon at the Inn,” Gloria said.

  “You did what?” Susan asked, thinking about spilling drinks, or upsetting plates of food or, possibly, getting drunk in public. She discounted the latter in Gloria’s case; Gloria was too careful, too conservative to lose control in public. It must have been some sort of embarrassing accident that she was talking about.

  But Kathleen knew better and she wanted to know more. She waited, a noncommittal smile on her face, hoping that Gloria would continue. But they were interrupted again by the voice of the class instructor.

  “Class beginning, ladies. Everyone on the floor for warm-up exercises!”

  Kathleen and Susan slammed their lockers shut and followed Gloria, still making two pigtails of her hair, from the room.

  They joined a couple dozen other women on a large gymnasium floor in a room originally designed for indoor team sports for children, but altered by adding mirrors at one end about ten years ago when the exercise class craze had begun.

  “Everyone line up. You know the routine, ladies!” called out the instructor.

  And they did “know the routine,” Susan thought to herself, looking around the room. Everyone here had taken more than one class over the years; most of the women had taken many. The room was crowded, as this was the last series of classes before the start of summer. Susan wondered how many of the women here had tried on their swimsuits before signing up for class. Of course, there were a lot of tan women who had returned from winter vacations to the islands, and who probably had a head start on their exercise program. But the instructor was issuing orders and she’d better pay attention.

  “Three steps left … turn … face the back of the room … three more steps left … I said left, ladies …”

  Susan had to concentrate to follow the directions and she didn’t hear the first time Gloria said her name.

  “Susan, I need to talk to you!” The insistent hiss came from behind her.

  “After class?” Susan offered, turning right instead of left and bumping into the woman next to her who was correctly following directions.

  “Now!” came the reply. “What did Kathleen say to you about yesterday?”

  “Clap hands above your head … high up … stretch … ten times and now five times on each side, ladies.”

  Susan had to wait until the noise had subsided to reply. “Nothing. She didn’t mention it. What happened?”

  “Knees up nice and high and elbow to opposite knee, ladies … then turn in a circle twice … and twenty steps in place … knees nice and high …”

  Susan tried to get Kathleen’s attention and failed. Kathleen was working hard, knees as high as they would go, arms waving, long ponytail bobbing in time to the music. No wonder she looks better than I do, Susan thought, again losing track of the instructions and traveling in the opposite direction to the rest of the class.

  “Now, ladies, we’re going to repeat the whole routine. I think that most of you have gotten it. The ones that are having an extra bit of trouble” (here she looked straight at Susan) “can just follow along as best they can. Now … three steps left and turn … Yes, what is it, Mrs. Grey?” she interrupted herself as the Club switchboard operator appeared in the doorway.

  “I have a message for Mrs. Susan Henshaw.”

  Susan left the line quickly and hurried over to the woman. “What’s wrong?” she asked anxiously, thinking of her husband in an automobile accident or maybe a heart attack—or arrested.

  “Hancock Elementary called. Your son, Chad, is in the nurse’s office with a fever of a hundred and two degrees. They think you’d better go over.”

  “Susan?” Kathleen came up behind her.

  “It’s okay, Kathleen. Chad’s sick at school and they want me to pick him up.”

  “Oh, I thought that something terrible had happened.”

  “No, probably just another case of strep throat; he gets it every single time someone breathes near him. Listen, call me later, will you? I want to hear about everything with Gloria.”

  “So do I,” Kathleen agreed. “I’d better get back to class, but I’ll call you afterward.”

  Susan ran back to her locker and got her coat and purse. She left the Clubhouse without bothering to change and drove quickly over to school, lecturing herself for not paying more attention to her son’s health at breakfast this morning. The school was on the other side of town, but Hancock wasn’t large and she was in the nurse’s office in less than fifteen minutes.

  “Hello. I got a call that Chad was sick—had a fever,” she said, entering the small office near the gymnasium.

  “You must be Mrs. Henshaw.” The tall efficient woman in the white uniform of her profession came to the door to meet her. “We called about forty-five minutes ago and your housekeeper said you were out. I’m glad she found you so quickly.”

  Susan thought briefly that the timing meant that Chad must have gotten sick almost as soon as he got to school. “He seemed all right at breakfast,” she began.

  “Well, these things come on quickly,” Mrs. Robinson said diplomatically. “The spots are just beginning to show up now.”

  “Spots? I was told he had a fever. I was thinking strep throat again.”

  “I think you’d better start thinking chicken pox, Mrs. Henshaw, because that’s what he has.”

  “Chicken pox?” Susan repeated weakly, remembering the cold compresses, calamine lotion, and scabs that she had lived with before.

  “Yes, chicken pox, and it looks like it’s going to be a doozy of a case. Has Chrissy had it?”

  “Yes, when she was a baby,” Susan replied. “Chad wasn’t born yet.”

  “Oh, too bad; it’s easier when the whole family can get it over with at one time. But sometimes these things just don’t work out,” she concluded briskly.

  “Where is Chad?” Susan asked.

  “Right here. His teacher was bringing his coat and he went out in the hall to meet her,” the nurse replied, as the child walked back into the room, carrying not only his coat but a pile of schoolbooks.

  “I’ll carry those, Chaddy,” Susan sai
d, taking the books from him with one hand and helping him put on his coat with the other. “I don’t see any spots,” she said.

  “Look. Here and here,” the nurse replied, pulling the child’s too-long hair off the back of his neck. “And when he takes off that shirt, you’ll see that he’s full of them.”

  Susan recognized the telltale spots and sighed. “Well, I guess we’d better be getting home and calling the doctor. Thank you very much. Let’s go, Chaddy.”

  “Stop calling me that!” the child insisted angrily.

  Susan and the nurse exchanged looks. Susan’s said that her child would never talk that way to her except when he was sick. The nurse’s look indicated that she doubted it.

  Susan and her son hurried through the cold to the car. “I think I’m freezing,” Chad said, wrapping his arms around himself and reaching over to turn up the heat.

  “We’ll be home quickly,” his mother assured him, reaching out and feeling his forehead. The child was burning up; she pressed down on the accelerator and the car speeded up. They made it into her garage in record time. On the door to the kitchen hung a note with her name on the outside.

  “What is it?” asked Chad, stopping and leaning against the side of the garage.

  “It looks like Mrs. Annie’s writing,” Susan began, opening the letter. “Oh, it is. It says she got a call from home and her daughter had an emergency and so she’s left for the day …” She noticed her son’s position against the wall. “Chaddy, I’m sorry to leave you standing out here. You’d better get to bed and I’ll call the doctor right away.”

  “Bed? Can’t I lie down in front of the TV? I’ll be bored in bed,” the child protested.

  Susan took one look at his flushed face and knew he would be asleep soon no matter where she put him and made a quick decision. “The den isn’t ready to be a sick room. Get into your pajamas and you can lie in my bed and watch TV. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  When they got to her bedroom, she helped him out of his clothes and into the sweatpants and T-shirt he wore for pajamas, Chad being too sick to remember his recently acquired modesty. She tucked him into her bed, giving him a dose of Tylenol, and, placing the remote control in his hand, she left him alone. She called the pediatrician first and, after the predictable discussion of fevers and antihistamines, she hung up. A knock on her front door pulled her back downstairs. She was more than a little surprised to find Mitchell and Sardini waiting for her.

  “We have some questions for you,” Mitchell said.

  “Hello, Mrs. Henshaw. My young friend here makes it sound more ominous than it is. We would like to look around your home and ask you a few—a very few—questions. You may refuse or ask for a lawyer present, of course.”

  “No, that won’t be necessary. Just let me tell my son what I’m doing. He’s upstairs. Why don’t you wait in the living room?”

  “Excellent.” The two men did as she suggested and Susan ran back up to her son. He was asleep, but her hand on his head told her that the fever was still raging. She covered him lightly, turned off the TV, and hurried downstairs.

  “Have you checked to see if any of your jewelry is missing, ma’am?” Mitchell surprised her by asking.

  “My … ? I don’t think so, but I could check,” Susan offered, remembering her hiding place for jewelry and blushing.

  “Have you looked at it since your party?” Sardini asked.

  “No. Do you want to come with me while I check?”

  “If we could.” Sardini got up from the couch.

  “I haven’t seen any signs that anyone has been in the house,” Susan added.

  “Let’s check anyway,” was his response.

  Both men followed her into the master bedroom. Susan glanced over at the bed and saw, with relief, that Chad was still asleep. Neither man said anything, nor seemed surprised when she led them into the large connecting bathroom. Susan knelt on the handpainted ceramic tile floor and opened the door to the cabinet under the sink; she removed a large-size Tampax box. Standing up, she covered the counter top with a fluffy towel before opening the box and dumping out its contents. A half-dozen little leather jewelry boxes and one or two made of cardboard fell onto the towel. Susan opened them all and searched through the various sparkling contents. “Everything seems to be here,” she said finally.

  “You keep your jewelry in a Tampax box?” Mitchell was amazed.

  Sardini was grinning broadly, but said nothing.

  “I thought it was one place no one would look,” Susan explained. “I used to keep it in the safe deposit box but this is more convenient. We kept meaning to get a home safe, but just never got around to it.” She replaced everything as she spoke.

  “Probably as safe as most places,” Sardini agreed.

  The three of them left the bathroom. This time Susan went to the bed and felt her son’s head again. He seemed cooler; the medicine must be working.

  “Home sick from school?” Mitchell asked.

  “Yes. I was at my aerobics class when the school nurse got a message to me that he needed picking up,” Susan answered, leading the men back downstairs.

  “How did the school find you at your class?” Sardini asked, taking out the notebook he had been writing in before they went upstairs.

  Susan explained how the call had been forwarded by her cleaning woman and began to tell how she had found the note from her telling about the emergency departure.

  “Have you seen anyone suspicious around?” Sardini asked.

  “No, I …” she began and then remembered the man in the dented Jeep that she had seen waiting outside her house just a few hours ago. She told them about it.

  “That’s very interesting, Mrs. Henshaw.”

  “Really?” Susan asked, wondering how significant it could be.

  “Yes. You see, we put Mrs. Elliot’s name through the Department of Motor Vehicles’ computers—just standard procedure; we didn’t think that she had committed a crime. And what popped up was an accident between your friend Kathleen Gordon and a black Jeep. The Jeep is registered to Mrs. Dawn Elliot.”

  “Mom, I feel so sick,” came a voice from the top of the stairway. The men and Susan turned around in time to see her son lean against the banister and throw up.

  IV

  “So a man driving Dawn’s car was hanging around my house,” Susan said, pouring out some steamy tea for Kathleen. The two women were sitting at her kitchen table discussing recent revelations.

  “Susan, how many times have you seen him today?”

  “Just once, this morning.”

  “And before that?”

  “Just the time you hit him,” Susan answered.

  “Well, I was telling Jerry about the accident, and do you know what he said? He said that he thought the man with the Jeep came to the door during your party.”

  “What?”

  “Jerry opened the door for some late guests and this man was there asking about for someone’s house. Well, Jerry didn’t know the people he was asking about—and, remember he’s lived in Hancock a long time and knows a lot of people—and the man went back outside and drove off in a black Jeep with a bashed-in side.”

  “So, if it’s the same man, he was around that night. But why? Maybe …” Susan got excited at her thought. “Maybe he killed Dawn and was putting her in the Volvo.”

  “And then came to the door to draw attention to himself? I doubt it.”

  Susan sat back and sighed. “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. But he must fit in here somewhere,” Kathleen said. “I think I need to spend some time with a pencil and paper.”

  “I know you’re doing all this to help Jed and me, but I wonder if I could ask you for another favor?” Susan said.

  “Sure.”

  “Would you go upstairs and sit with Chad? He’s still sleeping, but I know he’s going to wake up and I need to go to the drugstore and pick up the calamine lotion and more Tylenol.”

  “Of course. I’ll
go up to your room and work on my lists.”

  “You have had chicken pox, haven’t you?” Susan asked.

  “Sure have. There’s even a little triangle of scars on my stomach to prove it. Don’t worry about anything. Chad and I will do just fine.”

  “Well, here’s the pediatrician’s phone number, in case you need it.”

  “We’ll be okay,” Kathleen repeated. “Go do your errands.” She took a tiny gold pen and a large leather notebook from her purse and started upstairs. “Oh, Susan,” she called back to her, “have you heard anything from Jed? About his meeting with the lawyer this morning?”

  “No, I think it was this afternoon. He may call while I’m out, but I don’t think you should …”

  “I won’t tell him that you mentioned it to me. I’ll explain about Chad, though,” Kathleen said, guessing at what Susan had been going to say.

  “Great.”

  The Datsun rattled out of the driveway for the second time that day; Susan turned it in the direction of Hancock’s small commercial district. She was lucky, quickly finding a parking space. She locked her tiny car and put a quarter in the parking meter in front of the florist’s cheerful window. Maybe she’d stop after her errands and buy herself a bouquet of spring flowers; the ones left over from her party were beginning to look pretty sad. Maybe some of those deep purple tulips and white freesias for the living room coffee table. Well, she’d decide later. She headed for the drugstore.

  “Well, you’re certainly looking very athletic,” came a voice from behind the wicker shelves of hair products. Hancock’s strict zoning laws didn’t extend into its shops, but there were unwritten laws that standard chrome and glass fittings were slightly beneath the town’s standards.