Baylin House (Cassandra Crowley Mystery) (18 page)

Cassie woke at 4:05 the next morning, totally rested for a
change. This was the seventh day since she’d left home in Las Vegas; her body
clock was finally caught up with Texas time and so was her head.

She padded barefoot into the dark kitchen, and saw the tiny
red light blinking on the telephone. She ignored it; nothing was important until
she had coffee.

When she heard steady gurgling sounds from the pot, she picked
up the neighborhood flyer tossed onto the counter last night, and glanced at
the long Welcome letter with a list of pool rules, a note of thanks to some
tenants who volunteered for Beach Patrol during a party, a couple recipes, and the
courtesy request for more ideas. On the back page was an amateur horoscope
written by someone who lived in the complex and who would do a Tarot Reading on
request.

Cassie traced down the list to her Libra birth sign: “Your
mind is urging you to take the initiative in a current project, so give
yourself permission to do so. Don't feel like you absolutely need approval from
others before tackling the issues you wish to tackle”.

Really? Now that was either worth a good laugh or downright spooky.

When the coffee machine hissed its last drops, Cassie poured
a cup and dropped the newsletter into the trash. She carried the steaming cup
to the telephone hoping Sydney Owen had called again. She opened her notebook
to a clean page and pressed the PLAY button.

But it wasn’t Sydney Owen’s voice that rumbled into the room.
Detective Rob Baxter’s honey coated baritone came through the speaker with an
electrifying effect on Cassie’s metabolism.

“Hi Cassie, I work the noon to midnight shift, Thursday
nights off. I understand your schedule is different, but I’d still like to see
you. If you can spare me some time, give me a call.”

He left a different phone number than before. The message
ended, the machine announced the date and time received – yesterday at 6:04
p.m.

Cassie thanked her Karma she hadn’t seen the message light
when she came in last night. She might have called back in her overly frustrated
state and said something she would regret this morning.

She played the message back twice more and finally wrote the
number on the inside cover of the steno notebook. This time she did not press
‘erase’.

An hour later she was showered and dressed, sitting over a
plate of pan-baked veggie frittata with a dash of Cajun Spice, topped with
shredded jack cheese, sour cream, and avocado slices -- a slight alteration of
the version in her mother’s diet cookbook where she found the original idea.

While she ate, Cassie worked up a timeline chart in ten-year
increments for Rosalie’s book. Then she penciled in notes for the unfinished sections,
hoping the right questions would bring the needed answers. Rosalie Baylin’s declining
health wasn’t going to wait for Cassie to find the right moment to ask them.

She arrived at Baylin House at 7:55 ready to put everything
else aside and focus on the job she was being paid for.

Rosalie looked well, dressed in a maize knit polo over khaki
slacks. Her color was good; her plate of grits and eggs pushed aside was mostly
empty.

But two wadded papers sat on the table in front of her. Another
page sat blank in the typewriter. The whole time it took for Cassie to set up
the computer, Rosalie just stared at the blank sheet of paper.

“Can I show you something I worked up this morning?” Cassie
asked.

Rosalie looked relieved. “Yes, please do.”

Cassie handed her the timeline chart. While Rosalie looked
it over, Cassie suggested, “Dr. Baylin told me about your mother deciding to go
to London for her pregnancy, and a little about the society ladies in her day. I’ve
been working it into a chapter I think makes a good background piece. Especially
if it influenced the choices you made later?”

Rosalie nodded, looking at the chart. Then she handed it
back, and sat staring at the typewriter with a strange expression. The lines in
her face deepened and her eyes closed; her mouth twisted into a grimace. She
was in pain!

“Should I go find Bea?” Cassie asked cautiously.

Rosalie shook her head and exhaled slowly, her features
softening as more seconds passed. When she opened her eyes, she looked at the blank
page in front of her.

“Maybe it would be best to start with what Lawrence told you
and I’ll just add what I can remember,” she suggested.

“Okay. Would you like to read what he told me?”

“No, he’s told me that story so many times I’m sure I know
it by heart. And if it’s all right, could I just tell it to you as Lawrence does?
You can put everything down in writing better than I can. Especially the way my
hands are cramping this morning.”

“Sure, we can do that.” Cassie was more relieved than she
wanted to show. She didn’t want to hurt Rosalie’s feelings, but the job would
be a hundred times easier not having to struggle with her tortured typing.

“I can pick up an inexpensive printer so you can read what
we have as we go,” Cassie suggested. “It should be easier for you to red-line
what you see than to type from scratch, if you’d like?”

Rosalie looked as relieved as Cassie felt. “All right then,”
she agreed. “That’s what we’ll do from now on.”

Over the next three hours, Rosalie spoke from her memory and
Cassie learned a great deal about the privileged childhood afforded by wealthy
families before the depression. Judith Marie Marshall Baylin, once a teenage-concert-pianist,
was cold and distant as a mid-life socialite mother. In contrast, Andrew
Lawrence Baylin, business broker and barrister defending prohibition-era
clients, provided all the family opulence and still found time to afford great affection
to little Rosalie. “That was in spite of the violence that surrounded his
clients,” Rosalie captioned.

“Father died in an auto accident when I was nine,” Rosalie
recounted with surprisingly little emotion. “His car crashed into a tree on his
way home one evening. Lawrence moved home immediately and opened his private
practice on Long Island, and for several years life went on almost as before. Neither
Mother nor I had any idea there were financial problems until Lawrence enrolled
me in nursing school at a local campus instead of the University in Boston
where he’d gone. That didn’t meet with Mother’s expectations, but life was still
good as far as I was concerned. After graduation in 1950, I accepted a job in a
VA Hospital in California.

“I was gone, Lawrence was busy in his clinic, and that left Mother
alone too much. In time she progressed to more than just verbalizing her anger,
she began acting out with behavior so unpredictable that Lawrence was afraid to
leave her alone while he tended to patients. He went through a string of home
companions; none of them lasted long. It was a Godsend when he found a private
facility in upstate New York that would take her. The queen went willingly, but
only because they promised to pamper her to her satisfaction.

“There’s a lot of blur in my memory of that time, but I remember
Lawrence sold the family estate on Long Island right away; he needed my
signature on some papers to fund an annuity that would pay for Mother’s care. A
few months later he sold Father’s other properties too – one at Martha’s
Vineyard, and a hunting lodge in Georgia. He moved himself into a rented room
near his clinic, and then he came out to California and moved me on campus at
Berkeley. He wanted me to finish a degree in Psychology and then go to McLean
for Post Grad Studies.”

“The same place where he studied?”

“Yes, but I was still rebelling and didn’t do any of what he
wanted. As soon as that semester was over, I took a part time job in the ticket
booth at a movie theatre, and moved myself to an off-campus boarding house
where the rules weren’t so strict. Then I enrolled pre-Law.”

“Pre-Law. . . is that when you met my grandmother?”

“Noreen, yes, it was her house that I moved into. I adore
her, Cassie. I was overjoyed when she and Lawrence--”

Suddenly Rosalie gasped and went quiet.

Cassie looked up from the keyboard to see her take another
drink of tepid tea. When she put it down, the cup was empty.

“Noreen and Lawrence? You mean my grandmother and Dr. Baylin
knew each other?”

“I’m sorry, Cassie. I don’t want to go any further with this
right now. Could you let Bea know we’re ready for lunch?”

While Bea put lunch on the table, Cassie used the phone in
the living room.

The news was not good. “Leave of absence?” Cassie squeaked, talking
to the Government Offices switchboard. The operator confirmed. “Ms. Owen is on
personal leave and not scheduled back until the end of September.”

Cassie shook her head and hung up the phone. Sydney’s 30-day
extension on the license would be long expired by then. If that’s what she
wanted to warn Cassie about, she could have said that in the message she left
on Cassie’s answering machine!

But she had to keep it to herself for now. This was not a
good time to let Rosalie suspect something else was wrong.

Bea held out a plate of dark bread slices to go with the
tuna salad and fresh fruit already in front of them. They each took a slice.

“How are your hands feeling now, Miss Rosalie?” Bea asked.
“Are they still bothering you?”

Rosalie shook her head. “Cassie is doing all the typing. I
tell her what I want to say and she does all the work.”

Bea flashed a smile of gratitude to Cassie.

Cassie forced a smile in return, pretending she did not feel
squeezed between a python and a bulldozer with Dorothy on one side and the
Health Department on the other. She didn’t know there would be so many brick
walls to leap over just to get the paycheck at the end of this three week job.

After lunch Bea went upstairs. Cassie pulled the laptop back
into position, and then prompted, “You said you and my grandmother and Lawrence
were friends--”

Rosalie took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said, leaning back in
her chair. “When Lawrence came to visit for a month before he went to Korea, we
spent a lot of time together. And that’s all that needs to be said about that.”

Cassie felt chastised for asking. She nodded, and kept her
fingers on the keyboard, eyes on the screen, pretending to read what was in
front of her. She could ask Noreen about it later.

Rosalie was quiet for a full minute after that.

Cassie continued to wait.

Finally Rosalie said, “I’ve been debating whether to say
anything about this, but I guess it needs to be. It’s about my twenty-first
birthday.”

“Okay,” Cassie said, typing a quick preamble note. “Were you
still at Berkeley?”

Rosalie drew in another long breath. “Actually, it’s the
reason I left Berkeley. It started with a phone call from Mother. That was the
first I realized she even knew where to find me, but of course Lawrence had
given my information to the sanitarium staff as the person to contact in case
of emergency while he was overseas.”

“So they let her call to wish you Happy Birthday. . .”

“
HAPPY
Birthday? No, dear, there was nothing happy
about it. My birthday only meant I was of age to sign Mother out of the
sanitarium without permission from Lawrence. She called to demand I come sign
the release papers. She had grandiose ideas about going back to the house on
Long Island and getting her old life back. In her twisted reality she was still
an ingénue with concert bookings waiting for her.”

Rosalie exhaled a cynical laugh, but there was moisture in
her eyes.

“That must have been awful,” Cassie offered.

Rosalie blinked away the tears and shook her head. “Not the
way you think. I suppose I should be ashamed of myself, but I really wanted to
tell her Lawrence had sold all the properties and none of her old lifestyle
existed anymore. I wanted to wrap it up in a pink ribbon and shove it down her
throat. But I couldn’t do that to Lawrence, so after that first call I just stopped
answering the phone.”

“You mean she kept calling?”

Rosalie laughed. “Every couple hours for several days, yes. And
poor Noreen kept running for the damned ringing phone, hoping it was Lawrence
finally getting her message, and of course it was always the old witch with
more of her endless whining. Anyway, a couple weeks later a package arrived
from New York. It was sent to me with no return address, so I refused to open
it.”

Rosalie paused, and Cassie finished the sentence she was
typing.

“But you finally opened it?”

“Noreen opened it for me.”

“The package was a birthday present . . ?”

“It was Mother’s way to punish me as only she could do, and she
didn’t care who else she hurt.” Rosalie’s guttural tone was startling.

So was the sound of her breath coming ragged, and the sudden
gray color of her complexion. She looked away to dab a tissue at the drop of
red gathering like a teardrop above her lip.

Cassie started out of her chair to find Bea.

Rosalie caught her arm, and leaned forward whispering, “I’ll
get the package out for you tomorrow. Then we’ll talk about it.”

When she let go of Cassie’s arm it was to pull another
tissue from her pocket.

Cassie moved quickly to the bottom of the stairs before she
called out. Bea came to the top landing.

“Rosalie needs you,” was all Cassie had to say. Bea could
see from her face that it was serious, and was half way down the stairs before
Cassie took another breath.

As they did before, Cassie helped Rosalie to the bed and then
stood out of the way while Bea took care of getting her laid down. She heard her
name, and stepped forward to the foot of the bed where Rosalie could see her. “Do
you need me to do something?”

“Yes,” Rosalie answered in a breathy voice. “Take a plate of
Bea’s fruit salad to Emmet on your way home. Would you do that for me?”