Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (20 page)

“That’s a great idea,” she said.

“I know, right?”

“Except, you can’t pay your rent.”

“All the more reason to move.”

“And houses out there are priced higher than you can count.”

“It sounds silly when you put it that way.”

“You know those women in nursing homes who have to be restrained around the clock
because they mix up everyone’s medication and steal all the bedpans?”

“Yes,” I said, wondering what I was walking into.

“That’s going to be you.”

She was probably right. If I lived that long.

*   *   *

I drove up to a stunning adobe casita with a three-car garage and a manicured lawn,
wondering if I could afford something like that if I sent all my purchases back and
sold Misery. Behind it were the Sandia Mountains and in front, gorgeous red-rock canyons.
Julia met me out front and led me around the house to the back.

“I got a call from Mrs. Lowell,” Dr. Penn said as she showed me to an outside patio
behind the house. She had a fire burning in a kiva fireplace. “I’ve been expecting
to hear from you. But I didn’t expect you to show up on my doorstep.”

Wonderful. Had Mrs. Lowell called the PTA as well? Maybe Harper’s childhood friends?
Or her second-grade teacher and high school volleyball coach. She must have been on
the phone for hours.

Dr. Penn, an averaged-sized woman with long gray hair pulled back into a hair clip,
motioned for me to sit, her outdoor furniture elegant to the extreme. “I can’t talk
about the case. I’m sure you know that.”

“I’m aware that you can’t talk specifics, so I was going to ask some more general
questions. You know, things that could apply to anyone.”

She offered me an impatient smile.

“Do you know what the symptoms of PTSD are?”

“Are you going to attack me, Ms. Davidson?”

“Not at all. I just want to make sure you know the symptoms.”

“Of course I know the symptoms.”

“Did you not recognize them in Harper? It sounds to me like they were genuine.”

“Do I come into your office and tell you how to run your investigations?”

I thought a minute. “Not that I’m aware of, but I haven’t been in my office for a
while now.”

“Then please, Ms. Davidson, don’t tell me how to diagnose a patient. I think I’ve
had a few more years of experience than you.”

Snobbish much? “So, what you’re trying to tell me is that you screwed up but you can’t
take it back because it would look bad.”

“You can see yourself out, yes?” She rose and started for her back door.

I stood as well. “Or did Mrs. Lowell pay you to misdiagnose Harper? To keep her drugged
and compliant?”

If my stepmother’d had money, I had no doubt in my mind that she would have done that
very thing. To shut me up. To keep me from causing trouble or embarrassment.

She turned on me. “I am a psychologist. I rarely recommend drugs and am not licensed
to prescribe them.” She turned to her fireplace. “Every psyche is different. Some
are more fragile than others. Harper missed her father, what she once had with him.
She saw Mrs. Lowell as a threat. It’s all in the timing.”

“Ah, the marriage. But what if something else happened? Looking back, knowing what
you know now, could she have had a form of PTSD?”

With a sigh of resignation, she said, “It’s possible. But I even tried regression
therapy.”

“You mean hypnosis.”

“Yes. I shouldn’t be telling you this, and I only am because Harper hired you and
her stepmother said to cooperate, but she lost a chunk of time. A week, to be exact.
She couldn’t remember anything about the week she spent with her grandparents. Nothing
at all.”

“And she’d stayed with them during the Lowells’ honeymoon, right?”

“Yes, but they doted on her hand and foot. Now, that is all I can tell you. The Lowells
are very good friends of mine. I’ve already overstepped the bounds of confidentiality.”

“I just have one more question.”

With a beleaguered sigh, she said, “Fine. What is it?”

“Are you renting or did you buy this outright?”

*   *   *

When I’d asked Dr. Penn about her house, she became slightly volatile, accusing me
of accusing her of taking payoff money to be able to afford her luxurious lifestyle.
I really just wanted to know if she was buying or renting. Clearly we’d gotten off
on the wrong foot.

On the way back to the big city, I called Gemma for more intel. “So, how’s the head?”
I asked.

“What the hell did Cookie put in those margaritas?” She sounded like she had a cold.
It was funny.

“Your guess is as good as mine, which is why I only had one.”

“Oh, my God, I had like twelve.”

Being the loving, nurturing sister that I was, I laughed. “Let that be a lesson.”

“Never drink twelve margaritas in a row?”

“No,” I said with a pfft. “That’s totally acceptable. Never trust Cookie.”

“Got it. Have you seen my pants?”

“Speaking of which, how did you get home without them?”

“I borrowed a pair of your sweats. I ran into a convenience store with them on. I
talked to neighbors out in their yard when I pulled up. And only after I got inside
did I realize they had ‘Exit Only’ written across the back.”

“You stole my favorite sweats?”

“I wanted to die.”

“It’s weird that sweats would make you suicidal. I’d analyze the crap out of that
if I were you.”

“Do you actually wear those in public?”

“Only when I go out in them. Hey, how hard is it to diagnose PTSD?”

After a long pause, she said, “Charley, I know why you’re calling, and yes, hon, it’s
painfully obvious you’re suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder.”

“What? No. I’m talking about a client.”

“Mmm-hmm. And does this client have brown hair and gold eyes and talk to dead people?”

“Subtle. Don’t make me yell into this phone,” I said with an evil smirk. Twelve margaritas
would make that thought very unappealing.

“Oh, for the love of God, please don’t.”

“Okay, then focus. It’s not for me. Really. How easy is it to diagnose in a child?”

“Well, unless the patient doesn’t remember anything that happened to him or her, then
it’s pretty easy. I mean the symptoms are fairly universal, although each case is
a little different. No matter what happened, it should be fairly straightforward.
Anything from a car accident to a natural disaster to soldiers exchanging fire on
the battlefield can cause it.”

I decided to take a stab in the dark. “What if something happened to a young child,
but she didn’t remember what it was? Or maybe she saw something? Or heard something?
Can that cause PTSD?”

“Absolutely. But that happens even to adults. I once had a case where a woman was
in a car accident and couldn’t get to her crying son. She couldn’t see him, but she
could hear him. And before help could arrive on scene, he passed away. She heard his
last cries.”

“Okay,” I said, interrupting her. “I don’t like this case.”

“I didn’t either, but I have a point.”

“Fine, then, but make it quick.”

“Afterwards, she had what is referred to as hysterical deafness, or psychosomatic
hearing loss.”

“Like the guys who go off to war and go blind for no apparent reason.”

“Exactly. Their minds can’t absorb the horrors they’ve seen, so the brain refuses
to process visual information. The visual cortex shuts down. It’s completely psychological.
But those are pretty extreme cases. PTSD is usually much less blatant, so oftentimes
people don’t even realize they have it. Like, say, a PI who was held captive and suffered
great physical and emotional trauma.”

“Are we back to this again?”

“Charley, let me hook you up with a friend of mine.”

I straightened. Now she was talking my language. “Is he cute?”

“
She
is a very good psychotherapist. One of the best in the city.”

“Wait,” I said as another thought occurred to me.

“No more waiting.”

“What if this happened decades ago? Would it have been harder to diagnose PTSD back
then?”

“Possibly. PTSD has been around since the dawn of man, but it only gained notoriety
as a diagnosis around the eighties. Then it took a while to catch on.”

“Thanks.” That might explain how Dr. Penn had missed it. Why she looked so hard at
other causes of Harper’s illness. I had to find more about what happened to Harper
during her parents’ honeymoon.

*   *   *

I decided to do a quick drive-by at Pari’s place to check on Harper. The shop wasn’t
open yet, it was still early for a tattoo parlor, but Tre was there looking at Internet
porn. He had good taste.

“Where’s Pari?” I asked him.

He shrugged and I sensed a jolt of hostility. “She’s out.”

Uh-oh, trouble in paradise. He seemed really bummed. Not enough to hold my attention,
though. I looked past him at the pictures of clients Pari had on her wall and pointed.
“Hey, those are the Bandits.”

I stepped closer to the pic of the ragtag team of bikers. They owned my favorite mental
asylum, for some bizarre reason, and the picture was of my favorite three bikers ever:
Donovan, Eric, and Michael. They were showing off their tats, each of them posing
like bodybuilders, but something about them clicked in the back of my mind. I’d seen
them out of context recently, in another situation, another environment. It was odd.
Something about their shape. Tall, medium-tall, and just plain medium.

“Okay, well, I’ll just be back here.”

Tre shrugged, his acknowledgment barely noticeable.

I wondered about the Bandits as long as my ADD would allow me to, then moved on to
my childhood dream of being an astronaut and how I would’ve tried to save the world
if a comet were headed toward Earth. I concluded that the human race was doomed.

“Hey, Harper,” I said, ducking into her closetlike room.

She’d been looking out a window the size of a business card and turned to me. “Hi.”

“Do you have a minute?”

“Really?” she asked, indicating her surroundings with her upturned palms.

“Right,” I said. “I hope Pari is treating you well.”

“She’s kind of different.”

“That she is.”

“Did you talk to Art?”

“Yes, and he’s definitely not our guy.”

“Oh, I know that. I was just hoping he might have figured something out.”

“Well, he did have some pretty interesting comments,” I said, my clever meaning disguised
in a subtly subversive way. “He seems to think something happened to you while you
were staying with your grandparents.”

She stood again, her jaw set in frustration. “It always comes back to that, but I
just don’t remember. For some reason, by the time my family got me into therapy and
I’d started to analyze what could have happened, I’d completely forgotten that week.
It’s not all that unusual. I mean, how much about your childhood do you really remember?”

She had a point. Even my childhood was pretty spotty, and I could recollect anything
if I wanted to. I couldn’t imagine how much a normal kid would forget.

“But he said you’d changed after you came back.”

She looked at me, confused. “He hardly knew me. My parents dated and got married before
we knew what happened. Let’s just say we were not brought into the loop on that decision.”

“That’s weird. I wasn’t brought into the loop with my parents’ marriage either.”

“Really? How old were you?”

“Twelve months.”

She giggled. “I can’t imagine why they didn’t ask your opinion.”

“I know, right? Well, if you don’t have anything, I guess I might have to actually
do some investigative work.”

She grinned. “Isn’t that what you do?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Right.” I nudged her with my elbow. “I am a PI, after all.” Telling
her I could talk to the dead and often used them to help me solve crimes might be
awkward at this juncture. It would be best if she thought I had my crap together instead
of scattered from here to Timbuktu, like, say, the crap on a cattle ranch. “Have you
checked out Tre? He’s well worth the effort.”

Her shoulders raised in modesty. “Not yet.”

“Well, see that you do, missy. Hard manly flesh like that shouldn’t go to waste.”

“Okay. I promise.”

*   *   *

I stepped out of Pari’s shop just as my phone rang.

Speaking of whom, “Hey, Par.”

“Where the heck are you?”

I stopped and looked around. “Right here. Where are you?”

“You’re here?”

“Here where?”

“Charley.”

“Pari.”

“You’re supposed to meet my dates.”

“Oh, right. That’s where I am. I’m almost there.”

“Are you sure? Because we’re on a pretty tight schedule.”

“Positive.” Knowing it’d take me forever to get a parking space, I took off in a full-out
sprint. I may not look good when I got there, but I’d be damned if I was late. Or,
well, later.

Fortunately, the Frontier was a mere two blocks away. I thought about ordering a
carne adovada
burrito and a sweet roll before sitting with Pari and—did she say dates? As in more
than one? But she might hurt me. Still, their sweet rolls were a thing of beauty.

The Frontier was an odd sort of place just across from the University of New Mexico.
It ran the length of several partially divided rooms. I finally found Pari and her
dates in the very last one. There weren’t many people in that part. Several students
were having a Bible study group in one corner, and a homeless man named Iggy sat at
a booth off by himself. Pari and her dates—literally, as there were three men sitting
with her—were stashed in the farthest corner.

This wouldn’t be awkward at all.

She brightened when she saw me and motioned me over, looking only mildly ridiculous
in her sunglasses, knowing I would be there.

“Hey, you!” She stood for a hug. “I haven’t seen you in forever. How weird that we’d
run into each other here.”

Oh, okay, we were playing that game. I wished she would’ve filled me in. I thought
we were playing the I-have-trust-issues game. Why else would she want me to sit there
and measure their honesty while she grilled them?