Murder on a Bad Hair Day (5 page)

Officer Mitchell and the attendant shoved me up into the ambulance. It was a most ungraceful entrance, and I was glad I was still wearing my sweats.

My life has been, fortunately, a fairly uneventful one. At sixty, I had never ridden in an ambulance before. By the time we reached the hospital, I had decided that not riding in an ambulance was how I had made sixty. The driver, who had had his license for maybe a week, was a maniac. There was no other way to describe him. He sailed through intersections, sped along the shoulders of roads, shot birds at people who were frantically trying to get out of his way. And all the time, he flashed the light and blew the siren. The young man who sat in the back with Claire and me seemed unconcerned. He would check gauges and then thumb through a
People
magazine. A toothpick flipped lazily from one corner of his mouth to the other.

“Does he always drive like this?” I asked him as we went around a dozen cars and down the median.

He looked up from his
People
, took the toothpick from
his mouth, and grinned. “He could win the Indy 500.”

I thought it best not to look out of the window. “Is she all right?” I motioned toward Claire, who appeared to be sleeping.

The young man squinted at the gauges. “I think so.”

No use pursuing this line of conversation.

Memorial Hospital is built on a mountainside, as most of the hospitals in Birmingham are. Which means that during a snowstorm we are cut off from emergency medical care. Emergency calls go out for people with four-wheel-drive vehicles, and the radio stations broadcast calls for help. Quite a few area babies have been born in four-wheel-drive vans.

The ambulance driver careened onto the incline that led to the emergency room, sped up it, and stopped abruptly at the emergency entrance. If the gurney Claire was on hadn’t been strapped down, and if I hadn’t been hanging on to it for dear life, I would have been the first one into the hospital.

“Shit!” I gasped.

The attendant grinned. “Sometimes,” he said, opening the door for the emergency crew rushing from the hospital.

“Don’t leave me,” Claire said. “Please don’t leave me.”

“I won’t.”

And I didn’t for about an hour. During that time a procession of doctors and nurses filed through the cubicle Claire was assigned, trying to get her medical history.

“Any history of diabetes?” they asked. Claire looked at them blankly. “Allergies? Heart disease? Hepatitis? Cancer? Lupus? Other inflammatory diseases?” The blank look.

Then each turned to me expecting enlightenment. I had accompanied her to the hospital. It was my duty to know these things.

“Sorry,” I said, actually beginning to feel guilty.

Finally, a young woman who introduced herself as Dr. Langford called me into the hall and said they were admitting Claire for observation and psychiatric evaluation. Perhaps a neurological workup.

“Someone tried to kill her last night,” I said.

“That’s what I heard,” the doctor said casually, waving
to someone down the hall. “We’ll check on it.”

“You do that, Sweetie.”

The startled doctor met my schoolteacher gaze. To her credit, her face flushed. “We’ll take good care of her”—she glanced down at the chart—“Mrs. Hollowell.”

I patted her arm. “I know you will.”

“You’ll need to get her admitted.”

“Can I speak to her first?”

“Of course.” Dr. Langford and I both went back to Claire, who seemed to be sleeping again. An IV had been inserted into her arm.

“Glucose,” the doctor explained. “She was dehydrated. And a mild tranquilizer.”

No way I was going to tell Mary Alice about the tranquilizer.

“Claire,” I said, taking her hand, “I’m just going to get you checked in. I’ll be right back.”

She squeezed my hand, but her eyes didn’t open.

“You know,” Dr. Langford whispered, “she looks like somebody out of
Gatsby
, doesn’t she?”

There just might be hope for this young doctor after all.

Memorial Hospital is where Haley works in heart surgery. The odds were against my running into her. But as I walked through the door into the emergency room lobby, there she stood, dressed in her operating room greens and drinking a diet Coke.

“Haley!”

She turned, saw me, and froze. “Mama! What’s wrong? Is it Daddy?”

“No, darling. We’re fine.”

“Aunt Sister?”

“She’s fine. I’m here with somebody you don’t even know.”

Haley sat down weakly in one of the blue fiberglass chairs. “Lord,” she said. “Scare me to death.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Who is it?” She crushed the can she was holding, a habit I hate, and threw it into a wastebasket.

“A girl named Claire Moon. A former student of mine. I saw her last night at the party Sister and I went to and then she showed up sick on my steps this morning. She said somebody tried to kill her last night.”

“Is she hurt?”

“I suspect the doctors think it’s mostly emotional. They’re going to keep her for observation, though. Do some tests. I don’t have any idea what’s wrong with her, to tell the truth, or why she came to me.” I sat down in the chair beside Haley. “What are you doing down here?”

“Waiting for a patient with a gunshot wound they’re bringing in from Anniston. The bullet’s touching his heart, so we’re doing the surgery.”

“Lucky man,” I said.

“Lucky man.”

“Come for supper tonight,” I said. “Vegetable lasagna.”

“You’ve got a customer.”

An ambulance pulled up to the door. “That’s probably me,” Haley said, jumping up and rushing to the door. I watched her oversee the patient’s removal, check his vitals. As they rushed by me, she wiggled her fingers.

“That’s my daughter,” I told an elderly woman who was sitting across from me knitting. She didn’t answer, but that was okay.

I followed the signs to the admitting office, though I knew I was going to have to wait for Mary Alice. Neurological workups and psychiatric evaluations sounded like more than Fred and I had in our combined retirement funds. Sister surprised me, though, by coming in the front door of the lobby just as I came in the side. She still had on her raincoat, but red leggings said she was dressed for her Mrs. Santa stint at the mall.

“I’ll have you know I missed my appointment at Delta Hairlines,” she greeted me. “Delta rescheduled it, but she wasn’t at all happy about it.”

“Tough,” I said.

“How’s Claire?”

“They’re admitting her for evaluation.”

“Well, of course.” Mary Alice looked around and sniffed. “They’ve got us by the short hairs here, Mouse.”

I thought of the man Haley had just rushed through the emergency room. “Thank God,” I said.

Getting Claire into the hospital was not an easy thing. We spent several minutes dealing with bureaucracy. Finally a social worker was called in—a “Patient Advocate,” her badge said, an apropos title, given her job. Somehow she worked things out so Claire was temporarily admitted, which didn’t sound very secure, until we were forthcoming with information and insurance cards, etc.

“What et cetera?” Mary Alice asked.

“Just et cetera.”

We took it, though the offer was almost withdrawn when Mary Alice asked for a pin to prick her finger so she could sign.

Soon as that was done, she dashed for Rosedale Mall and I went to find out where they had taken Claire. She was in Room 492. She had on a hospital gown and was sleeping like a baby.

“Hey,” said a woman sitting on the bed beyond the dividing curtains. “You her mama?”

“No.” I picked up Claire’s hand and held it.

“She’s a pretty one.”

“Yes. She is,” I agreed.

“Very sick?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Me neither. Just quit breathing every now and then.”

“Well, long as you start back.”

“God’s truth.”

I looked at the sleeping girl. If the tranquilizers were going to work like this, I could go home and come back tonight. I went to the nurses’ station and asked.

“She’s fine,” the woman in charge said. “You just leave your number and we’ll call if she needs anything.”

“Maybe I’ll bring her some gowns,” I said.

“You do that, honey.” She smiled and picked up a chart.

I was almost at the elevator when I realized I had no way
to get home. I didn’t even have money for a cab. Or to call Fred. I was about to turn around and throw myself on the mercy of the nurses when the elevator opened and Officer Bo Mitchell stepped out.

“Ms. Hollowell,” she said. “How’s Ms. Moon?”

“She’s sleeping. They’re going to run some tests.”

“She by herself?”

“There’s a lady in the room with her. Another patient. Why?”

“She’s telling the truth. Somebody’s after her, all right.” Bo Mitchell pointed to some chairs by the elevator, and we sat down. “I just came from her place and it’s a mess. And a slice in the door a couple of inches deep where the knife hit it. Just like she said.”

“My God!” I could feel my heart racing.

“Some of the boys are over there now, but I thought I better check on Ms. Moon.”

“She’s asleep,” I said. Then the light dawned. “You’re afraid whoever it is will come after her here?”

“We’ll fix it so they can’t,” Bo Mitchell said. She got up and I followed her down the hall.

“Room 492,” I said.

“I know.”

We entered a room which had been quiet when I left and which was noisy and crowded now. The woman in the far bed was the center of attention of at least five various and sundry medical personnel. One of them saw us enter and smiled brightly. “She’s fine,” she said. “She just quit breathing.”

In the bed nearest us, beautiful Claire slept.

B
o Mitchell had Claire’s name removed from all admittance records and had her transferred to a private room in the psychiatric section in the basement. Surprisingly, it was light and airy down there, with a large open atrium that seemed to be filled with natural sunlight where plants and even a couple of small trees flourished.

“They can watch her better here,” Bo said. Judging from the number of personnel in the halls, I could tell she was right. “We do this sometimes when we aren’t sure what’s going on.”

“It looks like an expensive hotel,” I said.

“Hnnn.” Bo Mitchell started toward the nurses’ station.

“Hey, Bo Peep.” A small, blond woman in a red nylon jumpsuit came up behind us. “You bringing us a customer?”

Bo Peep? I cut my eyes around at her.

“Hey, Connie. This is Mrs. Hollowell.”

“I’m not the patient,” I assured Connie. “Though of course, it would be all right if I were, wouldn’t it? I mean, an illness is an illness. Right?”

“Right.” Connie and Bo Peep spoke at the same time.

I could have kicked myself. I was protesting entirely too much. But how could these two young women who had been raised in the age of lithium and tranquilizers and antidepres
sants know the fear of mental illness that my generation had known? My grandfather’s sister, Aunt Josephine, had “spells” when she would be unable to carry on with her everyday life. She would lie in the bed and cry, sometimes raging at her husband and children. And there was nothing anyone could do for her. Her spells, in fact, were looked upon as a weakness.

I still remember going with my grandfather, who was not an insensitive man, to see his sister as she lay facing the wall in her darkened bedroom. “Get up, Josie,” he said, “and quit putting on. You’ve put us all through enough.” This was just a few weeks before she slit her wrists.

I shivered, but Connie and Bo weren’t paying any attention to me. They were talking about Claire.

“Good as done,” Connie said.

“Thanks. We’ll be checking.”

The elevator opened and two orderlies pushed Claire’s bed out.

“That her?” Connie asked.

Bo Mitchell nodded.

“Bring her in here, then.” Connie motioned to a room directly in front of the nurses’ station.

“Good,” Bo said.

“Bug in a rug,” Connie agreed.

After leaving my number at the desk in case Claire should awaken and want me, I asked Bo Mitchell if she could give me a lift home.

“Sure.” Her car was parked right at the front door of the hospital in a No Parking zone. “A perk,” she said, flashing those perfect teeth.

I realized that this was my second “first” for the day. The ambulance and now the police car. We rode along with squawks which made no sense to me blaring from the radio. Bo Mitchell seemed able to interpret, though. A couple of times she flipped a button and talked back. A lot of ten-fours and ninety-eights. It sounded exactly like a television show.

She turned to me. “Tell me about Claire Moon.”

“Is your middle name Peep?”

She laughed. “Can you believe my mama did that? It’s what everybody calls me, too, except down at the station. They said, ‘Hey, girl. What kind of an image you gonna give us? Your name is Bo. Period.’”

She looked over at me. “When I came to your door what if I’d said, ‘I’m Bo Peep Mitchell’?”

“I see what you mean.”

“You’d have laughed like crazy.” She swung up the interstate. “Now, tell me about Claire.”

I told her all I knew about Claire as a teenager and how I had seen her the night before for the first time in years. I told her about her showing up on the steps and the condition she was in, and that that was all I knew. I hadn’t even known where she lived or that she was widowed until she had answered the questions.

“You know anything about Mercy Armistead?”

“I never met her until last night. My sister had the invitation to the opening. Why?”

“Just wondered.” Bo drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. It was too casual.

“She had a heart attack, didn’t she?”

“That’s what they say.”

“But you’re not sure.”

“Hey, Mrs. Hollowell, I’m no doctor.”

I thought about Claire’s screaming “They got to Mercy!” and reminded Bo of it.

“I remember,” she said.

“You think there could be anything to it? I mean, a woman in her thirties with no history of heart disease falls over dead and someone tries to kill her assistant on the same night. What do you think?”

“Don’t know.” We rode along the interstate for a mile or so in silence.

“Hey, Mrs. Hollowell?”

“Call me Patricia Anne.”

“Patricia Anne, you want to get Claire some gowns? Her apartment’s just off the next exit.”

I thought about the policemen there. “Is it okay?”

“There’s something I’d like you to see.”

“Why?”

“See what you think of it.”

I sighed. “Okay. But can you make personal phone calls on that thing?” I pointed to the squawking box. “My husband may have tried to call me.”

“Here.” Bo Peep reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny cellular phone. “Use this.” The phone was the size of a small calculator and almost as light. I decided at that moment what I wanted Fred to give me for Christmas.

He wasn’t in, but I was so enamored of the phone I called my own number to see if I had gotten any messages. The library had a book I’d reserved, Bonnie Blue wanted me to call her, and Mary Alice said not to worry about Christmas.

“Everything okay?” Bo Mitchell said as I handed her the phone.

“My sister said not to worry about Christmas.”

“That’s nice.”

“Not necessarily.”

We had turned into an area of apartments that had been built right after World War II. Attractive and well constructed, when they went condo about ten years before, they were snapped up by people who appreciated the high ceilings, the molding, the arched alcoves. Since then, the prices have skyrocketed. I was startled when Bo stopped in front of a corner unit that had a view of the whole valley.

“This is where Claire lives?” I asked.

“Yep.”

We got out and started toward the door, where we had to step over yellow crime scene tape.

“These places are expensive,” I said.

“Claire Moon owns it, too, lock, stock, and barrel.” Bo Peep Mitchell fumbled in her pocket, found a key, and opened the white door. She stood back while I walked in. “Well, what do you think?”

It was like falling into a snowbank. Everything in the whole apartment was white, not flat white but glistening. The carpet, walls, furniture, even paintings and bric-a-brac were
all white. I felt like reaching into my purse for my dark glasses.

“What do you think?” Bo Peep asked again.

“It’s white. I thought it was going to be messed up.”

“Look carefully.”

This time I saw slashes in the sofa where white stuffing was spilling and shards of glass shining on the white hearth. The more I looked, the more damage I saw.

“Here’s where the knife hit.” Bo Mitchell closed the front door and a dark gash shone in all that whiteness like a bloodstain. “Probably a butcher knife.”

I shivered. “This is what you wanted me to see?”

“Upstairs.”

These apartments all had three small bedrooms upstairs when they were first built. Many of the residents have combined the two smaller rooms into a large master bedroom. I saw immediately that was what Claire, or the people she bought the unit from, had done. Everything was white up there, too, and was made even more blinding by a large skylight that centered a rectangle of December sun on a king-sized bed. Above the bed, the word
whore
was sprayed with red paint. The paint had dripped like blood.

“Oh, my,” I said, closing my eyes.

“In here is what I want you to see,” Bo said. I followed her into the small guest bedroom. By comparison, it was much darker than the adjacent room. My eyes had to adjust to the change.

“What do you think?” Bo asked.

“About what? I can’t see a thing.”

“Close your eyes a minute.”

I did, and when I opened them, I was no longer immersed in whiteness. The walls were covered in graffiti done in bold, primary colors. Obscene words were written across the wall. Streaks of color crossed and crisscrossed in long swaths as if the vandal had delighted in aiming the spray can at the white walls.

“My God,” I said.

“Just look.” Bo Mitchell turned on an overhead light and
the extent of the damage sprang out at me. The reddest of red poured down the walls. What seemed to be an exploding sun rained fire over the whole scene.

“My God!” I exclaimed, fighting nausea.

“But look here.”

I knelt down and looked at the corner where Bo Peep Mitchell was pointing. There, in a small rectangular area, probably ten inches by twelve, was a pastoral scene. In the softest of pastels, a red-haired woman sat in a meadow painting three pictures of a dark-haired subject. The painter’s back was to us, so what we saw were the portraits on three easels.

“What is this?” I asked Bo. “You got a flashlight?”

She handed me one and I shined it against the painting with one hand and held my bifocals away with the other so the bottom part would magnify the pictures.

“All three of the pictures are of a woman with hair like Claire’s,” I said. “But they don’t have any features.”

Bo Peep sat down beside me on the floor. “Let me see your glasses.”

She held them away from her and studied the painting.

“Mercy Armistead was redheaded,” I said.

Bo Peep handed me my glasses. “That’s what I heard.” She motioned at the wall above us. “What do you think?”

“What do you mean, what do I think? Quit asking me that, damn it. I’m not a psychiatrist.” I grabbed the handle on the door, pulled myself up, and stomped into the other room. The whole morning had finally gotten to me. “Are you asking me if I think the average person paints stuff like that on walls?” I pointed to the word
whore
. “I hope not. But can I psychoanalyze it? No.”

Bo Peep followed me into the master bedroom.

“And right now,” I said, “I’m going to get a sick girl some clean nightgowns.”

“Bet they’re white,” Bo Mitchell said.

They were.

When I got home, I was exhausted. I fixed myself a peanut butter and banana sandwich and a glass of milk and sat down
to watch an old
Bewitched
. I was just finishing when the phone rang.

“What are you doing?” Mary Alice asked.

“Eating a sandwich, watching
Bewitched
.”

“With the old Darren or the new one?”

“The old one.”

“I still can’t believe we accepted that like we did. Samantha changed husbands in midstream and we weren’t supposed to notice?”

“Maybe that’s what witches do.”

Mary Alice was quiet for a moment while she decided whether or not to take this personally. She decided not to. “Did you get my message?” she asked.

“About Christmas?”

“You always get in such a tizzy that I thought this year we’d all go to Foxglove for dinner.”

“Foxglove? That’s a poison.”

“It is not. It’s a perfectly beautiful place. Bill and I had dinner there the other night.”

“Mary Alice, nobody would name a restaurant Foxglove.”

“Somebody would and somebody did. And I’ve rented the private dining room for us. Henry wanted to do the cooking, but I told him we were all going to relax at a restaurant this year.”

Henry Lamont is her daughter Debbie’s “main squeeze,” a term Sister picked up from TV, I’m sure, since Debbie would never use it. He’s a very nice young man who Sister believes to be the father of the twins, Fay and May, based solely on the fact that he once donated to the UAB sperm bank where they were conceived. He’s also a gourmet cook and had probably been looking forward to trying out new recipes on us for Christmas.

“You can have your children on Christmas Eve and then we’ll all have dinner at the restaurant on Christmas Day.”

“At Foxglove.”

“That’s right. One o’clock suit you?”

“Of course.” Best to agree.

“That’s what time I told them. How’s Claire?”

“They have her in the psych unit. She’s sedated. I went over to her apartment with Bo Mitchell, the policewoman.”

“Did you find her purse?”

“What?”

“With an insurance card.”

“No.” I hadn’t thought to look, but I hated to admit that to the woman who was footing the bills. “She’s got some awful stuff painted on her walls, though. Really terrible. I can’t even describe it.”

“That means it doesn’t match your Norman Rockwell plates.”