Window of Guilt (21 page)

“Some things we think are bad aren’t really bad after all, are they?” said Carmen.

Arnold extracted a package of Swiss cheese from the refrigerator. Then he sliced open its contents and pulled five slices from the pack. “I don’t know.”

Carmen eyed the red droplets that decorated the top slice. “Your uncle like licorice on his cheese?”

“Oops,” said Arnold, wiping them off with his shirtsleeved elbow.

“You’re supposed to be here in Baraboo for another week, right?”

Arnold pressed the second slice of buttered bread atop the open-faced sandwich. “How’d you know?”

“Sandy gave me your uncle’s address.”

“Then I guess it’s okay to talk to you.”

Arnold cut the sandwich in half. He pulled down a single serving potato chip bag that sat on top of the refrigerator. Then he peered inside. His face paled. “My uncle’s gonna be mad.”

Carmen shifted in her seat. “We were talking about bad things that aren’t really bad.”

Arnold looked at her. “Grandma used to beat me with a belt when I was little. She said I was dumb and she was teaching me to obey my elders.”

“Abusing a child is always bad.”

His expression turned fierce. “My grandma’s not bad. She loves me.”

“She might love you in her own way, but hitting a child is never right.”

“So I’m not bad?”

“Nope.”

“Arnold, get me my lunch,” came a rough voice from a far-off
room.

Arnold tensed. “I got to go.”

“I’ve got a bag of potato chips in my car. How ’bout I give them to you when we’re done talking?” offered Carmen.

Arnold’s face brightened. “Yeah!”

“Bet you’ve got lots of friends at the group home,” said Carmen, watching the stout young man bustle around the tiny kitchen.

“Oh yeah,” said Arnold in a jubilant voice. “We go bowling and to the movies. Sometimes Sandy takes us for ice cream.”

“Sounds like fun. You guys allowed to have guests in your rooms?”

“Not girls,” he said candidly. “They don’t want us to make babies.”

“You have a girlfriend?”

“Yep, but she moved into an apartment with Charissa. They live too far to visit.”

“You seem pretty independent. How come you don’t move into an apartment yourself?”

Arnold cast his eyes away. “I want to stay in the group home with Sandy and my friends.”

“You allowed to have guy visitors in your room?”

He nodded. “Sometimes you want to talk private.”

Carmen leaned forward. “You share your friends’ private stories with anybody?”

“Jesus doesn’t like people to gossip,” Arnold said knowingly. “I always ask my friends’ permission first. Wanna hear one of my stories?”

“Sure.”

“You’re only the second person who’s ever heard this one,” he said conspiratorially.

“Arnold, where the hell are ya?” came his uncle’s whining voice from down the hall.

“Coming, Uncle Roger,” he said, grabbing a package of orange Kool-Aid from the pantry. “Last June, our regular housekeeper was sick so another lady and her son came to clean our rooms.”

“What did her son look like?” asked Carmen.

“His arms were real thin, like he didn’t eat much, but he had some neat dragon tattoos. He said they washed right off when you got tired of them. He wasn’t dumb like me, but he still lived at home with his mama. We got along good. I wished we could be brothers. I told him about this special napkin I hid in the bottom of my socks drawer.”

“A cloth napkin?” asked Carmen.

Arnold shook his head. “A white paper napkin. When Terrence and his momma left here, my special napkin was gone.”

“You think the housekeeper and her son stole it?”

Arnold nodded.

“Why would somebody steal a paper napkin?”

“The napkin had the two addresses of this girl I had a crush on in 1996 when I worked at Camp Briarwood.”

Carmen nonchalantly withdrew a notepad from her shirt pocket. “Two addresses?”

“Yep. Laurie’s married address in Chicago and her parents’ summer home address.”

“Did the girl give you her addresses?” asked the officer.

Arnold shook his head. “Grandma was invited to her wedding thirteen years ago. There was this tiny envelope with an address. Grandma never sent it back.”

“So you wrote both addresses down on a napkin,” Carmen encouraged.

“Yep. It was hard to print all those words and numbers without the napkin tearing. I messed up a whole bunch of napkins. I wrote Laurie a note a long time ago when we were up at Camp Briarwood. It said I LOVE YOU. I brought it to the senior counselor cabin. Her campers were on an overnighter with another counselor and the unit supervisor. Laurie was off duty.

“The moon was high. I saw these shadows through the curtains. A boy and a girl touching each other’s privates. My head hurt real bad, but I had to rescue her. I ran outside and prayed. Jesus told me to light a fire in the bush outside the cabin.”

“You started a fire?”

Arnold nodded. “Laurie and Eddie must have smelled smoke, ’cause they ran out of the cabin real fast. The fire truck came and put out the fire. I felt proud because I saved Laurie from getting hurt. By that time, I was at grandma’s house. She told the police I was there all night.”

Carmen sucked in her breath. “Anybody get hurt in that fire?”

“The bush died.” The color drained from his face. “I shouldn’t have told you that story. Now you’re going to put me in jail.”

“Relax, Arnold. That fire happened twelve years ago. Neither human life nor property was injured. You’re a man with mental challenges. The judicial system wouldn’t prosecute you.”

“Judicial system?” he asked fearfully.

“Just wait ’til I get hold of you, boy,” a harsh voice echoed down the hall.

“I gotta go.”

*

Laurie slipped onto a barstool and plopped an ice cube in her cafe mocha, creating waves of liquid sand. “What’s up?”

Mitzy licked the whipped cream from her Frappacino. “Thought you’d want to know Officer Gomez interviewed Arnold at his uncle’s house in Baraboo. Turns out Arnold printed both your addresses on a paper napkin and hid it in his pajama drawer at the group home.”

Laurie jumped to her feet, nearly spilling her coffee. “That napkin belonged to Arnold? I am so relieved.”

Mitzy glanced around at the inquisitive stares of the coffee shop patrons. “Arnold told Gomez he showed the napkin to the housekeeper’s son. Soon afterwards, the napkin disappeared, along with the housekeeper and her son.”

Laurie fell back into her seat. “Why would they steal a paper napkin with my addresses?”

“More likely, Arnold forgot to put the napkin back after showing it to the boy,” said Mitzy. She leaned towards Laurie. “I’m thinking Brad Hamilton Jr. paid some thug to convince your husband to keep his medical claims discovery to himself.”

“That came out of nowhere,” said Laurie, slumping in her chair.

“He is a real con artist.” Mitzy slurped in coffee.

Laurie’s fingers trembled on her mug. “What if Brad paid the housekeeper to retrieve all this personal information on Ryan and me?”

“What possible connection could there be between the housekeeper and Great Harvest?”

“Maybe she cleaned Brad’s condo,” said Laurie.

“Sounds pretty lame to me.”

Laurie snapped her fingers. “What if the housekeeper’s son was one of the eight claimants rejected by Great Harvest?”

“Tell me where you want to go from here.”

Laurie swiped at her eyes with a caramel-stained paper napkin. “Investigate Brad Jr.’s role in this fiasco.”

“Don’t worry ’bout a thing. Maggie is fixing me up with him.”

Laurie hugged her friend. “You’re the best bud a person could
have.”

“This case makes me want to quit teaching and go back into investigative journalism,” said Mitzy, rubbing her hands together.

Laurie poked her friend’s shoulder. “Don’t give up your day job.”

*

Laurie was perusing property listings on the Multiple Listing Service when the phone rang. “Hello?” she asked, clicking on loudspeaker.

“Hey,” said Ryan. “Just finished working out. I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s gone south between us.”

“Now’s a bad time to talk.” Laurie clicked “property history,” then “print.” “Mitzy’s hanging in the other room while I put together a market analysis for a new client.”

“Listen, I’ve been a real shit, not leveling with you. A young claimant named Todd Gray hacked into our computer system and read the correspondence between the medical expert and myself.”

“I can’t deal with this right now, Ryan,” Laurie said, gulping deep breaths.

“Todd discovered my real name and fabricated a story to maneuver his way into my office cubicle,” Ryan blurted.

Laurie’s vision blurred as she attempted to shield her heart from the onslaught of emotions his words engendered. “You had a security guard at Great Harvest,” she said tenuously.

“He’d gone to take a piss. Todd harassed me to change my determination. When I reiterated he’d reached his lifetime cap and wasn’t eligible for a heart transplant, he threatened me. I had him physically removed from my office.”

Laurie’s shield crumbled. “You shit, exploding this bomb on me over the telephone instead of to my face,” she spat.

“I couldn’t hold it in any longer.”

“You figured this Todd fellow came up to our summer home to seek revenge. What happened to the body?”

Ryan hesitated. “Somebody moved it.”

“Somebody like you?” Laurie asked suspiciously.

“I’m not that crazy. Point is, Todd’s alive and well. No longer must I peer through a window of guilt.”

“What guilt?”

Just then, Mitzy sauntered into the kitchen.

“Guilt about turning the young kid down for a heart transplant, of course.”

Laurie turned to her friend quizzically. Then she remembered the loudspeaker was on. “You knew?”

“Only since you sent me to Urbana,” said Mitzy.

“That was your idea?” Ryan screamed into the phone.

“Someone had to keep tabs on you,” yelled Laurie.

“Seriously, you guys, I don’t want to destroy our friendship,” said Mitzy. She turned to Laurie. “Forget I ever asked about Brad Jr., okay?”

“What about Brad?” Ryan thundered through the telephone receiver.

Laurie hunched over the kitchen sink. “Brad attempted to attack
me.”

“That jerk make a pass at you?”

“Cocktail party we attended when you were still working at Great Harvest.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ryan demanded.

“Brad threatened to fire you if I blabbed.”

“Asshole!”

“If everybody would just tell the truth, life would be so less complicated,” said Mitzy.

26

Mitzy clawed Brad Jr.’s muscular waist and prayed she wouldn’t fall off the bike. The Harley had been weaving in and out of city traffic for the better part of an hour and she felt dizzy as a drunk aerialist. “I’m gonna puke if you don’t slow down,” she screeched.

“I gotta maintain a steady speed,” he yelled back. His words tumbled into the autumn colors.

“Slow down now!” she shrieked, beating his back.

“Why’d you hit me?” yelled Brad. He veered down a side street and pulled to the curb. Big yellow globs stuck to his black leather jacket. “Fuck! Jacket set me back five hundred bucks!”

Still straddling the bike, Mitzy grabbed a handful of facial tissues from her fanny pack and attempted to capture the bigger globs of vomit. “You should have stopped.”

“Maggie didn’t tell me you were scared of motorcycles.”

“I like motorcycles. It’s your driving I can’t stand.” She climbed off the Harley and withdrew her pet pals checkbook from her fanny pack.

“Hey, what you doing?” he asked.

“Writing you a check to have that jacket cleaned,” Mitzy said, signing her name with a flourish.

Brad squinted at the amount. “No way is this jacket gonna cost that much to clean.”

“That’s okay. Keep the change.”

“At least let me take you to lunch.”

Mitzy applied lipstick from her fanny pack. “What I want, you ain’t got.”

Brad leaned against his bike, pulled the glove off one hand, and started to enumerate. “I own a rehab in Wrigleyville, got a hefty bank account, and I’m sales manager for my dad’s insurance business. The ladies say I’m a good in….”

“I’m not out to get laid.”

“Whatever.”

Forcing a seductive smile, Mitzy touched his arm. “If anything changes in that department, I’ll let you know.”

The guy preened like a Cheshire cat.

“That lunch offer still good?”