Gateways, page 12
“Peas are seeds—legumes. Nuts are seeds too.”
“No lettuce, no broccoli—?”
“No. Those require killing the plant. I don’t approve of killing. I eat only what a plant intends to discard.”
“What about Oyv?” He glanced at the little Chihuahua chowing down on something in his bowl. “He needs meat.”
“He does perfectly well on soy burgers. Loves them, in fact.”
Poor puppy.
“So I guess if I stop by with a craving for a bacon cheeseburger—”
“You can just keep on going, hon. There’s a Wendy’s not too far down the road toward town.”
Gia would be right at home here, Jack thought. She wasn’t a vegan or anything, but she’d stopped eating meat.
Whatever. This dish was delicious. Jack wound up having four burritofuls.
He helped clear the dishes, then Anya brought out the mahjongg tiles, saying, “Come, I’ll teach you.”
“Oh, I don’t know…”
“Don’t be afraid. It’s easy.”
She lied.
Mahjongg was a four-person game played with illustrated tiles, but Anya was teaching him a two-player variant. The images on the tiles swam before his eyes—circles, bamboo stalks, ideograms that were supposed to represent dragons or the four winds—while terms such as chow and pong and chong searched for purchase in his brain. He didn’t have any references for this stuff. Why couldn’t the tiles have spades and hearts or jacks and queens and kings?
The constant stream of smoke from the chimney that was Anya didn’t help. Neither did her plants. They seemed to be watching the game, like a gaggle of curious spectators crowding around a high-stakes poker table in Las Vegas. One strand of vine with broad green and yellow leaves kept falling off a palm frond and draping across his shoulder. Jack would put it back, but it wouldn’t stay up.
“That’s Esmeralda,” Anya said.
“Who?” Jack replied, thinking she was referring to some new tile or rule in the game.
“The gold-net honeysuckle behind you.” She smiled. “I think she likes you.”
“I’m not fond of clingy women,” he said, reaching once again to remove the vine from his shoulder. But when he saw Anya’s frown he changed his mind and let it stay where it was. “But in this case I’ll make an exception.”
She smiled and Jack thought, Sweet lady, but nutso, nutso, nutso.
In addition to the green, leafy distractions, all the wine he’d consumed wasn’t exactly helping his learning curve. Anya lifted the bottle—she’d opened a third magnum—to give him a refill. Jack put his hand over his glass.
“I’m flagging myself.”
“Don’t be silly, hon. It’s not as if you have to drive home.”
“I have something I want to do tonight.”
“Oh? And that would be…?”
“Just getting some answers to a few questions.”
“Answers are a good thing,” she said. Her voice was clear, her hand steady as she refilled her glass almost to the rim. No doubt about it: The woman had a hollow leg. “Just make sure you’re asking the right questions.”
12
Even in his slightly inebriated state, Jack had no trouble entering the clinic. All it took was a flat-head screwdriver from his father’s toolbox to pop the window lock and he was in.
He’d managed to extricate himself gracefully from the mahjongg lesson with a promise to return for another real soon. He wasn’t big into board games, although he’d played Risk a lot as a kid. He liked video games, though. Not so much the first-person shooters that were mostly reflexes; he did well in those but preferred role-playing games that involved strategy. He liked trying to outwit the designers.
After leaving Anya’s he’d gone back to his father’s place and doused himself with a mosquito repellent spray he’d found on a shelf with the tennis racquets and balls. Then he’d walked around some to clear his head and get the lay of the land. Here it was 9:30 and no one was out. This was good. An occasional car drove by but he’d duck into the bushes as soon as he saw its lights. One set of lights had turned out to be a cruising security patrol jeep.
A couple of times he’d stayed in the bushes longer than he had to because of the faint feeling that he was being watched. He couldn’t find a trace of anyone following him, though, and wrote it off to his being on unfamiliar ground.
He’d approached the clinic building from the rear, where there was less light, and held his breath as he lifted the window, ready to run in case it was armed with an alarm system he hadn’t spotted. But nothing sounded.
Made sense when he thought about it. Why spring for the extra expense of alarming all the buildings when you had a real live security force manning the gates and patrolling the streets?
He crawled through, closed the window behind him, and began searching about. He used the penlight he’d found in his father’s top drawer, flicking it on and off as he moved. He found the small file room to the right of the receptionist area. He’d been hoping it would be windowless, but it wasn’t, so he had to search the files with his penlight.
Again that feeling of being watched, but he was the only one here. He sneaked to the window but saw no one outside.
A few minutes later he found his father’s slim chart. Holding it in his hand, he hesitated before opening it. What was the bad news Dr. Harris had been hiding? He knew the question—did he want the answer?
Again, the matter of his father’s privacy. The information inside could be pretty intimate. Did he have a right to peek this far into the man’s life?
Probably not. But the guy was in a coma, and Jack needed answers.
Taking a breath, he opened the file and flipped through it. He found two pages of lab test results. He didn’t know what all these numbers meant but noted that the “Abnormal” column was blank on both sheets. Good enough. An EKG had a typewritten reading at its top: “Normal resting EKG.” Even better.
But hadn’t Dr. Huerta said something about his father developing an abnormal rhythm in the hospital? Maybe from the stress of the injuries. Everyone had heard of the patient with the normal EKG who has a heart attack on the way out of the doctor’s office.
He checked the handwritten notes but couldn’t read much of Dr. Harris’s scribbling. The last entry was fairly legible though.
Reviewed labs w pt. All WNL. Final assess: excellent health.
Excellent health. Well, that was a relief.
But damn it, doc, why couldn’t you have just said so in the first place? Would have saved me a whole lot of trouble.
13
Jack fished the house key out of his pocket as he walked down the slope toward his father’s place. The good news was that the man was in excellent health. The bad news was that Jack didn’t know one damn thing more than he had when he woke up this morning.
Nearing the house, he passed a beat-up old rustbucket Honda Civic parked in the deep shadows on the grass adjacent to the cul-de-sac. Hadn’t been there when he passed by before.
On alert now, Jack slowed his pace. Before rounding the rear corner of the house, he peeked first. He froze when he saw the silhouette of someone squatting beside one of the trees between his house and Anya’s. Was this who’d been watching him?
Dropping into a crouch he hugged the jalousied back porch and crept toward the figure. The wash of light from the parking area of the cul-desac cast long shadows across the space, but not enough light for Jack to make out his features. Could be one of those weird-looking characters from the pickup truck this morning.
Then the figure flicked a flashlight off and on—only for a second, but that was enough for Jack to identify him.
He straightened and walked up behind him.
“What’s up, Carl?”
The man jumped and let out a little yelp. He wore a lightweight, long-sleeved camouflage suit—if nothing else, it protected him from mosquitoes—but a screwdriver instead of a hand protruded from the right cuff. He looked up at Jack and held his left hand over his heart.
“Oh, it’s you. Tom’s son…” He seemed to be fumbling for the name.
“Jack.”
“Right. Jack. Boy, I gotta tell you, Jack, you shouldn’t come up on a body like that. You just bout scared the life outta me.”
Jack noticed something metallic with a silver finish on the grass before Carl. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he knew it was too bulky to be a gun.
“I’ve found that people tend to get jumpy when they’re doing something they shouldn’t. You doing something you shouldn’t, Carl?”
Still in a squat, Carl looked away. “Well, yeah, I guess so. Sorta. But not really.”
Now there’s a clear-cut answer, Jack thought.
“And what would that be?” When Carl hesitated Jack said, “Share, Carl. It’s good to share.”
“Oh, all right. Might as well tell you since you caught me in the act.” He looked up at Jack. “I’m doin a job for Dr. Dengrove.”
“Who’s he? Your therapist?”
“Naw. He lives three houses back, near the beginnin of the cul-desac. He wants me to catch Miss Mundy in the act of waterin her stuff and all.”
“Why would he want to do that?”
“Because it’s makin him crazy that his grass and his flowers is all dead and wilty while Miss Mundy’s is all green and growin like a jungle.”
“So you’re supposed to hang out here all night and catch her in the act?”
Carl nodded. “Sorta. He’s been after me for weeks, offering me money to do it, but I keep tellin him no.”
“Because you don’t want to get Miss Mundy in any trouble, right?”
“Well, yeah, there’s that, but also on account of how I gotta be up bright an early ever mornin for my job. That don’t stop him from offerin me more money, though. But I just kept on tellin him no.”
“‘Kept’?” Jack said. “I guess your being here tonight means he made you an offer you couldn’t refuse.”
“In a way, yeah.” He motioned Jack down. “Here. Take a look at this.”
Jack glanced around to see if anyone else was lurking about. He sensed Carl was exactly what he seemed to be: just a cracker working as a groundsman. But still…after having one of his tires slashed by another cracker this morning, he wasn’t taking any chances.
It looked like they were alone out here, so Jack squatted beside Carl.
“What’ve you got?”
“Somethin really cool.” He picked up the metal object and held it toward Jack. “Dr. Dengrove lent it to me. Ain’t it somethin?”
Jack took it and turned it over in his hands. A digital minicam. He noticed two slim wires trailing from the casing.
“What do you think you’re going to do with this?”
“Get pictures. Dr. Dengrove wants me to get a movie of Miss Mundy waterin her stuff.”
Jack shook his head. “In this light, Carl, I’m afraid all you’re going to get is a dark screen.”
“Nuh-uh. Nuh-uh.” Jack detected a certain note of nyah-nyah glee in Carl’s tone as he reached over and pressed a button above the camera’s pistol-grip handle. “Take a look.”
Jack raised the viewfinder to his eye and blinked as the walls of Anya’s house and the grass and plants surrounding it leaped into view.
“Whoa,” he said. “A night-vision camera.”
He could make out the palms and the larger flowers—not the colors, of course, because everything was either green or black, just the shapes—along with her array of crazy lawn ornaments. As he swung the view past a lighted window the image flared, losing all detail. As he kept moving, the light from the window left a wavering smear across the tiny screen that quickly faded, allowing him to make out details again.
“Yeah,” Carl said. “Almost like I’m runnin a Big Brother show, dontcha think?”
“I suppose.”
Jack had never watched a single episode. His own life was more interesting than any reality-TV show. He couldn’t resist tuning into The Anna Nicole Show now and again, but that couldn’t be classified as reality. At least he hoped not.
“These don’t come cheap,” he said as he lowered the camera and turned it over in his hands. “What’s this Dr. Dengrove doing with it?”
“Ask me, I think he bought it just so’s he can catch Miss Mundy in the act. He don’t seem to be hurtin none for bucks, but he’s sure hurtin bad for a green lawn.” He snorted a laugh at this little turn of phrase. “Hurtin so bad he’s near about crazy.”
“Crazy enough to drop a bundle on a night-vision video camera and hire you to run it?”
Carl grinned. “You betcha.”
Jack shook his head. Some people. “I think Dr. Dengrove should get a life.”
“Mostly I think he eats. You should see the gut and butt on him—real pan-o-ramic.”
“Pano—?”
“You know.” He spread his arms. “Like you told me: wide.”
A panoramic butt…Jack opened his mouth, then shut it again. Let it ride.
“He’s like most of the folks here, I guess. They got too much time on their hands so they worry about all the wrong things. That’s why I liked your daddy so much—”
“Like, Carl. He’s still alive, so you can still like him.”
“Oh, yeah. Right. Well, anyway, he didn’t just sit around and complain. He kept busy. Always seemed to have somethin to do, someplace to go.”
“Speaking of going places…the accident happened out on a swamp road in the dead of night. You have any idea what he was doing out there?”
Jack couldn’t make out Carl’s expression but saw him shake his head.
“Nope. I go home at night and I stay there.”
“Where’s home?”
“Got me a real nice little trailer in a park just south of town. Me and the guy next door share a satellite dish. For bout thirty bucks a month each we got us a zillion channels. No reason to go out. And even if there was, you wouldn’t catch me out in the Glades at night. I told you: It’s angry these days.”
“Right. You did. But you’re out tonight—nice camo suit, by the way.”
“These here are my jammies.”
“They’re you, Carl. So the plan is, you’re going to sit out here all night and wait for Miss Mundy to show?”
“Nup. Don’t hafta. At first I figured I’d just set the camera up and let her run, but that wasn’t going to work. Even if the battery would last, the memory wouldn’t. But then I came up with this real smart idea to solve all my problems. Lookit here.”
He held up a little circuit board.
“What’s that do?”
“It’s a motion detector.”
This Carl was full of surprises. “Did Dr. Dengrove give you that too?”
“Nup. Got it myself. Took it out of a singin fish.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack said, poking a finger in his right ear. “I thought you just said you took it out of a singing fish.”
“That’s right. That’s what I did. Actually, I took it out of the board the fish sits on.”
“You’re losing me.”
“Big Mouth Billy Bass…the singin fish. He bends out from the board and sings ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy,’ and some other song I never heard before.”
“Oh, right. I know what you’re talking about.”
Jack had seen one in a store once and couldn’t imagine why anyone would want one. But a clerk had told him he couldn’t keep them in stock.
“Course you do. I bought mine years ago. Was one of the first around here to get one. Hung it by my front door and anytime someone came in it started singin. Pretty soon everyone in the trailer park had one, but I was first.” He shook his head. “Haven’t used it much lately, though. Got pretty tired of havin to listen to those same two songs every time I walked by. So I let the batteries run out. But just the other night I remembered that it had a motion detector inside that set it off every time you passed.” He waved the circuit board. “And here it is.”
“I get it,” Jack said. “You’re going to attach the motion detector to the camera, and when Anya comes out to water, you’ll catch her.”
“That’s the plan. I made sure I popped off the speaker, though.” He chuckled. “Wouldn’t do to have that fish voice start singin ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ in the middle of the night, now would it.”
“I guess not. You think this’ll work?”
“Oh, it works. I checked it out at home.”
“You really think you’ll catch her?” Jack didn’t like the idea of Anya getting in trouble.
“Nup. But don’t tell Dr. Dengrove that, and don’t you go tellin her I’m doin this. I don’t want her mad at me.”
“And you also don’t want her tipped off that she’s being watched.” He nudged Carl with his elbow. “Won’t you feel bad if you get her in trouble?”
“I would, cept that’s not gonna happen. Like I told Dr. Dengrove, all this work’s gonna be for nothin. We ain’t never gonna catch Miss Mundy waterin.”
“Why not?”
“Because she don’t. All she does is sit and watch TV all night. Just like everbody else. Reruns of either Matlock or Golden Girls. That and the Weather Channel’s all anybody round here ever seems to watch.” He licked his lips. “But there’s somethin else.”
“What?”
“She looks dead when she’s watchin TV.”
“How do you know?”
“I peeked in last night while I was settin up, and I thought she was dead. I seen my share of dead folks—I’m the one found Mr. Bass dead in a chair on his front porch awhile back, and Miss Mundy looked just like him. Boy, was I glad to see her up and about this mornin.”
“Didn’t you call anyone?”
“Hey, I wasn’t supposed to be there. And if she was as gone as she looked, there wasn’t nothin nobody could do anyhow. Tonight I looked in again, just a few minutes ago, and it was the same thing. Gwon. Look for yourself.”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Gwon. See if I ain’t lyin. It’s creepy, I tell you.”
The last thing Jack needed was to get caught acting like a Peeping Tom, but his curiosity was piqued. He crept up to the lighted window that looked in on the front room and peeked through the lower right corner.
