The Ties That Bind, page 7
part #2 of Max Plank Mystery Series
“Mom, did you hire this man?”
That pulled her up short. “Christopher, I’d appreciate it if you left us alone and went inside. We will discuss this later.”
“Mom—”
“Christopher,” she literally shrieked.
“Damn it,” he muttered, but to my surprise, he turned and trudged off, disappearing inside the same sliding doors that had unleashed the shrew.
“Does your husband live here?”
Her face froze in a rictus. I waited for it to defrost.
“Neither my husband, nor any other member of my family, is any of your concern. I told you that you were no longer working for me. If I catch you anywhere near my property again, I will call the local police, who know me well and will be most eager to deal with a problem like you on my behalf. Do you understand?”
I spun on my heel and left her there sputtering.
“Do you understand?” she shouted again.
“And that goes for my son and daughter. Stay away from them!”
When I got back to my motorcycle, I sat for a moment contemplating the nature of the things I’d learned.
I only knew two things for sure. First, whether Christopher Wambaugh was a momma’s boy or not, his mother had a firm hold on him. And, secondly, Mrs. Wambaugh had something to hide. Maybe more than one something.
I switched on the Ducati, and it roared to life, humming like a big cat between my legs. I felt like I was on the trail of something big and wild and bad, and I intended to ride its tail no matter where it led.
Eleven
We stood at the foot of the bed and looked at Sarah’s limp form, pale and ever-so-fragile, a breathing tube in her nose, an IV snaking out of her arm. A computer screen kept track of what was happening inside her, monitoring blood pressure, heart function, and brain activities of various sorts. A continuous clicking sound accompanied the visual aids like a single cicada snapping its wings.
It was a private room with a bathroom in intensive care. I could see the stainless-steel sink and the pristine white elevated toilet seat through the half-open door. Above the bed was a watercolor in shades of blue and green—a river, a meadow, a waterfall cascading down into a placid pool. A small television opposite the bed and above our heads was tuned to the financial news network. Ticker tape stock quotes reeled by in silence. At the far end of the room, a window looked out onto the emergency room parking lot.
It smelled like hospital. Antiseptic, medicinal, with a slightly sour scent.
Sarah was still in a coma. She looked like a frozen angel, sleeping peacefully. Snow White waiting for Prince Charming’s wakening kiss.
She hadn’t opened her eyes or uttered a word in more than two days. No one, including the police, had been able to question her.
There was an officer in the waiting area with a Krispy Creme donut and a coffee reading Vanity Fair magazine.
After a few seconds of us standing awkwardly around the bed, a bell rang out in the corridor and someone cried out in pain. Nurse Sadie glanced nervously at us and said, “I think it’s best if you leave now. Her condition is stable. Nothing to do now until the doctors decide it’s time to bring her out of the coma.”
We thanked the nurse for allowing us the brief visit and followed her out the door of Sarah’s room.
Phoebe and I huddled over coffee and toasted blueberry muffins in the hospital cafeteria.
“Do you think she’s going to be okay?”
“Yes,” Doctor Plank said, confidently.
“She looked so pale. And thin. Maybe it’s my imagination. But she must have lost twenty pounds in two days.”
At the table closest to us, a man and woman were gripping hands, touching foreheads, and reciting the Lord’s prayer in unison.
Phoebe gave them a sidelong glance. A tear escaped her right eye, trailing down her cheek.
“She’s going to recover. From what everybody tells me, she’s strong. It’ll just take a little while. Before you know it, she’ll be out of that coma.”
She nodded her head repeatedly, wanting to believe me, trying to convince herself that I was right.
I reached out and patted her hand. “Now that it’s been a couple of days, do you remember anything else about that evening? Anything unusual? Anything Sarah might have said or done. Anyone she talked to?”
She glanced back over at the praying couple who had finished whispering and were just sitting there, foreheads touching, hands tightly clasped, eyes closed.
“I don’t know…I’ve been so frazzled…but I have thought about it. The police asked me to try and…to remember anything that might help…”
She stopped, took a deep breath. I let her take her time.
A little boy shouted, “I want chocolate pudding now!” His mother grabbed his wrist and yanked downward, and he squealed and burst into tears. She dragged him out of the cafeteria, an expression of stoic resolve on her face.
“It’s nothing, I’m sure. Stupid. I don’t even know why I thought of it.”
“What’s nothing?” Nothing is never nothing and sometimes turns out to be quite something.
Said the Mad Hatter to Alice.
Phoebe drummed her fingers on the table, glanced at me, then twisted her cheek to the side, frowned, and said, “Flowers.”
“Flowers?”
“Red roses.”
I looked at her and waited.
“Sarah doesn’t like them. I don’t know why. Something about them bothers her. A couple of times fans have sent them, and she’d never keep them. She’d either give them to me or somebody else or dump them in the trash.”
“What does this have to do with—”
“Twenty red roses in a box were delivered to the club for Sarah that afternoon. I didn’t remember until last night. It wasn’t anything important. Not shocking or anything, other than everybody kind of knows this odd quirk about Sarah—this time it seemed to bother her even more than before. She seemed a little freaked out about it. Before, roses just seemed to leave her cold. This time it was more than that. Hard to describe, but it was really noticeable.”
“Who sent them?”
“I don’t know. There was a note, but it just said, ‘Break a Leg,’ and was signed Love, your admirer, or something like that.”
“So it might have just been a fan who didn’t know about her aversion to red roses.”
“Probably. That’s why I said it was nothing.”
“But it’s not what you think?”
“I don’t know what I think. Not for sure. I just thought it was a little strange. ‘Break a Leg’?”
“Doesn’t that just mean good luck in show business? You say the opposite thing to the performer because wishing them good luck might backfire. It’s a superstitious thing, right?”
“Yes. But it’s more used in theater. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it said to Sarah before. Never been said to me. Maybe people do, but I thought it was a little off. And then that ardent admirer sign-off. It sounds like something from an old movie made back in the forties. I know, it all sounds so innocent. And I’m sure it is. I just—”
“What did Sarah think?”
“She thought it was weird, too. Especially the ardent admirer bit. And the fact that there were twenty roses.”
“That does seem an odd number.”
“Yes. It’s always been a dozen or one. We couldn’t figure out why twenty. We thought maybe the fan had seen her nineteen times before and this was going to be his…or her twentieth. Who knows?”
“What happened to the flowers?”
“I don’t know. Sarah probably gave them to somebody.”
“It might be nothing, but I’d like to see that note. Can you ask around the club and see if anybody knows what happened to the flowers and the package they came in?”
She pursed her lips and said, “Yes, I’m going in later today to get music for a show this weekend. I’ll ask Alice and the boys.”
The praying couple got up from their table and, holding hands, walked slowly, with a palpable sense of doom on their faces, out of the cafeteria.
Phoebe’s cell phone rang, and she took it out of her side pocket.
“Chaz,” she said, letting out a long, slow breath.
She held the phone tight to her ear and started fidgeting with her left hand, picking up a salt shaker and tapping it on the table while listening.
Chaz was angry. I couldn’t hear every word, but he was yelling and mentioned “that damn hospital” a couple of times. He mentioned something about his dinner and wasn’t she tired of doctors and hospitals. Sarah tried to protest a couple of times, mumbling, “Chaz, Sarah…and Chaz, you don’t understand…and sorry, Chaz…I’ll be home tonight.”
I didn’t like his tone. I didn’t like her submissiveness. I wanted to reach through the phone and ring Chaz’s neck.
When she hung up, her face was flushed red with shame. “Sorry,” she murmured.
Now I was ashamed. “Phoebe, have you been sick?”
“Yeah. I’m in remission. Breast cancer. They say they think they got it all. I finished chemotherapy a few weeks ago.”
She smiled shyly, reached up and patted her bald head, “I always wanted to go bald anyway. Now I know what it feels like. Doesn’t look half-bad, does it?”
“Half-bad? Phoebe, you’re gorgeous.”
She smiled at me. “You’re a nice man, Max.”
“Shhh. Don’t let anybody hear you say that. Not good for my reputation.”
She laughed.
“What’s with Chaz?”
Her smile vanished. “He’s okay. Just…kind of tired of doctors and hospitals. It was tough on him having to help me while I was being treated. He doesn’t know why I have to come to the hospital so much for Sarah. He likes me home at night.” She laughed again, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “I guess like most men he likes his dinner on the table and his woman in the kitchen at night.”
I wondered if Chaz was a really old dude. That might give him an excuse for his lame attitudes. I felt for Chaz, having to put up with all the muss and fuss of Phoebe’s cancer.
Anybody named Chaz had a lot to apologize for in any case.
Phoebe studied my face and picked up on my thoughts. “But he’s a good guy overall. I don’t know what I would have done without him while I was being treated. He and Sarah were always there. Q, too, in his own way.”
I nodded, let it go.
I’d learned over the years that it’s not a good idea to criticize a partner or spouse, no matter what the situation looks like from the outside.
People have all sorts of reasons for staying together, healthy or not. Dysfunction takes many forms, not all of them godawful.
Max Plank, therapist-at-large.
Twelve
Q took a sip of Blanton’s Single Barrel Kentucky Whiskey from the cut glass tumbler and murmured, “Hmmm mmmm.” He lifted the cigarette, that I’d just watched him roll with panache, to his lips and breathed in before blowing it out to his left, away from me. “Sometimes, Plank, it’s the little things that make life worth living, despite all the big shit being fucked up.”
We were sitting at a little table in a dark corner of the Double Musky Inn. A big candle, bubbling and cratering in the middle of the table, lit up the craggy corners of his fascinating face.
There was a platter of oysters in the middle of the table, and one of Muskies famous half-pound burgers with caramelized onions dripping onto a French roll in front of each of us.
Although oysters, cigarettes, and whiskey don’t float my boat, I had to agree with him. The burger and the chocolate malt next to it provided a close proximity of the thrill he was feeling.
The Double Musky is one of those true American hybrids, with a menu impossible to classify, but if you couldn’t find something to satisfy your tastes you were probably a vegan and even vegans had deep fried plantains to resort to. The portions were big enough to satisfy a polar bear just waking up from winter hibernation.
Q had just finished telling me about his real name, Quentin Quest. He said the name made no sense, especially for a black man. He figured the last name probably belonged to some slave plantation owner and he attributed his given name to his mother’s love for alliteration. She was a poor housemaid for most of her life and wouldn’t have recognized the term, but she loved nonsense poetry and rhyming, and was a big fan of Dr. Seuss.
Q lifted his whiskey toward me and said, “To Sarah.” I tapped my malt against his tumbler and nodded. He gave my malt a funny look but didn’t comment.
“She’s gonna pull through,” he said, then took another sip of the amber liquid.
“Have you been able to see her?”
I knew he’d visited after me.
“Yeah. She didn’t look as bad as I thought she would. Looked awfully pale, but still so beautiful and peaceful. Like some fairy tale princess. Jeez,” he added, “listen to me.”
I understood the feeling.
Q took a bite out of his burger, smiled, and closed his eyes, savoring the juicy moment.
“Have you thought anymore about who might possibly have any motivation to shoot her?”
He frowned and put the burger down. “Sure, I have. Thought about it a lot.” He was looking off into the distance now, thinking about what he’d been thinking about.
I waited.
“As I said, you couldn’t hardly dislike her. She’s a beautiful soul. She doesn’t hate nobody. Her feelings are all there, right on top for anyone to see and some to take advantage of. She hurts sometimes, but she don’t take it out on people. But…” He took another puff on his cigarette, another sip of whiskey, another bite of his burger.
He took his time. I let him.
“…there’s three people I can think of. I don’t see any of them being the culprits, but somebody has to be, so I don’t know what to think.”
He paused, took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, “We got the boyfriends, Christopher and Speed Weed, and then there’s—
“Speed Weed?” I asked.
Q chuckled, coughed, cleared his throat. “Yup. That’s his name. Says he made it up himself because his West Virginia folks screwed up big time when they named him. I told him I couldn’t imagine they did any worse than him, and he didn’t think that was too funny. Anyway, he was her full-time manager and part-time boyfriend until about a year ago when Sarah decided he never was going to change for the better. She’s a smart girl, but sometimes too forgiving. Speed, like a lot of his ilk, is a slippery son-of-a-gun, a fast talker, and a smooth operator. He was always full of promises about what he was going to do for her, but none of them ever came true, and he was taking too big a share out of her income. As a boyfriend, he was even worse. She found out he was sleeping with three or four of his other ‘protégés,’” Q made quotation marks with his fingers, “as he called his female clientele.”
“Was he angry when she dropped him?”
“Sure. She threw him out of her bed and her business at the same time. A double whammy. Most men would be hurting bad losing a woman like her. I hear maybe he’s been hitting the candy pretty hard the last months.”
“Cocaine?”
He nodded.
“Was he ever violent with her or threatening in any way?”
“Not that I saw or she ever said.”
“Is he around at all? Have you seen him?”
“A few times over the past few months. He comes and goes. Looks for talent in the nightclubs. He’s still in the business, still carrying on. He hasn’t had any breakout talent, but I guess he does okay.”
“I guess we have to learn more about him. Can you help there? Do you have contacts or sources in the music or nightclub business that might know more?”
Q pursed his lips, nodded. “Yeah. I been at this for a while. More’n forty years bumbling around the San Francisco scene with a couple of breaks when I went to New York to make my fortune. Loved New York. It didn’t love me back. So I was already thinking about askin’ around about my old friend Speed. I know a couple of his girlfriends and just about every agent and producer and nightclub owner in town. I’ll see what they have to say.”
“Good. I’ll do some checking too, but it sounds like your sources might be a whole lot better than what I can do.” I paused, sipped out of the straw to my malt and added, “How about Christopher?”
Before he could respond, I quickly summarized my visit to the Wambaugh residence.
“Doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “He’s a spoilt boy. I don’t think he’s a bad kid, but he’s too soft for life as we know it. I don’t think he really loved Sarah. It was more a need. Like he’d lost something and was trying to replace it and latched on to Sarah for dear life.” He took another toke of the cigarette and frowned at the table nearest us where four young men in sport coats and ties were quietly drinking red wine and playing Hearts. An unusually well-behaved group. I gathered that they had tickets for the Kronos Quartet that evening.
“Shit, I don’t know, but he acted like a love-sick puppy, but I never bought it. Neither did Sarah, but I think she felt sorry for him. Soon as she met Rachel, things changed. I think that’s the real thing. Nobody’s fault, but it’s gotta have upset little Christopher. I can’t see him picking up a gun but…” His voice trailed off along with the smoke from his cigarette.
“So you never saw him show any signs of violence toward Sarah either?”
He shook his head.
“You said there was a third person that made you a little suspicious.”
“Yeah.” He had his whiskey glass at his mouth and tapped it against his lips, his eyes wandering into a dark corner of the room. “The old lady.”
“Mrs. Wambaugh?”
He nodded. “I haven’t met her, so I can’t claim any real feeling there. But from what Sarah has said, she’s one mean, ornery woman. Sarah couldn’t figure it out. Didn’t know if it was because of Christopher or Rachel or both of them. Anyway, the way I see it, she could have hired somebody. A hitman.”
The four well-behaved young men had finished playing Hearts, and suddenly they stood up and began undressing. In moments, they had stripped down to matching red thongs and black tank tops. They whooped in unison.
