Ada Unraveled (15 page)

But not an adulteress. My English Lit
instructor had stressed that difference. Adulterate means to be
changed to a worse state by mixing. By mixing Uncle Claudius’ seed
with Hamlet’s father’s seed—in Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude.

So was Ada childlike? She was very young
when all this happened, but...after years of complicit acts?
Concealing Eddie. Did Ada die from her innocence?

And was Matt suggesting that Luke killed
Mark? Hmmm. Luke, the second born, maybe jealous of his older
brother? It’s certainly a classic motive. But…so is love.

“Might not be so unusual, brothers loving
the same woman, I mean,” I muttered to Wisdom. “They were all so
young. Look, Mark Stowall died when he was twenty. And Ada was
widowed about the same age. And Luke was just eighteen. I wonder
what Mark died from.” Wisdom had no answers. I absentmindedly
rubbed the top of his head and behind his ears where the softest
fur was.

I briefly looked down and noted that he was
staring at the white wall before him. At nothing. He could do that
quite comfortably. Nothing was a good thing to stare at when you
were a dog being stroked. Or a PI contemplating. I was no longer
seeing the names on the chart.

Matt returned. “I was wrong. It was for me.
The County Water Department wants me to consult on some vandalism
in the morning. I pushed it to afternoon. Have you looked at the
quilt yet?”

I turned away from my blind inspection of
the genealogy and stood next to him by the bed, inhaling deeply to
reengage my brain.

Pointing, he began. “Remember we thought
square one was a reference to Adam and Eve?”

“Sure, a male and female figure standing
either side of an apple tree. Make’s sense,” I mumbled, still
stroking the dog’s ears, who had closely mirrored my movements so
we could stay connected. “The male figure is made of blue
materials. The female figure of pink. They’re both smiling.
Obviously in Paradise.”

“Then, square two must be Cain and Abel.
Right? Two guy’s fighting on the ground?”

I stared. Two guys fighting. I leaned
closer, stopped stroking the dog. One of the fighters had a small x
over his one visible eye. “One of them has stopped fighting. He’s
dead.” My head snapped back toward the genealogy—and thoughts of
Hamlet.

Matt said, “Bingo. Mark. The dead guy could
be Mark and the one on top, the winner of the battle, could be
Luke.”

“So…we think Luke may have killed his older
brother, maybe over Ada. So there would be a police record
somewhere. At least an investigation of the event.” What was that
date again? I checked. “December sixty-five.”

“Noted.”

“I’ll check the Cleveland County Times.
Should have an article, ‘Local Boys Fight to the Death’, something
like that.”

“Agreed.”

I said, “And now…I can see that in square
number three the male figure looks different, taller and bigger,
with blond hair instead of brown. So square number one is Ada and
Mark in Paradise, square number two is Luke killing Mark in a
fight, and square number three is Luke and Ada around the apple
tree. Only this time there’s a snake dangling from a branch. And
Ada isn’t smiling. I bet the snake is Luke’s sin. Their one way
ticket out of Paradise.”

“Possibly. But check out the female figure
in squares one and three. Do you see anything different in them?”
The phone rang in our office again, and Matt rushed off to answer
it. He was using Marine words as he went.

I peered at the two Ada figures. Her
stomach. It was slightly bigger. So was she pregnant by the second
marriage? Or was this variation merely a consequence of the
difficulties of creating with fabric, as in the art of
appliquéing?

And the next question was, when was Eddie
born? But I didn’t have to look at the genealogy to know that Eddie
wasn’t listed on it. I’d already noted this, while blindly staring
at it.

“I’m going to call Gloria, Wisdom. Maybe
nurse Gloria can help me with Ada’s medical history. Abigail did
say her mother worked at the Cleveland Hospital. I better practice
her last name.” And I began saying Pustovoytenko over and over in
my head. I should have practiced it aloud.

I would make several phone calls.

Things got complicated on the first, when I
called the Cleveland County Times to discover the newspaper had a
two month wide hole in its archival records. From December 1964
through January 1965.

So no info on the death of Mark. And no
wedding announcements of either marriage.

My next call was to Gloria and I totally
flubbed her last name, twice.

Gloria Pustovoytenko agreed to meet with me
during her lunch time tomorrow. She was reluctant, but finally
agreed to let me view Ada’s medical records. I was frankly
surprised. She would definitely be bending the medical ethics
rules. So I assumed she wanted to find out what happened to Ada as
much as the quilters did. And her daughter Abigail was one of
them.

Then I called Gerry Patrone and Hannah Lilly
and invited them along. I had some special plans for these two
women that I was hoping field experiences might help move
forward.

Wednesday, October 8.

I finished serving deadbeat dad in Del Mar
by one--an onerous chore made more so by the necessity of chicanery
and deceit, and the sense of personal danger which was always a
part of the activity.

In California, and probably other states as
well, the documents must be visible to the person being served, in
other words, not in an envelope. If the individual refuses to
accept service, flees, or closes the door, etc., and this
individual has been positively identified as the person to be
served, the documents may be “drop” served, and it’s considered a
valid service.

I was lucky. The guy slammed the door in my
face after answering that I had his name right, so I dropped the
papers where I stood, rang the bell once more and walked away.

No confrontation. No threats. Nice and
easy.

Then I drove up into Cleveland County to
meet Hannah and Gerry at the Hospital on Charles Street North.
There was also a small Cleveland Community Clinic on Tio Pico Road
in the southern part of the county, but that one didn’t have an
Intensive Care Unit and Gloria Pustovoytenko was in charge of the
hospital ICU.

My latent fear of the white truck with the
rammer attached had receded to the point that I didn’t think of it
until I crossed the southern border of Cleveland County on I-13.
Then my heart began a low, steady thumping and I found myself
searching every intersection along the route. Relieved, I finally
spotted the hospital and quickly pulled into the three story
attached parking structure.

The ICU was on the third floor, so I parked
on that level and walked toward the clearly marked entrance. The
old parking structure was gray and damp and made me feel
melancholy. Not a good entrance into a world where life was on the
line for so many, I mused. But hospitals were expensive to build
and just as expensive to maintain. So given our current economy,
old it would no doubt stay. At least it wasn’t rainy today. Just
threatening.

Gerry and Hannah were waiting just inside,
Gerry in another semi-formal outfit with matching purse, this time
all in blues and sans the opera cape, and Hannah in a casual outfit
similar to my own, a subdued gray and white pantsuit. My pantsuit
was black on gray, with a string of onyx beads.

After solemn hellos the three of us
traversed several long corridors then turned right toward a final
branch that ran directly in front of the intensive care units.

The left side of this hallway held small
groupings of chairs. No one was sitting in them, but a couple of
gatherings of people stood staring at what appeared to be the right
wall, about thirty and sixty feet away. They were worried looking,
caught between hope and grief. As we neared the first group I
realized these people were peering through large viewing windows,
looking directly into the ICU’s. Now I understood the guard and
nurse’s station at the beginning of this corridor. This was where
families could gather to gaze upon their loved ones and send them
their prayers if they prayed.

On some levels it seemed a strange practice,
perhaps unwise, perhaps intrusive. But I thought the viewing
windows allowed loved ones the illusion of closely guarding the
patients currently under care without interrupting the activities
of their nurses and occasional doctors.

My heart began objecting to what I might see
through the windows as we approached. But thankfully there were no
great puddles of blood forming under patients’ beds, or broken
bones sticking out of twisted limbs, or multicolored bruises on
display. There were, however a lot of tubes and wires running from
comatose-looking old people hooking them to eerily lively monitors
blinking red and green and blue-lighted numbers and squiggly
lines—like science fiction screen savers.

Someone needed to tell the IT guys this
wasn’t a party. I wondered if Ada had ever been kept in one of
these rooms for the world to ogle. Abigail’s mom emerged from a
small office facing the patients in ICU One and she quickly joined
us.

In a stern librarian’s voice head nurse
Pustovoytenko said, “Ve must to go to Records. Dis way.”

Her Ukrainian accent was so strong I had
trouble understanding what she’d said, but when she turned to walk
away Gerry and Hannah followed, so I did, too. We walked back the
way we’d come, and took an elevator down four stories. My gut began
objecting again—it has a mind of its own—
not the morgue, don’t
take me to the morgue again
.

But of course, yesterday’s morgue was miles
away.

And this first subterranean level was a
different kind of morgue, an archive—a kind of morgue but of
records, not people. The three of us followed a silent Gloria down
more twisty corridors. I wondered if I should drop bread crumbs. I
also wondered why we couldn’t have met Gloria somewhere on the
first floor. Save us a lot of time and walking. But I had to admit
her time was more valuable than mine, and I remembered this was her
lunch hour we were using.

A few minutes later we were standing inside
a long room, about fifteen by thirty feet, filled with assorted
shelving and filing cabinets. We were alone. Gloria turned to stare
at us, arms across her bosom as if we were naughty students she was
considering whether to paddle. I was voting not.

Finally she spoke, her eyes sliding across
us angrily, settling on each of us at odd times, leaving me with a
head full of questions I would only much later ponder and might
never find answers for.

Again, her accent bedeviled me so I found
myself leaning toward her in an effort to better hear--like I did
when Matt was watching one of those European soccer games he loved,
announced by some Scotsman gleefully pretending to speak English
when actually it was Latin with only an occasional English word
thrown in. I concentrated hard and picked up most of what she
said.

“Dees recarts are protectit by privacy lahs,
but I’m openink dem to you for tree reasons: vun, you ahr relatet
to deh victim.” I turned to look first at Gerry then at Hannah.

“Two, you ahr vorking under deh Caleevornia
Public Eenwestigator’s laws.” Now they turned to stare at me.
“Veech allows you leemitet access; und tree, Gerry, yur broder Tom
called me dis mornink and ordered me tuh open dees medical records
for all off you to see or else.

“Not det I tink he has even deh slightest
power to do anytink to me…”

I was betting with her.

“…but, if dere’s hell to pay for me doink
dis, dis vill be my defenses. Make no mistake about it, I am not
heppy aboud beink forced to do dis. Deh time to heff acted in Ada’s
behaff is done. This so-call’t inwestigation bordurs on notink more
den woyeurism es far es I’m concerned.”

I pulled my neck back. Way back.

Gloria continued to glare at us, as if she
expected her preamble would dissuade us from proceeding. I was
completely taken aback by this statement, having been led to
believe that Gloria was supportive of our attempts at
discovery.

Clearly Gloria felt her job was in jeopardy,
so I tried to explain our actions in a better light than she was
seeing them.

“Gloria, I understand and respect that your
professional instincts are to protect your patients, even after
they are no longer your patients. And that you feel you are
speaking as Ada’s advocate now. But we have equally strong feelings
that we are doing the same, and even more. Yes, Gloria, she’s
beyond any help we can offer her. But our actions on behalf of Ada
at this time may help defend her child.” I watched as Gloria’s face
reflected surprise.

It was deja vu ala Gerry. Her face read
“What child?”

I continued. “We believe that Ada may have
died as the result of a criminal act. We believe that like all
people who are forced into a position of weakness through no fault
of their own, Ada was unable to defend herself.” I suddenly felt
like I was parodying the Catholic Nicene Creed, but couldn’t help
myself. “We believe that she felt she had no way out of her life as
a victim of abuse. So we are not here as voyeurs, I assure you.
There is no one here who takes any kind of pleasure in seeing what
I expect you are about to show us. We’re here as advocates for
Ada’s son, Edward.”

I had no idea what she was about to show us
or I would have run from the room.

“Who?” Her eyes slid from mine to Gerry’s
then to Hannah’s. “Dere is no son. Vell, dere vas, but he vas
berried.…”

Abigail had gone to bed before the end of
the bee…maybe she didn’t know about Eddie, so hadn’t told her
mother about Andrea’s outburst at the bee revealing that Eddie had
arrived at the double funeral for Ada and Jake, drenched and muddy
and carefully carrying his mom’s quilt in a black garbage bag.