Killer Commute (25 page)

“They've taken her to cardiac. Paramedics thought some guy would be following the ambulance in with her stuff.”

“Mel can't stand hospitals. Poor baby.”

When she'd filled out most of Maggie's history so she could be sick legally, Charlie sat outside the cardiac unit reading
Open and Shut
until a young Dr. Jenkins came to sit beside her. He looked gray with exhaustion. “Your friend is in a great deal of trouble, I'm afraid. We'll stabilize her overnight and may do surgery tomorrow. Why people never learn I don't know. Women are succumbing to this younger and younger.”

“Are you talking bypass or angioplasty? Maggie?”

“If people don't straighten up their acts, we'll all be dead by thirty-five. And the very first thing she has to do is throw away those damned cigarettes.”

“Maggie doesn't smoke. Far as I know she never did.”

“She reeked of cigarettes when she came in here.”

“Her boyfriend smokes. She probably reeked of Mel.” And Charlie explained Kate Gonzales's theory of estrogen deprivation and how it causes irregular heartbeats and fear takes it from there.

“This is an emergency situation, your friend's life is in danger, and you want us to treat her illness on the basis of pop medicine from some women's magazine?”

Actually it's from the cleaning lady. But Charlie didn't have the nerve to say so aloud. This poor guy was under a lot of stress.

“Women cannot go on hiding behind PMS, menopause, and hormones—they're going to have to take control of their lives and their diets. Caffeine, alcohol, stress, and a fatty diet—”

“She had two glasses of red wine with dinner at my house and Maggie eats more fresh fruits and vegetables than anyone I know.” Charlie failed to mention her friend's taste for strong coffee and the barbecued ribs and deli potato salad she'd also had for dinner. “I'd be real sure it's a heart attack before I'd do bypass if I were you. My friend's a practicing attorney of long standing in this town.”

He looked unconvinced. “Well, she certainly doesn't look like one now.”

Open and Shut
was chilling and funny as hell, the title a double entendre concerning a cop bent on proving a famous chef guilty of killing his obese wife by poisoning her with excess and his fabulous cooking. (She could see a studio ruining half the fun and half the macabre by titling it something bland like
Killing with Kindness.
A lot of the fun of Charlie's job was getting to experience the truly creative talents in the industry, which the industry often watered down for the common man.)

The wife had become so heavy she couldn't bend in the middle and the gifted chef had had a double-wide recliner made for her, and then a triple-wide. Their apartment was above the restaurant and he would have his minions take up morsels of his best work to keep her happy until he was through in the kitchen and then would bring up the best of everything to share with her.

This, of course, was in a series of flashbacks as chef and staff and around-the-clock male orderlies were questioned—male orderlies because of the lifting required to see to her hygiene—by the cop who Charlie pictured as J. S. Amuller. The first scene, behind the front credits, was this young homicide detective viewing the triple-wide recliner and its contents. The chef's wife had passed over with a smile on her lips and vomit all down her front. The deceased eater was tested for poisoning, but never once did our clever cop suspect that. He came to the conclusion that, since the orderlies were encouraged to go down to the kitchen to enjoy their own dinner, during that precious two or three hours that the couple had together to share their mutual love (food and wine), on this fateful night the chef reclined his helpless wife flat for a period of time so that when the rich meal came up, she choked on it.

Now the chilling part was that the chef had no alibi, had to admit he fed extravagantly rich food to an enormously overweight wife, and yes, she had money he would now inherit.

The funny part was how the couple talked to each other as they dined late at night (both did most of their sleeping during the day). The description—it was one of those script experiences where you're reading it, hearing it, seeing it, and casting it, even if you're only an agent. While Charlie grew ravenous at the couple's descriptions of the food and its taste and texture and color and odor, she grew fearful for the poor chef who must have loved the woman to slave for her so. (Hollywood would throw in a young blond for him to sleep with and wreck the whole thing—but that's the biz). She laughed at the play going on between the orderlies downstairs and the gofer cooks, the departing patrons exclaiming over the wondrous, exotic, fragrant ambrosia they'd experienced inside. It made
mouthwatering
such a tame expression you wanted to ban it from the language. Jesus, this is going to play in Europe even.

But you not only watch the food cooked, described, pictured in color, and shared descriptions between chef and wife and staff and customers—suffice it to say that the huge Mrs. Chef experiences multiple spontaneous orgasms every night at dinner.

Okay, Keegan's a guy who learned about women from
Playboy
and other totally clueless, out-of-the-frame sources. But the point was that's Hollywood, which is male, and Charlie was terrified for the poor chef while tingling all over with that wonderful we-got-something-here-or-what? agent feeling.

I can sell this.

Hell, anybody could sell this. It's Keegan Monroe, for god-sakes. Get ahold of Keegan ASAP. With your luck he's looking for another agent because you haven't told him how wonderful the script and he are.

I'm talking holding up big studios for really big money up front. I'm talking the deal of the century.

You should be talking staying out of prison first.

“Are you Mel, Melody?” a woman asked softly and handed Charlie a packet of nose tissues.

“No, I'm Charlie Greene. Here for Margaret Stutzman.” Charlie realized her crying and laughing and joy for poor Keegan had not gone unnoticed in the waiting room of the cardiac unit. And then she noticed there were only four other people there left.

“Miss Stutzman has been moved to a semiprivate and is asking for Mel.”

*   *   *

“I told them you are a local practicing attorney and not to rush to judgment about surgery here.”

Jenkins was right about one thing—Maggie sure didn't look like an attorney. She was always pale but now her glorious hair was limp and she had funny red spots on her cheeks that weren't blush. The blue eyes had lost their snap.

“I was finally stabilized enough to remember the name of my gynecologist. Thanks, Greene, but wasn't Mel at my bedside?”

“He can't handle hospitals. And I'd have been there but they wouldn't let me in. Isn't there a blood test that proves or disproves whether or not you had a heart attack?”

“A guy at my office went around for two years being treated for a bad heart until they took out his gallbladder. Heart's been fine ever since. My doctor will be here in the morning. I promised to sue if they did anything surgical without her approval.”

“Last time this happened, Detective Amuller upset you in Jeremy's living room. What set it off this time? Mel said you just ran back out of the house holding your chest.”

“Sometimes it doesn't take anything. I can just be sitting in a chair. One time I was moving a heavy load of files from my desk to a table in my office. But this time it was Jeremy. I saw him in the house.”

“Jeremy's dead.”

“It was his ghost, Charlie.”

*   *   *

Out in the hospital parking lot, Charlie found her Toyota the center of attention, particularly to the biggest black labrador Charlie had ever seen. He had a cop attached to his leash. Another cop stopped her. “That your car, ma'am?”

“Yes, what's happening?” But Charlie had a pretty good idea and another thing kachunked into place.

“Mind telling me what you were doing in the hospital?”

“Visiting a friend in the cardiac unit. Margaret Mildred Stutzman. My name is Charlie Greene.”

He checked this out with admissions on his cellular. Charlie didn't even blink when the bomb squad arrived. She'd seen that weird truck before.

“We had a bomb scare tonight and they found nothing until the officer walked his dog past your car on the way to his car. That dog's decided there's bomb makings somewhere under your car or in the trunk.”

It was after midnight when Charlie came home in a black-and-white to find Libby and Larry snacking in the kitchen. There'd been a bomb device attached to the underside of the Toyota. It wouldn't detonate but the bomb squad would keep the car and return it after a thorough search.

“Larry, don't let me forget to call Keegan tomorrow.
Open and Shut
is a winner. I'm exhausted. Maggie will live—we'll talk tomorrow, okay?” The wonderful thing about the title was that while the cop hero knew he had an open-and-shut case, the chief suspect—the chef—had to hand-feed his wife, and he would say “open,” and spoon in some devilishly wonderful food, and he would say “shut,” and she would close her mouth and chew while he took a bite. And then they would describe the taste, texture, seasoning, even the mood of the food in a truly sensuous way. It was brilliant. It even made Charlie horny and it wasn't her estrus time.

She crawled into bed to find some wet green stuff on her pillow. Goddamned cat. She threw the pillow to the floor and grabbed the other. It wasn't until morning that she found other chewed green things around the room and could identify them as hundred dollar bills.

CHAPTER 34

LARRY
SCRAMBLED EGGS
the next morning and Betty brought over her sinful cinnamon rolls, hot out of the oven. One of the long-standing mysteries of the compound was solved when Larry asked her how she did it. “I just called to invite you, couldn't have been a half hour ago.”

“Oh, I don't make them, dear. Have a freezerful. They're Sara Lee and I own stock in the company. Just doing my part, you know. Take them out of the freezer and warm them up. I take them out of the aluminum pan and put them in this Pyrex one to bake. This here's two boxes' worth.”

Libby was still asleep. Charlie would go to the hospital to Maggie. Ed would come by and pick up Larry. The guys intended to get to the bottom of the couple with the red Ferrari in the redwood house who looked to be planning on leaving town. Charlie was fairly certain she already had figured it out, but wouldn't mind a little corroboration.

“Do you want to come with me to see Maggie, Mrs. Beesom? We could take your car since mine is still with the bomb unit.”

“Oh no, dear, but you can take my car. Two places I don't go except under force—hospitals and nursing homes. You two won't understand until you get to be my age.”

Charlie wasn't about to touch that one so she turned to Larry. “
Open and Shut
's got everything. You were right. I was laughing and crying in the waiting room and making a total ass of myself. I wish Keegan would call again before I go to Maggie.”

“I never imagined anything so erotic. And from a couple married what, thirty, thirty-five years and she unable to bend in the middle? And so sad and so funny, too. Making love with food isn't new, but Stew's going to love it.”

“They weren't really making love with food, Mrs. Beesom,” Charlie told the woman threatening to hyperventilate while chewing. Once started, Betty wouldn't pause while eating if Jesus Christ walked up and asked directions.

“How can Monroe be such a genius and so unimpressive to look at? And was there really a bomb attached to your Toyota?” Larry wanted to know. “Who could predict Maggie would have a heart attack and you'd drive it to the hospital where they could attach it? Or is there a random bomber following you around?”

“That labrador was sure convinced, practically mounted the tailpipe—that's just an expression, Mrs. Beesom, he didn't really. I just wonder if the bomb had been there for a while and didn't go off like it was supposed to. The makings of a dud might smell the same to a dog.” That could also have been why the red Ferrari followed them to the eye doctor yesterday—to punch a detonator at the right time or to witness the success of the planting of the bomb.

“You mean there could have been a bomb on the back of your car when we drove to Dr. Pearlman's and all over the city yesterday?” Betty slowed the lifting of her fork.

“I think it's a real possibility that whoever was following us in a Ferrari like Jeremy's wanted us dead—both of us. You too. And Maggie claims that what set off her heart problem last night was seeing Jeremy's ghost in her house when she returned unexpectedly for something she'd forgotten—and, Mrs. Beesom, no one who lives here and knew Jeremy is safe.”

“Charlie,” Larry said, studying the old woman with concern, “careful here. Her heart's a lot older than Maggie's.”

“She's not safe, Larry. Nobody who lives here is safe without Jeremy. And, Betty, if I have to choose between you and Libby in a dangerous situation, how would you imagine that scene would play?”

“Jeremy's ghost,” Betty said.

“It wasn't Jeremy's ghost, was it, Mrs. Beesom?”

Betty was saved answering that embarrassing question by Maggie Stutzman walking in the back door without waiting for an invitation. “Tell me you haven't eaten all the cinnamon rolls.”

*   *   *

Maggie, replete with the rest of the cinnamon rolls, took Charlie over to her house for serious coffee. She didn't want to go alone. And Dr. Jenkins warned her she was lucky this time but if she didn't give up cigarettes, caffeine, alcohol, red meat, and dessert, she'd be back again fast. “And don't think you can blame everything on hormones because you're female,” he said.