Mixed Messages (A Malone Mystery) (10 page)

“Don’t scream at me
,” he whispered.
“
I’m at the office. I can’t talk now. I’ll be home later. I just wanted you to know I’m okay. I fell asleep in the car
last night
. Like it matters to you. Like you care
.
” He slammed the phone down.

“Bastard!” she said aloud.

Her anger subsided quickly and, all of a sudden,
she
felt tired
and depressed
.
She forgot all about calling Bernie as s
he went into the living room,
plopped
down on the sofa, leaned back and closed her eyes.
We used to do so many things together, she recalled. How long has it been since we piled the kids in the car and went for a ride to see the changing colors of the leaves?
She
pictur
ed
the four of them, heading out for a family outing.
It had felt so
good to be together as a family, happy and carefree, as they drove along the back roads of Indiana and through the small picturesque towns, stopping at the A & W stand to buy big, frothy mugs of root beer. She fell asleep with a tear running down her cheek.

A few minutes later, she awoke abruptly to the sound of someone banging on the apartment door. Groggy and disoriented, she hurried to the door, combing her hair with her fingers and pushing it behind her ears.

“
Oh, no!
This is all I need,”
she
muttered under her breath as she looked through the peephole at her mother-in-law’s face. She opened the door. “Louise, come in,” she said, forcing a smile. “I’m surprised to see you.”

“Evidently,” Louise said, bending down
to pick
up a toy fire truck that Davey had
left on the floor.

“I’m sorry the place is such a mess,” Ann said. “Please, sit down.”

“Why aren’t you dressed, Ann? Are you ill?”

“No. No. I
… .
It’s been a bad morning. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“That would be nice,” Louise replied, following Ann into the kitchen where the remains of breakfast littered the table and stovetop.

“I haven’t had a chance to clean up yet,” Ann said. As she cleared a place at the table for Louise, tears began streaming down her face and her hands trembled as she carried dirty dishes to the sink.

“What’s wrong?” her mother-in-law asked.
“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. I
… .
I don’t know how much more I can take,” she said, her voice cracking. “David didn’t come home last night.”

“Where is he? Is he al
l right
?” Louise asked in a shrill voice.

“He’s fine. He called this morning from the office.”

Louise sighed.
“Well, then, there’s nothing to be upset about, is there?”

“Nothing to be upset about? How can you say that? Didn’t you hear me? David stayed out all night!”

“Oh, for goodness sakes, Ann. Grow up. Boys will be boys. You should know that by
now.
You should be thankful he’s
safe and sound
.
”

“Wait a minute
. I should ‘grow up’ but David’s allowed to be totally irresponsible because ‘boys will be boys’? He’s a married man! A married man with children! He should be home at night with his family, not hanging out in bars doing God knows what with God knows who!”

“What are you saying? What are you accusing my son of?” Louise shouted.

“I’m not accusing
him
of anything. I’m telling you like it is. He goes to the bar
almost
every
night. He comes home in the wee hours
,
so drunk he can barely walk. He’s hung over almost every day. It keeps getting worse and worse. Now he’s stayed out all night
!
Your son has a problem with alcohol and you’re too blind to see it!”

“
Are you calling David an alcoholic?
How dare you call
him
an alcoholic? He works hard. He supports you and the children, doesn’t he? Did it ever occur to you that maybe he doesn’t
want
to come home? That, maybe, if you kept a cleaner house and paid a little more attention to your appearance he might not
have
to stay away?”

Ann felt like slapping her. Instead, she said, “I think you’d better go now.”

“Well, I didn’t come here to argue with you. You’d better give some thought to how good you’ve got it
, Missy
. It wouldn’t be so easy raising two kids on your own, you know.
I did it and it wasn’t easy. At least
I
had a job. How would you even live?
You don’t even have a job.”

Ann glanced up at the
wall
clock above the
stove
. “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. “
The job!
I’ve got an appointment with Father Andrew in exactly one hour
!
I have to get ready. Look, Louise, let’s just forget it
.
We both got carried away. I’m sure everything will be fine. But, I really do have to get ready.”

“I put in a good word for you, you know, with Father Andrew,” Louise said.

“And I appreciate that. Thank you. I’ll let you know what happens,” Ann said as she
ushered Louise out the door of the apartment. “We’ll talk soon.”

She
followed her mother-in-law into the hallway and out the front door.
Olivia
was
sitting on the front porch in her wheelchair. “Liv, I didn’t hear
you come down,” Ann said.

“It’s a wonder,” Olivia said, “with the noise that darn lift makes.”

“Actually,
David asked me to talk to you about that. Is there any way you could have that noise fixed? It’s been waking
him
up in the morning. Sometimes, he goes back to bed for an hour or two after the kids go to school. If he had mentioned it to me sooner, I could’ve asked you about it
before now
. Then maybe you could’ve had Charlie look at it
Monday
when he was here.”

Olivia frowned. “Charlie was here
Monday
? I don’t remember
seeing his van
,” she said, looking perplexed. “
He usually parks right in front of the house.
Oh well, no matter. Consider it done. I’ll call him today and see if he can do it right away. He’s a wonderful handyman, been fixing things around the neighborhood for years. Anything broken or not working properly, he can fix it.”

“Thank you. Oh, I’m forgetting my manners. You know David’s mother, Louise, don’t you?” Ann asked, turning toward Louise.

Olivia smiled pleasantly. “Of course. Hello.
How are you?
”

Louise
didn’t reply. She simply
nodded toward Olivia and started down the steps. When she’d reached the walkway, she turned around. “Good luck, today, Ann,” she said.

As soon as she was gone, Ann looked down at Olivia and said, “I’d love to sit and talk with you awhile but I’m late
!
I’ve got a job interview
with Father Andrew
at the church
in an hour
for a part-time secretarial position
.
” She took a deep breath and exhaled.
“
To tell you the truth,
I’m kind of nervous.
Cross your fingers for me that I get this job.”

“I will,” Olivia said, holding up her hand and crossing her fingers. “I know you’ll do just fine but you’d better get going.”

“
If you want, I’ll come up and tell you all about it when I get back.”

“Well, you’d better. I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Olivia replied, smiling up at her.

* * * *

As the door
closed
behind
Ann
, Olivia mumble
d to herself
, “That darn Louise
Kern. What a meddlesome, old biddy!
”
It seems like, every time I turn around, I see her sour face
, she thought
.
Why can’t she leave those poor kids alone? And what was that business about Charlie being here
Monday
? I didn’t call him. I know I’m getting old but I’m not senile yet.

Chapter
1
2

BERNIE KOCH FROWNED AS HE LISTENED
to the busy signal.
Disappointed, he
hung up the receiver and
placed the scrap of paper with Ann’s phone number on the table beside him.
He’d tried calling
her
several times over the past few months but he couldn’t seem to get in touch with her. He was sure he had the correct number because he knew that the Kerns had kept their old phone number
when they moved
but, each time he called, he either got a busy signal or the phone rang and rang. Whatever happened to her answering machine? he wondered.

Ever since
Ann
and her family moved out of his apartment building
at the beginning of the year
, he’d hoped she would call
him
but he knew how it was with young people these days.
The world
was so hectic anymore,
everything moved at such a fast pace,
not like back in the days when he was a young man, when
life was much simpler
. At least, that’s how he remembered it.

He turned the volume back up on his police radio scanner, pushed the lever down on his La-z-boy recliner and struggled to get to his feet. He grabbed his cane, which he always kept at his fingertips, and
hobbled
to the kitchen. His leg, the result of a gunshot wound when he was
on the
force, was really acting up today. That always happened when it rained; the dampness seemed to
seep into his bones
for days
.

He opened the refrigerator and took out a can of Diet Coke. He waited until he was back in his recliner before popping the tab on the can. He’d learned the hard way that, if he opened it before he sat down, sure as anything he’d spill a lot of it
on the way to his chair
. There were several faint stains on the light beige carpet to prove it. No matter how hard he scrubbed, he couldn’t totally erase them.

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, thinking about his
many
conversation
s
with Ann. She was such a sweet girl. When she lived across the hall from him, she used to come over almost every day and they’d spent hours talking. He’d begun to think of her as the daughter he never had.
He hoped that she was okay.
He knew that her husband, David, was on his way to developing a drinking problem. Bernie had seen all the signs and he recognized them because he too had once had a problem with alcohol.

It started when he was in boot camp. At first, it was a social thing but, little by little, for
him
, it had escalated. In Korea, it became a way to escape temporarily from the horrors of war. He didn’t like to think about the war. There was so much death and destruction in what was truly a beautiful country. He could still see the blood
ied
bodies of his friends and the terrified expressions on the faces of the little children, many of whom had fathers and mothers who were soldiers because Korean women fought as soldiers too.

Worst of all
,
was the time he’d spent as a prisoner of war. Somehow, he’d made it through the months of captivity but he’d
seen
so many men die. Some died of malnutrition and disease because they received no medical treatment whatsoever, some froze to death, some were beaten to death and some simply couldn’t take it anymore and died from what was later called Give-up-itis. He’d watched two of his closest friends being executed by the KPA forces, one bullet behind
each of
the
ir
ear
s
.

He
opened his eyes. It didn’t pay to think about that time; it only depressed him. The war was what had started him drinking in the first place but, miraculously
, because a lot of men developed drinking problems
on
the job
, joining the Cincinnati police force after the war, had somehow saved him. He had his old sergeant to thank for that.

He’d started out on the force drinking with the other cops a few evenings a week after work. It wasn’t long though before even he knew that he was using any and every excuse to have a drink, actually several drinks, and he realized that, long after his buddies went home, he still sat in the bar ordering one after the other
.
Some nights, no one else wanted to go out but he went anyway. He didn’t think about quitting because hey, a guy worked hard, risked his life every day to protect the public, he deserved a break.