Pink Balloons and Other Deadly Things (Mystery Series - Book One) (13 page)

Vickie came to mind. I’d forgotten to call her about scheduling another appointment. Maybe she could fill that eight o’clock slot. Cognizant of the no cell phone use while driving law, I pulled off the highway at seventy-second street, miraculously found a spot to park, pulled over and dialed her number. She answered on the first ring.

“Vickie? It's Carrie Carlin.”

“Hi.”

“I have an opening at eight tonight. Is that good for you?”

“Gosh, I don’t know. I’m going for a job interview in the morning.”

“No kidding. That’s terrific!” Vickie had never held a job for longer than two months. Her interpersonal relationship skills were weak, and she was unreliable, sometimes arriving at work late, at times not showing up at all. Brainwave training for attention deficit would help, but we weren’t there yet. We were still working on positive affirmations and visualizations. “What kind of a job is it?”

“My boyfriend got me an interview at Bloomingdale’s.”

“As a salesgirl?”

“Demonstrating makeup.”

“Hey, that’s great. You have such beautiful eyes. You'll be perfect. Good luck.”

“Thanks. I am kind of nervous.”

“Why don’t you try and make it tonight then? We'll go over interviewing strategies, do a success visualization.”

“Okay.”

“Good. See you later.”

“Yeah. Bye.”

“Bye.” I hit
End
and flipped my phone closed. I felt better. I was making progress with Vickie. Even if the boyfriend had used his connections to get her the interview, this job, if she could get and keep it, would give her a degree of independence even from him. Maybe she’d move out of her parents’ home. It was therapeutic, getting my mind off my problems and concentrating on those of my patients.

I picked up the phone again and dialed Meg's shop.

Franny’s voice. Meg’s Place.”

“Franny?”

“How may I help you?”

“It's Carrie. What’re you doing there today? Where's Meg?”

“Oh, Carrie.” Her voice became hushed. “Meg had to leave.”

“On a Thursday at lunch hour? Where’d she go?”

“A couple of policemen came by. I don’t know what it was about, but they asked her to go to the Hackensack station with them. She called me to come right over.”

A cold breeze that had nothing to do with the open windows swept through me.

“When was this?”

“About an hour ago.”

“What did the cops look like?”

“One was tall and thin, kind of nice looking in an outdoorsy kind of way. Looked like he could use a good meal, though. Or a new suit. The other one was---”

I hardly heard the rest and hung up as soon as I could. Damn Brodsky! Bad enough he’s constantly on my case, but when he starts harassing my friends, it’s time I let him know he’s way out of line.

Fifteen minutes later I pulled into the parking lot of the Bergen County prosecutor’s office.

Alighting from my car, I was just in time to see Meg get into hers. I yelled at her to wait, but she seemed not to hear me and drove off. I stood there indecisively, not sure if I should stick with my original plan or follow her. I went with my first impulse. I could catch up with Meg later. I wanted to have it out with Brodsky while I still had the nerve.

I marched into the building feeling belligerent as hell, ready to barrel past anyone who tried to stop me. But Brodsky’s name was an open sesame, and I was waved on without comment. Several detectives were sitting around the congested squad room, scribbling at their desks, talking on phones. I spotted Brodsky next to a water cooler, paper cup in hand. I was tempted to grab it and dump it over his head, but I held my temper and planted myself firmly between him and the cooler.

“Detective.”

He didn't seem surprised to see me. Very deliberately he finished drinking, then reached around me and tossed the cup into the wastebasket.

“Something I can do for you, Ms. Carlin?”

“You brought my friend, Meg Reilly, here for questioning.”

“Yeah,” he said, unperturbed. “Right.”

“You’ve got to stop this. It’s one thing, your badgering me incessantly with your questions. Like it or not, I’m involved in this mess. But it’s absolutely unconscionable of you to drag my friends into it.”

“Maybe you should choose your friends more carefully.”

“What?” I hadn't expected that.

“Maybe,” he replied with exaggerated patience, “you should--”

“I heard you. What is that supposed to mean?”

He took my arm and led me into his small office.

“Sit,” he said.

“I’d rather stand.”

He shrugged. “Whatever.”

He sat, and I stood, feeling something of a fool, like the king in
The King and I,
who didn't allow anyone’s head to be higher than his.

Brodsky drummed his fingers on the metal desk. “Your friend’s a real looker, isn't she.”

I was so shocked, I sat down. What was this? It didn't jibe with my impression of him.

“Tell me something I don't know,” I said stiffly.

“Okay. Did you know she knew your husband?”

“Well, of course she knows him. She’s been at the house when he comes to---”

“I mean, before you and she met.”

...
before you met, before you met
ricocheted off the wall, took a few seconds to penetrate. My first instinct was to deny and defend.

“For your information, Meg only moved here from the city after Rich and I were separated, so---”

“She did some modeling for him several years back.”

When I was ten years old, I was kicked by a horse. It felt exactly the same way. A minute went by before I dredged up enough breath to speak.

“That’s not true.” But the worm of suspicion lying dormant in my gut reared its head.

“Her picture was in that pile you found yesterday,” he said quietly. “That’s why I brought her in.”

“Why are you telling me these lies?”
I wanted to cry. But then I remembered Meg reaching for the pictures her face gone suddenly pale, and all I managed was a whispered, “I don’t believe you,” while I twisted the braided strap on my handbag into an irretrievable knot.

He reached into a folder and pulled out a photograph. I could see where it had been taped together. He slid it across the desk to me.

The face in the photo was Meg, Meg a few years younger, made up more glamorously than I’d ever seen her. I saw something in Brodsky's eyes then, like he cared that I had to see this, that he had to tell me these things, like you see in the eyes of a friend. But I know better than to believe what I see in someone’s eyes. Friends betray. I was becoming an expert on betrayal.

“Carrie, she admitted it.”

“What?” I whispered.

“She used to be a professional photographer. Your husband saw some of her work and hired her for a shoot, then offered her a job modeling. Ms. Reilly had two photo sessions using various products,” he continued, his tone flat. “The picture here was for eye makeup. When she showed up for a body cream shoot, she discovered there was no photographer and your husband wanted her to model nude while he shot the pictures himself.”

This was another of my nightmares.

“None of Rich’s ads use nude models,” I protested nonsensically.

“The photos were obviously not for public display.”

That was pity in his voice. I didn't want his pity. I wanted him to be lying. They say troubles come in threes. So this had to be the end of it. After today nothing bad could happen to me. My children and I could live happily ever after.

Brodsky had the sensitivity to keep his eyes averted. “For whatever it's worth, she says she turned the job down.”

She says.
“Why didn't Meg tell me she knew Rich?”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

“Was—-did she ever see him again? I mean until she met me?”

“She says she didn't.”

It came back to me then, Meg's knowing what I’d said to Rich that night. How could she have known that unless Rich had told her?

“Do you know anything about her past, Carrie?”

“Not...much.” I sounded funny, like I had a bad cold. “She never talks about herself. Only that she was married, and her husband died.”

“Her husband isn’t dead. He’s in the federal pen in Danbury.”

One lie after the other. Like Rich.

“She goes...that must be where she goes every week when...she must go up to Connecticut to visit him.”

“Sounds right.”

“What’d he-—what’s he in for?”

Brodsky made a big thing of straightening out the papers in the file and closing it.

“Conspiracy to cover up a fraud. Your friend was an unindicted co-conspirator.”

How do you get to be an unindicted co-conspirator?
I thought.
What is an unindicted co-conspirator anyway? If you’re a co-conspirator, why don’t they indict you?

It was all too much for my overloaded brain. I went numb. I think there’s only so much shock the human mind can absorb at one time. After that there’s a protective mechanism that kicks in and you stop feeling. At least it seems to work that way with me. But I must have been shaking because Brodsky came around the desk and put his jacket over my shoulders. I’m not sure if it was the jacket or his hands on my shoulders, but after a minute sensation returned.

I got unsteadily to my feet and handed the coat back to him. “I have to go. I have clients coming.”

“I’ll have someone drive you.”

“I have my car.” Politely, I held out my hand. “Well, good-bye, Detective. Thanks for the information.”

“I'll walk you out.”

He guided me out of his glass-enclosed office to the front door. I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and managed to get down the steps without falling. He led me around to the passenger side.

“Give me your keys.”

“I can drive.”

“You can’t walk. Give me your keys.”

Robotlike, I handed them over. I was hardly aware of getting into the car or of him getting behind the wheel and starting the engine. But I was aware that he reached out and covered my hand with his.

IT’S AN INTERESTING phenomenon that, when you have children, there’s some kind of inner strength that takes over and keeps you going. I had to earn a living. There was no way I was going to keep my practice if I kept canceling appointments.

So I saw all my clients. From somewhere outside myself I watched as I weighed my overeaters and moderated their discussion on addictive behavior. I even remained detached when Melanie Greenwald brought up the murders right in the middle of a group exercise on the destructiveness of displaced anger.

“Maybe they should be looking for a fatty,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“You know. The person who knocked off your husband’s sweetie pie and his secretary. The cops should be looking for an overeater.”

So much for my hope that they might not connect me with the case.

“Why do you say that?” I asked in a well-modulated tone while the group gave a concerted gasp at her temerity.

“Whoever did it's mad as hell-—I mean angry-mad, not nuts. Well, maybe nuts too. But like you’re always telling us, he or she needs to direct the anger where it belongs.”

Thank God I weigh in at a hundred and ten pounds.

Ruth-Ann’s face turned blotchy. “Why don’t you just shut up, Melanie!”

A shocked silence settled over the group. No one but me had ever seen Ruth-Ann angry. Everybody looked at her, then at me, then looked away.

“It's a fascinating theory, Melanie,” I said, shooting Ruth-Ann a reassuring “I can handle this” look. “I’ll mention it to the police.”

Somehow I got through the rest of the session and saw three more patients without dissolving into hysterics.

Mr. Tobin came at six. He's a tall thin man in his sixties, with round glasses and sparse gray hair, who walks kind of bent to one side like a poplar in a windstorm. I have a feeling that before his wife died last December, he walked straighter. When I first saw him, his blood pressure was one-ninety over one-ten. By watching the biofeedback monitor, he’s learning how his thoughts and emotions adversely affect his body. I’m teaching him techniques to regain control.

I like Mr. Tobin. I like how he misses his wife, how he talks about her with such tenderness in his voice. Widows and widowers tend to idealize their dead spouses. You’d think they’d all been married to saints. But I believe Mr. Tobin. Even dead, I envy Mrs. Tobin.

At seven, I had Jerry Grinch-—my “grinch who stole Christmas,” which I am certain he is capable of doing.

Jerry is seventeen. His hair is cut in a mohawk that stands straight up on his head and is dyed green. He wears lots of black leather, high studded cowboy boots, and a hanging rhinestone earring in his left ear. I don’t think he’s into anything stronger than marijuana, but it’s not doing much for his powers of concentration. I’m trying, without much success, to convince him that he can achieve a satisfactory high from brainwave training, without drug-related memory loss. Jerry’s father is president of a bank in Greenwich, Connecticut, and his mother is a fund-raiser for some historical society. They bring him to Piermont for therapy in the hope they won’t run into anyone they know.

We went through our usual bit.

“Take off the earring, Jerry,” I instructed, as I do at every session.

“Aw, shit,” he replied, as he does at every session.

“If I get a good reading first time around, I won’t have to pinch your ears.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

I always have a tough time getting a correct reading on the impedance meter when I do Jerry. After I’ve applied gel and attached the sensors to his head and earlobes, I plug the cable into the meter. A low reading means I have a good contact. With Jerry, I usually have to reapply the gel two or three times, rub the spot on his head extra hard where the sensor is attached, and pinch his ears with the earclips. I think the problem is the green hair dye.

“Ow,” he yelled, as I pinched.

“Sorry,” I said.

Halfway through the session he’d had enough of the blinking lights on the monitor. “Hey, I'm gettin’ sick of red and green. How about throwin’ in some oranges and purples?”