Pink Balloons and Other Deadly Things (Mystery Series - Book One) (7 page)

Rich was standing over me, clenching and unclenching his massive fists. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I wasn't about to become a battered wife. I stepped back.

His mouth worked, but nothing came out. Then he managed a croak. “You did it, didn't you?” His face turned purple. “You did it to get back at me! You killed Erica!”

Before I could answer, the door was flung open. Out of my peripheral vision, I caught Dot’s triumphant expression. Behind her, staring at me, mouth agape, stood Gus Gennaro, Rich’s normally jolly security guard, looking as though someone had just whacked him in the gut with a battering ram.

I don’t remember running past Gus or Dot, or pressing the elevator button, or riding the elevator to the lobby. I think I used the stairs, but I wouldn’t swear to it in a court of law. Somehow I found myself in the parking lot racing to the safety of Meg’s car. I fell to my knees beside the rear tire and lost what was left of my breakfast. Then I burst into tears. I’m not sure if they were the result of the past couple of days, or grief over love gone rancid, but I cried all the way back to the office as though I’d lost my best friend.

Which I certainly had.

THERE WAS A MESSAGE on my answering machine when I arrived back at the office. Joe Golden, Vickie Thorenson’s psychiatrist, wanted me to squeeze her in for a relaxation session. Joe sends me patients on a regular basis. He’s one of the few psychiatrists I know who appreciates the benefits of biofeedback, so I always try to accommodate him. After this morning I probably needed a session with him more than Vickie needed one with me, but I’d blown her off yesterday, so I called Jen Cordova’s mother and asked if she’d mind picking up her daughter directly from school and bringing her to my office by three fifteen. Jen’s one of my ADD’s. She’s on her next-to-last session and is now getting B’s in school, so I knew I could finish with her in three-quarters of an hour. I called Vickie and arranged to see her at four.

Somehow I managed to put the incident with Rich in a separate compartment of my mind. Keeping busy, the best therapy. I checked my book, saw that I had Baji Ponamgi at twelve-thirty, Carl Lomax at one-thirty, Phyllis Lutz at two-thirty, and Timmy Brannigan, another ADD, at five.

Mr. Ponamgi’s a pain client, fifties, an uptight accountant, referred to me by my old clinic. Quite a compliment, considering they have two biofeedback therapists on staff. As a result of an automobile accident, he suffers from pain in the cervical and lumbar regions, meaning whiplash, and back injury. Difficult areas to treat, especially in an A-personality type like Mr. Ponamgi, who thinks he’ll be struck dead by the God of Workaholics if he allows himself a day off. But he’s making progress. He works as hard at healing himself as he does at everything else, and being East Indian, he’s more open to alternative therapies than many westerners.

Carl’s the complete opposite. Only thirty-eight, sinewy, and basically in good shape, he had a minor accident on the job, gets workman’s comp, and if he can get away with it, will probably milk the system forever. He stonewalls me at every turn.

Phyllis is my only hypochondriac. She had both hands pressed to her head and was already pacing the waiting room impatiently when I finished with Carl at two-twenty.

“I’m getting a migraine,” she announced to Carl.

“That right?” he replied. “I got a spinal injury; I’m in constant agony,” winning the “can you top this” contest hands down.

“Come on in, Phyllis,” I cut in quickly before she could start enumerating her gastrointestinal symptoms. Phyllis spends half her time in her internist’s office and half in mine attempting to treat her headaches and her nervous stomach, which have their origin in the fact that her husband isn't and never will be Donald Trump. I’ve talked with Greg Lutz. He’s a decent guy who makes an adequate living, but if Phyllis can't have the jet-set lifestyle, she'll opt for the attention illness brings her.

“This isn’t working,” she declared the minute she had settled herself in the recliner.

“It isn’t for everyone,” I agreed. “But you’ve only had five sessions and nothing else has helped, so why not stick with it for a while longer?”

She picked a piece of lint off her cashmere skirt. “The whole concept makes no sense. Warming my hands. Ridiculous.“

“Have you been practicing?”

“I feel silly.”

“No one has to know what you’re doing. Let’s try it.” I flipped on my tape recorder and began attaching the sensors to her head and fingers. I felt her body stiffen under my touch. “What’s the matter?”

“You always do that?”

“What?”

“Record the sessions? I never noticed.”

“It’s so I can review what I’ve done, what works and what doesn’t with a particular patient. Does it bother you?”

“Yes. Turn it off. I don’t want any record of something I might say when I’m under.”

“Under what?”

“Hypnosis.”

“Phyllis, I don’t hypnotize you. I relax you. It’s more self-hypnosis than anything.”

“I don’t care. Just turn it off.”

I complied. “Okay, we’ll just have the music then.”

It was a frustrating session for us both. Sun on the beach didn’t work, hot oil didn’t work, even boiling lava and volcanic ash failed to de-ice those frigid extremities. The more images I came up with, the lower her peripheral temperature dropped. At the end of the session, my hands were sweating and her temperature read a chilly seventy-nine degrees. She left clutching her temples, heading for Dr. Heller’s office. Feeling like a failure, I took two aspirin.

I was actually happy to see Vickie, who was only ten minutes late—-a record for her. She appeared more relaxed when she walked through my door than I’d expected after Allie’s melodramatic description of their phone conversation. As always, she looked gamine adorable. The doe-shape of her big brown eyes and that heart-shaped face allow her to get away with one of those boyish haircuts you never have to set, and if she were to decide to wear a horse blanket, her long lean dancer’s figure would make it look like a Donna Karan. Today she wore brown stretch pants, a tie-dyed tunic top, and a carefree smile.

I’m always struck by Vickie’s abrupt mood changes. Ever since I’ve known her, the on-again, off-again nature of the relationship with her lover has kept her seesawing between rapture and despair. Happily, whatever combination of medication and counseling Dr. Golden had come up with today seemed to have had a settling effect.

“I’m sorry about canceling your appointment yesterday,” I apologized as I attached the sensors to her fingers and muscles. “I had an emergency and had to leave the office.”

“That’s okay. Dr. Golden saw me this morning.”

“I know. But I felt bad about it because my daughter said you sounded really upset when you called on Saturday.”

“I was, but it’s over. I guess I’m learning to deal with it.”

“With what?”

“That my dad hates me.”

“Oh, Vickie, he doesn’t hate you. He just wants to control you.” My eyes flashed to the computer, and I noted that her EDR, which was registering internal tension, went from seven to thirty-nine as she talked about her father. “What happened this time?”

“Same old stuff.” She began twirling the spiral on my desk with her free hand. “He was screaming at me, calling me names. He’d like to keep me locked up in a cage.”

Much of the work Joe Golden and I had been doing with Vickie had to do with getting her to deal with her feelings of anger toward her father.

“Did you do what we talked about?”

“You mean about just walking away?”

“And the visualization exercise.”

She giggled. “Yeah. You should’ve seen the expression on his face when I said, ’I’m leaving. I don’t allow anyone to abuse me anymore.’ And then I walked out of the house and got in my car and went over and over the exercise in my head.”

“Good for you.” I didn’t like Vickie’s father. I’d met him a couple of times when he’d brought her to the office before she had her car. He’s a domineering man who thinks money can buy him anything, including his daughter’s love and respect. I suspected Vickie’s promiscuity was related to her endless search for a father substitute. “I was worried you might’ve been feeling depressed over—-you know, the breakup.”

“Oh, no. I fixed that too. We’re getting back together.”

I was tempted to go on about the folly of staying in a bad relationship but caught myself. Instead, once she was completely relaxed and in a meditative state, I gave her positive affirmations about taking charge of her life and making things happen instead of passively letting them happen to her.

I should follow my own advice,
I thought wryly. We mental health professionals are so good at teaching other people how to handle their problems; not always roaring successes in dealing with our own.

By the end of the hour, Vickie’s muscles registered 0.4 and 0.6 respectively, indicating a completely relaxed physical state, but her excitement at the prospect of being back with her lover was clearly keeping her emotions at a high pitch. I hadn’t been at all successful at lowering her EDR or in raising her peripheral temperature to a balanced ninety-two degrees. Then I remembered what it felt like—-being young and in love, and despite my certainty that this particular relationship was a dead end for Vickie, I couldn’t help feeling just a tiny pang of envy.

THE LAST PERSON in the world I wanted to see was waiting outside my office building when I came out after work.

I’d been looking forward to going directly home and soaking in a bathtub filled with stress-reducing crystals, when I saw Brodsky's lanky frame holding up a telephone pole. I kept my eyes lowered, pretending to search through my bag for my keys. Wishing he would vanish, I hurried toward the lot where I’d parked Meg's car. He caught up with me as I got to the gas station on the corner.

“Sorry about this,” he murmured, falling into step beside me.

“About what, Detective? I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Just a few more questions. Thought you’d prefer not to come down to the precinct.”

I didn’t miss the implication. My knees went weak, and I stumbled.

He caught my arm and steadied me. “Let’s take a walk.”

I shook free, shrugged my assent, not slackening my pace. The heat wave had broken, and the temperature had returned to normal, somewhere in the seventies. I headed for the pier and breathed in the clear crisp air.

He waited until I stopped at the water’s edge. “How long would you estimate you spent watching Ms. Vogel?”

I hesitated. “Maybe—-maybe twenty minutes to half an hour.”

“Can you pinpoint the exact time?”

“Somewhere between three-thirty and four, I should think. Is that important?”

“Could be. If you can prove it. Depends on when the M.E. fixes the time of death.”

“Sue Tompkins saw me.”

“She doesn’t remember exactly what time she walked the dog. Did anyone else call Ms. Vogel beside your husband while you were there?”

“No.”

“Their conversation was friendly?”

I gazed out over the water, focusing on the line of rush-hour cars crawling like an army of ants over the Tappan Zee bridge, willing myself to feel nothing. “Yes.”

“Did Ms. Vogel leave her chair at any time? Did she go inside at all?”

“No.”

He jotted something down in his notebook. “Could you give me an accurate description of the necklace she was wearing?”

“I thought my husband did that.”

“Men tend not to notice detail.”

Involuntarily, my hand crept to my throat as if to finger the familiar links. “It was a gold watch fob chain-—old, maybe late eighteen hundreds. The links were rectangular, about half an inch long each, with little pieces of chain holding them together.”

His pencil paused mid-page. “You seem to have a rare eye for detail, considering you said you never got close to her.”

“The necklace had been mine.” I kept my face expressionless. “Rich will be entitled to half my jewelry when we’re divorced. Erica wanted that piece, so he made off with it a little ahead of time.”

He began writing again. “I wasn’t aware that personal possessions are part of equitable distribution in New Jersey.”

“Jewelry is. Most men don't take advantage of it.”

I felt his eyes on me. I kept mine on a sea gull that was shoving a smaller gull off its perch on a stanchion. Nature’s way. Survival of the toughest.

“Rough seeing something you valued on another woman,” he said. “Especially something so personal.”

I didn’t miss the implication. I shifted my gaze and looked him straight in the eye. “Hardly worth killing over.”

He looked back down at his notes. “Anything else you can tell me about the necklace?”

“The clasp was an addition. I guess Erica thought the original was too plain. Or maybe she found it hard to fasten. Whatever, he replaced it with a cluster of diamonds and rubies. It didn't go with the chain.”

He studied me for a minute. “How did you happen to know that?”

“What?”

“That the clasp had been replaced.”

I grimaced. “She wore it to Allie’s Sunday school graduation last week. She made sure I saw it.”

“Did you notice anyone in the area when you drove there on Saturday? Anyone who didn't seem to belong in the neighborhood, anything unusual at all?”

I thought hard, trying to dredge up something. “There may’ve been,” I said finally, “but I didn’t notice anything.”

“You know all the neighbors’ cars?”

“Pretty much. It's not a long street.”

“Was there an unfamiliar car parked anywhere? Most people park in their own driveways or garages. Was there a car or truck parked on the street?”

I tried to imagine how the street had looked, but all that came back to me was the indelible image of a half-naked Erica wearing my necklace, lounging on my outdoor furniture. I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I can’t remember.”

“Too bad.”

“How about fingerprints?” I asked hopefully. “You must’ve found fingerprints.”

“We did,” he replied succinctly. “Yours.”

In my youth I used to break out in a rash whenever I got nervous. At Brodsky’s words I was sure hives were popping out all over. “
Mine?
Where?”