Sweet Liar (24 page)

Samantha didn't like the nursing home. For one thing, it was ugly, sterile ugly. Everything in it had been chosen for use with no consideration for beauty. The floors were those hideous gray plastic tiles that some creature from hell had invented, and the walls were painted in a white that was so glaring it could have been lit with neon. All the lighting was overhead and fluorescent, and every tube in the building hummed with that sound that was guaranteed to drive a sane person crazy within three days.

Besides the look of the place, there was the smell: disinfectant and medicine. Samantha sometimes wondered how people managed to make a place smell of medicine. Did they empty pills out of those little brown bottles on the floor then crush them?

Holding her hand, Mike looked down at her and saw the disgust on her face. “This is one of the better homes,” he said. “Some of them smell like urine.”

Shaking her head in disbelief, Samantha looked at the ceiling. The “designer”—desecrator, actually—of the nursing home had managed to completely disguise the fact that the “home” was in a beautiful old building. High above their heads were lovely moldings, and the walls were that heavy, thick plaster that helped to make old buildings quiet. But the walls were covered with horrid photocopies of rules and schedules: no lights after nine in the evening; no loud music, in fact, no rock and roll at all; no dancing in the dining room; no running; no chewing gum. While Mike was at the desk asking about the woman he was to see, Samantha read the notices and wondered what had happened to cause notices to be put up outlawing gum and dancing and rock and roll.

“Oh, Abby,” the nurse was saying with a little smile. It was the smile you used when speaking of a wayward pet that often got into trouble but you were fond of the mischievous little darling anyway. The nurse was standing behind a desk covered in plastic laminate that was chipped, scarred, and tattooed with marks from a thousand ball-point pens.

“Abby's doing all right now. For a while we thought we were going to lose her, but she pulled through. Come along, I'll take you to her, but don't be surprised if she's a bit contrary. She's a feisty one.”

Samantha walked with Mike, following the nurse down the hall, and wondered whether Abby was retarded or senile.

The nurse opened a boring gray door, and they stepped into a room that was as ugly as what Samantha had already seen. The room was so clean that Sam thought a little dust would be a nice decorative touch. Overhead, fluorescent tubes whined, and their light showed every barren inch, from the gray tiles to the bare white, white, white walls to the stainless-steel furniture.

“There we are,” the nurse said in a hearty-hearty voice. “I hope we're feeling good tonight, for we have visitors.”

“Drop dead,” said the woman in the bed, her voice strong.

“Now, now, Abby, you mustn't say those things in front of your company. They've come a long way to see you.”

“East Side, huh?” The woman's voice was heavy with sarcasm.

As the nurse chuckled, Samantha looked around her to get a look at the woman on the white-painted metal bed, lying on the white sheets. The only “color” in the room was the gray tiles.

She was a small thin woman, and there was a tube running out of her arm and wire hung from under the sheet, leading into a dial-laden machine that perfectly matched the rest of the decor. The woman was old, her cheeks were sunken, and her skin was wrinkled, and she had an unhealthy greenish-gray cast to her skin. In spite of the unhealthy look of her, Samantha could see that she'd once been pretty. Even though her body now seemed to be giving out, there was intelligence in her eyes.

The woman was looking up at the nurse, but when the nurse moved to one side, she saw Mike, looked him up and down, dismissed him, then looked at Samantha. For a moment she stared at Sam, almost as though she were surprised by her, then abruptly she looked away and back at the nurse. “Get out of here,” she said. “I want to talk to my guests alone.”

Turning away, the nurse winked in conspiracy at Mike, as though to say, Isn't she cute? then left the room.

“Hello, I'm Michael Taggert. I contacted you some time ago, but they said you were recovering from surgery and couldn't see me.”

“Probably told you I was going to die, didn't they?”

Mike smiled at her, but Abby didn't take her eyes from Samantha. “And who is this lovely young lady?”

Samantha said the first thing that came to her mind. “I don't like this place and I don't like that woman.”

Her eyes sparkling, Abby chuckled. “I can see that you and I agree on many things. Why don't you come over here and sit by me? No, not in the chair, on the bed beside me so I can see you. My old eyes, you know.”

Samantha didn't hesitate. Some people are afraid of older people—maybe they remind them of what they will someday become—but Samantha wasn't. She'd spent a lot of her life with her grandfather Cal and with her father when the cancer was making him age daily. Now, she didn't think twice as she climbed on the bed beside the woman and wasn't surprised when the woman took her hand and held it—held it rather tightly.

Abby looked at Mike. “I take it you were the one who wrote me about Maxie.”

“Yes,” Mike said softly, standing at the foot of the bed, looking from one woman to the other, watching their movements. “I want to know what you know of her.”

“Why?” Abby shot out, and Samantha saw the needle on the machine flicker.

For some odd reason, Mike just stood there watching the two women and didn't answer Abby's question.

“He's writing a biography of Doc,” Samantha answered for him. “And he wants to know about Maxie. And I want to find her too because Maxie is probably my grandmother.” Her voice lowered. “It was my father's dying wish that I look for his mother.”

Abby didn't say anything, but the needle on her machine went all the way to the right and stayed there for a second or two.

“Maxie's dead,” Abby said after a moment. “She died about eighteen months ago.”

Samantha let out her pent-up breath. “You're sure?”

“Absolutely. We were friends since the twenties. Well, not really close friends since then, but back then we used to be close and we kept in touch over the years. She died out in New Jersey somewhere and the home where she stayed sent me notice of her death.” She looked up at Samantha. “Why in the world would a pretty young thing like you want to know about an old woman like her? You ought to marry your young man here and have babies and forget about the past.”

Sam didn't look at Mike. “He's not my young man.”

“Oh?” Abby said. “Then what's this?” Lifting Samantha's left hand to the light, the big diamond sparkled.

“Oh. That. I…Well, we…”

“My uncle Mike wanted me to look for Maxie,” Mike said, breaking his long silence.

“And who would your uncle Mike be?” Abby asked without much interest in her voice.

“Michael Ransome,” Mike said softly.

Slowly, Abby turned to look at him, her eyes hard, glittering like dark coals. Her body might be ill, but her spirit and her mind were obviously very healthy. “Michael Ransome died that night. Died on the twelfth of May, 1928.”

“No, he didn't,” Mike said. “Scalpini's men nearly shot his legs off, but he lived. The day after the massacre, he called my grandfather in Colorado, and Gramps sent a plane for him, then saw to it that the world thought Michael Ransome was dead.”

After a long, thoughtful moment in which Abby seemed to be digesting what Mike had said, she narrowed her eyes at him. “If your grandfather could do that, he must have some money—and power.”

“Yes, ma'am, he does.”

“And what about you? Can you support this lovely child?”

“Yes, ma'am, I can. Would you please tell me about my uncle Mike?”

Abby, still holding Samantha's hand, leaned back against the clean, crisp, sterile pillows. “He was a handsome man. Handsome Ransome all the girls called him.”

“As handsome as Mike?” Samantha asked, then lowered her eyes, embarrassed at blurting out her first thought. “I mean…”

Abby smiled. “No, dear, not quite as handsome as your young man, but Michael Ransome was wonderful in his own way.”

“Where did he come from?” Mike asked, utterly serious. “Uncle Mike would never tell anyone about his past.”

“He was an orphan. No family. All he had were his looks and the ability to dance as though he were floating on air.” She paused, then almost whispered. “And he had the ability to make women love him.”

“Did
you
love him?” Samantha asked.

“Of course. We all did.” It didn't take anyone with ESP to know that Abby was being evasive, as though she didn't want to tell anything about herself.

“Did Maxie love him?” Mike asked.

Abby fixed him with a sharp, piercing look, as though she were trying to read his mind. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “Maxie loved him very much.”

Taking her purse from the chair beside the bed, Samantha withdrew a photo from inside, a photo that was yellow with age and had one corner burned away. She handed the photo to Abby. “Is this Michael Ransome?”

When he saw the photo, Mike nearly jumped out of his skin in surprise as he snatched it from Sam's hands before Abby could get a good look at it. The photo was one of those studio portraits of a handsome man, a very suave-looking man wearing a tuxedo, a cigarette in his hand. Mike had only known his uncle when he was older, but he knew that the man in the picture was the man he'd loved so much. “Where did you get this?” he demanded of Samantha.

She didn't like his tone that said she should have shown him the photo before presenting it to someone else. “For your information, my father left me a box full of my grandmother's things and this was in it. Dad stuck a note on it saying that when he was a little boy his mother had burned a bunch of things and he'd managed to save this from the pile.”

“Why didn't you show it to me before?”

“For the same reason that you keep secrets from me,” she snapped, glaring at him. “Every day you reveal something else that you've kept from me so why shouldn't I keep a few things from you?”

“Because—” Mike stopped, his face turning red with embarrassment when he heard Abby begin to laugh.

“He's not your young man?” Abby asked, teasing, as she looked from one to the other.

Samantha wasn't embarrassed in the least. “He
thinks
I'm four years old and that he's my guardian and my protector. He throws fits if I so much as go out shopping by myself.”

Before Abby could say a word, Mike said softly, “One of Doc's men tried to kill her.”

That statement, that one statement that told so much, wiped the smile from Abby's face. For a moment she lay back on the pillow and did nothing but concentrate on trying to breathe. The needle on the machine fluctuated wildly, moving from one side of the dial to the other then back again. After a while, a time during which Samantha stroked her hand and held onto her firmly, Abby lifted her head again. “Yes, that's Michael Ransome,” she said softly, her voice weak. She took a few breaths and tried to sound cheerful. “And now I'm glad I've been able to solve the mystery for you. Maxie died over a year ago. I have your mailing address, young man, and I'll send you the letter I received from the nursing home saying Maxie died.” Her tone was a dismissal, but neither Sam nor Mike acted as though they understood.

“What was her real name?” Samantha asked.

“Maxine Bennett,” Abby shot out, frowning.

“I wish I could have met her,” Samantha said, stroking Abby's hand, her eyes with a faraway look in them. “I heard so much from Granddad Cal about her and from my father.”

“Cal,” Abby said softly, her frown disappearing and a slight relaxed, peaceful smile taking its place. “Maxie spoke of him. Was he all right after Maxie left or did he die in a place like this?”

“No,” Samantha said brightly, happily. “He stayed with us, with Dad and me, the last two years of his life. I was going to school so we had to hire a nurse/housekeeper for him.”

“Was his nurse nice?”

“No, she was dreadful and Granddad Cal made her life miserable.”

Abby smiled but didn't say anything, so Samantha continued.

“She was a horrible, bossy woman and she treated Granddad Cal as though he were a stupid child. He would have fired her, but he said that getting her back gave him a reason to live. He used to do awful things to her, such as putting salt in her shampoo so it'd sting her eyes. One day while she was outside mowing the lawn he made a big pitcher of iced tea for her, only it wasn't iced tea. It was Long Island tea, you know, that stuff that's all liquor. She drank three big glasses of it then passed out on the kitchen floor. While she was passed out, Granddad Cal shaved her mustache.”

Both Abby and Mike laughed.