Death of the Office Witch (31 page)

Charlie watched Roger's surprised look as the three of them set off across the parking lot. Two inside and one out. She tried to marshal her wits to save her child. She must do something heroine-like. “Where did you learn to drive a five-speed?”

“I only sort of did. Doug's dad's car. He'd leave it home when he went traveling, and when Mrs. McDougal would take the station wagon to go shopping, we'd practice on the—”

“Not the Porsche?” Charlie watched Roger slide off the hood as they passed under a lone streetlight at the entrance to Happy Valley Canyon Road. At least he went sideways so they didn't run him over.

“Well, you never leave this heap home for kids to learn on. And Lori's mom never leaves home, period. What are we supposed to do?” Libby pulled out onto the two-lane road.

“Libby, you're in the wrong lane.” And in the wrong gear. And this should not be happening to you.

And the Toyota dropped dead. Left them sitting crosswise in the middle of a road with a blind curve in front of them and one in back. And not that far from their front and back, either.

“Told you this was a dreary pile of junk. If you weren't so cheap.”

“This little number has never let me down. Not once. Just relax, try again.” Before someone comes barreling around the corner and kills us. “You're working the clutch wrong. Don't flood the engine.”

“Mo-om, shut the fuck up.”

When Libby started using four-letter words in earnest and against Charlie, the grating shock value of those same tired expressions took on sudden added power. So Charlie decided to break the habit, be a better role model. It hadn't worked. Nothing worked. Not even her cellular.

“Not even my Toyota Corolla.” Charlie started bawling.

“It's okay. You're just drugged up. And you barfed all over yourself. And you're sick anyway.”

“I stink.”

“Hey, you can't help it. I'll get us out of this. Just relax.” And the kid had the engine running again, even eased the car over into the right lane before it jerked to a stop once more. “Now what did I do?”

“You were in third instead of first.” What was the use? The whole world was against Charlie. “Where's that stupid Marvin? He was going to go for help.”

“I don't know, but somebody's pulling up behind us in that dirty blue pickup, and I have the feeling it's Roger.” Libby had the Toyota moving once again, and this time in first. “I can't see.…”

“Turn on the lights.”

“How? Can't you do it? I don't want to worry you, but I don't think I have time, Mom.”

The lights coming at them were almost as good, but Charlie leaned across to flick the left wand. The headlights showed the close-up of the coming collision in an overexposed shot. Charlie and her daughter groaned in unison.

At the same time Libby, in the sort of perfect reflex action only the young brain can produce without thinking, nearly put them in the trees on the other side of the road and in a 180. All this before Charlie could blink away her tears to see it happen. The oncoming car, too, must have escaped oblivion because the dirty blue pickup careened up the road behind them, unscathed.

Then they were off again, but something wasn't right. The Toyota began to smell almost as bad as Charlie. “Oh, boy.”

“What's that smell?”

“You forgot to release the emergency brake. It's this cute little handle here between us.” Charlie released it and the Toyota leapt into the air. “You're going to have to shift sometime. You can't stay in first.”

“I just want to stop. But I can't remember how. And I can't let you down. You're all sick and I need to—”

“Honey, I'm feeling lots better.” Actually, Charlie was feeling lots more frightened. “Now let up gradually with your right foot on that pedal, but keep an eye on the curves. We're going to make it, don't worry.” We have to change drivers before the pickup turns around and catches up with us, is what we have to do. “Okay, now move that right foot over to the next pedal, and get that left one working the clutch and ease into that paved turnoff ahead. If you can't make that, no big deal, there'll be another soon.”

Libby killed the engine again, but not before she had them pretty much off the road. She did it without hitting a tree, ditch, or embankment. Charlie pulled her stinking T-shirt off and flung it at the darkness at the side of the road while she and her daughter raced to exchange places.

“Mom?”

“I can't stand the smell. Neither can you. I'm wearing a bra.”

“Just get us out of here. I sure hope you've sobered up.”

Me too. “No problem.”

Automatically scanning the lighted dials on the dash, Charlie changed her plans and swung the Toyota around, heading them back the way they'd come. She blinked her contacts back into place and squinted at the road ahead.

“You're taking us right back into trouble. Jeez, I thought you were sober.”

“Libby, I don't know what's up there. Not much I think. We're running low on gas, and this way leads back to safety and to the police, I hope.” Someone must have called them by now. “When I came to, it was night. What happened all that time I was out?”

“You kept talking crazy stuff. You seemed like you were awake a lot.” Marvin had decided that if Charlie inhaled the proper mixture of exotic herbs, her natural psychic ability would overcome her right brain, and she'd be able to contact both Mary Ann and Gloria.

“Did I contact them?”

“You went on mostly about the funny things you were seeing and about why you and grandma don't get along and how you were afraid I'd turn out like you. You even started singing some embarrassing song, and you can't carry a tune when you're high, either. What were those herbs?”

“Sounds like nature's own psychedelics. Libby, they didn't do anything to you, did they? While I was out of it?”

“They were too busy getting high themselves and then getting mad at each other. And then getting mad at you because you wouldn't get to the point. You're starting to drive kind of funny.”

“I know.” The double center line wiggled like a snake, and a tree walked right into the middle of the road.

Libby reached over and jerked the wheel, and the tree stepped aside. And bowed. “Pull over and rest a minute. Let's think about this, okay?”

“I'm afraid to stop. I'll just go real slow. How did you get away to hide upstairs?”

“The geek with the nose hairs stuck me in the bathroom and held the door open a little so I couldn't lock it.” When Marvin rushed downstairs in answer to Roger's call, Libby ran into a bedroom. “I hid on a closet shelf behind some blankets and pillows. When that Roger guy came banging around looking for me, he checked out the closet floor and the wall behind the hanging stuff. Didn't even look up on the shelf. That closet smelled bad like Grandma's house. Mom … I think he wants you to pull over.”

The flashing lights and the siren were the last things Charlie remembered before she found herself trying to walk in a straight line down the road in her bra. Libby was shouting at a police officer, “She's not drunk, you moron. We've been kidnapped. She's drugged.”

Charlie lay flat on her back looking up at Maggie Stutzman's devilish smile, trying to remember why. “I knew you were faking it, Greene.”

“How'd you get out here?”

“We're in Canoga Park Hospital, and you're going to be okay.”

“Where's Libby?”

“Asleep over there in the chair. She's in a lot better shape than you are, but I can't get her to leave.”

“My throat's so sore.”

“That's because they stuck a tube thing down it to fix a little hole in your tummy. Not to worry.”

David Dalrymple leaned over Charlie. “Feeling better, Miss Greene? Not to worry. We have Roger Tuschman under lock and key. We have some leads on Grunion. And there's a guard outside your door.”

“But Marvin was going to go for help.”

“Afraid he headed for LAX instead.”

“But he tried to talk Roger out of taking us.”

“Maybe Grunion's psychic powers told him he was getting in too deep with kidnapping.”

“Did he go off to the airport in a dirty blue pickup?”

“Seventy-nine Ford, blue, well worn. Why?”

“We thought it was Roger. That's why he didn't come after us.”

“We found Roger stoned in the grove, talking to his dead wife.” Neighbors had called police when the commotion finally interfered with their dwindling leisure time.

“Where is Libby?”

“Gone home with Miss Stutzman for a much needed rest.”

“Do you know where Mary Ann was the week before she died? Was she kidnapped?”

“Roger Tuschman claims she spent that time at his condo. That she drove up the night of the memorial séance after everyone had left, demanding he take her in and hide her. Apparently, she was delusional. She had to get away from personal demons. He claims her car was parked in the lot behind his condominium complex the whole week we were searching for it. But the night of her death he came home to find it gone. He says he helped her hide because he hoped she could help him contact the dead Mrs. Tuschman.”

“But she was having problems with the Tuschmans. They wanted some of the money from
Shadowscapes
. If she wanted to go away, she could go home to her family.”

“Again, according to Mr. Tuschman—Mary Ann Leffler suffered from mid-life symptoms that had left her family fed up. One of the reasons her husband was in Canada, in fact. She insisted they were the last people she'd go to for help.”

“Keegan said she was afraid of L.A., too. Had anxiety attacks.” And Libby said that closet smelled like her grandmother's house. Neither Tuschman smoked, but Mary Ann and Edwina were heavy smokers.

“Well, Miss Greene,” Dr. Williams had replaced Dalrymple when she woke next, “I wish we hadn't needed to be so precipitous with your treatment, but it looks as if the cauterization was a success. You had a tiny perforation of the stomach lining, which we have sealed. You're young and healthy. If you keep your stress levels down and alter your life-style appropriately, you should be home free.”

He patted Charlie's shoulder and was gone. Three minutes later she could barely remember what he looked like. Generic medicine, generic doctors.

32

Richard Morse, Irma Vance, and Maurice Lavender stood around Charlie's bed the next morning. Richard was saying, “So what's it going to be, Charlie? You want Maurice here put in jail and Medora Lavender left to her own devices in that nursing home? You want Irma in prison for just trying to save his tush and thwart a blackmailer? She's had her problems under control for years. They got great drugs for that stuff now. The Scarborough House thing is history. Hey, you're calling the shots, babe. You heard the tapes.”

“Why didn't Lieutenant Dalrymple? If I could find them, his men could.” Then again, they couldn't find Mary Ann's rental car parked in the Tuschmans' parking lot—if one could believe Roger. As much as she didn't want to, Charlie did.

Now the boss was saying, “But they didn't find them. Old Charlie did, though. If she could just keep Irma and Maurice out of jail for pulling a stupid but well-intentioned stunt—which on the face of it wasn't a bad idea. Irma had noticed some unsavory types hanging out in the alley, so some bum doing in Gloria wasn't that far-fetched. They thought they'd wiped all trace of Gloria off the railing.”

“Richard, tapes or no, the Beverly Hills P.D. probably has both deaths about solved. They and the courts will decide who goes to jail and who doesn't. Besides, somebody was whispering up or down the stairwell and trying to sound like Gloria, someone who kept saying she was in the trash can.”

“Who would pretend to be Gloria and do that? Not Irma or Maurice. Who else knew she was even dead till the next day?” He raised his hands toward the ceiling like a TV evangelist. “Wouldn't it be the mother of all ironies if Gloria herself managed to tip off the Beverly Hills P.D. that way? God, talk about your concept.”

“But she wasn't even in a trash can.”

“Hey, for goofy Gloria, that's close enough.”

“We did not put Gloria in the bushes.” Irma rubbed enlarged knuckles in an odd, nervous gesture Charlie had never seen before.

“You put her in the dumpster, which is more logical. Why do I have the feeling there were more than two of you? Did Mary Ann help?”

Maurice sat on Charlie's bed to hold her hand in one of his and stroke it with the other. It was the most natural thing, and yet he'd chased the office witch out into the hall in a rage so awful she fell and struck her head. And then he helped stuff her into the bag on the janitor's trolley and later in the day—in fact shortly before security and the police searched the entire building for her—helped carry her down the back stairs and out to the alley. Something didn't wash.

“Far as I know, Mary Ann was nowhere near the agency at the time,” Maurice said.

“Okay, then who
was
the third culprit here? You and Irma may have stuffed Gloria into the bag, may have even gotten her body down the back stairs in that bag. I just wondered if you had help tossing her up into the dumpster?”

Maurice and Irma slid each other a hasty glance. Maurice's stroking paused. “And Maurice, you might have been the reason, but I think Irma was the one who scared Gloria.” Always the gentleman. In one way your poor Medora is a lucky lady. “I heard the tapes, remember? Why didn't somebody destroy them?”

“When the cops didn't find them, Irma decided that was the safest place for them. Those guys were dropping in whenever they felt like it. That way nobody'd catch her trying to get rid of evidence,” Richard said. “Simplicity always works best. These two just explained the whole thing to me on the way up here. First I knew the tapes existed.”