Schooled In Lies (6 page)

If I recalled correctly, I remembered overhearing her telling her fellow round table cronies more than once that she planned to model after high school. It’s no mystery why that plan didn’t work out since the modeling world isn’t real big on 5’ 3” models, at least not any that wear clothes. Of course I could have told her that back then but she didn’t ask me. I wondered if that’s why she was being treated for depression. Was there such a thing as Failed Model Syndrome?

“Could you have accidentally had some alcohol?” I asked for lack of anything better to say.

She thought hard for a minute and then buried her head in her hands and groaned. “No! It’s just not possible. I know not to mix alcohol with my prescriptions. I would never make that mistake. I know my husband probably thinks I’m lying but I swear I didn’t have a drink.” She started to cry and I handed her the box of tissues on the bedside table.

“How long are they going to keep you in here?” I asked softly.

She shrugged miserably and leaned back against the pillows, causing her tears to run down the side of her face.

“Well, I’m going to leave now so you can get your rest. Is there anything you need before I go?” I figured my curiosity had been satisfied sufficiently.

“Oh, I need my cell phone. Can you hand me my purse. It’s in the closet,” she said through her tears.

I grabbed a large tan leather purse from the floor of the narrow closet and walked over to hand it to her. But in her weakened condition, she didn’t get a good enough grasp on her heavy purse and dropped it. It fell on the floor spilling some of its contents. She mumbled an expletive as I bent down to pick up everything. Amongst the wallet, brush, can of hair spray, box of wet wipes, and set of keys on a unicorn key chain, I spied something surprising. It was a half empty bottle of baby oil. Hadn’t baby oil been what Ms. Flack had slipped on last night? I looked at Audrey as I stuffed everything back into her purse. Her eyes were closed. Was she the one who put baby oil at the top of the cafeteria steps? It didn’t make any sense. Then I remembered that Audrey had arrived
after
Ms. Flack and me and couldn’t have put the baby oil on the steps. I realized how paranoid I was being. Because why in the world would Audrey want Ms. Flack, or anyone else, to fall down the steps?

I handed Audrey her purse and headed out of her room, almost colliding with a nurse in green scrubs and a white lab coat. It was Audrey’s best friend and Carl’s ex-wife, Vanessa Brumfield. Vanessa was a nurse at Willow Memorial, though to be honest I was surprised she was still working. She’d inherited a large sum of money from her father when he died, money she only got because she ended her marriage to Carl. Her greedy behind must have spent it all. I stepped aside and held the door open for her. She gave me a dismissive look before walking past me into the room.

“You’re welcome,” I said when it was obvious she wasn’t going to thank me. She rolled her eyes and flipped a piece of her long dark curly hair over her shoulder before closing the door in my face.

I couldn’t tell if she was just being bitchy or if there was something she was going to be talking about that she didn’t want me to hear? And if so, was it about Carl? Had she left the door open I’d have gladly left. But to someone as nosy as me a closed door only meant one thing: an invitation to eavesdrop. I looked up and down the hall to make sure no one was coming, then pressed my ear to the door. I could only hear muffled snatches of what they were saying. So, I pushed the door open just a sliver.

“What am I supposed to be listening to?” I heard Vanessa ask Audrey with barely concealed annoyance.

“Just listen. It’s the third message,” Audrey responded tensely.

I pushed the door open a little further and peeked in. Vanessa was sitting on the hospital bed with her back to the door with a cell phone pressed to her ear. Thankfully, she was also blocking Audrey’s view of the door and neither woman had noticed me spying on them. Vanessa must have been listening to Audrey’s voice mail messages.

“What have you done now?” Vanessa asked when she was done. She was waving the cell phone in Audrey’s face.

“What do you mean what have I done? I have no idea who that message is from let alone what they’re talking about,” wailed Audrey.

“The message said,
you will pay for what you did
. All I’m asking is what is it you did to piss someone off?”

“Nothing! I’ve done nothing,” insisted Audrey. I could see Vanessa crossing her arms and turning to stare out the window.

“Just forget it! Go on back to work. I just thought since you were my best friend you might care that someone threatened me. My mistake.” Audrey’s voice rose angrily with each word.

“Oh, calm down,” Vanessa said in disgust.

“Calm down. Someone left a threatening message on my voice mail and all you can say is calm down.
You
fucking calm down.”

“I’m sorry. But are you
sure
you don’t know who left that message?” Vanessa stood up abruptly. I quickly closed the door a smidge.

“You obviously have something on your mind. Just say it.” Audrey’s voice was hard and cold as ice.

“All right. Are you sure one of your little friends didn’t leave that message?”

I didn’t hear a response. I peeked in again and saw Audrey glaring at Vanessa. She looked so mad her pale cheeks had turned bright pink.

“No one I know would have any reason to leave me a message like that,” Audrey said, through gritted teeth.

“I certainly hope not. Because if you don’t cut it out, you’re going to lose everything you have.”

Vanessa turned towards the door and I hot-footed it across the hall and into another hospital room. I peeked through the door and watched as she stalked off down the hall. I started to leave when I heard a familiar voice coming from behind me.

“Well, ain’t this a surprise! Hey, baby doll, you just in time to help me wit my sponge bath. Come on in here, girl, and let me look atcha.”

I whirled around and found myself face to face with Lewis Watts, of all people. Just great. I’d made Lewis’s acquaintance last spring at a local hole-in-the-wall called the Spotlight Bar & Grill. Lewis was height challenged, thought he was a Don Juan, and dressed like he shopped at Pimps R Us. The seventies had been Lewis’s glory days, and he wasn’t about to let that decade go without a fight. The last time I’d seen Lewis was when he’d caught me hiding in a house I’d snuck into while he was delivering furniture. He’d tried to feel me up in exchange for not busting me and only kept his mouth shut after I’d threatened to report him for disability fraud. In other words, we’re not friends.

He was sitting upright in the hospital bed nude from the waist up exposing his thick muscular arms and a barrel chest lightly sprinkled with grey chest hairs that were in great contrast to the jet black processed hair on his fat head. A plastic tub of soapy water was sitting on a tray positioned in front of him. He leered at me and tried to hand me the sponge in his hand.

“I don’t think so.” I backed up towards the door.

“Hey, wait a minute, Kelly. I’m just kiddin’,” he said with a devilish laugh. He tossed the sponge into the tub and pushed the tray aside. “You mean you really didn’t come to see ole’ Lewis?” He looked genuinely hurt.

“It’s Kendra and, no, I didn’t come to see you. Bye.”

My hand was on the door handle but before I could pull it open, it was pushed opened from the other side and in walked a nerdy looking doctor staring at the chart in his hand and not where he was going. I was pushed backward, slipped on Lewis’s hospital gown, which was on the floor, and practically landed in his lap. When the doctor finally looked up, Lewis had his arms wrapped around me and was nuzzling my neck while I tried in vain to break free.

“Ah, I see you’re feeling much better, Mr. Watts,” said the doctor whose name tag identified him as Dr. Samuel Kincaid.

“Yeah, Doc, my lady here has a way of making me feel a whole lot better if you get my meanin’.” Lewis winked at the doctor. Both men laughed. My face was burning.

“I’m not his—” I began but didn’t get far.

“Are you ready to be discharged?” Dr. Kincaid cut me off. I was finally able to break free and stood up glaring at both of them.

“Don’t worry, Miss. We’ll be releasing your
Boo
within the hour,” he said in an attempt at sounding black and only succeeding in making me want to slap him. “But only if you promise to drive him straight home. Understand?”

“I got it, Doc. Kelly here is gonna take me right home, ain’t you, girl?” His eyes were pleading with me and I realized he probably had no other way home. Great. I nodded my head in agreement.

The doctor left and I rounded on Lewis. “Call a cab,” I spat out at him and turned to go.

“Hey, wait. I ain’t got no money and I only live ‘bout five minutes from here over in the Pullman Apartments. Come on, Kelly. Help a brotha out.”

“You mean to tell me you don’t have a girlfriend who can come and get you?”

“Naw, I’m between ladies at the moment. See, my lady left me when my disability got cut off back in May. Once I didn’t have no check to spend on her, she bounced,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Finally caught up with you, didn’t they? What happened? Did Social Security find out you were delivering furniture when your back was supposed to be bad?”

“Yeah, my ex-lady called and told on me when I cheated on her with my last lady,” he said smugly, like he was proud that the loss of his love pushed women to drastic measures.

“So now you have to work like the rest of us,” I said, laughing. But Lewis didn’t laugh.

“Yeah, you lookin’ at the custodian at Springmont High School.” He shook his head sadly.

After dropping Lewis at his apartment, and grilling him about how often the floors got mopped at Springmont High, I headed over to the Kingford College bookstore to buy the book for my class. According to Lewis, he mopped the floors at least three times a week. But he’d been in the hospital since Friday morning with chest pains and hadn’t mopped the floors since Thursday, and he doubted the custodian who subbed for him Friday would have mopped. So, anybody could have spilled the baby oil on the floor in front of the cafeteria steps anytime on Friday. Most likely it was one of the summer school students. I felt stupid for thinking it could have been Audrey.

The Kingford College bookstore was in the student union. Since it was the summer session, which is always a slow time for the college, I was the only other person in the bookstore besides the staff. I quickly located the book I needed for my class. After getting over the shock of having to fork over sixty bucks for a used copy, I headed to the checkout counter and was surprised to see a fellow member of the reunion committee running the register. It was Dennis Kirby. He looked just as surprised to see me as well. He had a bruise on his forehead and his left wrist was wrapped in an Ace bandage. The nametag he was wearing pinned to his yellow button-down shirt identified him as the manager.

“Dennis, I didn’t realize you were working here.” I handed him my book.

“I just started last week. It’s only temporary, though, until something in my field opens up,” he said nonchalantly. I could tell he was embarrassed for me to see him working a job he clearly considered beneath him.

I knew Dennis’s field was sports medicine and that he’d worked for a college baseball team in California before moving home to help his parents after his father’s triple bypass. Willow wasn’t exactly a booming area for the sports medicine field. Dennis was in for a long wait.

“Did you have an accident?” I asked, gesturing to his wrist and forehead.

“Oh, this?” He rubbed the bruise on his forehead. “I didn’t exactly have a great evening starting with that bullshit meeting. When I got home I found out someone had broken into my parent’s garage and trashed it. Red spray paint all over the fucking walls. I slipped on some spilled lawn fertilizer and slid into the wall. I bumped my head and sprained my wrist and knocked down a shelf. Then when I got out the Dustbuster to vacuum up the fertilizer, I plugged it in and almost got electrocuted.” He chuckled.

“It wasn’t pictures. It was words and misspelled ones too. It’s great to see our education system at work.” He laughed loudly, a little too loudly.

I asked him if he’d heard about Audrey being in the hospital.

“No, what happened to her?” I could tell he wasn’t all that interested. He was shifting from foot to foot and I got the distinct feeling he wanted me to leave. Instead, I filled him in on what happened to Audrey. He whistled and shook his head.

“You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if those rug rats of hers have driven her to drink. And I wouldn’t put it past her to lie about it, either. Honesty’s never been real important to Audrey.”

“Really,” I said, my curiosity flaring up.

“I wouldn’t expect you to know this, but Audrey’s been on antidepressants since our senior year in high school. She started taking them after she got depressed and overdosed on sleeping pills.” He smirked nastily, which surprised me.

Dennis and Audrey, being fellow members of the round table crew, had been tight. I knew eleven years was a long time for some people to maintain a high school friendship. But I could tell that Dennis was getting a big kick out of Audrey’s troubles and wondered what had happened to change things.

“I guess she never got over her one true love,” he said, staring off into space. Audrey’s one true love had been Dennis’s cousin Julian Spicer. They’d dated all throughout high school until she mysteriously dumped him halfway through our senior year.