The False-Hearted Teddy (6 page)

It was a long process, as there were seven different award categories and after each name was read there was a smattering of polite applause. That is, up until Jennifer Swift was nominated for an award in the “Dressed /

Accessorized, Over Five Inches and Under Fourteen Inches” group because Tony bellowed out that moronic sea-lion-like “ooh, ooh, ooh” sound so popular among the old
Jerry Springer Show
audiences and other gather-ings of the Brain Trust. At last the judge came to the

“Dressed / Accessorized, Fourteen Inches and Over”

bracket and began reading the list of nominees. I was so ab-sorbed in listening for Ash and Hilda’s names that at first it didn’t really register when I heard the woman say, “Dirty Beary made by Bradley Lyon of Lyon’s Tigers and Bears.”

Ash threw her arms around my neck and gave me a moist kiss. “Congratulations! Honey, I’m so proud of you!”

“Thanks, but Hilda wasn’t nominated.”

“That’s not important.”

“Wrong. You were robbed. Are those people blind?

Hilda is better than Beary.”

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John J. Lamb

“Brad, sweetheart, it’s all right. Truly. I couldn’t be happier.” Ash’s eyes were glistening.

Meanwhile, the judge began announcing the nominees for the final category, “Soft-Sculpture, Plush Animals.” A moment later, it was my turn to hug and kiss Ash when we heard that her Siberian snow tiger was a finalist. At the conclusion of the event, the judge asked the chosen artisans to go into the exhibit hall, retrieve the nominated stuffed animals, and personally hand them to one of the selection team. We did so and were told that the prizes would be awarded the following afternoon.

After the reception, we hooked up with Karen Rundlett and some other artisans and went out to dinner at a seafood restaurant. The food was wonderful and the company even better but we didn’t stay out late. We knew that tomorrow was going to be a very exciting day.

Five

We woke up early, got ready, and just after 7 a.m. returned to the ballroom to attend a special breakfast banquet for the artisans. The room was now full of large round tables, each covered with crisp white tablecloths and glittering with glassware, china, and silverware. I noticed a thus far empty VIP table near the podium where all the place settings were marked with folded cardboard placards that read reserved in the same bold script used for the signs warning people away from high voltage electric lines.

Up along the front wall, the finalist bears selected the previous evening were on display on a series of tables.

We’d brought the digital camera along and took photos of each other standing next to our creations. Then I saw a couple of large coffee urns in the corner and made a beeline for them. The coffee wasn’t bad—a little weak perhaps—

but then again I still have a taste for the brown sludge I used to drink back in the SFPD homicide bureau.

Other people began to filter into the room and I wasn’t 44

John J. Lamb

surprised to see Jennifer, Tony, and Todd seated at the VIP table with the event organizers and judges. Interestingly, the suits I’d seen with the Swifts the previous evening were nowhere to be seen. Tony was again wearing the i wuv cheery cherub bears T-shirt but, thankfully, not the goofy top hat. He was talking loudly to some guy about how early he’d gotten up to go down to their booth and repair the base of a Plexiglas teddy bear stand, making the entire operation sound as challenging as a space-walk to fix something on the International Space Station.

Jennifer actually seemed cheerful as she chatted with the woman beside her. Meanwhile, Todd stared straight ahead at the table’s centerpiece, one of Jennifer’s bears.

I refilled my coffee cup and we found a place at an adjoining table. A few minutes later, things got under way as the event organizer, an older woman in a cream-colored dress, went up to the podium. She greeted us and then delivered some announcements about the day’s forthcoming activities. Several special workshops would convene at 8 a.m., the general public would be allowed entrance into the exhibit hall at 9 a.m., and the winners of the teddy bear competition would be announced at 5 p.m.

As the lady spoke, a squad of waiters began circulating through the room carrying trays with glasses of various juices.

“And I have one final bit of wonderful news I’m very pleased to share because I know that everyone here will want to applaud their success.” The organizer paused to glance and smile at the VIP table. “Yesterday, our good friends Jennifer and Tony Swift signed a licensing agreement with Wintle Toys and Dumollard Ani-Media. That means that those sweet Cheery Cherub Bears will soon be in stores nationwide and are also going to be featured in their own animated television series.”

Tony grinned and raised his clasped hands like an old time prizefighter, while Jennifer smiled shyly in response The False-Hearted Teddy

45

to the applause. Todd merely looked up and grimaced. I thought his reaction was pretty strange and probably would have kept watching him if Ash hadn’t tapped on my arm and discreetly pointed toward the back of the room. That’s when I saw Donna marching up the aisle.

Her fists were balled, her face was livid with rage, and she was headed for the VIP table. Although she wasn’t a large person, I don’t think I’d have wanted to try to prevent Donna from reaching her destination. Visualize a charging two-thousand-pound African Cape buffalo or better yet, a sixty-eight-ton M-1 Abrams tank racing along at forty-five-miles-an-hour and you’ll grasp some sense of her implacable demeanor.

When the Swifts noticed Donna, I was intrigued and entertained by their responses. Jennifer blanched and began blinking as if she were sending some sort of ocular semaphore SOS message while Tony looked down at the table, wearing an expression that up until that moment I hadn’t imagined he was capable of: red-faced embarrassment. Meanwhile, Todd’s lips seemed to be twitching. I couldn’t be absolutely certain but it appeared as if he was struggling mightily not to smile.

Donna stopped before the table, pointed an accusing finger at the Swifts, and although she didn’t shout, her icy words were audible throughout the now silent room. “I hope the pair of you burn forever in hell. Those cherub bears were
my
designs and you not only stole them, you turned them into something cheap and dirty.”

Tony tried to square his shoulders. “Now, Donna—”

“Shut your mouth, fat boy, or I’ll tell everyone here all about the time your thieving wife ‘fell down the basement stairs’ and was in the hospital for five days. Looking back at it, I wish you’d broken her damn neck.”

The big man flinched as if he’d been snapped with a whip and was silent. Up behind the podium, the shocked old lady’s mouth was opening and closing in a way that 46

John J. Lamb

reminded me of a goldfish. Everybody was just sitting there taking in the impromptu breakfast theater and I looked at Ash to see if she wanted me to intervene before a food fight broke out. She nodded vigorously and I pushed myself to my feet. As I approached, I caught sight of the hotel security guard coming through the door.

Donna returned her baleful gaze to Jennifer. “And you, sitting there like a queen. Once these people know the truth about you they’ll be so disgusted they’ll want to vomit, just like I do every time I remember that you called me your best friend.”

I touched Donna lightly on her upper left arm. Startled, she spun to face me. “I’m not done.”

I kept my voice gentle. “Much as I’d like to hear the rest of the story, I think you are. You need to go before the guard ejects you from the building.”

Why do most unarmed security guards behave with all the icy menace and swagger of an old-time Hollywood cowboy villain? Slouching slightly with his thumbs tucked into his belt, the rent-a-cop had clearly modeled his tough guy persona after Jack Palance’s classic performance as the evil hired gunslinger in
Shane
. He inclined his head toward the door, flashed a humorless half-smile, and said, “C’mon lady. You’re outta here.”

As if awakening from a trance, Donna took in all the staring faces and her lower lip began to tremble. Her gaze fell to the floor and she shuffled toward the door as the guard escorted her. For a moment, there was utter silence and then the room erupted into hushed conversation that, unless I misread the tone, was tinged with disappointment. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one curious to hear the end of the story.

Then I heard the sound of wheezing and looked at the VIP table. Jennifer was bent forward holding her right hand open over her upper chest and was clearly having great difficulties in catching her breath.

The False-Hearted Teddy

47

“What’s wrong?” Ash asked as she joined me.

“She’s got a long history of asthma.” Todd turned to Jennifer and placed a comforting hand on her lower left arm. “It’s okay. Slow down and try to breathe a little more deeply, Jen. You’re panicking.”

It was good advice. Sometimes asthma attacks can be provoked by stress or emotional upheaval and when the victim becomes naturally frightened from being unable to breathe properly, the episode becomes a vicious cycle. She needed calm, but what she got was Tony, who’d just shifted into caveman mode.

“Get your hands off her!” Tony delivered the command at bullhorn volume about six inches from Jennifer’s right ear as he pushed himself out of the chair.

“She needs help.”

“You’re the one that’s gonna need help if you don’t get away from her. You must think I’m stupid not to know.”

“This is insane. Your wife can hardly breathe.”

Jennifer wheezed and erupted into a long cadence of savage hacking coughs to emphasize the point. Meanwhile, there was a growing cacophony of agitated voices from the rest of the folks in attendance.

“That’s right, she’s
my
wife!”

“This crazy shit will cease immediately!” I barked in my best hands-up-or-get-ready-to-show-St.-Peter-two-forms-of-picture-ID voice, deliberately using the obscen-ity for shock value. Both men shut up instantly and the room became much quieter. I pointed to Todd. “You.

Move away because Stupid there is going to continue his temper tantrum until you do. We’ll take over.”

“You?” Todd looked doubtful.

“Todd, I’ve been handling emergencies since you were probably still in third grade. We can handle this.”

“But I’m an EMT.”

“I know, but Tony is going to go into low earth orbit if you touch her. We’ll take over.”

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John J. Lamb

“Fine.” Todd spat the word. As he rose from his chair and stepped away, he quietly added, “I’m sorry, Jen.”

Ash slid into the vacant chair and took the gasping woman’s limp left hand. In the same tender and serene voice I’d heard her use so long ago to soothe our children when they were sick, she said, “Jennifer, pay attention to me: you’re panicking, honey, and you need to calm down.”

“I don’t want you to touch her either,” Tony snarled.

“I’m not exactly thrilled over it myself, considering whatever you two did to Donna, but we’re out of options.

Now, try to behave like an adult for just a couple of minutes. I assume she has an inhaler. Where is it?”

“Upstairs in our room.”

“Then make yourself useful and go get it.”

Tony glowered for a moment. Then he turned to jog toward the door and the elevator as Ash continued to urge Jennifer to breathe more slowly. I sat down on the other side of Jennifer and didn’t interfere. Ash’s voice was hyp-notically tranquil and I could see the fear slowly receding from Jennifer’s eyes as her breathing gradually became more normal. Jennifer was only wheezing slightly when Tony reappeared. His T-shirt was damp with sweat and he had the inhaler in his meaty hand. He handed the small cylindrical canister to his wife.

Jennifer put the device to her mouth, took a deep huff of the medication, and flinched in pain and alarm. She tried to cough and her eyes widened with terror as she realized that she couldn’t catch her breath. The inhaler fell from her hands as Jennifer clutched at her chest with both hands and was wracked with powerful respiratory spasms as she attempted to breathe. With every exhalation, I could hear horrible gurgling sounds. This wasn’t an asthma attack anymore and if we didn’t do something immediately, Jennifer was going to find out if there really were Cheery Cherub Bears in heaven—provided of course, that was her final destination.

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49

“What’s wrong with her?” Tony sounded frightened and was dancing an anxious and clumsy jig, skipping from one foot to the other.

“I don’t know. Go to the lobby and call nine-one-one, now! And wait out there to show them where we are.”

I figured there were probably a dozen people calling for the paramedics on their cell phones at that very moment, but it would be best to give Tony some task to di-vert him while we tried to save his wife’s life. Otherwise, he’d just get in the way. Tony took off for the door with the same speed, grace, and agility of a bull walrus trying to escape from a polar bear and I hoped this second session of light aerobic exercise didn’t cause him to have a heart attack. Things were already going to hell in a handbasket.

“Ash, let’s get her on the floor for CPR.” Then I yelled over my shoulder to the circle of spectators that had closed around us, “Clear out and give us some room!”

The people moved back and Ash and I lowered the shuddering and gasping woman to the floor and laid her on her back. Her eyes were locked on Ash, silently begging for help, then her pupils rolled upward as she lost consciousness. The violent breathing convulsions continued for another couple of seconds and then her body suddenly went limp. I grabbed the woman’s wrist and felt for her pulse and couldn’t find one. Jennifer was in full car-diac arrest and death was imminent. For the briefest of instants I wondered why Todd hadn’t come back to help and assumed it was because he’d left the ballroom. That meant it was up to us.

I told Ash, “No pulse. You do rescue breathing and I’ll do the chest compressions . . . and be prepared for her to throw up.”