Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 02 (21 page)

They weren’t a mile into the States when the girl yelped and clutched her belly. She’d fallen forward, her head dropping onto the front seat behind Leo’s. She held that posture until Hickey touched her shoulder blade; then she squealed piercingly, fell straight backward, and began quaking. A moment later she launched herself against the front seat and back again, her head flying loosely in convulsions.

“Pin her, Tom,” Leo hollered. “Cram something in her mouth. Must be she’s an epileptic.”

By this time Hickey had her in his arms, squashing her against him, letting her arms flail and claw his back. She alternated howls with gagging noises, a few inches from his ear, and finally she screamed, “It’s still there. I hear it. God, I feel it squirming.”

“Take the next crossroad. Right,” Hickey snapped. “You know Riverview Hospital?”

“Yeah, Tom. Hold on, I’ll get you there.”

The girl resumed thrashing, cursing Hickey because he wouldn’t let go. She dug her fingernails into his back. When that didn’t free her, she worked her head loose enough to chomp his throat. If he hadn’t grabbed her hair and nearly yanked it out, she might’ve severed his jugular. Furiously he shoved her off the seat, onto the narrow rear floor, and rolled her over so her face pushed into the floorboard and her hips jutted upward on the drive shaft tunnel. He secured her legs with his feet and pinned her arms behind her. She could move neither sideways nor up.

For a minute or so she lay there spent, butt up as though she’d volunteered for a spanking. Then she thrashed and raged, screaming things that got muffled and skewed because her mouth was shoved against the floorboard. Hickey caught only words and phrases. Charlie. Ophelia. A devil baby. Over the last mile before Leo turned into the driveway of Riverview Hospital, Hickey pieced those morsels together with the phrase she yelped several times: “They were going to flush me out.”

“I got it,” Hickey said. “Charlie sent her down there for an abortion. When I head-butted her, she thought I killed it. Now she thinks different.”

“Okay. Fits so far. You got a guess who’s the daddy?”

“Yep.”

“Out with it.”

“Pravinshandra. Her mother’s pal.”

“Him again,” Leo growled. “Somebody oughta fix that boy.”

The hospital was blacked out. Only one dim light glinted, on the side of a curtain in a room off the lobby behind the main doors. The curtain shimmied as if somebody’d disturbed it, peeking out.

Leo ran to check the main door and found it unlocked. He came back to help Hickey with the girl. She lay corpselike, didn’t squirm even when her arms got twisted weirdly, until she was out of the car. As though she’d recovered and lost the motive of her tantrum, she stood a moment looking around calmly. Then she bolted.

Hickey tackled her around the ribs and held on, pinning her arms there. Leo got hold of her legs. She went stiff and only whimpered while they carried her inside.

A pale nurse with long gray hair tugged harshly back and plaited into a single braid stepped out of the lighted room and ushered them ahead of her, serenely as though a whimpering, board-stiff lunatic got dragged in every hour or so. Before requesting names or details, she used an intercom to ask someone named José to join them, then to inform a Dr. Carroll they had a potential intake.

While Hickey tried to coax the girl into a chair, two Mexican orderlies appeared at an interior doorway, glanced at Cynthia, and jumped to hover eagerly around her. She was leaning on the chair, her eyes closed. When the Mexicans each took one of her arms and half dragged, half walked her into the hallway, she didn’t resist. Didn’t even open her eyes.

The door shut. Hickey got a wave of nausea, then a rush of intense foreboding, as if the girl had just entered a place like Hades from where only a few blessed souls could return.

While Leo helped the nurse with her forms and all, Hickey sat in a corner dialing first information and then the Saint Ambrose Home. On his third demand, a grouchy nun rousted Father McCullough. The priest must’ve stayed up drinking in the holiday, Hickey deduced from the voice, too cheerful to belong to anybody whose sleep had just got arrested.

“Sorry to disturb you, Father. It’s about the girl. Henry Tucker dead or alive?”

“Alive.”

“Okay. Well, Cynthia cracked up. I’ve got her at Riverview Hospital. They’re gonna ask for a release from one of the parents, before they’ll keep her. I’m sure not going to call Venus, if I can help it. Tomorrow I’ll come out and get Tucker to sign papers, if she’s still loony. Meantime, I need you to convince the doctor here you’ve got Henry’s okay. He’ll go for it. The doctor, I mean. You know, who’s gonna call a priest a liar?”

Father McCullough withheld his reply long enough for Hickey to wonder if he was jotting down a list of disbelievers. “I doubt Henry will give me his okay, even if I can rouse him.”

“Fine,” Hickey said. “No sense even bothering the poor guy, is there? I’ll have the doctor call you back. Sit tight. Merry Christmas.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

By the time Hickey had negotiated with the doctor, gotten Leo back to his car, driven himself home, played Santa Claus, fed Madeline a brief version of his adventures, and managed to find the
OFF
switch in his brain, he didn’t log much sleep before Elizabeth pranced into the room delivering coffee she’d made, singing, “Fa la la la la…”

A little shy of 6:00
A.M.
Hickey creaked out of bed feeling as if he’d spent the night crashing into immovable, sadistic tacklers. He sipped his coffee and looked out the window. A trio of sea gulls tap-danced on the silver bay. A pelican leaped off the water as if its feet were burning.

He brushed his teeth, eyed the bruise on his neck on which a couple tooth marks remained, splashed his face, and wiped the last traces of blood from his nose and lip.

Madeline was cooking bacon and waffles. Elizabeth had plugged the tree lights in, lifted all the window shades, put a record of Christmas carols on the Motorola. They ate sitting on cushions around the tree, then started tearing the wrapping off gifts.

Elizabeth had gotten Hickey three ties with hand-painted tropical birds, a new briar pipe, and a pair of swim fins. Madeline had bought him cuff links, lapis lazuli set in silver, a tie bar to match, and a bottle of cologne. She’d got Elizabeth a party dress, a couple frilly slips, and a set of long underwear decorated with hearts. When Madeline modeled for them the sheer, scanty nightgown Elizabeth had bought her, Hickey crossed his legs and wondered what had passed through his daughter’s mind when she’d bought that—if at fourteen she glimpsed the dreadful power of sex, the way it could bind people or rip them apart.

He’d requested that they wait until last to open the gifts he’d bought. In less than an hour at Marston’s, including wrapping time, he’d not found the leisure to discriminate much. On the run, he’d purchased a selection of fragrances the perfume girl chose, gotten two cashmere sweaters, blue and green for Elizabeth, burgundy for Madeline. He’d bought the toboggan Elizabeth wanted. Velvet gloves, a new pair of mittens, and a hand-knitted snow cap for his wife. For each of them, he’d picked out a pair of fleece-lined boots. His last stop had been the jewelry counter. The gold rings, Madeline’s set with one large and four tiny diamonds, Elizabeth’s a single ruby, had set him back a week or two of packed houses at Rudy’s.

He got repaid double in hugs and kisses. The rings fitted, though Hickey’d only guessed, knowing their middle fingers were about the size of his little one above the knuckle. Elizabeth called it her best Christmas ever. Hickey shivered and his heart swelled even though it was her standard line, which she’d said about every Christmas since she’d grown old enough to remember past ones.

A few minutes before nine, the spell got broken when Madeline examined the bruise on his neck and noticed the tooth marks. Elizabeth was in the bathroom. Hickey started to explain. With a hand on his cheek, Madeline stopped him. A second later she disappeared, to straighten things and pack for their trip to the mountains.

Hickey went into the bedroom for the notepad he kept in his coat pocket. Returning to the living room, he flopped onto the couch and picked up the phone on the end table. He looked in his notepad, called Laurel Tucker, let the phone ring a dozen times. Nobody home. He dialed information, got the number for Dunsmuir’s sheriff. Same results.

His third call connected. To the Castle Crag Motor Hotel. A man answered. When Hickey asked for Fay Giles, the man sounded peevish but called her.

“Fay here.”

“Tom Hickey. We met about a week ago, on my way to the Black Forest.”

“I remember.” She muffled the phone and spoke to somebody. “What can I do for you?”

“A couple things,” Hickey said. “At the Black Forest I heard a tale about an avalanche. Would’ve been on Saturday. The twelfth? A lady got killed.”

“No,” she said breathlessly, then repeated the word, drawing out the
o
. “I’m sure we’d have heard.”

“They were climbing Mount Shasta,” Hickey said. “A couple
Nezahs
—the dead woman, Emma Vidal. The guy they call the master. And Venus’ daughter Cynthia. You heard nothing like that?”

“No. When the
Nezahs
first arrived, we watched them closely but no longer. Except their real estate transactions. I…”

“Whoa. Let me finish, please. I tried to call the sheriff. He must be out shooting a turkey. I wonder if you’ll tell him what I said, soon as you can? Ask him to call me. In San Diego, Belmont 63459. Avalanche or no, it looks like there was a murder.”

Fay Giles muffled the phone and spoke to the man Hickey guessed stood over her. “You mean Venus’ daughter and the man conspired…”

“Not the daughter.” Unless, Hickey thought, Cynthia was loco enough to have dreamed up the rape and believed it. Unless Cynthia had been in cahoots, maybe in love, with Pravinshandra and had finally gotten jilted. “I’ve been snooping ever since I left Dunsmuir. If I get my way, the master’s gonna take a fall.”

“Are you a policeman?”

“A friend of the girl’s, like I told you before. And a private investigator.”

“I see.…Mister Hickey, do you think this will stop the Venus woman?”

“Stop her from what?”

“From buying up our town. I don’t want to sound like an opportunist, but…a few days ago she found someone to sell her two hundred acres near Black Butte. Mrs. Barbato, a widow who plans to move to Arizona.”

“Maybe,” Hickey said, and he paused to let an idea grow. “Let’s try something. Get your checkbook ready. When she starts selling, buy up a foresty parcel or two and sell me ten acres, with a pond or near a trout stream. Give me a rock-bottom price.”

She muffled the phone while Hickey crossed the room, picked up his pipe, looked around for the Walter Raleigh. “Mister Hickey?”

“Yeah.”

“If you can stop her from grabbing Dunsmuir, we’ll
give
you ten acres.”

“Deal.”

“Is there anything I should do, besides talk to the sheriff?”

“Just keep your eyes peeled. Any news about the
Nezahs
, call me.”

“Well, you might be interested that Venus and her friend have arrived back in town. At least, I believe so, in their big car. It passed about an hour ago.”

Hickey calculated, decided that was some hasty driving from Denver. Maybe they chose to flee before the cops pried into their affairs, speculated who’d have a motive to gun the master, and started asking why. “Thanks, Fay. Give my best to the nosy guy.”

Hickey cradled the phone on his lap, stared at the wakes of motorboats splashing against his pier. Ten acres, he thought. Maybe he’d end up with something to show for a couple weeks’ trouble, a dead man who might rise to sting his conscience now and then or cause Charlie Schwartz to finger him, and a few hundred in expenses. Maybe ten acres would serve as some small justification for the whole lousy business. It seemed clear he wasn’t going to get any personal satisfaction out of what he’d done for, or to, Cynthia Tucker. Not when it looked like the girl was bound for hell by one route or the other. Ten acres might also help console Madeline when she learned about their gold mine caving in.

Rudy’s was a goner. If losing Cynthia Moon didn’t break the place, his next chat with the Cuban would, unless Thrapp’s story about Castillo and the Jersey mob proved a fairy tale. And unless Castillo vowed not to get within ogling distance of Madeline. Fat chance, Hickey thought.

He scanned the room, spotted his tobacco on the window ledge. He lit up, listened to Madeline instructing Elizabeth on what should go into her suitcase. After a minute he checked the directory for the numbers of Western Union and Riverview Hospital. He called in a telegram, to Venus Tucker, Black Forest, Dunsmuir, California:

He dialed Riverview Hospital and asked for Dr. Carroll. The nurse, whose squeaky voice sounded like an old dame imitating her great-granddaughter, told him the doctor was unavailable until 4:00
P.M.
Hickey gave his name.

“Oh,
yes
. The man who promised to deliver the
signed
intake forms this morning.”

“How’s the girl?”

“Now well. When Doctor left her alone, though she
was
sedated, she tried to hurt herself. She broke a chair and gouged the sharp end of a piece into her abdomen. If the orderlies hadn’t caught her…”

“Where’s she now?”

“Sedated more heavily, in a safer room.”

“The padded kind.”

“Yes. I’d like you to tell me more about her, if you will, when you deliver the intake forms. When can I expect you?”

“Tomorrow,” Hickey said. “Not on Christmas. I’ve got a family.”

“So do I,” the nurse snapped. “I’m meeting
all
my responsibilities.”

“Good. I hope you’re paid accordingly. Tell me something—you think she’s carrying a baby?”

“That’s certainly what she believes. By and large, women seem to know those things.”

“She’s a girl,” Hickey said. “A crazy one.”

“True. Doesn’t she sing beautifully, though? I heard her as I passed the room this morning.”

When he got off the phone, he sat a moment picturing Cynthia Moon on stage. Her body turned sideways, swaying lithely, she sang “Boo-hoo,” looking over her shoulder, wearing a coy little smirk. The vision clobbered him the way Charlie Schwartz’s big chauffeur would try to one of these days, if he didn’t choose to run Hickey down or bound from behind the oleander hedge at the dead end of Fanuel Street, holding the twin of his automatic that Leo now possessed.

Hickey dragged himself into the bedroom. When he landed on the bed, it seemed that every worry and grief he’d dodged or outrun in the past nine days joined forces, tackled him, and piled on. It felt as if the bed were one hard, spiny boulder and the air were another. Yet he wasn’t inclined to move. If not for Madeline and Elizabeth, he might’ve lain there halfway through the New Year.

***

An hour later he was driving through Mission Valley past the dairy farm and the orphanage at Mission de Alcala, where Cynthia had lived, where she’d met Father McCullough, while her daddy roamed the West trying futilely to kick Venus out of his heart.

As they climbed the mesa, Hickey started yawning. Over the next five miles, past the college, the chicken ranches, the citrus groves, and the trout pond at Grossmont summit, his eyelids slammed shut ever more frequently. He strained, using every muscle in his head to winch them open. They kept banging down. Elizabeth rubbed his shoulders and cooed, “Poor daddy.” Finally he turned the wheel over to Madeline and crawled in back. In the wedge of the seat, he caught a whiff of Cynthia.

Elizabeth woke him in Pine Hills, after they’d checked into the lodge. Her mother led him by the shoulders through a misty snowfall into their cabin, aimed him at the bed, and shoved gently. The feather mattress seemed bottomless. He kept sinking the whole time Madeline helped him out of the street clothes and into his flannel pajamas.

When he woke, the fireplace was crackling. Madeline sat beside it in a chair made of planks and cushions. Her elbows on the chair arms, hands folded at her chin, she appeared to have been watching him sleep. She sat pensively still as a painter’s model. Iron gray streaks in the sky out the window clued him that the sun had dipped behind the mountains, giving him less than an hour to catch a toboggan ride down the hill with Elizabeth.

“Wanta go sledding?” he asked Madeline.

She finally moved her head, wagging it slowly. “I’ve been out with Lizzie, got my fill. Your turn.”

Hickey dressed and stepped outside, found the path that led between the rear cabins to the base of the hill, where a dozen half-frozen humans hopped and flapped around to guarantee they’d survive. Every few seconds a sled, toboggan, or chunk of wood or thick cardboard came zooming down the hill with one or more bodies atop it, howling.

Elizabeth’s new toboggan nosed out from behind a cedar. It was past Hickey’s clear vision—he hadn’t worn his glasses, since they would’ve frosted anyway. He couldn’t be sure if the figure riding behind Elizabeth was a huge person or a bear. They swerved off the trail and back, picked up speed, and finally careened past Hickey as though bound for Indianapolis. When the toboggan crashed into a snow mound, Elizabeth lurched forward but didn’t sail off. Apparently the big fellow’s knees had her cinched there.

While they brushed off, Hickey wandered over, eyeing Elizabeth’s partner, inches taller than himself, dressed in lumberjack clothes. He was blond, round-featured, pale as a snowman. About eighteen. Elizabeth held his giant mittened paw. “Howdy, sleepyhead. The toboggan works great. Wanta try it?”

“Tomorrow,” Hickey said.

“Okay. This is Olaf—he lives in Ramona.” The kid bobbed his head and gave a hillbilly smile.

“Nice place. Babe, you’ll be back at the cabin by dark, right?”

“Sure, Dad.”

Hickey strolled toward the lodge between rows of pine not much older than Christmas trees, figuring that if the big kid gave Elizabeth any heartache, he’d phone the Selective Service board, tell them Uncle Sam badly needed this palooka.

He found Madeline waiting for him, the fire burned to coals beside her. Her elbows still on the chair arms, knees slightly parted, it looked as if she’d only moved six inches while he was gone, dropping the hands from her chin and leaning forward. Her eyes slanted inward, as if she’d been grieving.

“Sit down, please, Tom.”

On a corner of the bed, he sank until he was almost squatting. Madeline slid to the edge of her chair.

“Look, baby, I don’t enjoy being played for a stooge. If you’ve been frolicking with Miss Moon, I wanta know about it.”

“Christ,” Hickey snapped. “Maybe if she stays locked up, after a year you won’t ask anymore. Why’re we starting this again? You figure I’m liable to grill you about Castillo, so you’re gonna attack me first, that it?”