Lady Vanishes (15 page)

The garden lights came on, and Jackson blinked. “Are you having trouble deciding?” Homer asked. “Some greens, I thought. And a little touch of color.”

He stopped when he noticed Jackson.

“What are you doing out here at this hour?” he said. As if he expected an answer.

I’m not sure why, but I bent and dropped the bookend back into the hole.

“Dashiell began to dig. Damn dog must think he’s on the beach or something,” I said, pushing the dirt back over the bookend with my hands and quickly replacing the bricks. I stood then and tamped them down with my feet.

Homer was still in the doorway. I took Jackson’s hand and led him with me.

“Give those to Homer,” I said, pointing to the scissors.
“He’s going to cut some flowers for Venus’s office, make it look real pretty for when she comes back.”

Homer reached forward and took the scissors.

“I’ll walk Jackson to his room while you do the flowers. You know what she likes better than I do.”

Homer smiled. “That I do,” he said.

“You know, I bet Jackson could use a cup of tea,” I said, as if I were talking to Homer. But I wasn’t. “Should I make you a cup, too?” I asked, turning back now.

“I have to do the bed check first, Rachel. Everything’s off tonight, everything’s late, because of that extra job. If I’d have done the bed check when I always do, I’d have known Jackson here wasn’t in his bed.”

“He will be very soon. But first, we’ll go sit in the kitchen for a bit. I think that would make us both feel better.”

“Settle him right down. Does for me.”

“It’s so peaceful out here,” I said.

“That it is.” He tilted his head back and looked up at the moon.

“I think if I lived here, I’d come out to the garden every night, just to be by myself for a little while, have some place that was my own.”

I felt Jackson’s fingers twitch in my hand.

“I wouldn’t care what the rules were. What harm could it do to sit out here, look up at the moon and down at the shadows it makes in the yard?”

Homer walked over to the raised beds of plants against the north wall. I headed for the door, Dashiell looking back where the treasure he’d found had been reburied, then running on ahead.

While the kettle heated, I gave Dashiell water and two of Lady’s dog biscuits. Then I wet a small, clean dish towel and washed Jackson’s face and hands. There was paint every
where—streaks of green on both sides of his shirt, paint on one cheek, more paint in his hair, his hands so caked with dirt I couldn’t see the paint underneath until I started to clean them, which he passively let me do.

I filled a bowl with warm soapy water, and Jackson let me put his hands in it, to loosen the dirt from under his nails and get the layers of paint off his skin. While the tea was steeping, I rinsed and dried his hands.

Sitting across from each other, we drank our tea without saying a word. Dashiell had fallen asleep on the floor near the water bowl. Listening to him breathe, sounding like a kid with a stuffed nose, I wanted to go home, soak in a hot bath, and then crawl into bed and sleep, too.

But there was only one day left before all hell broke loose. Sitting there with this shell-shocked man and my sleeping pit bull, I thought, no, what was I thinking, there wasn’t one day left, all hell had already broken loose, and if I didn’t find out why, things were going to get even worse than they were now.

I stood and reached for Jackson’s hand. For a moment, only a moment, he seemed to look at me, the way he had done once before. He looked away, reached into his shirt pocket with two long fingers, and pulled out a piece of bread, holding it out to me, then dropping it into my upturned palm. It was as hard and dry as a bone long ago picked clean by a hungry dog, but I had always been told it was the thought that counted, and I believed that. I went around the counter, standing in front of Jackson and looking at him. His eyes flashed again, like heat lightning on a summer night, a quick, bright light, then darkness.

Jackson stood, again looming over me.

“Come here, honey,” I said, opening my arms.

This time he stepped toward me, and when I folded my
arms around him, he lifted his. I felt the weight of his lanky arms on my shoulders. Then I felt the tears, mine wetting his shirt, his landing on my neck, warm and wet and sad as death.

Jackson took off his paint-splattered Keds and got into bed with his clothes on, too tired to change into his pajamas. Or maybe he would have needed help, but I didn’t know the drill, and at this point it didn’t seem very important. I pulled a chair close to the bed and sat, Dashiell sprawled on the floor, everyone exhausted by now.

Paint on the bookend. What did that mean? Had it been Jackson who had tried to kill Venus?

But why?

With a population this disabled, was there a
why
I could understand? These were people who could be stressed beyond my comprehension by the ordinary things that made up my world—the touch of a fellow human, the sound of someone’s voice, color, light, noise, change of any kind, the barking of a dog.

With some, their brains couldn’t discriminate among the sounds that made up speech, so they could neither speak nor
understand when someone else spoke. Some were labeled brain-damaged or retarded because of this, the way people deem animals dumb because they try to judge their intelligence without first understanding how they function. Wouldn’t we be considered the dumb ones if the test had to do with following a scent trail?

Charlotte got so stressed by normal city noises that she wore earmuffs to block out the sounds of traffic and construction. Some of the kids became mesmerized by things they saw—curls of wood coming out of a pencil sharpener, light flickering on a wall—or by repetitious activities of their own making—sliding a toy back and forth on the floor or table, moving sand from one container to another, rocking or spinning for hours on end—anything that would replace the sights and sounds that were disturbing with something predictable, benign, and most important, comforting.

Why was I even trying to figure out what might have motivated Jackson? It could have been the sudden screaming of a car alarm, or the pain and confusion when a lamp was turned on. Perhaps he was in the dark the night he surprised me in the garden not to be unseen but because the lights hurt his eyes. How could I possibly understand what might have made him freak? It could have been anything.

Jackson’s eyes fluttered and closed. I reached out and shut off the lamp. Sitting there in the dark, thinking about the symmetrical smears of paint on Jackson’s shirt, I began to concoct another way the green paint might have gotten onto that bookend.

He might have come in and seen it on the floor next to Venus, picked it up, seen the blood, then dropped the bookend and frantically wiped his hands against his shirt.

That would explain it.

No—it wouldn’t. Dashiell had tried to alert me to something on the desk. The bloodstain under the blotter.

Had Jackson picked up the bookend and put it down on the desk while he straightened up the books? That would account for the green paint on the dictionary. And the blood on the desk.

What next?

He’d seen the blood on his hands and wiped his hands on his shirt.

But it didn’t end there. He’d picked up the bookend again and taken it outside, burying it in the garden.

Why?

And why had he been out there crying after he’d hidden it?

How I wished he could just tell me.

I reached out and touched his arm, watched him sleeping on his back, his mouth slightly open, his breathing audible, but no competition for Dashiell’s.

Jackson, clobbering Venus? It didn’t make sense.

Had he come in afterward?

Or had he been there all along, someone figuring it didn’t make any difference, these three witnesses, considering who they were? All good news, no bad.

But if it wasn’t Jackson who struck Venus, who was it? Were we back to David? Ever the skeptic, I didn’t believe that one either.

Dashiell was whimpering, running in his sleep. Or was he dreaming he was digging again, using his paws for shovels? They were brown now instead of white, dirt on his face as well. I’d cleaned off Jackson, but not my dog.

What had alerted him—the fresh dirt? Or had he smelled the blood, something out of the ordinary, something to pay attention to, something, if you were Dashiell, that would make you alert your master?

It couldn’t have been planned. You don’t plan to murder someone with a bookend from their desk.

Or with a bicycle.

Someone was angry, seething.

Someone’s rage was spilling.

Someone was coming apart.

Why couldn’t I see it, see who it was?

I decided not to wait for Homer. Getting up, I went to David’s room, one flight up from Jackson’s, knocking softly, then opening the door. The bedside lamp was on, but David seemed to be asleep, lying on his side, his back to the door. I listened to his breathing, slow and even. Only that wasn’t the way David normally breathed. It was the sedative, slowing everything down.

Did that mean it was safe to stay?

Carefully, never taking my eyes off David, I walked around the bed and looked at his face, tense even now, despite whatever tranquilizer he’d been given.

His hands were tense, too, one rigid and clawlike, the other in a fist.

With something sticking out.

In the light of the lamp, something sparkled, something metallic, all but a tiny piece of it secreted in David’s hand.

Could I see what it was, this amulet he held in his sleep?

Could I do it without waking him?

Maybe I could.

I called Dashiell, softly, with a whistle. As he ambled over, shaking his head, his ears clapping hard, I patted the bed. Dashiell jumped on and without further ado served up the specialty of the house. He lay down alongside David, sighing as he did. Then he let go, leaning all his weight and the heat of his body against David’s back.

I waited.

David stirred. His head moved, but his eyes remained closed. I listened to the sound of David’s breathing. After a moment, I carefully reached for the treasure in David’s hand, grasping the tiny part that was exposed and sliding it toward me until it was free.

When I held it up in the light from the lamp, it came alive, the diamonds winking and sparkling, mesmerizingly beautiful. I let the heart fall into my other palm, feeling the weight of it in my hand, the chain, its clasp broken, hanging down. For all it cost, it wasn’t very heavy. But it was heavy enough, I knew, to keep me up all night wondering what this meant, wondering if David had seen the necklace and been attracted to its sparkle, had reached for it and clobbered Venus when she’d pulled away.

Venus had told me to be careful around David. Had she failed to take her own advice?

Sleeping, Jackson appeared normal. David did not. Even now, even with Dashiell tight against his back like a squeeze machine, he was so tense he was spastic, his face in a grimace, his knees pulled up to his chest, the hand I had robbed of its security object twitching.

There was something else sparkly in the room. It was lying on the nightstand: a key chain with a gold-colored ball set with colored stones, faux rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds, but no keys. Why would this man need a set of keys?

I held it up and watched the light dance off the metal and the stones, then lowered the ball into David’s palm and let go as his fingers closed around it, having neatly pulled a Dashiell. Sometimes, when there was something he knew he couldn’t have, something he wanted with all his heart, he’d make a trade, leaving one of his toys in the place the object he so coveted had been, as I had swapped the key chain for Venus’s necklace.

Holding it in my hand, it was no longer the weight of gold and diamonds. It was the weight of obligation. David and Jackson could sleep, but no way could I, not until I understood what had really happened to Venus. To Harry. And to Lady.

On the way downstairs, seeing the mark along the wall, the mark that Homer must have purposely neglected to clean away, I thought about her, about Lady, the missing dog, sliding along the wall as she traveled up and down to see her charges.

Coincidence, all this happening at once?

Or is that where this all began? Lady vanishes; everything goes downhill from there.

On the way down the stairs, I heard Homer’s voice. Someone was frightened. Homer was soothing.

I moved faster, heading for Eli’s office, to look for I didn’t know what.

I knocked. Because you never know. Then I used Venus’s keys, letting myself and Dashiell in, closing the door, then flipping on the light.

I didn’t think I had a lot of time, so I went straight for the files, quickly moving through the patient folders, hoping something would jump out at me, something telling.

Dream on.

There were several file drawers full of medical journals and articles on autism, new drugs, vitamin therapies, homeopathy, acupuncture, aromatherapy, you name it, it was there. Though traditionally trained, it seemed Eli was willing to investigate anything that might help.

I was looking for personal things—his will perhaps, or
Harbor View finances—but those were all in Harry’s office. Venus had a point. Why would someone think these men’s skills were interchangeable? The beauty of the relationship was that they were not, that each was an expert in his separate field, and that each was equally devoted to the small, damaged population at Harbor View. It was, it seemed to me, not a career but a calling. Sure, it took money and lots of it to keep this place going, but money wasn’t the point of it. And neither man, I thought, took out more than was needed to survive. Well, of course, Harry hadn’t taken money out. He’d put it in. Gobs of it.

I flipped through the rest of the files quickly, stopping at David’s to read the overview that started each resident’s file, then stopping at Jackson’s to read his. I took the phone apart and found the bug, then shut off the light and opened the door, my heart pounding because I didn’t have a story ready this time.

But the lobby was empty. Homer would be working his way down from the top. I listened for a moment, but I didn’t hear a sound. Eli’s office wasn’t the place to be. I went next door to Harry’s office, unlocking the door and letting Dashiell into the dark room first, then stepping inside after him, letting the door close and feeling his tail start to bang against my leg.

What was he so happy about, just because he’d been here before, because it was familiar?

I felt along the wall for the light, pushing up the switch when I found it, then sucking in my breath when I saw we weren’t alone.

He lifted his hand to shield his eyes when the overhead light came on. I stood there, mute, Venus’s keys in my hand, too surprised to think of how I could explain my presence here. That’s when I noticed he had been crying.

“Please don’t tell anyone I was here,” he said.

Dashiell approached, his tail going in circles now.

“I didn’t want any of them to see me crying. They get upset too easily.”

I went and sat next to him on Harry’s big leather couch.

He had a wad of tissues in one hand and wiped his eyes with it, but the tears kept coming.

“I don’t understand what’s happening. And I’m afraid. I don’t know who’s going to be hurt next, but sure as we’re sitting here, Rachel, someone is.”

“You may be right,” I told him, looking at his small, polished shoes, his feet side by side, as if he were sitting in church. Then I looked back at his face. “What can we do about it?” I asked.

“You and me?”

“Exactly.”

“What could
we
do?”

“We could pool our information, for one thing.”

“I don’t—”

“If you don’t know what’s going on here, Homer, who does?”

“Well, I hear some things, but—”

He sat up, looking at me critically now, probably wondering what I was up to, if he could trust me.

I was already in it up to my chin, but I was wondering the same thing about him.

Sometimes you just have to take a chance.

“You heard some things yourself, didn’t you? This afternoon, for instance, outside the dining room. You were listening to them in there, weren’t you?”

“I was.”

“How come?”

“Because something funny’s going on here, don’t you think?”

“I think it’s not so funny.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“I never said,” he told me.

“What didn’t you say?”

“That I saw you listening.”

“How come?”

Homer turned away from me.

“Why didn’t you tell Eli what I did?”

“Venus brought me here twelve years ago. She took a chance on me.”

I looked at the little man’s face, the flush across his nose and cheeks.

“You met at AA?”

He nodded. “I didn’t think I was ready for no responsibility. The cleaning, okay, I needed the money. We both knew that. And that was something I could do. Because, see, I don’t clean one night, I won’t disappoint anyone so bad I can’t hardly stand the sight of myself in the morning.

“But Venus said I was here for the kids first, to help Molly with the bedtime, to do the bed checks, to sit with any of them when they get bad dreams or night sweats.

“I told her, no, I can’t do that. I can’t be counted on. I never could be. ‘You can now,’ she told me. ‘I would trust you with my life.’ I’ll never forget her saying that to me because the way she did, I knew I had to make it true. She went to Mr. Dietrich and worked it out. I don’t know what she told him, but knowing Venus, I’d say it was the flat-out truth. That’s how she is, you know.”

I nodded, thinking about how she’d hidden the truth from me. Or rather, eked it out. For Harry’s sake, she’d said.

“When I seen you listening in on them, I figured maybe you was doing it for her, to find out what was happening here.”

“That’s true. I am trying to help Venus. And I think you can help me do that, Homer.”

He looked at those polished shoes of his, the laces even, tied just so, as if by paying careful attention to the minutia, that and going to meetings, you could keep your life from falling to pieces.

“I never mean to—”

“But it happens, right? You’re cleaning, and you hear someone on the phone, or you hear an argument. The way you saw me snooping today, by happenstance.”

He nodded.

“You see, this here building, it was a seaman’s hotel originally, before Mr. Dietrich bought it, got it fixed up so it would be right for the kids. It was meant for short-term visits, people staying here by themselves, not a place for lots of families, thick floors and walls you can’t hear through. Voices carry here. Mostly, it’s a helpful thing. The princess, she cries a lot at night, but she doesn’t get up and call me. From anywhere except the kitchen I can hear her, or any of them that needs me. I know to go to her, make things better. That’s my job. That’s what Venus hired me to do. She said I could understand them, because I’d been down. She said no one would ever wish to be where I spent a major chunk of my life, no one would ever choose to be a drunk and a failure, no one would ever think any good could come of it.” Homer’s eyes filled again. “‘But in this job,’ she said, ‘you could consider it an advantage.’”

Dashiell got up and put his head on Homer’s knee.

“But sometimes what I hear,” he continued, “it’s got nothing to do with what I was hired for. You know what I’m saying?”

“I do.”

“Sometimes I find out things in other ways,” he said.

“A piece of paper in the trash.”

Homer nodded a little too enthusiastically.

“Hey, you’re human, right? You’re curious.”

“I never go through the files or nothing. Just sometimes there’s something right on top of the desk when I’m cleaning up. It’s hard not to look.”

“I figure you know about as much as anyone,” I told him.

“Some would think that.”

“Before I came today, Homer, did you hear anything yourself? From the big powwow in the dining room?”

“Seemed like the sister wasn’t too happy. Those spoiled kids of hers either. Mr. Dietrich wasn’t like that. You could see he was rich all right. But he was a regular guy, too. He wasn’t a showoff, like them.”

“What were they miffed about?”

“That Bailey thinks it’s going to be him doing Mr. Dietrich’s job, managing investments, and making financial decisions for Harbor View. I always thought Nathan was preparing himself for that, with his MBA degree and all that fund-raising he does. Maybe he thought Mr. Dietrich would move down to Florida, get hisself a boat, take it easy for a change. If anyone could afford to do that, he could. But it’s too late for that now.”

“What about Samuel? If Nathan thought he’d take over for Mr. Dietrich, did Samuel think he’d take over for his father one day?”

“You can’t take care of the kids with singing and dancing, Rachel. These poor souls have serious problems. They need medical care.

“Oh, it’s not that Sammy didn’t try. There’s nothing he would a liked better’n that, as devoted as he is.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “The story I heard was that he
was in medical school, and pffft. Couldn’t cut it. Had the brains for it, but not the stomach.”

“Who told you that?”

“Molly did. She’s known them boys forever. She was their nanny before she came here.”

“No kidding.”

“Cross my heart,” he said. And he did.

“So Samuel. He was in medical school, but he flunked out?”

“Oh, Mr. Samuel is a smart one. Don’t kid yourself. He’s always reading something, that one, wouldn’t step on the subway without a book. And listening to his music, the classics and opera. He didn’t flunk out. He passed out. Fainted at his first autopsy, first year in.”

“But lots of people do that and get by the squeamishness and go on to be fine—”

Or go on to be psychiatrists, I thought, doctors who can’t stand the sight of blood.

“Not this one. He’s here late, he wants a snack, Molly leaves the tomato sauce off his pasta, gives him a little oil and garlic instead. Someone gets cut, or falls, it’s not Samuel you call. It’s Dr. Eli or me or Molly, that tough old bird. He’s always been like that, squeamish. Not Molly. You should see what that woman can handle, and the strength of her, at her age. She can lift some of them, grown-ups, nearly her own size, as if they were babes in arms. Gets them to take their pills, go to bed on time, bathe when they don’t want to—she can handle anything. A find, that’s what she is for a place like this. But so is Samuel, in his own way. Couldn’t follow in his father’s footsteps, the way he wanted to, but he does a world of good here with his little classes every night, a world of good.”

“What about the poster family for overindulgence? Have they ever done anything here? And what about the wives?”

“What wives?”

“Harry’s wife, before she got sick? And Eli’s?”

“Eli’s wife died when the boys were young. That’s why they had Molly. She lived with them, in Brooklyn, while the boys were growing up.”

“And now?”

“She lives here, Rachel. I thought you knew.”

“No, I didn’t.” But I hadn’t seen where anyone could either. I assumed when Venus stayed, she slept on the couch in her office. But where would Molly sleep? I asked Homer.

“Up top. Southeast corner, nice and quiet, overlooking the garden. Small, but she don’t seem to mind.”

“Do you live here, too?”

“Not me, Rachel. Venus offered. But I’ve had my place for thirty-three years now, and the rent’s cheap. I got my own troubles without being with theirs every hour around the clock. You’re here, your work hours get flexible, you see what I’m saying? Molly don’t mind that, or so she says. I do. I got to get to my meetings regular and have some peace and quiet, too. And I need a phone, so’s I can call my sponsor when I have to. Like tonight.” He looked toward the phone on Harry’s desk. “We’re not supposed to use the phones here, unless it’s for them, the kids, an accident or something. Like we ain’t got no needs ourselves.”

I patted his hand.

“He told me to hold on, my sponsor.”

I nodded.

“Well, I told him, I’m
trying,
aren’t I? It’s why I’m calling, I said.” He nodded. I did, too.

“Homer, you never told me about Harry’s wife. Marilyn. Did she come here, work with the kids, or help Harry out?”

“Met her twice, is all. This was Harry’s work, not hers. The sister’s the same way, I can tell you. The one was here today? That Bailey Poole, her son, he was saying he’d be overlooking the finances. That’s what I heard him say, overlooking the finances. Never set foot in the place more’n once a year before now. But that sister woman, when they got here after the services, she was looking the place over, as if now that Mr. Dietrich is gone, it’s
hers.
Can you just imagine what
that
crew would do to this place if it were theirs? Turn it into a shopping mall, I guess.” He looked at his hands, gnarled with work, the fingers stained a yellowish brown. “Never worked a day in their lives, the pack of them. You can see it by their hands, even the boy. Good-for-nothings, I say. Dr. Eli, he was telling them they were jumping the gun. They had to wait and see.”

He looked at me, his eyebrows raised.

“Until they got to see the will,” I told him, “see what Harry spelled out for Harbor View. I guess everyone is expecting what they want, as if Harry were Santa Claus.”

“I’m sure he did what’s right for
them,
” he said, pointing up.

“You don’t think he would have been concerned about his relatives’ feelings? After all, Arlene was his wife’s sister, and he has no other family that I know of.”

“Don’t matter,” Homer said. “This is what mattered to him. These people here, the twins and Jackson, Willy and Richard and the princess, Charlotte, David, and all of them, this was Harry’s family. This is where his heart was. You’ll see.”

I nodded. “You okay now, Homer?”

“I’m better. It’s good to have a friend.”

I reached over and patted his hand, dry from cleaning products, rough from hard work.

“I better finish my bed checks. You done in here?” he asked me, the suspicion coming back into his eyes.

“Yeah, I was just looking for you,” I told him. “To tell you I couldn’t wait for our cup of tea. I want to get over to the hospital, see how Venus is doing.”

Homer nodded. “You tell her I said—”

Then he remembered.

“I will, Homer. No point me sitting with her and keeping my thoughts to myself. I figure, maybe she hears me, so I talk a blue streak. It couldn’t hurt.”