Mother Gets a Lift (2 page)

I smiled at Clay, told him I knew he was innocent, and asked him if he could get his lawyer to wrangle a look at the body for him.

“I’m not sure I want to remember her that way.”

“Well, no one does, but I need a second opinion.”

“What are you saying?” He looked puzzled.

“Just do it, would you?”

*

Back in the car, I called Fred.

He sounded anxious. “The boys are fine, but I’m worried about Stella. I don’t know how to handle her.”

“Is she fussing? I left milk for her in the fridge. You just have to heat it up. You know the routine.”

“No, she’s not hungry, but she’s wide awake and she just lies there and looks at me.”

“Pick her up.”

“She’s a girl. I don’t know what to do with girls.”

“She’s a baby. The girl stuff doesn’t take over for a while. Think of her as one of the boys at that age, just dressed in pink.”

“She’s not in pink. She got one of the boys’ baby shirts on. It’s green and I’m worried it will affect her development.”

I pulled out of the lot and sped down the street toward the entrance to the turnpike south.

“It’s really too early to worry about that.”

“I don’t want to set her up for making an arbitrary decision about gender somewhere in the future.” His voice shook. Fred took this fatherhood thing to heart.

I suggested he change her shirt to another, the one with ruffles and scenes of tiny grey mice dancing in a field of flowers, pink, of course. This seemed to make Fred feel better.

“Before I let you go, there’s something else.” The anxiety returned to his voice.

What now? “Don’t let the boys eat the play dough.” I couldn’t remember if I’d warned him about that before I left or not.

“Don’t worry. The dog already took care of that.”

I sighed in relief. “What then?”

“Your mother’s closest friend, Vera Cleeve, called and wants to come by tonight to talk to you. She says she saw the man who pushed your mother off the ship and it was her husband Clay. It was your mom, right?”

I repeated the words I’d said earlier to the detective. “Maybe.”

*

“Have you talked to Clay? I don’t know why your mother wanted to divorce that man. Well, maybe now I know. He did kill her. But until that happened he was such a gentleman. And he had so much money.” Vera sat in the recliner rocker pushing herself back and forth. From the moment she entered the house she had been talking. I might have worried all that babbling and rocking meant she was distraught over Mom’s death if I hadn’t known Vera since I was a kid. She was a talker. I’d bet she did it at home with no one around. She seemed to like to hear herself, or maybe the feeling of her mouth opening and closing and her tongue moving made her feel more alive. She was pushing eighty after all.

I had to break into her monologue. “Could I…”

“So why do you think Clay did it? Another woman? No, that can’t be it. It has to be…”

“Vera!” This time I shouted.

“What, dear? Oh, you must be so torn apart by this. What with the new baby and all. It was a girl, right? Your mother would have been so…”

I hopped off the couch and leaned over Vera. “If you don’t stop talking, you’ll upset me, and that’ll upset the baby. Then she’ll start to cry. That’s sure to upset her stomach, and she’ll probably throw up, and then I’ll break out in hives, and we’ll have to run off to the twenty-four-hour walk-in clinic because my hives are usually accompanied by my throat swelling shut. I turn blue when that happens. Blue is not a good color for me, at least not the shade of blue I do. You don’t want to be responsible for my baby losing her mother as well as her grandmother, do you?” I gasped for breath. Talking to Vera so she’d listen was not unlike managing birth contractions, only there was no pushing.

“Heavens. You think I’m responsible for your mother’s death. Is that what you’re trying to tell me now?”

“Not at all, but I do have a few questions I’d like to ask you.”

She nodded and opened her mouth to speak.

I held up a cautionary finger. “Wait for the question.”

She clamped her lips together.

“Whose idea was it to go on this cruise? Mom’s? And you and she roomed together? Did she know Clay was coming along? Just what exactly did you see that night?”

“That’s more than one question.” She compressed her mouth tighter and crossed her arms. Vera never liked anyone trying to rein in her mouth. I reached out, patted her arm, and nodded. That seemed to mollify her.

“You know how your mother loved self-improvement?” She looked to me for confirmation.

“It was plastic surgery, not a seminar on the history of railroads in Florida.”

“Yes, but the boat had seminars too, you know. Anyway, she said she wanted to get away from Clay. He was beginning to annoy her. I guess he liked her just the way she was, but you know your mom.”

“Right, the self-improvement thing.”

“She asked me along for company. She had the surgery, and I played bingo most of the time. The last night out, she complained her pain pills weren’t working and said she was going down to the infirmary for something stronger. Between you and me, I think she had a thing for the doctor. Anyway, she was all wrapped up in one of those fluffy robes all the patients wore and her face was still bandaged.”

“No wonder I couldn’t tell if the body was Mom’s. The surgery was that recent?”

“Only the day before. She was one of the last patients he worked on.” She stopped talking. She looked as if she’d run down and needed to be wound up again.

I tried to be encouraging. “Don’t stop now. You were saying she went to the surgery for pills?”

“I had moved from where she left me to farther down the rail toward the back of the ship. When I looked forward to where we’d been, I saw her come from below through the automatic doors, walk toward the rail and look out over the sea. I yelled at her but she didn’t seem to hear me. Then Clay came out and simply picked her up and pitched her into the water.”

“Did you say anything to him?”

“No. He couldn’t see me. I was too far away and several pillars separated him from me.”

“But you’re sure it was Clay?”

“It had to be. He was tall and slender and had Clay’s full head of brown hair. Not many of the men on ship had hair. It wasn’t a cruise for families you know, so most of us were older.”

“But did you see his face?”

“It was Clay. I’m certain. It had to be. They had argued only hours before. Who else aboard ship had reason to murder her?”

*

The next morning I sat at my computer with Stella sleeping in the crook of my arm.

“You could put her in her crib.” Fred smiled down on his sleeping daughter. He seemed more comfortable with her.

“I think the exposure’s good. The world is so high-tech I don’t want her left behind.” I signed onto the Internet and began my research. By the end of the morning and only several Stella feedings later, I knew something was not right with the cruise Mom had selected. Perhaps not unrelated to the imminent bankruptcy of the cruise line was the near illegal nature of the doctor’s surgical background. Dr. Banitwick had graduated from a medical school in California, but I could find no license to practice medicine in any state. Also interesting was he was a member of the Chi Do Rho fraternity at his alma mater. And so was Donnie Brookman, the owner of the cruise line company, Beautiful Cruises for You.

I left Stella with Fred in the late afternoon and headed north to the port of Miami. The office I was searching for was tucked behind the more opulent headquarters of a larger cruise line. I looked through the glass door with “Beautiful Cruises” lettered on it and saw a deserted office. Had I come too late? Then I noticed a window to the left of the entrance. Behind it a balding, short man, sweating heavily, struggled with a heavy briefcase. Before he could exit, I pushed the door inward taking him off guard.

“We’re closed.” He looked frightened.

“Yes, you are, but you’re not going anywhere.”

“You’re an undercover cop, right?”

Okay. I could be. I nodded. I was wearing a prebirth outfit, a smock with an arrow on the front pointing downward toward my belly and reading “Guess Who?” He didn’t ask for identification, confirming either his lack of intelligence or television crime show deprivation.

“I knew it. I knew this would happen.” He dropped the briefcase on the floor and began crying. His nonstop babbling made me wonder if he and Vera were related.

“I can’t compete with the larger cruise ships, but I thought running this specialty cruise would save the line. Then comes the murder, and I’m worse off now than I was before. I’m finished. No money. And I’m sure there will be plenty lawsuits up ahead. Banitwick was a hack, as you already know. He could do only one nose and one chin, one set of lips. He didn’t even do facelifts. He just sutured faces and made like he did the lifts. I’m ruined.” He dropped to his knees and looked up at me with his hands in a position of prayer. “Help me.”

“Why should you take the wrap for this?” I flipped open my phone and called Detective Estevez.

*

“He had to have made some money off the plastic surgery cruise. Where is it?” Any pity I felt for the man had evaporated, so annoying was his constant crying.

We stood outside an interrogation room watching Donnie sob his way through a confession. So far he’d admitted to stealing money from the company, failing to pay his creditors and his employees, and hiring someone he knew had no license to practice medicine.

“I’ve had calls coming in for the last twenty-four hours asking how to get in touch with the cruise line. The passengers are only now realizing they’ve been taken.” Estevez looked as annoyed as I felt.

A uniformed officer came up and tapped Estevez on the shoulder. “Excuse me sir, but some woman is here, saying she wants to turn in her mother. It’s related to the cruise line thing.”

Estevez and I turned to see a woman about my age followed by another woman with a bandaged face. A prickly feeling worked its way up the back of my skull.

“This,” the younger woman hesitated and gestured angrily at the other woman, “this person is not my mother, and I want her arrested for impersonating my mother, who is a dear, sweet woman. This one is a shrew. She couldn’t possibly be anyone’s mother.”

“Mom?” I asked.

Two blue eyes met mine.

“Fine. Then I want police protection,” said the bandage.

The younger woman turned on her companion. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want you out of my life whoever you are. I fed you and ran errands for you since I picked you up from the cruise, but nothing I did was good enough, was it? Who the hell are you?”

“She’s my mother.” No maybe this time. I didn’t need to see her face. I could tell. “The police think you’re dead. What happened?”

“Not even a ‘so glad you’re not fish bait, Mom’?” the bandaged face asked.

“I never thought you were.”

“You said maybe the body was hers.” Estevez’s earlier annoyance at Donnie was now turned on me.

“You pushed me,” I retorted.

“I don’t care who she belongs to. Get her out of my life.” The woman who’d dragged Mom into the station looked desperate to unload her. “I’ve never met anyone so selfish, so demanding, so, so….”

“Acerbic?”

The young woman nodded. Then worry crossed her features. “But where’s my mother?”

Uh, oh.

*

Another detective led the woman off to the morgue while Estevez, Mom, and I took up residence in one of the interrogation rooms. Estevez acted as if he was glad to have our cooperation, probably because he felt guilty over insisting I identify the other woman’s body as my mother’s, and so soon after giving birth. Motherhood has its advantages in law enforcement. Besides, I’d brought him Donnie. He owed me.

“Can I get you anything?” Estevez smiled at Mom.

“Yes, I’d like a mimosa and some fresh strawberries. I asked that woman for fruit, just a little fruit and do you know what she gave me? Canned peaches. Can you imagine?”

“Mom, don’t you think we should get you off to your doctor to have the bandages removed and let him take a look at those sutures?”

“I already removed the bandages. There are no sutures underneath. That doctor was a complete fraud. Knocked me out and did nothing. Well, nothing I can talk about I guess. Then he tried to kill me.”

“No. You mean your husband tried to kill you. I guess he confused you with another woman and bumped her off instead.” Estevez seemed anxious to put the pieces of his investigation together as soon as possible.

“Clay? Clay wouldn’t hurt me.”

“Vera saw him throw someone overboard. She thought it was you.” I reached out to touch Mom’s bandages. I was itching to get them off her, but she slapped my hand away. She was looking like a badly preserved Egyptian mummy.

Estevez interrupted our bonding ritual. “Maybe you can fill us in on why you think the doc tried to kill you and how.”

“No mimosa?”

“A Diet Coke?” he offered.

She settled for that and a Snickers bar.

Mom squirmed around in the metal chair. “I don’t suppose you have anything more comfortable I could park my body in.”

“Just tell us what happened.” My body warned me I only had about an hour before I needed to return to my daughter.

“Don’t be sassy to me. This isn’t easy. I’ve experienced quite a trauma you know.”

Right, Mom. And I only experienced the recent delight of popping out an eight pound squalling watermelon.
I said nothing, but gave her a look of impatience, one I knew she recognized because I’d copied it from her.

“Okay. I was taken in for surgery the morning before we docked. I woke up and was escorted back to Vera and my room. In the evening, she and I decided to walk on the deck. If she hadn’t been with me, Clay wouldn’t have recognized me from the other women similarly bandaged and wearing our snuggly white robes. By the way, those robes were the only good thing about that cruise. The food was awful.” She finished the candy bar and held out the wrapper to the detective.

“I could eat a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup now.”

He looked about to refuse her, but signaled whoever was watching through the two-way mirror. Soon the candy appeared.