“Could we talk about this murder attempt?” I said.
She padded back to the bed and flopped down again. “Somebody’s after him. Definitely,” she said. She stubbed out her^ cigarette, with a yawn.
“What makes you say that?”
“The vibes.”
“Aside from the vibes,” I said.
“Oh balls, you don’t believe us either,” she said. She turned sideways and settled against the pillows, folding an arm under her head.
“Is someone after you too?”
“Nun-un. I don’t think so. Just him.”
“But why would someone do that? I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I’m looking for a place to start and I want to hear what you have to say.”
“I’d have to think about it some,” she said and then she was quiet.
It took me a few minutes to realize she’d passed out. Jesus, what was she on?
Chapter 4
I waited in the hallway, shoes in hand, while Bobby covered her with a blanket and tiptoed out of the room, closing the door gently.
“What’s the story?” I said. “She’s O.K. She was just up late last night.” “What are you talking about? She’s half dead!” He shifted uneasily. “You really think so?” “Bobby, would you look at her? She’s a skeleton. She’s doing drugs, alcohol, cigarettes. You know she’s smoking dope on top of that. How’s she going to survive?”
“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think she was that bad of�” he said. He was not only young, he was naive, or maybe she’d been going under so gradually that he couldn’t see the shape she was in.
“How long has she been anoretic?” “Since Rick died, I guess. Maybe some before that. He was-her boyfriend and she took it pretty hard.”
“Is that what Kleinert’s seeing her for? The anorexia?” “I guess. I never really asked. She was a patient of his before I started seeing him.”
A voice cut in. “Is there some problem?” Derek Wenner was approaching from the gallery, highball in hand. He was a man who’d been good-looking once. Of medium height, fair-haired, his gray eyes magnified by glasses with steel-blue frames. He was in his late forties now, by a charitable estimate, a solid thirty pounds overweight. He had the puffy, florid complexion of a man who drinks too much and his hairline had receded in a wide U that left a runner of thinning hair down the center, clipped short and brushed to one side. The excess pounds had given him a double chin and a wide neck that made the collar of his dress shirt seem tight. His pleated gabardine pants looked expensive and so did his loafers, which were tan and white, with vents cut into the leather. He’d been wearing a sport coat earlier, but he’d taken it off, along with his tie. He unbuttoned his collar with relief.
“What’s going on? Where’s Kitty? Your mother wants to know why she hasn’t joined us.”
Bobby seemed embarrassed. “I don’t know. She was talking to us and she fell asleep.”
“Fell asleep” seemed a bit understated to me. Kitty’s face had been the color of a plastic ring I sent away for once as a kid. The ring was white, but if you held it to the light for a while and then cupped your hand over it, it glowed faintly green. This, to me, did not connote good health.
“Hell, I better talk to her,” he said. I had to guess he’d had his hands full with her. He opened the door and went into Kitty’s room.
Bobby gave me a look that was part dismay and part anxiety. I glanced in through the open door. Derek put his drink on the table and sat down on Kitty’s bed.
“Kitty?”
He put a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. There was no response. “Hey, come on, honey. Wake up.”
He shot me a worried look.
He gave Kitty a rough shake. “Hey, come on. Wake up.”
“You want me to get one of the doctors from downstairs?” I said. He shook her again. I didn’t wait for a response.
I slipped my shoes on and left my handbag by the door, heading for the stairs.
When I reached the living room, Glen Callahan glance’d over at me, apparently sensing that something was wrong.
She moved forward. “Where’s Bobby?”
“Upstairs with Kitty. I think it might be smart to have somebody take a look at her. She passed out and your husband’s having trouble rousing her.”
“I’ll get Leo.”
I watched while she approached Dr. Kleinert, murmuring to him. He glanced over at me and then he excused himself from his conversation. The three of us went upstairs.
Bobby had joined Derek at Kitty’s bedside, his face creased with concern. Derek was trying to pull Kitty into a sitting position, but she slumped to one side. Dr. Kleinert moved forward swiftly and pushed both men out of the way. He did a quick check of her vital signs, pulling a penlight out of the inside breast pocket of his suit. Her pupils had contracted down to pinpoints, and from where I stood, the green eyes looked milky and lifeless, apparently responding little to the light he flashed first in one, then the other. Her breathing was slow and shallow, her muscles flaccid. Dr. Kleinert reached for the telephone, which was sitting on the floor near the bed, and dialed 911.
Glen remained in the doorway. “What is it?”
Kleinert ignored her, apparently talking to the emergency dispatcher.
“This is Dr. Leo Kleinert. I’m going to need an ambulance out on West Glen Road in Montebello. I’ve got a patient suffering from barbiturate poisoning.” He gave the address and a brief set of instructions about how to reach the place. He hung up and looked at Bobby. “You have any idea what she took?”
Bobby shook his head.
Derek responded, addressing the remark to Glen. “She was fine half an hour ago. I talked to her myself.”
“Oh Derek. For God’s sake,” she said with annoyance.
Kleinert reached over and opened the bed-table drawer. He sorted through some junk and then hesitated, pulling out a stash of pills that would have felled an elephant. They were in a Ziploc bag, maybe two hundred capsules: Nembutals, Seconals, blue-and-orange Tuinals, Placidyls, ‘Quaaludes, like colorful supplies for some exotic cottage industry.
Kleinert’s expression was despairing. He looked up at Derek, holding the bag by one corner. Exhibit A in a trial that had been going on for some time by my guess.
“What are those things?” Derek said. “How’d she get them?”
Kleinert shook her head. “Lets get people out of here and then we’ll worry about that.”
Glen Callahan had already turned and left the room and I could hear her heels clipping purposefully toward the
stairs. Bobby took my arm and the two of us moved out into the hallway.
Derek was apparently still having trouble believing this was happening. “Is she going to be O.K.?”
Dr. Kleinert murmured a reply, but I couldn’t hear what it was.
Bobby steered me into a room across the hall and closed the door. “Let’s stay out of the way. We’ll go downstairs in a bit.” He rubbed at the fingers of his bad hand as if it were a talisman. The drag in his voice was back.
The room was large, with deep-set windows looking out onto the rear of the property. The wall-to-wall carpeting was white, a dense cut-pile so recently vacuumed that I could see Bobby’s footprints in places. His double bed seemed diminutive in a room that was probably thirty feet square, with a large dressing room opening off to the left and what was apparently a bathroom beyond that. A television set rested on an antique pine blanket-chest at the foot of the bed. On the wall to my right was a long built-in desk with a white Formica surface. An IBM Selectric II and the keyboard, monitor, and printer for a home computer were lined up along its length. The bookshelves were white Formica too, filled almost exclusively with medical texts. There was a sitting area in the far corner; two overstuffed chairs and an ottoman covered in a plaid fabric of rust, white, and slate blue. The coffee table, reading lamp, books and magazines stacked nearby suggested that this was where Bobby spent his leisure time.
He went to an intercom on the wall and pressed a button.
“Callie, we’re starving up here. Could you send us a tray? There are two of us and we’ll need some white wine too.”
I could hear a hollow clattering in the background: dishes being loaded into the dishwasher. “Yes, Mr. Bobby. I’ll have Alicia bring something up.”
“Thank you.”
He limped over to one of the chairs and sat down. “I eat when I’m anxious. I’ve always done that. Come sit down. Shit, I hate this house. I used to love it. When I was a kid, it was great. Places to run. Places to hide. A yard that went on forever. Now it feels like a cocoon. Insulated. But it doesn’t keep bad stuff out. It feels cold. Are you cold?”