Crazy Lady Read online

  Bliss picks up the phone and puts it down twenty times. She’ll call. Don’t call her. She won’t answer. You’ll make a fool of yourself on the answering machine. Worse — it’ll be busy. She’ll be talking to Klaus, whispering sweet nothings, saying, “I’m really sorry. Hurry, come to me. I love you.”

  Stop tormenting yourself. He won’t come. Keep thinking that; keep praying that he won’t come. He won’t come.

  Maybe she’ll go back to Holland to see him.

  No, that’s worse. I’ll never find her.

  The phone rings. He leaps for it. It’s Daisy, coldly. “Zhe rent is due on your apartment, sir.”

  “Sir!” What is this “sir”? But he doesn’t complain. He’s tempted to tell her about Yolanda, but common sense prevails.

  “I want her back,” he yells to the walls.

  After what she just did?

  “Yes. I want her back,” he shouts. “I love her. I love her.”

  The Man in the Iron Mask loved his woman and remember what happened to him.

  Daphne phones. He lunges for it, praying for Yolanda. “Glad I caught you —” starts the elderly Englishwoman. “Not now, Daphne.”

  “David!”

  “Sorry, Daphne. Expecting an important call,” he says as he puts it down, then he sits by the phone all evening waiting for a knock on the door.

  It’s a mistake — come back please. He doesn’t deserve you; what man would leave you like that? Not phoning, no flowers, nothing.

  It is three in the morning, but the Land of Nod is way over the horizon as Bliss lies in the silent vacuum left by Yolanda’s departure. He would walk the deserted quays in the cold moonlight but won’t risk leaving the phone, so he stares at the ceiling, his mind full of her: her luscious kisses, her sweet scent, her heavenly body. He wills himself not to let her spirit go even for an instant. You’re the only woman I’ve ever truly loved, and you love me, I know you do. I would have died for you.

  The following morning comes an hour earlier to the offices of Creston Enterprises in frosty London as John Mason claps his hand over the mouthpiece of his phone. “It’s the Canadian private eye,” he explains to J.C. Creston. “He’s finally found Janet.”

  “She’s shacked up with some old guy in a big house in North Vancouver,” Craddock continues in a Bronx accent he reserves for foreign clients.

  “Are you sure it’s her?” asks Mason, flicking the PI onto the speakerphone.

  “Yup. Followed the broad who first found her. Tina somebody or other; been following her for a week. Christ. She drives like a freakin’ —”

  “No profanity please, Mr.…”

  “Craddock — just Craddock.”

  “So, Craddock,” says Creston, leaning in to the speakerphone. “If we wanted her moved, would you be able…”

  “You mean like — heavies?”

  “Well. She may not be co-operative. They may be protecting her.”

  “Hey, we’re talking big bucks.”

  “Yes. But could you do it?”

  “Mebbe. I’d have to bring in the whole team. It could cost —”

  “We’ll get back to you, Mr. Craddock,” cuts in Mason.

  “Just Craddock.”

  “What do you think, John?” asks Creston once the speakerphone is off.

  Mason sits back and rubs his chin thoughtfully. “If she disappears now, first place they’ll look is Browning’s dump.”

  “She’s obviously not said anything?”

  “About what?”

  “Anything,” says Creston.

  Janet is talking — mainly religion, but Peter Sampson doesn’t care. A woman’s voice in his home has taken ten years off the old-timer.

  “I won’t be needing anymore enemies,” he whispers to Trina and she sniggers briefly at her patient’s malapropism before looking worriedly in Janet’s direction.

  “You two aren’t —?” she starts, but Sampson angrily cuts her off.

  “No. Of course not. Daena’s an angel. Angels don’t do things like that.” Then he bends to whisper in Trina’s ear. “And God watches everything we do so I have to be careful.”

  “Oh, no,” mutters Trina under her breath. “She’s roped you in, has she?” But she puts on a smile as she says, “I’m very pleased for you both.”

  Bliss’s mind is in such turmoil that he finally picks up the phone. She answers. “Yolanda — I have to see you.”

  “I don’t think that is a good idea.”

  He hears the coldness. She is shutting me out. Quick, I need an excuse.

  “I have some of your clothes.”

  The silence as she seeks a rebuff is deafening.

  “You really should have them,” he says to fill the void. “I…” she starts then pauses. He senses her reluctance to relent, but he waits.

  “Okey-dokey,” she concedes eventually. “On the seafront — L’Escale in half an hour.”

  The phone goes dead. She won’t talk. She can’t talk. She loves me and she knows it. If you love her let he go, but why should I let her go. She loves me. She always loved me. Klaus should let her go, not me.

  The bar L’Escale is as deserted as the rest of the jaded resort, but at least it’s open. Bliss wants to grab her; shake some sense into her — You’re mine, Yolanda. You’re mine— but all he manages is a weak, “Hello.”

  “I’m sorry, David, Klaus is coming. I have no choice.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  The meeting lasts an hour, but it’s over in the first minute. He begs and pleads, but Yolanda is unshakeable. “I am really sorry. I’m just not available at the moment. I’m promised to someone else.”

  “At the moment?” Bliss questions. “What do you mean?”

  Yolanda shrugs. “Just give me a little time, David.”

  “And you’ll come back?”

  “Perhaps. Maybe things won’t work out with Klaus.”

  “Maybe they will,” he says, and he knows he’s lost her as he walks away with his eyes on the ground.

  At least I don’t have to try to change history, he tells himself in consolation as he spies the fortress on the island. The Man in the Iron Mask really did die of a broken heart.

  Bliss’s phone is ringing as he opens the door to his apartment. His heart leaps — she’s changed her mind again — but it is Daphne.

  “David. Are you all right?”

  Some woman just run me over with a steamroller, he wants to say, but he doesn’t want to explain, so he snaps, “Yes. What did you want?”

  “I think I’m onto something, David,” she says conspiratorially, but Yolanda is the only thing on his mind, and he doesn’t keep up as she explains her theory that the three Creston children were all murdered and Doctor Symmonds is hiding something.

  “That’s why they sent her to Canada,” she is saying by the time he gets his focus.

  “Sent who to Canada?”

  “Have you been listening?”

  “Yes… no. Sorry, what do you want?”

  “I want to know if you have anyone who could do a bit of break and enter for me?”

  “What?”

  “I’d do it myself, but I’m not quite as slim as I used to be.”

  “Daphne, all you’ll need is a lawyer if you do things like that.”

  Aha! A lawyer, she thinks. “Great, David,” she says. “I knew you’d have an answer.” Then, armed with an excuse, she phones Samantha, his daughter.

  “I’m really worried about your father,” she claims.

  “Don’t worry. He’s in love,” says Samantha, catching on immediately.

  “I thought he was ill.”

  “It’s the same thing, Daphne. At least it is when it hurts.”

  “The old unrequited love kick.”

  “No, not exactly,” says Samantha, but she’s not sufficiently sure of the facts to explain. “Anyway, what can I do for you?”

  “I need to get a hold of some medical files,” explains Daphne, then fills in the young lawyer with detai
ls of the Creston deaths before outlining her suspicions about Symmonds. “The funny thing is that the police paper-work’s missing and the doc who signed the records and death certificates reckons he doesn’t remember them.”

  Doctor Peter Symmonds has concerned himself with nothing other than the deaths of the young children since Daphne’s visit, and he is finally driven to call Creston.

  “Symmonds,” he announces himself when he’s put through to Joseph’s private line.

  “Peter —” starts Creston cordially.

  “Someone’s making inquiries.”

  “About?”

  Joseph Creston is well aware of the subject of the doctor’s call, as is Trina Button when Daphne phones her.

  “Three kids in four years and the doc doesn’t remember,” Daphne complains, her voice full of incredulity. “The Crestons are the biggest family around here. You know, Creston chocolates?”

  “Yeah. We get those here.”

  “Anyway, Amelia Drinkwater remembers all right, and it was nothing to do with her. Well, not directly.”

  “Indirectly?”

  “She claims that Joseph Creston dumped her and went off with Janet. She called her a trollop, but she’s a sour old witch.”

  “So would I be if I was in love with an heir to a fortune and he dumped me and pushed off with someone else.”

  “Anyway,” says Daphne, “the only place I can think that there might be something incriminating about the deaths would be at the doctor’s place. I’ve spoken to David’s daughter; she reckons there’s no chance of persuading a court to give me a search warrant.”

  “PIs don’t use warrants,” says Trina, laughing. “PIs use stealth.”

  “I’m getting just a little bit past —”

  “Don’t worry. I’m coming over.”

  “What?”

  “Janet’s safe now. I can’t get back into that Beautiful dump. I’ll get an overnight flight.”

  “Oh, to have that kind of money,” sighs Daphne as she puts down the phone.

  “England!” exclaims Rick when he arrives home from work and walks into a heavy suitcase in the hallway.

  “It’s Daphne,” explains Trina with a pained expression. “She needs me.”

  “But you’ve only just got back from that retreat centre.”

  “That was weeks ago,” she claims. “Anyway this isn’t for my health, it’s for Daphne’s.”

  “How long?”

  “Thanks ever so,” she says breaking into a smile and kissing him. Then she turns as she heads out of the door with her suitcase. “There’s banana curry in the fridge… make sure you take the guinea pig for a walk.”

  chapter ten

  By the time Trina’s 747 gently kisses the Tarmac at Heathrow the following morning David Bliss has crashed in the South of France. He’s worked his way through a litre of wine and enough brandy to pickle a dozen peaches, but the pain in his heart is so severe that he’s considering a bottle of Aspirin.

  “She will call… She will call,” he repeats like a mantra, but by midday the silence gets to him and he’s forced out to walk the lonely quays again.

  Trina has studied her manual for PIs during the flight and found the section on mobile surveillance particularly riveting.

  “This is great,” she breathes as she practises trailing unsuspecting drivers as she leaves London for Daphne’s Hampshire home.

  The narrow roads and zippier cars of England are seen as a bonus to Trina as she whizzes the rented car in and out of traffic with the alacrity of a rally driver. “Got ya,” she yells time and again as she sticks to the tail of vehicles when they switch lanes to avoid her.

  “Move over, I’m coming through. Oh shit!” she shouts to the air as she battles her way into an impossible gap. Private eyes ought to be allowed to have sirens like police, she tells herself as she races a set of changing lights. She loses, but it doesn’t stop her, and she gives a friendly wave to the driver of skidding truck. She’s out of earshot before his shouted insult catches up to her.

  “Right,” says Trina as she hits a roundabout at double the posted speed, then she panics. “Or is it left?” The stream takes her, but she’s on her third circuit when the truck she cut off at the traffic lights catches up.

  “Hey. Yer a crazy freakin’ lady,” yells the driver as he uses his forty tons of gravel to squeeze her onto the wrong exit.

  “Rats,” says Trina, realizing she is headed back to London, so she makes a U-turn into the path of a taxi.

  “God, the drivers here are real aggressive,” she complains to Daphne an hour later when she arrives. “Always on their horns and swearing.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” admits Daphne.

  “No wonder they have so many accidents,” continues Trina as she sips a cup of tea in Daphne’s living room. “I saw at least three near misses.”

  “Well. You’ll have to be very careful,” warns Daphne, but she is anxious to move ahead with her plan to infiltrate Peter Symmonds’ archives so she pulls out her carved soap-stone chess set to help explain her strategy.

  Vancouver’s ace private investigator, or so he would like to believe, also has a plan in mind when he phones Creston.

  “Craddock, Vancouver,” says the PI with as much weight as he can put into the two words. “The target’s minder is on the lam.”

  “In English please, Mr. Craddock.”

  “Just Craddock. The crazy woman who’s been minding your wife has taken off. One of my associates picked her up on a B.A. flight to the U.K. last night.”

  Craddock has no associates, just a client working at Vancouver airport who happens to owe him a favour — several favours.

  “Only, I was thinking,” continues Craddock, seeing his future bank balance ballooning, “if you were looking to get your wife out, now might be a good time.”

  Creston puts his hand over the mouthpiece and sits back in thought.

  “Sir?” asks Craddock after a few seconds.

  “Call back tomorrow,” spits the executive gruffly. “I’m thinking.”

  Dr. Peter Symmonds eyes Daphne coldly as she stands at his front door.

  “I was wondering about that chess game,” she prattles on, careful to avoid his gaze. “Only you looked as though you might be grateful for someone to give you a game.”

  Symmonds hesitates long enough for her to add a little pressure. “Of course, I’d quite understand… only I’m on my own as well. And I just thought you might like a bit of company.”

  “I was having an afternoon nap,” Symmonds lies as an explanation for his apparent reticence.

  “Daphne… Daphne Lovelace,” she says, smiling while holding out her hand. In her other hand is a confectioner’s box tied with a red ribbon. “I brought a couple of éclairs… fresh cream… naughty but nice,” she adds as a peace offering.

  “All right,” he says, relenting and opening the door, and, as he guides her through the disused consulting room to his private quarters, she asks, “Do you still see patients?”

  “Not really. Just a few old friends who don’t trust the kids who practice today.”

  “Bunch of cowboys,” scoffs Daphne, as if she has frightful experiences to share.

  “Quite.”

  Symmonds was a good chess player in his time but he’s been playing solitaire so long he’s lost his edge. The disquiet caused by Daphne’s presence, and some apparently wacky plays, keep him off balance, and no one is more surprised than Daphne when she wins the first game.

  “Checkmate,” she shrieks triumphantly, but the look of dismay in the old doctor’s face suggests that she’s more likely to win if she loses.

  “How about a cup of tea and a chocolate éclair?” she proposes, leaving him no alternative, and she starts to rise with the kitchen in mind.

  “I’ll make it,” he says patting her back down, but she gets up anyway, explaining, “Old bones… need to stretch.” Then, as he heads into the adjacent room, Daphne saunters to the rear window.


  “I’ll bet this is very pretty in the summer,” she calls out as she surveys the overgrown rubbish heap that was at one time a back garden.

  “It used to be. It’s got away from me since the wife died.”

  Daphne peers deeply into the undergrowth, but it’s nearly four and in the wintry twilight she sees no sign of Trina amid the brambles and lilacs that have rampaged since Symmonds’ wife’s sécateurs ceased to cut.

  “Maud used to spend most of her time out there,” Symmonds carries on nostalgically, making Daphne jump by his nearness, and she spins to find him peering over her shoulder.

  “Oh!” she exclaims. “I thought you were making the tea.”

  “Almost ready,” he says, skipping back to the kitchen. “Kettle’s almost boiled.”

  “Where are you? Where are you?” mutters Daphne under her breath as she returns to the garden and searches for Trina. Then she spots movement in a neighbour’s oak tree.

  “Oh no! Wrong garden,” she murmurs between clenched teeth as she wills Trina to look her way.

  “Do you take milk?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Trina. Trina, she mentally yells, and after a quick check over her shoulder she frantically signals to the woman below.

  “Sugar?”

  “No thanks,” she calls, then spots a table lamp. “It’s getting dark,” she carries on as she picks up the lamp and waves it back and forth across the window.

  “Are you all right?” questions Symmonds entering with a tray.

  “Oh yes,” says Daphne, holding the porcelain-bodied lamp high and peering at the base. “I was just wondering if it was Meisson.”

  “Royal Albert,” says Symmonds, carefully placing it back on the table. “I was a G.P. not a brain surgeon.”

  “Right,” says Daphne, still unsure if Trina got the message.

  David Bliss, on the other hand, is getting the message. Two dozen unanswered phone calls leave him in no doubt that his chance of getting back his lost love is rapidly slipping away.

  “She’s even moved,” he tells Samantha as he holds back the tears. “I made some inquiries and found her place. It’s empty. She’s gone, Sam. She’s gone.”