thought. She felt proud. They were a team on their way to something new.
She lounged back. Donna was reading. Dan B. and Lee continued to bicker back and forth over directions and exchange less than complimentary regards for one another, which was normal for a chef and a dishwasher. Vera took some time to just look around, let the vast countryside speed past her eyes. It was almost tranquilizing, the long open road, the encroaching ridge, and the fact that they hadn’t passed another car for miles. She felt free now, released from the cement confines of the city and from a relationship that had been false for God knew how long.
“Only one thing bothers me,” Donna suddenly said.
“What’s that?” Lee inquired. “Dan B.’s crane won’t rise anymore?”
“It rose just fine last night when I was at your mother’s house,” Dan B. informed him.
“Yeah, but what about your sister?”
“Would you two idiots shut up,” Vera snapped. She couldn’t imagine how Donna could put up with Dan B.’s profane sense of humor. “What were you saying, Donna?”
“The rep. It bothers me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Who’s going to want to spend big money staying at a country inn with such a reputation?”
Vera knew what she meant; she’d thought about that herself, and quickly came to the conclusion that they needn’t worry. “Forget it, Donna. It’s all a bunch of crap, and even if it isn’t, that stuff supposedly went on fifty years ago.”
“What stuff?” Lee turned around and asked.
Donna seemed enthused. “The Inn used to be a place called Wroxton Hall. It was a sanitarium.”
“What’s a sanitarium?”
“It’s a place where you study sanitation, you dick-brain,” Dan B. laughed. “Didn’t they teach you anything in reform school?”
“They taught me how to lay pipe with your mom,” Lee came back.
“Please, please, stop,” Vera pleaded. ”A sanitarium, for your information, Lee, at least in this case, is an insane asylum. Not like the mental hospitals of today. Back then they pretty much just locked the mentally ill away instead of treating them. That’s where they sent people who were schizophrenics and psychotics.”
“And male virgins, too,” Dan B. added. “So you better be careful.”
“Oh, that’s real funny,” Lee said. “Almost as funny as your last special. Remember? We ran out of veal for the medallion soup, so you used pork.”
“That’s right, skillethead, and you didn’t even know the difference, so blow me.”
“I’d need tweezers and a magnifying glass to bl—”
“And what Donna is just itching to say,” Vera interrupted, “is that this particular asylum ran into a few problems.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Well,” Vera hesitated. “Evidently, some people died there.”
“They didn’t just die,” Donna augmented. “They were murdered.”
