must leave you. You may wait until we lock up if you want to, but I have work to do.”
She crossed the room and disappeared into a corridor beyond the kitchen.
The old man finished mopping and courteously lifted down two chairs from a nearby table and set them on the damp floor for us.
I checked my watch. It was now nearly twenty-five minutes since I’d spoken to Savannah, almost twenty since we left Dixie, and no sign of either woman.
“Maybe there’s something in her bag that could tell us where she lives,” said Heather when another five minutes passed and conversation dwindled to nothingness.
I pulled the Fitch and Patterson brochures from the bag, then the packets of fried chicken and another of ribs. Beneath that was a mahogany doorstop carved in the shape of a frog sitting on a lily pad, a flashlight, several chiffon scarves, and a much-folded page torn from an issue of
A little black book with her own address circled in red would have been nice, but the bag held nothing that helpful.
As we sat there, an occasional man or woman, one with three young children, came in for bananas, and Heather watched each one with covert distaste.
“You know what must be the worst thing about being poor?” she said suddenly. “The clothes you have to wear. Old clothes are so—so
Beneath her own rich blue jacket, she wore a white silk shirt. A purple and red silk scarf was tucked into the open neckline. Her nails were short, but neatly manicured and painted a pink that matched her lipstick. Clearly color was important to her, but—“Believe me,” I said. “Drab, faded clothing is not the worst thing about being poor.”
“Savannah must feel the same way,” she said, ignoring my remark. “You have to admire her for that. Even if her mind’s a little scrambled right now, she hasn’t been defeated. She still finds a way to wear colors.”
“Which is odd, if you think about it,” I said idly. ‘1 heard that she never wore color before. Just black.”
We were abruptly joined at our end of the table by a belligerent man who hunched and mumbled over his banana as if afraid we were going to try to snatch it from him—another manifestation of the Law of Unintended Results.
Civil rights for the mentally handicapped and the main-streaming of psychotics back into the community are commendable goals, but when Reaganites emptied out our federally funded institutions, they sent federal patients home without compensatory federal funding. I’ve had a lot of these unfortunates in my court, and I’ve seen the despair of their families, who’ve been pushed to the end of their financial and emotional limits. When I say that I’ll ask to have a relative put on a waiting list, we both know that our county facilities can’t begin to service the number of seriously disturbed people who need help.
This man who guarded his banana from us probably wasn’t violent, but you can never be sure. I’d have felt more comfortable if I’d had my usual bailiff near at hand.
After thirty minutes, it seemed clear to me that Savannah wasn’t going to show. Heather would have waited longer but Yolanda Jackson was ready to lock up, so I gave her the tote bag and asked her to please hang on to my purse if Savannah should happen to bring it in. “And if Dixie Babcock comes looking for us, would you tell her I’ll be sitting on the sidewalk in front of her building if she’s not in her office?”
Yolanda looked at the man who’d been sharing our table. Where I saw latent paranoia, she seemed to see an ordinary human being who had no reason not to be helpful. “Hey, George? You gonna be sitting on the steps for a while? If this lady’s friend comes looking for her, tell her she’s gone back to the office building, okay?”
She gave his arm a squeeze.
“Yeah, okay,” he mumbled, and as we drove away, I looked back. He was sitting on the very top step, watching, and he gave me a thumbs-up gesture.
A few exhibitors were still straggling out of the GHFM building when Heather dropped me off a few minutes past ten. Inside the lobby, the guard gave me a dubious look as I passed, but I flashed my badge and kept going to the elevators.
Everything was silent on the sixth floor and the tap of my heels echoed loudly on the polished tile as I hurried past Vittorio E’s gold-and-ivory display and turned the corner past the motion furniture’s archway.
Dixie’s door was closed and the office looked dark. I could see a note taped to the door, but I didn’t go down the hall to read it because I suddenly noticed that Kelly Crisco had left one of those large dummies face down in the swing.
Except that he was clutching the cushions in a way no dummy could.
The cowboy boots looked familiar.
“Chan?”
He didn’t move and his breathing seemed shallow and irregular.
I touched a pulse point on his neck and the heartbeat was almost undetectable. An odor of alcohol, chocolate and sour vomit emanated from the cushion beneath his head, and he didn’t respond when I shook his shoulder.
I flew back down the hall to the elevator and cursed its slow descent every inch of the way.
As the door opened to the ground floor, I was startled to see Dixie talking to the guard. She smiled and said, “Perfect timing. Ready to go?”
“Call an ambulance,” I gasped. “It’s Chan. Up at the Swingtyme place. I think he’s dying!”
7
