Chapter 4 #2
I was funny but decided not to argue with her.
Instead, I read through the parts of the Three Friends file I hadn’t looked at yet.
Roberta had gone to the winery with two friends, Zoey Calder and Patty Gauthier.
Each statement gave their addresses, phone numbers and where they worked, so I knew how to find them.
Zoey’s statement made reference to how much fun Roberta was.
It was apparently Patty’s fiftieth birthday that day, which was why they were there in the first place.
She claimed they heard their friend screaming, but that Melanie had gotten to the ladies’ room first and wouldn’t let them in.
She and Patty hovered near the door calling out encouragement until the ambulance got there.
Patty’s statement was similar, though she complained that after the ambulance left Melanie brought their bill and Patty, the birthday girl, ended up paying it.
The statement didn’t say whether she’d used cash or credit.
Finally, it was time for us to go in. The nurse led us back to the exam room. The room where Dr. Blinski was killed. The room where I fell on top of his corpse. It had been redecorated, of course. Now it was pink and blue with teddy bear wallpaper. Still, being there was just a tad creepy.
The nurse took Emerald’s vitals: her pulse by holding two fingers on her bicep, her temperature by aiming a contraption into her ear, blood pressure with a tiny cuff on her thigh.
Finally, the nurse sat Emerald up and then left her there for a moment.
She wobbled, then the nurse picked her up and was about to give her to my grandmother when I reached out and took her.
“Are you here for anything specific or just a routine check?” she asked my grandmother.
“Routine,” I answered.
“Okay then. The doctor will be in shortly.” Still not to me. Now I knew what women felt like at a car dealership.
After the door shut, Nana Cole said, “Don’t ask a lot of questions.”
“Why not? We’re not paying by the question. We might as well get our money’s worth.”
“I’ve done this before, you know. I can answer any questions you have.”
“You haven’t done it recently. Things change.”
“Change isn’t always better. Sometimes it’s just change.”
The doctor came in. She was in her early forties with gray hair that curled like a Brillo pad. The door wasn’t closed behind her before she began to baby-talk at Emerald. I set the baby on the exam table in a sitting position. She maintained it for longer than she had with the nurse.
“Very good,” Dr. Tammy said. She picked up the baby and lay her on her stomach.
We waited until Emerald had wiggled around and finally rolled over.
I nearly said, ‘Good girl.’ She been rolling over for several weeks, and given Dr. Tammy’s previous questions I knew it was something she was supposed to be doing.
“Are you feeding her solids?”
“We should have started months ago,” Nana Cole said. “He wouldn’t let me.”
I glared at her. She was trying to rat me out to the doctor.
“Well, she’s got good head and neck control, and she’s almost sitting on her own.” She’d picked the baby up and put her back in a sitting position, bracing her back with one hand. “Does she seem interested in your food?”
I had no idea. Typically, I fed them first and they were usually in the living room while I ate. I gave my grandmother a questioning look.
“Does that really matter?” she asked. “She’s supposed to eat when she’s supposed to eat.”
The doctor explained, “When I was a child, doctors recommended keeping babies on a strict schedule, they didn’t believe in babies doing things early or late.
I believe you let the baby lead. Try putting her in the high chair and giving her some rice cereal or mashed banana.
If she spits it out, don’t force it. Try again in a week.
Or even a few days. Her weight is in the ninety-fifth percentile. There’s no reason to force food.”
“Great. We’ll do that.”
It’s not that I was in a rush for Emerald to grow up, it’s just that I was in a rush for her to grow up. For one thing, diapers. For another, someday I’d need more help with my grandmother. She might be useful by the time she’s eight. Maybe even seven.
Wait, what was I thinking? I wasn’t hanging around here for eight years.
I was going back to Los Angeles. I was going back soon.
Maybe I’d just bring Emerald with me? Leave my grandmother to fend for herself?
Okay that was all really complicated. There were a lot of details to work out.
I was going to have to think it through. Another time.
Before the visit ended, Dr. Tammy asked, “Have you heard anything from Emerald’s mommy?”
“She and Emerald’s daddy have gotten married, and they’ll be setting up house soon.”
“What? When did you—” I shut up. There was a lie afoot here, I just wasn’t sure who was being lied to, me or the doctor.
“Well, I hope they set up nearby. I’d love to watch Emerald grow up. She looks great. I’ll see you back in about a month. Stop at the desk and make an appointment on your way out. If it turns out, if Mommy comes back and you don’t need it you can go ahead and cancel.”
The door shut and I glared at my grandmother, “Did you talk to my mother and not tell me?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“They’ll be setting up house soon?”
“That’s what people do after they get married, isn’t it?”
“You know she doesn’t follow those kinds of rules. People don’t usually get married after they have the baby, people don’t usually have a baby when they’ve got a twenty-four-year-old son, and people don’t usually disappear and abandon their kids. Do they?”
She sighed and said, “I’m going to wait in the car.”
As she wobbled out of the exam room I called after her, “Don’t you dare try to get in all by yourself.”
We hadn’t locked the car. It was Masons Bay, after all. Still, I had the keys in my pocket. I took them out, aimed the fob at the front of the building, and pressed LOCK. Hopefully, that would do it.
I secured the baby in her carrier and went out to the front desk.
Over Emerald’s screams, I asked that they send an invoice for the visit then made an appointment for the next visit in a month.
I walked out of the building half expecting to see my grandmother spread out across the sidewalk.
But she was leaning on her cane next to the passenger door looking like she wanted to spit on me.
“You locked the doors.”
“I did. Let me get the baby settled and I’ll help you in.” I unlocked the doors with the fob. As I reached for the back door, Nana Cole opened hers and made to scramble in. I set the baby carrier down in a snowbank and got behind her in case she fell. Luckily, she didn’t.
When she got into her seat, she saw me there and said, “Get off me.” I decided to interpret that as ‘Thank you.’
I got the baby situated in the back seat, climbed in behind the wheel, then drove three blocks and parked again in front of Fudge You!
“What are you doing?” Nana Cole asked.
“I need to go into the fudge store for a minute or two.”
“No, you’re not giving the baby fudge. You heard the doctor, rice cereal or mushed up fruit.”
“That’s not why—I need to talk to someone who works there. Okay?”
“Oh. Fine.” Before I got the door fully open, she added, “Get me half a pound of chocolate pecan.” She opened her purse and dug around for her wallet. She gave me a five and I got out of the SUV.
Inside, Fudge You! was a narrow storefront with glass cases on one side and two marble-topped tables in the center. I knew from previous visits that the fudge was made on the marble and that somehow made it special. Don’t ask me how.
Behind the cases, dressed in a red-and-white smock, was an awkward looking girl a few years older than me. She wasn’t who I was looking for, that was clear.
“Hi, I’m looking for Zoey Calder. Do you know when she’ll be here?”
“I’m Zoey.”
“Oh, okay. Are there two Zoeys?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, maybe somewhere there’s another one. Who are you?”
“I’m Mooch Milch. I’m working for—”
“I’m sorry, what did you say your name was? Moo-moo?”
I really needed to give up on that nickname. “Henry. Henry Milch. I’m working for an agency investigating the fall Roberta LaCross took at Three Friends winery. You were with her that day?”
“Yeah, I was.”
“You and Roberta are friends?”
“We are. Yeah.”
I reminded myself to ask open-ended questions. “How did you become friends?”
“You think it’s weird, don’t you? Because Bobbie’s older. We play trivia together at Main Street Café. We’re on a team together called the Boomers. Most of the team are baby boomers. Except me and Bobbie, I’m a millennial and she’s… gosh what comes before boomers?”
“Got me,” I said, trying to smile. “And how do you know Patty Gauthier?”
“Trivia. She’s an actual boomer.”
“So, what is Roberta like?”
That got me a frown. “It’s so weird that you keep calling her Roberta. She’s Bobbie. Everyone calls her Bobbie. Everyone who knows her. I mean, she’s in Main Street Café most nights.”
“I’m from Los Angeles.”
“I guess that explains the outfit.”
I almost asked what was wrong with my outfit.
I was wearing my cheap blue puffer jacket, rubberized winter boots, lavender leg warmers (yes, I know no one has worn leg warmers since the year I was born, but I found them at a thrift shop, and they are warm), my lime green sweater—which I’d spot cleaned, and a black-and-white piano key scarf.
“Do you play the piano?”
“No, I just thought it was a cool scarf.” I’d been asked that question a half dozen times, I was going to have to find another scarf or start piano lessons.
“What is Rob… Bobbie like?”
“Bobbie is the best. Such a character. So much fun to be with! The stories she tells. She’s had a really incredible life.
I mean, yeah, she repeats her stories a lot and that annoys some people, but the stories don’t always turn out the same, so they never annoy me.
I mean, she’s had a hard life. Those ex-husbands, I’d feel sorry for her if she wasn’t so funny all the time, you know? ”
“Tell me what happened the day you went to Three Friends. It was Patty Gauthier’s fiftieth birthday?”
“It was. There were supposed to be a lot more of us. But, well… Patty is someone who speaks her mind. I think it’s refreshing, but some people think it’s just being a bitch. Actually, it was embarrassing that almost no one came. Patty didn’t deserve that.”
“Did you guys get drunk?”
“I didn’t.”
“Did Bobbie?”
“Bobbie’s a lightweight.”
“You said she’s in Main Street Café most nights. She’s not drinking?”
“Well, I mean, she is… Honestly, I think someone gives her a ride home most of the time.”
“Right before she fell, was Bobbie slurring her words?”
“Oh, I mean, not really.”
“Not really?”
She smiled and said, “I don’t really remember what I’m supposed to say.”
“You’re supposed to tell me the truth.”
“Well… yeah.”
“You and Patty were teasing Bobbie about slurring her words?”
“That makes us sound awful. I guess, yeah. That’s true but it wasn’t like serious. It was just a joke.”
“She must have been slurring her words if you teased her about it.”
“It’s better for Bobbie if I say she was slurring her words, isn’t it?”
“Would you lie to me so Bobbie wins her lawsuit?”
“Oh my god, no. I’m not like that. What she said was, ‘I have to go to the bassroom.’ Like it’s a room for fish.”
I decided to switch tracks. “Did you go into the bathroom after Rob… Bobbie fell?”
“I stood outside the door. There was water on the floor.”
“Was the faucet running?”
“I don’t know. Why would that matter?”
“What else do you remember from that afternoon?”
“We were having fun. Bobbie was on. You know, cracking jokes, telling stories. Back then, she had an apartment on Crystal Lake. This dentist owned the place, like three apartments right on the water. Bobbie’s faced away from the water, which is why she could afford it at all.
The two in the front were weekend rentals all summer.
Anyway, she was telling stories about the tourists and how crazy some of them are. And the bugs.”
“The bugs?”
“There’s a lot of bugs out that way. Mosquitos, gnats, moths, fireflies, all that. The tourists would spray themselves with all sorts of chemicals, but Bobbie didn’t care. She just let the bugs bite, you know?”
Honestly, one of the best things about winter in Michigan was no bugs.