Diane Davidson - Sticks & Scones

My sight clouded, then went black. I screamed for help and tried to cover my head, turn around, anything. I couldn’t catch my breath. I’d been listening to the roar of the vac upstairs, reading Tom’s personal correspondence –

My attacker hit me again and my chin slammed into Tom’s desk. My knees crumpled and I was sliding, helplessly, whimpering, trying to cover my head, my body afire with pain. This isn’t fair. Was I saying it or thinking it? Damn, damn, my inner voice supplied. My knees and then my body banged onto the basement’s cold floor.

John Richard had never said he’d love me always. But Tom had. The day of our wedding. I’ll love you forever, Miss G. Forever and ever.

As unconsciousness claimed me, I remembered Tom’s handsome face that happy day, and the sound of his warm promise.

I’ll love you forever.

-12-

Getting banged up is bad. Gaining consciousness is worse. From my years with the Jerk, I was acquainted with sledgehammer-wedged-in-the-skull pain. The worst part is that you suspect that if you’d used the brain inside your head in the first place, this might not have happened to you. I’d been told that on independent janitorial service was going to clean up the glass. Not some guy

masquerading as a window fixer. Damn again, I thought. You idiot.

Yeah, yeah, Tom had said something about not blaming yourself when you screwed up. So: Wracked with pain, lying sprawled on our basement floor, drowning in self-recrimination, I tried to talk myself into getting up on my feet again and calling for help. After agonizing minutes of thinking about moving, then searching for the least painful way to stand, I fought off nausea, trembling, and visual black clouds to get to my feet. Once upright, I gingerly touched my head until I found the beginnings of a lump. Agh! I sighed and looked around. Tom’s desk was clean, as in, nothing on it anymore. No papers. No files.

No computer.

I blinked and swayed dizzily. My watch said ten-thirty. I walked - slowly, taking steadying breaths - up the stairs, into my kitchen. I called and looked all around; no attacker in sight. Did we have any painkillers in the house? My brain offered no answer. In fact, my thinking was extremely fuzzy, even as to the location of the Cognac I used to make Cherries Jubilee. Everything in the kitchen seemed turned around… or different.

Wretchedly, I realized that things seemed unfamiliar because the smashed monitor of my kitchen computer lay on the floor beside the keyboard. The kitchen computer itself was also missing.

I started to cry. Then I yelled and cursed. Of course, there was no question that folks on the street might hear me.

But I didn’t care what the neighbors thought. My own shouted curses miraculously seemed to clear my brain, at least until I could pour myself a glass of Cognac from the dining-room cabinet. Of course, I’d learned in Med Wives 101 that you didn’t treat a head injury with alcohol, but my brain was screaming for reprieve from the pain. I had just taken a first naughty swallow when the front doorbell bonged, making my head spin. Great, I thought, things couldn’t get much worse.

I peered through the peephole at the smiling faces of Sergeants Boyd and Armstrong. Not exactly in the nick of time, were they?

“Somebody broke in,” I announced bluntly as Boyd, his barrel-shaped body somewhat rounder than the last time I’d

seen him, came through the door.

“Here? Just now?” asked Boyd, eyeing me, my trembling hand, and my glass of brandy.

When I replied in the affirmative, Armstrong, whose towering frame and fierce face contraindicated what I knew to be his gentle demeanor, said, “You look as if you’re in pain.” Since I’d seen him last, he’d lost a few more of the sparse brown hairs he combed so diligently over his bald spot.

I said, “I am. Got knocked over the head. But… come on out to the dining room. I know the two of you won’t have a glass of booze while you’re on duty. Before lunch, no less. But I’m treating a nasty bump.”

Boyd and Armstrong told me to wait. In the front hallway, they insisted on separately assessing my noggin, which involved painful pressing on my head, then unblinking assessment of my eyes. Both decreed I should see a doctor that day.

“I can’t. I have to go back to Tom. He’s resting at Hyde Castle.”

“You need to get attention,” Boyd insisted.

“Look, thanks, but I’m aware of the symptoms of severe head injury,” I replied. “Blurred vision, slurred speech, nausea, loss of memory, fainting, and sleeping too much. If I show any of those signs, I’ll call for help. Scout’s honor.”

Armstrong’s scowl deepened. “Show us where this happened.”

“I was sitting there,” I said after I’d led them to the bottom of the cellar steps. I indicated Tom’s swivel chair.

“I was whacked from behind.” I felt

inside my jeans pocket and repressed a sigh of relief. The disk was still there. I knew I should mention to Boyd and Armstrong that I’d downloaded Tom’s files. But I couldn’t. Not yet, anyway. I couldn’t even think. In fact, I did feel a bit dizzy. But I’d be damned if I was going to any damn doctor on this damned day. Was rage a symptom of brain injury?

“Can we go back upstairs?” I asked them. “I need to sit down. You might want to look in the kitchen, because whoever it was stole that computer, too.”

“You pass out on me, I’m gonna get fired,” Boyd announced glumly as we headed up the stairs. In the kitchen, Boyd called for help on his radio while I tossed out the rest of the brandy and made myself an espresso. The computer thief wouldn’t have left prints on my coffee machine, would he?

“To process a crime scene,” Boyd concluded to the dispatcher.

To process a crime scene at the Schulzes’ house, again.

“Can we sit in the dining room?” Armstrong asked me. “We need to get through some questions.”

In the dining room, Boyd opened what looked like the same smudged notebook he’d carried for years. I wondered if he ever bought new ones.

“So what were you doing in the basement?” he began gently. “I mean, what were you doing when you were sitting at Tom’s desk? Working on his computer?”

His black eyes bored into me. I swallowed. “No, not on the computer. I was …looking on Tom’s shelves, for our photo albums. I need a picture of John Richard Korman. You know, my ex. He was released last Friday. The Hydes want a photograph of him, since they need to know what he looks like in case he tries to get into the castle.”

“There were photo albums on the desk down there?” Armstrong looked skeptical.

“I’m not sure…” I lied. But I could not tell Boyd and Armstrong that I was seeking the identity of her. Moreover, I was not ready to admit I thought a) that my husband might be having an affair and b) that I was snooping around in his stuff to get the answer to a).

“I need that picture,” I repeated firmly. “And the photo albums are down there somewhere. I think,” I added. I was trying to sound confused in the aftermath of the attack. I knew full well that our

albums were in an upstairs closet.

“If they’re in the basement, we can’t get them now. We’ll taint the crime scene,” Armstrong murmured. “Do you have any ideas who might have hit you?”

I told them about the bowlegged man who’d showed up claiming he was sent to fix the window. I also told them about the woman in the car. Trudy would be eager to talk about the mysterious beauty in the station wagon, I said, and she had her license plate number, too. Armstrong checked to see if either the glass truck or the car was still outside. Neither was.

“Could you please tell me about Andy Balachek?” I asked when he returned.