Page 17 of A Winter of Discontent for Henry Milch
“When did you and Bobbie stop being friends? You can answer that because it’s not part of your statement.”
She chewed on that for a moment, and said, “Last Spring. May, beginning of June. Yeah. It was June definitely.”
“What happened? I got the impression you were good friends.”
“She doesn’t have friends; she has people she uses.” I checked her ears to see if smoke was coming out. “She broke her arm. That’s what happened. Stupidly, I told her she could stay with me while she got better. I’ve got the room, or at least thought I did. When it happened, she needed to stay as still as she possible, so I took her in. Cooked for her, took care of her. After eight weeks she could do a lot more on her own, so I asked when she was going home. Come to find out, without telling me, she’d had some guys move her out of her apartment and put her things in storage. She was saving six hundred dollars a month living with me.”
“So, you threw her out?”
“Not for another eight months. It was the holidays. I couldn’t throw her out at Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. And then it was the dead of winter. And then she broke her wrist.”
“How did she do that?”
“I’d given her the master bedroom, my bedroom. It’s on the first floor and there’s an ensuite. I moved to the apartment abovethe garage. When I worked up the courage to tell her to get out, she tripped while walking across her—mybedroom. Apparently, she fell into the door and broke it. It took until June to get her out of here. She mooched off me for almost a year.”
I cringed a little at the way she’d used the word mooch. I had the feeling she wanted me to. I waited. Finally, she said, “After I threw her out, she went around telling people I’d treated her badly while she was recovering. Both times. That I wouldn’t hang out with her and play cards, that I wouldn’t cook anything she liked, that I just left her lying there week after week which wasn’t fair at all. I bought a new TV and DVD player for the bedroom, and I don’t even watch TV.”
“Was she drunk at your birthday lunch?”
She gave me a look that said she knew exactly what I was doing. After a moment, she answered. “No. She wasnotdrunk. And she wasnotoverserved. And I didn’t say she was in my statement.”
“Were you and Zoey teasing her about slurring her words?”
“That wasn’t alcohol. You can’t be much of a private investigator if you haven’t figured out she was on drugs most of the time.”
Okay, that was harsh. “Um… well… I only got the case a few days ago.”
“Well, you didn’t hear that from me. I’m not officially saying anything against her. There’s no telling what she’ll do.”
“Do you know what she was taking?”
“Some kind of antianxiety medication. Atta-boy?”
“Ativan?” I supplied. This was a little uncomfortable. Was I slurring my words? Did people notice?
“Yeah. That’s it. When she was staying with me, I saw that she had a giant bottle of it.”
“Do you know where she got it?”
Well, it was a relevant question, don’t you think?
“From a doctor. It was prescription.”
“Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Um… Is there anything else you left out of your statement?”
The flood gates were open, she said, “It was a mosquito bite.”
“What?”
“On her shin. She picked at it until it bled. She went into the ladies’ room to wash it off. She put her foot into the sink. That’s why she fell.”
“Okay, wait? An old lady put her foot in the sink?”
“She was very flexible. And proud of it. All you have to do is say the word yoga and she’ll spend an hour telling you she’s practically a yogi.”
“What about her shoe? No one mentioned that she wasn’t wearing her shoe? I mean, she did take her shoe off, right?”
“It was August. She had on this kind of loose sandal. I think they’re called slides. Way too young for her but… It probably didn’t strike anyone as odd that her sandal came off. I mean, she was on the floor. Why wouldn’t it?”
