Flamethrower - Maggie Estep [14]
“Does your husband’s condition have anything to do with his having been kidnapped?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“You have to call the authorities, Jody.”
“Don’t start with that again. I have a plan.”
“This is crazy.”
“I’ll grant you that. And I’d like to reiterate that you don’t have to do this, Ruby. I never intended to involve you in anyway.”
“It’s fine.”
“You’re a kind and lovely woman.”
“That and two bucks will get me on the subway. But thank you. I appreciate the sentiment.”
“Don’t be flip.”
“I’m not.”
They fell silent.
The traffic wasn’t too bad, and Jody had to circle Tobias’s block only three times to find a parking spot.
Tobias’s street was a pleasant, mostly residential block. There were nice brownstones. A dry cleaner. People walking designer dogs.
The building was a three-story brownstone that had been sectioned off into small apartments. The husband’s apartment was on the second floor in the back. As Jody fumbled with the keys, Ruby stared at her psychiatrist’s chewed-down fingernails. She understood their provenance now: psychiatrist parents and a mental defective husband.
After getting the door open, Jody hesitated. Ruby stood behind her, waiting. She was on the verge of saying something when Jody walked forward.
The apartment was a large, L-shaped studio with two floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over a dense green garden. A massive sleigh bed was pushed against one wall, a desk and computer against another. A TV roosted on a stand near the bed. There was no sofa.
Jody walked over to the desk, sat down, and touched the computer keyboard. The screen woke up, and Ruby saw that the desktop pattern was a win photo of a racehorse.
Ruby came closer and stood looking over The Psychiatrist’s shoulder as Jody opened the husband’s e-mail program. Ruby and Ed shared a computer, but Ruby didn’t think she’d ever be able to breach his privacy and read his e-mail. Even if Ed’s leg had been cut off.
Jody suddenly got up and walked away from the computer. “I can’t go through his mail like this. Would you do it?” Her face was pinched.
“What should I look for?”
“I don’t know,” Jody shrugged, “anything suspicious.”
Ruby had no idea what might be construed as suspicious, but she sat down anyway and started reading through the man’s saved mail. There was some correspondence between Tobias and a woman named Bess who he seemed to play Scrabble with frequently. There were several notes from Violet detailing billing for the three horses she trained for Tobias. Nothing of consequence.
Ruby started looking through the outgoing mail and found something more interesting. Right there for anyone to see. Or at least anyone who happened to go through his e-mail. Ruby felt her stomach tighten.
6. UNFIT
The note was addressed to Elvin.Miller@gmail.com, but there wasn’t any salutation in the e-mail itself: “She will be in her office at that time. You can call her there. It will all go smoothly.”
It could have been a note about almost anything, but Ruby knew this was it. She glanced over at her psychiatrist, who was on her hands and knees, looking through a shoebox in the closet. It will all go smoothly. Had Tobias had himself kidnapped? And who would be idiot enough to arrange that kind of thing and then leave evidence of it on his computer? It didn’t make any sense.
“Jody?”
Jody was startled and dropped something. A pair of scissors. Why was she holding a pair of scissors? Ruby had a brief image of her psychiatrist stabbing her with the scissors. Then she thought tangentially of Edward Scissorhands and, for the thousandth time, wished he actually existed. She got like that sometimes. Insanely whimsical. A girl had to get through the day.
The Psychiatrist arched an eyebrow at Ruby.
“You should see this,” Ruby said.
Jody got up, smoothed her dress over her legs, and came to look over Ruby’s shoulder. She was still holding the scissors.
“Oh,” Jody said after reading the note a few times.
“Did he have himself kidnapped?” Ruby asked.
“Evidently, yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes, very possibly,