“From such an examination, halitosis in the vagina she could catch from you, no?”
“I know you!” Penny was sitting up on the examining table and staring at the pudgy doctor.
“Ah, so. But of course. Is the young lady with the shpritz annihilating the bunny.”
“Are you Dr. Kilembrio?” Penny was surprised.
“But of course.”
“But you’re the doctor in the laboratory who runs the rabbit tests.”
“So I’m moonlighting a bit. From the wee-wee analysis alone a living a man should make? No. So I’m scraping up what I can on the side.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?” Penny said indignantly. “In my position, you knew I was in the market. You have no idea how hard it was to find someone like you.”
“Soliciting, I’m not,” Dr. Kilembrio told her sternly, thumping his round basketball of a stomach for emphasis. “Like rubber they are maybe, but ethics I am having.”
“I’m sorry.” Penny apologized.
“All right.” The doctor rubbed his hands together briskly. “So getting down to business we are. Miss Carridge, a sheet you’re throwing over the yummies and wheeling the patient downstairs to the operating room.”
“Downstairs?” Penny inquired.
“Yes. In the basement I’m scraping up my extra cash. Is more private there and also has furnace for disposal of evidence if necessary.”
With the fat doctor leading the way, Miss Carridge wheeled Penny’s sheet-covered body up to a thick door, unbolted it and then pushed her down a ramp to the cellar. It was a large, sterile-looking room. Even the huge furnace at one end was painted an antiseptic white.
Waving Miss Carridge off, Dr. Kilembrio set about examining Penny himself. His movements were professional and impersonal. When he was finished, he nodded to Penny. “Is no problem,” he assured her. “Unpregnant you’ll be in a jiffy.”
But as he bent to his task, there came an unexpected interruption. There was a pounding on the door at the top of the ramp and the muffled sound of a hysterical female voice. Dr. Kilembrio and Miss Carridge looked at each other with mutual apprehension.
“Covering her up and keeping her covered,” Dr. Kilembrio hissed. “I’m answering door to see what the happening is.”
“Lie still,” Miss Carridge instructed Penny as she covered her with the sheet from head to toe.
Dr. Kilembrio unbolted the door at the top of the ramp and positioned his body so that the person on the other side couldn’t see through the opening. The squat, middle-aged woman on the other side was shaking with anxiety. “My son, Doctor. He’s shot himself. Come quickly. He’s shot himself.”
“A moment. My bag I’m getting.” Dr. Kilemhrio latched the door carefully in the woman’s face and went back down to Miss Carridge. “Is bad,” he told her. “A thing like this could bringing the fuzz down on us like brick tonnage. I’m going to see if I can stop that happening. You staying with patient. Hearing bulls, you knowing what you have to do.”
Miss Carridge nodded almost happily. She knew what she should do. She walked with the doctor to the door and bolted it behind him.
To Penny, still covered completely by the sheet, it seemed like a very long time passed in silence. Then, faintly, the sounds of a police car siren reached her ears. The noise grew louder. It mingled with the sounds of Miss Carridge springing into efficient action.
Miss Carridge swung open the door to the huge furnace and backed away from the blast of heat given off by the roaring flames. She went behind the stretcher and pushed it to the brink of the fire. Then, humming to herself, she tipped the stretcher. Feet-first, the sheet-covered figure of Penny Candie was propelled into the inferno!
Miss Carridge closed the furnace door. Outside the sirens grew louder. She grunted contentedly. The sound of flesh crackling in flames was just discernible behind the noise of the sirens. It was too sudden for Penny even to have had a chance to scream.
She never even had a chance to say how much she disliked barbecues . . .
CHAPTER TWO
Turn back the clock . . .
Morning becomes electric. A circuit is completed, current flows, a clock-radio eases Pennington P. Potter into a new day. A razor is plugged into a bathroom socket and overnight bristles are removed from sleep-slack cheeks. Toast pops forth from between red-hot filaments and coffee gurgles from an A.C. perc-pot. Shortly, an automatic dishwasher hums into action and sloshes the breakfast utensils. Electrified into wakefulness, Pennington P. Potter is now ready to start the day.
At this moment there is no thought in his mind that he will end it by putting a bullet through his brain!
What Pennington P. Potter is thinking is that he must wake his mother, with whom he shares the brownstone duplex. He is steeling himself for this. Mrs. Potter, his mother, greets each new day as if it were a mountain of troubles deliberately placed in her path by her only son, Pennington. This morning is no different.
“Why,” she asked as she opened her eyes, “have you, only son, deliberately placed this mountain of troubles in my path?”
“I don’t understand. Could you rephrase the question, Mother?”
“I was having this dream,” she explained. “I was walking down a narrow lane and suddenly my way was blocked by this mountain of troubles. You were standing on top of it and jumping up and down with glee and bragging how you put it there deliberately. I don’t think that was very nice, Pennington.”
“I’m sorry, Mother.”
“I worry enough about you when I’m awake. I do wish you’d stay out of my dreams.”
“I’ll try, Mother.”
“Perhaps you should talk to your shrink about it. He must be good for something constructive,” Mrs. Potter said nastily.
“I wish you wouldn’t refer to Dr. Hitler as a ‘shrink,’ Mother. He’s a licensed psychiatrist and a qualified psychoanalyst. When you call him a ‘shrink,’ you’re only trying to shake my faith in him.”
“Why shouldn’t I? Doesn’t he try to shake your faith in me? Isn’t he always passing the buck to me for all your neuroses?”
“Not really. He’s simply helping me see the inevitable œdipal hangups that have resulted from our relationship.”
“Œdipal hangups indeed! What’s wrong with a boy kissing his mother good night?”
“Nothing. But when the boy is twenty-nine years old and the mother keeps kissing and the boy likes it, that’s not normal.”
“What’s not normal? A boy should love his mother,” Mrs. Potter insisted. “Your shrink is against mother-love, that’s what he is. And if you ask me, that’s his problem, not yours. But what can you expect from a shrink with a name like Adolph Hitler? Believe me, if he was healthy himself, he would have changed his name.”
“Dr. Hitler explained all that to me,” Pennington told his mother. “His name is one of the reasons he became an analyst. When he was younger he went through a real identity crisis. But if he’d changed his name he wouldn’t have been facing up to reality. That would only have been submerging the problem. So he went into analysis instead and resolved it. Now he says he finds the name useful in getting patients to release their aggressions toward him.”
“I’d like to release my aggressions toward him!”
“Why bother when you have me, Mother?”
“I never release my aggressions toward you! Never! Never! Never!” Mrs. Potter’s clenched fists pounded the nightstand beside the bed. “You’re my son and I love you!” Her voice mounted to a shriek.
“All right, Mother. Calm yourself.”
“I have never once released aggression toward you. Not once! And Lord knows I’ve had aggression! Lord knows I’ve had reason to have aggression! Lord knows you’ve given me reason! But have I ever shown it? No! Never!”