True-Life Adventure

turned up at Kogene at precisely 7:00 P.M.
    Marilyn saw me in the reception room, not even in her office. Her demeanor wasn’t what you’d call welcoming. In fact, she reminded me of the sculpture in front of the Bank of America building— the one nicknamed “The Banker’s Heart”. It’s the biggest, blackest, hardest rock in the Western Hemisphere.
    “I agreed to see you,” she said, “because I thought you could do us a lot of harm if I didn’t. I never underestimate the power of the press.” She spoke bitterly. That kind of hatred and suspicion was one of the reasons I quit journalism.
    “But I want you to know,” she continued, “that I consider talking about poor Lindsay to be revealing family secrets. I don’t think that anything I’m going to tell you could be of any possible journalistic interest and I ask that it be considered off the record. Do you agree?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “All right. What can I do for you?”
    “You can tell me what you and Lindsay talked about that Friday.”
    “Jacob told you about Terry’s illness, didn’t he?”
    “Yes.”
    “Lindsay was very upset. I mean extremely upset, Mr. Mcdonald. As I said, I don’t like talking about family secrets, but I was frankly worried about her. She said the pressure of Terry’s illness was getting to her, that she needed time off.
    “She said she was having headaches and couldn’t think straight. She was planning to take a leave from work. So what she wanted me to do was intercede for her with Jacob— she wanted me to persuade him to let Terry spend some time with her, to let her take Terry to Disneyland, things like that— just to be with her.”
    “What did you say to her?”
    “Frankly, I was very worried about her stability. I said that of course I’d intervene, but that maybe now wasn’t the best time, that maybe she should think about getting professional help.”
    “You mean see a shrink.”
    Marilyn looked very pained, as if such a thing couldn’t possibly happen in the Koehler family, even to its ex-members. “I really thought it had come to that.”
    “What was her reaction to the suggestion?”
    “She got very defensive. I guess that should have been a clue, but I honestly didn’t realize things were as bad as they obviously were— I mean, I had no idea she’d kidnap Terry, or I’d never have let her pick her up.” She paused, as if reflecting, blaming herself a bit. Then she said, “You won’t tell Jacob any of this, will you? I don’t want him to know how bad Lindsay’s condition actually is. You can understand that, can’t you? He’s under a lot of strain, and nothing would be served by increasing it.”
    I didn’t answer her. I said, “Did Lindsay mention anything about Jacob’s treatments?”
    “What treatments?” Her face went white.
    “His treatments for Terry’s leukemia. Isn’t that what you’re working on here— a leukemia cure?”
    “I can’t answer that. But Jacob certainly isn’t treating Terry. Where on earth did you get that idea?”

CHAPTER 19
    “A guess,” I said. Jacob had said “off the record,” and I always take that to mean “entre nous.” If he hadn’t told his wife, who was I to interfere?
    “A bad guess,” she said. She had recovered her equilibrium, but I thought I’d given her a shock.
    I said I supposed so and I thanked her for her help.
    Even though I had a date with Sardis, I drove back slowly, trying to figure things out. Marilyn thought Lindsay was crazy. Even Lindsay’s close friends hadn’t been too sure about her stability during the last few months. So maybe she was crazy. But what was crazy, anyway? Jacob wasn’t what you call your shining example of radiant mental health, and Joan was a little bonkers and Sardis was delightfully neurotic and then there was me. How much crazier could Lindsay be than any of us?
    And what, specifically, was Marilyn afraid of? She didn’t want Jacob to know how bad Lindsay’s condition was, but what difference did it make, really? If she hadn’t taken Terry to a cancer quack, what did Jacob have to worry about? Hell, he was a cancer quack himself, and now Marilyn knew it if she hadn’t known it before. What did she think Lindsay might do that could be so terrible?
    I was thinking so hard about all this I was practically creeping across the Bay Bridge, but no one seemed to care much. I had nearly the whole bridge to myself.
    Perhaps Lindsay had some history of mistreating Terry. After all,