Moonbird Boy by Abigail Padgett Page A

Aldenhoven sighed and handed a case file to Estrella. "Hand-shaped bruises on the baby and the three-year-old sister has worms as well as lice," she outlined the case. "Reporting party is a barrio priest. There won't be any problem getting the petition. And Bo..." she glowered levelly through contact lenses tinted to make her blue eyes violet, "... this isn't the tropics. You'll get the next case that comes up. Don't go anywhere."
    Bo saw her chance. "I thought I'd take the free time to do a little decorating in here," she said. "Maybe redo my bulletin board, change the plants around, you know."
    Madge believed in sterile work spaces, almost as zealously as she believed in the Protestant work ethic. It was rumored that even plastic plants died in her office.
    "Nick is at the dentist," Madge said with sudden purpose, grabbing a pen lodged in her flyaway white hair and pointing it at Bo, "so you might as well take his new case. It's a six-year-old boy whose father was accidentally shot up in the desert near Campo. If you can find the mother or some other family before the weekend we can close it without involving juvenile court. The file's on Nick's desk. Let me know by this afternoon what you turn up. Your hair, by the way, looks much better short."
    When the door had slammed shut after Madge, Bo looked at Estrella. "Accidentally?" she said. "Mort wasn't shot accidentally, he was murdered!"
    "You don't know that. It might have been an accident, Bo." The word was pronounced "bean," a sure sign of anxiety. Estrella's Spanish accent always escalated with her stress level. Bo experienced a warm flutter of neck muscles. Guilt. She hadn't meant to upset her best friend.
    "You're right," she admitted. "And I know taking this case is pretty dumb, but I want to do it for Mort." Striding the two steps necessary to cross the tiny room, Bo hooked both thumbs in the waist of her skirt and stared into a spindly bottlebrush shrub beneath the window. "He was... really close to me."
    Estrella feigned interest in the case file on her desk. "Andy will be back from Europe in a week," she mentioned. "I hope you and Mort didn't get, you know, too close." Estrella's vision of Andrew LaMarche escorting Bo to an altar had reached obsessive proportions.
    "Our favorite pediatrician," Bo answered, "has not been supplanted in my dubious affections or my bed, if that's what you're asking, and it is what you're asking. When Andy heard I was in the hospital he wanted to cancel that training program on child abuse prevention on foreign U.S. military bases he's doing for the government, but there was really no point. I wanted him to stay in Frankfurt. He's sent flowers every other day. Also an enormous cuckoo clock, three pairs of kid gloves I'll never wear unless I move back to Boston, and an illustrated strudel cookbook in German. My relationship with Mort Wagman was different. We were friends."
    Estrella was pensive. "Maybe in a place like that, where everybody's just trying to get on their feet, that could happen," she mused. "I still don't really understand what Ghost Flower Lodge is, to be honest. And what are you going to do with a German cookbook?"
    "I thought I'd run an ad on Craigslist for a German cook," Bo answered. "And Ghost Flower Lodge is a subacute psychiatric facility, like a rehabilitation center, the only one of its kind. The Neji started taking in people with chronic psychiatric illnesses years ago. It's a special purpose they have, a tradition. Now famous people go up there to rehab after a hospitalization or a medication change. Movie stars, pro sports types, everybody." Bo unbuttoned the cuffs of her blouse and rolled up the sleeves, creating wrinkles. It felt better.
    "But not everybody pays at Ghost Flower," she went on. "Half the guests are indigent, trying to stay alive on Social Security Disability benefits. Ghost Flower is actually licensed by the county as a board-and-care."
    "Ycchh!" Estrella said. "I've seen those places,