Oops! (Alo Nudger Book 10)

by John Lutz

  “The fire department says the balcony broke away because the concrete was old and cracked around the rerods,” Hammersmith said.

  “Rerods?”

  “That’s what construction guys call those round reinforcing rods, like the one Claudia grabbed onto. Over time, the concrete gets weathered or chipped away around them, and if they’re used for structural support, they can bend or lose contact, and whatever they’re helping hold up can come down. Remember when the Kingshighway viaduct collapsed a few years back?”

  Nudger nodded. At two in the morning, fortunately when no one was around to be killed or injured, tons of concrete had suddenly roared down. It had taken the city months to dispose of the rubble, and now there was a new Kingshighway viaduct, improbably but beautifully lined with countless decorative street lights.

  “Same thing,” Hammersmith said. “Old concrete structure, and its time came.” He squinted at Nudger with his cop’s cool gray eyes. “There’s nothing suspicious about this, Nudge. The other balconies on Claudia’s building are the same way, real safety hazards. The owner’s gonna have to remove or rebuild them all.”

  Nudger wiped his hand down his face. He was perspiring even after sitting in the cool hospital room with Claudia. “You really believe that balcony collapsed by itself?”

  “In an official capacity, I have to believe it.”

  “What do you believe in an unofficial capacity?”

  “I doubt that this had anything to do with anything, Nudge. Accident’s occur.”

  “Sounds like a bumper sticker.”

  “Bumper stickers are the philosophy of our age, Nudge. And Claudia’s building is old enough to have developed structural problems. It was built in nineteen twenty-five.”

  “With those balconies?”

  “Well, that I don’t know. Maybe they were added later. Say, during the depression.” Hammersmith fingered three of his horrible green cigars protruding in cellophane wrappers from his white shirt pocket. “But if you isolate this incident, it has every earmark of being an accident.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “You don’t have to. You’re a private citizen, Nudge. You can believe it was a ray from a UFO did the deed.”

  “I’ll at least check and see if there was a sighting nearby,” Nudger said. “Got time for a cup of coffee?”

  Hammersmith glanced at his wristwatch. “Sure, as long as Claudia’s asleep. She going home tomorrow?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt if she stayed here a couple of days. For her own protection.”

  “I thought you said the balcony collapsing was an accident.”

  “I think it was, Nudge. But nothing in life is sure. Dracula never really died, and we have the option of going to prison instead of paying taxes.”

  “Are you operating on a hunch instead of the facts?” Nudger asked, remembering their earlier phone conversation.

  “On friendship,” Hammersmith said, shaming him.

  Nudger bought two cups of coffee from a vending machine in a nook down the hall and was quiet. He figured Hammersmith must have been on some kind of debating team in school.

  When Hammersmith had gone and he was sure Claudia was safe and down for the night, Nudger left the hospital.

  Before driving home, he stopped by his office and picked up the day’s mail. He drove with one hand and riffled through the stack of bills, coupons, and advertisements with the other. A square, dark blue envelope near the bottom of the pile made him pause. He remembered a stack of such envelopes on Willa’s desk, in Wayne Hart’s home office.

  When Nudger opened the envelope and examined its contents in the light of the traffic signal at Manchester and Sutton, he was surprised to find he’d received an invitation to Wayne Hart’s party.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The invitation mailed to my apartment doesn’t say party,“ Lacy told Nudger the next morning over the phone, “it says soiree.”

  “That just means they’ll serve croissants.” Nudger turned up the air conditioner in the window near his desk, then settled back in his chair.

  “Are we going?” Lacy asked.

  “After what happened yesterday, we’re definitely going.” He told her about Claudia almost being killed when her apartment balcony gave way.

  “She gonna be okay?” Lacy asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

  “The doctors say so.”

  “You think the balcony collapse was a murder attempt, Nudger?”

  “I don’t know for sure. What do you think?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe we can gain some insight at Wayne Hart’s soiree. Though we should be insulted; we weren’t on the original guest list, so our invitations were mere afterthoughts. And since the party’s tonight, I don’t have much time to find something attractive to wear that’ll conceal a gun.”

  “Stop trying to talk like you’re Kinsey Milhone.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A character in a series of books Claudia reads. Female private investigator.”

  “No kidding? There are more of me?”

  “No,” Nudger said, “not of you. Have you talked to anyone at National Triad about them saving half of Millman’s life insurance money and splitting it with us?”

  “Sure. I told you, leave that to me and don’t worry about it. I’ve been with a young exec there name of Lance Cintamon and I know we can work a deal.”

  Nudger wondered just what Lacy meant by ’been with’ but didn’t ask.

  “You going to see Claudia today?”

  “Soon as I hang up,” Nudger said.

  “Tell her I hope she’ll be okay.”

  “I will.” He was surprised by this bit of civility from Lacy.

  “Better not tell her we’ve got a date tonight.”

  Lacy was laughing when she hung up.

  Incorrigible.

  Claudia was sitting up in bed eating breakfast when Nudger entered her room at Incarnate Word.

  “They want to keep me another day,” she said, around a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

  “Good idea.”

  She took a sip of what looked like tea. “I feel good enough to go home. Besides, I’m not sure my insurance will cover another day.”

  “I’ll talk to the doctor about that,” Nudger said.

  “Talk to him about me going back to my apartment.” She sounded adamant. He knew he had a problem.

  “We’ll see what he says. They look at those X rays of your hip again?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then you should stay here. For all you know, you’ve got a hairline fracture.”

  “It’s probably just a bruise.” She finished her eggs and wiped her lips with a napkin.

  “You look beautiful,” Nudger told her, “even without makeup and with bruises.”

  “You sound like a sadist. Go see if you can find that doctor—Shirehap or something is his name—and tell him I’m ready to be checked out.”

  “You’ve got it backward,” Nudger said, concerned about her, sure, but at the same time getting a little aggravated by her attitude. “It’s the doctor who tells you if you’re ready.”

  “I know how I feel.”

  And he knew the uselessness of arguing with her. He stood up from his chair and tucked in his shirt where it had worked out above his belt at his sides. “I’ll go see about those X rays.”

  “Nudger?” she said, her voice softer. “I’m sorry about my mood, the way I talked to you, but I really do feel better.”

  “Good.” He walked over and kissed her on the forehead, as she had a bit of scrambled egg stuck to her lower lip.

  “You want me here because you’re worried about me, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean, you think my balcony falling might not have been an accident.”

  “I have my doubts,” he told her.

  She stared at him as if seriously considering his position.

  “I still need t
o get out of here,” she said.

  He left to see if he could find the doctor.

  One of the nurses directed Nudger to a small nook with a chair and a potted plant in it and he heard her page a Dr. Sirak. He sat and waited, watching patients in varying degrees of pain or discomfort pass in their hospital robes, sometimes aided by visiting friends or relatives. A man with a heavily bandaged head was rolled past on a gurney, his eyes closed and a peaceful expression on his face. The nurse and uniformed attendant pushing the gurney were smiling as if they’d just shared a joke. Nudger wondered if the man had died and they hadn’t noticed.

  Within five minutes a dark-haired man with sensitive brown eyes, wearing a rumpled green surgical gown and carrying a sheaf of bulging file folders, approached Nudger. On the breast of the gown was a plastic name tag that said he was DR. JOSEPH J. SIRAK, JR.

  Nudger stood up from the chair and introduced himself Dr. Sirak waited patiently for him to get to the point.

  “I’m a friend of one of your patients, Claudia Bettencourt.”

  “I recognize you now from yesterday,” Dr. Sirak said. “Do you want to know her condition?”

  “Something more than that, Doctor. You see, there’s good reason to think she’s safer here in the hospital than at home. The accident that injured her ... well, it might not have been an accident.”

  Dr. Sirak regarded Nudger calmly with unblinking eyes. “Have you reported this to the police?”

  “Yes, of course. They, uh ...”

  “Don’t believe you?”

  “Not exactly that,” Nudger said. “It’s more that there’s insufficient evidence. At least as far as they’re concerned.”

  Sirak sighed and shifted his weight. He smiled at Nudger. “You’re obviously very much concerned about Miss Bettencourt,” he said. “What exactly do you want, Mr. Nudger?”

  “For you to convince her she should stay in the hospital for another day.”

  “All right.”

  Nudger was surprised. “Huh?”

  “I was going to keep her over anyway, Mr. Nudger. The new X rays on her hip are inconclusive. Probably she’s fine, but it would be wise to take precautions.”

  “A third X ray?”

  “No, that isn’t necessary. I want a specialist I know to interpret both sets of X rays.”

  “Will there be any problem with her insurance?”

  “Tell her not to worry. I’ll take care of that.”

  Nudger grinned and pumped Dr. Sirak’s hand. “I appreciate this, Doctor. It takes a lot of worry off me.”

  Dr. Sirak shook his head. “Don’t think I’m varying my treatment of a patient because you asked me to, Mr. Nudger. I wouldn’t keep her over if I didn’t think it desirable.”

  “Of course not.” Nudger resisted the urge to wink.

  “I’m serious. We’re dealing with medical insurance here. Nobody diddles Blue Aide.”

  “Wouldn’t want to,” Nudger said hastily.

  Dr. Sirak tucked his chin in and looked at Nudger the way a traffic-court judge once had, after Nudger pleaded innocent to reckless driving and explained that he’d swerved his car to avoid running over a stray kitten.

  It had been true, but Nudger had been found guilty and had to pay a fine.

  “I’ll go talk to her now,” Dr. Sirak said, and walked away in the direction of Claudia’s room.

  Nudger stayed the rest of that day with Claudia, slumped in the chair near her bed, reading the same People and Reader’s Digest over and over. Claudia slept most of the time. He suspected the nurse had given her a sedative to keep her from being restless and demanding.

  He didn’t leave the hospital until five that evening, when he drove to his apartment to shower and dress for Wayne Hart’s soiree.

  When he walked into his apartment his phone was ringing. He picked it up, said hello, and found himself talking to Lacy.

  Or rather, listening.

  “No sense taking two cars tonight, Nudger. Want me to swing by your place and pick you up on the way to Wayne Hart’s?”

  Nudger cringed, seeing himself and Lacy arriving at Hart’s plush party in her haughtily finned pink Cadillac convertible.

  “I’ll pick you up,” he said.

  “Okay, great! I can hardly wait.”

  He didn’t like her tone. “This isn’t a teenage date, Lacy.”

  “Claudia doing okay?”

  “She’s better, thanks.”

  “I think you’re gonna love my dress, Nudger.”

  Nudger chewed an antacid tablet after he hung up. He could never be sure if Lacy was putting him on.

  People like that dealt in the unexpected.

  They were like throw rugs waiting to be tripped over.

  They made him uneasy.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  When he pulled up in the Granada in front of her decrepit cottage at the Hostelo Grandioso, Lacy must have seen him through the window. The door opened immediately and she stepped outside.

  She was wearing an impossibly tight black dress made out of some kind of crinkly material. On her feet were black spike-heeled shoes that made Nudger wonder if she’d need her cane again to walk. The dress had a low neckline and a high hemline. Her short dark hair was fashionably mussed, and she’d made a pass at elegance with a simple string of pearls around her neck.

  “You look nice,” Nudger said, when she got in the car, thinking she looked as if she might be on her way to practice the oldest profession.

  She thanked him for the compliment and scooted over on the seat, showing a lot of leg, so she could close the door.

  “Like the dress?” she asked, as he made a left turn out of the parking lot.

  “Sure.” He was telling her the truth, in a way; what he especially liked about it was that it made it clear there was no place she might be concealing a gun.

  “You look nice, too,” she said. “At first glance the spots on your tie aren’t noticeable. And isn’t it a little warm for a corduroy sport jacket?”

  “The spots on my other jacket, along with the ones on my tie, might be too busy.”

  They drove in silence for a while.

  Finally Nudger said, “Claudia’s coming home from the hospital tomorrow morning. She might have a slight problem with her hip, but she probably only has some cuts and bruises that will heal within a few weeks.”

  “Claudia who?” Lacy asked.

  Nudger was sure she was going to cause trouble tonight.

  A white-jacketed security guard stood by the black wrought-iron gate to the Hart estate. He stared dubiously at the rusty Granada, but after Nudger gave him their names and showed the invitations, the guard used a sender on his belt to make the gate glide open.

  Nudger drove the Granada along the driveway toward the house until he ran out of room and had to park at the end of a line of cars. Some of the parked cars were luxury models, Mercedeses, BMWs, and Cadillacs unlike Lacy’s. But others were almost as old as Nudger’s car, though they were sporty models and were in much spiffier condition.

  He and Lacy got out of the Granada and followed another uniformed security guard’s directions along a lighted flagstone path to the back of the sprawling house, where a white canopy was erected over an area where about twenty people were standing around talking, munching on hors d’oeuvres and sipping drinks from a bar set up at the far end of the canopy. Everything was illuminated by soft floodlights that for some reason attracted no insects. The women were dressed up, and all of the men had on suits or sport jackets. Nudger saw that his was the only corduroy coat there, all right. Music for elevator listening was seeping softly from concealed speakers.

  “I’m glad you two could come,” a high, raspy voice said.

  Wayne Hart was suddenly standing in front of them. He was wearing a dark blue suit, black shirt and a red and blue ascot, and, incongruously, blue-and-white Nike jogging shoes. In his pudgy right hand was what appeared to be scotch or bourbon mixed with water in a heavy glass with a pebbled base. />
  “It’s beautiful here,” Lacy said. “I’ve never seen it at night.”

  Hart smiled as if in pain. “The reason for my invitations was to settle whatever suspicions you might have about me and this place. You seem to have gotten the idea that something illicit is going on here, and it simply isn’t so.”

  One of the security people caught Hart’s eye and motioned to him.

  “Excuse me,” Hart said. He put on a fat-padded smile. “Help yourselves to something to eat and drink. Mingle and talk. Enjoy. Please.”

  He hurried away to attend to host duties.

  “There’s one of the beneficiaries,” Lacy said, pointing toward Warren Tully as Nudger and Lacy walked beneath the shelter of the taut white canopy. The music was louder there, but still unobtrusive.

  “It’s not so much the five beneficiaries who interest me,” Nudger said, “it’s the other twelve names on the guest list.”

  “We’ll have a chance to see them here,” Lacy said, “along with their guests.”

  A waiter approached them with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Lacy took a miniature sandwich, Nudger a spiced meatball skewered with an oversized toothpick. As they made their way toward the bar, nodding and smiling at people, he increased his estimate of the number of guests to about twenty-five. Several men did an admiring double take when Lacy and her dress passed by. Several women gave her different kinds of looks. Nudger didn’t know whether to feel proud or ashamed to be seen with her.

  He and Lacy got glasses of white wine at the bar. Beyond the bar, the lawn sloped away. There were lights and activity down at the dock, and lights on the big cabin cruiser were glowing.

  “Let’s separate and mingle,” Nudger said.

  “I’ll mingle,” Lacy said, “but I prefer to stay in one piece.”

  While Nudger was thinking about that, she walked away from him. He wished she wouldn’t wriggle so much, but maybe it was her injuries, causing her to limp slightly in the preposterously spike-heeled shoes.