“What did they say about the dress?” Frenchie asked. “Was there a label?”
“Label?” Angela parroted thoughtlessly, her thoughts clearly elsewhere. “I didn’t think to ask.” She sat down.
“But . . . isn’t that why you called, to find out about the dress?”
With effort, Angela gathered her wits and, with a deep breath, focused them on her companions. “I’m sorry. Yes, Frenchie. That’s why I called. I got through, but they say the girl has disappeared from the hospital.”
“The girl? The girl with the dress? From the beach?” said Frenchie.
“Yes. Very strange.”
“Strange?!” said Frenchie. “Beyond strange, I should think. Nobody noticed someone carrying a girl in a coma out of the hospital?”
“Oh, no. No, she came out of the coma,” said Angela. “A nurse was with her when it happened. Very agitated, she was, but apparently in full possession of her mental faculties, at least at first.
The addendum had an ominous ring. “At first?” said Albert.
“The nurse settled her. Told her where she was, that she’d been asleep, and so on. Then she went to get the doctor and, when she came back with him, the girl went berserk and said she didn’t want a heart. ‘I don’t want a heart!’ That’s what they said the nurse said the girl said. Over and over.
“They gave her a sedative and she went to sleep. When the nurse came back to check on her a couple of hours later, she was gone.”
“Gone where?”
“No sign,” said Angela. “She was gone.”
“Was her dress gone?” said Albert, thinking that a girl wandering the streets of Auckland in a hospital gown wouldn’t be hard to find.
“I didn’t think to ask . . . anything . . . about the dress,” said Angela. “Not much of a detective, I’m afraid.”
“No,” Albert agreed. Even he would have thought to ask that. “I think she took it with her. She had time. That’s what they should be looking for, a girl in a brown dress with spots on it.”
“A sea-foam green dress, Albert,” Angela corrected. “With fleur-de-lis appliqués.”
Albert looked at the girl in his memory. He’d have said brown with spots, but women were more particular about that kind of thing, so he deferred. “That’s what they should be looking for.”
“I expect that’s what they’re doing,” said Angela. “They’d have thought to look, of course.”
Albert didn’t share her confidence in the constabulary in bulk. They subscribed to the kind of groupthink that had put Tewksbury and Tanjour Trelawny—both innocent—in jail. At the same time, they had failed to put the manifestly guilty in jail. Perhaps the police in New Zealand were different. “Yes,” he said, in lieu of voicing these doubts.
“Ten-to-one that nurse would know where that dress came from,” Frenchie declared. Adding, in response to the questioning eyes that swiveled toward her. “She’s a woman, isn’t she? Seeing a lovely, bespoke dress like that? Of course she’d have taken a peek at the label. Couldn’t resist. I’d have done. What about you?”
Angela dropped her head a bit and smiled. “Yes. I would have.”
Albert was among aliens.
A second round of phone calls ensued during which Jeremy Ash and Wendell returned and, together with Albert, learned more than they cared to know about Frenchie’s first and second husbands and the traits, characteristics, and habits that had, in the end, robbed them of her affections.
Returning fifteen minutes later, Angela’s expression was of triumph. “Raphael!” she declared. “Of Hanoi.”
“Viet Nam,” said Albert with a nod. “North.” He surveyed his companions to judge, by their expressions, whether this was common knowledge.
“We need to alert authorities there,” said Angela. “What kind of relations do we have with Viet Nam these days? I don’t even know.”
“How?” said Jeremy Ash.
Angela sighed. “Back to the phone . . .”
Albert had a different thought. “Where would someone from Viet Nam go if she woke up in a hospital in New Zealand?”
The question made its way, eye-to-eye, around the little gathering.
“You got an idea?” said Jeremy Ash.
Albert waited for a moment to see if his mouth would come up with one. It didn’t. He thought. He knew from experience that the first thing people in a strange land look for is someone who speaks their language. Was there a Chinatown in Auckland—only for Vietnamese?
He began to deliberate aloud. “She woke up in a strange place, where they don’t speak her language. She saw the nurse. The nurse saw that she’s awake and went to tell the doctor. The doctor comes in the room, and the girl starts screaming.”
“I don’t want a heart. I don’t want a heart!” said Angela, in the role of an Asian girl in the sea-foam green dress. “Then they give her a shot to settle her down, and the first chance she gets, she runs away from the apparent safety of the hospital into the night, a complete stranger in a strange land.” She looked at Albert. “Where would she go?”
Albert didn’t think that was the question. At least, not the first question. “No,” he said flatly. “She didn’t scream when she saw the nurse. Why did she scream when she saw the doctor? And what did she mean when she said ‘I don’t want a heart!’”
“My head’s spinnin’,” said Frenchie, seizing the article in question with both hands and rocking it gently back and forth.
“She recognized the doctor,” said Albert. At last his mouth had something important to say. He looked from one to the other of his hearers. “She recognized the doctor.”
“And she screamed because she knew him, and that was because she’d seen him before,” said Jeremy Ash.
“On the Venice Regent,” Albert said, more an announcement than speculation.
Chapter Thirteen
For Frenchie, this failed to bring her head to a standstill. She dragged her palms down her cheeks, elongating by a good half-inch the questioning eyes she raised to Jeremy Ash.
Suddenly a picture began to form from the agitated fragments of mosaic littering Albert’s brain. “They’d need a doctor,” he explained. “To do the . . . what they were doing.”
“Good Lord!” said Frenchie and Angela in concert. “Poke me in the eye!” Frenchie added. “Of course they would.”
“And it was him,” said Jeremy Ash. “The doctor she woke up to in the hospital! She knew him, he knew her, and he knew that she recognized him . . .”
“So first thing, he gives her a sedative to keep her quiet,” said Wendell. “Maybe the nurse was in it, too?”
“If she was,” said Frenchie, “the girl didn’t know it. She didn’t scream ’til she saw the doctor.”
“I don’t want a heart,” said Albert softly. “That was opposite.”
Angela raised an eyebrow. “Opposite?”
“If he’s . . . that kind of doctor . . . If she knew what he was going to do . . . wouldn’t she have said ‘don’t take my heart’?”
“I need a drink,” said Frenchie, rising. “Two drinks.” She set off as on a mission.
“Okay, okay,” said Angela, attempting to coral the kittens. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” She poked a finger up for each point as it was made. “The girl was from Viet Nam. Let’s assume she was kidnapped—somehow—and kept aboard the Venice Regent which, after leaving Pitt Island, runs aground off the coast of New Zealand. She seizes the main chance, escapes, jumps overboard—makes it to shore, in a coma somehow.”
Five fingers.
“We find her on the beach and call the police. They take her to the hospital. She’s in a coma for several days. Wakes up, sees the doctor, and screams, ‘I don’t want a heart!’”
Ten fingers.
Albert half expected her to take her shoes off and resume counting on her toes. Instead, the punctured balloons of her digits deflated into her palms. “What would that doctor have to do with the Venice Regent?”
“Business on the side, I�
�d say,” said Wendell. “National Health don’t pay much.”
Jeremy Ash, more apt to discern figures in the shadows than the others, said, “What if there’s a lot of ’em.”
“A lot of who?” Angela asked. Frenchie, her brain sufficiently fortified by three quick shots of cognac to grapple with the incomprehensible, resumed her seat across from Albert.
“Doctors and pirates,” said Jeremy Ash, warming quickly to his subject. “All over the place—South Africa, India, China. Who knows?”
“A network,” said Angela. “There’d have to be, wouldn’t there?”
“Sure. Doctors to find patients willing to pay. Kidnappers with assignments to get just the right victims. Pirates to steal the ships and take those victims—or their parts—from one place to another . . .”
Wendell joined in. “And more doctors to do the operations on the ships.”
“And the fish get what’s left,” said Albert to himself.
“I thought we'd decided the pirates didn't know what the ship was when they took it,” said Frenchie.
“We're just 'what iffin',” said Jeremy Ash. “Looking at possibilities.”
“If that’s the case,” said Angela, with a shiver, “that’s what that doctor was. That would explain why she was afraid.
“We need to find out who this doctor is,” said Angela. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Why Woolie-Woolie?” said Frenchie. All heads turned toward her. “I mean, I don’t claim to know much about medicine, but . . . you can’t just take liver from one person and plonk it in somebody else, can you?”
“She’s right,” said Jeremy Ash. “You give somebody the wrong type of blood, it could kill ’em. Must be the same with parts.”
Who would know better, Albert thought, than someone who – like Jeremy Ash – had spent the better part of his life in hospitals where doctors took him apart in bits and piecces?
Angela considered this. “So, that being the case, these pirates, or kidnappers, or whatever you want to call them, don’t just go grabbing people willy-nilly . . .”
“Or Woolie-Woolie,” said Wendell, with a snort.
Angela ignored him. “They must know exactly who’s getting the part—and what blood type they are, or what-have-you. So they need to find a match.”
“How do they do that?” said Albert.
“Good point, Al,” said Frenchie. You can’t go around asking people what their blood type is, and when they find the right one just bang him on the head.”
“Or her,” said Albert.
The answer was obvious to Wendell. “A doctor would know.”
Frenchie looked up. “What doctor would know anything about Woolie-Woolie? We don’t even have a qualified medico out here—which is why Dr. Chan had to come out. All we have is Steamy Pyle and a nurse. Metiria Patuwai.”
“That’s a name?” Albert asked, not wishing to proceed with that assumption only to find out, later, that it had been an epithet, which is what it sounded like.
“Spot on, Al,” said Frenchie. “I expect she’s with them down at the cooler.”
“Is she from the island?”
“To the Patuwais,” said Frenchie, “the rocks are newcomers. They’re Moriori, or were. She’s one of the last with enough blood to make the claim. Went off to school in Auckland when she was about 12—like most island kids. Stayed there through nursing school, and then came back.
“Which makes her an exception. Been here ever since.”
“She’d know Woolie-Woolie’s blood type,” said Albert.
Frenchie laughed her trademark, descending glissando laugh. “If you’re tryin’ to tie Metiria in with that lot,” she said, “you’re shinnin’ up the wrong tree. She’s the life of the island, is Mettie. Isn’t that so, Mill’?” she called, drawing the innkeeper into the conversation.
“What’s that?” said Milly, who had been dying for an opportunity to stop pretending not to be eavesdropping from the near-distance. Her ears had begun to stretch with the strain. She wandered toward the group, taking a perfunctory swipe or two with her chamois at the porcelain cherub candlestick that had been the object of her attentions for the last ten minutes and was relieved when those attentions were directed elsewhere.
Frenchie made her current with the conversation.
“Mettie!” she blurted at the conclusion of the telling. “Mettie! That girl’s a lamb! Nearest thing Chatham’s got to a saint, I’d say. Wouldn’t you say so, Fran?”
Frenchie’s mouth twisted expressively in less that complete agreement. “Well, if your saints can wash down half a stuffed pig with a six pack of beer at midnight, and get up at three to deliver a baby clear the other side of the island, I guess you could say so. Anyway,” she said, turning to Angela more than anyone else. “Mettie’s got nothing to do with any of that lot. Trust me.”
“Trust me,” Albert echoed, just above a whisper. If that last few years had taught him anything, it was that no one—even those with the best of intentions—could be trusted absolutely. Especially when they said “Trust me.” “Who else would know Woolie-Woolie’s blood type?” He allowed the silence to pass the question around.
Suddenly, a thought came to Milly. “He had pneumonia not two months ago, didn’t he, Fran?” She turned to Albert without waiting for affirmation. “Woolie-Woolie did.”
Albert failed to see what this piece of information had to do with anything, and his expression said so.
“She’d have taken blood,” the innkeeper continued, “and sent it off to the mainland for testing. They’d know.”
“Who would?” said Jeremy Ash asked, even as Albert was inhaling to ask the same thing.
“How should I know?” said Milly. “Whoever you send blood to for testing, I should think. Some laboratory or hospital? Can’t be that hard to find out. I can ask Mettie. As for the girl, if I was her, I’d make tracks for the Vietnamese embassy, if that’s what she is—Vietnamese. You think I’d raise a stink? Too right, I would!”
Milly rose, in Albert’s estimation, from the level of simple innkeeper to that strata occupied by those who, like Jeremy Ash, grasp the obvious and then scatter their observations about like pearls before swine.
“Oink,” said Albert.
“Pardon?” said Frenchie.
“It would be in the paper, then,” said Jeremy Ash. All eyes made him the center of attention. “Wouldn’t it? I mean, a girl stumbles into your embassy, and tells you she’s been kidnapped and—who knows what else. ’Course they’d tell the authorities. Which means the press would find out. ’Specially if they’re not s’posed to . . . and . . .”
“We don’t get today’s paper ’til tomorrow,” said Frenchie. “It’s not printed ’til after the plane leaves Auckland. That’s why we don’t call it news . . .”
“We call it ‘history’,” said Milly, stealing Frenchie’s thunder. “I can call my sister in Wellington and see if she’s read anything.” Detaching herself from the group, she worked out her words in shoe leather.
“What if she didn’t get there?” Albert hypothesized.
“?”
“If it’s true—what we’ve been talking about, those. . . people,” the word stuck in his throat. So far had the perpetrators of such depravity fallen in his estimation that he bridled at numbering them among the race of which, however peripherally, he was a member. Some new designation had to be made. “Those evil people . . . would not want her to get to the embassy.” He surveyed his audience. “They’d have thought of that—just like . . .” What was her name?
“Milly,” said Frenchie, in response to the question on Albert’s face.
“Milly,” said Albert. “Yes.” He thought if Milly had made that deduction, then Professional Evil People would have done the same.
“They’d have tried to intercept her,” said Jeremy Ash.
“Intercept,” echoed Albert. “If there is a lot of them—a network, like Angela said—then they’d just send out a message to find he
r before she got to the embassy.”
“Which means, if there’s no mention of her in the paper, she’s back in their hands,” said Jeremy Ash.
“Or worse,” said Wendell.
Frenchie objected. “Wait a second! We’re bein’ a bit previous, don’t you think? I mean, we’re shovin’ off in a ship still tied to the dock. Let’s wait and see what Milly has to say.”
They didn’t have to wait long. Milly didn’t so much drift as tumble back into the conversational vortex and even before she spoke it was evident from her expression that she was not the bearer of glad tidings.
She settled her rump on the arm of Albert’s chair. “Not a breath of it,” she said.
“You’re sure?” said Frenchie, hoping against hope.
“Gwennie may not be the tightest stitch in the net,” said Milly, in reference to her sister, “but she can read. Not a word of any kidnapping.”
Jeremy was about to expand the list of possibilities, but Milly, anticipating this, plowed on. “Or anything of the kind. No pirate ships. No missing people or shady doctors. Just normal things, mostly about the cleanup from the ’quake.
“Power’s back on in most of Auckland, by the way,” she added sotto voce for the benefit of those who might be interested.
“That’s not good,” said Frenchie. “It means either she’s still stumblin’ around the streets of Auckland, or . . .”
Nobody wanted to give voice to the “or.”
Albert was in a quandary. Something was telling him they should go back to Auckland and search for the girl. Something else was telling him there were still answers to be found on Chatham Island. Something else was telling him “What are you doing, Albert? The world is a terrible place, and you’re just a piano player! Run away before you get it all over you!”
“Is there a church somewhere?” his tongue wanted to know, at which his brain was surprised.
If Milly was nonplussed, she didn’t show it. “St. Augustine, in Te One. A few miles up the coast. Not big enough to hold more than a prayer or two, I should think. Short ones, at that.”
Jeremy Ash, however, was nonplussed. “What do you want a church for?”
Albert didn’t know. “Do you have a motorcycle?” For the second time in ten seconds, his brain was surprised by what his mouth was saying. Why did he want with a motorcycle? Then again, recalling Agnes Dei, the purple moped he’d left behind in Tryon, North Carolina— the purple helmet with sparkles on it, the wind in his face as it consumed the road at nearly twenty miles an hour—was exhilarating. Rather than object, it decided to await the unfolding of events.
Improvisato Page 17
