by Jane Haddam
“What’s the matter?” she said again.
I pointed to the couch. The rattle had started. It was very low in Sarah’s throat. It sounded like wood scraping against wood.
“What is that?” Marilou said.
The room was fluid and uncertain. Walls bulged and sucked as if they were breathing. The carpet made waves.
I thought of Sarah in Grand Central Station, eyes shining, hands tugging nervously against the strap of her shoulder bag, arrived in Mecca at last.
“I haven’t had any sleep,” I said.
“I don’t care if you haven’t had any sleep,” Marilou said. She was shrieking, but it was very far away and I didn’t mind. “Tell me what’s going on,” she said.
She grabbed me by the front of my sweater and shook me. I saw her shaking me but was unable to feel it. I saw the room and the waves and Sarah on the couch.
Somewhere on Mars, Marilou Saunders was contorting into the Platonic ideal of rage and frustration and fear. Her face was red. Her eyes were wild. Her Goldie Hawn hair was spiraling into Bride of Frankenstein static electric chic.
“Listen to me,” she screeched. “None of this is my fault and I’m not going to get caught up in it, I’m not, so you’d better—”
“I’d better what?” I sounded drunk.
“What’s wrong with her, McKenna?”
I made a last, valiant effort to get control of myself. I managed to stand up and straighten my back.
I thought of Sarah at Bogie’s, Sarah in my apartment, Sarah kissing the taxi driver on the nose.
Sarah who had finally, finally won.
I tried to tell myself I could be wrong. I was sick. I was tired. I could be overreacting. I knew I wasn’t. I knew because I could feel the hard scrape on my stomach lining that told me the same thing that had Sarah was about to get me.
I turned to Marilou Saunders, tried to focus, failed.
“Oh, hell,” I said. “She’s dead.”
Then I passed out.
NINE
SOUND AND LIGHT: CEMENT-BLOCK echoes in a wind tunnel; flashbulbs and strobe lights and metallic fluorescent glare.
Give me a clamp give me a clamp give me a tube give me a clamp.
Squeak in one of the wheels. No sense of direction. Get it out of her hand. Somebody dropped the knife on the tiles.
It’ll be all right if we hurry.
Get it out of her hand.
I need a wash I need a wash give me a clamp I need a wash blew the tube.
She’s going to cut herself.
Give me a tube give me a clean tube.
Free fall roll. Tear in the throat.
It’s home it’s home give me a clamp.
I can’t get it out of her hand.
You can’t pump a goddamned empty stomach.
Red on white. Landscape of the earth after the explosion of the sun.
It’s gonna work. It’s gonna work anyway. Give me a clamp.
Nearly cut her goddamned finger off.
We’re home we’re home you can’t pump a goddamned empty stomach but we’re home give me a screwing clamp.
Tony Marsh said, “My face. That’s the problem, my face. They take one look at me and think I’m a goddamned choirboy, not the Joseph Wambaugh type choirboy, the kind sings ten o’clock at St. Bernie’s and then—”
There were no cigarettes on my bedside table. I felt the slick white metal, probing. Water glass (plastic), water pitcher (plastic), tissue box. No cigarettes. I opened my eyes to look at the tissue box. Kleenex.
On the other side of the room, Tony Marsh was saying, “That was the problem. I’d be on the street in uniform and this face and they’d pick fights. I mean, it infuriated them. The contrast, you know. And then I got the promotion and went into plainclothes and—”
I tried to sit up. There was a tube through my nose and down my throat and an IV in my arm. I felt feverish and achy and oddly disembodied. Except for the tube. There was nothing disembodied about the tube. I tried to say “Tony” and nearly strangled.
I must have made some kind of noise. Tony stopped mid-sentence. There was shuffling on his side of the room.
“Even if she is awake,” a female voice said, “you can’t talk to her.”
“Not with that thing in her throat,” Tony Marsh said.
“If she’s awake, I can remove the tube,” the female voice said. “But you still can’t talk to her.”
I gave it my best effort. I said, “I’m awake.” It came out “Icomrska.”
There was more shuffling on that side of the room, then footsteps, then two hulking figures coming through the light. The nurse was a nun with trigeminal neuralgia and a corrected harelip, dressed in something white and stretchy and a short veil. Tony Marsh was Tony Marsh. He looked as much like a homicide detective as Elmer Fudd looks like a brain surgeon.
“Maybe we ought to call Miss Damereaux in,” Tony Marsh said.
The nurse did something to the tubes trailing up the side of my head, hooked her fingers at the plastic junction under my nose, and pulled. I felt like I was being eviscerated.
“There,” she said. “If you pass out on us again, I’m going to be very angry.”
“I want a cigarette,” I said.
“No smoking allowed in the rooms,” the nurse said.
“To hell with that,” I said.
Tony Marsh coughed. “Maybe we ought to get Miss Damereaux and Mr. Carras,” he said. “They’ve been waiting three days.”
“Three days?” I said.
They ignored me. I lay very still. Since the nurse didn’t seem like an ally, I waited until she had marched out of the room, leaving me alone with Tony. Three days? Did she say three days? I remembered Tony Marsh didn’t smoke. I didn’t remember much of anything else.
I tried to sit up again. Reality was fluid. The hospital bed was less manageable than a waterbed.
“Tony,” I said. “Three days. What have I been doing here for three days?”
He said, “Sleeping.”
I nodded. I needed cigarettes, and coffee, and chocolate, and Nodoz, and maybe even something stronger. My head was full of cotton candy.
“I know I’ve been sleeping,” I said. “I figured I’d been sleeping. What am I doing here?”
Tony looked surprised. “You don’t remember? You called 911.”
I thought about that. I remembered calling 911. I remembered Sarah English dying. I remembered Marilou Saunders going to pieces in Dana’s reception room.
“Okay,” I said. “That takes care of Sarah. What am I doing here?”
“Sarah?” Tony said.
“Sarah English who died,” I said. “Who I called 911 about. Marilou Saunders was standing there holding Sarah English and then we called 911 and we put her on the couch and then she died—at least she looked dead enough—damn, Tony, I know—”
“Marilou Saunders from television?” Tony said.
“Tony.” I said.
Tony was shaking his head. “You called 911 and reported a poisoning,” he said. “We got it all on tape. You can hear yourself if you want.”
“Of course I called 911 and reported a poisoning,” I said.
“And they got there and found you poisoned,” Tony Marsh said.
“Found me poisoned?”
“Arsenic,” Tony said sagely. “Are you having amnesia? If you’re having amnesia, we should maybe call Dr. Heilbrun. You’ll like Dr. Heilbrun.”
It is remarkable how little patience I have when I’m sick and hungry and denied cigarettes. I was literally grinding my teeth. Worse, I was getting confused. Being confused scared me to death.
“Tony,” I said. “You’re a homicide detective. If you’re here, somebody must be dead. I’m not, so who is?”
“Nobody’s dead. Miss Damereaux thought you’d like to see a friendly face. We arranged it.”
I tried again, cotton-candy head, swollen tongue, blocked nasal passages. “I was in Dana Morton’s reception room. There was Marilou
Saunders and she was holding Sarah English, who is somebody visiting me from Connecticut. Sarah English was all doubled over and trying to throw up. She—”
“You threw up,” Tony said. “It was all over the carpet. How could you eat ratatouille quiche for lunch?”
“I didn’t eat anything for lunch.”
“You threw up a lot before we got you down here,” Tony said. “That’s what caused all the trouble.”
“Tony,” I said. “Where is Sarah English?”
Tony did his blink act. “You’ll like Dr. Heilbrun,” he said. “He pumped your stomach; he made it seem like football.”
Phoebe had been down in the lobby getting coffee. By the time she got back to my room, I had given up trying to explain anything to Tony Marsh. I was lying in bed, going over and over the last things I remembered before passing out. Sarah. Marilou. The coffee. I thought about the coffee, and the arsenic. I thought about Sarah sick all over Dana’s rug. I thought about cigarettes.
Nothing about that time was clear. Nothing would come together. I kept seeing disembodied pictures, like pieces of a rebus. Silver bangles. An empty patch of carpet. My head ached.
Tony paced the floor at the foot of my bed. “The problem we’ve got now,” he said, “is reconstructing your day. Just in case this wasn’t random. We don’t know where you had lunch. We don’t know who you had it with—”
“I didn’t have lunch,” I repeated wearily.
“You had ratatouille quiche,” Tony said positively.
I let it go. Sarah had had ratatouille quiche. Ratatouille quiche was exactly what Sarah would have ordered for a first lunch in New York. I thought of that rattle in Sarah’s throat. I gave it one more try.
“Coffee,” I said. “It must have been in the coffee.”
“In Dana Morton’s reception room?” Tony asked. “We checked the coffee. We took that Dripmaster apart. And put it together again, of course. And gave it back.”
I tried to concentrate. “Halloween candy,” I said. “There was Halloween candy on a desk and I ate some of that.”
Tony nodded. “Exactly,” he said. “Halloween candy. It was crammed. Problem is, girl who had it on her desk says she’s been eating it all week. Everybody in that office has been eating it all week. No problems.”
“If you found arsenic in the Halloween candy,” I said, “why ask me about lunch?”
“Fill in the gaps,” Tony said. “Besides—”
“You’re saying someone put them there just for me.”
“Maybe not,” Tony said.
“How’d they know I’d eat the stuff? Nobody offered it to me. I just took it.”
“Well, there,” Tony said. “You see the difficulty.”
I closed my eyes and turned it over in my head. I couldn’t make much of a case for the Halloween candy. How would Sarah have got hold of the Halloween candy? And no matter what Tony was trying to hand me, I knew Sarah was dead. I had seen her die.
Jane Herman. Sarah was supposed to see someone named Jane Herman.
I shook my head. Possible, but I didn’t think it likely. That office had been deserted. Sarah hadn’t been there when I got there. When would she have seen Jane Herman?
On the other hand, if she hadn’t seen Jane Herman and she hadn’t left the reception room, there had to have been arsenic in both the coffee and the Halloween candy. Which didn’t seem very likely either.
There was a rattling outside in the corridor. Phoebe came bustling in, staggering under a D’Agostino’s bag. I had a sudden, stabbing nonmemory of something—something—out of place. God only knew what.
Phoebe put the grocery bag on the chair next to my bed and bustled over to me. Then she stood on tiptoe so she could look into my face.
“Oh,” she said. “Thank God.”
“Cigarettes,” I said. “Now.”
“Nick had to go downtown for an hour. I had the nurse call him.”
“Cigarettes,” I said again.
Phoebe frowned. “You can’t have cigarettes in a hospital room,” she said. “They don’t allow it.”
“Is this a private room?” I asked her.
“Of course it is. Nick and I wouldn’t put you in with a lot of strange people.”
“Do I look like I’m in an oxygen tent?”
“Now, McKenna,” Phoebe said.
“Cigarettes,” I said. I held out my hand.
Phoebe sighed and started rummaging in the grocery bag. “I knew you’d be like this,” she said. “I got the call on the intercom and I thought, I’m going to get up there and the fool is going to start bellowing for cigarettes but thank God if she does because that means she’s all right and here you are with a perfect chance to quit absolutely insisting on giving in to your addiction—”
She put the cigarettes in my hand. The pack was new and unopened and wrapped in plastic. The matches were from Lüchow’s.
This time I managed to sit up. There was no ashtray, so I dropped the spent match in the plastic water glass. Then I took the drag to end all drags.
Phoebe’s grocery bag was sliding off the chair. I reached for it. I didn’t make it. I leaned. I tottered. Only emergency action on the part of Tony Marsh kept me from falling out of bed. Phoebe got very stiff.
“If you need something,” she said, “all you have to do is ask.”
“Jelly doughnuts,” I said.
“How about Zabar’s chocolate croissants?”
She pulled a little white bag out of the larger brown one and tossed it to me. Tony Marsh glowered at both of us.
“I don’t think she’s supposed to be eating that sort of thing first thing,” he said.
We both ignored him. Phoebe ignored him because Phoebe believes food is always good for you. I ignored him because, although I expected chocolate croissants to make me sick, I didn’t really care. I ate three, told my stomach not to notice, and tit another cigarette. Procedures were falling into place. Plans of action were coming clear. I was feeling very alert and able to think of everything but explanations.
“Tony won’t listen to me,” I told Phoebe, “but you’ve got to. I was in Dana’s reception room and Sarah English was sick and she died, for God’s sake. I called 911 for her. And now she’s missing. So you see—”
Phoebe was shaking her head. “Sarah English isn’t dead,” she said. “She’s in Connecticut. She called me day before yesterday and said she’d heard all about you in the papers. She wanted to know if there was anything she could do.”
The first thing Nick said was “Put that down.” I would have obliged him, but I had nothing to put that down on. I had managed to keep the nurse from confiscating my cigarettes, but she had been careful not to provide me with an ashtray, so all the time I was smoking I had to hold the cigarette in the air. I was holding it in the air when Nick arrived, sometime after eight o’clock. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. I had slept all afternoon. The chocolate croissants had finally backed up on me. I’d been sick and then exhausted and then asleep. The nurse tried to wake me for dinner but didn’t manage. She tried to wake me for my vitamin pill but didn’t manage that either. By the time I woke up, it was after seven, everyone else on the floor was drifting toward sleep, and I was feeling antsy and anxious and ready to go.
Except for the chocolate croissants, the scene with Phoebe and Tony didn’t seem entirely real, any more than did the half memory, the something. Phoebe had left the grocery bag. I rummaged through it until I came up with a cheese blintz and a package of tortilla crackers. Fortunately, I didn’t feel like eating much of either.
I had been dreaming about white-tiled corridors and harsh lights. I lay in bed smoking and thinking about the dream, and about Sarah, and about coffee and Halloween candy. Then there was Marilou Saunders. The way everyone was behaving, Marilou hadn’t been in the reception room when the emergency squad found me there. Where had she gone? And why?
My head ached. I considered buzzing the nurse for an aspirin and decided against it. I wo
uld only get another lecture about smoking. Then Nick said, “Put that down,” and instead of putting it down I tapped the ash into the plastic water glass and tried to smile.
Nick looked worse than awful. He looked dead.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Don’t do this sort of thing.”
“Don’t do what sort of thing?”
“Get yourself poisoned.” He dropped into the armless, plastic upholstered chair and stretched his legs. The room was dark except for a tiny reading light above my bed. His face was in shadow. In my still-drifting state of mind, he looked like the protected interviewee in a “60 Minutes” expose.
“I think,” he said, “that I’m no longer going to take no for an answer.”
“To what?”
“To opening negotiations about marriage. I’ve had it, McKenna.”
I puffed at my cigarette. This was not the time to start talking about marriage. For one thing, the subject was more complicated than it might appear on the surface. For another, I was weak enough to forget that and say yes. I studied my cigarette ash.
“Did Phoebe tell you anything?” I asked him. “I’m not crazy, you know. They were there.”
“I got here as soon as I could,” Nick said. “I was here for about forty-eight hours straight and then I had to go downtown. I couldn’t help it.”
“You look like you were here for forty-eight hours straight,” I said. “Did Phoebe tell you anything? Tony is making me nuts with this ‘it’s all in my head’—”
Nick leaned forward, intent, worried. “Phoebe told me everything,” he said. “You want me to tell you everything?”
“Go ahead.”
“You were alone in Dana’s reception room when the ambulance got there,” he said. “We checked everything—the coffee, the Halloween candy, the hard candy on Dana’s desk, some cookies one of the typists had in a drawer. Arsenic in the Halloween candy. Period. I called Marilou Saunders before I got here. According to her, she never went anywhere near Dana’s office that afternoon, she never saw Sarah except for that dinner at Bogie’s, you must be hallucinating.”
