by Jane Haddam
I cocked an eyebrow at him. The tone of his voice was heartening. “You believe me,” I said.
“I believe there were other people in that room when you passed out,” he said. “I don’t know if I believe Sarah English is dead. She could have been very sick. She could have left. That’s all.”
“Why would she leave?” I asked him. “If she was so sick, how could she leave?”
“I don’t know,” Nick said.
“Do you believe me about lunch?” I asked him. “I didn’t have lunch. Do you believe that?”
“I certainly believe you didn’t have a ratatouille quiche.” He smiled.
“How fast does arsenic act?”
“If the dose is strong enough, in minutes.”
“Then it was in the coffee. I poured myself a cup of coffee and I drank it out of the cup. I chugged it. Nobody else got anywhere near it. The arsenic had to be in the Pyrex pitcher thing.”
“It was in the Halloween candy. We checked. McKenna.”
“Whoever vomited ratatouille quiche had to be someone other than me.”
“The police won’t give you that,” Nick said. “I will.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Tony said people were eating the candy all week. And nobody got poisoned.”
“Except you. And Sarah English, if you’re remembering right.”
“Of course I’m remembering right. But the Halloween candy was in an office in the back. Sarah was waiting in the reception room. The place was empty. Why would she go in back?”
“McKenna—”
“I had coffee when I first got to the office,” I said. “Then I had it again when I found Marilou and Sarah. Somebody poisoned it while I was talking to Dana.”
“All right,” Nick said.
I sighed. There was an edge of reserve in his voice. I was ready to sleep again. I wasn’t up to unraveling the emotional complexities of a summa cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School with a tendency to believe that what is not admissible in court does not exist. I fastened on the one chink in his logical progression.
“You think someone tried to poison me.”
“I know someone tried to murder you. Nobody’s arguing that.” He put his face in his hands. “I want to bundle you up and sneak you out of the country to a mountain in Switzerland. Leave it at that.”
“I can’t leave it at that,” I said.
He looked up at me. “I don’t think there’s some murder plot afoot. I don’t think we have another... situation on our hands. I think you got hit by a crazy. But that doesn’t change anything, McKenna. Your story or Tony’s, it’s all the same to me. I can’t handle thinking of you hurt and I can’t handle thinking of you dead and I can’t handle not knowing where this relationship’s going. I’ll give you enough time to get better and get out of here, but after that you have to make up your mind.”
“Nick.”
He stood up, stretched his arms and legs, shook out the cricks in his back.
“They’ve got a cot in a room down the hall,” he said. “I can stay there. Get some sleep.”
“I’m not hallucinating,” I said.
He sighed. “You just might not be,” he said. “That’s what worries me.”
He took the cigarette out of my hand, turned off the light, and left the room.
TEN
HOSPITALS ARE REQUIRED BY law to allow patients who do not wish to remain in care to leave. That, of course, is only the law. The practice is often quite different. At Brandon Hill Medical Center, the practice was to keep me in my room and allow in anyone who bothered to knock.
“Knocking” may be a bit too metaphorical. Flesh and blood visitors were not the problem. Mail was the problem. At eight o’clock on the morning after I regained consciousness, the nurse brought in a tray of scrambled eggs, dry toast, and tea, and a purple and white Bonwit Teller bag full of mail. She put the tray in my lap and the bag at my feet, sniffed “Very popular, you are” like a member of the cast of Upstairs, Downstairs, then threw a small stack of message slips at my knees. “Messages day and night,” she said. “Jennie doesn’t have enough to do.” She turned on her heel and walked out.
I gathered up the messages, wondering why nurses are always in such a bad mood. Long hours and low pay came to mind, but seemed too rational to believe.
I was not interested in my mail. I know what is in my mail.
I looked at the messages. My friends and business associates had decided I was not going to die. Expressions of concern and hopes I would get well soon were sparse and short. Hysterical demands to know whether I would be off my ass in time to meet this, that, or the other obligation were voluminous. The escapee from Hunter College reminded me I had a signing at Bogie’s on Sunday, preceded by a talk at the 92nd Street Y (Wednesday), and a taping for Marilou’s “Wake Up and Shine! America!” (tomorrow). There was also a photo session for People scheduled on Friday. People was underlined three times. I was not going to be allowed to blow a People story just because I’d been irresponsible enough to get myself poisoned.
Dana had made an appointment for me at Faces, the newest, trendiest, and most expensive makeup consultants in town, for Wednesday morning. She had arranged a signing for me at Crime Wave, a mystery bookstore, on Saturday. Crime Wave is in Cleveland. She had “managed” to get me a talk spot at the Fifteenth Annual Convention of Private Investigators—eight forty-five Monday morning on stage at the Calhoun (Texas) Sheraton. She was “endeavoring” to place me at Bouchercon, the annual mystery writers’ convention, which was being held this year in Minneapolis.
Things were looking up.
I threw the message slips on the floor and reached under my mattress for cigarettes. I lit up with one of Phoebe’s Tavern on the Green matches and lay back to think.
Maybe it was worse because I could think. I wasn’t fuzzy. I didn’t feel especially weak. Things that had seemed like badly constructed dreams the day before were now ominous and unsettling. Sarah English was dead. I had seen her dead. She had somehow disappeared. Marilou Saunders had also disappeared—at least from Dana’s reception room. I didn’t believe Tony Marsh wouldn’t continue to check it out. I did believe Marilou would lie and tell him she wasn’t there.
Marilou Saunders was the key.
I buzzed for the nurse. I waited. Nurses know who is dying and who is not. If you are not, they tend to let you buzz in vain for minutes at a time. I was occupying a very expensive private room and as such was entitled to some degree of courtesy. I waited one and a half cigarettes.
“Is there some way I could make a phone call?” I asked her when she stuck her head in my door.
She pointed to the wall over the night table. There was a pink kitchen phone screwed into it.
“Nine for an outside line,” she said, disappearing.
I picked up the receiver and dialed nine for an outside line. I reevaluated my state of mind. I was no longer fuzzy, but I was still confused.
When I finally got through to Dana, she was exasperated and trying not to show it. Dana got into the office at nine-thirty. She did not appreciate phones going off in her ear the minute she stepped through her door. Besides, morning was her busiest time. She plotted in the morning.
I didn’t bother to apologize. People who commit me to signings in Cleveland do not deserve to have me apologize.
“I need Marilou’s direct line,” I told her. “I—”
“If there’s anything you need re the taping, I’ll do it,” she said quickly. “I don’t want you saying a lot of stuff I’m going to have to get you out of later.”
“It’s not about the taping,” I said.
“Clients are suicidal,” she said. “Some half-assed movie producer tells them he wants to take all their merchandising rights in exchange for fifty thousand flat and he has to have story rights on top of it for a ten-million-dollar movie, and the client just sits there and nods like a drunk ninny.”
“I don’t want to talk about the taping,�
�� I shouted. Footsteps hurried to my door, stopped, hesitated. The nurse was trying to decide if there was something wrong with me.
Dana, too, hesitated. “What could you possibly want to talk to Marilou about?” she asked me. “What could anyone in their right mind want to talk to that lobotomized pharmacopoeia about if it isn’t business? You don’t even like her.”
I got another cigarette. I needed Marilou’s direct line. Without it, I wouldn’t get through. The switchboard would assume that if I didn’t have the number, I was not to be taken seriously. I didn’t want to tell Dana what I was thinking—this mess had started in her offices, after all—but if I didn’t tell her, she wouldn’t give me the number.
“It’s about the other day,” I said reluctantly. “I know everybody thinks I’m crazy, but I know what I saw—”
“If you mean Miss English,” Dana said, “forget it. She called me.”
Sarah had apparently been running up quite a phone bill from Connecticut.
“You’ve been talking to Phoebe,” I said.
“I’ve been talking to the police,” Dana said. “For days. I know what you think you saw, McKenna, but, well—”
“Have you talked to Marilou Saunders?”
“Well,” Dana said. There was another little pause. There was a cough. There was the sound of shuffling papers. “I’ve got a call coming in on the other line,” Dana said. “I can’t talk now.”
“Give me Marilou’s direct line,” I said.
“No,” Dana said. “Don’t forget your appointment at Faces.”
The line went to dial tone.
I put the receiver back in the cradle. I picked it up again and dialed the general number for the Network. I got (in chronological order) a switchboard operator, a division receptionist, and a “Wake Up and Shine! America!” secretary. All of them told me how much Ms. Saunders appreciated my support. I hung up again.
The problem with telephones is that they leave you too vulnerable. People can hang up on you. People can stare at their desk calendars or the Times daily crossword and forget you’re there. If I was going to get anything done, I was going to have to get out of the hospital and back on the street. Or back in office buildings, which in New York amounts to the same thing.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and headed for my private bathroom. The first priority was a shower. The second priority was clothes. The third priority was getting out before Phoebe could show up and stop me.
I had not considered the problem of money. Money is necessary everywhere, but in New York it is lifeblood. Nobody hitchhikes on Columbus Avenue. Nobody picks up hitchhikers on Columbus Avenue except police interested in making arrests for soliciting.
I stood in the middle of the room thinking about money and the alternatives to money. There was money in my apartment. I always kept a hundred dollars taped under one of the kitchen cabinet shelves in case I got robbed on the street. Unfortunately, my apartment was on Central Park West in the Seventies and Brandon Hill Medical Center was off Lexington in the Thirties. Total walking distance: two and a half miles. On a normal day I can do two and a half miles and not feel it, but this was not a normal day. I didn’t feel weak, but I was going to before I went half that distance, and the walking wasn’t going to be the worst of it. I would have window-shoppers to contend with. And traffic. And the lights at Columbus Circle, which are arranged to make it impossible for pedestrians to get from the park to the real city on any day when the New York Marathon is not being run.
I sat down on the bed and considered my options. The most sensible was to get out of my clothes, climb into my hospital nightgown, and ask the nurse to bring’ my pocketbook. Then I could get back into my clothes and, armed with my bank card, my American Express card, my Visa card, and (if I remembered correctly) forty-five dollars in cash, go looking for a cab. It was a wonderful plan. Unfortunately, it would take too much time.
It was quarter after ten. Visiting hours started at quarter after eleven. If there was any delay finding a nurse, or any delay in the nurse finding my bag, or an argument, I was going to run into Phoebe coming in. If I ran into Phoebe coming in, I might as well give up.
I lit a cigarette. I told myself I was giving myself a chance to think, but I was really wasting time. I always waste time when I don’t know what I’m doing.
I was halfway through when there was a knock on the door and the nurse—my first nurse, she of the neuralgia and the corrected harelip—came sidling through the door.
“If you’re going to escape,” she said, “you’re going to need help.”
ELEVEN
I HAD TO STOP at three Chase Manhattan branches before I found one with an instant cash machine. I had been unusually optimistic about how much money I had in my wallet. Credit cards I had. Membership cards I had (Museum of Natural History, Whitney Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution). Money I did not have.
I did, however, have something new to think about. There were advantages to be gained from too much newspaper publicity. My nurse had been proof of that.
“I’ve read all about you in the papers,” she’d said. “And I know what’s been going on around here.”
“What’s been going on around here?”
She was contemptuous the way only soap opera heroines can be contemptuous. “They think you’re hallucinating,” she said. “Well, that’s what they thought the last two times, didn’t they?”
That wasn’t quite accurate—the second time they thought I was hallucinating, the first time they thought I was guilty—but I didn’t correct her. She was bustling me down the hall, talking out of the corner of her mouth in a low-whisper imitation of Bogart doing a dying Sam Spade.
“We’ll say you insisted,” she said. “When we get to the desk, act like you’re insisting. Say things like ‘If you attempt to restrain me, I’ll sue this hospital for illegal imprisonment.’ Things like that.”
“I’ve never said a sentence like that in my life.”
“Well, say it now. Then sign the form—sign out, it doesn’t mean anything. I’ll call Dr. Heilbrun and you walk out. Just like that.”
“I have to wait for Dr. Heilbrun?”
“No, no, no,” she said. “You walk out without waiting for Dr. Heilbrun. I can’t stop you.”
I said “Oh” and decided to go along. I was worried about her self-satisfaction level (very, very high), but it seemed a workable plan. I couldn’t find any reason not to go along with it. She thought she was making herself part of a great adventure.
“Wait’ll I tell my sister Maisie about this,” she said. “Old cow. Thinks you don’t get any excitement outside the emergency ward.”
I found a cab fighting its way north on Third and got into it. It was going to take forever to get uptown, but I didn’t care. Phoebe had to be on her way downtown, to the hospital and (she thought) me. Since Phoebe hasn’t taken public transportation since her sales first topped two hundred thousand, I figured she was stuck. All I had to do was get to my apartment, feed the cat, and start on my rounds.
We stopped for a light at East Seventy-ninth Street, and I started rummaging in my bag for something to read. I usually carry at least three magazines and a book when I have to take cabs, but I hadn’t taken anything when I went to see about Verna, and I hadn’t been back to the apartment since. All I could find were three advertising circulars and an oblong manila envelope, crammed to bursting, with Brandon Hill Medical Center stamped all over it. The cab swung into the park, chugging angrily behind a bus whose driver stopped every three feet to look at the scenery.
“Look,” the driver said. “I’m going to have a smoke. You going to bitch if I have a smoke?”
“Not if you give me a light,” I said. I had the oblong envelope in my lap and a terrible feeling I was going to open it to find forty-five dollars wrapped in a rubber band. I tore the flap open and dumped the contents on my knees.
The driver threw me a pack of matches with two copulating lesbians on the cover
and said, “These MTA guys, they don’t care. They don’t have to make time. Their paychecks come in regular.”
I said something like “I guess” and pored through the stuff on my lap. No money. Keys, paper clips, a mini-screwdriver, a bent lipstick case, three inkless Bic medium points, four subway tokens, an American Express pocket calendar (last year’s), but no money. Not even change. I wondered if I’d been relieved of it in the hospital or in Dana’s reception room. So much for the honor of the bureaucracy—public and private.
“He’s going down to Seventy-second,” the driver said. “You want to go to Eighty-first Street? You don’t want to go to Eighty-first Street, it’s going to take all day.”
“Go to Eighty-first Street,” I said. The little silver thing was at the bottom of the pile, among the paper clips and tokens. I picked it up. It had a long stem (two inches) and a shorter branch. One end came to a flat, side-pronged point. The other looked as if it had been broken in two places. The break on the side had stretched the silver into a peaked tuft, like the peaks on birthday cake icing. The break at the end was sharp. It had edges.
“This is Central Park West,” the driver said. “This is no problem from here.”
“Right,” I said.
I was still holding the silver thing in my hand when we pulled up in front of the Braedenvoorst. I had put the rest of the debris back in the envelope, but the silver thing bothered me. When the cab came to a stop, I got some money out of my pocket, threw it on the driver’s seat, and got out. It brought the tip to $1.17, but I had too much on my mind to wait until he made change.
“Just like I always say,” the driver said. “Women tip better than men. Always did. Always will.”
“Right,” I said.
“Wrong,” Phoebe said. “What are you doing here?”
It was like someone coming up behind you and yelling “Boo” in your ear while you were standing at an open window on a high floor. I nearly fell off the curb.
