by Alice Duncan
"I don't know. Dammit, let me do my job, will you?"
"Sorry," I muttered, irked.
"See if you can find a telephone. Call an ambulance. I'll see what I can do for her here."
Familiar as I was with homes of rich people, I headed for the staircase straight ahead. Most of the rich folks I knew had a telephone closet underneath the staircase.
Gloria didn't. Nuts. I searched some more and eventually found that she had an entire room given over to the telephone, which I imagine she used a lot, because it wasn't a mere wall 'phone like the ones we middle-class people use, but was rather an elaborate, enameled candlestick number perched on a desk. I rushed over, picked up the receiver and clicked the cradle several times. When the operator answered—it wasn't Medora Cox this time—I couldn't remember the number of Gloria's house. Nuts again.
"I need an ambulance," I told the operator. She asked for the address, which is when I realized I didn't recall what Sam had said on our way here. "Um... Just a minute." I set the receiver on the desk and ran to the huge hallway, which was where Gloria lay.
Sam had sort of sat her up, but her head lolled to one side. She looked dead to me. Ugh. "Sam, what's the number of this house."
"How the hell should I know?" he barked.
"The address, darn you!"
"Eight forty-eight."
"Thank you."
I raced back to the telephone room. "Eight forty-eight East California Boulevard," I panted at the operator. "And please hurry. I think a woman is dead here."
Which didn't make any sense. If Gloria were dead, she wouldn't need an ambulance. Oh, well. The operator agreed to get an ambulance to eight forty-eight East California Boulevard. My heart was hammering like thunder when I walked back to where Sam cradled Gloria.
Actually, he'd laid her on a sofa and was patting her cheeks. I'd wanted to do that myself a few times, only much harder than he was doing.
"Is she going to be all right?" I asked, knowing even as I did so that Sam couldn't answer that question.
"Depends on what's wrong with her. She has no visible wounds, so I don't think she's been shot or knifed. And there are no marks of strangulation. As much as I hate to say this, she might have taken or been given some kind of drug or poison. If I knew she'd taken morphine or chloral, I'd have her throw it up, but whatever it was might be corrosive."
Ew. "Oh, dear. I didn't like her, but I didn't want her dead, either."
"She's not dead yet," said Sam grimly. "Call the station, will you? Tell whoever answers to send two uniforms to eight forty-eight East California. Can you remember the number, or shall I write it down for you?"
"Darn you, Sam! I'm... rattled. Frightened. I don't stumble over bodies every day, you know."
"You didn't stumble over this one, either."
He would have to say that. I stomped to the telephone room again and did as he'd commanded. If Sam ever asked me to marry him, we were going to have to have a serious discussion about how he spoke to me. The policeman who answered at the station was nice, however. I told him Sam Rotondo wanted two uniforms at Gloria's house and why, and he said he'd get two coppers there right away.
About five or ten minutes later—it seemed like eons—lights and sirens rent the formerly quiet air around the Lippincott home, and uniformed attendants scurried in through the front door, carrying a stretcher. They lifted Gloria's limp self onto the stretcher and headed to the front door again.
"Castleton?" asked Sam of one of the attendants.
"Yes, sir," said the attendant.
From that brief exchange, I understood that Gloria was going to be rushed to the Castleton Memorial Hospital, which was also on California Boulevard, only west of Fair Oaks Avenue, and quite close to her home. I wanted to go there, too, but didn't know if Sam would let me.
A cop car screeched to a halt outside on the drive, and a couple of seconds later, two uniforms rushed into the house. They had to leap aside to make room for the ambulance attendants with the stretcher.
When they finally reached Sam, he said, "You two go over this place as carefully as you can. Dust for prints and be on the lookout for anything that might suggest what the woman took that knocked her out. I don't know if it's a liquid or pills or what. Just be thorough. I'm going to the hospital. If they can do a gastric lavage, we might have some idea what she took."
"Or was given," I said.
All three members of the Pasadena Police Department turned blank stares upon me. I shrugged. "Just a thought," I said in a tiny voice.
After taking a huge breath and exhaling slowly, Sam said, "Yes. It's possible someone gave her something. Just be as thorough as you can be." He turned to me. "I guess you'll have to come with me."
Goody! I didn't say that aloud, but rather donned a somber expression. "Yes. All right."
So, by the beam of Sam's flashlight and the flashing lights atop the police vehicle, we again made our way to his big Hudson, and climbed in. Sam drove rather fast, considering it was dark as an ebony slab out there and the only illumination came from his two head lamps, but we arrived at the hospital in one piece. Sam parked directly in front of the hospital's big front doors, reached into the back seat, pulled out a cardboard sign that read "Pasadena Police Department. Official Business," and propped it against the front windshield. He'd lent me one of those signs once to prevent me from getting shot, but that's another story entirely.
We hurried into the hospital lobby, and Sam was accosted by a uniformed officer. I guess one of the officers at Gloria's house had radioed in a call that we were headed to the hospital and why. "Detective Rotondo?" the man said.
"Yes. That's me."
"The woman's in an operating room right now. The doctor is doing a lavage on her stomach in order to find out what she's taken."
I wondered what a lavage was, but didn't believe it would be prudent of me to ask at that precise moment.
"Good. Where can I wait for the doctor?"
"I'll take you." The officer glanced at me, then back at Sam. "The two of you together?"
With a huff, Sam said, "Yes. Take us both there. I didn't have time to get rid of her before I drove here."
Well, I liked that!
"Right," said the officer, not flinching at Sam's horrid words.
I did more than flinch. I told Sam Rotondo precisely what I thought. "That was flat nasty, Sam Rotondo. You wouldn't even have known about Gloria having been drugged if it weren't for me."
"Yeah. I'm so much better off now, huh?"
"Oh, bother you!"
I heard a funny noise from the officer who was leading us down a long hallway. It took me a second to realize the man was trying to muffle a laugh. Of all the nerve! Of course, I should have been used to it by this time. It seemed that everyone in the Pasadena Police Department knew Sam and I were acquainted, if not more than that. A year or so earlier, I'd made a spectacle of myself by rushing from a crime scene and straight into Sam's arms. In the lobby of the police department. It was very embarrassing. But I was running away from a vicious murderer and scared witless at the time, darn it!
We were all as serious as judges when the officer, whose name tag revealed him as Patrol Officer William Griggs, opened the door to a small waiting room. The room had a window in it, so that we could see what the doctor was doing to Gloria. After an initial peek, I decided I didn't want to see anymore. During that peek, I viewed a doctor in a white coat feeding a long tube into Gloria's throat, presumably directing it to her stomach. Next to him stood a nurse in a white uniform and cap holding a pump-like device connected to the long tube. I assumed that, after the doctor got the tubing into Gloria's stomach, he and/or the nurse would use the pump device to withdraw her stomach's contents. Ugh.
"That's what a gastric lavage is?" I asked Sam, deeming it safe to speak.
"Yeah. They pump whatever's in the stomach out."
"I see." Ick.
I sat in an uncomfortable straight-backed wooden chair and looked around to
see if the hospital had provided any reading material to keep its visitors entertained. It hadn't. So I sat there, bored and feeling a little sick—that tube-and-pump device looked as though it would be awfully uncomfortable for the person upon whom it was used—crossed my arms over my chest and waited. After a few minutes, I removed my gloves and hat, although I kept my coat on.
It was I don't even know how much later when the doctor I'd seen in the operating room opened the door and approached Sam. He had disgusting-looking stains on his white coat. I figured they'd come from Gloria's stomach but didn't ask.
"Are you Detective Rotondo?" he said. He glanced at me, but evidently I wasn't important enough for him to talk to.
"Yes. Do you have any idea what the woman took, or do you have to run tests?"
"We'll run tests," said the doctor. "But right offhand, I'd say she took or was given a pretty big dose of chloral hydrate. There may be something else in her stomach contents, but we won't know until the lab tests them. I suspect she might also have taken Veronal, although we can't be sure until the tests come back. The chloral and the barbital taken together are generally lethal."
My nose wrinkled, and I was glad the two men were ignoring me. But... ew.
"Is she going to live?"
The doctor heaved a big sigh. "I can't honestly tell you one way or another at this point if she'll live. If she wakes up—and she may not—she's going to have a really sore throat from the lavage tube, and she'll be too groggy to question for quite a while."
"What constitutes 'quite a while'?" Sam wanted to know.
"Hours. Days. It's hard to say, especially since I don't know if there's anything besides chloral in her system. Do you have any idea when she might have taken or been given the drug?"
I was surprised when Sam turned around and stared at me. I blinked up at him, and he began to frown.
Understanding—at last—what he wanted to know, I said, "Uh... I'm not sure. I think it wasn't more than an hour or so ago when I talked to her. When did I call you, Sam?"
Shaking his head, Sam said, "About seven. So you think you talked to her around six or six-thirty?"
"I guess. I'm sorry. I didn't look at a clock or anything."
"Well, if that's the time we're looking at, her chances are better than if she'd been lying around for several hours. In fact, if she'd taken the stuff much earlier than that, she'd already be dead," said the doctor.
Good heavens, I might have saved a woman's life! Not that I much liked the woman, but still. I'd taken the initiative, braved Sam Rotondo's native surliness, and forced him to go to Gloria Lippincott's house. Perhaps forced isn't the correct word. Maybe coerced might be more accurate. But he'd picked me up, we'd gone to Gloria's, and I'd followed Sam's directions regarding telephoning the ambulance and the police.
Since I knew very well that Sam would never thank me, perhaps I could look forward to some gratitude from Gloria. If she survived this ordeal. I shuddered involuntarily. Gloria wasn't a nice person; she stole other women's men; she might have collaborated with the person who killed her husband; she might be in cahoots with someone who may or may not be poisoning Connie Van der Linden. Those were a lot of mights and mays. I hoped she survived, mainly because I wanted to get to the bottom of the various mysteries surrounding The Mikado and its cast members.
The doctor left us then, and Sam said, "I'll take you home. I'll have to come back here and wait around until she either dies or wakes up."
"I'd like to talk to her when she's able to talk. I might be able to convince her to confess to involvement with her husband's death."
"Leave the police alone to do their jobs, Daisy. We'll get everything out of her. Well, everything the doc left." He grinned.
I didn't. "That's disgusting, Sam."
"Yeah. It is, kind of." He chuckled.
Deciding there was no use arguing with the man, I donned my hat and gloves again, and we walked out to the Hudson. I was home in no time, and Sam was on his way back to the hospital. I didn't know what impact Gloria's... accident? Whatever it was, I didn't know what impact it would have on The Mikado. I'd begun to think the production was cursed.
Ma, Pa, Aunt Vi, and Spike were all in the living room when Sam dropped me off. He didn't see me to the door, which was all right with me. Spike danced around my legs as if he hadn't seen me for a decade or three. I bent and scooped him up. Ugh. He was getting heavier and heavier. Pansy Hanratty, who'd taught Spike's obedience class, would never forgive me if I let my dachshund get fat.
Nevertheless, I carried him to the sofa and plopped us both down thereon. As Spike licked my face, I removed my hat and gloves once more.
"What happened to that woman?" Ma demanded.
"Who was it?" asked Vi.
"Your mother said you think someone was trying to kill her," said Pa. "I don't know why these things always happen around you, Daisy."
With a sigh, I said, "I don't, either, Pa. But the woman is Gloria Lippincott."
"Isn't that the one whose husband was run down and killed the other day?" asked Vi.
"She's the one, all right. And now it looks as if either someone's trying to do her in, or she tried to commit suicide. The doctor said her chances of surviving whatever it was she took—or was given—are iffy."
"Good heavens," said Ma. "I really don't think you should be around those acting people, Daisy. They're nothing but trouble."
"Most of the cast are members of our church, Ma. It's only a few of them who aren't."
Ma's lips pinched, and she said, "I don't think Pastor Smith should have allowed that production to take place in a house of worship. I don't care if it is for a good cause."
With a sigh, I gently shoved Spike aside and struggled out of my coat. The house was quite toasty. "I think there are only one or two bad apples in the cast, Ma."
"It only takes one bad apple to ruin a whole bushel, you know," said Ma, spouting an adage from the wisdom of ages.
"I know."
"Want a sandwich?" asked Vi. "We each had a roast pork sandwich, and I can make one for you. I'll even slice an apple for you to eat with it."
Boy, it seemed like we'd barely finished dinner, but when I glanced at the clock on the mantel, darned if it wasn't almost ten o'clock. I hadn't realized how long it had taken Sam and me to get to Gloria's, get Gloria to the hospital, and wait for the doctor to finish his repulsive operation and come out to chat with Sam.
My stomach took that opportunity to grumble slightly, surprising me. "Thanks, Vi. I'd like that."
So, bless my darling aunt, she made me a sandwich and sliced an apple for me. After I'd finished my supper, I washed up after myself, and Spike and I went to bed.
Chapter 21
On Monday morning, before I was fully awake, I got a telephone call from Sam, who was ringing from the Castleton Hospital.
"Can you come down here?" he asked. "Mrs. Lippincott is asking for you."
To say I was surprised, both by Sam's call, during which he didn't even sound grumpy, and by Gloria's request, would be a vast understatement. I was, in fact, so thunderstruck—or should that be thunderstricken? Oh, who cares?—that I stared at the instrument hanging on the kitchen wall for some seconds, unable to find words in my mouth. The fact that the hour was early and that I'd only minutes earlier crawled from beneath my comfy quilt might have had something to do with my muteness. I'd aimed to go to the library that day and look up poisons. Was Sam going to spoil my day?
"Daisy?" Sam's voice was a trifle louder and harsher.
"Oh! Oh, yes. Yes, I can do that. Um... So I guess she didn't die." I shook my head hard and spoke before Sam could pounce on my words and shred them to tatters. "I mean, she's awake and coherent?" That was more than could be said for me at the moment.
"She can't talk very well, but she's been asking for you. She won't talk to anyone else."
"My word. How odd. I wonder what she wants with me."
"If you'd drive down here, you could find out."
"I've been here all night long. If I'm snappish, that might be one reason. Another reason is that the idiotic woman won't talk to the coppers. She wants you."
"Very well. I'll have breakfast—"
"Which is more than I've had."
"And after I have breakfast, I'll get dressed and drive down to the Castleton. Will you still be there?"
"Yes, I'll still be here," he said peevishly.
"Um... does the hospital have a canteen or something? Maybe you can get a bite to eat there."
"Yeah. I'll do that. Just get here as soon as you can, all right?"
"Yes. Of course. I'll be there in a jiffy."
"Good." He hung up.
Blasted man! But I guess he had a reason to be surly, given the circumstances. When I turned away from the telephone, my mother, Aunt Vi, and Pa were all looking at me. Well, and so was Spike, but he was wagging and happy. It didn't seem to me as if any of my kin were happy at all.
"That was Sam," I said.
"We figured that out for ourselves," said Ma in an uncharacteristically caustic tone. "Where is it he wants you to go? To that woman's room at the hospital?"
"Yes." I shrugged and my shabby robe slithered down my right arm. I hoisted it back up with my left hand and said, "He said she's awake, wants to talk to me, and refuses to talk to anyone else."
"Why?" asked Pa.
This time when I shrugged, my robe slithered down my left arm. I determined then and there to make new robes for everyone in the family. I thought I'd seen in the newspaper that Maxime's Fabrics was holding a sale on flannel.
"I don't know," I said. "I don't really even know the woman. I can't imagine why she wants to talk to me."
"Do you suppose she's afraid of the police for some reason?" asked Ma, who is sensible under almost all circumstances.
"Good question. She might well be." I yawned. "But I have to eat breakfast now and get down there before Sam blows a gasket."
Ma's brow wrinkled. "What is a gasket, anyway?"
