Cinderella for a Night

by Susan Mallery

  Noises filtered in from beyond the confines of the waiting area. The squeak of soft-soled shoes, the clank of a piece of equipment being moved. He could smell the lingering scent of antiseptic and the previous evening’s dinner. It was nearly two in the morning and the waiting room was deserted. There was still chaos downstairs in the emergency room—people being treated in the aftermath of the hotel blackout and the subsequent panic. But up here was relative peace. At least he didn’t have to worry about making small talk with anyone. Except Stryker.

  He glanced at the detective. “I don’t think you’re waiting with me because you’re concerned about Cynthia Morgan.”

  “I wouldn’t mind knowing she’s okay,” Stryker told him. “But I’m here because I need to ask you some questions.”

  Jonathan rubbed the bridge of his nose, as if he could erase the weariness that filled him. “It feels like it should be some time next week,” he said. “Instead of just early Sunday.” He drew in a deep breath and figured there was no point in ignoring the obvious. “You want to know if there was some reason David could have wanted to get to me through her. Did he hurt Cynthia because it would bother me.”

  “The thought has crossed my mind,” the detective admitted. “Your brother obviously wanted to screw you any way he could. The doctor said they didn’t know what was wrong with her. They’ve ruled out appendicitis. Once the tests come back we’ll have a clearer picture, but until then I can’t rule out the suspicion that David was involved.”

  Jonathan looked at Stryker and shook his head. “Not possible. I just met her tonight.” He told the other man about literally running into Cynthia at the ball. How he’d planned to leave, then had surprised himself asking her to dance.

  Without wanting to, he found himself caught up in the past, in the pleasure of her in his arms. How she’d looked and felt as they moved together. The sweet scent of her skin and the way she’d tasted when he’d kissed her.

  “David couldn’t have known about her because I didn’t,” he concluded.

  Stryker loosened his shirt collar, then jerked his head at the purse lying next to him. “There’s nothing in there to give us a clue, either. I’ve notified her family. They’re on their way here. Maybe they’ll know something. Although her mother said Cynthia is perfectly healthy. Never had a medical condition.”

  Jonathan didn’t want her to die. Not that he wished anyone dead, but his desire for Cynthia to live was strong and growing. He willed strength to her, as if he could send the power through the corridors of the hospital and help her hang on until the doctors got it all figured out.

  The detective pulled out his notebook. “Start from the beginning and tell me again what happened.”

  “I was speaking with my brother,” Jonathan began patiently, prepared to go through the sequence of events as many times as it took. “We’d just finished and I knew that if I was going to die that night I didn’t want it to be at that ridiculous party. So I started to leave. When I turned I ran into—”

  “Mr. Steele?”

  He looked up and saw a young nurse standing in the doorway of the waiting area. Jonathan was on his feet in a heartbeat. “What? Do you have news?”

  She nodded. “Dr. Howell asked me to tell you that the preliminary toxicology reports suggest that Ms. Morgan was poisoned. He wanted to let you and the detective know.”

  The news shouldn’t have stunned Jonathan. After all he and Stryker had been talking about David being involved. But David couldn’t have known about Cynthia. “Poisoned?” he repeated blankly.

  She nodded. “He said that it would be helpful if you could figure out how and then find the poison.” She gave him a quick, impersonal smile and turned to leave.

  “Wait,” he called. “How is she?”

  “I don’t know. The same, I think.” And then she was gone.

  Jonathan sank back into his chair. He looked at Stryker. “Poison? Does that make sense to you?”

  “Depends on how it was delivered. Did she eat anything at the party?”

  “I don’t know,” Jonathan admitted. He frowned in concentration. “When I first met her she was carrying a glass of wine. White, I think. She spilled it, so I doubt she drank much. If she ate before or after I was with her, then I wouldn’t have seen what it was. While we were together, she didn’t eat or drink anything.”

  Stryker tapped a pen on his notebook. His tweed jacket looked rumpled and blond stubble darkened his jawline. He rubbed his tired eyes. “We haven’t had any complaints about other people getting sick. So it probably wasn’t in the food. And if she ingested the poison before the party, we don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of figuring out what it was.”

  Jonathan listened as the other man spoke, but a part of his brain focused on something else. A whisper of a memory that he couldn’t make focus. Something just out of reach that seemed important and yet—

  “The coffee,” he announced, cutting Stryker off in midsentence. “She brought me coffee.”

  “What?”

  He turned toward the detective. “At the hotel. Remember? You went to check on something and she was waiting in the hall. She wanted to see how I was. She was holding a cup of coffee and told me that a waiter had brought it for me. But I hadn’t ordered any.” He frowned, trying to remember the exact sequence of how things had occurred. “I didn’t want any because I hadn’t ordered coffee. Then Cynthia ended up drinking it instead.”

  Stryker was on his cell phone in an instant. He spoke to a police officer still at the scene.

  “We’ll see if we can get hold of that cup,” he said when he was finished.

  “Is that how David planned to kill me?” Jonathan asked. “Poison?”

  Stryker shook his head. “Your brother wouldn’t have been that specific. I’m guessing the killer saw an opportunity and took it. We’ll interview the staff. Someone had to have seen a new guy working tonight. We’ll find him and get him to tell us what kind of poison he used.”

  He sounded confident, but Jonathan wasn’t so sure. Besides, even if they found the killer, would it be in time to save Cynthia?

  “I need to get back to the hotel,” Stryker said as he came to his feet. “You’ve got my number. Call me when you know more about Ms. Morgan’s condition.”

  Jonathan hated the thought of being left behind. “There has to be something I can do to help.” He couldn’t just sit around and wait. He always acted in a crisis. It was one of his strong suits.

  “We’ll handle it, Jonathan,” Stryker said. “I promise I’ll be in touch.”

  And then he was gone, walking out of the waiting area and down the corridor. Jonathan watched him go. The tall man passed by a young mother with three children. The harried woman stopped at the nurses’ station across from the waiting area.

  She was petite, maybe five-one or-two, with short blond hair. Something about her was vaguely familiar, yet Jonathan was sure he’d never met her before. He glanced briefly at the gangly preteen girl standing on one side of the woman, then at the twin boys clinging to her other arm. Then he shrugged and settled back in his seat. He didn’t like waiting around, but it looked like he didn’t have a choice.

  “Mr. Steele?”

  He looked up and saw the woman and her children had entered the waiting room. He rose to his feet, not sure how she knew him. “I’m Jonathan Steele.”

  The woman trembled slightly. Tears filled her blue eyes and her face was pale. “I, ah, they said at the desk that you brought her in. Cynthia. That you were with her.” The woman paused and swallowed. Her visible effort to maintain control made him uncomfortable. “They didn’t tell me anything when they called. Just that she’d collapsed and was being brought here. They wanted to know about existing medical conditions, but I told them she’d always been fine. A healthy girl, and, oh Lord, I can’t lose her, too.”

  “It’s okay, Momma,” the preteen girl said and wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist. “She’ll be fine. You’ll see.” But she was
crying as she spoke and the two boys clung tighter as tears spilled down the woman’s face.

  Jonathan resisted the need to bolt. He wasn’t comfortable in the face of this much emotion or suffering. “Look, maybe I should call a nurse or something,” he said awkwardly, already backing from the room.

  The woman was shaking her head. “No, I’m fine.” She wiped her face with her free hand and offered him a poor imitation of a smile. More tears filled her eyes. “I’m sorry. I just can’t seem to find the strength to deal with this. I suppose it’s because I lost my husband three years ago and being in the hospital is bringing it all back.”

  Jonathan stared at her. Cynthia had mentioned something about her stepfather dying three years ago. Which meant this woman was her mother. But Mrs. Morgan didn’t look much over thirty-five and Cynthia had to be in her mid-twenties.

  “You’re her mother?” he asked.

  The woman nodded. “I was still a teenager when I had her. These three are my children with Frank.”

  A shudder rippled through her. Both the boys had tears on their faces and the preteen had given up pretending not to be crying. Jonathan felt as if he’d just boarded a leaking ship. In a matter of minutes they would all be going under.

  “As someone must have told you, I’m Jonathan Steele,” he said, touching the woman’s arm and urging her and her children over to the plastic chairs.

  “ You can call me Betsy,” she said, sinking onto the seat. “This is Jenny and the boys are Brad and Brett.”

  Jonathan gave the kids a reassuring smile. He crouched down in front of the distraught family. “I’ve spoken with the doctor in charge. His name is Noah Howell and he’s about as good as they come. As of a few minutes ago, they know what’s wrong with Cynthia and they’re doing everything they can to make her better.”

  Betsy stared at him. He saw now that her daughter had her mother’s mouth and her eyes were the same shape, if a different color. Cynthia topped Betsy by about five inches, but they both had slender yet curvy figures.

  “What happened?” Betsy asked. “Do they know why she’s sick?”

  He hesitated. There was no point in trying to hide the truth. They would find it out eventually. “They think she was poisoned. It was an accident,” he added hastily. “But now they can start working on the best way to get the poison out of her system.”

  A voice came over the loudspeaker, requesting a doctor on a different floor. Betsy closed her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t go through this again,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. “I just can’t.”

  “Mommy?”

  One of the boys spoke. Betsy didn’t respond verbally. Instead she put her arm around him and held him close. The little family seemed to fold in on itself, as if each member gathered strength from the others. Jonathan felt like an intruder.

  He stood and cleared his throat. “Now that you’re here to see about your daughter, I’ll just be going,” he said.

  Betsy’s eyes popped open. She stared at him. “You’re leaving us?”

  Both boys stared at him beseechingly. “Aren’t you Cynthia’s friend?” one of them asked.

  Jonathan shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, well, we are friends and of course I’m concerned. It’s just…” His voice trailed off.

  The preteen girl didn’t stay anything. She simply stared at him, tears running down her cheeks.

  Betsy recovered first. “Of course, Mr. Steele. I’m sure you’re a very busy man. It was kind of you to stay this long. Thank you for your concern. We’ll be fine.”

  He wanted to swear at them all. They looked anything but fine. It was the middle of the night and they were all scared out of their minds. The kids had already lost their father and now they had to worry about their older sister. The mother looked as if she was going to lose it at any second.

  He told himself this wasn’t his problem. On the heels of that thought came the realization that Cynthia could have swallowed poison meant for him and there was no way these people were going to make it without some kind of help. For now, he didn’t have a choice.

  He shoved his hands into his tuxedo pants pockets. “I’m going to get some coffee,” he said. “Why don’t I bring you back a cup?” Then he glanced at the two boys. “You two want a soda or something? Why don’t you come along and help me carry everything.”

  Betsy Morgan gave him a genuine smile. “Thank you, Mr. Steele. Those newspaper articles always say you’re a wonderful, caring man and now I know they must be true.”

  “Call me Jonathan,” he said curtly, wondering how he could explain that he was anything but wonderful and caring. In fact he was something of a bastard. But this was neither the time nor the place. Besides, if he stuck around long enough, she would figure it out for herself.

  “But what does it mean?” Betsy asked the next morning.

  There weren’t any windows in the waiting room so it was impossible to tell what it was like outside. Jonathan glanced at his watch. Eleven-fifty. Sunday. Barely twelve hours since the ball last night, but he felt as if he’d already lived a lifetime since then.

  “Stabilized means just that,” Jonathan said, trying to keep Cynthia’s mother calm. If she stayed in control, the kids were fine. When she started to lose it, he had four sobbing messes on his hands.

  “Last night she was deteriorating,” he reminded her. “So stabilized is a step up. Next, she’ll start improving.” At least he hoped so. He had enough skin in the game now that he wanted to make sure that Cynthia made a full recovery.

  Betsy looked at him, then folded her arms over her chest and sighed. “You’re being very patient and kind and I really appreciate that. I’m trying to believe what you’re saying, but it’s so hard. I want her to wake up.”

  “I know. Me, too. At least they’ve been letting us in to see her.”

  Just after breakfast Noah Howell had arrived in the waiting area with the news that they could visit Cynthia for a few minutes every hour.

  Betsy tucked a strand of short blond hair behind her ears. She looked weary, with dark circles under her eyes. Last night she’d obviously dressed in haste. She wore a sweatshirt over jeans, and athletic shoes with no socks. Jonathan felt out of place in his tux. He knew that he would have to go home to shower and change at some point, but he wasn’t ready to leave just yet.

  The three kids were seated close to the television, watching a cartoon show. They all looked dazed from what was happening. Dazed and young and impossibly vulnerable. Their concern about their sister touched him, as did Betsy’s love for her child.

  “I can’t survive if something happens to her,” Betsy said in a low voice. “I won’t make it.”

  Jonathan leaned close. “First, she’s doing better and the doctors think she’s going to be fine.” Fine was a stretch, he admitted to himself. The fact that she was still unconscious wasn’t good, but he wasn’t about to remind Betsy of that. “Second, you’ll make it because you have three children depending on you and you’re not the kind of person who walks away from her responsibilities.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “I don’t know if I can be that strong.”

  “I know you’ll do what you have to.”

  She sniffed and looked at her three children. “I guess you’re right. It just feels so impossible.”

  Her pain slipped through his defenses and made his insides ache. She loved her children with a fierceness that startled him. He hadn’t known it was supposed to be like that between a mother and her offspring. His mother had walked out of his life when he was only five, leaving behind an angry husband and a confused and sobbing little boy. His stepmother had been kind, but ineffectual against his father’s tirades. Growing up, he hadn’t had much in the way of emotional security and comfort.

  Watching Betsy with her children made him wonder how life would have been different if his mother had stayed, or if his father had forgiven him for being the son of the woman who had left him.

  Jonathan straightened in his chair and
forced himself to push away the maudlin thoughts. It was all the in-activity, he told himself. It gave a man too much time to think.

  Movement by the waiting room door caused Jonathan to look up. He saw Jack Stryker standing in the hallway, motioning to him. Jonathan excused himself and stepped out to speak with the detective.

  “You look like hell,” Stryker said by way of a greeting. “Have you had any sleep at all?”

  Jonathan dismissed the question. “I’ll get home later today for a quick shower. That’s all I need right now. What did you find out?”

  Stryker grinned. “I have good news for you, my man. We have recently taken into custody one Harold P. Millingsgate, better known as Harry the Hood. He has as many arrests as he has tattoos, which is saying something. He’s a career criminal, starting out with small stuff in high school and graduating to some impressive felonies. In the past couple of years, he’s moved into killing for hire. He’s wanted for murder in several states, including Texas and he’s willing to talk to avoid extradition to a place where they are more eager to enforce the death penalty.”

  “He’s the one who poisoned the coffee?”

  “He sure is. He’s already handed over the substance—some chemical used for industrial pest management—which I took to Dr. Howell. After looking at a series of photos, Harry identified your brother as the man who hired him to kill you. He was supposed to wait until later this week, but he wanted to head back to New York before the first of the winter storms, so he went to work a little early.”

  Jonathan didn’t know what to say. While he was grateful that the doctors could now figure out how to make Cynthia better, he couldn’t absorb the fact that David had actually hired someone to kill him. Hearing it from his brother was one thing, but having a detective fill him in on the details was another.

  He stood in the hallway waiting to feel something—anger, rage, frustration. But there was only cold emptiness. He’d always known that his brother had resented his presence. David had longed to be the only Steele son. But murder was a hell of a way to realize his dream.