The vigil seemed interminable. Nurses bustled around her, checking the tubes and cables attached to Miles, adjusting his position, resetting the bank of monitors. She envied their activity.
Sometime after they had finished evening medication rounds, she stopped at the nurses’ station. “Have anything I might borrow to read?”
The duty-nurse looked under the counter. “Nursing Today and True Confessions. Take your pick.”
Kate laughed. “Which do you recommend?”
The nurse handed her Nursing Today. “Great article on PMS. You know, premenstrual syndrome.”
“Thanks.” Kate sat by Miles’s door, trying to listen for him and concentrate on the long, technical article. Feeling sleepy, she laid the open magazine on her lap and closed her eyes.
“Queen Victoria had PMS.” Lieutenant Tejeda seemed to come from nowhere. “She used to abuse her poor husband.”
“The things you know. What brings you here?”
“Just checking on you.”
“It’s late. Where’s Theresa?”
“She’s sleeping at Mrs. Murphy’s. Here.” He handed her a bright orange Tupperware container. “Theresa sent you something.”
Kate opened the container and looked at the shimmering brownish-gray mass inside. “What is it?”
“Cowboy casserole, as promised.” He took a plastic fork out of his pocket. “Theresa hopes you like it. She said since it was you, I could stay as late as I want. She took her jammies over to Mrs. Murphy’s.”
“Precocious kid, that Theresa.” Kate looked at the mass again. “Can’t do it.”
“C’mon, be a sport, try it. Just so I can say you did.”
She took a bite, not chewing, the way you do with raw oysters. “Mmm,” she smiled at him. “It’s terrible.”
“It is, isn’t it? She didn’t have any hamburger so she substituted browned tofu.”
“Didn’t know you could brown tofu.”
“With steak sauce.” He put the open container on the table.”How’s your uncle?”
“Semiconscious. He asked Mina for some water. Mostly he just moans and snores.”
“If he wakes up and he seems coherent, will you ask him some questions for me?”
“For instance?” she asked.
“See if he knows anything about the keys and the cricket bats.”
“That all?”
“If you think he’s up to it,” he hesitated for a moment, flinching as if waiting for a blow, “ask him if he killed your mother.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“It’s nothing to kid about.”
“Miles?”
“You think that’s not possible?”
“I don’t know.” What was possible anymore? She rubbed her eyes, but everything was the same when she opened them, but not exactly the same; like looking through the backside of a mirror. “There’s a sort of divine justice if Miles killed Mother, when you think of what she was trying to do to him. Then again, it makes things a lot neater.”
“Neater?” He rolled the word over. He didn’t seem to like the taste of it.
“I love my Uncle Miles very much and I don’t want to believe he killed Mother. But he’s dying, and I’d rather see this whole mess die with him than have my family dragged through an investigation and trial.”
“Won’t work.” He shook his head. “Even if we get a deathbed confession from Miles, it isn’t going to neaten up things. He sure as hell wasn’t driving your mother’s car tonight.”
“I know.” Kate had to hang onto the belief that Miles would never hurt her, no matter what he might have done to Mother. Then she thought for a minute and decided it was crazy to think that sweet, gentle Miles could have killed anyone. Even Mother. She felt disloyal to the whole family to have considered the idea, and was vexed with Tejeda for broaching the subject. She turned to him and asked, “Why don’t you just ask him yourself?”
“Because the nurses won’t let me wake him up, and I don’t know how long I can wait around here.”
“Then I hope he wakes up before you leave.” She crossed her arms across her chest. “Because I won’t ask him if he killed my mother.”
“Suit yourself.” A conspiratorial grin spread across his face. “But you want to know the answer, right?”
“Maybe,” she sighed. “Maybe not. But I’m glad to have some company while I decide.” She tried to get comfortable in the hard, molded seat. She sat sideways, facing Tejeda, with one leg tucked under her until it went to sleep, then she shifted forward and rubbed her tingling foot.
Tejeda yawned and leaned back, stretching his arm along the back of Kate’s seat. “Besides the food, do you know what I miss about being married?”
“I can think of a few things,” she laughed.
He smiled. “There’s no one to wait around with. Like last summer, I took my son to have his wisdom teeth out. I spent half a day alone in a waiting room, thinking about all the crazy things that could go wrong. After a while I’d persuaded myself he’d never come out of the anesthesia, or they’d zap a facial nerve and he’d spend the rest of his life looking like Quasimodo. Then last week I drove him up to college and moved him into the dorm. All the way home I listed to myself all the ways he could destroy his life before he finishes his freshman year.”
“I didn’t know you were such a worrier.”
“Normally, I’m not. Before last year, before my wife moved out, we would have been waiting there together, arguing about where we were going on vacation or why the checkbook didn’t balance or why Congress should spend more on schools and less on bombs. It was a diversion. Now I have to be bored all by myself.”
“How long were you married?”
“Nineteen years.”
“That’s a long time.” She leaned back, his arm on the back of her chair cushioning her head. “What happened?”
“Not sure,” he said, drumming a distracted tattoo on her shoulder. “Success, maybe. Cassy is a brainy, good-looking woman. I always wanted things to be perfect for her, but we had a pretty rough beginning. First I was in Vietnam, then I became a cop. And all that time she never knew if suddenly she’d be left a widow with little kids, half-expecting it all the time. I’ve been shot at more times than I can remember, hit a couple of times. She was a brick. Didn’t say much about it, ever. Just fed me chicken soup and kissed the boo-boo.
“’Course, there was never much money. But she made do, found ways to economize so we had a comfortable life.”
Kate couldn’t imagine herself filling the shoes of the long-suffering Cassy. Or if she’d want to. She turned her head on his arm and looked up at his strong profile and thought it might be worth a try. “So what happened?”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Two years ago I made lieutenant. I was safer, I didn’t have to dodge bullets anymore. The pay was great, relatively speaking. I told Cassy to relax, do more for herself. The kids were old enough to take care of themselves, so she had time to do what she wanted. She could go back to college, finish her degree. She could do anything she wanted to.”
“So what did she do?”
“First she bought some furniture, but she hated it, said she liked the old junk better. We went on a cruise, but she liked roughing it in the woods better. When we got home she cried for a week. Then she read about some Indians in New Mexico who were living in dire poverty. So she packed a bag and went to help them. She said we didn’t need her anymore.”
“Do you hear from her?”
“Rarely.” He shook his head. “Sent the kids birthday cards and me a copy of the final divorce decree.”
“How sad for you,” she said. “Must be lonely.”
“Lonely?” He gave her a startled look, then laughed. “Who says I’m lonely? Did you ever try living with a saint? I think she’s just found her natural calling. Should have been a nun to start with.”
She turned in her seat so she could look squarely at him. “A nun?”
“
Some people are natural celibates,” he said, running a finger along her chin. He kissed her lightly on the forehead, leaving a tracing of static electricity. “I’m not one of them.”
“Lieutenant?” Officer Little came up silently. “Sorry to, uh, interrupt, but there’s a call for you. Sergeant Green.”
“Thanks.” He squeezed Kate’s arm. “Gotta go. Remember what I asked you to do. And Little, stay close.”
Kate handed him the Tupperware, a way to delay him, if only for a moment. “Don’t forget this.”
“Right.” He dumped it in a flat ceramic ashtray. “You loved it?”
“I loved it,” she laughed, though she felt keen disappointment that he was going. She wanted him to turn around and ask her to come with him.
“Nice guy, the lieutenant,” Little said as Tejeda disappeared into the elevator.
“Yes. Very nice.” Kate stood up and stretched, putting her hand on the back of her neck where Tejeda’s arm had warmed it. She smiled to herself; the warmth she felt extended far beyond her neck, a delicious voluptuousness for all its innocence. Yawning lazily, she asked, “What time is it?”
“Eleven.”
“Seems later. I’m going into my uncle’s room. Take a little nap. Where will you be?”
“I’ll be right here.” He sat down in her vacated seat and pushed the full ashtray and its smelly contents to the far side of the table. “I like earning overtime this way.”
Kate went inside and quickly checked Miles, tucking his cold hands under the blanket. She pulled the room’s only chair into the corner by the window and leaned her head against the sharp edge of the windowsill, closing her eyes. The heavy, morguelike odor brought strong images of her mother, eddying in dizzy pools, drowning other thoughts.
“Margaret.” A gritty voice. From somewhere in the room, or was it a dream? Kate sat up, not sure if she had dozed. The room was almost dark, the only light coming from the green video screens and the city lights outside. She rolled her head to stretch tight muscles.
“Margaret.” The white blanket moved slightly.
Leaning forward, Kate could see narrow glints of light under Miles’s eyelids. “It’s not Margaret, Uncle Miles. It’s me, Kate.”
The eyes closed and he coughed, sounding feeble and dry.
“Do you want some water?” She shook the pitcher of water on the bedside table. Hearing the rattle of ice, she half-filled a Styrofoam cup, put in a straw and offered it to him, supporting his neck in the crook of her arm.
His fingers, like a dry claw, wrapped around her hand on the cup. He drank, dribbling water and spittle down his chin.
“Can I get something else for you?” Alone with him, she felt a rising panic. He was so frail. As much as she loved him, she didn’t want to be here alone if he died.
“Too late.” Like gravel deep in his lungs.
“Let me get the nurse.”
She pushed the call button and waited as Miles breathed in increasingly shallow gasps.
Finally, a female voice crackled through the speaker at the head of the bed. “May I help you? Just speak and I can hear you.”
“My uncle is awake now.”
“Yes, I can see on my monitor. Does he need anything?”
“I don’t know.” Kate looked at his stonelike face.
“We’re watching him. Just call if he asks for something.”
Miles had closed his eyes again. He was so still Kate went nearer to make sure he was breathing. She leaned her face over him.
His eyes popped round and bright. “How many babies did you take?”
Kate stumbled back, horrified. His voice was so clear she looked around quickly to see if someone else had slipped into the room and spoken.
How many babies? It made no sense to her. She couldn’t be sure that he was really awake. Or that he would ever be more coherent than he was now. She stepped close to him again. But how could she ask him what Tejeda wanted? “Uncle Miles, can you hear me?”
“You won’t do it again.” He shook his crabbed hand at her. “Twice you took my baby. You won’t take my baby away again.”
“Tell me about your baby. Where is your baby?”
“Hah!” he cackled. “Safe at home. You can’t get him now.”
“Safe where?”
But he only shook his head, grinning. “I won’t tell.”
She looked at him, searching for the man she loved. But he seemed so changed, something that went beyond the gravity of his condition. Then things started to connect, like little keys in rusty old locks.
Mother had helped Miles’s mistress find an abortionist, according to Mina. Miles loved children, but his only child had been lost to him because of the machinations of her mother. Although she knew that Mina and Susan had taken part, intuitively Kate knew it was her mother who had done the planning. And the persuading. Had the maid wanted to keep her baby?
Maybe he wasn’t as incoherent as he seemed. She decided there was no harm in trying to get some answers from him. “Uncle Miles, Mother’s keys are missing.”
“I put your keys back,” he contradicted.
Kate saw Little watching her from the doorway. “Call Lieutenant Tejeda, quickly, please. I need him. Now.”
He nodded and closed the door.
Groping in the half-dark, Kate found a light switch. White light filled the room, dazzling her for a moment.
Miles didn’t flinch.
“Uncle Miles, look at me.” She leaned over him again. “It’s not Margaret. It’s Kate. Look at me.” She held his shoulders gently in her hands, surprised by the firmness of the muscles under the hospital gown.
He gave her a moronic grin, like a drunk the instant before he passes out, long past sensibility.
“When did you have the keys?”
“It wasn’t cricket, what you did,” he said stupidly. “But it was damn good cricket what I did. Always a crack batsman.” He started to giggle. “Crack.” The giggling became hiccups. He arched his back, gripped by a violent spasm, his body rigid and trembling.
Kate held him firmly, to keep him from falling off the bed. Or from sliding into oblivion.
He looked up at her, eyes rolling back in their sockets.
“Did you hit Mother?” she demanded, trying to control the anger and frustration in her voice. There was so little time left. “Tell me what you know. Help me.”
The spasm released him, and he relaxed in her arms, lying very still. The white face turned toward her. “Kate?” His voice was very faint.
“Thank God. Yes.” She kept her face in his line of vision. “I’m frightened, Uncle Miles. I need to know what happened to Mother. I need to save myself.”
“I can’t help you anymore. I tried. Trust hope.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Trust hope,” he said through clenched teeth. He arched in rigid spasm again, grimacing as if something were pulling on him from the inside.
The door burst all the way open and a mass of green-gowned nurses filled the room. “Coronary,” one of them yelled over her shoulder, elbowing past Kate to lean over Miles. “Where’s the doc? Damn! Where’s the doc? We have grand mal seizure and he’s in arrest.”
“STAT,” the P.A. in the hall crackled. “ICU. STAT. STAT.”
A second wave of green pushed into the room, rolling ahead of them huge carts of emergency equipment.
Kate stood there, frozen, unwilling to let Miles slip away from her. Bony hands grabbed her arm and impelled her toward the door. “You have to get out.”
Under the noise she heard the small blips on the video screens race frantically, then flatten into a steady tone.
THIRTEEN
“T EJEDA THINKS MILES KILLED MOTHER with his cricket bat,” Kate stopped when she heard the light tap at Dolph’s study door. Mina’s maid came quietly into the room carrying a breakfast tray. Kate waited for the maid to put the tray down on Dolph’s desk and then leave the room before she said anything more. “Do you think it’s possible th
at Miles would kill anyone?”
“It’s possible.” Dolph filled a small crystal glass with freshly squeezed orange juice from a silver pitcher and drank it down.
“You’re awfully calm about it.”
“I’m also not persuaded. I only agree it is possible. Maybe Miles thought the only way he could stop her from dumping him in an institution so she could turn his place into condos was to eliminate her. God knows more conventional means failed.” Dolph studied the buttered toast in his hand. “But if he wanted to kill her, why didn’t he haul out his deer rifle and make a tidier job of it?”
“Oh, Dolph, please.” The suggestion recalled a strong, vivid image of her mother’s battered head, adding a neat hole between her eyes. Then she remembered the eyes of the elk Miles had shot in Colorado and she knew why he wouldn’t have shot Mother.
“Sorry, sweetheart.” Dolph put the uneaten toast down again. “What exactly did Miles say to you?”
“He said, ‘It wasn’t cricket.’”
“Cricket again. Miles sank back into a coma last night after the docs revived him. What do you think the chances are we’ll be able to talk to him again?”
“None.” Last night, after the doctors had stabilized Miles, she had stayed for a few minutes, just to be with him one last time. She remembered the emptiness in the air around Miles as she pressed her cheek to his to say good-bye, as if the electricity in his body had been shut off.
“I thought not.” Dolph shook his head, seemingly lost in deep thought. Then he turned to the tray and piled a plate with eggs and sausage and fruit. But he held his empty fork poised over his plate, his eyes locked on a point in the space in front of him.
All morning Kate had felt edgy, expectant. It was equal parts lack of sleep and waiting for the inevitable call from the hospital. The final call.
Carrying her cup of coffee, she got up and paced the sea of pale green carpet, noticing how the ocean shimmering dully beyond the French doors seemed merely an artful part of the room’s decor. She looked around at the deliberate casual-ness, the way Dolph’s law journals heaped in the whitewashed willow basket by his big reading chair were stacked just a little crookedly, as if they’d been carelessly tossed there. But even though the journals changed regularly, the angles of the stack were always the same. She began to feel that, like the carefully arranged vase of silk flowers on the corner of the desk, nothing here was quite genuine, or ever changed, and she wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before. The comfort the place offered was artifice.
No Harm (The Kate Teague Mysteries Book 1) Page 14
