No Time to Die & the Deep End of Fear

by Elizabeth Chandler

  "Mr. Westbrook's room, please."

  "I'm sorry," the desk clerk replied, "that room is not accepting calls. May I take a message?"

  I stared at the phone's mouthpiece, surprised at succeeding. Joseph, noticing my silence, set down a tool and took several steps closer.

  "I said, may I take a message?" the clerk repeated.

  I thought quickly. I have a delivery for Mr. Westbrook at the Queen Victoria Hotel. What room is that, please?"

  "I'm sorry, we don't give out that information. You may leave the delivery at our front desk, and we will be happy to take it to his room."

  I thanked the woman, then set the phone back in its cradle.

  "He's there?" Joseph asked, incredulous.

  "Someone named Westbrook is, but the person isn't accepting calls."

  "I guessed wrong. I never would have thought—"

  I interrupted him. "It could be that Trent keeps a room there simply to be with Margery. In any case, we are supposed to leave our delivery at the front desk, and they will be happy to take it up to his room."

  "What delivery is that?"

  "Something large enough that, when they see it, they won't really be happy to take it up themselves. Something ugly enough that they won't be much happier about keeping it in the lobby."

  Joseph smiled. "So they will give us the room number, wanting us to deliver it." His hand swept the air, indicating all the merchandise in the shop. "So much to choose from."

  I surveyed the items around us, then spotted it in the corner. "Yes, oh yes!"

  Chapter 21

  An hour later, Joseph and I, breathing hard, leaned a large painting wrapped in brown paper against the hotel's front desk. Carrying the artwork, which was as tall as Joseph and as long as a sofa, through the elegantly furnished lobby of the Queen Victoria hadn't been easy. The desk clerk greeted us coolly and, at our request, studied the store tag from Olivia's. The date and time of delivery, as well as the name of the hotel, were printed clearly on it; the customer's "signature" was unreadable. Joseph and 1, afraid a delivery for Mr. Westbrook would raise too many questions, had decided on a different strategy.

  "The writing on this tag is illegible. I can't possibly help you," said the clerk, a twenty-something man with a fake British accent. He looked past us, as if he thought we might go away.

  I rested both arms on the counter, not planning to go anywhere but upstairs. "I remember the customer coming into our store. We spent quite a bit of time discussing Olivia's fine selection of paintings. I am certain I would recognize the name if I saw it again."

  The clerk pursed his lips and refused to take the bait.

  "Perhaps if you looked at the registry," Joseph suggested.

  "No one," said the clerk, "is allowed to look at the list of guests. May I help the next in line, please."

  "I think it began with 'S,'" Joseph continued, propping his elbow on the counter, occupying more space. "I hope it's Superman. This masterpiece must weigh a hundred fifty pounds."

  "'S'? I thought it was 'M.'"

  I could hear the people who were waiting behind us shifting their belongings.

  "I must ask you to step aside," the clerk said to us.

  "But we have to deliver this," I replied.

  "Step aside, please. You may use the public phone if you would like to contact the store for the necessary information." He cocked his head, indicating that he was addressing the guest behind us. "Yes, sir. Thank you for waiting so graciously.'

  I stepped aside—slightly. "Perhaps we should leave the painting here, Joseph. Surely the purchaser will recognize it."

  "I'm sure of only one thing," Joseph responded, "I'm not lugging it back to the shop."

  Though this was part of our script, Joseph wasn't acting; he had sweat profusely during our effort to get the painting in and out of his S.U.V.

  We carried the painting toward a mahogany pillar, a prominent position in the tastefully restored lobby. Working quickly, we peeled off its wrapping. The huge gilt frame, which had enough dips and waves in it to make a person seasick, caught the light and made the perfect border for a painting of very plump women bathing in a pink, soda-pop spring with strange winged creatures darting about.

  Three middle-aged ladies who entered the hotell saw the painting, glanced at one another, then laughed out loud. The desk clerk looked up. When he saw what the patrons were staring at, a look of horror crossed his face. "What are you doing?* he demanded.

  "We thought we'd leave it here til the owner claimed it," Joseph replied.

  "You must be joking!"

  More people entered the lobby. "Mommy, those ladies don't have any clothes on," a child observed.

  A quiet buzzer sounded behind the desk. The office door opened and I held my breath, hoping it wasn't Margery, who might recognize me. To my relief, a dark-haired woman emerged.

  "What's the problem, Francis?" she asked the desk clerk, but she spotted it as she spoke.

  Francis explained how this "unfortunate painting" had materialized in the lobby, then boldly suggested that it be stored in her office.

  The woman, whose name tag indicated she was the assistant manager, studied the canvas. "Not while I work there," she said.

  "If I could look at the registry," I interjected, I think I would recognize the customer's name."

  She nodded. "Come behind the desk. It's on the computer."

  I did so, scanning the list, making sure to search beyond Westbrook, Room 305.

  "Got it. McCutcheon. Room 313."

  Joseph scribbled the number on the tag.

  "She's expecting us, but we'll use the house phone to tell her we're coming up," I said, hoping to keep Francis from making such a call.

  "Thank you, we are rather busy," the woman replied, smiling, then disappearing into her office, leaving behind a pouting desk clerk. A few minutes later, after faking the call, Joseph and I discovered that the antiquated guest elevator was too small for transporting the painting. Francis exacted his revenge by informing us that only employees were allowed to use the service elevator. I could have demanded to speak again to the assistant manager, but I was afraid she would tell an employee to accompany us.

  "Looks like it's the steps," I said to Joseph.

  Wide enough for a dozen people to climb shoulder to shoulder, the Victorian staircase swept up to a large, stained-glass window, then split into two stairways that doubled back, rising to the second floor. After pausing at the split, Joseph went left and I went right. We nearly dropped the painting between us. Then he went right and I went left, both of us grunting as we slammed our foreheads and shoulders against the ornate frame.

  "Which way?" he asked, mopping his brow on his sleeve, puffing hard.

  "You choose, I'll follow." Usually, the stronger person follows, bearing the weight of an object when climbing stairs, and that was me.

  We carried the bathing ladies down to room 313, in case someone checked on our delivery. "Sallie McCutcheon," I said, remembering the name on the registry, "is going to be very surprised."

  Joseph, who had lost his sense of humor, simply dried his hands on a handkerchief and walked back to Room 305. I caught up with him at the door and pressed my ear against it. At first I couldn't figure out whose voices I heard, then I squeezed Joseph's arm. "It's the tell y," I whispered, "tuned into a children's program. Patrick's here!"

  "Do you think Trent is with him?"

  I listened a moment longer. "I doubt it. He's probably back at Mason's Choice, pretending he has nothing to do with this." I knocked on the door.

  When no one answered, I rapped harder.

  "Patrick may be bound or drugged," Joseph said, then slipped from his pocket a case of small tools. In the last few weeks he had become skilled at opening locked boxes and bureaus, both in the shop and at his mother's house. What he lacked in muscle, he made up for with dexterity. A minute later, he turned his head toward me, smiled a little, and softly opened the door.

  The room was da
rk and stuffy, its heavy drapes pulled across the windows. Patrick lay on the bed, sunken into the pillows. I ran to him. "Patrick, are you all right?"

  His glassy eyes slid away from the cartoon he was watching. He turned his head slowly, his eyes gradually focusing on me, then he pulled the bedcovers around him.

  "I'm so glad to see you!" I said, hugging him. I felt him recoil, though his drugged body didn't have enough strength to pull away from me. I let go.

  "Patrick?"

  "He's been given something," Joseph said, standing on the other side of the bed.

  "It's more than that," I replied bitterly. "Someone has been tell ing him things about me. They've been lying about me."

  I reached for Patrick's hand. He flinched.

  "Patrick, listen to me. I didn't want to abandon you. I was fired. I was forced to leave."

  Patrick moved closer to Joseph.

  "You may be right," Joseph observed.

  "We're here to help you, " I continued. "We're going to take you back to your father."

  Patrick didn't respond.

  "We should call Adrian," I said to Joseph, "and tell him where we are, in case something prevents us from getting Patrick out of here."

  "The front desk may be able to monitor hotell phones," Joseph replied, pull ing out his cellular. "What's the number?"

  I gave him Adrian's private line.

  "Should we leave a message if he isn't there?—Wait, I have him. Adrian, hold on for Kate." He handed me the phone.

  "Kate? Where are you?"

  "At the Queen Victoria," I answered. "Joseph and I have found Patrick. He has been sedated, but he seems all right. He was here alone."

  "At the hotel? Do you know how he got there? Did he say who took him?"

  I suspect Trent, since he is friends with the manager. We slipped into the room with the help of Joseph's tools from the store. Patrick is awake, but hasn't spoken yet. I think he's afraid of me, Adrian."

  "Let me talk to him."

  I handed the phone to Patrick. "It's your father."

  Patrick listened for a minute or two, then handed back the phone.

  "Was he there?" Adrian asked, sounding both irritated and anxious.

  "Yes. He's just not speaking. We'll bring him home."

  "Not yet," Adrian said. "Get him out of there—Trent just left the house and may be headed in your direction. But don't bring Patrick here. Emily is hysterical, and I want to talk to him before she gets him upset and confused. I don't think Trent is alone in this, and Patrick may be the only one who can tell us the details we need. The hotell must have a back way out, a fire exit."

  "We'll find it."

  "I'll meet you at the auction house. It's closed today. No one will be there, and we can talk. I'll go in the back way to turn off the alarm and lock up the dogs," he continued. "Then I'll meet you at the front. You should make it in twenty minutes. If you're not there in forty, I'll call the police. What vehicle are you taking?"

  I gave him a description of Joseph's S.U.V. When I hung up, I told Joseph the plan, then checked the hall for a fire escape. A set of inside steps was designated as the fire exit, but I thought I had seen the stairway's door near the front desk. Having entered the lobby with a large, ugly painting, we'd surely be remembered and questioned if we exited with a drugged child.

  There was an old iron fire escape, a zigzagging ladder, attached to the outside of the building. The problem with that route was that Patrick, in his doped-up state, couldn't be counted on to climb down safely by himself. Returning to the room, I told Joseph that I would carry Patrick piggyback down the outside steps.

  But Patrick refused to let me touch him. With unexpected energy, he kicked at me, then punched me with balled-up fists. I caught his wrists, but he continued to kick.

  "Patrick! What is going on?"

  "I won't go with you! I won't!"

  "You have to."

  "You're pig snot," he said. "You're a bucket full of pig snot."

  I let go of him. It was one of Ashley's expressions, a description she had used for Joseph.

  "Why don't you ask him what color it is?" Joseph remarked dryly.

  I had asked Ashley that more than once.

  "Green swirled with pink," Patrick said.

  Joseph grimaced at the "correct" answer. "It is creepy, Katie. It's as if she's inside him."

  "I know." I reached for Patrick again. He squirmed away and lurched toward Joseph, who caught him. "will you let Joseph carry you?" I asked.

  Joseph's eyes widened. "You're trying to give me a heart attack, aren't you."

  "At least, this time, you're headed down."

  Patrick finally agreed, and Joseph helped him put on his shoes, since he wouldn't allow me. We used Joseph's belt and a sheet to tie Patrick onto Joseph's back, in case he let go.

  "Now he's secure, but my pants aren't," Joseph complained.

  Opening the room's door, I looked both ways and led them down the hall. I climbed down the fire escape first, testing it for safety. When I reached the bottom, Joseph slowly descended with Patrick on his back. Each time Joseph's foot felt for a rung, I held my breath. I kept checking the back windows of the hotell to see if anyone was watching us. So far, so good.

  The fire escape ended several meters off the ground. I argued with Patrick about letting me catch him. Finally, I pushed a pile of garbage bags and boxes over to the spot to soften his fall, then stepped in and caught him at the last moment.

  He wrenched himself away from me. "I hate you!" he said. "You're goose poop."

  I bit my lip. It was another of Ashley's descriptions of Joseph, inspired by our experience of walking through fields fouled by Canadian geese. As funny as the expression sounded, Patrick was deadly serious, his eyes angry—angry and scared.

  "All right, take Joseph's hand. Let's walk as quickly as possible."

  Patrick's behavior didn't make sense, I thought, as we hurried up the alley then backtracked down the front street. If Patrick was tapping into the record of Ashley's thoughts and feelings, why didn't he act this way toward Joseph?

  Suddenly I realized my mistake. At the beginning, when Patrick had described Ashley's hair and clothes, I had thought that he was seeing a talking image of her, seeing her the way people are supposed to see ghosts. But Dr. Parker had said that he was experiencing her emotions and thoughts, nothing more. Ashley had been proud of her curly hair and had loved the coat and shoes that Patrick described. He knew what she looked like not by seeing some kind of image, but simply through her thoughts about herself.

  Even after talking with Dr. Parker, I had imagined that Patrick "heard" Ashley's thoughts the way one might hear a ghost—as if Ashley were narrating her story, as if she were an actress delivering lines for his benefit. But he was experiencing her thoughts and feelings as if she were inside his head. Perhaps the more he connected with her psychic trace, the less able he became to distinguish her thoughts from his own. Immersed in her thoughts, he had transferred her feelings about various people to people in his own life.

  Patrick wouldn't recognize Joseph by Ashley's thoughts about his physical appearance, for Joseph looked nothing like he did twelve years ago. But if Patrick experienced her negative thoughts about "my tutor," he might apply those thoughts and feelings to his own tutor—me. If Patrick "heard" Ashley's thoughts as if they were his own, then his belief that his father had killed November made sense: Ashley would have thought, "Daddy hates November.

  Daddy wants to get rid of him," meaning Trent; but to Patrick, "Daddy" was Adrian.

  "This is it, Katie," Joseph called out to me, trying to catch my attention. "You're not leaving me alone with this kid, are you?"

  I turned around and saw that I had walked past the S.U.V. "Sorry."

  Patrick got in the back of the vehicle and I in the front. When I checked to see if his seat belt was fastened, he glared at me.

  Joseph must have read the pain on my face. "Don't take him so seriously, Katie. His brain has been scram
bled by whatever Trent gave him."

  But I knew it wasn't the effect of the sedative. Patrick had begun to pull away from me the night I discovered him playing the piano the same way Ashley had played to annoy Joseph. And the look on his face now—defiance and fear—I had seen that two days ago when rescuing him from the pond.

  A new thought occurred to me, one so strange and chilling, goose bumps rose at the back of my neck. At the pond I had been trying to get Patrick to tap into the moments when Ashley was lured onto the ice, hoping she saw who was responsible and that he could learn the murderer's identity from her. What if he had learned that it was "my tutor"?

  I turned slowly toward Joseph and watched him drive, popping Life Savers into his mouth, wiping the sweat off his brow, looking like a normal, overweight guy on a warmish day in March. Joseph? Impossible.

  But he had been there the day Ashley had died. And he knew I was taking Patrick to the pond after school in an effort to learn about her death. He knew about the reappearance of November, but I hadn't told him the cat was killed—our conversation at Tea Leaves was cut short when Trent and Margery arrived. It wouldn't have been hard to find an orange tabby that resembled November from a distance. Had Joseph hidden among the trees that day? Had he called me on the cell phone, disguising his voice, baiting me, knowing the one reason I'd leave Patrick for a moment was to protect him from a furious Robyn?

  "What is it?" Joseph asked, suddenly aware that I was gazing at him.

  We were stopped at a red light, and his brown eyes looked steadily into mine, a small frown forming above them. "Is something wrong?"

  I shook my head and looked away. "No, I was just thinking."

  How wel did I know this man? No better than I knew Trent, or Robyn, or Brook—I only thought I did because he seemed to be on my side.

  The light changed, and Joseph drove on.

  He had no reason to kill Ashley, I told myself. He had no reason to bait Patrick. People, sane ones, don't murder people they simply don't like. And even if there was some motive sufficient for deadly revenge against the Westbrooks, something I knew nothing about, why would a person who hated them that much suddenly help me rescue Patrick? It didn't make sense.