Mouth-watering smells wafted in from the kitchen. Whatever Aggie was fixing for dinner smelled amazing.
I leaned my head back against the cushion and closed my eyes.
Brnng, brnng.
I stood, crossed from the couch to my desk, and answered the phone. “Hello.”
“Ellison, it’s me.” Anarchy’s voice had a cop-like ring.
Guilt tightened my throat. I should tell him about the file. But explaining exactly how vile Henry had been didn’t appeal to me. Nor did revealing my friends’ secrets to the police. Thankfully, the wine had made the trip from the couch with me. I drank. Deeply. “Hi.”
“I need your help.”
“Oh?”
“Someone tried to kill Lark Flournoy—”
“No!” I braced myself against the desk.
“Yes. I’m at the hospital and his wife is distraught. Would you come and sit with her? Please?”
“Of course. What happened?”
“Someone ran him down as he walked to his car after work.”
“Ran him down in a car?”
“Yes.”
“A blue car?”
Long seconds passed. “How did you know?”
“Lucky guess.”
“Right.” He didn’t believe me.
“There was a blue car parked in front of the Flournoys’ when Marigold was killed. I told you about it.” I took another sip of wine. “It makes sense that Marigold’s murder and the attempt on Lark’s life are related.”
Anarchy said something I couldn’t understand.
“What?”
“Nothing. I was talking to someone else. Hold on—” I heard him say something about interviewing witnesses “—can you come?”
“I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“Thanks, Ellison. I appreciate it.”
I hung up the receiver, looked at the near-empty level in my wine glass, and called a taxi.
“Aggie—” I walked into the kitchen with Max at my heels “—I have to go to the hospital and sit with Winnie Flournoy. Would you mind staying with Grace?”
She looked up from the pot she was stirring, concern cutting stark lines across her face. “I’d be happy to. Is everything all right?”
“Her husband was hit by a car.”
“How awful.”
“On purpose.”
“Even worse.”
“I don’t know how late I’ll be.”
“Don’t give it a second thought.”
Thank heavens for Aggie. “Thank you.”
I arrived at the hospital twenty minutes later and entered through the Emergency Room doors.
There were plenty of people in the waiting room. None of them were Winnie.
I approached the check-in desk.
“Good evening, Mrs. Russell.” The woman behind the desk made it sound as if I was a regular visitor.
I was.
“How may I help you this evening?” she asked.
“I’m looking for Winnie Flournoy. I believe her husband was in a car accident.”
“Mrs. Flournoy is in the surgical waiting room. I’d be happy to have someone take you there.”
I held up a hand. “No need. I know the way.” I spent entirely too much time at the hospital.
My heels clicked against the tile in the otherwise quiet corridors—rounds were over, patients were fed, and day-shifts were winding down.
I found a red-nosed Winnie huddled in a chair next to a uniformed policeman who looked as if he’d graduated from the police academy last week.
Winnie stood when she saw me and launched herself into my arms.
I hugged her and patted her on the back and listened as she sobbed against my shoulder. “What’s happened?” I mouthed over Winnie’s shoulder to the boyish police officer.
He shook his head. “Still in surgery.”
I let Winnie cry for several minutes then asked, “How long will he be in surgery?”
“They don’t—” hiccup “—they don’t know.”
“Have you eaten?” I asked her.
“I couldn’t.”
Fair enough. “Let’s go to the powder room. We’ll wet some towels with cool water and put them on your eyes.” Winnie’s poor eyes were practically swollen shut from crying.
“I can’t leave. What if they come?”
“Officer—” I read his name tag “—Officer Long, would you please stay here while I take Mrs. Flournoy to the ladies’ room?”
He nodded, looking relieved that someone was taking the near-hysterical woman off his hands. “Of course.”
“Hear that, Winnie? If anyone needs you, Officer Long will knock on the door. Now, come with me. You’ll feel better after you’ve cleaned yourself up a bit.”
Winnie didn’t need a bit of a clean-up; she needed a major overhaul. We did what we could. We pressed cool towels against her eyes. We combed her hair. We applied fresh powder and lipstick. “You want to look your best when you see Lark,” I told her.
“What if he doesn’t make it?” Winnie’s chin wobbled.
“Of course he’ll make it, and you don’t want the first thing he sees to be you looking a mess.”
Her chin firmed. “You’re right.”
“Give me just a minute—” I opened the door to the toilet stall and wrinkled my nose “—never mind.” If Mother, who sat on the hospital board, ever saw a bathroom in such need of a good cleaning, heads would roll.
We exited the powder room with Winnie looked marginally better. She’d even quit crying.
“Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?” I asked.
“Positive.”
We settled into green Naugahyde chairs and waited.
And waited.
After about thirty minutes, Winnie had twisted her handkerchief into a rope, then twisted the rope around her fingers, and I’d decided a search for a clean ladies’ room was essential.
I stood and looked at Officer Long. “Where is Detective Jones?”
The young man glanced at his watch. “He should be back any minute now.”
“Where did he go?”
“He went to talk to the witnesses.”
“Witnesses?”
“Lark’s law clerks.” Winnie’s voice was faint. “They saw it happen.”
“What did they see?”
She shook her head, pressed her palm against her mouth, and fresh tears welled in her eyes.
“Winnie, the doctors are taking excellent care of Lark.”
“I know. It’s just—” her head bent, and her neck didn’t look strong enough to raise it again “—how did this happen?”
“Anarchy will do everything he can to catch whoever did this.”
Winnie’s head moved in a barely discernable nod. “I know that.” Her shoulders straightened. “I need to think about something else.”
I sighed and sat next to her. My trip to the ladies’ room could wait a few more minutes. “I have new next-door neighbors,” I told her.
“Who?”
“Jennifer and Marshall Howe. They moved from California.”
“They won’t last.”
“Oh?”
“Haven’t you noticed? The people who move here from the east or north stick like glue. Sometimes, the Southerners stay. People from the west coast never last.”
I had not noticed that.
“They can’t handle the winters.” She crossed her arms as if she could feel January breezing down her neck.
The young police officer nodded his agreement.
A man in scrubs stepped into the waiting room and approached us. “Mrs. Flournoy?”
Winnie stood and clutched my hand. The lines in her face looked like cracks in a plaster wall—a wall crumbling t
o dust. “Yes.”
“Your husband is out of surgery and everything went well.”
Winnie exhaled. Loudly. Her eyes refilled with tears. “Thank, God.”
The man looked at her with concern. “He’ll be in recovery for at least an hour. Why don’t you take a break? Eat a sandwich?”
Winnie just stood there.
“What are Lark’s injuries?” I asked.
The man shifted his gaze to me. “And you are?”
“Ellison Russell.” I spotted the flicker in his gaze. “A friend of the family.”
The man nodded. Once. “He has a broken leg, a broken pelvis, and there was some damage to one of his kidneys, but we’re cautiously optimistic.”
Winnie sagged, and her breath caught.
“A nurse will fetch you in an hour or so. You can see him then.” He waited as if he expected one of us to say something.
Winnie was beyond talking.
“Thank you, Dr.—” I didn’t know his name.
“Dr. Goodman.”
Winnie let go of my hand and pumped his. “Thank you for everything, doctor.”
Dr. Goodman extricated his hand and disappeared.
Winnie collapsed into her chair. “Oh, Ellison, thank God. I’m not ready to be part of the widows’ club just yet.” Winnie’s eyes widened and clapped her free hand to her mouth. “I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t give it another thought. I’m not ready for the widows’ club either.”
“But you’re—”
“Too young to join the widows’ club.” Just ask Mother. She was determined to see me married again—but not to Anarchy. “Come on, Winnie.” I tugged at her elbow, pulling her away from the row of uncomfortable chairs.
“Where?”
“You heard the doctor. We’re getting you something to eat.”
“But—”
“He said you have an hour before they’ll let you see Lark. A sandwich in the coffee shop won’t take thirty minutes.”
She allowed herself to be led to the coffee shop where she sank onto a chair at a table next to the window and buried her head in her hands. “These last few days have been a nightmare.”
I made a sympathetic sound.
“What will I do if—” her voice hitched.
“The doctor said Lark will be fine.”
A waitress with an impressive beehive approached our table and put down two glasses of water. “What’ll it be?”
“You go ahead, Ellison.”
I didn’t need a menu. And I didn’t need water. My teeth were ready to float out of my head. The only thing keeping me at the table was the forlorn arch of Winnie’s neck. “A club sandwich.”
The waitress made a note on her pad. “Coffee?”
I couldn’t say no to coffee. “Yes.”
“We’re running low on lemon meringue. Would you like me to put a slice back for you?”
I spent almost as much time in the coffee shop as I did in the emergency room. They knew me. “Please.”
The waitress turned her attention to Winnie.
“I’d like a cup of your soup and a ham and swiss on rye, please.”
“Would you like your soup with your sandwich or before?”
“Before.” Winnie raised her head and rubbed a palm up and down her arm. “I can’t seem to warm up.”
“Anything else?” asked the waitress.
“Do you have hot tea?”
The waitress nodded and made a note. “Got it.” She slipped the pad into the pocket of her ruffled apron and headed toward the kitchen.
Winnie leaned back in her chair. Her face was still far too pale and new creases ran from the edges of her nose to the corners of her mouth. She sighed. “Thank you for being here, Ellison.”
“It’s my pleasure.” It would be more of a pleasure if I didn’t need to run to the bathroom.
A wry smile twisted her lips. “I seriously doubt that.”
I shifted in my chair. “I’ve had a rough year. I wouldn’t have survived without my friends.”
Winnie nodded and took a small sip of water. “It’s funny…”
“What’s funny?”
“I saw in the morning paper that John Wilson had died.”
I waited.
“It’s not funny that he’s dead. It’s funny that we were just talking about him.”
I said nothing.
“Odd funny,” she continued.
Where had that waitress got to? I ignored the water, ignored the ice melting in the glasses, and crossed my legs.
“I can’t help but wonder if John’s murder and what happened to Lark are related.”
There were no flies on Winnie.
I squeezed my legs together. Finding a bathroom was becoming essential. “You said it yourself, you haven’t thought of John Wilson in years. How could John’s death and Lark being run down be related?”
Now her face looked positively bloodless. “One of the law clerks who saw it happen sat with me for a while. He said the car sped up to hit Lark.”
“Oh, Winnie.” I reached across the table and squeezed her hand.
“I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve been sitting in that waiting room making deals with God and wondering why this happened.”
“That doesn’t sound crazy.” I’d done the same thing more than once.
“All I can come up with is a case John and Lark had together.”
“What kind of case?”
She glanced down at her hands. “I don’t know. I’m sure they’ve had more than one.” She rubbed her wan cheeks. “And I got it wrong. John Wilson wasn’t a plaintiff’s attorney, he represented criminals.”
“Why would an old case come up now?”
“I don’t know, but a case is the key to all this. I’m sure of it.”
“All this?”
“Marigold’s death, too.”
“Did you tell Detective Jones?”
Her gaze slid away from me. “No. Not yet. Do you think I should?”
I nodded with enthusiasm until I remembered part of her story involved my pulling John Wilson’s name from a hat right before he was murdered. Anarchy would be especially curious about that part. “He might have already put two and two together.”
“How?”
“It’s not every day one lawyer is murdered, and another is almost murdered. It stands to reason the two are related.” I was going to have to leave her—if only for a few minutes.
“What I don’t understand is how poor Marigold was mixed up in all this.”
“You’re sure that’s her real name?”
Something flashed across Winnie’s face—an expression there and gone before I had a chance to read it. She pursed her lips. “Who could make up a name like Marigold Applebottom?”
She hadn’t answered, but I ceded her point with a nod then pushed my chair away from the table. “Would you excuse me for a moment, please?” I’d ask her more about Marigold (Winnie was hiding something, I was sure of it) when I returned from the powder room.
“Of course.”
I marched through the crowded coffee shop and passed through the door to the hospital lobby, pausing for an instant and looking back at Winnie. The waitress was serving her a cup of soup. Winnie would be fine for the short amount of time I’d be in the ladies’ room. I zipped across the lobby and opened the door (much cleaner than the facilities near the surgical waiting room).
I took less than five minutes—the necessities, then washing my hands, running a comb through my hair, patting powder on my shiny nose, and swiping a bit of color across my lips.
I hurried back to the coffee shop where Winnie had forsaken her chin-up attitude. In fact, her chin—her whole head—was on the table.
I sat. “Are you all right?”
&nb
sp; She didn’t respond.
“Winnie.” I reached out and touched her arm.
Nothing.
“Winnie!” My voice rose in both volume and pitch.
The people at the surrounding tables gaped at me.
“Winnie!”
I turned to the waitress. “Get help.”
Her hands fluttered.
“Now!” I insisted. “We’re in hospital, call a doctor.”
“Ellison, what’s wrong?” Anarchy stood next to the table.
Tension that had been spooling around me unwound. “Something has happened to Winnie.”
Anarchy took charge. Barked orders. Hospital personnel rushed Winnie from the coffee shop to the emergency room.
When they disappeared into the elevator, I asked, “Where did you come from?”
“Officer Long told me where you were.” He had on his cop face. “What happened?”
I paused at the entrance to the lobby. “I only left her for a few minutes. When I came back, she’d collapsed.”
“Where did you go?”
What kind of question was that? “The ladies’ room.”
“She was fine when you left?”
“Yes. We were talking about what happened to Lark.” I swallowed. “And John Wilson. And Marigold.”
“And you’re sure she was okay?”
I nodded. Mystified. “I wouldn’t have left her.”
“What exactly was she doing?”
“Nothing.” I pushed a few stray strands of hair away from my face. “Eating soup.”
“Soup?” Anarchy’s gaze traveled back to the table where I’d sat with Winnie. The soup bowl still sat on the table, but a busboy was reaching for it. “Stop!” Anarchy’s voice carried through the restaurant and every single person within its walls stopped what they were doing.
He strode across the floor to the table. “Don’t touch that.”
The busboy blinked and backed away.
I followed him to the table. “What’s wrong?” Everything looked normal. Two sweating glasses of water, one bowl of soup, an opened pack of crackers, a few crinkled napkins. Nothing to suggest why Winnie had collapsed.
“Which water is yours?”
I pointed to the untouched glass. “That one.”
Anarchy nodded as if I’d confirmed his suspicions.
“What’s wrong?” I asked a second time.
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