The Third Sister

by Sara Blaedel

  Ilka let herself in the funeral home and stood for a moment listening; all was quiet. The door to the arrangement room was closed, but when she put her ear to the door, she knew that Leslie must be in there. On the way back from the hospital, Ilka had bought groceries with a few of the bills she’d snatched out of Lydia’s bag before stashing it in the locker. She went out into the kitchen to put coffee on and make a few sandwiches.

  Her father had called as she was paying in the supermarket. He was on his way to see Amber. She was getting the results of some tests taken the day before, and he wanted to be there; he was concerned about his youngest daughter. That stung Ilka. Which was childishly jealous, she realized at once. She was ashamed of herself. Before hanging up, she’d promised to help him find out how to have a death certificate annulled.

  Ilka balanced the food tray on one hand and knocked on the door before entering the room. Leslie lay fully clothed on the sofa when she stepped in. At least her half sister had gotten up, though so far that was about it. Her head was resting on a stack of pillows, and her earbuds were hooked up to the iPad on her lap. Ilka set the tray down on the table and turned to her.

  “How about if I open the curtains?” She walked over to the window.

  Leslie nodded listlessly, as if she hadn’t really noticed the room was still dark even though it was long past noon. She was watching a movie or TV series on the iPad—someone was kissing—but Ilka didn’t recognize any of the actors.

  “And maybe I could open the window, to get a little fresh air in here?” She was trying to fight off the annoyance creeping into her voice. The last thing she needed was an adult zombie lying around all day like this. But she held herself back and shifted into a friendlier voice.

  “Dad took the bus in to see Amber. I’ll drive you over if you want to visit her. She’s been asking about you.”

  Leslie still hadn’t reacted to the news that their father was alive, and she hadn’t asked any questions either. She simply stared at the screen, as if she’d checked out mentally.

  Ilka patiently held the plate out to her again. Leslie hesitated but finally accepted a sandwich and sat up just enough to drink her coffee without spilling.

  For several moments Ilka stood watching her, not knowing what to do. Leslie hadn’t even mentioned the clash with the Rodriguez brothers, nor had she asked a single question about Lydia. Did Leslie even know the nun had been working for her father the past twelve years? Ilka wasn’t sure. She seemed lost in her own world; maybe she’d simply decided it didn’t concern her.

  Someone stuck a key in the back door of the home. Leslie stiffened and watched wide-eyed as Ilka walked out of the room and closed the door behind her.

  “How did it go?” Ilka asked.

  Her father took off his coat. “Fine. Everything looks good, very good. Tom came while I was there. They seem very happy together.”

  Ilka sensed his relief; it truly looked as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

  “I stopped by to see Artie too.” His face fell. “He doesn’t seem to remember much, short-term. And several major nerves in his arm were severed. It looks like he has a tough road ahead of him…I’m afraid he’ll never be the same.”

  Ilka stared at him in astonishment. “He seemed to be just fine this morning. He remembered things, like how he found out Lydia had been hiding Fernanda and the boy, that he’d told them they could stay at his gallery.”

  Without answering, Paul looked over at the door to the arrangement room. “Is she still in there?” He said he’d looked in on Leslie before leaving for the hospital, but she’d been asleep. “How is she?”

  Ilka shrugged. “Nothing seems to really get through to her.” She walked over and rapped on the door, then opened it.

  “Leslie? Our father is back. He wants to see you.”

  Leslie slowly raised her eyes from the screen, but when he walked in, she looked back down without a word and focused on the iPad. Her face was a blank slate.

  A heavy, awkward silence filled the room as Ilka and her father stood in the doorway.

  Finally, without looking up, Leslie said, “I thought it was her coming back.”

  “Coming back?” Ilka didn’t understand. She’d checked the front and back doors, which were both locked, before she’d left for the hospital, and she was sure her father had been every bit as cautious since she’d told him about the Rodriguez brothers returning.

  “The nun. She came when I was on my way to the bathroom. She let herself in the reception.”

  Ilka glanced quickly at her father.

  “She’s been here?” he cried out. “When?”

  Leslie shrugged. “Not long after I woke up.”

  “You just let her leave again?”

  Leslie looked bewildered at Ilka’s question. “What is it I should have done?”

  Their father took a step into the room. “Did she say anything?”

  Leslie thought that over a moment then shook her head. “Most of the time she was out in the garage, but when she came inside it was like she was looking for something. She came in here too and went through all my things.”

  Suddenly Ilka realized this was the first time she’d heard Leslie speak coherently since she’d picked her up at the ranch. “Did she leave a message?”

  Leslie shook her head.

  “Did you notice if she had a cell phone?” he asked.

  Leslie shook her head another time as they peppered her with more questions.

  “Did she take anything with her?” Ilka asked.

  She shrugged. “I didn’t really notice. I don’t even know the woman.”

  “But she just left?” her father said. “She didn’t say anything about where she was going?”

  He looked ashen as he stared at Leslie. Again, she just shook her head, and it went without saying that she hadn’t thought to ask Lydia.

  While her father tried to squeeze more details out of Leslie, Ilka walked out to the garage, but she saw no sign of Lydia. She hurried back into the reception to see if she’d left a message.

  No messages. No trace of her. Nothing that pointed to her having been there at all. Then Ilka remembered the small silver necklaces, the only things she could think of that might be worth something—and easy to sell when you were on the run. The funeral home used to sell cremation jewelry, which family members would fill with the ashes of their deceased loved one. Ilka had planned to get rid of the necklaces at the flea market they’d set up, but then they shut the whole thing down early, so Lydia had packed them back into their velour-lined boxes.

  When Ilka opened the cupboard, the small boxes tumbled out. Lydia had emptied them all. Ilka didn’t blame her. She imagined her searching for any valuables she could find after discovering her bag was gone. And she’d have wanted to get out of the funeral home as quickly as possible to avoid the Rodriguez brothers. Ilka felt terrible; Lydia didn’t know she’d sent the brothers back to Texas.

  She ran across the parking lot to Lydia’s apartment. The last time she’d tried the door it had been locked, but seconds later she stood in the entryway, half expecting to be met by the barrel of Lydia’s gun.

  The apartment was empty. An open cabinet door and a pulled-out drawer in the bedroom were the only signs that anyone had been there. None of her things had been touched, and it didn’t look as if anything had been taken from the living room either. Ilka guessed that Lydia had simply grabbed some clothes and taken off.

  Ilka hung her head as she walked back. If only she’d been there when Lydia had arrived, she could have told her where she’d hidden the bag.

  But wait: Lydia might have been keeping an eye on Ilka and her father; she might have known they were out. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to see them. Or to answer their questions.

  Ilka regretted taking the bag to the hospital. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, and it made things that much more difficult for Lydia.

  Then she remembered about the insurance. She’d promised the nurs
e on Artie’s ward that she’d call when she found the policy number.

  The arrangement room door was closed when she returned, and her father had gone upstairs. She rushed into the office and began looking through the stacks of file folders on the shelves, then knelt down and started going through all the files. In the left lower cabinet she found a ring binder with all the prepaid funeral agreements and another one filled with receipts. In the middle cabinet she found copies of death certificates, and finally, in the cabinet closest to the window, she took out a ring binder with EMPLOYEES written on its spine.

  She laid it on the desk and quickly flipped to the section labeled ARTIE, where she found his insurance papers. GOLD STAR INSURANCE was printed in one corner, and farther below she read that Mr. Arthur Sorvino was insured under the Platinum plan.

  Ilka sighed in relief. She slipped the most recent payment receipt out of the folder to copy the policy number. Then she noticed the date; it was a year old. She flipped through the rest of the payments to check if they were out of order, but all the others were older. For a long while she sat and stared at the policy. Finally, though she was barely able to breathe, she stood up and went out into the reception to look for a bill from the insurance company.

  One by one, she pulled out all the drawers in Lydia’s desk, and finally she found the stack of unpaid bills, but none of them were from the insurance company. Then Ilka remembered the mail and advertisements she’d set aside the day she discovered the threatening letter from Maggie. Ilka had only been interested in the handwritten envelope; everything else she’d tossed into a pile and forgotten about. Now she found the pile, and there it was. The bill from Gold Star Insurance. She hadn’t even opened it.

  She did so now and pulled the bill out. The expiration date for the insurance was printed clearly in the middle of the page. It had passed long ago.

  “There’s been a mistake,” Ilka repeated to the Gold Star agent. “It must be some electronic error. The money was deposited in the wrong account or something.” No, she didn’t have a receipt for the transfer of funds. They didn’t use a payment service. And she didn’t remember the exact date the payment had been made.

  “He’s insured on the Platinum plan,” she added. “If you look him up, you’ll see that you’ve been covering him for many years.”

  The agent confirmed that Arthur Sorvino’s policy had been active for fifteen years, without any claims having been made during that time.

  “You see? And we didn’t cancel the policy. It’s still active. This is simply a mistake.”

  She accused their bank of screwing things up, and it sounded as if the woman on the phone was inclined to agree with her. When she said she would check to see how quickly they could activate the policy again, Ilka thanked her so profusely that an awkward silence followed. Finally, the woman cleared her throat before adding that, naturally, Arthur Sorvino would have to take another physical examination, and when they received proof that he was in good physical health, that he had no chronic illnesses or disabilities, she would send his application on to be evaluated.

  Ilka called six other insurance agencies before giving up. She begged, exaggerated, even lied to some extent to convince them to insure Artie. Initially, they were more than willing, ready to promise the world and all its gold, but as soon as they heard he was in the hospital, with a long course of treatment in front of him, the conversation was over. They wouldn’t budge an inch.

  She sat and stared into space. She would have to suck it up and admit to Artie that it was her fault if they sent him home without the treatment he needed. But she couldn’t, she just couldn’t do that. She was going to have to figure something out before the hospital demanded to see the insurance policy again. Ilka assumed there was still money in his hospital account; otherwise they would have contacted her already.

  “Damn you, Lydia Rogers,” she mumbled to herself.

  Suddenly she longed for home. Everyone in Denmark had the right to hospital care, insurance or no insurance. Maybe not every inch of hospital floor was spick-and-span, and the food could be better, but no one was turned away if they needed a doctor.

  Ilka stood up slowly. She was determined to find a solution. If she couldn’t get Artie covered, she would at least be prepared when they demanded cash instead.

  14

  The bag! Ilka had to get back to the hospital and use the money from the bag to pay them. By the time she grabbed her coat and was on her way to the car, she was already concocting a cover story. She simply couldn’t tell Artie she hadn’t paid his insurance, that she’d laid the bill aside after finding the letter from Maggie. That she’d neglected the responsibilities of running the funeral home she’d inherited.

  But really, though, she told herself as she headed for the hospital, who could have imagined running into characters like the Rodriguez brothers? Who could have foreseen all these dangerous things happening?

  In fact, she wasn’t even sure of her own insurance status. At some point her mother had told her that she was covered by travel insurance for sixty days. But did that include being assaulted by drug dealers from Texas?

  The incessant monologue in Ilka’s head continued all the way to the hospital and up the elevator to Artie’s ward. She would dump so much money on them that their counting machine would burn up. By the time she walked into his room, she was so anxious that she could barely breathe.

  Artie lay with eyes closed. A large bouquet on his bed table blocked most of his face from sight. She knew she would have to explain what had happened with the insurance at some point—just not now. Not until she could promise it wouldn’t affect his treatment. But that would also mean she would have to tell him about Lydia’s money.

  The man in the bed beside Artie gazed at her with eyes half shut. He was the only other patient in the room. Two beds had been removed, and the four other beds were empty.

  Ilka said hello, and he nodded weakly at her. She draped her coat on the chair beside Artie’s bed so the man would know she was a visitor, then she walked over to the locker. She was about to punch in her mother’s birth date when she noticed the door wasn’t completely closed. She flung it open; the lock had been broken, and the locker was empty.

  For several moments Ilka stared at the bottom of the locker while trying to wrap her head around the situation she would soon be dealing with. She turned slowly and glanced over at Artie’s battered face. He was watching her now, and she realized her father was right. She’d been thrilled to know he was still alive, and maybe that’s what had affected her judgment, made her believe everything would be fine. Her relief from his regaining consciousness had blinded her, but now, as he lay there with the black stocking cap on his head, she saw how badly injured and weakened he really was. Or perhaps his condition was just more obvious, now that her ability to help him had vanished along with the bag.

  She tried to smile as she walked over to him. “Has someone been in and moved your things?” She sat down on the chair.

  Artie raised his eyebrows in puzzlement.

  “When I was here earlier, I stuck a bag in your locker and locked it up, but now it’s open.” She didn’t mention the lock had been broken.

  Artie shook his head and mumbled that he didn’t even know he had a locker. “Lydia was here. She came just after Paul left.”

  His words were slurred and weak, as if he had to struggle to find them. Ilka wondered if they’d given him an extra dose of painkillers. He seemed dazed, a bit confused; it was almost as if he were talking to himself.

  “I could sort of feel her, sitting beside the bed here, but we didn’t talk.” Now he was looking at Ilka, though his voice was still fuzzy. “She brought the flowers.”

  Ilka slid over and reached for his hand. “Did she say anything?” She was relieved Lydia had figured out what she, Ilka, had done with the bag, but she knew the money that could help Artie might be long gone. It was not a pleasant thought. “Did she leave a message?”

  Artie stared int
o space somewhere over her left shoulder for several moments before shaking his head. “We didn’t talk.” His voice sounded sturdier now, as if he was concentrating on making sense. He managed to sit up in bed before Ilka could help him.

  “I need to ask you a favor.” His chest seemed thin inside the hospital shirt, and his stocking cap was pushed up further now. Ilka noticed the bandage on the back of his head.

  She leaned forward to hear him better.

  Artie wet his lips and began speaking slowly. “I sent my bank a power of attorney, so you can withdraw money from my account and pay my bills while I’m in here. I didn’t know Paul was back, or I would have assigned it to him.”

  Immediately Ilka grabbed his hand. “That’s no problem. Of course I’ll help. I’ll stop by the bank and make sure everything gets paid.”

  It warmed her heart that he would include her in something so private as his financial affairs. Maybe it was because he looked so feeble lying there, she thought, but his trust was touching. Though now it would be even more impossible to explain that she’d screwed up his insurance payments.

  She gave it another shot. “Did Lydia say where she was going?”

  “I think I sort of nodded off. First I thought I’d dreamed she showed up, but then there’s the flowers. She was here.”

  He nodded at the small card on the table. Get well soon had been written on it in Lydia’s stiff handwriting.

  Ilka laid the card back on the table and tried to hide her desperation. Artie was in free fall, and she couldn’t grab him. She blinked away a few tears and stroked the back of his hand. His eyelids were growing heavy again.

  She sat there until he fell asleep. Then she stood up and pulled the flowers out of the vase, but there were no more cards. No hidden messages, no sign that Lydia wanted them to know where she was headed. She was gone. She and the bag.

  “Unfortunately, I’m not the one who makes the rules.” The woman in the office had stopped Ilka again as she was leaving the ward. “We need to see his policy now, or else we will have to stop treatment.”