I went into my purse and pawed around for a long second or two, trying to decide what would be reasonable for me to ask. I pulled out a tissue and took my time, wiping my eyes, blowing my nose.
“Was this her room?”
If it was, no way I was going to find any evidence here. Every trace of every thing that had ever happened here in the history of McCauley Road Hospital had been scrubbed clean. It was fresh and tidy. Ready for the next customers.
“Yes. I’m so—I thought you should be sitting down. Have some privacy. I should have realized—”
“No. No. Thank you so much. You’ve been very kind. I’m fine. We were not super close. Was she alone when—? Did she have a roommate?”
“Yes. No. She was the only one in this room when she…at the time.”
I’d run out of questions. I’d learned next to nothing. Tom was waiting. I needed to make my exit before I said or did something stupid. Or before something stupid I’d already said or done caught up with me.
“I should go. You’re busy. Thank you so much. Again. For telling me. This is my fault. I should have stopped at the desk.”
“No.” She gave me an encouraging smile. “I completely understand. It gets chaotic down there.”
In the hall I thanked her again and made my way back to the elevator.
Outta here.
Chapter Twenty-three
Not so fast.
Ivy Martin was waiting outside my elevator. I got on. She got on behind me and reached out to press three. Silent. In command. When we got there she held the door open for me. I got off. There was a little conference room across the hall. She held that door, too. I went in. She followed. We sat down.
“Ms. Harper. What are you doing here?
I could see “Visiting my mean old Aunt Martha of The Sucky Pound Cake” was not going to fly.
Let’s try the truth again.
“Ms. Martin, I apologize. I know this is irregular. But Dr. Bennington and I, we’re hoping to be able to adopt Rune. He doesn’t have anyone now and he and Tom have been friends.”
“Dr. Bennington. Did he by any chance recently win 550 million dollars?”
But of course.
“Yes. And Rune is the reason.” I filled her in. When I arrived at the end, I added, “So everything that’s happened, including Renata’s death, is because of that. You can see how personally Tom takes this. Someday Rune is going to want to know what happened to his mom. He’s not asking questions right now, but he’s a smart kid. He’ll ask.”
Ivy was standing down. Little by little. But every little bit was helping my case. I decided on a bold move.
“You said there’d be an autopsy. Will someone share the results with us? Will it be here or the ME’s office—Ms. Martin?”
Her face was telegraphing the UhOh reflex. Glazed-over eyes. Pinched brow. A minimal tightening around the mouth. She swept it all away in a microsecond. Too late. I’d seen it. She knew it. Now she had to decide whether to lie to me. I waited.
Once again I was seeing the alternate universe of Ivy Martin, maybe the true one. I was starting to believe that if I’d met her outside her official capacity I’d have liked her a lot.
“Ms. Harper. I’m putting my employment at risk right now. I want to be sure you understand that, at least.” We locked eyes and I nodded.
“I understand.”
“I saw you and Mr. Bennington. Dr. Bennington. With the boy. Rune. Together. I’m an excellent judge of character. It’s an asset in my job. I agree that someday you’ll want to tell Rune everything you can about his mother’s death. So I’m about to tell you something that would reflect badly on this hospital. You’ll do with the information whatever you have to, but I hope you’ll be discreet.”
I nodded. What was this?
“There’s been some temporary confusion.”
Confusion? What kind of confusion could there be? Renata was dead. She was no longer in her room. They’d scheduled an autopsy. Ivy had said that yesterday.
So? Here? Or downtown?
Or.
“You’ve lost her body.”
A sigh. “Temporarily. But yes.”
“How?”
“Not sure. She was taken to…downstairs. The ME’s office sent a van. Somewhere along the line, though, the body…stopped being where it was supposed to be.”
“What does that mean?
“For now, I hope you’ll share our belief that it’s a paperwork error between us and the ME. These things happen, though not frequently. At all. Everybody’s rushed. We rely on digital data to track…things. If there’s a glitch—”
“A glitch.”
“We’ll find her. I promise you.”
“And when you do, you’ll let us know?”
“I will. And in exchange will you keep this to yourselves until we have time to sort things out?”
“I have nobody to report it to. Except Tom. We don’t want to cause you any problems. We’ll wait until we hear from you.”
“Thank you.”
“You, too.”
I gave her my contact information.
“Oh, one more thing, Ms. Martin. How did you know I was up there?
“Dr. DeRoss checked you out. No Aunt Martha.”
***
I couldn’t get back to Tom fast enough. When the revolving door propelled me onto the sidewalk, I had to restrain the urge to take off running. How many dangerous people were watching me right now?
Don’t turn around, Allie. Walk like a normal person, even if you aren’t one.
I walked, trying to reconstruct what it had been like to be a normal woman walking and just wondering where she’d parked. I found Tom sitting on the guardrail, hanging his feet over mostly open space.
“You were supposed to wait in the car.”
“Taste of your own medicine. I figured I could go off on my own for once.”
“You could have gone way, way off from where you’re sitting.”
“You mean down the berm made of asphalt. Through the smallish trees over the hill. And then off the cliff?”
“How do you know that?”
“Smell of tar. Rustle of weak trees with only a few sad, dry leaves. And the echo from way down there. Pretty far down there. What did you find out?”
“Well, I found out Ivy Martin is nicer than you’d think and a Dr. DeRoss is as suspicious as he is cute. But I only got two pieces of information for us. First, Renata’s MRI came back normal. And second, they’ve lost her body.”
After he’d sat silent for a while, no doubt listening to the whisper of sad leaves and the echo of a long drop, he said, “Later this afternoon, but not very much later, I’m going to need a drink.”
“Good thinking. I’m with you.”
Chapter Twenty-four
I’m going to make a list about all the ways blind guys are better than non-blind guys. I already mentioned the Body Braille thing and the me-waking-up-in-bed-with-a-blind-guy-and-not-needing-to-look-good advantage. But there’s also the benefit that results from the blind guy’s need to pay attention to exactly where he is in time and space right now and also to where he’s headed right after this. This would be Number Three on my new list.
What brought this to mind was the sight of my erstwhile spouse making his way along East Fourth toward the table on the patio outside the Zocalo Mexican Grill and Tequilería, where Tom and I had been, until that very millisecond, working hard to forget the troubling misadventures of the morning, having the drinks that the Universe owed us because of those misadventures, and soaking up the vibe of the trendiest avenue in downtown Cleveland.
I observed D.B. Harper focusing his considerable intellect on whatever overwhelmingly snotty thing he was about to say to me, as he walked into and nearly crushed a smallish woman who was standing in his w
ay. She wasn’t killed or even seriously injured, so he mumbled a quick “Oh, sorry, ma’am.” And kept on ruining my Friday evening one step at a time.
The mere fact that a guy is 6’4”, darkly good-looking, with arrestingly beautiful ice blue eyes, doesn’t necessarily make him worth a second look. God. I wish someone had explained that to me freshman year. But incontrovertibly, here he was. Young ladies on both sides of East Fourth were looking. And looking again.
Ironic coincidence: Tom and I had just been talking about the lawyer we were hiring to handle the blind trust and here was one of the city’s most successful and well-known. Trampling ladies to get to us.
I needed to get rid of this guy. Meet. Greet. Retreat. I put my fingers on Tom’s arm and my lips close to his ear and muttered, “Ex-husband at twelve o’clock. Apologies in advance.”
He nodded, aiming an encouraging smile in my general direction. “I heard you grind your teeth all the way over here.”
Being married to one man for five and half years gives an observant woman the ability to read his mind by looking at his big, handsome, evil face. Here—in order—was the progression of D.B.’s thoughts from the moment I came into his view:
“Wow. There’s Allie. I’m amazed she looks even that good. Who’s she with? Some loser. Oh, man. Is that a blind person cane? A blind loser? Allie’s now scraping the bottom of the ADA barrel. Too bad. Heh, heh. That’s too good. Too—
“Uh! Oh, sorry, ma’am.”
“Stupid women, standing around with their heads up their—Waaaait a sec. Hold on. What was that thing Jack said? He heard a blind guy in Cleveland won the Mondo. Five hundred-fifty million. Nah. That’s a rumor. And surely it’s not—that blind guy’s not—shit. The look on her face—Alice’s hooked herself up with 550 million dollars? Shit. Shit. Shit!”
So there, at the big finish, he’d read my mind, too. For my part, I got to play the alien who blows up people’s brains from the inside. All I’d had to do was smile.
The D.B. was speechless?
I sat back and visualized an official of the Olympic Games hanging the gold medal around my neck. I listened to a few measures of the Star Spangled Banner before I said, “Hey, D.B. How’s it…going?”
To his credit, he squeezed off a reasonable facsimile of his usual arrogant smile. “Good. Alice. Great, actually.” He paused, waiting for an introduction to the man he was staring at as if he were the white, blind LeBron.
There was awe, sure. Curiosity. But the expression around his eyes was pure dread. I knew he was playing a mental preview of the conversations that would be going down next week in the coffee room at GG&B.
“Tom,” I led off, nice as pie, “I’d like you to meet my former husband, D.B. Harper. D.B. This is Dr. Tom Bennington the Third. He teaches at CWRU. Tom, D.B. is a senior partner at Gallagher, Gallagher & Barnes.” That was all he was getting from me. I snapped shut like a self-satisfied clam and savored the moment.
D.B. was at a horrible disadvantage. Key information was missing and he had not the foggiest idea how to get at it. He shuffled his feet. “May I pull up a chair?”
I gazed at him. “I’m so sorry, D.B. Tom and I were just leaving.”
Silly me. This was a trial lawyer I was talking to.
“No, no. Alice.” He hit the Alice exceptionally hard. D.B. was master of the small, disarming irritation, delivered in a killer one-two combo with a put-down designed to leave the addressee staggering. Or maybe crying. Or at least pleading guilty as charged.
Brace yourself, Alice.
“I’m so glad to see you out in public again. Not brooding. Or sulking. That’s so great. After all. It’s been, what? Two years? Time flies. Let me buy you and your friend a drink. I want to hear all about it. How did you guys meet? Blind date? Oh, hey. Sorry, man. My bad.”
I glanced at Tom. He was sitting, quiet and contained, letting the D.B. run off him. My hero.
“No, not at all, D.B.” Assurance fairly dripped from that juicy Southern drawl. “Allie and I have been friends for what seems like quite a while. That blind date would surely have been with you.”
It was a pleasure to watch D.B. get, shall we say, blindsided for the second time that evening. I made a mental note to sit down with Tom and draw up a list of ways to use a disability against your enemies.
However, I’d forgotten how persistent D.B. could be in the face of rejection. After a moment during which he closed his mouth and returned an expression of not-poleaxed to his face, he went right ahead and pulled up a chair, arranging his long muscular legs and his wide muscular torso all over it. Then he leaned in and planted his elbows on our table in such a way that our end of the street was now dominated by the sprawling presence of Duane Bradford Harper. I caught the wave of his ultra-expensive, signature cologne. I was already getting a headache.
“So. What’s new? Tell me all about—everything.”
“Oh, there’s so much, Duane. So much. And truly, no time at all to talk about it now. We’ve been very…busy the last couple of days.” I smiled in what I hoped was a meaningful way.
Tom mirrored my satisfied smile. “Yes,” he drawled, laying his hand on my bare arm with that unerring skin radar of his, “Very. Busy.” He picked up my hand and planted the extremely potent kiss I remembered from our first…ah…date in the center of my palm. Everybody at our end of East Fourth got second-degree burns.
D.B. blinked.
I signaled our waiter, a lovely young man named Sean, who had been lurking against the front wall of the tequilería, watching this scene unfold with amused empathy. I believed he’d correctly identified all the players and had witnessed my victory, but he did not, I could tell, know about Tom’s Mondo ticket.
He had brought us our Margaritas Fantasticas and extra free snacks and given us flawless, friendly attention in spite of our ordinary, not at all wealthy, demeanor. At my nod, he swooped in with the check, which came to about twenty-five dollars.
In a secret compartment of my wallet, I had a hundred-dollar bill that I’d kept in there for the past two years, to remind myself that I was fine on my own and bound for better things. Or to pacify a mugger, should that be required. There would never be a more propitious moment for me to spend my Ben. Sean put the check down and I dropped the hundred on it. I winked at him. “Keep the change, Sean. Awesome service. Bye, D.B.”
I stood up. Tom stood up. He took my arm. We walked.
I couldn’t resist a backward glance.
Behind us stood two men with their mouths hanging open.
One ecstatic. One not.
Chapter Twenty-five
Monday, August 24
That was Friday night. Here’s some good news. I looked up on the Internet and found out that, numerically speaking, between Friday night and Monday morning of the final week in August, approximately three hundred thousand people on Planet Earth died. That, of course, is not the good news. That’s the preamble to the good news. Which is here: I am pleased to report that on that Saturday and Sunday, as far as I know, not one of those three hundred thousand people died because Tom won the Mondo.
That weekend might have been a romantic interlude for us, happily shacked up on those hot summer days and stormy summer nights in our luxurious room. But the glow was diminished by all the accumulated death and destruction we had to fret about, and a lot of other stuff that needed to be handled. Like calling in rich on my library job. Speculating about our murder investigations. Avoiding murderers. Many small details such as that.
Neither of us had the guts to go back to our houses yet, so we had to stock up on some suitable attire for our lawyer appointment. I figured my jeans, shirt, flip-flop ensemble wouldn’t cut it in my new role as a woman of gold-digging motivation. Dress for success, I say.
Another anti-interlude factor was my compulsion to keep looking over my shoulder. The creepy, crawly, everybody’s-wa
tching sensation that I thought of as “Creepy Eye” was everywhere. Every car that slowed as it passed us. Every shadowy doorway. Every sideways glance. To counteract this, I spent a considerable amount of time online, searching for articles about how to tell if you were being followed, or hacked, or whatever.
Experts thought that if you made four right turns, one after another, and somebody was still behind you, this somebody was likely a tail. Or if you thought your phone was being used to track you, you could stop it by doing a total reboot on the phone. That would be time-consuming, but if my phone started lighting up all by itself or popping out some kind of strange code, I’d definitely try it.
I didn’t mention any of this to Tom. He felt bad enough about things as it was.
For all these reasons, just about anywhere on Earth would have been very Creepy Eye for me that weekend. Except maybe the hot spot under the down comforter of a Marriott Bed.
Vigilance wears you out.
***
All interludes, by definition, have to end. Even cluttered, distracting, and semi-exhausting ones. Monday morning, we got dressed up in our new clothes and showed up, holding hands and smiling, at the well-appointed offices of GG&B—D.B.’s firm.
D.B.’s lair, more like it.
A sensible person might well inquire why we chose Gallagher, Gallagher & Barnes from among all the big names now available to us. Well, for one it was also the firm of the lawyer I trusted most in all the world. And for two? Spite. One hundred percent pure. This was going to even up an old, festering score for me. With 550 million dollars to spare. So here we were.
When I said “well-appointed,” I was not joking. Gallagher, Gallagher & Barnes is referred to around town—and probably all over the known world—as “the venerable Cleveland law firm.” Its history extends back to the second quarter of the twentieth century. Its billings are in the stratosphere. If there were a law firm located inside Monticello—Jefferson, Jefferson & Hemings, if there is any justice in this world—its reception room would be the mirror image of GG&B’s.
The firm’s location at the very pinnacle of the Arco Building, one of the city’s tallest, is, I’m sure, an intentional metaphor for its extreme exclusivity. Only the best attorneys. Only the most affluent clients. Everything rarified. Every detail totally under control. Control is a big deal at GG&B. They like everything buttoned up and bolted down. Spouses, as well, I found to my rue, when D.B. and I were a couple.
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