The Girl Next Door

by MacDonald, Patricia

  She started to walk away from the bed.

  “Nurse,” he croaked in a hoarse voice.

  She came back and looked him over, frowning. “You’re sweating something terrible. Let me get the thermometer.”

  She walked away again and Andre fell back against the pillow. He had to get word to Nina. Tell her what happened. The skinny young man with dirty hair and desperate eyes had opened the door a few inches and stared at him.

  “Are you the doctor my aunt called about?” he had asked. Then: “Thank God. You gotta help me. He’s dying.”

  Andre had gone into the room. It was dark and in disarray. The whole room smelled of vomit. There was a large man on the bed with a rubber tube tied around his upper arm and vomit all over his shirt. He was barely breathing.

  “What happened?” Andre had asked Mears.

  Calvin Mears had stared at the man on the bed. “I don’t know. He just collapsed.”

  Andre had rushed to the man’s side, examining his eyes. His pupils were pinpoints, his pulse feeble. His skin was pallid, cold to the touch. His breathing slow and shallow. “What drug did he take?”

  “Drug? I don’t know,” said Mears.

  “You’re a liar,” Andre had cried, groping around until he found the syringe on the floor. “What was it?” he demanded.

  “Heroin,” Mears had said. “It was heroin.”

  “Shit,” Andre had said. “We need Narcan. Call nine-one-one.” And then he had heard the knock at the door. Mears had gone to answer it.

  The nurse returned with the thermometer, poked it into Andre’s ear, and pressed a button. She took it out of his ear and peered at it.

  “What is it?” Andre breathed.

  “It’s climbing on us a little bit. That’s normal though. Right after surgery. We’ll keep an eye on it.”

  Andre reached out and grabbed her hand. “Please, nurse. A phone call. Can you do it for me? It’s urgent.”

  “Now, listen,” said the nurse. “You may be a doctor, but I’m in charge here and I say no phone calls, no questions from the police, nothing, until we get you into a little better shape.”

  “Police?” he whispered.

  “They’re out in the hallway,” she said. “They’ve been asking to come in here for the last hour. They want to talk to you about what happened. But they’re not getting in until I say so.”

  “I want to tell them …” he said.

  “Oh no. I don’t want them in here disturbing everything. There’s plenty of time for that,” said the nurse. “Now lie back.” Shaking her head, she took the thermometer and his chart and went back to the nurses’ station. She recorded the patient’s temperature, filed the chart in the appropriate slot, and then went to check on an elderly man who had had his gallbladder removed by laparoscopy. The old man seemed to be faring pretty well. He would be heading up to his room in no time. She moved on to a woman who’d had several ovarian tumors removed that afternoon. Everything was benign, but she’d had a rough couple of hours. A bad reaction to the anesthetic. The nurse started to walk around the side of the bed to take the woman’s pulse when the woman called out in a weak but alarmed voice. “Nurse, that man, look!”

  The nurse turned and saw the doctor with the gunshot wounds. He had managed to slide off the bed. He was on his feet, but wobbling, holding the bandages on his stomach with one hand and the wall with the other as he tried to make his way to the door. The back of his johnny was flapping open but he did not seem to care.

  “Dr. Quinteros,” she cried. “Stop that!”

  He ignored her, continuing to shuffle toward the door holding on to the wall.

  “You stop right there,” she cried, as she rounded the bed and headed toward him. “You’ll start bleeding.”

  Just as he got to the door she reached him and tried to grab him. He turned toward her, his coppery skin now gray. Blood was seeping across the front of the johnny where he held his hand. Before she could catch him his eyes rolled back and he collapsed against the wall and slid down to the cold tile floor.

  28

  NINA had called Farrell’s Antiques and the salesman, Arne, answered. He told her that Lindsay was out. When Nina persisted and said she would come to the store and wait for her, Arne had finally admitted that she was out appraising the contents of an estate for a young banker named Cowley, whose parents had recently passed away. She would probably be working there late into the night. Reluctantly, he gave her the address, warning her that she was not welcome to barge in on Lindsay while she was working. Nina was beyond caring about being unwelcome.

  The Cowley estate sat at the end of a winding driveway that passed through an apple orchard and over a bridge above a manmade pond surrounded by weeping willows. In the moonlight, the fronds of the willow trees were silver, and the onyx surface of the pond was split by a corrugated trail of light. Nina drove slowly toward the enormous Norman-style house at the foot of the driveway. The place was probably breathtaking when it was all lit up, Nina thought, but tonight it was dark except for several glowing windows on the first floor. Nina parked the Volvo beside the lone car in the driveway, a black BMW, and stepped out onto the cobblestones. There was no sign of the Jaguar. This one time, Nina wished that she had found it here. Maybe he came and went, she told herself. Go and find out.

  She walked up to the front door of the Cowley house, which was standing ajar, and pushed it open. She stuck her head in the door and called out in a loud voice, “Lindsay? Are you in here?”

  Nina heard a distant voice say something, and she stepped into the grand, open foyer with a winding staircase that faced the front door. She looked down through the corridor of rooms on either side of the foyer. One of the corridors was dark, but through the other she could see the tasteful muted tints and wallpapers of the succeeding rooms. “Lindsay. It’s Nina Avery,” she called out in the direction of the lighted rooms. She listened for a reply and heard one voice, and then a second voice.

  Frowning, Nina began to walk in the direction of the lighted rooms and the voices. As she got closer she could distinguish the timbre of the two voices—it was a man and a woman speaking. Lindsay and, if she wasn’t mistaken, Patrick. Patrick. Nina fumed as she passed through ornately decorated rooms that already had colored tags attached to the vases, paintings, and furniture. She arrived at the doorway of a book-lined room and steeled herself for what she might see when she looked in. She knew she should announce herself, but she decided it was time they were caught in the act. She stepped through the doorway and looked. At the opposite end of the room, in front of a bank of mullioned windows, Lindsay and Patrick were huddled together. As she looked closer she saw that they were examining the underside of an upended settee. “Look at that webbing,” said Lindsay, shaking her head.

  “Reupholstered,” said Patrick. “So that takes it out of the five-figure range.”

  “Exactly,” said Lindsay.

  “Excuse me,” said Nina.

  Lindsay shrieked and Patrick looked up, glaring. “Nina,” he said. “For Christ’s sake. You scared us. What are you doing here? Why did you sneak up on us like that?”

  Nina stared at the two of them, dressed in sneakers and filthy clothes. Lindsay had her hair knotted up in a scarf. “I’m sorry,” Nina mumbled. “I didn’t …”

  “Let’s lower this,” said Patrick. Lindsay nodded, and the two of them replaced the settee on the jewel-toned oriental rug.

  “I’m going to get started in the dining room,” Lindsay said to Patrick. “I want you to get to work on those Japanese porcelains. We’ll go over it when you’re done.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  Lindsay edged by Nina and exited through the library doorway. “Always nice to see you, Nina.”

  Patrick indicated a tapestry-covered chair. Nina took the seat. Patrick sat down on the edge of the leather sofa.

  “Patrick, what’s going on here?”

  He folded his hands together and sighed. “I could lie,” he said, “but I gues
s I may as well tell you. My mind is pretty well made up. Although I’m going to catch hell about it from all directions …”

  “Patrick …” Nina said sharply.

  Patrick frowned. “All right. Here’s the short version. I’m quitting my job, and I’m going to buy Lindsay’s business.”

  “This is about the business?” Nina said.

  Patrick nodded. “That’s what I was doing the other night in the office when you came by. Going over the books. She’s got a lot of stock and overhead, but there are people with money around here who are ready to buy. Lindsay and Arne are getting married and they’re going to move back to Europe.”

  Nina felt stunned at how completely she had misread the situation. “Arne? The salesman in the store?”

  Patrick nodded. “Yeah. I think he’s a little … flaky, but hey, who am I to talk? Anyway, it seemed like a perfect opportunity. I just … I don’t get any satisfaction anymore out of what I’m doing. I mean, we have money, and everything money can buy, but the only time I’m really happy is when I’m doing this—digging around old estates, going to auctions, hunting through old books to find obscure paintings. I thought I would be satisfied when I finished my house, but I found myself hating work and wishing I could start all over again. And, I don’t know, maybe it’s because both our parents are dead at such an early age, but I keep thinking that life is too short. You have to do the thing you love, even if it means you don’t have all the luxuries another kind of work can bring. Well, you know. You do what you love to do …”

  Nina shook her head. “Patrick, I’m … I don’t know what to say. Does Gemma know about this?”

  Patrick made a sour face. “No. And she’s not going to like it. We’re not going to have the kind of money she’s used to …”

  “Oh, come on, Patrick. Gemma’s not exactly materialistic,” Nina reminded him.

  “No, but things are gonna be tight for a while. She may have to find herself a job where she can make some money,” he said.

  “I guess she can always go back to the university,” said Nina.

  Patrick looked at Nina with an incredulous expression on his face. “Uh, no, I don’t think so.”

  “Sure. They’ll take her back. She can work on her mother’s book on weekends or evenings.”

  “She didn’t tell you, did she?” Patrick asked. He shook his head. “She asked me not to. She said she was going to. I should have known.”

  “Tell me what?” Nina asked.

  Patrick shook his head. “Nina, she didn’t resign to work on any book. She was fired. She was fired for falsifying results in the research lab for a paper she prepared for publication.”

  Nina stared at him. “Gemma?”

  Patrick sighed. “Don’t feel bad. She didn’t tell me about it for six months. She pretended she was going to work.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Nina.

  “I wish I were. Don’t look so surprised. This is vintage Gemma. I’ve gotten used to it over the years. Anyway, I’m not all that concerned with what she thinks about my job change. She’ll have to live with it. And Lindsay’s been helping me with the things I don’t know too much about. That’s why I’m here. She thought it would be a good opportunity for me to price some things I wasn’t too familiar with—chinoiserie, American antiques—all that. So, now that you know, what do you think?”

  Nina felt like her head was spinning. “I think … if that’s what you want to do, you should go for it.”

  Patrick smiled broadly, and Nina realized it had been a long time since she saw her brother smile that way. “Thanks,” he said. “That means a lot to me. I doubt my wife will agree.” He shrugged. “But I don’t care anymore. It’s my life.” Then he looked at Nina curiously. “By the way, how did you find me?”

  Nina shook her head. “I … I … just took a lucky guess. I wanted to tell you about Jimmy.”

  Patrick rolled his eyes. “Is he drunk? He was drunk last night, you know. I had to go pick him up at a bar. And before you ask, yes, he told me all about him and Calvin robbing the house the night Mom died. I thought about punching his lights out but he was too drunk to even feel it.”

  “Patrick,” Nina interrupted him. “Jimmy’s in the hospital. A drug overdose. He’s in a coma.”

  “Oh my God,” said Patrick.

  “Gemma’s been trying to call you.”

  Patrick grimaced. “Shit. I was ignoring the messages. I knew I’d be late with all this. Shit. We have to get to the hospital. Where is he?”

  “Shore Medical. I’m on my way down there again. He was with Calvin when it happened.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” said Patrick disgustedly. “Nina, will you take me with you? I don’t have my car. Some guy at the bar was hocking me about how ragged it was running. So I took it to the garage after I dropped Jimmy off this morning, and I grabbed the bus into the city.”

  Nina’s heart suddenly felt positively light. He didn’t even have the Jaguar. Her suspicions of Patrick were completely off base. “So it wasn’t your car there,” she said.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Never mind. Come on. We better go.”

  “All right. Let me clean up. My business clothes are in the powder room under the stairs. I’ll tell Lindsay what’s going on and meet you outside.”

  Nina nodded and watched him go, calling out to Lindsay that he had to leave. Nina could not remember the last time she had felt so relieved. Hoisting her leather satchel on her shoulder, she walked out of the library toward the entrance of the house. As she passed through the dining room, Lindsay set down a silver candlestick she was examining and looked over at Nina. “Will he be coming back?”

  “Not tonight,” said Nina. “Our brother—well, you know Jimmy—he’s in the hospital. He’s in a coma.”

  “That’s awful.” said Lindsay. “What happened?”

  Nina felt an irrational desire to protect Jimmy, even from the consequences of his own stupidity. “It was an accident,” she said.

  “Nina, where are you?” Patrick demanded from the hallway. “Let’s go.”

  29

  WHILE Nina drove, Patrick adjusted the knot in his tie and tried to reach his wife on the telephone. There was no answer at the house or on the cell phone. “Where is she?” he said irritably.

  “She may have gone down to see Jimmy. She was very worried about him,” said Nina loyally. She was admittedly surprised at the news about Gemma’s being fired from her job, but everybody knew that the academic world was a high-pressure, results-oriented environment. Nina was willing to give her sister-in-law the benefit of the doubt, even if her husband wasn’t.

  “She was worried. Right,” Patrick scoffed.

  “Come on, Patrick. Gemma’s been under a lot of stress lately. In addition to everything else, I think she’s been a little anxious about your relationship with Lindsay. I mean, I know I was suspicious. I thought you might be … messing around with her. It was a natural assumption, given your history with Lindsay.”

  Patrick shrugged. “Well, I’d be a liar if I said it didn’t cross my mind. Lindsay’s a beautiful woman. But she’s taken.”

  “And so are you,” Nina reminded him.

  “Right,” Patrick said glumly. He peered out the car window at the darkened street. “Hey, Nina, if you don’t mind, can you swing by the garage?” said Patrick. “If my car’s done I can pick it up. It’ll be closed by the time we get back, and with all that’s going on, I may need it tomorrow.”

  “Where is it?” she asked distractedly. “Whitey’s?”

  Patrick nodded and Nina made a left turn in the direction of the garage they had used for service for as long as she could remember.

  “Make it quick,” said Nina. “We have to get to Jimmy.”

  “That fucking Calvin Mears,” said Patrick. “When I get my hands on him …”

  “Oh, I guess I didn’t tell you. Somebody beat you to it,” said Nina. “He’s dead. Someone shot them in the motel room where they w
ere partying …”

  “Shot them? Why? Jimmy, too?”

  “I don’t know why. But no. Not Jimmy. He’d already overdosed. They shot Mears and some other guy who was there. A Puerto Rican guy.”

  “Jesus Christ. Jimmy can pick ’em, can’t he? Here, turn here. We can go around Whitey’s the back way.”

  Nina followed his instructions and pulled up by the lighted pumps in front of the garage. The garage doors were closed and dark. “Even if it’s ready,” she said, “you may not be able to get it.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Patrick. “I know the kid at the pumps. He’ll give it to me. I’ll be right back. Wait for me.”

  Nina nodded as Patrick jumped out of the car. She watched her brother go up and start talking to the young guy in the lighted booth between the gas pumps. Patrick and the attendant had a brief conversation and then Patrick headed back to the Volvo. The kid picked up the magazine he had been perusing and resumed reading. The kid won’t give him the car, Nina thought. He’ll probably have to come back in the morning.

  Patrick opened the door of the Volvo and slid into the passenger seat.

  “What happened? It’s not ready or he can’t give it to you?” Nina asked.

  “Neither,” said Patrick. “They fixed it first thing this morning. Brought it back to the house. Look, it’s getting late. Why don’t I just ride with you? You don’t mind, do you?”

  Nina was staring blankly through the windshield.

  “Nina?” he said.

  Nina shook her head. “No. No, of course not.”

  The drive to the hospital only took half an hour, and Nina drove there without any wrong turns or mishaps, but when she pulled into the well-lit parking lot and turned off the engine, she could not remember having made the trip. Her mind had spun, turning over and over the events of the day. When she told Gemma about the Jag being seen at the motel where the shooting occurred, Gemma acted indignant. How dare Nina accuse Patrick? But Gemma knew all along that Patrick didn’t have the Jag. That it was home. In their garage.