by Jane Haddam
Everybody started up the stairs at once, too. They were like a herd of stampeding bison, and once they got upstairs to the hallway leading to all the bedrooms they were even worse. Coraline raced past that black girl and past Grace Whoever-she-was and ran into the room she shared with Deanna. Her clothes were all hanging up carefully in the closet. It made her crazy. She never got dressed this fast. She always consulted with somebody, and took a long time choosing between things. She always asked her mother.
“Not too fancy,” she said, under her breath.
“What?”
Deanna was in the room, too. They were both standing in front of the same closet.
“Nothing too fancy,” Coraline said. “You see them on television, you know, going to lunch places. If they go to some big event like the Oscars, they’re all dressed up, but when they go out to lunch they just wear stuff. Jeans. T-shirts. Nothing fancy.”
Deanna stared. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re absolutely right.”
Coraline knew she was right. She had a good pair of jeans, her one really expensive pair, from Calvin Klein. She put those on and then went through her T-shirts to find the one that fit the best. It was hard to know what to do. She had an expensive T-shirt to go with the expensive jeans, but the expensive T-shirt didn’t fit all that well. She finally grabbed a bright red one that said COKE—THE REAL THING! on it in swirly letters. It covered her like paint.
Coraline raced to the vanity table. She didn’t wear a lot of makeup under ordinary circumstances. She didn’t think she needed to. That would work here, too. These people wore enough makeup not to look bad in photographs, but not enough to look like clowns. She put on a pale lipstick and then some gloss over it so that her lips shimmered. Then she got up and started running again.
She got to the downstairs foyer just before Deanna and just after the black girl, who looked like she was participating in a freak show. She had her hair frizzed out beyond belief and enough kohl around her eyes and mascara on her lashes so that she looked half dead. Coraline backed away a little and bumped into the Asian girl.
“I don’t understand how she ended up in the house at all,” the Asian girl said. “She isn’t going to win this competition. You can see that she isn’t.”
Coraline made a strangled little noise. “Most of us aren’t,” she said. Which was true.
The Asian girl made a little noise and turned away. Coraline found herself next to Ivy Demari again. She told herself that it was really all right. Ivy was odd looking, but she was very nice. It was better to be next to her than to Grace.
Grace was standing right near the front door, so that anybody who came through them was sure to see her. She looked defiant.
“Do you think there’s going to be another fight?” Coraline asked Ivy.
“With Grace?” Ivy shook her head. “Sheila’s had Grace on a platter already once today. She won’t do it again to the same person.”
Coraline shrank back a little.
It was just at that second that the front door opened, but instead of the limo driver, it was Sheila Dunham herself who came in. Coraline shrank back yet again. Sheila Dunham was such an unpleasant-looking woman. She was too thin, in the wrong way. And her mouth always turned down.
And she stalked.
Coraline sucked in air.
“Take the earrings off,” Sheila said to Mary-Louise Verdt. Mary-Louise put her hands up to her ears and unfastened her big gold hoops.
Sheila went past Grace without stopping. Coraline could hear the collective sigh of relief when it came. She was pretty sure she participated in it.
Sheila went past three more girls, looking them up and down. She stopped at Janice Ledbedder and walked around her. Then she moved on. Janice looked ready to faint.
Coraline was feeling a little better than she had. This was not too awful. There was no screaming. Sheila didn’t act like a crazy woman all the time. This looked like it was going to be one of her calm periods. If only they could get out the door and into the limousine. If they could get this challenge started, Coraline was sure she’d be just fine.
Sheila inspected Andra Gayle, but didn’t say something. Still, Coraline thought, you could practically see the contempt on her face. Sometimes, on the show, Sheila reduced girls to tears just by looking at them.
Sheila came up right in front of Coraline, and Coraline stopped breathing. She looked good. She was sure she did. She had double-checked her hair and her makeup. She had been careful about her clothes. She did not look overdone. She did not look sloppy.
Sheila seemed rooted to the spot. Coraline felt her looking up and down, up and down. Maybe she wouldn’t like the shoes. Coraline was wearing cork-soled sandals. You saw celebrities wearing cork-soled sandals all the time.
Then Sheila put her hand up, grabbed the neck of Coraline’s T-shirt, and ripped, just the way she had ripped at Grace this morning. The effect was worse. The shirt came away in so many pieces, Coraline had nothing to hold up against herself.
“The only logos we wear on this show,” Sheila Dunham said, “are mine.”
SIX
1
Policewomen were never called “matrons” anymore, as far as Gregor Demarkian knew, but it was a matron who greeted him in the lobby of St. Mary’s Hospital when he came in to meet the doctor who was treating the mysterious Lily. Except, Gregor thought, that Lily wasn’t really mysterious. She was just sad, and the things about her that did not fit the sadness—the fact that she was meticulously clean—did not add up to enough to make even a lame episode of American Justice. Gregor thought most episodes of American Justice were lame. He’d been interviewed on the show several times—and on Cold Case Files and Forensic Files and Snapped as well—but when he sat down and viewed the show as it was finally put together, it seemed to him that the writers and producers were working too hard to make it like a golden-age mystery. Of course, he hadn’t known that at the time. It was only recently, when he’d started reading Agatha Christie, that his mind had made the connection.
The woman waiting for him was middle aged, a little thick around the middle, and wearing one of those old-fashioned uniforms with a jacket and a skirt. He supposed there was no reason why she shouldn’t be. There were probably plenty of variations on the standard uniform available to women on the force. It was just that he hadn’t seen a policewoman in a skirt in decades.
She stood up when he came through the sliding glass doors and held out her hand. “Mr. Demarkian,” she said. “I was hoping I’d recognize you. The mayor said I would, but I’m not really that good at recognizing people. I’m Billie Ormonds.”
Gregor shook her hand. “I’m Gregor Demarkian. You threw me off a little. I didn’t know that policewomen still wore skirts.”
Billie Ormonds looked down at her knees. “Most of us don’t. Slacks are just easier to manage. But some of the clerical workers do. And people like me, who end up dealing with the public. Do you mind being thought of as the public?”
“As far as I know, nobody’s hired me,” Gregor said. “Have you seen the woman who was in the house, the woman who calls herself Lily?”
“I’m attached to the investigation. Yes, I’ve seen her. She’s in the hospital wing of the jail at the moment, although I don’t know how long we’re going to be able to keep her there. Or anywhere. We don’t have any evidence that she’s done anything wrong.”
“I was thinking that myself.”
Billie sighed. “It’s an odd thing. There’s this other woman, the one upstairs here—”
“Sophie Mgrdchian.”
“Ah,” Billie said. “That’s how you pronounce that. Yes. There’s Mrs. Mgrdchian, who is obviously in some distress. But as far as we know, she’s in her eighties. Distress happens at that age. And there’s nothing to say that this Lily woman wasn’t invited into that house. It’s a mess, really. If Lily was aware enough to have a lawyer, she’d certainly be out of jail already. The best we’ve been able to think of up to now, is
to ask a judge to hand her over for a full-op four-day psych observation. I’m pretty sure we can get that done, in spite of the fact that the Legal Aid attorneys are going to land on us at any minute. But that’s going to be four days, and after that—” Billie shrugged.
“So how’s Sophie Mgrdchian?”
“Ah,” Billie said again. “That’s the other problem.”
“Is she worse than she was yesterday?”
“Not that I know of,” Billie said. “Neither better nor worse, last time I checked. But the doctor. The reason I wanted you out here is that I thought you’d like to talk to the doctor face to face. The doctor is a little nervous. That’s about the best way I can put it.”
Gregor thought that almost anybody working in a hospital would have to be a little nervous. There was sickness everywhere. There was death everywhere. There was a lot of expensive equipment that could go wrong at any second, along with the hundred and one other things that could go wrong.
Just looking around this lobby made him think that he ought to be nervous. This was the front lobby, not the emergency room. Nobody was standing around bleeding on the carpets. Even so, there were people in wheelchairs, and people looking strained, and one small woman sitting in a corner with her face in her hands, crying silently and unceasingly.
“I know,” Billie said. “I hate hospitals. It’s like they’re the one place you can go where you can’t get away from the fact that we all die. Even funeral parlors aren’t that bad. Or cemeteries. In funeral parlors and cemeteries, it’s like it’s all happening to other people. It’s like it has nothing to do with you.”
“Well, it’s all happening to other people here,” Gregor said.
“Only for the moment,” Billie said.
She waved him toward the long bank of elevators, and Gregor followed. She was, he thought, right. Maybe it was a function of the fact that everybody had been in a hospital once or twice by the time they were middle aged. Children were in to get their tonsils out. Women were in to have children. Men landed in the emergency room because of accidents at work or at home. It was easy to think that a funeral parlor or a cemetery was just somewhere you would visit as a guest, and not as the center of attention. With hospitals, it wasn’t so easy.
The elevator was very wide and very deep and very tall and had doors on two sides, although only the ones on their side opened. It was spotlessly clean, too, but it wasn’t empty. Right after they got in, a woman got in whom Gregor only noticed on second glance was a nun. He liked his nuns traditional, in long habits and veils. This one was wearing a pants suit with a gold cross pinned to the lapel and a little half veil attached to the top of her head. It made her look like one of the help in an old British movie about the aristocracy.
“Right along here,” Billie said, when they reached the third floor. “She’s in the wing. It’s kind of a trek. I’ve asked Dr. Halevy to meet us there in about three minutes. She’s usually pretty prompt.”
Gregor threaded his way through what felt like empty hallways, wide corridors with deep carpeting and doors, but no people that he could see. St. Mary’s was not one of the expensive hospitals in the city. It was, in fact, the one that took in the vast majority of the uninsured, since it was subsidized by the Archdiocese. Gregor had a sudden vision of the present Cardinal Archbishop of Philadelphia, and then another of those nuns in the pants suit.
“Here we are,” Billie said.
She opened a heavy swinging door, and behind it Gregor found the people he had been missing up to now. There was a wide curved desk that was the main anchor for the nurse’s station. Behind it stood another nun in a pants suit, except hers was a standard nursing uniform and she wasn’t wearing a veil of any kind. There were also two more women, also in uniforms, probably not nuns.
“It’s too bad about the nuns,” Billie said suddenly. “They used to be able to staff this entire hospital with Sisters of Mercy—well, almost the entire hospital. Nursing staff. Even some of the doctors, lots of the clerical people. The nuns worked for ten dollars a month and the medical bills were low or nonexistent to anybody who came through the doors and couldn’t pay for it. And then suddenly there were no more nuns.”
“I know somebody who can spend a fair amount of time talking about that,” Gregor said. “She’s an—extern sister, I think it’s called. For a Carmelite monastery out on Hardscrabble Road.”
“Oh, I know that one,” Billie said. “I’ve seen them. It’s like watching an old movie.”
The nun at the nurse’s station looked up and saw them. She came out from around the desk. “Officer Ormonds,” she said. “This must be Gregor Demarkian.”
“That’s him,” Billie said.
The nun had no sense of humor, and she wasn’t interested in introducing herself. “Dr. Halevy is in with the patient. I’ve asked her to take this meeting into a conference room. There’s one at the far end of the hall. Mrs. Mgrdchian is stable, but there’s always the problem with comatose patients that you don’t know what they’re able to hear. We like to think that they’re just dead to the world, so to speak, without actually being dead, but many of them can hear everything that goes on around them.”
The nun was pumping down the hall as she talked, and Gregor and Billie were following her. Gregor was getting a little breathless. The nun stopped.
“Here is is,” she said. “We’ve got her alone down here until we’re sure of what the situation is. We don’t want to upset other patients if there needs to be a police presence. Please don’t stay too long in the room, and please don’t discuss the particulars of the case—the police case or the medical case—where she can possibly hear you. Even if you think she can’t hear you. Is that clear?”
“Of course,” Billie said.
The woman was chirping. Gregor almost laughed.
The nun looked dubious, then turned around and headed back down the hall. Billie opened the door to Sophie Mgrdchian’s hospital room.
“Old bat,” Billie said cheerfully. “She didn’t decide to give Mrs. Mgrdchian a private room and neither did the hospital. We insisted on it. Come in and meet Dr. Halevy.”
Gregor walked into the hospital room and looked around. It was a small room, but big enough to hold several chairs as well as Sophie Mgrdchian’s bed. Sophie lay on her back with her head on a pillow and the top half of the bed raised just a little. There was a tube in her arm, but nothing else. Gregor was a little surprised. He’d expected a lot more technology.
A tall woman looked up from Sophie’s bedside and then came around to greet them. Dr. Halevy was as middle aged and thick as Billie Ormonds, but her hair was pulled back tightly on her head, and she was wearing a stethoscope.
“Mr. Demarkain,” she said. “Right on time. You have no idea what a relief that is. Hello, Billie. It’s good to see you again.”
“Actually,” Billie said, “she wishes she’d never have to see me again. But that’s only because she hates police work.”
“I don’t hate police work,” Dr. Halevy said. “I hate crime. You’d think with all the pain and suffering in the world, people would refrain from causing it when it wasn’t necessary. And it isn’t necessary, pretty much ever, as far as I can tell.”
“Police have to hurt suspects sometimes,” Gregor started.
Dr. Halevy waved this away. “You know what I mean. I’m not talking about the police.” She gestured back to Sophie. “She’s all right for the moment. The nurses have orders to check in on her at least once very fifteen minutes. Let’s go out in the hall for a moment.”
“I thought there was some kind of conference room,” Gregor said.
“There’s a conference room if you want it,” Dr. Halevy said, ushering them all out into the corridor, “but I don’t really know if we need one. I mean, I’ve got only one thing to say, and it doesn’t mean anything, if you believe Billie here. It can’t be used in court, or something.”
“It just doesn’t tell me anything,” Billie said mildly.
; “What is it?” Gregor said.
“What it is,” Dr. Halevy said, “is that I have absolutely no idea what happened here. Not one. I’ve got no idea why this woman is unconscious or how she got that way. I’ve done all the usual tox screens. Nothing. We’ve checked heart and lungs. Nothing. We’ve checked for cancer. Nothing. There’s no sign she’s ever had a stroke. There’s no sign she’s ever had a heart attack. There’s no sign of anything at all. It’s like voodoo.”
2
In an Agatha Christie mystery, what was happening to Sophie Mgrdchian would be discovered to be a secret poison—or maybe not so secret, because in spite of the clichés, Dame Agatha didn’t really go in for the more esoteric stuff. She’d have thought of something else, something closer to home. Gregor could not, for the life of him, imagine what it would be.
Instead, he found himself walking down City Ave after his talk with Dr. Halevy, passing the edge of St. Joseph’s University and thinking that he’d soon be at the place where City Ave went to hell after dark. For all he knew, it might go to hell in the daytime, too. He ought to get a cab and get back to Cavanaugh Street.
Instead, he got out his cell phone. He had to be careful with it. For the first six weeks he’d had it, he hadn’t been able to pick it up without “launching the browser,” which apparently meant getting on the Internet. From his phone. Here was something else Dame Agatha hadn’t had to contend with. Still, Miss Marple would not have objected. Miss Marple believed in accepting change and embracing progress, one way or the other.
He was standing on City Ave, thinking about Jane Marple as if she were a real human being. Tibor was getting to him. Tibor thought of all fictional characters as human beings, even if they were hobbits.
Bennis had set up his speed dial list. All he had to do was remember the number he’d given to David Mortimer. Eventually, he gave up trying to remember and just looked at the list instead. The list was interesting. Bennis had given herself the number 3. She’d given Tibor number 1, and his doctor number 2. He’d have to talk to her about that.