by Josh Lanyon
In the middle of my smile, I yawned. For all the sleeping I’d already done, all at once I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open.
“I’m glad they called you.”
“I’m glad you told them to call,” he replied with quiet intensity.
Had I? If I had, it had been post op when I was out of my skull on painkillers. I nearly volunteered that unneeded info but had the wits to shut up in time. What did it matter how he’d got here? I had wanted him, and the only thing that mattered now was he was here.
Instead, I asked, “Did they tell you what happened?”
He nodded, looking somber. Yeah. Of course they had. Poor Nella. Poor kid. Another wave of lassitude swept over me, and this time it seemed to knock the legs right out from under me. Poor Anna. So far I hadn’t been much help to her.
My fatigue must have showed. J.X. lightly touched my face again. “You look beat, honey. Why don’t you sleep,” he said softly.
Honey. That was nice. He’d never called me that before. Not that I’d ever encouraged the use of pet names. But for now…it was nice. I gave him a spacey smile, let my eyelashes fall shut and mumbled, “I hope you’re not a dream.”
He was not a dream. J.X. was sitting beside the bed the next time I opened my eyes. He was reading the latest Miss Butterwith, The Moving Finger Writes for Miss Butterwith, and frowning disapprovingly.
I sighed inwardly. Not that I wasn’t glad to see that one of us was feeling better. He looked disgustingly refreshed for someone who had traveled cross country, and if he was back to criticizing my work, things were rapidly returning to normal.
At the rustle of sheets, his head jerked my way. He tossed the book aside—a bit too forcefully in my opinion—and rose to lean over the bed again.
“Hi. How are you feeling?”
“Like someone threw me over a cliff. What time is it?”
He glanced at his watch. “A couple of minutes after one.”
“In the afternoon?”
He nodded.
“Jeez. You shouldn’t have let me sleep.” I sat up incautiously, gulped, and lay back, breathing hard.
“You have big plans, do you?” J.X.’s voice inquired from somewhere overhead.
I opened my eyes and scowled at him. “That fucking hurt.”
“I bet.” He casually brushed the hair out of my eyes. “Do you remember the accident at all?”
It was sort of ridiculous how good even that casual touch felt. Like my hair had nerve endings; I could feel him to my roots. That hyper-receptivity was probably due to the years of sensory deprivation that had passed for my marriage.
I realized I still hadn’t answered his question. “Not really. I was talking to Nella in the backseat, that much I recall.”
“Nella is the woman who died?”
“She was really just a kid. Maybe twenty or so.” I swallowed hard, remembering. “God.”
“Sorry, Kit.” He said it gently, seriously. I regarded him curiously. I never thought of him as particularly sensitive. My young, tough ex-cop. Maybe I didn’t give him many opportunities for softness.
I was contemplating this new idea when he said, “They’re letting you out of here tomorrow morning. What do you want to do?”
“Do?”
“If you feel well enough to travel, do you want me to see whether I can get you on an earlier flight? Originally you weren’t leaving until Tuesday, right?”
“Right.” And now I remembered why Anna had wanted me to stay that extra couple of days. Everything I’d conveniently forgotten came rushing back: like the real reason she’d dragged me out here to the Berkshires.
For all the good it had done.
A dreadful thought struck me. Wasn’t this car accident too convenient? After all, Anna had had a close call a few weeks earlier when the brakes of her Mercedes had failed. Could someone have mixed the cars up?
No. That was unlikely. Not only was Poppy’s Mercedes thoroughly thrashed, she had parked along the drive to the house. Anna’s car would of course be in the garage. Even the stupidest would-be murderer had to know that much.
Right?
But I had seen someone suspicious wandering around the grounds the night before.
At least…post-midnight solo strolls seemed suspicious to me.
Even acknowledging that Anna couldn’t have been the target this time—at least directly—wasn’t this still a big coincidence? The accident had happened after leaving the Asquith Estate, and Anna’s own protégé had been killed.
“What’s wrong?” J.X. asked, watching me closely.
I looked up at him uncertainly. “I don’t think I can leave yet.”
“Why?”
“Because…well, it’s kind of a long story.”
His face set in that mulish look he gets sometimes. Intractability was one of his less charming traits, although I bet it had made him a good cop.
“Anyway,” I said, hoping to change the subject. “It’ll wait. You haven’t said how your trip was.” I tried to turn it into a question.
“Kit.” I’d known that solicitousness was too good to last. “Start talking.”
Chapter Nine
“Aren’t I supposed to get one phone call?”
“Quit stalling.”
I quit stalling.
“So to recap,” J.X. said when I’d finished relating everything Anna had told me when I arrived at the Asquith Estate, “your kindly old mentor, who sounds even loopier than you, dragged you back here in the dead of winter so you could play amateur sleuth?”
I could feel myself getting irritated, even though I knew he was right. “She’s afraid for her life.”
“Then she should go to the police.”
“With what proof? Any one of those attempts could have been an accident.”
“That’s exactly right. And that’s almost certainly what they were.”
“Oh come on. What about the law of coincidence? What about the shadowy figure I saw wandering around the night before?”
“Kit.” I could see him struggling for a tactful way to say it. “This sounds like something you’d write.”
He should have kept struggling.
“Oh. Right. This from the grand master of the Bang Bang, You’re Dead school of crime fiction.”
J.X. reddened. “Look. All I’m saying is, this sounds farfetched.”
“Yes,” I said huffily. “I understand exactly what you were saying. I’m a hack and you’re the real deal.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I’m not talking about that at all. Where is this coming from?” He seemed genuinely bewildered. But then he was thirty-something and still at the top of his game. The critics loved him and everything he wrote shot straight to the top of the bestseller lists—all the bestseller lists. In the last year alone three of his books had been optioned for film.
It was coming from jealousy and frustration and bitterness. It was coming from the heart of darkness. The same heart that yearned for him even while resenting him and his condescending attitude. And if that wasn’t a recipe for romantic disaster, I didn’t know what was.
Even so, my own aggression—not to mention my lack of timing—caught me off-guard. Maybe it was the meds I was being fed, but without warning it was all pouring out. “Look. We both know what you think of my writing. You think I write the equivalent of literary junk food. Brain lint. Disposable fluff.”
“That is not what I’m saying.” J.X. was so vehement I knew I was right. “I did not say that. I have never once said that.”
“Yeah, you did, actually. When we were stranded in Northern California. You said I cranked them out in my sleep and that I’d been doing it for years.”
I knew by the flicker of his eyes I’d cornered him. Not that it gave me any pleasure. I was startled at the painful accuracy of that particular memory. I don’t think I’d accepted how much it hurt until this very moment.
“Anyway, whethe
r you said it in so many words or not, you certainly think I’m a hack.”
He stopped wasting time trying to defend the indefensible and went on the attack. “I don’t think you’re a hack. I think you’re afraid to write anything that challenges you or that means anything to you.”
“As opposed to you and your high-octane literary masterpieces about the straight, gun-toting Inspector Dirk Van de Meer?”
J.X. bit out each word very quietly. “You’re a better writer than I am, Kit. You should be doing more with that gift. Instead, you’re hiding behind Miss Busybody’s skirts.”
It was my turn for a red face. Not that he could tell beneath all the bruises, fortunately.
“Anyway,” J.X. said, while I was still trying to come up with a response. “Like I keep trying to tell you, that wasn’t what I meant. What I meant was, if someone really wants Anna dead, it wouldn’t be that hard to arrange. They wouldn’t have to go to all these elaborate lengths of icy steps and food poisoning and pushing flower urns off rooftops.”
He paused to give me a chance to respond.
The choice was mine. We could continue to quarrel over what couldn’t be changed or we could move on to a relatively neutral topic. I took a deep breath and let it out. “Clearly this person needs it to look like an accident.”
Imperceptibly, the tension eased in J.X.’s frame. “There are easier ways to do it and simpler accidents to arrange.”
He had a point. I was wondering myself why someone hadn’t simply conked Anna over the head with the nearest rock. Maybe this person or persons unknown didn’t intend murder. Maybe they were trying to frighten Anna. But to what end?
With his disconcerting knack for reading my mind, J.X. said, “Are you absolutely convinced someone really is trying to kill her?”
“No,” I admitted. “I also agree that it all sounds unlikely. Someone might be trying to give her a scare, but that seems pretty abstract. And equally contrived.”
“It doesn’t happen like this in real life.”
“Hey, I watch Snapped. Truth is stranger than fiction. Look at that guy on the Food Network.”
But it seemed J.X. didn’t want to look at the Calorie Commando and his attempt to hire homeless hit men. “How stable is Anna?”
“Stable? What kind of a question is that? How stable is anyone? Being human is an unstable condition. Has she officially been diagnosed as nutso? Not that I’m aware.”
“I mean, is she prone to exaggerate or dramatize?”
“No.”
He looked skeptical.
“Well, she’s a writer. Exaggeration is part of her job description. But not the way you mean, no. I don’t think so, anyway. I know it’s been a few years, but Anna always seemed pretty hardheaded to me. I don’t think she’s someone who’s easily scared. I don’t think she’s someone who jumps at shadows. Is she a dramatic personality? Yes, I guess she is. She’s used to being a media darling—as much as any writer can be.”
“Okay, don’t get so worked up. I’m only trying to narrow the possibilities.”
“Fine, but whatever the possibilities are, I can tell you right now I can’t abandon Anna. Not after what’s happened. She asked for my help.” Not something that happened to me very often, and I felt obliged to take it seriously.
“Kit, you’re not in any shape to help anyone right now.”
That was certainly true. I felt like shit. And, worse, I apparently looked like shit. Which made me feel worse. It was a vicious cycle.
“And you’re going to feel worse when they let you out of here,” Mr. Helpful couldn’t help adding.
I asked irritably, “Aren’t you supposed to be trying to cheer me up?”
J.X. had the grace to look sheepish, but he said, “I’ve had a dislocated shoulder before. I know how much fun that is. Never mind all the rest of it.”
“Yeah, whatever. Word. Next time you ride ventre à terre to my death bed, you could at least bring me grapes.”
I was kidding, naturally. Trying to, anyway. I don’t even like grapes. But J.X. said seriously, “I was in a hurry to get to you.”
That sincerity threw me off my stride. It seemed to require reciprocal honesty, but that’s something I’m really bad at.
I said instead, “Anna asked for my help. If she still wants it, I’m going back to the estate.”
“The seminar is over. What is it you think you’re going to do? You’re not exactly in shape to act as her bodyguard.”
Let’s face it. I’ve never been in shape to act as anyone’s bodyguard. And there are fewer things I’d be less inclined to try. J.X. on the other hand…
I eyed him speculatively. “Since I’m laid up here for the time being, could you do me a favor?”
“Yes.” He said it so gravely, looking right into my eyes—and this despite our recent spat—I felt a fluttering sensation in my belly.
“Could you trade on your cop pedigree and find out whether the police are investigating this accident as an accident?”
He hesitated. That was a given. J.X. was not impulsive.
“What I mean is, can you drop a word in the right ear, or an elbow in the ribs, or whatever it is brother law enforcement does, and suggest that they look closely? More closely. That they make double sure that it was an accident?”
“Yes. I will do that for you,” he said like he was making a formal promise. It lifted an unexpected weight off me. Whatever J.X. thought, I knew that I could rely on him. If he said he was going to do something, he was going to do it, and to the best of his ability—or die trying. Believe what you will about tight abs and dark-as-midnight eyes, there’s a lot to be said for reliability. To find them all in one package…well, perhaps better not to dwell on his package in my fragile state.
Not long after J.X. departed on his mission of mercy, I rang for a nurse and asked after Poppy. I wasn’t sure she had been admitted to the same hospital as me, but I was informed that she was, in fact, conveniently located downstairs next to the frozen-foods aisle. Which is still better than being a frozen food.
One problem down. The next quandary was what did one inmate wear to visit another? I felt my backless ensemble was a trifle informal for the occasion, so it was a relief to find that Anna had brought a few essentials with her when she’d stopped by.
The effort of getting dressed—well, that was an exaggeration right there. The effort of pulling on my bathrobe nearly sent me whimpering back to bed on jellied legs. There was the problem of the IV too, which meant I had to drape my robe more or less toga style so as not to come undone.
Anyone who wasn’t half-stoned on pain meds would have instantly realized what a really bad idea this plan was, but since that didn’t include me, I didn’t worry about it.
Off I sallied, dragging the IV stand rattling after me. I got some peculiar looks from staff and visitors alike, but no one challenged me, which is a statement as to what an air of confidence will do. Or how truly scary crazy people are.
Eventually I found Poppy sharing a room with a tiny Asian lady and her mob of equally petite relations. It was like a gathering of yousei. I determinedly weaved my way through the crowd, hauling my medical apparatus behind me like my little red wagon.
Poppy was lying in the bed staring bleakly up at the ceiling. She looked more bruised and battered than me, which is always a comfort. Her nose was taped up and her leg was in a cast.
“Hi.”
Her gaze dropped to mine. Her eyes widened. “Hi.” She sounded muffled due to the taping of her nose. “What the hell happened to you?”
“The same thing that happened to you.”
“I mean…” She fell silent as I lowered myself painfully to the only available seating not taken up by the grandmotherly lady’s family—a small chest of drawers beneath a mounted TV set.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Like shit.”
I nodded feelingly.
“You broke your arm?”
“Collarbone. Apparently
I dislocated my shoulder too, but I can’t tell one from the other.”
“Oh. Are you supposed to be up and walking around?”
“No one told me I couldn’t.”
She seemed to think that one over and then abandon it as another thought struck. “I guess I should tell you how sorry I am you were injured.”
I shrugged—or tried to. Either way, it was a really bad idea.
In the distance, I heard Poppy say, “Anyway, I am sorry and I hope you forgive me. But what I’d really like to know is, are you planning to sue me?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.” I steadied myself on the IV stand, but since it had wheels, I nearly pitched off the chest of drawers. That hurt too. A lot.
I tried to remember why it had been so urgent I get down to see Poppy that afternoon.
“Probably not,” I managed, once I’d regained my balance. “It’s not like you were drunk or criminally negligent.”
“No, I’m just a lousy driver.”
What could I say to that? She was a lousy driver and we’d all paid the price—unless by some chance that accident had not been an accident.
She watched me, her brows drawing together. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Erm…you seem kind of…”
How could she hope to be a writer when she had problems formulating the simplest thoughts? I tried to get the conversation back on track. “Do you remember what happened? I don’t.”
This seemed to be familiar ground. “I explained it to the police. I hit a patch of ice. Black ice. The car spun out—and kept spinning. I couldn’t get it back under control and we went over the edge of the embankment.” She closed her eyes. “My airbag went off. That’s the last thing I remember.”
That was more than I remembered. That wasn’t unusual with concussion, but it was weird to have that gap.
“Did the car seem…I don’t know. Did the car seem all right?”
She opened her eyes, the only color in her waxen face. “What do you mean?”
“Just that. Did the car seem okay? The brakes and everything?”
“It happened so fast.” Poppy thought it over. “I don’t think there was anything wrong with the car.”