Chosen for Death (18 page)

"Right," I said. "That sure is romantic. One of them thinks I'm a sundae, the other treats me like a roast. What about my mind?" I opened the menu. What appealed to me was meat. Steak, baked potato, and salad. Even though the steak house had been her idea, Suzanne had swordfish and salad. She loves fitted clothes, and she's tiny, so she has to be careful about her weight. "Speaking of romance," I said, "who was the deep-voiced gentleman in the background last Sunday, or shouldn't I ask?"

She smiled mysteriously. "You can ask. His name is Paul. Paul Merritt. Headmaster at a certain unnamed private school we've been courting as a potential client. I've been seeing him for a while. He's fun."

There was something she wasn't saying. "Single?" I asked.

"I can't hide anything from you, can I?" she sighed. "Married. Separated about a year. The divorce is in the works, but it's not final. In fact, it's been a real roller coaster. A couple times they've considered getting back together. It's been pretty discouraging. I know better than to let myself get into situations like this, but he's a wonderful man, and we have a lot of fun together. What about your policeman? He single?"

Suzanne was annoying this way. She wanted people to be happy, so she latched on to involvements way too early and then watched them like a hawk. She reminded me of those kids back in junior high who assumed you were going steady if you talked to the same boy twice. "Suzanne, he's not my policeman. Anyway, it's trooper, or detective. And I don't know anything about him."

She left me alone after that. We ate our salads in silence and when my steak came she cut it up without being asked.

"Thanks, Mom," I said.

"I'm not sure that's funny," she said. "So far, you're the closest I've come to having a kid."

"Life is long," I said. "Maybe your dream guy is right around the corner."

"He'd better come around the corner soon," she said. "The clock is ticking. You want to tell me about the accident?"

"There was no accident," I said, "or, to be more precise, I didn't have an accident, an accident was done to me."

"Done to you?" she said, sounding puzzled. I told her the whole story, starting with lunch at Leadbetter's and ending when I woke up in the hospital.

She was shocked. "Thea, it sounds like something out of a cheap novel! You must have been terrified. Have the police arrested this Charlie? Is he the same person who killed Carrie?"

"The police think I drank too much and ran into a tree. Or they did think that. I told them what happened and they thought it was all the product of my deranged mind, the result of the concussion." Now that I was neither drugged nor dizzy, remembering how condescending Andre had been made me furious. I wasn't wild about having been seen in my underwear, either, but maybe showing him my bruise might have helped change his mind. It wasn't an injury that would have logically occurred in an accident. I was sure Andre had seen enough bruises in his life to know the difference. "Charlie has disappeared. And I don't know if he killed Carrie. I don't think so. He seemed genuinely surprised to learn she was dead. He's unreadable, of course, but there was something about what he said—that he'd hurt me so that we'd both hurt—that made me think he didn't."

I decided to tell her what I'd been thinking about in the hospital. "The main obsession in Carrie's life was the search for her birth parents. Just before she was killed, she told a woman she worked with that she'd finally had a breakthrough. And someone searched her apartment and took all her papers and diaries. All that was left were some notes the police found in her car. Maybe she found someone who didn't want to be found."

"Did you tell the police about your theory?" Suzanne asked.

The waitress arrived and began to clear away our plates. "Can I bring you ladies some coffee or dessert?" she asked.

"Just coffee for me, please," Suzanne said.

I just shook my head. I wanted dessert, but my face already ached from so much chewing and talking. When the waitress had gone, I answered Suzanne's question. "The police don't think much of my theory. They're still assuming it's a sex crime. But they didn't know Carrie. It's hard to explain to an outsider how significant her adoption was to Carrie. Since they don't see that as an obsession in her life, they can't take the next step, and see how important duplicating her search may be. So I'm going to do it." I hadn't known, until I said it, that I'd made up my mind, but Suzanne didn't seem surprised.

Her eyes gleamed at me over her coffee cup. "Thea will fix it, right?"

"You know me too well," I said.

"Well enough. I ought to, after all this time. They haven't exactly been uneventful years, have they?" She dropped her AMEX card on top of the check without looking at it. "You've chosen a good time. Things at the office should be pretty quiet. No big deadlines, just some proposals to write. You can recuperate and do a little legwork." She seemed delighted with the idea of me as a detective. Of course, to Suzanne, a quiet period meant we only worked fifty-hour weeks instead of eighty, but I appreciated the support. I was lucky to have such a flexible boss, even if I never took advantage of it. But I was forgetting. I was a boss now, too.

"On your feet, Thea," she said. "We've got miles to go before we sleep." We stopped in the ladies' room, where I almost had to ask for help, I was so stiff. By the time we got to the car, I was wishing the restaurant had sent me out in a wheelchair. Suzanne read it all in my face. "Feeling rotten, huh?"

"Rather."

"Be right back." She was out of the car before I could protest. She came back a minute later with a cup of water. "Hold this," she said, digging around in her briefcase. After a prodigious search she came up with a little brown container. "From Dr. Bob," she explained, shaking a pill onto the palm of her hand and passing it to me.

"What's this?"

"He didn't tell me," she said. "He just handed it to me, followed by a long litany of instructions about taking care of you, most of which were appropriate only to the care of idiots and vegetables. I told him you were neither. He said he had observed that Mrs. Kozak—and he emphasized the words 'Mrs. Kozak'—seemed very able to take care of herself. So I gather you gave him a hard time."

"He's too sensitive. All I did was tell him that if he was Dr. Tabor, I was Mrs. Kozak, not Theadora."

She giggled. "That's all? Well, you made quite an impression. Now you lie back and go night-night and I'll wake you when we're home." I did as I was told. It took about twenty minutes for Dr. Bob's gift to work, but after that I felt just fine.

Chapter 14

It was Wednesday before I felt like a normal human being again. A being without a headache, who could take a deep breath without wincing. On Wednesday Suzanne drove me to my local G.P., who pronounced me well on the way to recovery and took the tape off my nose. It was still swollen—to me it looked gigantic and ugly, like a lump of mottled clay—but the doctor and Suzanne both assured me that it wasn't bad. The black around my eyes had faded to a hideous yellow-green. I looked like the star of
Creature from the Yellow Lagoon,
but I felt better without strips of white tape below my eyes.

Wednesday was also the first day I didn't feel feeble and exhausted by midafternoon. I went from the doctor's office to work, despite Suzanne's protests, and put in three good hours before I ran out of steam.

Being without a car was making me crazy. Suzanne was happy to help, but it made both of us feel trapped. I called my insurance agent, who assured me that I was welcome to rent a car, and my insurer would pick up the cost, as long as it was moderate. Moderate, further questions revealed, might get me something off the back lot of Rent-a-Wreck. I was spoiled by my Saab. I wanted it back. If I couldn't have it, I wanted another Saab.

I let my fingers do the walking, searching for a Saab to rent. It wasn't easy. I was afraid my ear would become permanently attached to the receiver. It would have been easier to rent a BMW, but I finally found a Saab for only about twice the cost of an American car. Luckily, money isn't a problem for me. David's company had a good life insurance policy, and I collected the policy limit from the guy who killed him. Plus, Suzanne paid well, and I was too busy working to spend much money.

Suzanne, relieved to have her chauffeuring chores at an end, drove me to the rental agency. After an uncomfortable twenty minutes with a rental agent who couldn't stop staring at my face, I drove away in a shiny red Saab loaded with options. It had a state-of-the-art sound system, a sun roof, an air bag, and a car phone. I felt like a real fat cat. The only drawback was that it was automatic, probably to leave one hand free for the phone. Half the fun of driving is shifting gears. It would take a while for my left foot to stop flopping around hopelessly on the floor.

Thursday I worked until midafternoon and then drove to my parents' house. It was a dual-purpose visit. First and foremost, I went to prove to them that I was truly alive and well, so they would stop calling me every night. Second, I hoped to persuade them to help me find Carrie's birth parents.

The evening was an unqualified disaster.

It began before I even got in the door. Mom opened the door, took one look at me, and burst into tears. Dad tried to calm her down, but it was evident that he was also shocked by my appearance. Before things could settle down, Michael and Sonia arrived, looking tanned and rested, and Mom couldn't resist pointing out that taking a vacation immediately after the funeral was in very bad form. Sonia and Mom get along badly at the best of times, and Sonia didn't appreciate the comment, a fact she made abundantly clear.

Then, when Dad asked what I'd like to drink, Michael said, "Maybe you shouldn't give her anything. We don't want her wrapping that nice red Saab around a tree. I don't think her face could take it."

I tried to pass it off lightly. "Thanks for your concern, Michael," I said. "You can always drive me home if I can't handle it. We're practically neighbors, after all." He scowled at that. Mike hates to put himself out for other people. We do live in neighboring towns, but he never calls to see if I'm OK, or invites me to dinner. "I'll have my usual."

My brother wouldn't leave it alone. He and Sonia must have had a fight on the way over. Michael doesn't know what to do with bad feelings, so he spills them all over everyone. He's always been like that. When he was little, if he broke a favorite toy, he'd try to break one of mine to make himself feel better. He's developed some controls. He no longer indulges in physical violence, but he's still into verbal violence. Between them, he and Sonia had two of the nastiest mouths on the East Coast. "How's everything at that little think tank of yours?" he asked. "You and Suzanne still the happy couple?"

It would have been a good time to mention my partnership. My parents would have been pleased, but Michael was looking for a fight, and he'd find something nasty to say. I wasn't in the mood for nasty remarks. Or a fight. I can give it back just as fast as he can dish it out, if I want to. But it had been a hard week; I didn't have energy to waste on a pissing contest with my brother. "Things at work are fine, Michael," I said mildly. "How is your work going?"

"Michael seems to be suffering from artist's block," Sonia said, "if there is any such thing. In fact, he's suffering from a block in several areas. It's tough on his fragile male ego, isn't it, dear?" She sat back on the sofa, smoothing her glossy hair with hot-pink fingernails, gloating over her remark. The rest of us refrained from comment. Dad came back with a tray of drinks, handed them around, and settled into his favorite chair. Mom came in from the kitchen, bringing with her the faint scent of fresh bread, and sat beside him. Her sherry was waiting. She took a sip and smiled at all of us.

"Dinner will be ready in about twenty minutes. The roast is slow tonight. I hope you don't mind waiting." Dad said he didn't, and the rest of us agreed. I was looking forward to dinner. Suzanne is not a great cook. Mom looked at my drink with undisguised disapproval. "Thea, dear," she said, "are you really feeling all right? Should you be drinking so soon?" She didn't wait for my answer. "I should have come to get you myself, instead of letting Suzanne do it. You're not getting enough rest. I can see that. I hope you're not back at work?"

I guess moms never stop worrying about their kids. "I'm doing fine," I said. "I know I look awful, but that's just the way bruises are. You must know that, with all the time you spend at the hospital. They stay ugly long after they stop hurting."