Deadly Interest (14 page)

Lying on my side, the cold linoleum against
my left cheek giving me reassurance I was still alive, I tried to
shout that I’d already called the police, but my brain couldn’t
make the connections to force my lips to make the right sounds.

At my indecipherable mumbles, I heard a
grunt, which I took as surprise. A moment later, I suffered a solid
kick to the stomach. Vomit, hot in my throat, nearly choked me,
till it chugged outward from my mouth and nose, forming a warm
puddle beneath the left side of my face. The flashlight’s beam cut
across my eyes.

I no longer heard Diana. A man’s voice
addressed me, or so it seemed. Whatever words he uttered were
punctuated by further kicks, mercifully less intense. Or maybe I
was less aware. My mind worked enough to convince me I ought to
feign unconsciousness.

It wasn’t hard. My body had had enough. I
felt it shutdown. All I wanted to do was close my eyes make the
pain of breathing go away.

I heaved.

Another bubble of hot bile shot from my
mouth. I took a ragged slice of breath and finally, sweet darkness
carried me away.

My head pounded with the kind of headache
that makes sound fade in and out with every throb. Loud, soft,
loud, soft.

It took a full minute of this see-saw
wailing before I realized it probably wasn’t a European police car
giving chase. I sat up gingerly, every movement causing head-pound
flashes behind my eyes.

Cool moonlight draped the area in blue, and
I listened, hard, as I blinked my eyes to clear my vision. A soft
rush of heat poured from a vent near my face. I listened for a long
time, waiting for some indication that our attacker was still in
the house.

Nothing.

I hadn’t lost consciousness—the part of my
brain that maintained my life support had also kept me awake,
though barely—tucking away small memories as I lay there. The man
had been saying, “Not here,” repeatedly, and I’d heard the drag of
the uneven back door scraping against the cement landing. He must
have pulled the door shut when he left.

Now, my tongue felt huge, and the right side
of it burned as though it were on fire. I wiped my chin, my fingers
coming back sticky-warm with my own blood. I blinked, trying to
see, still trying to determine the source of the uneven noise.

Diana lay on her back, her left arm bent
mid-forearm at an angle so gruesome that seeing it nearly churned
my stomach upward again. Her pained eyes were clamped shut, and her
long, high-pitched moans rose to the ceiling. My European
siren.

Bracing myself on all fours, I tried to
balance, holding my breath against the searing pain in my abdomen.
My left knee must have twisted as I fell; moving it shot long
streams of heat up my leg. I braced myself on my right knee and was
about to stand, when my foot caught the edge of a slippery puddle
and gave way.

My head, already hammering with the shushing
sound of pain, bounced against the linoleum. I rested for several
shallow breaths before trying again.

When I finally made it to my feet, the
down-rush of blood helped the headache subside. I looked down at
Diana’s twisted arm and hoped for her sake she was unconscious.

Extending my right arm, I winced at the
unexpected pain there, too. I pressed my hand flat against the wall
and cautiously stepped over Diana’s supine form. I knew I’d forever
remember the interminable half-walk, half-crawl to the living room
to dig out my cell phone out of my purse.

When my fingers finally curled around its
cool metal exterior, I whispered a small prayer of thanks, and
hoped I wouldn’t lose consciousness before help came.

* * * * *

Detective Lulinski showed up moments after
the paramedics arrived.

Part of me wanted the efficient medical
personnel to be more careful, to be sure they weren’t trampling
over clues that might point the finger at the guilty party, but
more than that I wanted them to stop the pain in my head.

“
You might have a mild
concussion.” The clean-cut young man who said this to me stared so
hard into my face that I was mesmerized.

He continued to stare into my eyes, aided by
the beam of a small handheld lamp. The house lights had come back
on at some point, but I didn’t know who’d taken care of that. “Did
you lose consciousness at all?”

“
No,” I said, knowing that
any other response would land me in the hospital for
sure.

He asked me several other questions, which I
answered as precisely as I could, feeling as though I were talking
with a clothespin clipped to my tongue.

Time had no meaning for me. I watched as
Detective Lulinski took reports from both paramedics and from
uniformed officers. He strode back and forth through the room
several times as the young medic ministered to my wounds.

I made out the name stitched above his
pocket: Chet. With effort, he helped me over to the long beige
couch. I sat there and he knelt on the floor in front of me, taking
readings, reporting in via radio, and marking notes on a clipboard.
We’d moved to one side of the room to allow passage of the
stretcher that would eventually carry Diana out to a waiting
ambulance and off to the emergency room.

Chet reached into his case to pull out gauze
packages, when Detective Lulinski crouched in front of me. “Can I
talk with her a moment?” he asked.

Chet nodded, still concentrating on his task
at hand. “Yeah,” he said. “I want to keep her alert and awake. As
long as she’s up for it.”

Catch this bastard, I wanted to say. I
nodded with as much eagerness as I could muster, then was
immediately sorry. It felt like rocks banging against the inside of
my skull.

“
Miss St. James,” Lulinski
began.

“
Call me Alex,” I said,
the end of my name coming out in a lisp. I tried to smile, but it
hurt.

Detective Lulinski wasn’t wearing his
customary gray suit. Instead he had on a blue flannel shirt and
jeans, no jacket. When I looked into his gray eyes, I didn’t see
the hardness I was used to. Instead, his expression was filled with
sympathy and that caught me off-guard. He reached out and, lightly,
took my right hand in his left. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re
strong.”

The warmth of his hand, the sense of relief
knowing how lucky I was to be feeling it, sent hot stings to my
eyes. “I look that bad, huh?”

He gave me an avuncular pat. “Nah,” he said.
“Just a little frazzled around the edges.”

Even though Chet had made a valiant effort
to clean me up, I couldn’t ignore the surrounding sourness of
remaining upchuck. My face felt sticky from the antiseptic pads
he’d used to wipe it, and when I tried to tuck my hair behind my
ear, my fingers got stuck in a gummy mess.

I still felt as though I’d been shot in the
tongue with an extra-strong dose of Novocain. “How’s Diana?”

Lulinski’s gray eyes clouded for a
split-second before he managed to settle an impassive expression
onto his face. “She’ll live, if that’s what you mean. Her arm’s
been broken in several places and the paramedics think she’s in
shock. That’s what’s really worrying them now. She’s totally out of
it. She doesn’t seem to have the spirit to rally.”

“
But I do?” I asked,
pulling my mouth around my tongue, trying to control my words
better.

“
I’m counting on it,” he
said. “Now tell me everything.”

* * * * *

Despite Detective Lulinski’s insistence that
I go for an MRI, I signed a waiver declining a night in the
hospital, and promised that I’d have my aunt come stay with me till
morning. Overcome with guilt for sending me back to the house with
Diana, Aunt Lena insisted on staying up the entire night, checking
on me every twenty minutes.

Lucy wanted to help, and between the two of
them I spent restless hours, dozing off for short moments only to
be awakened by a cool touch of fingers to my wrist, my cheeks, my
forehead. I must have cried out once, because I sat up
instinctively to see both Lucy and Aunt Lena there, twin frightened
looks on their pale faces.

“
I’m okay,” I said, and
lowered myself, with effort, back to a reclining
position.

My mother had always said that the mouth
heals quickly because saliva helps speed the process. So, when
morning light snuck through the mini-blinds in my room, I worked my
jaw, and practiced a couple of words aloud, surprised at how much
clearer my speech was compared to the night before. My tongue had
even shrunk back to its normal size, although there was a small
patch on the right that I still couldn’t feel.

I vaguely remembered washing up the night
before and then crawling into my oversized T-shirt. Now, as I sat
up, I tugged at its hem, feeling a chill on my legs as I inched the
covers from them, grimacing with each movement.

Now, wincing, I eased my legs over the side
of the bed and considered my options. Too raw to brush my teeth
last night, I’d rinsed my mouth with warm salt water instead,
hoping to wash out as much blood as I could. At the time I thought
I’d done a decent job, but right now it felt like my teeth were
wearing sweaters.

Steadying my feet on the cool wooden floor,
I started to boost myself upward.

“
Don’t try to stand up by
yourself.” My aunt’s sudden appearance at the doorway startled me.
“Lucy,” she called behind her. “Come here and help your
sister.”

“
I’m fine,” I said, then
as though to prove it, I took several steps forward, trusty fake
smile in place. Aunt Lena didn’t have to know I’d sucked in a whoop
of breath at the first step. I felt like I’d done about a thousand
sit-ups, and was now wearing hundred-pound weights on my arms and
legs.

I got to my doorway, and braced myself
against the wall with my left hand. “I have to get into work
today.”

For a half-second I thought Aunt Lena would
laugh, but her face sobered and she shook her head. “I’m making
breakfast. Why don’t we try starting with that, first?”

Over my aunt’s protests that I’d slip and
crack my head open, I took a long, hot shower. Raking my damp hair
backward off my face as I toweled off, I leaned toward the mirror,
trying to see how bad the bump above my right temple looked. Not
too bad, I decided. The steam from the shower softened my
reflection, blurred the bruising, but I just knew I was going to
have a shiner.

I felt much stronger after showering.
Energized, I shuffled into the kitchen, to be greeted by the warm
waft of bacon, eggs, and coffee.

“
I feel like I’ve died and
gone to heaven,” I said with a smile, meaning it as a compliment to
my aunt’s cooking.

She snapped at me. “Bite your tongue.”

Lucy, seated at the table, watched us both
through wide worried eyes. Aunt Lena glanced her direction, then
smiled at me, softening her rebuke. “I just mean that last night
was too close, Alex. I’m sorry I asked you to look around at Mrs.
Vicks’. If I hadn’t been so eager to have Diana move back—” Her
voice cracked.

“
Everyone’s fine,” I
started to say, then noticed brightness streaming in from my back
porch. I glanced that direction, out the window, then up at the
kitchen clock. “It’s after eleven,” I said with alarm. I’d told
Bass that I planned to be in extra early this morning for a meeting
about the San Francisco trip. I could only imagine his fury when I
hadn’t shown up. And then I realized something else. “You missed
the funeral.”

Aunt Lena pulled out my chair and thunked a
steaming plate of food in front of me. “Some things are more
important, dear,” she said. “Anyhow, Moose is at the services. He
came by to check on you this morning before heading out.”

I sat, nodded and turned to Lucy. “Can you
grab me the phone?”

Aunt Lena placed a mug of coffee on the
table, accompanied by a little ceramic pitcher of cream. “I already
called in for you.”

“
What?” I said, a bit
rattled. Nobody had “called in for me” since high school. “But I
need to talk to Bass about the trip on Friday.”

“
Oh, yes, he mentioned
that.”

That sent me off-kilter. I sputtered before
I spoke. “You talked to him?”

Placing a matching platter of food before
Lucy, Aunt Lena rested a hand on my shoulder. “Of course. I asked
for your boss, Philip Bassett. I told him everything that happened
last night. He was quite sorry to hear about it. Very concerned
about you. Such a nice man.”

Bass? I thought.

She continued. “He wanted to know when you’d
be up and around again—when he could expect you back in.”

Okay, that was more like the Bass we all
knew and didn’t love.

“
I told him you were going
to see your doctor this afternoon, but I definitely let him know
how badly you were hurt. He asked me if I thought you’d be able to
make some business trip to San Francisco this Friday, and well, I
told him no, of course.”

“
But,” I said, then
stopped. The aches and soreness suddenly seemed ten times
worse.

“
Don’t worry, honey. Mr.
Bassett said he would find somebody to take your place.”

Yeah, I thought. That’s exactly what I was
afraid of.

Late that afternoon, when the long white box
arrived, I knew who it was from even before I opened it.

“
Good news travels fast,
apparently,” I said to Lucy as she carried the gift into the
kitchen for me to open. An envelope, tied to the large black ribbon
in the center, read: “Get Well,” in gold-embossed
script.

“
What do you mean?” she
asked.

I shook my head, and Lucy didn’t push it.
Aunt Lena had just left for the hospital to check on Diana, after
extracting a promise from me and from Lucy that we’d call if even
the smallest thing went wrong.