New Year's Eve Murder (11 page)

After reading Nadine’s article, Lucy found herself agreeing with Sara. Although she argued her case forcefully, Lucy couldn’t agree that testing cosmetics was equally important as testing potentially life-saving drugs, for example. She could rationalize the need for the latter, but not the former. No rabbit needed to suffer for longer, thicker lashes.

Depressed, Lucy turned eagerly to the photo spreads. Having seen Pablo at work she was sure they would be visually interesting. Plus, with her newfound interest in fashion she might get some ideas for a new spring outfit. But when she turned to the spring fashion forecast she was shocked to discover it pictured designer cruisewear modeled in a Caribbean shantytown. Gorgeous models with gleaming skin lounged in scanty outfits on tilting porches amidst piles of garbage and debris. A chicken scratched in the foreground of one picture; a stooped, skinny man in an oversized shirt lurked in the background of another. Reading the commentary offended Lucy’s soul: the outfits cost thousands of dollars.

Lucy was fuming about the injustice of a culture that afforded some fortunate people thousand-dollar swimsuits while others couldn’t afford the necessities of life when she turned the page and saw the filthy, wrinkled face of a homeless woman sporting a diamond tiara and ropes of pearls. She got the concept, all right. The woman’s face expressed human dignity, but the addition of the jewels was demeaning and insulting. Disgusted, Lucy tossed the magazine across the room where it landed with a thud in the wastebasket.

Elizabeth twitched in her bed but didn’t wake up, so Lucy reached for the remote to turn on the TV that hung from the ceiling. She was flipping through the channels when the door opened and Nancy Glass appeared, wrapped in a tan Burberry coat. Even Lucy recognized the famous plaid lining.

“How’s the patient?” she asked, taking Lucy’s hand and squeezing it.

Lucy turned off the TV. “They think she’ll be all right.”

“I couldn’t believe it when they told me she was in intensive care.” Nancy’s eyes were huge.

“Me, either.”

“You poor thing. How are you holding up?”

“I’ve been better,” admitted Lucy. “But at least I know she’s getting good care.”

“Excellent care. People come here from all over the world. They’ve developed all kinds of advanced treatments.”

“Thanks for telling me that,” said Lucy. “I guess they can handle a little spider bite.”

“Is that what she has?”

“That’s what they say.” Lucy was looking around the room for another chair, but there was only the single recliner. “Sit if you want,” said Lucy. “I’ve been sitting for hours.”

“No, I’m only here for a minute.” Nancy stepped close to the bed and gave Elizabeth’s hand a little pat. “You know, maybe we should have her write a first-person account for the magazine. When she gets better, of course. I know Pablo’s planning to use some exotic bugs for his next jewelry spread.”

“Well, that’s a better choice than homeless people.” Lucy felt like biting her tongue the minute she said it, but Nancy wasn’t offended.

“You didn’t like that?” she asked, smiling.

“Not much. I didn’t like the shantytown, either.”

“I know. Talk about bad taste!” Nancy shrugged. “That’s our Camilla. She thinks controversy sells.”

Lucy managed a small smile. “That’s what my editor at home thinks, too.”

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be true, in
Jolie
’s case, anyway.” Nancy’s eyes had fallen on the crumpled issue in the wastebasket and she grimaced. “A lot of people agree with you—circulation is dropping, and the magazine is losing money.”

“I heard that. Not a good time to lose a key editor. How’s everybody coping?”

“You mean about Nadine?” Nancy was checking her manicure.

“Everyone must be reeling in shock, no?”

“It could be worse. Nadine was a master at delegating responsibility. Phyllis knows exactly what needs to be done and how to do it.”

“That’s fortunate.”

“Yeah. The magazine will be fine.” She was looking at her reflection in the mirror above the sink and tweaking her hairdo. “The one I feel bad for is her husband.”

“Arnold?” Lucy remembered his hand on her bottom at the AIDS ball.

“He’s a lovely man. So sensitive. I’m sure he’s devastated.”

“You never know how somebody’s going to react to a death in the family,” said Lucy, surprised at Nancy’s obvious sincerity given her own experience with Arnold. “Grief takes everyone differently.”

“Well, I’m going to do everything I can to help him through this difficult time,” said Nancy, tightening the belt on her coat.

“Well, thanks for coming by,” said Lucy. “I really appreciate it.”

“That’s me. A regular Miss Goody Two-Shoes,” said Nancy, clicking out the door on her stilettos.

Lucy wasn’t sure that was exactly the term she’d use to describe Nancy, but you never knew. Just because a woman was glamorous and fashionable and successful didn’t mean she wasn’t nice underneath. You couldn’t tell a book, or a magazine, by its cover. She retrieved
Jolie
from the wastebasket, flipped through a few pages, and shoved it aside. What she needed was something distracting, something silly. Maybe the Three Stooges. At home you could find the Stooges at any hour on some cable channel or other. Lucy knew; the trio had gotten her through many a sleepless night.

But when she switched on the TV there was no sign of Larry, Curly, and Moe. There was, however, a serious young female newscaster in a navy blue suit reporting that the medical examiner was investigating the death of magazine editor Nadine Nelson, now deemed suspicious.

I
t was supposed to be a vacation but the flight had been terrible. The trouble started at check-in, when the clerk had actually been Moe from the Three Stooges. He was also the pilot, and Larry and Curly were the flight attendants. A couple of passengers got squirted with seltzer water but nobody got drinks, or peanuts, because Larry and Curly were too busy bopping each other on the head and tossing the refreshments around the cabin.

When the plane landed they had to get off by sliding down the emergency chute, and Lucy had to take off her heels, spike heels, before they’d let her slide down. That’s why she was running barefoot, trying to catch up with Bill and Elizabeth who were far in the distance on the wide, empty street lined with ramshackle shop fronts. It was eerily quiet, like the set of a cheesy Western movie just before the climactic shoot-out, and people stared at her from the windows and doors but no one spoke.

Suddenly, she was on a beach, a classic Caribbean beach with palm trees, white sand, and turquoise water. She was tired of running so she stretched out in a handy hammock and watched Bill and Elizabeth frolicking in the waves. Then Elizabeth shrieked with delight and plucked something from the water. Waving it, she ran up the beach to show it to Lucy.

It was a shell, a beautiful striated nautilus shell with a pearly lining. But while they were exclaiming over its beauty, something black and evil crawled out of the center. Lucy tried to snatch the shell away from Elizabeth, but before she could grab it the spider hopped onto Elizabeth’s hand. Lucy tried to brush it away but paused when she noticed it had a head like a woman. It was a spider with a woman’s head, with Camilla’s head. She wanted to ask Camilla what had happened, why had she turned into a spider, but before she had a chance, the Camilla spider sank two gleaming white vampire fangs into Elizabeth’s hand.

A shriek of protest from the aged recliner chair woke Lucy, and she found herself sitting bolt upright, panting and sweating, in a hospital room. Elizabeth was in the bed, sound asleep.

It was a dream, she realized—only a dream, and there was nothing to be afraid of. She gave her head a shake, clearing her mind of the image of spidery Camilla, and got up to check on Elizabeth. She found the girl was sleeping easily, her forehead was cool, and the bite on her hand was improving: the wound itself was healing and the swelling had gone down.

Reassured that Elizabeth was on the road to recovery, Lucy went out to the nurse’s station where she asked for a toothbrush and the nearest ladies’ room. When she got back a middle-aged man in pale green scrubs was examining Elizabeth, who was awake and responsive. Lucy gave her a big smile and a thumbs up.

“I’m Dr. Marchetti,” he said, shaking Lucy’s hand. “I must say I’m quite impressed by your daughter’s response to the medication. Antibiotics don’t usually have this dramatic an effect on spider bites.”

“I’m not convinced it is a spider bite,” said Lucy.

The doctor narrowed his eyes. “No? Why not?”

“Well, we live in Maine, for one thing. It’s pretty cold there this time of year and you don’t see many bugs. Not any, really. Not even fleas on the dog.”

“And I don’t remember getting bitten,” volunteered Elizabeth. “I hate spiders so I’m sure I would have noticed one on my hand.”

“Maybe she got bitten here,” suggested the doctor as he consulted Elizabeth’s file.

“I haven’t seen a single bug here, either, but she was exposed to the flu.” Lucy remembered the newscast. “Or what I thought was the flu. Considering the way people zip around on airplanes these days, it could be some bizarre jungle thing like monkey pox or malaria. They’re investigating.”

“Who’s investigating what?”

“Nadine Nelson’s death,” said Lucy, so eager to inform the doctor of this development that she failed to notice Elizabeth’s shocked expression. “It was on the TV. They said the medical examiner was investigating.”

“And your daughter had contact with this woman? This Nadine Nelson?”

“Oh, yes, we both did. On Monday, at
Jolie
magazine. It was a contest, you see, for mother–daughter winter makeovers….”

Dr. Marchetti wasn’t listening. He was out the door.

Elizabeth was white faced. “She died?”

Lucy wished she’d asked to speak to the doctor privately; she’d forgotten that Nadine’s death would be shocking news to Elizabeth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have realized you couldn’t know. You were really out of things.”

“Do I have what she had? Am I going to die?”

Lucy gave her a hug. “Do you feel like you’re dying?”

“No,” admitted Elizabeth. “I feel much better.”

“Trust your body,” advised Lucy. “They don’t know what it is but the medicine is working and you’re much improved. You heard the doctor.”

“What if I take turn for the worse?” She flopped her head over, like a rag doll, then sat up. “Actually, I think I might be dying of starvation.”

Lucy opened the door and stuck her head in the hallway to see if there was any sign that dinner was imminent. There wasn’t.

“I’m hungry, too,” she said. “I think I’ll go down to the cafeteria and get some provisions.”

Remembering hospital protocol she checked at the nurse’s station to make sure Elizabeth could eat and, after getting the okay, headed straight for the cafeteria. She was putting two containers of yogurt on her tray when her cell phone rang. It was Lance.

“How’s Elizabeth?” he asked, without even saying hello.

“Much improved. She’s sitting up and wants something to eat.”

“That’s great! But I think I should warn you that brown recluse spider bites are very slow to heal. She could be in the hospital for quite a while.”

“That’s funny,” said Lucy, adding a couple of pieces of fruit. “It’s already much smaller.”

“What?”

“Yeah. The doctor was amazed. Said antibiotics don’t usually work like that on spider bites.”

Lance didn’t reply and Lucy took the silence to mean he was thinking. She took advantage of it to fill two paper cups with coffee, then got in line to pay the cashier.

“You know, my research also pulled up anthrax,” he finally said.

“Anthrax?” Lucy gave the cashier a ten-dollar bill and put the change on her tray, which she carried over to an empty table. “Like those postal workers?”

“Yeah.”

Lucy remembered the scare, which had dominated the news for weeks. “Didn’t a couple of them die?”

“It can be fatal,” admitted Lance.

All of a sudden her heart felt like it was in a vise. “But the doctor says Elizabeth is much better.”

“There are two kinds,” continued Lance. “Inhalation anthrax; that’s when you breathe in the germs. It’s very serious. But there’s also cutaneous anthrax; you get that if you touch the stuff but don’t breathe it. And that’s not as serious as the other kind.”

“You mean Elizabeth’s spider bite could really be an anthrax sore?”

“Yeah. And it would respond to antibiotics.”

“What’s the other kind like? The inhalation kind?” demanded Lucy.

“Like the flu. Like a really bad case of the flu with respiratory problems.”

“Really?” Lucy was thinking of Nadine. “And how do people get it? Is it contagious?”

“It’s not contagious. You have to be directly exposed to get it.”

“It’s a germ?”

“A spore, actually, and it’s not usually around in the environment, like most germs. It has to be introduced. The post office workers got sick when the anthrax was shaken out of an envelope by a sorting machine. Some nut was sending it to people in the government.”

“Right. They had to shut down congressional offices, didn’t they? To decontaminate them.”

“And that’s the other thing,” said Lance. “Most germs have a pretty short life span unless they find a host, but not anthrax. It forms spores that can lie dormant for years until they find the right living conditions. That’s why it’s such a good biological weapon.”

“Biological weapon? I think we’re getting a little crazy here. You know, Elizabeth never had chicken pox. The others did but she was away at summer camp and missed it. It could be something like that.”

“The doctors will figure it out,” said Lance. “You think it’s okay if I visit her tonight?”

“I think she’d love it,” said Lucy. “Right now she’s probably wondering what’s taking me so long. I’m supposed to be bringing her something to eat.”

As she made her way back to Elizabeth’s room Lucy tried to remember everything she could about the anthrax scare a few years earlier. It wasn’t much, she realized. She didn’t even know if they’d ever figured out who had sent the stuff, or why. The only thing she was sure of was that ever since the attack, the discovery of any unspecified white powder was enough to shut down schools and offices until it was positively identified. Some pranksters had even managed to shut down Tinker’s Cove High School for an afternoon last fall by spilling some salt on the assistant principal’s desk.

“Is that all you got me? Fruit and yogurt?” demanded Elizabeth, when Lucy delivered the tray.

“It’s just to tide you over,” said Lucy, amazed at Elizabeth’s sudden interest in food. Maybe it was true that every cloud had a silver lining. “They’re going to bring you a big dinner, eventually. I saw the meal trolley at the end of the hall.”

“I don’t know how people survive in the hospital,” said Elizabeth, digging into the yogurt with a plastic spoon. “You could starve to death.”

“Take mine, too,” said Lucy, who was too distracted to eat.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

She stood up. “I have to make a phone call. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Standing in the hallway outside Elizabeth’s room, Lucy felt a bit like a cartoon character with an angel perched on one shoulder and a devil on the other. The good little angel was telling her that she really ought to alert somebody at
Jolie
magazine about the possibility that the office was contaminated with anthrax, while the bad little devil was telling her it would be a waste of time.

“People’s lives are at stake. You must warn them,” said the angel.

“How are you going to do that?” scoffed the devil. “Camilla’s the one you should call and you can be sure her phone number is unlisted.”

“That’s just an excuse. You need to find a way,” insisted the angel.

“There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” whispered the devil. “You’re exhausted. Frazzled. You deserve some time to take care of yourself.”

“You’ll never forgive yourself if someone else gets sick because you were too lazy to make a phone call,” said the angel.

Lucy checked her watch. It was just after five. That meant the best she could probably do would be to leave a message on Camilla’s phone mail. But when she dialed the receptionist answered and put her right through to Camilla.

“I’m so glad I caught you,” began Lucy, feeling rather awkward. “There’s something I think you should know.”

“I heard your daughter’s in the hospital. How’s she doing?”

“She’s going to be fine,” said Lucy.

“Well, I’m glad she’s recovering. You must excuse me—this is not a good time,” she said.

Lucy was suddenly guilt stricken. In her haste to do the right thing she’d completely forgotten that Camilla and Nadine were close friends. The poor woman was probably wracked with grief and completely shattered by her loss.

“I’m afraid there’s no good time for what I have to tell you,” said Lucy, her voice gentle, “but trust me, the sooner you know, the better.”

“Well, go on,” said Camilla, impatiently.

“Okay,” said Lucy. “I think there’s a very real risk the
Jolie
office is contaminated with anthrax.”

“What?”

“Anthrax. Nadine’s death and my daughter’s symptoms are consistent with anthrax, at least that’s what I’ve been told.”

Camilla’s voice was hard. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not ridiculous at all,” insisted Lucy. “And if the offices are contaminated other people are at risk of getting sick. That would be terrible.”

Camilla’s words were clipped, precise. “The doctors say Elizabeth has anthrax?”

“Well, no,” admitted Lucy. “They’re still testing. But I did some research and I’m pretty sure….”

Camilla was practically shrieking. “
You
did some research?”

Lucy felt her face warming. “Well, actually it was Lance, Norah’s son. He’s a student at Columbia and he does research at the hospital with a professor.”

“A college kid has some crackpot idea! And you decide to call me?”

Lucy was flabbergasted. Here she’d gone out of her way to do a good deed and Camilla was practically biting her head off. “I thought the sooner you knew the better.”

“Oh you did, did you? Well, I’m going to wait for official notification before I go to the expense and trouble of closing the office and having everyone stay home. Furthermore, I don’t know who you think you are, spreading ridiculous rumors like this.” Camilla paused for breath. “I’m warning you, if you so much as whisper this preposterous idea to anybody I’ll slap you with a lawsuit so fast you won’t know what hit you.”