The Christie Curse (25 page)

“The board of directors,” she said with a sniff.

“I should have known. Well, here’s the thing. The security there doesn’t seem to be
up to snuff as I made clear, and I’m not convinced the police are on the ball. But
I know a few people who are, and I’d like you to contact a decision maker at the hospital,
perhaps the CEO or the chair of the board, and ensure that my people are permitted
to watch Karen Smith’s door and keep everyone out. They will require access to the
room if medical personnel enter. The last villain was dressed as a surgeon.”

Vera shivered. “Dressed as a surgeon? May I know who these people are before I put
their names forward?”

“Believe me, she’ll be in good hands with them.” For one thing, they wouldn’t be falling
for any tricks by Eddie the postman or Officer Smiley, the so-called police officer,
or the man with the limp who had been disguised as a surgeon.

“Names?” she said.

I was startled as something black swooped toward me before I could answer.

“No! No! Sleep, sleep!” Well, that was a relief. It was only Signora Panetone, flapping
like a deranged crow.

“Sleep! Now! Yes!”

“Go back to bed, Fiammetta. Miss Bingham needs to speak to me without your squawking.”

Signora Panetone seemed to melt away into the darkness, muttering, “Sleep now.”

As if there’d been no interruptions, Vera Van Alst said, “Names, Miss Bingham?”

There was no avoiding it. “First names: Valentine. Daniel. William. Conrad. Last name,
Kelly.”

Of course, that would be Uncle Tiny, Uncle Danny, Uncle Billy and Uncle Connie to
me. The twins were incommunicado lately, but these four uncles were stalwart, strapping,
brave, untrusting and stubborn as anyone of Irish extraction could ever be.

“Tell your celestial contacts that these four men are in your employ for the moment.”

“What’s that going to cost me?”

“I’ll take care of it. But I don’t have pull with the hospital. You do.”

Of course, my uncles would do it for me in this life-and-death situation. I’d have
a chance to return the favor in time. Even so, I thought Vera might have argued in
favor of picking up the tab.

“We need to take care of this now. It can’t wait until morning.”

“And you need to remember what I am paying you to find.”

The door closed in my face.

As they say, point taken.

*    *    *

I MADE A call to alert the uncles. The great thing about being the only niece in the
family and the daughter of the beloved sister is that your uncles will do whatever
ridiculous thing you want. No charge. No guilt trips. No questions asked. Also as
they were unencumbered by jobs, they’d most likely be available. I was blessed, no
doubt about it. I hoped that their guard shifts at the hospital would be officially
approved. Otherwise a plan B would be needed, and that might be a bit more complicated
to bring about. Could I count on Vera to care enough to make it happen? I sure hoped
so.

In the meantime, I worried about Karen. I was pretty sure that Detective Zinger hadn’t
really believed me about the latest attempt on her life. I hoped that Karen would
be lucid enough to convince him and that the police would take her safety seriously.
With luck my uncles would be there in the morning, but what about overnight? I shivered
when I thought of someone creeping through the darkened corridors, disguised as a
doctor, a nurse, a cleaner, and outwitting the security guard. It was easy to blend
into the background in a hospital. And easy to get away, as I’d seen when Karen’s
assailant vanished as if he’d never existed. Which he had, I reminded myself.

Even my cabbage rose retreat wasn’t enough to take my mind off what was going on that
night. Neither was the stack of Christie reading. It would have been great to talk
to Tiff, but she must have been tied up with some emergency. I reminded myself of
the two-hour time difference and decided against leaving a “call me” message.

Talk tomorrow! xoxo

I tossed and turned. The third time I turned on the light, I decided I might as well
stay up and try to make sense of things. I figured that’s what Agatha Christie would
have done, as would her charming creations, Miss Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot. I’d
learned a lot from reading Christie’s work as well as the many books about her. Could
I use any of that to help figure out this tangled mess? I decided, as I’d be awake
anyway, to do something about what was bothering me most.

Five minutes later, I was crossing the shadowy parking area. I checked the backseat
of the Navigator, locked the doors and drove to the hospital.

*    *    *

“CHECK WITH DETECTIVE Zinger of the Grandville Police if you’re worried,” I told the
young security guard
who had the boring job of watching Karen Smith’s door while she slept the troubled
sleep of the injured and drugged.

I guessed the guard wasn’t worried, because she didn’t check with anyone. I made myself
at home in the visitor’s chair by Karen’s bed.

“Leave the door open to be on the safe side,” I added.

She stared at me. I was glad I’d come. Mickey Mouse could have talked his way past
this girl.

The night promised to be longer than most, but I planned on figuring out who was who
and what was what in recent events. At least I had Christie in my corner, and I’d
brought a notebook along with me.

In the Christie world, things were never what they seemed. Insignificant items, seen
in passing, could be very important to the solution. People might not be what they
seemed, or they might not be where they should be. Someone might be present who should
have been elsewhere, or absent when they should have been present.

And if items weren’t where they should be, people were even less so. They might not
even be who they said they were. They might not have been doing what they claimed
to be doing or what other people thought they’d witnessed. Their relationships might
not be what they’d led us to believe. Their connections to other characters would
be very surprising when revealed. Even their crimes were not what they were supposed
to have been. One crime could be a smoke screen for another. Plus everyone lied. Even
villains couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth on the page. How unfair was that? No
wonder it took a Poirot or a Jane Marple (or occasionally Tommy and Tuppence) to solve
these cases.

Certainly the police didn’t have a hope. Mind you, fictional detectives usually had
the advantage of a closed cast of characters, while I had all of upstate New York—and
beyond—to draw on. I knew that if I didn’t figure out what
was going on, Karen Smith and Ashley Snell might never be safe. Other people might
be drawn into danger. And if I didn’t make some progress on my task of finding the
Christie manuscript, I would be out of a job. Vera had made that quite clear. That
would mean forgetting about returning to grad school for a while and—worse—leaving
my cabbage rose kingdom.

I sure could have used a sidekick.

As the clock moved slowly, I made a list of everyone I thought might be involved and
recapped what I knew. Of course, I didn’t necessarily know what I didn’t know, but
you can make yourself crazy if you think too hard. I had to work with what I had.

Under the names, I had notes and questions about motives, connections and general
suspicious elements.

What else was I missing? What didn’t I know? Why couldn’t I figure it out? It would
have been a good night to be Agatha Christie, but I was Jordan Bingham, perched on
an astoundingly hard plastic chair in the hospital, watching a woman sleep. It was
not a good night for me.

Karen didn’t stir all night, not even when the nurses made their infrequent visits
to check vitals. Each of them nodded to me, the caring “niece.”