Irregardless of Murder (Miss Prentice Cozy Mysteries) (15 page)

“Well, she has you to thank for that, Alec,” I said.

He shook his head vigorously. “No, it was Gracious Providence, as I said. And don’t forget that gallant lad who fished her oot.” It might have been my imagination, but his burr seemed more pronounced. “I was just thankful to play a small part.”

Alec and Lily? Was it even possible? Curiouser and curiouser.

I left him in the hallway, whistling “In the Garden.”

“About time!” Lily snapped as I entered. She clapped her hands impatiently. “Get in here and get to work! I feel like Quasimoto.”

“Well, I guess that could make the Professor your Esmerelda,” I put in wickedly. “That’s the kind of weird pairing that’s perfect for an afternoon talk show.”

“What? You mean that refugee from
Brigadoon
? Is he out there?”

“Waiting patiently for the unveiling.”

Lily groaned and rolled her eyes.

“Let’s not keep your public waiting any longer, shall we?”

Lily pawed through the bag of merchandise. “Black mascara? Didn’t I specifically say brown?”

“Sorry, that’s all they had.” I shrugged and pulled out a strange-looking instrument. “This thing curls and dries your hair at the same time.” I showed her the price tag and, to my surprise, she nodded her approval and indicated that I should plug it in. As I knelt on the floor, looking for an outlet, I said, “Listen, Lily, I need to ask you a favor.”

“Go on, I’m listening.” She pulled out the deodorant and snorted. “Roll-on? Really, Amelia.”

I decided to ignore her whining. I turned on the combination curler/hair dryer and raised my voice over the noise. “Are you going to be out of here any time soon? Or are they keeping you overnight?” I sectioned out a piece of hair and wound it around the bristles.

“Didn’t I tell you? The doctor came in while you were gone and pronounced sentence. Said he didn’t like the look of my blood pressure.” She dumped the remaining articles on her lap. “I told him to take a surprise dip in thirty-degree water and see what his blood pressure did.” She held up a tiny tube of toothpaste. “Gel. Good. At least you got that right. Whew! That air is hot!”

I dialed down the temperature on the gadget a little and continued to make little dry curls out of her wet mop. “So when do you get out of here? Did he say?”

She shrugged. “They’re going to check me tomorrow—heaven only knows what that means—and then decide. It may be a couple of days, he says.”

I sighed. “Well, I have to teach Sunday school tomorrow. It’s too late to ask someone to take my place. I need to borrow your car and get home tonight.”

“Amelia, don’t you get enough of those slimy adolescents during the week?”

“No,” I said, “not at all.” And with a flash of pleasure, I realized I meant it.

“What about you and the boy reporter? I thought the happy couple might take this opportunity to elope.”

I scowled and made another ringlet.

“So that’s how it is, eh? A lover’s quarrel?”

“Lily—may I take the car or not?” I finished and sat heavily in the bedside easy chair.

She reached in her purse and tossed me the keys. “Go ahead. Leave me in this hell-hole with escaped geezers pawing at my door.”

I pocketed the keys. “That escaped geezer may have just saved your life, you know. Give him a break.”

“Yeah, right. You’re trying to tell me that fat old man jumped in and fished me out?”

“Fat old man” struck me as exceedingly unkind.

“No, that was one of the deck hands, but Alec’s the one who did the Boy Scout act.” I paused.

“Boy Scout act?” Squinting into the compact mirror she had propped on her bed table, Lily began to spread makeup base under her eyes and around her lips. “What do you mean?”

Lily’s make-up process was fascinating. Her techniques were not at all like Meaghan’s. I was reminded of a recent
National Geographic
special on the Japanese Kabuki theatre.

“You know,” I said casually. “Got you breathing again.”

Lily powdered her face vigorously, and paused to look at me over the top of her compact. “Was I that far gone?” Her warm corkscrew curls trembled.

I had begun telling her the story in an attitude of mean-spirited fun, as a kind of payback for her crankiness, but the memory of Lily’s poor wilted body lying on the deck brought me up short.

“Yes,” I said, and shivered. “We thought you were dead for a minute there.”

“So? What exactly did he do? The Professor, I mean,” Lily went on flicking mascara on her eyelashes with a short, jerky wrist motion.

“Just some first aid stuff, you know,” I mumbled. I had lost the desire to bait her. “Look, it’s getting late. Would you mind combing out your own hair?” I fished in my purse. “Here’s your credit card. Got to get going.”

“Wait a minute! Oh, no, you don’t—” Lily said, dropping her mascara wand and grabbing for my wrist, which she missed. “You’re going to explain that last. Come back here!”

“Don’t forget to comb your hair out when the curls cool down. I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said, fumbling with my coat. “And I’ll be back to get you when you’re discharged.”

“I want to know what exactly a Boy Scout does!” she called after me as I rushed through the door. “You don’t mean mouth to mouth—” Her voice, which carried a panicky tone, was cut off when the door closed.

I patted Alec’s arm. “Give her fifteen minutes and go right on in,” I said and headed down the hall to the elevator.

She’d be in good hands. After all, he’d saved her life.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was quiet in the hallway. No one was at the nurse’s station as I passed. I turned into the elevator alcove and pressed the down button.

“Miss Prentice,” said a deep voice from just over my left shoulder. “I gotta talk to you.”

I turned and looked up at my student, Derek Standish. He looked angry.

He frowned, and I noticed something that had never struck me before: He was a full head taller than I. He took a step closer, and I glanced around nervously for a nurse or orderly, but there was no one.

“Derek! You weren’t in school yesterday. I heard you were sick. Are you all right?”

“Never mind that. Come on over here. I need to ask you something,” he said, indicating the door marked Stairs.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m in a hurry. Why don’t we talk about it in school Monday.”

The elevator doors opened and I stepped inside. “Goodbye,” I said cheerily.

He followed.

“Look, Derek,” I said, fumbling for the Door Open button. I pressed it and kept pressing, refusing the doors permission to close around me and leave me alone with great big Derek Standish. “What is it you want? I’m busy, and I don’t happen to have my grade book with me.”

He heaved a long sigh and muttered something under his breath. His arms hung straight at his sides, and his hands were knotted in huge, tight fists. As he thrust them abruptly into the pockets of his white windbreaker jacket, a tiny trickle of fear ran down my back.

This is ridiculous. It’s just the Standish boy. I went to high school with his mother. I boss him around in school all day. What on earth is wrong with me?
Still, I couldn’t take my finger off the button.

Derek shifted his weight from foot to foot. He glanced uneasily out the door, then said, “Mrs. Burns. She’s okay, right? I mean, she didn’t drown or anything, right?”

“No, Derek, they say she’s going to be fine. It’s very nice of you to be con—”

“Listen, mistakes can happen, right?” Derek’s eyes widened.

“Of course they can. Derek, why don’t we go over this in school—”

He stared at his large sneakers. “Listen. I might’uv made a big mistake.”

“What? What do you mean? If it’s about your absences—”

He hit the wall with his fist. “It ain’t—I mean—it’s not that. I mean . . . ” He trailed off and glanced over his shoulder into the still-empty hallway.

Down the hall, an amplified woman’s voice informed a Dr. Merritt he had a telephone call on line C.

Abruptly, Derek turned back toward me and his expression darkened. “But then, maybe I didn’t make a mistake. You see, I just don’t know everything that’s goin’ on—not yet, anyways.”

“‘Going on?’ Derek, I don’t understand.”

“Yeah, that’s what you say.” He leaned down, his face inches from mine. His bass voice cracked. I saw, to my amazement, that his eyes were filled with tears.

“Just tell me this—”

“Are you going down?” someone asked. It was a nurse, pushing a woman in a wheelchair.

Derek whirled and ran, slamming through the stairwell door. I could hear his heavy sneakers thudding on the steps.

“Is everything all right?” the nurse asked.

I nodded, smiling weakly, and released the button.

By the time we reached the ground floor, I’d decided that my nervousness was sheer imagination. By the time I got to the hospital entrance, I’d resolved that first thing Monday morning I’d refer Derek to the school counselor. The boy was clearly troubled. I tried to remember what I knew of his home situation and was ashamed to come up blank.

Poor Derek,
I thought, remembering the tears in his eyes.
The young are so vulnerable, no matter how big they grow.

“Amelia! Wait up!” It was Vern, sprinting in my direction with Gil sauntering in his wake with the amused air of someone out walking an exuberant pet.

A golden retriever, perhaps,
I thought as Vern stood before me in the chilly evening, panting in steamy gusts, his blond hair flopping over his eyes.
Or a sheepdog.

“How’s the knee?” I asked.

“What? Oh, that! Just a little sore, is all. You should have come,” he chided. “You missed Wink’s!”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Wink’s Delicatessen,” Gil informed me coolly, jerking his head toward a storefront across the street. “You’ll have to excuse Vern. He’s never been there.”

“Neither have I.”

“Too bad.” Gil shrugged. “I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

“You could be right. I’m probably not a deli sort of person.”

“See there, Vern? Didn’t I tell you she wouldn’t want to come? Too many
randy teenagers
, perhaps.” Gil glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a call to make. You coming?” He wheeled abruptly and headed toward the hospital.

“In a minute,” said Vern over his shoulder. He dropped his voice. “What did you say to him? He was like that all through dinner.”

“I don’t know that I had anything to do with it,” I said vaguely, scanning the parking lot. “I have to get home tonight. Where’d you park Lily’s car?”

“Come on, I’ll show you.” He strode forward quickly, and I was hard put to keep up. “See, over there,” he said, indicating a short flight of stairs leading to a parking deck next to the hospital. “Tell you what—how about I ride shotgun? I’ll just go tell Gil, and be right back.”

“I don’t need a nursemaid, Vern.”

“Yeah, but maybe I do,” he said, grinning, as he loped back toward the hospital. “Meet me at the entrance.”

There were two ways to get home. One was to go back the way we came, on the ferryboat. The other was to circumnavigate the upper portion of the lake by car and bridge, a much longer, but dryer, process. This time, we would go home by land.

Dusk had already fallen, and despite a light bulb here and there doing its feeble best, the parking deck was dark. Lily’s car was easy to spot—large, dark, and shiny, a four-door luxury sedan with all the options, lovingly purchased for her years ago by her husband. It bore a bumper sticker that said, “Shopping is my life.”

The car was totally automatic—gear shift, radio antenna, seats as well as door locks that opened in a four-way stereo clunk as I turned the key. I slid in behind the wheel and took a few seconds to place my purse on the floorboard.

I was thus occupied, leaning at an angle over the passenger’s seat, when I heard several fumbling thumps. Someone was trying to get into the car!

The locks! Hurry!
I struggled to right myself, wrestling with a now- uncooperative steering wheel and shoulder harness, but just as my hand reached the automatic lock switch, the passenger door behind me swung open, letting in a draft of cold air and the intruder.

“Don’t!” said a rough whisper as I craned my head to look behind me. Something cold pressed against my neck. “Start the car!” the voice ordered.

I had seen countless television programs about situations like this: a woman, abducted in a car, never to be seen alive again. I had long ago resolved that, should the situation arise, I would struggle, scream, wreck the car, do anything except passively drive away with a murderous stranger.

“Start . . . the . . . damn . . . car,” the voice said steadily and the cold, metallic something jabbed hard into my neck with each word.

I did as I was told.

With trembling fingers, I turned the key in the ignition and the powerful engine sprang to life. I switched on the headlights. A light on the dashboard warned me the hand brake was on.

Where is it?
I fumbled frantically.
It’s left of the steering wheel in my car
. No luck.
Maybe there’s a switch near the floor pedals
.

“I said, get moving!”

I could feel myself begin to hyperventilate. “I’m—I’m not familiar with this car.”

“Do it!” The pressure on my neck increased.

I found the release just under the dashboard and pulled it, gasping with relief.

My knees were shaking so hard, it was all I could do to operate the accelerator, and we backed from the parking space with a violent jerk. I slammed on the brakes and the tires shrieked.

The pressure on my neck stopped momentarily, but returned, more urgent than ever. “Let’s go!” said the voice. It sounded unnatural. He was trying to disguise it.

“L-look,” I said as I continued backing out. “You’ve scared me. And I’m doing what you said. But I can’t drive with that—thing in my neck. I might run us into a wall or something.”

The pressure let up, but only a little.

Willing my arms and legs to work, I drove among the rows of parked cars, swearing to myself that if I lived through this, I would never go near anything automotive again and hoping that somebody, anybody would see us. I might be able to communicate my plight. But I saw no one.