Night Night, Sleep Tight (19 page)

Bunny’s look softened. “I understand why you feel you need to know. And I’m sorry you’ve ended up with so many . . . questions.” She gave Deirdre a long look, stripped of artifice. “But I’m telling you, as clearly as I possibly can, that it would be much better all around if you simply stopped asking them.” She lifted the dress out of the bag and bundled it around the knife. Then she gave Deirdre back her messenger bag, opened the gate to the pool, and went through it. A moment later Deirdre heard a splash.

When Bunny came back through the gate, her arms were empty.

Chapter 35

D
eirdre waited until she was off the Nichols’ estate to pull over and check that her father’s manuscript was still in her bag. It was. In an odd way, it was a relief to be rid of the dress and the knife.

When she got back to her father’s house, the police car was gone. Henry’s car was gone, too. The dogs greeted her at the door. She gave each of them a desultory pat on the head. One glance past the front hall told her that the place had been thoroughly searched. She made her way through the living room and into the den. Rugs were pushed back. Shelves cleared, with books and videocassettes dumped on the floor.

Deirdre continued to her bedroom. She leaned against the doorjamb and took in the disarray. The mattress had been stripped, the bedding piled on the floor. Her duffel bag had been taken out of the closet, unzipped, and its contents emptied out. The hollow-eyed, kitten-holding orphan was staring from the closet at her. Cardboard boxes that she’d piled in front of the orphan had been pulled out and opened, their contents strewn about. High school yearbooks. Scrapbooks. Spiral notebooks from college classes.

Deirdre wondered what on earth the police were looking for. It would take hours to straighten the mess.

She sank down onto the bare mattress, pulled the pillow off the floor, and hugged it to her chest. She wanted nothing more than to tip over, curl up, and shut down.

“Deirdre? Is that you?” her mother’s plaintive voice called.

Deirdre squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the pillow over her head.

“Deirdre?”

Deirdre threw the pillow aside and stood, steadying herself with her crutch. She followed her mother’s voice into her father’s bedroom. On the way past Henry’s room she looked in. His prized electric guitars were piled in a corner instead of lined up against the wall. The contents of his bureau had been dumped on the floor, his closet emptied out too.

Gloria was sitting up in Arthur’s bed, her turban askew and her eyes red from crying. Spent tissues were crumpled on the bed covers. This room had also been tossed.

“I see the police came back,” Deirdre said.

“Twice.”

“Twice?”

“First, two of them showed up and took Henry in for questioning.”

“They arrested him?”

“I don’t think so. Henry said to call Sy.” Gloria’s voice rose. “But before I could, another police officer arrived to search the house. I couldn’t stop him. He tore through the place while I tried to call Sy. I called his office, and I tried him at home. I tried over and over, but I couldn’t reach him.”

“Did the police officer say what he was looking for?”

“Looking for?”

“Didn’t he show you a warrant?”

Gloria hung her feet off the side of the bed, put her hands on her hips, and worked her thumbs into her back. She looked exhausted. “All he did was show me a badge and tell me to keep out of his way.”

“And I’ll bet he didn’t leave behind a list of what he took, either.”

“He didn’t leave anything and he didn’t take anything, either.”

One officer. No warrant. Nothing taken. Sounded like a pretty sketchy police search.

Gloria went on. “Look what a disaster he left the place. The funeral is tomorrow. People will be here.” Her voice dropped to a whimper. “It’s too much. It’s just too much.”

“And Henry’s still not back? He hasn’t called?”

“I haven’t heard a word from him.” Gloria’s face crumpled, and she pulled out another tissue. “I’m so glad you’re here, at least.”

Deirdre imagined Henry being questioned by Detective Martinez in that little room for hours on end, his words captured on a tape recorder without Sy’s reassuring presence to guide him. She tried phoning Sy but, like Gloria, got no answer. She hung up and stared at the phone, willing it to ring. But of course it didn’t.

“Come on,” she said to Gloria. “At least we can start straightening up.”

For the next hour, Deirdre and her mother worked their way from room to room, putting the house back together. They were finishing up in the den when the phone rang. Gloria raced to answer it in the kitchen. Deirdre listened, praying it was Henry.

“Vera?” Deirdre heard her mother say. A long pause. “Oh my God, no!” Deirdre rushed into the kitchen. Gloria was ashen, a trembling hand over her mouth as she listened. “Right. Right.” A pause. She shook her head. “How awful.”

“What is it?” Deirdre whispered.

“Give me a piece of paper, quick.”

Deirdre pulled open one kitchen drawer after another until she found a cash register receipt and a pen.

“Okay. Right.” Gloria listened. Then wrote on the back of the receipt. Then listened some more. She just stood there for a few moments, staring at the receiver. At last she found her voice. “That was Vera. It’s Sy.” She waved the receiver. “He was mugged in the parking garage on his way in to his office this morning. That’s why we couldn’t reach him. He’s in the hospital.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Deirdre could barely get the words out.

“All Vera could tell me was that he got robbed and beaten up. They’ve admitted him.” Gloria dabbed at her eyes with a fresh tissue. “Vera’s been calling people, canceling his appointments. Meanwhile, Sy is all alone. If it were one of us, he’d be there. Like when you were hurt, he was the first one to show up at the hospital to help your father.”

He was? Until that moment, Deirdre hadn’t remembered that there’d been someone else there. Now it came back to her. She’d woken up strapped to a gurney. Bright fluorescent lights streamed overhead. Unfamiliar smells. She’d been shivering from what was probably shock, not cold. Her leg throbbing with pain.

If she’d been alone, helpless panic would have overwhelmed her. Only she hadn’t been alone. Her father had been there, pale and clearly shaken, and beside him was Sy, a calm, comforting presence. Sy had taken charge, demanding blankets from a passing nurse and piling them over her. Rubbing her hands until she stopped quaking. Asking what she remembered. Explaining to her what had happened, how the car had gone off the road. Staying with her and Arthur until she was rolled into the operating room. Promising not to leave until the doctors were finished putting her back together and she was safely in the recovery room.

Henry had abandoned her, broken on the hillside. Sy had been there with her father at the hospital.

Gloria looked down at the handset she was still holding and hung up the phone. “I’m going over there.”

“No. I’ll go,” Deirdre said. She held out her hand for the notes her mother had written. “You’re right. He’s been there for me.”

“Thank you.” Gloria gave her the piece of paper and kissed her on the cheek. “You always were my good girl.”

Chapter 36

B
efore Deirdre left the house, she stopped in the bathroom and washed her face and hands. Then she soaked the washcloth in hot water and sat on the toilet seat with the cloth pressed to her face. When it had cooled, she dunked it again, wrung it out, and pressed it to the back of her neck. She was so tired it hurt.

As she made her way out to the car, her messenger bag felt heavy even though all it contained was her wallet, her keys, and her father’s manuscript. Gloria had written down
Urgent
care - Beverly Medical Center,
and an address on San Vicente in Brentwood. Deirdre had never heard of the place. It wasn’t all that far away, just the other side of the San Diego Freeway. But even though it wasn’t yet rush hour, traffic and roadwork made the trip slow going.

The medical center was tucked in the back of a half-block-long shopping plaza. A small red-and-white sign directed her to underground parking, where she left the car.

Deirdre leaned on her crutch, hitching her bad leg along behind her, her messenger bag bumping against her hip as she followed the signs to an elevator that deposited her in a bright, plant-filled atrium. The medical center was down a corridor, past a dental office, a law office, and a tae kwon do studio. The door was marked
B
E
V
E
R
L
Y
M
E
D
I
C
A
L
C
E
N
T
E
R
. Underneath that, in smaller print it said
CO
S
M
E
T
I
C
S
U
R
G
E
R
Y
, and beneath that in still smaller print it said
U
R
G
E
NT CARE
. Any other time, the irony of that juxtaposition would have cracked her up.

The waiting area was small, only a half-dozen chairs. One patient was waiting, a woman with a bandage over her nose and her face buried in a
Cosmopolitan
. Deirdre made her way over to a counter topped with a sliding glass window. Behind the glass were desks and a wall lined with a bank of vertical file cabinets with multicolored tabs. A poster of a cocker spaniel with a white bandanna and a stethoscope around its neck hung on the wall.

A woman wearing blue scrubs emerged from a door at the back of the inner office. She slid the window open. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Seymour Sterling,” Deirdre said.

“Are you a relative?”

“I’m his daughter,” Deirdre said without blinking.

“You are?” The woman looked surprised.

Deirdre started to cry. She couldn’t help it. She was worn down from sheer exhaustion. But it also made the lie more convincing.

The woman offered her a tissue. “Let me just check in on him. Make sure he’s feeling up to visitors.”

She disappeared and a few moments later returned, beckoning Deirdre through a doorway. Deirdre followed her down a corridor lined with examining rooms and through double glass doors. At the threshold of an antiseptic-smelling room, Deirdre stopped for a moment. The smells and the sounds of what looked to be a miniature emergency room were terrifyingly familiar. She had to fight the urge to buck and run.

There were just four hospital beds in the room. The attendant eased past her and disappeared behind curtains that were pulled around one of the beds. When she reappeared, she held the drapes open for Deirdre. “I’ll leave you. Don’t stay too long. Your father needs his rest.”

Deirdre thanked her and turned to Sy. She tried to hide her shock. He looked as pale as the sheets he was lying on. The top of his head was bandaged and black stitches tracked down the side of his face. There was a massive bruise on his forehead, and his right eye was filled with blood. She pulled the folding chair by his bed closer and sat.

“I did not realize that I had a daughter. Lucky me,” Sy said with a weak smile.

“Surprised the hell out of me, too.” Deirdre took his hand. Her lower lip began to quiver as she stared at the back of Sy’s hand, livid around the spot where a needle was taped to a tube that was attached to an IV bag hanging by the bed.

“
Sh, sh, sh,
” Sy said, though Deirdre hadn’t spoken. “The only reason I am not home? Doctor is afraid I will have another heart attack. Do not worry. This looks worse than it is.” He chuckled. Winced. “Ouch. Cracked rib.”

Heart. That explained the tubes attached to suction cups that snaked off his bare chest. A monitor by the bed beeped, a repeating fluorescent green wave pattern tracing out on the screen. Deirdre hated that beeping sound.

“Coming here brings it all back?” Sy said.

“Yeah. The sounds. The smell.” Deirdre glanced around the room with its three empty beds. “Why did they bring you here? It’s so small.” And it was less than a mile from UCLA, with its world-class hospital.

“I am just here for monitoring. Besides, I am not good at waiting in line,” Sy said. He coughed and winced again. “Plus my doctor is here in the building. No reason to get stuck in a big emergency room for bumps and bruises.”

It looked like a whole lot more than bumps and bruises, but Deirdre didn’t push it. “What happened?”

“I got—” Sy licked his lips and pointed to a cup with a straw on the metal table by the bed. Deirdre held it to his mouth while he sipped. Then he settled himself again. “I got out of my car in the parking garage this morning. Guy must have come up behind me while I was walking to the lobby. One minute I am thinking about my appointments for the day. Next thing I know I am on the ground, my head hurts like hell, and a cop and a lot of strangers are staring down at me.”

“Did anyone see what happened?”

“No one came forward. No surprise there. The parking lot is quiet by the time I get in. After the morning rush. And like I say, seemed like the guy came out of nowhere.”

“It was a man?”

Sy’s brows drew together. “You know, I am not sure. But I think so.”

“Did he get your wallet?”

“Oddly enough, he did not. Or my Rolex. Or my ring.” He raised his hand with the diamond pinkie ring. “And I still had my keys out, so he could have driven off with my car, for Chrissake. All he takes is my old briefcase. I have had that since law school. What did he think was in it?” Sy stared up at the ceiling for a few moments, his eyes squinting into the fluorescent light. “If you ask me, whatever he was hoping to find? He was disappointed.”

Hoping
to find? It took Deirdre a moment to register what Sy was saying. “You think you were targeted because of something he thought you were carrying? But what?”

“I have been asking myself that very question.”

Deirdre swallowed hard as one possible answer occurred to her. “This could be my fault. This morning I told Bunny I’d given you Dad’s memoir.”