Pushing Murder (6 page)

“Maybe they are, Dan.” I felt suddenly somber. “When we get to the chapel, we'll invoke their spirits. Now, start talking.”

“When we get there. Honey, will you do the chair?”

We rolled on in silence. I decided to hear Dan's story before I told him about Dwight's call. I ground my teeth at the thought of the man. Had he snagged the letter? I had a sinking feeling that Dan would have laid it in my lap at once if he had it.

We turned a corner, and another sign—
CHILDREN'S WING
—appeared over a door to a glass-enclosed passage. We went down the passage, and I looked out with wonder at the dense, snow-slowed traffic and the sagging ropes of Christmas lights. Strangely, the world outside one's own has a way of going on. Now we'd reached the other building, and the first door inside was covered with worn leather and embossed with brass nailheads in the form of a cross.

Dan opened it, and Kit pushed me into a dim little vestry. A handmade sign reading
LIBRARY
was tacked to a door on the left.

I said, “Let's peek in the chapel first.”

It was tiny and very devotional, with small, high, stained-glass windows and a flickering red light on the altar making redder the poinsettias there. A very old nun sat in the back pew. She turned and looked at our awkward threesome in the door, smiled, and said, “Please come in.”

“Thank you, Sister,” I said. “Er—we don't have time. Say a prayer for us.”

“I will.”

Kit pulled the chair back, and the door swung shut. She pushed me the few feet to the library, and Dan opened the door and groped for a wall switch.

It was even tinier than the chapel—no bigger than my room. There were four straight chairs and a worn sofa, a table with a china lamp, and a bookcase with glass doors rather sparsely supplied with elderly books.

Dan moved one of the chairs, and Kit pushed me in its place. They sat down, and Dan said, “Are you tired? You have to be.”

“Dan, come here.”

He smiled and came, and I pulled his head down and kissed him and touched the gauze patch in his hair. I said, “He'll pay for this. Did he get the letter?”

“Yes. You should fire me. Keep Kit.”

“Sit down and listen to me. You must be in some pain.”

“Not a lot, really.”

“You will be. Those cuts aren't funny, and I had a broken wrist once. It's awful at night—you can't get comfortable. We'll talk now, then you two are going home. You're both fired.”

“But—”

“Dwight Dunlop has his letter, and I'm safe.”

“Like hell you are.” Dan positioned his cast on the arm of the sofa. “Are you supposed to be happy and trustful of him when you find out what he did to get the damn thing?”

“What
did
he do, actually?”

“Well, he didn't do it himself, that's for sure. It was no seventy-year-old man who jumped me. The guy was young and strong.”

The door opened, and Sadd came in with a brown paper parcel in the crook of his arm. A package of plastic glasses was perched precariously on top. Kit got up and took the glasses.

Sadd said, “I wanted to get something decent, but I doubted that there was a corkscrew among the chapel artifacts, so I got some tank car with a twist-off top.”

“What's tank car?” Kit distributed glasses. “I love your lingo.”

“Nice alliteration.” Sadd smiled at her. “It's cheap wine that is literally shipped in tanks.” He looked around. “What an ideal little hidey-hole. I hope we won't be disturbed. Best keep our voices down.” He started to pour.

I said, “Dan is about to tell us what happened.”

Kit and Sadd sat down, and Dan looked into his wine.

“I was so sure I'd covered my ass. I took a cab to your door and licked into the vestibule. No sign of Dunlop. Not that I expected him to be obviously hanging around, but I thought he'd at least stroll by and check the place out. Then I realized he'd probably already done that. I figured he'd materialize from some doorway he'd ducked into with the mailman.” Dan swirled his wine, then took a sip. “Well, the mail came, but Dunlop didn't.”

Sadd got up and topped off my wine, then he sat down, hitching his chair nearer to the bookcase. Despite our irregular, even wacky, possibly dangerous situation—the four of us huddled in this dim little room and me AWOL—I knew that what Sadd wanted most at that moment was to study those faded book titles.

Dan went on. “I opened the box and saw Mrs. Folsom's letter with her return address on it and put it inside my parka. I let myself in the front door and went up to your place and put the rest of the mail on your desk. I didn't want it to be scattered if he jumped me. Then I called a cab and watched for it from your front window. When it came, I went down and crossed the pavement like a streak. No interference, no nothing. On the way down here I figured he'd heeded Mrs. Folsom's warning and left town. I sat back in the cab feeling good that you weren't in danger anymore.”

Poor Dan. He gulped his wine and spilled some, and Kit mopped his front. I bled for him. Mawkish and unprofessional, Clara. He sat up straighter.

“The traffic was backed up on Greenwich Street, so I decided to get out of the cab at Eleventh and take a shortcut through the hospital garage. I went past the ticket booth and up the incline to the first level. Don't ask me where the guy came from. I landed on my face between two cars with a wool cap pulled over my eyes, and he was ripping my parka and frisking me.
Shit!
I'd made it so easy for Dunlop! All he had to do was see me get in that cab and then phone his goon to watch for it at the hospital.”

We were silent for a minute, then Kit said, looking at me, “Does this kind of violence mean that he knows you know and he doesn't give a damn?”

“Yes. I think…” I suddenly felt cold, though the room was very hot, and shivered and rubbed my knees. Kit was on her feet. “You're going back.” She draped Dan's destroyed parka over me.

Dan stood up. “You think what?”

“I think he knew that Janet would panic and come to me.”

Sadd said, “You mean before the letter did?”

“Yes. He may even—revolting thought—have hung around here and seen her come. After all, a phone call to Fairfield could have told him she was back from Denver and in New York. What he's saying now is that he can play rough, maybe rougher, if I don't do what Janet refused to do.”

“Deal?” asked Kit, collecting glasses.

“Yes. Look the other way till he can salvage something. He called me this afternoon.”

“He called you?”
said Dan and Kit together.

“Yes. Very chatty. He's playing business as usual, and he's telling me I'd better do the same.”

Sadd, cradling his parcel again, held the door and Kit pushed me through. She said, “How can he be sure you won't go to the police?”

“With what?” I said. “Besides, he knows it would be easier to go to Sal.”

As I spoke the words, something began to bug me …

I stared out at the night city as we went back down the glass-enclosed passage. The streets were bright with garish colors the way they should be at Christmas. Lights went on in a big, old-fashioned crèche on the hospital grounds as we passed by it. I looked nostalgically at the funny old figures, sheep half the size of the camels, Wise Men looking like children in costume.

Bug me …

Why was this man so anxious to get his hands on a letter that had nothing positively incriminating in it? Why risk murder and mugging rather than face the mere railings of an angry woman? I presumed Janet's letter contained only that—mere railings. Surely he'd have a good chance of bluffing his way through with the charm that had always served him so well. Sal adored him. Mightn't she forgive all? Believe in his new leaf? Why had he chosen such a desperate path?

It was puzzling that an ineffectual tirade had had the power to put me in this wheelchair.

7

The elevator door opened on my floor to disclose Henry, Tina, and my ten-year-old grandson, Hen.

“Where the hell have you been?” My indignant son helped pull the wheelchair out. I said, “Don't swear in front of your child,” and Hen said, “Can I push?”

I was whisked into my room, fearfully looking about for D.N. No sign of her—off duty, I hoped. “How long have you people been here?” I asked.

“It must be all of ten minutes.” Tina winked at me as she and Kit helped me into bed. Hen immediately sat in the wheelchair and was hauled out of it by his father. “Henry was sure you'd been abducted.”

“You didn't make inquiries, I hope.” The thought of a general alarm and of the dismay of Sister Agnes equally appalled me.

“Another five minutes, and I would have.” Henry stared at Dan's arm. “My God, did he get to you?”

“He got to me, and he got to the letter.” Dan looked the picture of desolation.

“Dan did fine,” I said. “He forced Dwight Dunlop into the open. Everybody sit. Hen, dear, go into the next room and ask if you may borrow a chair.”

“I'll use this one.” Sadd sank into the wheelchair. “I'm practically a candidate for it.”

“I still want to know where you've been,” Henry insisted.

“At a wine-tasting party.” Sadd pulled the bottle and glasses from the bag. “Very old stock. Eleventh Street Vineyards. Care for some?”

Henry said come on, what was this all about, and I suddenly felt a little light-headed. I said, “What time is it? I think I'd better eat something.”

Everybody asked what I wanted, and I tried to think what I'd had in the course of that long, long day. A piece of French toast and two glasses of wine.

Sadd said, “It's seven o'clock, and I'm absolutely famished. As for Dan and Kit—”

“—as for Dan and Kit”—I looked at them remorsefully—“you are both to go straight down to the cafeteria and have supper. When you've finished, bring me anything.”

“Bring me everything,” said Sadd, reaching for his wallet.

“It goes on our bill.”

Kit and Dan were at the door as Hen returned dragging a chair. He said, “Can I write on your cast?”

“
May
you write,” said Sadd.

“Sure,” said Dan.

“When my dad broke his arm skiing, people wrote some neat things.”

Kit said, “Come down to the cafeteria with us and write a neat thing.”

“Can I get some ice cream?”

“May,”
Sadd said wearily.

“Hen, we've eaten, remember?” said Tina.

“No sweat.” Kit put her arm around him. “I have one like you.”

“Which reminds me, Kit,” I said anxiously, “what's your situation at home?”

“It's okay. My mother lives with us.”

They left, and Henry said, “For the third time—”

“Of course, dear, I'm sorry.” I lay back, fighting exhaustion. “Sadd, you tell them.”

I listened with admiration as Sadd expertly summarized the events from Dwight Dunlop's phone call on. Where I tend to digress, Sadd is concise; I dramatize, he is matter-of-fact; I bewail, he is philosophical.

When he'd finished, Henry said at once, “Of course, Dan's right, Mom. You're not home free.”

“It's Janet I'm concerned about,” I said.

Tina set her wine glass down. “Pardon me if I sound uncaring about this Janet—not having met her, I can't work up steam about her safety—but what I wish is that we could get
you
out of here, Clara, and back to Nice Ugly.”

“Or on a plane to Florida,” said Sadd. He rolled the wheelchair to a floor lamp and opened a book.

“What does the doctor say?” asked Henry.

“I don't know. I haven't asked her.” My light-headedness was returning. “How long have I been here?”

“Since Sunday. This is Tuesday.”

I lay with my eyes closed thinking of Janet. I'd promised to call her. Through the door came Sister Agnes with my pill. Henry and Tina hovered at the bed as I got it down.

“How's she doing, Sister?” asked Tina.

“Pretty well,” said Sister with all the caution of her calling.

“I've taken enough of these things to tranquilize an elephant,” I said. Sister left, and I added, “Dr. Cullen simply can't keep me here over Christmas.”

“I'm going to call her.” Henry reached for the phone as it rang. He answered, listened for a few seconds, then said, “This is Henry, Janet. My mother's had a rough day. Dwight Dunlop got hold of your letter, so we're concerned about you.… Yes, here she is.”

He put the receiver in my hand, motioned to Tina to pick up the other one, and said, “I'm going down the hall to a booth. What's Dr. Cullen's number?” I pointed to the pad, and he left. Janet's agitated voice was reaching me from ten inches away, but I ignored it and said without preamble, “Janet, I hope you remember what Dan told you. Stay in your room till—”

“I've checked out of the Plaza, Clara.”

“You've gone home?”

“I'm downstairs.”

Good God. “Janet! That man is everywhere!”

“I know. It's awful—he almost seems to have bilocation.”

“What's bilocation?”

Sadd looked up from his book. “It's the property certain saints are said to have had of being in two places at the same time.”

Janet was saying more or less the same thing. I said incredulously, “Saints?”

“And devils,” said Janet.

That figured. “Devils, too,” I said to Sadd.

He shrugged. “Could be. Fiends are sometimes said to be granted supernatural powers. In
The Screwtape Letters
—”

But it was Janet I was listening to.

“Clara, I've got to see you. Look—I'm going into the flower shop here in the lobby—”