The Jinx (14 page)

As if on cue, I could hear my phone ringing in my purse.

“Maybe it's him,” I said.

But I wasn't sure which him I wanted it to be.

B
ut it wasn't Peter, or even Jonathan. It was Edie Michaels.

Her words tumbled out in a breathless rush. Sara had gone into cardiac arrest. She was stable now, but the doctors at UHS had called in the police.

“The police?” I asked, confused.

“I know—I didn't get it either. But it's the same detectives who are investigating the attack at the boathouse. They must think that the seizure or episode or whatever you call it didn't happen naturally.”

I'd had a couple glasses of wine and was having trouble computing her words. “You mean—they think someone
caused
this?”

“Uh-huh. Don't ask me how. But it's sort of terrifying. If the nurse hadn't come in when she did…” Edie's voice trailed off.

“Are you at UHS now?”

“Yes. Standard visiting hours have pretty much gone out the window. And the police asked me to hang around so they could talk to me—they said that they're going to want to talk to everyone who visited Sara, and of course I was here this afternoon and then again earlier this evening. I'd brought Sara dinner, but she didn't have much of an appetite.”

“I'll be there in fifteen minutes.” I'd been there that day, so surely I was one of the people the police would want to talk to. It was good to have an excuse to find out in person what was going on.

“I'll be in Sara's room, if they let me. I don't want to leave her alone.”

As soon as I ended the call the phone rang again. This time it was Jonathan Beasley. Edie had called him, too, and he was on his way to UHS. I told him I'd see him there.

 

I turned to my friends, who had been unabashedly eavesdropping on my conversation. “Somebody tried to kill Sara Grenthaler,” I said.

“I thought that happened yesterday,” said Luisa.

“No. I mean yes. But it happened again.” I realized that on some level I'd been hoping that yesterday had been a random attack, regardless of police suspicions about serial killers and my own theories about stalkers and roommates. But it was becoming all too clear that whoever had attacked Sara the previous morning had intended to do far more than give her a headache. He'd meant to take her out, and tonight he'd come back to finish the job. Or she. And there was nothing random about it.

I told them what Edie had told me. “I'm going to go to UHS and see what I can learn.”

“Did you decide to do that before or after you found out that Jonathan was going to be there?”

I didn't justify Hilary's question with a response.

Jane stood up. “I'll drive you. I'm probably the only person here who's safe to be behind the wheel.” We'd all graciously pitched in during the evening to drink Jane's share of wine, a team effort designed to ensure that Baby Hallard remained unpickled.

Hilary jumped up. “I'll come, too.”

“Why?” I asked.

“You could probably use some moral support. Besides, nobody I've called at the police station will talk to me. This could be the best chance I'll have to meet your detective. Maybe I can talk to him about my book. And you said he was just my type.”

I knew from experience that it was useless to argue with her. And I had wanted her to meet O'Connell. Maybe this wasn't the ideal situation for a setup, but it would do.

“I'll get Matthew,” said Emma, already heading for the door to the basement and Sean's workroom. “He can ask the doctor what happened and then translate for us. Plus, I want to see this Beasley guy. I never took English 10.”

Luisa looked up from where she was now sitting alone. “So, my choice is either to go to UHS with all of you or to stay here, in which case you'll probably expect that I'll use that time to finish the dishes?”

Jane nodded.

Luisa cast one glance at her perfectly manicured nails and another at the dishes, pots and pans that still littered the kitchen counter. With a shrug she went upstairs to get her coat.

 

We piled into Jane's car, which was new since I'd last visited her. Even under the circumstances, we had to mock her. “This was the real reason I knew you were pregnant,” said Hilary. “I mean, why else would anyone have a Volvo station wagon?”

“It could be worse—they could have gotten a minivan,” Emma said. She was perched on Matthew's lap in the front passenger seat.

“We looked at minivans,” said Sean, from where he was wedged in the rearmost seat.

“I thought we agreed not to tell anyone that,” said Jane in an even tone. The snow was coming down hard, and the windshield wipers beat a steady rhythm as she steered carefully along the slick roads.

“That we looked at minivans? They're very practical.”

Hilary gave a moan of what seemed to be genuine pain. “Don't you know that it's a slippery slope? First the Volvo station wagon. Then in a couple of years it
will
be a minivan with a built-in DVD playing a nonstop loop of
Finding Nemo.
Next thing you know, you wake up one morning and you're a middle-aged Republican with sensible hair.”

“I think you may have skipped some stuff between
Finding Nemo
and middle age,” Matthew pointed out.

“And Jane already has sensible hair,” added Luisa.

 

Miraculously, there was an empty parking space on Mount Auburn Street directly in front of UHS. In the ground-floor lobby, we decided that only a couple of us would go up, since the seven of us at once would likely cause somebody administrative to protest, even if visiting hour regulations had gone by the wayside. Over Hilary's protests, I chose Matthew to accompany me. Besides scaring people to death, I had no idea how somebody could cause somebody else to go into cardiac arrest, but Matthew was the most likely candidate to help me find out. And if we did have any trouble getting in, he was probably the best qualified to run interference at the nurses' station. When Matthew went into his professional doctor mode the Shaggy resemblance completely disappeared.

We emerged from the elevator and stepped into the fifth-floor lobby less than thirty seconds later. Because she'd pulled similar stunts on more occasions than I could count in the past, I shouldn't have been surprised to find Hilary chatting up the nurse at the front desk. How she'd managed to beat us up there was a complete mystery to me, but I had a feeling it would stay that way.

I waved to the nurse as if I knew exactly what I was doing and where I was going and hurried off with Matthew. We'd only walked a few yards when we ran into Detective O'Connell rounding the corner of the hallway. He'd lost the suit jacket since I'd seen him that afternoon, as had Officer Stanley, who was trailing in his wake. O'Connell paused when he saw us, looking up with a tired expression.

“Detective O'Connell. Hi. Rachel Benjamin. Remember me? We met this afternoon?”

“What are you doing here, Ms. Benjamin?” His voice, as before, was polite but wary. He must be having a very long day. Officer Stanley stood silently by, which, judging by his silence when I'd met him before, must have been his role.

“Sara's friend, Edie, called me. She seemed pretty worried, and she mentioned that you would probably want to talk to the people who visited Sara today. And I wanted to check in on Sara and see if I could help out in any way. I've brought a friend of mine, Dr. Matthew Weir.”

O'Connell turned to take in Matthew. “Why does that name ring a bell?”

“A couple of your colleagues came to visit me yesterday. I run a free clinic in Roxbury, and one of the murdered prostitutes was a patient of mine. Rachel's an old friend, and we were having dinner tonight when she got Edie's call. I was hoping to have a word with the doctor who's treating Ms. Grenthaler.”

He nodded. Then he looked over Matthew's shoulder. “And you are?”

I followed his gaze. Hilary, despite the three-inch spike heels of her boots, had silently crept up behind Matthew. She gave O'Connell a radiant smile, the one that usually reduced men to slavering beasts. “Hilary Banks.”

“And what are you doing here?” O'Connell was not one for slavering, apparently, but his tone was courteous enough.

“I was at the dinner, too. But I've been hoping to meet you. I'm writing a book on the prostitute killer, and I've heard that you're just the man I should talk to.” Hilary said “man” the way some people said “chocolate” or “caviar.” I guessed that she'd found my assessment of O'Connell accurate.

“You've left messages for me, haven't you? At the station?”

Hilary nodded.

“I thought the name was familiar.” A vein pulsed in O'Connell's temple that hadn't been pulsing before, and I wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad sign for Hilary. He turned back to me. “Just for the record, Ms. Benjamin, can you tell me about your whereabouts this evening, before you were at dinner with your friends?”

I quickly sketched out where I'd been since I'd met with him on the business school campus. “Then Edie Michaels called, and I came right down here. Can you tell me anything about what happened?”

“Was it suspicious?” asked Hilary. “Do you think it was foul play?”

O'Connell sighed. “The doctors are concerned that something abnormal occurred and we're looking into it.”

“And you think it may be related to the prostitute killings? That's why you're working both cases?” O'Connell raised an eyebrow but didn't answer Hilary's questions.

“Was she given a stimulant or amphetamine of some sort?” asked Matthew. “There aren't many other reasons why an otherwise healthy twenty-five-year-old woman would suddenly go into cardiac arrest. It sounds like her head injury wasn't serious and that she was in stable condition.”

O'Connell sighed again, but there was something about Matthew. People instinctively trusted him, and they told him things they might not tell others. “We think somebody might have put something in Ms. Grenthaler's IV bag. It's being checked out, and they're also doing blood tests to see if there's anything unusual in her bloodstream.”

“You mean, somebody just walked right in and tampered with her IV?” I asked.

“How did the three of you get in?” replied O'Connell.

“Good point.” UHS wasn't exactly Fort Knox. “But surely there must be security cameras at the entrances to the building?”

“We're looking into it,” he said. “But in weather like this, when everyone's bundled up, they tend not to be too useful. At least, unless the perp thinks to look straight up and smile for the camera. And there are a bunch of kids in here with the usual midwinter flu, so the place has been especially busy.”

I'd thought Barbara Barnett had been overreacting when she'd mentioned arranging for private security, but her suggestion now appeared a lot more reasonable. I made a mental note to call her—she'd said she'd take care of it, but the task must have fallen to the bottom of her to-do list. And then I had another thought. “A guy named Grant Crocker was here this afternoon. Did you know that?”

“Yes, we are aware of that. Meanwhile, so were several other people, including yourself, Ms. Benjamin. Listen,” continued O'Connell. “Ms. Grenthaler's fine now, and she's resting comfortably. I appreciate your coming by—it saved me a phone call. But the best thing for you to do right now is to go on home. Ms. Michaels is with her, I've posted an officer at her door and I'll have one there until we resolve all this, and I'm about to give the people at the nurses' station and the folks downstairs a pretty stern lecture about keeping a better eye on who's coming and going.” He was slowly but firmly ushering us back through the lobby and toward the elevators.

“Can I have your card? In case I think of anything? That's what they always do on
Law & Order,
” said Hilary.

“What would you think of?” asked O'Connell, distractedly punching the call button for the elevator.

“Leads. Clues. Stuff like that. And I'd like to interview you for my book. You're going to be one of the main characters, after all.”

“I'm going to be one of the main characters?” His voice was flat with exhaustion, but I thought I detected an undercurrent of amusement mixed in with his usual politely veiled impatience.

“Yes. I'm a journalist, so I've written a lot, but this is my first book. And I'm really looking forward to working with you.” Hilary's radiant smile flashed again, but O'Connell's poker face betrayed no discernable impact.

“To working
with
me?” O'Connell repeated her words. This time the amusement was tangible.

“Sure.”

An elevator announced its arrival with a beep, and the doors parted. A sea of people spilled out, and I recognized them all. Edward and Helene Porter rushed immediately to the nurses' station, with Barbara Barnett following on their heels. Behind them were Grant Crocker and Jonathan Beasley.

Jonathan gave me a wave and bent down to kiss me on the cheek. Over his shoulder, I saw Hilary and Matthew exchange a look. I was definitely going to be hearing about this later. “I need to talk to Detective O'Connell,” said Jonathan. “Are you going to be around for a while?”

“Um. Just a bit.” I'd been about to leave, but now I wanted to find out why Grant Crocker had shown up. He still had my vote as most likely to be a Creepy Stalker, and Violent, too.

“Well, I'll call you later, then, if I miss you on the way out.” He caught O'Connell's eye, and the two of them disappeared around the corner, with Officer Stanley mutely bringing up the rear.

I signaled to Hilary and Matthew that I needed a minute and intercepted Grant Crocker. He was heading toward Sara's room, but he stopped when I put a hand on his elbow. His black eye looked even worse in the harsh fluorescent light. “What are you doing here?” I asked, managing to keep the hostility I was feeling out of my voice.