"Or eight weeks. It all depends on you and that little bone," he said, putting both hands around her calf and squeezing the still-soft cast, molding it to her leg. "Now, something else. You're going to itch under here, partly because that happens, partly because you know you can't scratch the itch. Do not stick anything down the cast. No chopsticks, no rulers, no knitting needles, no nothing. Believe me, I've seen them all. I've found pennies when I've cut off a cast. Gummi-bears. Toothpicks, crochet hooks. I could write a book about things people stick down their casts."
"Couldn't everyone? Write a book, I mean," Maggie said, pretty sure the arch of her foot had begun to itch. "So what do I do if I get an itch?"
"Think good thoughts, offer the itch up to the poor souls in purgatory? Seriously, just don't think about the itch, and it usually goes away. If it gets really bad, turn the hair dryer on the spot. Ah, and who's this?"
Maggie looked toward the door to see her friend and editor, Bernice Toland-James, sweeping into the room on a cloud of scent and Armani. "Bernie, what are you doing here?"
"Are you kidding?" Bernie gave a quick shake of her head, serving only to fluff out the cloud of bright red hair that was her trademark. "My bestselling author takes a header, where else would I be? Will she live, Doctor?"
"Probably another sixty or seventy years, if she doesn't smoke and she eats all her green veggies." He looked up at Maggie, still holding onto her leg, still pressing on the cast, which was beginning to feel warm and uncomfortably tight. "An author, huh? What do you write?"
"A mystery series," Maggie said, not eager to tell him her pen name, just to have him say he'd never heard of her. She was depressed enough, without that.
"She's Cleo Dooley," Bernie supplied unhelpfully. "You're working on a very famous person, Doctor."
"Lucky me," he said, grinning. "I'd ask for your autograph, but I'll need your real name on the check when I send you my bill. There, all done. My nurse will be in with the walker. She'll give you the prescription for pain that I won't forget to write, a few lessons on how to navigate, bathe, and you're good to go. Ladies, a pleasure," he said, and then he was gone.
"Never do that, Bernie," Maggie said, glaring down at the cast that felt as if it weighed fifty pounds. "Nobody ever knows me. I don't know who's buying my books, I swear I don't, because I never meet any of them out here in the real world. Oh, and how did you get here? Did Alex call you?"
"I'm to take you home," Bernie said, opening and closing drawers and doors in the large metal cabinet on the far wall of the cubicle. "You want a bedpan? There's a nifty one in here. How about some peroxide?"
"Would you stop!" Maggie said, laughing. "That's probably a five-hundred-dollar bedpan. I'm so upset. I can't put weight on this thing, Bernie. I'm going home for Christmas. How the hell am I going to be any use to—oh. Wait a minute, I'm having a flash here. Yes, a definite flash, followed by a warm, fuzzy feeling. I'm not going to be any use to anybody, am I?"
"And? You're smiling, Maggie, and it's an evil smile. Since it 'tis the Season, I'd have to say you're looking a little like the Grinch as he leered down at Whoville. What are you thinking?"
"I can't help trim the tree at my parents' house. I can't set the table. I can't wash the dishes. Nobody can tell me I'm doing everything wrong, because I won't be doing anything." She was chanting now, and fighting the urge to rub her palms together like the Wicked Witch of the West. "I can't run errands, I can't shop for groceries, I can't wrap presents—well, Mom never lets me wrap presents because I can't make hospital corners on the boxes. I can't do anything but sit on the couch, watch TV with my dad, and eat what everyone else cooks. I'm going to be totally useless, and Maureen and Erin will be doing all the work and taking all the flak for not doing any of it the way my mother wants it done. There is a God!"
"There's a bright side to everything, I suppose," Bernie said. "Not to your mother, granted, but good for you, making lemonade out of lemons. Me? I'm going to Vail tomorrow morning, where I'm going to do absolutely nothing, too, except without the cast. That would be a huge impediment to my favorite indoor sport."
Knowing what Bernie's favorite indoor sport was—and it didn't waiver, whether she was in Manhattan or Vail or anywhere else—Maggie had a sudden, fairly depressing thought. "Where's Alex?"
"I'm not sure. He said something about a house. About buying a house, or having dinner over a house—something like that. Alex is buying a house?"
"No, I'm—well, we're buying a house, right here in Manhattan."
"We? As in you and Alex?" Bernie put a hand to her ear. "Hark! Are those wedding bells I hear? Or are you going to live in sin? I highly recommend the latter, unless you two fall out and he dies, leaving you with a million-dollar life, taxes-paid-up-front, insurance policy. May both my deceased husbands continue to rest in peace between shifts in the Devil's coal mines."
"No, Bernie, we're not getting married. We're not even living together. The house is huge, and we'll share it, all of us, Sterling included. The condo is just too small for me, that's all."
"Sweetie, that condo is too small for your cats. And you can use the deduction."
"That's what my accountant said. Where's that nurse? I want to go home, find out how Alex did with Kiki the Wonderbra."
Bernie raised her carefully plucked eyebrows. "A female Realtor? Ah, no wonder you sicced Alex on her. Good thinking, Mags. Although you could probably threaten to sue, breaking your ankle and everything, and get her down on price that way."
"It's my foot, and why didn't I think of that?" Maggie groused as the nurse drew back the curtain and came in, carrying an ugly metal walker. "Omigod, I can't use that. That's for old people."
Bernie patted her shoulder. "Don't worry, sweetie. I'll take it to our art department and have someone paint it, or wrap ribbon around it, or something. Maybe something red and green? You know—for Christmas?"
"Bah, humbug," Maggie muttered as the nurse opened the sides of the walker and began demonstrating how Maggie was to hop, hop, hop for the next ten days ...
Meanwhile, back at the ranch ... er, sorry.
Meanwhile, back at the brain trust
plotting the perfect crime ...
Severed brake lines!
The city's flat as a ruler. Severed brake lines were for the high, twisty hills of San Francisco. Here? The car would roll half a block, maybe, and then stop.
Oou! Oou! Poison!
Drain cleaner? Mercury? Poison mushrooms? Nah, I read about poison mushrooms somewhere. Somebody's already done that.
A push off a bridge? A roof?
Okay, okay. That seems workable.
Except he's bigger than me.
Surprise. That's what's needed. The element of surprise.
Like, hey—surprise, you're dead!
Chapter Four
"Would you peel a grape for me, Alex?"
"Sadly, no."
"My hero. Jeez."
Saint Just looked up from the mortgage application he was currently perusing to smile at Maggie, who was ensconced on one of the overstuffed couches in her living room, clad in sky blue flannel pajamas with small white sheep on them, and looking delightfully slothful.