Adele was talking. I struggled to focus on her voice.
“I’d just had the glaucoma test myself, so I knew they used anesthetic. And Bo had told me all about peroxide torture when he was researching sabotage. There are more nerve endings in the eye than anywhere else in the body. The more nerve endings, the more pain. Put peroxide on those nerve endings, and you’re going to do a lot of damage. Very quickly.”
I whispered, “How’d you do it?”
“I went into the eye doctor right after I saw Philip’s calendar. Pretended I was there to raise money for the pool, while I took the saline rinse bottle from beside the ultrasound machine. Right under their noses! Then I came home and emptied the saline rinse bottle and put in Julian’s peroxide. I called the headmaster and insisted that Philip be the one to bring more decals, that no one else could do it but Philip Miller, especially if they wanted me to give the last twenty thousand for the pool.” She cackled. “So right after his eye appointment, he’d have to drive out to the school, then drive back to town. I thought with any luck he would die on that road. I couldn’t afford for him to talk to anybody, least of all Brian Harrington or you. You see, he wanted to warn you about living here. That’s why he called so early that morning. He thought he was being so careful, saying to you, Not on the phone!”
I said, “So you were the one listening in on my calls. Then you told the general what was going on in my life.” She didn’t respond. I said, “You never gave up on Brian.”
She sniffed and moved her hands in a nervous motion. Then she looked at me, as if she were searching for something. She said, “Oh, yes I did. At that anniversary party, when he kept on and on with Sissy, I knew it was over.”
“How did you get him to take Spanish fly?”
She sighed, fluttered her hands again. “I told him to come back after the party. I wanted to invest in Flicker Ridge. I smoothed cantharidin on top of his fudge. He died for chocolate!” She laughed. A wave of nausea swept over me. “Your son saw us the last time we were together. That’s why I’m sorry to say that he’s going to drown, too.”
I screamed, “Where’s Arch?”
“Where you won’t be able to save him this time.”
I was going to throw up. I bolted for the hall bathroom. But I could hear Schulz in there. He was sick. I couldn’t listen to it. I held my stomach and lurched back to the living room.
“What have you done?” I yelled at her.
She said calmly, “The only thing I could be sure you would ever eat or drink was that damn espresso. So I put Spanish fly in your coffee can. I’m sorry, Goldy. You and the policeman should be dead in an hour.”
29.
I lunged toward her. “You bitch!” I screamed. “Where’s my son?”
Just before my hands reached Adele’s neck she grabbed her cane and whacked me across the stomach. I doubled over with pain. My stomach heaved. The cane lashed my back. The living room blurred as I crash-landed on the floor. Pain surged through my body. I vomited on the Oriental rug.
Adele stood over me and caned my arm. She screeched, “Get up!”
It was so hard. Everything hurt: my stomach, my back, my innards.
“Move!” she yelled. She flailed at my legs with the cane. “Get down to that bathroom!”
I moved. “Tom!” I cried as I limped, furious at my physical weakness. “Tom! Bo! Help me!”
“Shut up!” said Adele as she prodded my calves. “Bo can’t hear you. I put Valium in his scotch. And your policeman friend may be dead. One hopes.”
Desperately, I whirled to attack her. But she caught me across the shoulders with the cane. Pain shot through my body. I fell against the wall outside the bathroom. She poked the bathroom door open.
I peered in. Tom was on the floor. His big body was curled tightly in the fetal position. Prods from Adele elicited a few moans. He rolled over and lifted his face. It was pallid, an awful yellow. His eyes beseeched me.
“Get in there!” howled Adele as she cracked me across the ankles. The woman was strong. I lost my balance and put my hands out to avoid hitting my head on the tile floor.
Adele hovered overhead, a fuzzy-faced helicopter. “You just don’t understand,” she said as she closed the door. I heard her wedge something under the knob and then tap-step away.
I turned to Schulz. His eyes were glazed with pain.
He whispered, “I think I’m going to die.”
“You’re not,” I told him with as much firmness as I could muster. Fire consumed my insides. The poison had to be diluted with water immediately, I knew that. I cupped my hand under the faucet and brought handful after handful of water to Schulz’s mouth, then to mine. Ten, twenty, thirty handfuis of water. My body burned with pain. In some distant part of my brain I heard Adele slam a door. She was leaving the house. Leaving us to die. Who would be blamed? The general? Me? Pierre the critic would have a field day with this one.
I swallowed more water, squeezed my eyes shut, and summoned a mental picture of Arch. I had to find him. I had to. Find, find, find. I repeated this mantra while I got down on my hands and knees and peered under the bathroom door.
Bathroom doors can’t be locked from the outside. To keep us in, Adele had anchored the general’s portable door jam under the knob. I could just see the rubber end of the extended pole on the wooden hallway floor. It was no comfort to think her fingerprints might be on the top of the jam.
I closed my eyes and saw Arch. I tried to think about what the general had told me about the door jam. The wedged pole made it impossible for an intruder to push a door open. The trick, the general had said, was to put the jam under a door that opened toward you.
I rolled over. I was not going to try to push the bathroom door out. It was constructed to open inward, so it would not swing out to hit anyone passing in the hall.
“I just wouldn’t understand, huh?” I said weakly as I delicately turned the knob, pulled on the door, and heard the jam clatter on the hall floor. “I don’t think so.”
I hauled up on my elbows, whispered a prayer that Schulz, who was groaning weakly, would understand why I was abandoning him, and dragged myself down the hallway. Spasms of nausea tore through my body. I crawled toward the garage. Twice on my way I had to stop to be sick.
I had thought Adele was my friend. I had wanted it. I had imagined we were confidantes. And now I was paying the price of my own self-deception, with the poisonous drug mistakenly taken when you tried to make people love you.
I kept my head up as I crawled. I visualized ice, coolness, anything to get my mind off of what was really happening inside my abdomen. I visualized Arch.
The garage door was open. I dragged my body across the gritty floor. Each movement was a struggle, getting into the van, hauling myself up, opening the glove compartment. My hand closed around my trusty safety kit. I prayed thanks and swallowed some ipecac.
When I had made my torturous way back to the bathroom I asked Schulz to try to get up on his elbows. I cradled his head under my elbow. His face was awash in sweat.
Before he would take the ipecac, he murmured, “If I die, I want you to know how I feel about you.”
“I know how you feel about me. Swallow.”
He did. I was sick into the toilet and then I held him around the torso while he was sick. It didn’t take long, but it was horrible. If Schulz and I could go through this together, we could weather anything. I stood up shakily, then helped him to his feet.
“I’m going to look for Arch,” I said once I had rinsed my mouth out with tap water.
“The heck you say,” he said feebly. He grasped the side of the marble basin and tried to steady himself. “I’m calling the department. Get help to track down Adele Farquhar. Get a medic here for you, me, and the general.”