Would he remember her? It had seemed to her that the best way to handle that sheriff sergeant was to give him the idea she and Daniel had something sexual going, because if that wasn’t the reason for her being here, what was the reason? Also, she could see that he was one of those men made uneasy by talk about sex from a woman, and it would probably be a good idea to keep him off balance a bit.
But in fact, if Daniel was as harmed as he looked, maybe he really wouldn’t remember her, maybe her imprint wasn’t that deep with him.
There was a white-coated intern in the room, seated in a corner on a chrome and vinyl chair, writing on a form on a clipboard. He nodded at Leslie and said, “You can talk with him, but not for long. You’ll have to get close, though, he can’t speak above a whisper.”
“Thank you.”
A second chair stood over beside the bed. Reluctant, wishing now she hadn’t come, that she’d merely telephoned to find out what his situation was — though then she wouldn’t have found out what she needed to know about the three men — she went over to that chair and sat down and said, “Daniel.”
His eyes had followed her as she crossed the room, and now he whispered, “What day is it?” The whisper was hoarse, rusty, and barely carried across the space between them.
She leaned closer. “Monday,” she said.
“Four days,” he whispered.
“Four days? What do you mean?”
“Auction.”
“What? You aren’t still thinking about that.”
He ignored her, following his own lines of thought, saying, “How do you know I’m here?”
“It was in the Herald. You were shot and the people who shot you were killed by—”
“Herald? Newspaper?”
“Yes. On Saturday. I couldn’t get here till now.”
“Leslie,” he whispered, “you’ve got to get me out of here.”
Now she was whispering, too, almost as inaudible as him, because of the intern, who was paying them no attention. She leaned closer yet to whisper, “You can’t leave! You can’t even move!”
“I can do better than they think. If I’m in the paper, somebody else could come to finish me.”
This was the subject she really wanted to talk about, and the main reason for her trip here. The three robbers. She whispered, “It’s the people you want to steal from, isn’t it? Do they know about me?”
“Different. Not them.”
That was a surprise. She’d taken it for granted it was the three men planning the robbery who’d discovered Daniel and had him shot, and quite naturally she’d wondered if they also knew about her. She whispered, “There’s somebody else? Who?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. Just so I get out of here. Leslie.”
“What?”
“The longer I’m here, the more the cops are gonna wonder about me. My background, my name. And I can’t have them take my prints.”
“Oh.”
She sat back, considering him. He was really in a terrible situation, wasn’t he? Battered, weak, being pursued by killers he didn’t seem even to know, trapped in this hospital with police all around, and now it turns out his fingerprints would lead the police to something dangerous in his background. And the only person in the whole entire world who could help him was her.
This time, she wasn’t surprised by him, she was surprised by herself. She felt suddenly very strong. Her emotion toward Daniel Parmitt wasn’t love or sex, but it was tender. It was almost, oddly, maternal. Now she was the strong one, she was the one who could help. And she wanted to help; she wanted him to know that when he asked the question, she would be there with the answer.
She leaned even closer to him, one forearm on the bed as she gazed into his eyes, seeing they weren’t really as dull as he pretended. She whispered, “How bad off are you, really? Can you walk?”
“I don’t know. I can try.”
“In the paper, it said you weren’t expected to live. Won’t that make these other people wait?”
“Awhile.”
“All right,” she said. “I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I’ll do it. I’ll see what I can arrange, and I’ll come back tomorrow.”
He watched her leave. The intern sat in the corner, writing.
7
Mrs. Helena Stockworth Fritz was an extremely busy woman, never more so than since the death of dear Miriam Hope Clendon. There were the foundation boards to sit on, the press interviews, the arrangements for the charity balls, the lunches, the shopping, the phone calls with friends far and near, the yoga, the aura therapist, the constant planning for this or that event; and now the auction of dear Miriam’s jewelry, right here at Seascape.
And not merely on the grounds, but inside the house as well. Most times, charity occasions at Seascape were held out on the side lawn and the terrace above the seawall overlooking the Atlantic, but this time it was necessary to have the jewelry on display, and to have the auctioneer where all the attendees could see and hear him, and so it was necessary to open the ballroom at Seascape with its broad line of tall French doors leading out to the terrace and the famous view. So in the middle of all this frenzy of activity, the last thing Mrs. Fritz needed was the delivery, three days early, of the musicians’ amplifiers.
Jeddings came with the news, to the parlor where Mrs. Fritz was deep in concentration on her flower arranging. Jeddings looked worried, as she always did, and clutched her inevitable clipboard to her narrow chest as she said, “Mrs. Fritz, deliverymen at the gate.”
“Delivery? Delivering what?”
“They say the amplifiers for the musicians.”
“Musicians? We aren’t having musicians tonight.”
“No, Mrs. Fritz, for the auction.”
The auction. Yes, there would be music that night, of course, dancing and the drinking of champagne before the auction began, to loosen up the attendees. But that wasn’t till Friday, the day after the ball at the Breakers when the jewelry would first be publicly displayed, and today was only Tuesday. “What on earth are they delivering amplifiers now for?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Fritz, they say this is the only time they can do it.”
“Let me see these people.”
Mrs. Fritz accompanied Jeddings to the vestibule, which was what they called the very well-equipped office at the front of the house, near the main door. Jeddings and two clerks operated from here, helping to keep all of Mrs. Fritz’s many charities and social events and other activities on track, and the video intercom to the front entrance was here.
Mrs. Fritz stopped in front of the monitor to frown at the TV image there. Once again, as always, that stray thought came and went: Why can’t these things be in color like everything else? But that, of course, wasn’t the point. The point was that, stopped just outside the gate, half blocking traffic, was a small nondescript dark van, containing two men. The driver was hard to see, but the passenger, a burly man with a thick shock of wavy black hair, was half-leaned out his open window, where he’d been speaking on the intercom and was now awaiting a reply.
“Tell him,” Mrs. Fritz said, “this is a very inconvenient time.”
“Yes, Mrs. Fritz.”
Jeddings sat at the desk, picked up the phone, and said, “Mrs. Fritz says this is a very inconvenient time.” Then she depressed the loudspeaker button so Mrs. Fritz could hear the reply.
Which was polite and amiable, but not helpful. Mrs. Fritz watched the burly man smile as he said, “I’m sorry about that. I don’t like no dissatisfied customers, but they give us this stuff and said deliver it today, and we got no place to keep it. We got no insurance for this stuff. These amplifiers, I dunno how much they cost, I don’t wanna be responsible for these things.”