Liz had grown up in North Harbor and for years ran the Emmerson Foundation, her family’s charitable trust. She knew everyone in town and was quick to use her influence if it could help someone she cared about. I could see the lines pulling at the corners of her mouth and eyes under her expertly applied makeup, and I knew that despite her feisty attitude she was worried about her friend.
“You’re certain Rose is all right?” I asked.
Liz nodded. “She’s just down there.” She gestured over her shoulder. “The doctor is in with her right now. They kicked Alfred and me out.”
I took a step sideways and looked down the hallway. Alfred Peterson was standing in front of a closed door about three-quarters of the way down the corridor. He was a small man with just a few tufts of gray hair and warm brown eyes. While he may have looked like the stereotypical grandpa who showed up in life insurance ads, he was in reality a computer whiz whose skills rivaled those of hackers a fraction of his age. Mr. P. smiled when he caught sight of me, and I raised a hand in greeting. I saw his shoulders relax a little. I might not have been Rose’s daughter, but I felt responsible for her—for all of them.
“So she delivered those candlesticks, after all,” I said to Liz. “I told her to get the taxi service to take care of it.”
Liz nodded. “She tried to deliver them. You’d think at her age she wouldn’t get caught up in some romantic nonsense.” She patted the canvas bag hanging from her arm. “I’ve got the damn things right here, along with Rose’s purse, and for the record I told you they were cursed.”
I swiped a hand over my neck. “What happened to Rose didn’t happen because of a pair of cursed candlesticks. And by the way, they aren’t cursed. There’s no such thing.”
Liz jabbed her index finger at me. Her nails were painted a deeper pink than her sweater. “Don’t tell me you never heard of karma. Those candleholders have bad karma attached to them. Purves Calhoun was a mean, coldhearted son of a bitch who mistreated his wife and kids just like his father before him, until his mother-in-law put a curse on him and he fell off the roof of the barn.” She gave me a triumphant look.
“Purves Calhoun fell off the roof of his barn because he had a still in that barn and he spent too much time sampling his own product,” I retorted.
“Whatever works,” she said. “Purves’s grandfather bought those things for his wife when she gave him a son, Purves Senior—just as much of a quarrelsome old coot as his son, by the way—after six girls, as if that was her fault,” Liz scoffed. “Then Purves Senior continued that reprehensible tradition and gave them to his wife when Purves Junior was born after four beautiful daughters.”
“I thought the candlesticks belonged to Purves’s grandmother,” I said, thinking it was kind of an odd conversation to be having while we were standing in the emergency room.
Liz shrugged. “Like father, like son. Every single thing, every pot and plate, every stick of furniture, belonged to the old man as far as he was concerned.” She fished in Rose’s bag and pulled out a box wrapped in blue paper and tied with a silver bow. “Here,” she said, handing it to me. “They have bad juju.”
“Bad juju?” I said.
Liz narrowed her blue eyes at me. “Don’t make fun. There are things out there that we don’t understand.”
She was going on about curses and bad juju because she was worried, I realized. “Rose is going to be all right,” I said, reaching over and laying my hand on her arm for a moment.
Liz nodded. “I’ve been telling her for years that she’s hardheaded.”
Mr. P. joined us then. “Sarah, I’m glad you’re here,” he said. The smile he gave me was a small one, and the lines on his face, like those on Liz’s, seemed to be etched just a little deeper. “Rosie told me not to call you.” He glanced at Liz. “So I called Elizabeth instead.”
“Rose went to Windspeare Point,” I said.
“I didn’t know, my dear,” Mr. P. said. “I assure you that if I had known, I would have stopped her.” He adjusted his glasses and smoothed down the few wisps of hair he had left; then he looked back over his shoulder. The closed door he’d been standing next to was open now. “I think the doctor is finished.”
“Let’s go,” Liz said.
“Isn’t there a two-visitor limit?” I asked.
“Doesn’t apply to us,” she said over her shoulder without turning around.
Mr. P. patted my arm. “It’s not the first rule that doesn’t seem to apply to us,” he said to me as we followed Liz toward Rose’s room.
Rose was sitting on a hospital bed wearing a wrinkled blue-and-gray robe over an equally wrinkled green gown, her white hair standing on end all over her head. Both items of clothing dwarfed her small frame. A nurse was putting a bandage on her left wrist.
I paused in the doorway, my chest tight, the lump in my throat too big to swallow away, it seemed. Rose looked small and fragile, and it suddenly hit me like a sucker punch to the gut that this could have ended very badly.
Rose looked up and caught sight of me. She shifted her gaze to Alfred. “You promised you wouldn’t worry Sarah,” she chided.
“He didn’t call her. I did,” Liz said.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Rose retorted. “You brought Sarah all the way over here for nothing.”
I could see that this was about to deteriorate into one of their back-and-forth sessions. I crossed the space between Rose and me and wrapped my arms around her shoulders, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “I didn’t come over here for nothing,” I said. “I came here for you.”
Rose reached up with her free hand and gave my arm a squeeze. “It’s all right, sweet girl. I’m just fine.”
I could see a swelling about the size of a Grade A large egg on the other side of her head. “That doesn’t look fine,” I said. “It looks nasty.”
Rose looked at the nurse, who was just taping the gauze bandage in place on her arm. “Will you please tell Sarah I’m all right?”
The nurse gave me a warm smile. “We did a CAT scan. Your mother is fine. We’re just waiting for the results from some blood work, and if that’s okay she can go home.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She picked up the tray with her supplies. “I’ll be back,” she said to Rose. “Push the buzzer if you need anything.”
“Thank you, my dear,” Rose said.
As soon as the nurse was gone, I sat down next to Rose on the edge of the bed. “You took those candlesticks to Jeff Cameron’s house,” I said, holding up the gift-wrapped package and trying to keep the frustration I was feeling out of my voice. “Why didn’t you just call Northridge and have them delivered? You know Tim’s people are reliable.”
Rose made a dismissive gesture with one hand, wincing a little at the motion. “That doesn’t matter right now,” she said. “What I need from you is to call Michelle—and Nicolas as well.”
Michelle was Michelle Andrews, my friend and a North Harbor police detective. Nicolas—Nick Elliot—was an investigator for the medical examiner’s office. I’d known him all my life. His mother, Charlotte, also worked for me and, like Liz, was one of Rose’s closest friends.
“Didn’t whoever found you call the police?” I asked.
“Of course they did,” Rose said. “I gave the patrol officer my statement, for all the good it did. He all but patted me on the head and told me to go home and bake cookies.” She shifted her gaze to Liz for a moment. “Mo Theriault’s grandson,” she added, as though that explained everything. Liz nodded knowingly, so maybe for her it did.
Rose turned her attention back to me. “I can’t get anyone here to take me seriously.”
I glanced at Mr. P., who was spreading a blue cotton blanket over Rose’s feet. He shook his head at my unspoken question. He didn’t know what she was talking about, either.