A Quiet Death (24 page)

‘Sorry, honey. We don't have that kind of information.'

In spite of how I felt about Hoffner, over the past several months he had been the closest thing Nick had to a friend and confidant. Grinding my teeth with distaste, I dialed 1-800-GOTALAW, but it rang once and went over to voicemail, making me wonder if the man had any partners at all. Where the heck was Smith? Where was Gallagher? Where was the receptionist, for that matter? The same smarmy syrupy voice that made my skin crawl came on the line. ‘Got a phone? Got a Lawyer! This is James Hoffner and I'm not available to take your call right now. But your call is important to me, so stay on the line and leave your message at the beep. And remember: Got a phone? Got a Lawyer!'

‘This is Hannah Ives,' I told his machine. ‘You've got my number. Call me.'

Following the directions of the volunteer behind the desk, I found a vending machine and bought a Coke, popped the cap and carried it out to my car where I could think. What would I do at this point if I were the delectable Detective Hughes? I'd start where Nick last lived, I told myself; at the Night and Day Suites near Laurel.

Laurel is only about twenty-five miles from northwest Baltimore, but I got snarled in rush-hour traffic on the Baltimore–Washington Parkway, arriving at the Night and Day Suites behind a group of seven businessmen who'd just been deposited in the lobby by a Blue Shuttle van from BWI. I stood in line at eighth position as they began checking in one by one with a registration desk staffer.

Three people had received their key cards and headed for the elevators before it occurred to me to find a house phone. I located one near the rack of tourist brochures – The Baltimore Aquarium! The National Zoo! Luray Caverns! – dialed ‘0' and asked the harried receptionist to put me through to Nicholas Aupry.

‘Can you hold, please?'

After a long silence in which I watched the receptionist hand over a key card to the next person in line, she came back on the line. ‘Sorry, but we have no guests by that name.'

So I got back in a line which had grown by another two hotel guests in my absence. One step forward, Hannah, and two steps back.

When I finally made it to the desk, the receptionist, a mouse of a girl, smiled in a way that transformed her face, as if the sun had come out from behind a cloud. She wore a brass name tag that said ‘Julie. Racine, Wisc.'

‘Checking in?'

I rested both hands on the counter, spread my fingers. ‘No, thanks, Julie. I'm trying to get some information. My nephew was staying here a couple of months ago, Nicholas Aupry, but he was badly injured in that terrible Metro crash.'

Julie's eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Didn't you just call and ask about him?'

Ooops! I shifted gears. ‘Yes, I did. It was such a long line and I thought . . . well, I have your full attention now!'

‘I do remember your nephew,' Julie said with a sad little smile that made it all the way up to her eyes. ‘I'd just started working here then. How's he doing?'

‘It was touch and go for a while, but he's finally out of the woods. Nick's still in the hospital, but we hope he'll be released to rehab before long. That's why I'm here, actually. I can't believe Nick didn't think about the luggage he left behind here until just yesterday! He's asked me to come pick it up for him. Do you have it in storage somewhere?'

‘That's really not my department,' Julie from Racine told me. ‘Hold on a minute.' She picked up the phone, spoke a few words to someone who appeared almost immediately from a cubbyhole of a room behind the reception desk. Rick – from San Diego – shook my hand, told me how sorry he was to hear about my nephew's accident and then got right down to the nitty gritty. ‘Sorry, you made the trip for nothing, but we already sent your nephew's luggage on.'

I made a production of rolling my eyes. ‘Oh, for heaven's sake! I
told
Nick I'm coming to take care of it! What was he thinking? Did it go to my apartment on Cathedral Street in Baltimore?

Rick's brow wrinkled in concentration. ‘No, I distinctly remember sending it to a Night and Day Suites up in Baltimore.'

‘The one near Kernan Hospital?'

He pointed a finger like a gun. ‘That's the one.'

I pressed my hands together in silent applause. ‘That's great. So it'll already be there when he checks in. Thanks so much.' I turned to leave, then spun around. ‘But just wait until I get my hands on that boy! I made a trip all the way down here from Baltimore for nothing! I'll kill him.' Clapped my hand over my mouth. ‘Whoops! My bad.'

I left Laurel, driving north on Route 29, then made my way east along I70 until it intersected with I695, the Baltimore beltway.

I found the Night and Day Suites, distinctive yellow awning and all, on Whitehead Court, where it had an unobstructed view of the elevated cloverleaf formed by the intersection of several interstate highways, a complicated, multilevel structure that resembled the movie set for Star Wars
Attack of the Clones
. Someone had cared enough to plant bright red flowers in planters on either side of the entrance to the motel, in an attempt to brighten up the view in an otherwise depressing neighborhood.

I took the steps one at a time – counting six – and wondered where the handicapped entrance was. In his present condition, Nick could certainly never handle the stairs.

For that reason, I had assumed Nick would be living in one of the handicapped rooms I'd seen advertised when I checked out the Night and Day Suites on the Internet. From the parking lot in Laurel, I'd tried to call ahead to let Nick know I was coming, but when I dialed the number suggested by my iPhone, I was patched through to the hotel's 800 number. ‘No, I don't want reservations,' I insisted. ‘I want to talk to somebody actually
at
the Night and Day Suites in Baltimore.' Apparently this request was too difficult for the operator to handle, so after three disconnects I hung up.

Inside the hotel, manning the desk, was the same receptionist, I swear, who had helped me out in Laurel. Or her twin sister, maybe. Lonnie was from Geneva, New York, had a smile as big as Christmas, and, when I walked in, was charming a couple who were checking in with a dog. I wondered if Julie from Racine and Lonnie from Geneva had attended the same school of hotel management, earning ‘A's in Hospitality 101. I waved breezily as I passed by and marched straight to the house phone, where I dialed ‘0' and asked for Nicholas Aupry.

The phone rang. And rang, and rang, and rang. I was about to hang up when Nick answered, sounding out of breath and out of sorts.

‘What?'

‘Nick, this is Hannah Ives.'

‘God! Just a minute while I catch my breath.' Even over the sound of the television playing at one hundred decibels in his room, I could hear him panting. Finally he said, ‘I'm back.' Followed quickly by, ‘How did you find me?'

‘It sounds like you didn't want to be found, Nick.'

‘It's not that, really. It's just that I don't like people making a fuss over me.'

I thought that was a lot of malarkey, but . . . well, you catch more flies with honey, or so they say. ‘OK, I promise not to make a fuss. I just wanted a report on how you're doing. Your mother does, too.'

Nick snorted. ‘Mother! That figures.'

‘Lilith didn't know that you had been discharged from the hospital.'

‘I didn't tell her.'

The last thing I needed was to be sucked into another family's internecine squabbles. I'd blundered through enough family crises of my own, thank you very much. When Emily eloped with a college dropout named Dante, for example, the man who was now the successful owner of Spa Paradiso and the father of my three unbelievably beautiful and talented grandchildren.

‘I stopped by Kernan to visit you,' I said, shading the truth just a tad, ‘and they sounded concerned that you'd missed rehab today.'

‘Yeah, well, that was unavoidable, I'm afraid.'

His voice sounded distant, distracted. Whatever Nick was watching on television must have been far more interesting than I.

‘Look, I'm talking to you from a phone in the lobby. How about meeting me down here for a cup of coffee or something?'

‘Sorry, I can't.'

‘Can I bring something up to you, then?'

On Nick's end of the line, an ad for Little Blue Pills blared. While Nick considered my offer, I listened to a sultry-voiced female boldly hinting at what those little blue miracles could do for ‘a certain portion of a man's anatomy.'

‘What would you like?' I quickly added, trying to tempt him. ‘There's an Indian restaurant down here. Menu looks good. Oh, damn, they don't open until five thirty.'

‘I'd kill for a glass of wine,' Nick said at last.

‘Gotcha. Red or white?'

‘White. I'm in 121, just past the elevators.'

Even though the restaurant wasn't open, I put on my most wheedling smile and persuaded a waiter to stop rolling silverware up in linen napkins long enough to sell me two glasses of wine. Carrying the wine, a glass in each hand, I made my way carefully down the hall and knocked on the door of 121 with the toe of my shoe.

It took Nick a while to open up, and when he did, I saw why. A brace supported his left leg and he leaned heavily on a brass-handled cane. He wore jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. A pair of square, frameless eyeglasses I'd never seen before sat crookedly on his nose.

‘Gosh, were you napping? Did I wake you up?' I had to smile. Nick had a case of classic bedhead. I resisted the urge to lick my palm, reach out and smooth down the boy's unruly cowlick.

Assisted by his cane, Nick hobbled over to a chair near a little round table and sat down heavily. I waited by the door, still holding the wine, sipping mine. Once he was settled, I handed him a glass and joined him at the table.

Although the room was more spacious than a normal motel room, presumably to allow for the passage of a wheelchair, it still seemed cramped. It was also one of the most patriotic motel rooms I'd ever seen, right out of a 1776 fantasy: pseudo-colonial white oak furniture, a red, white and blue striped quilted bedspread and matching blue, star-spangled curtains. I felt like saluting.

On the wall, over the king-sized bed, was a print of the United States Capitol building in winter, with skaters gliding over the ice on a pond that didn't exist.

I could see now that the television was tuned to Lynx News. One of their big name neo-cons, even more conservative than John Chandler, if that was possible, was on a tear about illegal immigrants, yelling at some hapless woman on the other side of the split screen, ‘What don't you understand about the word “illegal?”'

‘Bet she's glad to be in LA and not actually sitting next to the jerk in Washington,' I commented.

Nick dredged up a smile. He picked up the remote and switched off the commentator in mid-harangue.

‘You're recovering amazingly well,' I said when my eardrums had recovered. ‘Quite frankly, I'm surprised. But the young heal fast, they say.'

‘They do good work at Kernan. And I haven't always been a cooperative patient.'

‘Who would be with metal rods screwed into their head?' I sipped my wine. ‘So, how come you missed your physical therapy appointment today? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to.'

‘Goddam Hoffner. I can't drive yet, as you probably noticed. Son of a bitch ran off and left me stranded.'

‘Why didn't you have the hotel call you a cab or something?'

Nick waved the idea away. ‘By then, I was already late, so I said screw it. I called the hospital and let them know, so it's no biggie.'

‘When's Hoffner coming back?' I asked.

Nick snorted. ‘Probably never. I think I fired him.'

Well, I thought, as I gazed into the pale gold depths of my wine glass, that was the best news I'd heard in a month of Sundays.

‘Was Hoffner the person driving you back and forth to therapy?' I asked. ‘If he was, I'd guess firing him would be a problem.'

‘Trust me. It's not a problem. I'll be making other arrangements in the morning.'

‘Anything I can do to help?'

‘No, thanks, Hannah. The rest of me may be a mess, but my dialing finger isn't broken. Yet.'

Nick studied me over the rim of his wine glass which was beaded with condensation. I watched his face carefully as I shared with him the next bit of news. ‘The DC police are looking for you.'

Nick sputtered, choked as he aspirated his wine. He pounded his chest with the flat of his hand, coughing, trying to clear his lungs. ‘What did you say?'

‘It has something to do with the investigation into the murder of Meredith Logan.'

Nick set his wine glass down on the table casually, too casually. ‘Who?'

‘Meredith Logan. The PA at Lynx News who went missing.'

Nick's eyes narrowed. ‘What could I possibly know about that?

I waited him out, slowly sipping.

‘I don't even know her,' he added, twirling his wine glass, making wet circles on the table.

‘She was John Chandler's production assistant.'

‘So?' He was indifferent, or wanted me to think so.

‘Honestly, Nick, if I know you're lying through your teeth, don't you think the DC police will know it, too?'

While Nick gawped at me, I pressed on. ‘You told me you were doing research at the Library of Congress on the day of the crash. But guess what? You were caught on the security cameras in the lobby of Lynx News. The detectives showed me your picture.'