Death in Paradise (39 page)

He made a satisfied sound. "'Bye," he said.

"'Bye." I sat there with the buzzing phone in my hand, wishing he weren't gone. I dug around in my briefcase until I found my tickets and called the reservations number. Good news. I could get a flight out of here at 6:00 a.m. I called Andre back, gave him the times, and headed for the tub, hoping it wouldn't be too cold.

It wasn't. It was nice and warm. I got one whole foot in before panic seized me. Something I hadn't even considered. My body simply refused to be put into water. I stood there naked, shivering, with one foot in the warm, inviting water. I couldn't move. This time, I didn't even have to wait for sleep. The nightmare was with me while I was fully awake. I pulled my foot out, put on the robe, and huddled there, pondering, fearful, distressed. Baths had always been my salvation. My refuge. My comfort in a world that was too hard.

At the end of a long, hard day, lowering my body into a tub of lavender-scented water was often the only thing that kept me going. A shower just wasn't the same. But tonight, that's what it would have to be. The fear had chilled me. The day's trials had left my body aching, and my hair was still stiff with salt. Sadly, I let the water drain out, turned on the shower, and stepped in. I could barely tolerate that. When I let the water roll over my face to rinse my hair, the moments when I couldn't breathe terrified me. The suffocating feeling of water pouring down my face, over my nose and mouth, made me want to scream, jump out of the shower half-rinsed, and run out onto the balcony where I could be surrounded by air. I stayed in only long enough to rinse my hair and run a bar of soap over my body, and I was out, huddled back in my robe and shaking uncontrollably, even though I knew the room was warm.

I couldn't even stay in the bathroom long enough to comb my hair. I took my comb into the bedroom, where my meager luggage was, and snapped on the light so that I could get dressed. I took one step into the room, toward the chair where I'd left my clothes, and stopped, arrested, staring at the bed. It was the same bed. The same spread. Same color, same everything, as Martina's room.

Memory ran through me like an icy finger on my spine. I looked down at the rug, expecting to see one red shoe lying on the floor at my feet. When I looked back at the bed, I could see her as clearly as if she was still there.

Her head lay against the covers, hair spread out around it, wreathing that dusky purple face. The bulging eyes still stared blankly at the ceiling, the protruding tongue still poked out between her shiny red lips. What a commercial it would make—Color that won't fade, even when you're dead. The stocking around her neck seemed jaunty, like a scarf tossed casually over the shoulder. One hand still reached its scarlet talons toward me; the other—something I hadn't noticed before—was tucked behind her head, in imitation of a bathing beauty. Now, as I remembered, I saw that the legs almost looked like she was in the middle of a frog kick, as though she'd kicked off her shoe as she swam across the bed. Except no one did the frog kick on their back, not even frogs.

I closed my eyes but Martina wouldn't leave. She hovered there, plastered against the inside of my lids. My imagination supplied shadowy figures to dress and arrange her, joking as they worked. The scene showed so much anger. Profound hatred simmered around the cold reality of death.

No way I was sleeping in this room. No way. I wasn't staying here another minute. Cautiously I edged past the woman who wasn't there and grabbed my clothes. Clutching them against my chest, I hurried out to the living room and curled up on the couch, wrapping myself in a blanket. Eyes open or eyes shut, the image of Martina lingered there—the single strap tugged down, the artfully bared breast, the single shoe dangling from her foot, the vulnerability of those bent legs, the exposed crotch covered only by a bit of red satin thong. Martina had been a proud woman. An impeccable dresser. Someone who affected great dignity. The arrangement of her body had been deliberately degrading.

My hair needed to be combed or it would end up a rat's nest but I was unable to summon the energy to start working on the knots and tangles. Delayed reaction. Shock. All my bravado had gone down the drain with the bathwater. I couldn't get her out of my head. She lurked there like an oncoming headache, growing and pressing and filling all the spaces of my mind. Whoever had done this had hated her. It felt like a long-festering hatred. A planned assassination. But who was the assassin? Could Linda Janovich have hated her replacement enough to do this? Could she have done it on her own? And who had made the phone call that sent Lewis Broder packing and had Martina happily bathing in anticipation of a visit? None of it made sense.

The corners of the room were dark. The bedroom was inhabited by memories. Outside the windows it was dark. I wasn't scared of the dark. I just wasn't moving away from the nice, safe patch of light I was in. Hugging my knees, I folded myself into a tight little ball, closed my eyes, and buried my face in the blanket. Trapped in a luxury hotel room with a dead woman who wasn't there. Unable to leave the room because somewhere out there were the bad guys or bad gals and I had no idea who they were. I didn't think I could trust anyone here. I didn't feel safe. I wanted to be at home.

Well, I couldn't go home unless I packed, could I? And I couldn't pack my things if I couldn't get off this couch. Gradually I got myself unwrapped enough to comb my hair. It was a start. But my clothes were waiting on the floor beside me.
Goddamn it, woman,
I told myself.
Time to get going.
I couldn't get off the couch. An emotional vampire had sucked out all my drive. I was inert. Yeah, yeah. I'd had a hard day. I'd almost died. I was entitled to some down time. But not this wallowing. This cowering in fear. Didn't I believe that when the going got tough, the tough got going? Hadn't I been scornful of Rory for being a wimp? What, exactly, was I being right now?

It didn't work. A brutal little pep talk only made me fold back up into a ball again. At the end of the couch, the phone sat on a little table, the message light blinking like a red-eyed Cyclops. I could go that far, at least. I slid down the couch, picked up the receiver, and followed the instructions.

"You have... two... new messages," the canned voice intoned. I waited. There was a click, some heavy breathing, and then Rory's voice, sounding small and angry and scared. "Thea? Thea, if you're there, pick up. Please." A silence. Then, slightly louder, "Please? Please pick up the phone. Where the hell are you? I need you. I need to tell you this before it's too late." She was crying. "Why isn't anyone ever there when I need them? It's always someone wanting something from me, isn't it? No one wants to give me anything. Not just Martina. People I thought I could trust. Can you at least call me back when you get this? You're the one who needed so goddamned badly to know what was going on, aren't you? Are you there listening to me? Laughing at me? Thea..." There was agony and something like terror in her voice. "Thea, please. Pick up the phone. They're coming to get me. I know it. I thought they were my friends, you know, and I was wrong.... Thea... Please! I don't know what to do. Now that I realize I don't want to die, I'm going to."

There was another long silence. "Are you there? Thea? Please, please, please! Call me as soon as you get this. I can't run away and I'm afraid to be here. Help me!" There was a click as she hung up the phone.

 

 

 

Chapter 27

 

When her voice had gone, the silence in the room was deafening. It closed in around me like air rushing into a void, whirling and swirling and pressing on me, squeezing my aching head and ringing in my ears. My imagination gave that emptiness a voice. A cry for help, escalating, rising, increasing in intensity until the silence following Rory's message was an invisible scream that filled the room with her desperation. Yet I couldn't move. I sat on the fancy little sofa in the elegant room with only a cellophane-wrapped tower of fruit for company, reaching out for the silent beige plastic box that would connect me with the rest of the world, and my arm wouldn't move.

Nothing made any sense. I was a woman of action. I didn't sit, paralyzed, in fancy hotel suites when other people needed help. I hadn't been encased in plaster or frozen by a ray gun. Rory was scared and alone and asking for help and I was sitting here staring at the phone. It felt like I was breaking out of that invisible plaster as I forced my arm toward the phone. I didn't want to get involved. I wanted to move only to pack. I picked up the receiver and asked for the number at the hospital. Asked them to dial it. Asked for Rory's extension. Sat in my small pool of light in the cavernous room and heard it ringing and ringing and ringing. No one answered.

I called hospital central again. Explained that Rory wanted to speak with me. Explained that she wasn't answering. Got transferred three or four times, the way hospitals always do, until I got a woman who sounded like she'd just eaten a year's supply of Thorazine. She informed me, in mechanical tones, that Rory was unavailable and offered to take a message. I pressed her for a more human response, explaining that Rory had called me in a highly anxious state, asking for my help. That brought a longer silence, punctuated by whispering voices and words I couldn't discern. Finally she came back to me and informed me that there was nothing I could do for Rory "at the moment." I tried arguing, avoided cursing or screaming, but got only a mechanical repetition that she was sorry, and then she hung up on my next round of protests.

This was a job for Superwoman. It was time to leap to my feet, find the card with Bernstein's beeper number, and call it. Or rush downstairs and seize a taxi. Leaping seemed beyond the realm of possibility. Even getting to my feet and shuffling the short distance to my clothes seemed impossible. My body might have been cloaked in lead. Everything ached and was turgid, sluggish, unresponsive. I had become my own grandmother. I had been secretly transformed into slow-mo woman.

Slo-mo woman rose to her feet. A tall, trembling creature on long, long legs with unreliable, wobbly knees. Shuffled to the clothes and fumbled through the bundle to find underwear. Got one foot into the panties, staggered, caught herself, dropped the panties, bent down slowly, slowly and retrieved them. Got the second leg through. Wonderful. At this rate, I would be dressed by dawn. Getting a bra on when I couldn't lift my arms seemed even more daunting. My partner, Suzanne, helping me get dressed once in the hospital, had said putting a bra on me was like capturing wayward cantaloupes. Slo-mo woman captured what she had to capture and got all those damnable little hooks hooked. Fingers fumbling. Rory's voice lingering in my ear.

The dress was easy. All I had to do was raise my arms and drop it over my head. Raising my arms was about as hard as learning to fly, something I've never been able to do. Finally I got it over my head and settling around my body while I tried to put two arms through two holes, neither of which was supposed to be the neck. Did that. Bravo. Told my feet to go find the bathroom where I had left Bernstein's card lying on the sink. Shuffle. Shuffle. Shuffle. I wondered how bare feet could sound so much like I was wearing slippers. I hated slippers. The sound of slippers on the floor made me feel a thousand years old.

I found Bernstein's beeper number. Back to the phone. The bedroom phone was closer but there was no way I was going in there. Sure. It was irrational and I pride myself on being a rational person. But those who've never shared space with dead bodies don't understand how death haunts a place. All the while that my body was moving, as we New Englanders say, slower than molasses uphill in January, Rory's desperation echoed in my ears. Wait. This was a luxury suite. There was a phone right here in the bathroom. Shuffle. Shuffle. Shuffle. I picked up the phone and punched in the number. Then I'd done my bit. All I could do was hang up and wait.

Andre says he's no good at waiting. I'm a hundred times worse. Normally, I'd pace the floor or do some work while I was waiting, if I didn't just take matters into my own hands and go fix it. I'm a natural-born fixer. It was my job in the family, growing up, and it's stayed with me. That made the waiting even harder. I'd been betrayed by my own body. Even if I'd wanted to get in a taxi and go find Rory, I was moving so slowly and I felt so weak, I'd be practically useless when I got there. There had to be something I could do besides sit here and wait.

I picked up the phone again. Called the hospital again. This time I asked for the nursing station on Rory's floor. No one seemed puzzled or asked me any questions; they just put me right through. When someone on the floor answered, I didn't give them a chance to speak. "My friend Rory, in three-ten, she called me all upset and left a message. Is she all right?"

"I'm sorry," the voice said, "I can't—"

"Yes, you can!" I insisted. "I just need to know. She's alone. She's in a hospital and she's scared out of her wits. Is she all right?"

There was what felt like an endless silence, the kind of silence we fill with our worst imaginings. "I'm sorry," the person said finally. "She's dead." There was the clatter of the phone being dropped and then I was listening to a buzzing line. This time, reality was worse than anything I'd imagined.