Keepsake (27 page)

The jangle of the phone ripped Olivia from her troubled dreams. She groped for the light, then for the receiver. It was nearly midnight.

A faint moan on the other end seemed to be some kid's version of fun. It was creaky, trembly, a pale specter of real speech—a little prankster's idea of a ghost.

"I'm sorry, you have the wrong number," Olivia said, irritated that her heart had been sent careening for nothing. She was in the process of hanging up when she heard, or thought she heard, the name "Quinn."

She brought the receiver back to her ear. "Who is this?" she asked sharply.

"Miz
... Dewsbuh
... Qui..."

"Mrs. Dewsbury? What's wrong?"

Quinn tore the phone from Olivia's grip. "I'll be right there," he said after listening for a scant second or two. He hung up and dialed 911 and in a few terse phrases directed an ambulance to the widow's house on Elm.

By the time he got off the phone, Olivia was dressed. "I'll start your truck and bring it around," she said, grabbing his keys from the dresser.

She was through the bedroom door before he could object. Outside, she brought the truck to a screeching halt alongside him and slid over to the passenger side as he climbed in, pushed the seat back and took off.

You should belt,
she wanted to insist, because now she was thinking thoughts of death. Instead she forced herself to say calmly, "What happened?"

"Someone hit her from behind. God, I'm going to get you all killed," Quinn muttered through clenched teeth.

Was that a promise? He was driving like a fiend. Bracing herself with a furtive grip on the door, Olivia said, "Why did Mrs. Dewsbury call me instead of 911?"

"I programmed your number on her speed dial. All she had to do was hit the number one."

That was the entire conversation en route to Mrs. Dewsbury's house.

By the time they reached
Elm Street
, the ambulance had arrived and the paramedics were trying the front and back doors. Olivia ran instinctively to the side of the house that she saw was sheltered from its neighbors by a row of towering hedges. Yes—an open window.

She climbed through the narrow window, one of the side openings of a walk-out bay, and found herself standing in the dining room across from Mrs. Dewsbury, who was sitting in a chair by the phone with her head drooped forward over her chest. Quinn had apparently let in the paramedics with his key. One of the them was tending to the widow while the other was laying out the stretcher.

Olivia was dismayed to see that the old woman didn't seem able to speak. Dazed and shaking her head, she kept waving the three men away. Her gaze was glassy-eyed—until she saw Olivia standing across from her. Then she seemed to snap into focus.

Weakly, she beckoned Olivia to her side as the paramedics continued to hover over her, trying to take her vital signs. She clutched feebly at Olivia's jacket and pulled her closer.

Olivia rested her hand lightly on the stricken woman's back as she bent down to hear. "Yes, Mrs. Dewsbury?"

"My teesh," said the widow. She pointed a finger straight up.

"Your—? Ah. I'll get them and bring them to the hospital," said Olivia, divining the widow's concern.

Mrs. Dewsbury gave her a trembling smile that started tears rolling down her withered, pale cheeks. Olivia left her to Quinn and the paramedics and ran up the stairs and into the bathroom. She grabbed the glass with the dentures in it, intending to turn it upside down to drain.

That's when she saw that her hand was smeared with blood.

****

They were keeping Mrs. Dewsbury, despite her objections, overnight for observation. The staff physician at
Eastwood
Community
Hospital
seemed more impressed with the widow's iron skull than with her iron will.

"I doubt that there's a concussion, but I want to be sure; she seems a little disoriented," Dr. Tann told Quinn. "I don't know whether that's in character or not."

"It's not," said Quinn.

"She's not very happy about staying here, which isn't unusual with the elderly," the physician explained. "They like to be in familiar surroundings."

"Who doesn't?" Quinn snapped. He was incredibly tense. "What about all the blood?"

"It looked worse than it was; she didn't even need stitches. Any idea what was used for the blow?"

"Yes," said Olivia. "A dictionary. We found it on the floor at the foot of the stairs. Mrs. Dewsbury is a retired English teacher; she'll be amused."

The physician smiled wryly and said, "I doubt it. She's too upset about some television that got smashed."

"Can we see her?"

"No. Tomorrow's soon enough. I understand that she has a son in
New Hampshire
—
but he's on vacation in
Curacao
with his family?"

"That's right," said Quinn. "He's due back at the end of
the week. Should I try to get
in touch with him now?"

"She's already said that she'd rather call him in the morning, which is reasonable. However, assuming there are no complications and she gets discharged, I'd still prefer that someone keep an eye on her for a while. When her family returns, maybe she can stay with her son, since his wife is available during the day. It's too bad," he added, "that Mrs. Dewsbury lives alone. She's at an age—"

"When her independence means everything to her," Quinn finished up. "She needs to hold on to the house; she was born in it."

"Be that as it may, she's eighty-one years old. She's in reasonable health but her vision is poor," Dr. Tann said, shaking his head. "Her days of living alone are winding down."

"We'll see," Quinn said coolly.

Olivia was touched by Quinn's fierce loyalty to his old teacher. For someone who'd had virtually no family of his own—but maybe that was why.

Quinn seemed more tight-lipped than ever as he said, "When exactly will she be released?"

"If her signs are stabl
e she can go home tomorrow mid-
morning."

"I'll be here."

The physician left Quinn and Olivia alone in the tiny visitors' room, a dreary cubicle with a small TV mounted on a wall above a bistro table that held an assortment of ragged, outdated magazines.

Suddenly the long night caught up with Olivia: the midnight dash through deserted streets, the shock of seeing an elderly woman assaulted in her own dining room, the lingering tension between Quinn and Olivia over something as trivial as whether or not she should go with him to her Uncle Rupert's house.

"Quinn," she said, humbled by circumstances, "I'm so sorry."

"For what?" he said bitterly. "
You
didn't knock her down."

The barely repressed rage in his voice didn't surprise Olivia. "You think it's the same man," she said, aware of the new burden of guilt he was feeling.

"Gee. I wonder why," Quinn answered. He walked up to the double window that looked out at a parking lot. His hands were jammed in the back of his jeans as he stared, not at the boring view, but at the windowsill, working through his wretchedness.

"We'll
get
this creep," she said. "This isn't about torn capes and dead rats anymore. Chief Vickers will take the case seriously, now that someone's been hurt. I wish I hadn't come in through the window, though," she added, aware that she'd trampled over the crime scene in her zeal to reach Mrs. Dewsbury.

There was no response. After a pause, Olivia began to get frustrated. "You act so paralyzed. You act as if everything's hopeless," she said, trying to get a rise out of him.

His response was surprisingly subdued, and that alarmed her even more than it frustrated her. "You don't have the whole picture," he said without turning around.

"What parts of it don't I have, Quinn?"

He shook his head.

Weary of his continued refusal to confide in her, she glared at his broad back and said, "Sooner or later I'm going to figure it all out for myself, you know."

"God help us, then," he said softly.

"Damn
it, Quinn!" She said it so sharply that a passing nurse stuck her head in the room and shushed her.

Embarrassed that she had had to be reprimanded, Olivia said in a well-mannered hiss, "This is all your fault. You're acting as covert as a double agent."

"I'm sorry."

"Well, what do we do now? Sit here reading
Time
and
People
till morning? I already know who won the last election."

He turned. She was shocked to see his face. There was agony there, and guilt, but also a sense of menace. He was ready to annihilate someone.

"I'll take you home," he said, scooping up his jacket.

She folded her arms across her sweatshirt. "Absolutely not. I'm going back with you to Mrs. Dewsbury's house. I want to be there when you call the police."

"That's nuts. It's the middle of the night."

"I'm a witness—and maybe even an accessory," she said, digging in. "I stepped all over any footprints under the bay window when I climbed inside the house. It's better that they get my statement now than have to chase me down later."

He sighed and said, "Fine. At least I'll be able to keep my eye on you. Let's go."

She grabbed her parka and fell in step beside him as he headed for the elevator. "And then tomorrow we'll tackle the other problem," she announced as they passed the nurses' station. "Our visit to my aunt and uncle."

"No
, Olivia! Jesus! How many times do I have to tell you!"

"Shhhh!"

****

The good news was that Mrs. Dewsbury did not seem intimidated by the attack of the night before, despite a morning interrogation by Chief Vickers. The bad news was, she had developed a distressing tendency to lose her train of thought somewhere in the middle of a sentence.

"They're keeping me in this blessed place another whole day," said Mrs. Dewsbury, and Dr. Tann was right: She wasn't very happy about it.

"Did they say why?" asked Olivia. They knew of the delay, of course, which explained the small travel bag that Olivia was unpacking.

"Oh, I don't know. Something about my blood press—is it cold in here?"

Quinn, who was already half prostrate from the heat in the room, said, "I'
ll
have a nurse turn up the thermostat." He ducked outside and when he returned, Olivia was helping Mrs. Dewsbury into a chenille bedjacket that she had found on the bedpost in the widow's bedroom. Olivia had grabbed other things, too, odd little luxuries: a brush, soft tissues, lotions, a bag of lozenges from the nightstand, and—for the doctor to see—medication for high blood pressure. Quinn was afraid that Mrs. Dewsbury would take offense at Olivia's liberties.

Not in the least.

"You're such a dear
... so thoughtful
... this is exactly what I needed."

Olivia threw Quinn a superior look and said, "Men simply don't understand that these things matter."

"What was I doing with this?" the widow said, staring at the brush in her hand as if it were a garden rake.

"You wanted me to run it through your hair for you," Olivia answered without missing a beat.

She took the brush and combed Mrs. Dewsbury's white hair, which looked to Quinn just about the same afterward as it did when they walked in, but the women seemed to think it was an improvement. After that, Olivia freshened the water in the drinking pitcher and moved Quinn's flowers to a more prominent spot.

Finally, when Mrs. Dewsbury looked reasonably comfortable and at ease with them, Quinn got down to business.

"How did your son take the news of all this?" was the first thing on his mind.

"I
... haven't called him," Mrs. Dewsbury admitted sheepishly.

"The nurse didn't give you the number of the Windward Hotel? I called it in."

"She gave it to me."

"And you're having trouble getting an international call through the hospital's phone system? It can be confusing. Why don't I—?"

"It's silly to ruin Gerald's vacation," she said, fussing nervously with the sheet laid over her lap. "He gets so little time away. I don't want to be a bother."

They went round and round on that for a while, but Mrs. Dewsbury was adamant. Quinn didn't want to upset her, so he dropped the matter for the moment. That brought him to the delicate business of asking her what she remembered about the attack. He knew Vickers wouldn't tell him squat, so any information was going to have to come from the victim herself, and she was old and fragile and traumatized.