The Girl Next Door (31 page)

Nina turned to George and Rose. “Why don’t you two go home and get some rest. You’ve
been here for hours. Patrick and I will stay with him for a while.”

“Oh no,” said Rose, sitting back down next to her husband. “We’re fine. We just took
a break a while ago. Your wife was here, Patrick, and she stayed with Jimmy while
we went down to the cafeteria.”

“Gemma was here?” he said.

“She just left a few minutes ago,” said Rose. “Anyway, we need to stay because we’re
expecting Anthony. He’s flying in from Boston to be with his brother.”

Patrick reached out and rubbed his hand over Jimmy’s burr haircut. “That’s good of
Anthony,” he said.

George got up and said, “Here, let me get you two a chair.” Before they could protest,
he was out in the hallway questioning a passing nurse.

Nina’s stomach growled and she felt the headache returning.
She wanted to be alone to think. “Rose, what time does the cafeteria close, do you
know?”

Rose looked up at the clock. “You’d better hurry,” she said. “You can just make it.”

“Patrick, I think I’m going to go down there and get something to eat. Can I get you
anything?”

Patrick shook his head. “I ate with Lindsay,” he said.

“I’ll be back soon,” said Nina. She left the room, making note of the number and the
location, found an elevator, and rode to the basement, where the hospital cafeteria
was located. It was painted a muted aquamarine and had all the warmth of a fish tank.
There were only a few tables occupied, and the cafeteria workers were beginning to
wipe off the empty tables and put up the chairs. Nina grabbed a yogurt and a bottle
of juice, paid the cashier, and sat down not far from a couple who were sitting silently,
eating off trays.

Nina started to eat the yogurt, and it felt good going down, but she also was glad
to be away from Jimmy’s room in a spot where she could sit and think. Her hands shook
as she lifted the spoon to her mouth and tried to remember everything she’d heard
about the shooting today. It was some kind of madness to suspect Gemma just because
she’d had access to the Jag and lied about it. What reason would Gemma ever have had
to shoot Calvin Mears and the other guy? None. There was no reason. It was not as
if Calvin Mears had seen
Gemma
leaving their house that long-ago April night. Gemma had no reason in the world to
kill Marsha. Thinking back on that afternoon, she remembered Marsha urging Patrick
to take Gemma out to celebrate. Nina’s mother had always been more than kind to Gemma.
She’d always felt sorry for the girl who was forced to live with a father and a stepmother
who didn’t really want her around. No, there was no reason. Everything that day had
been perfectly normal. Nina and her mother had talked about what a great
student Gemma was, and what a help to Patrick. And then a thought struck Nina. A
thought that made her feel faint. The newspaper her mother had pulled off the coffee
table in the living room when she fell, dying of her wounds. Gemma’s picture had been
on the front page that day, for receiving the Delman Prize.

The couple at the other table stood up. The woman had her back to Nina. Nina could
see that she had frizzy brown hair cut into a shag. The man had blond hair and a bulldog
face. Nina took a last bite of her yogurt and stared at the pair. She was sure she
knew them from somewhere. The man picked up the trays to bus the table. The woman,
whose coat was hanging over the back of her chair, picked up the coat and put it on.
On the front of the coat was a large laminated button with a photo of two girls in
Christmas party dresses.

Omigod, thought Nina. Of course. She stood up, still holding her yogurt, and approached
their table shyly. “Mr…. Mazurek?” she said.

The bulldog-faced man scowled at her suspiciously.

“My name is Nina Avery,” she said. “You testified at my father’s parole hearing. Duncan
Avery.”

The man’s furrowed face broke into a broad smile. “Oh yeah. Hey there. Hey, honey.
This is Doc Avery’s girl, remember? Did you meet my wife, Carla?”

Mrs. Mazurek looked at Nina with narrowed eyes, as if she couldn’t really remember
her, but she smiled all the same and extended a hand. Nina put the spoon in the yogurt
in her left hand and shook hands with both of them.

“So,” Mazurek said, nodding. “Are you here to see the doc? We just come from his room,
but we didn’t see you up there.”

“I’m sorry?” said Nina, shaking her head slowly.

“Dr. Quinteros,” said Mazurek, looking at her curiously. “You didn’t know he was here?”

Nina felt suddenly weak. “Andre?” she whispered.

“Oh yeah. I figured you were here to see him. He told me he needed that cop’s address
in Seaside Park because of something to do with you … or your dad. I don’t know. Anyway,
he got caught in a shootout over there. The doc’s lucky to be alive.”

N
INA
grabbed the sleeve of his coat. “I didn’t know anything about this. What happened?
Is Andre all right?”

Stan shrugged. “He was pretty groggy when we were up there. Well, he’s been through
a hell of a lot today. He was in surgery this afternoon. Then they had him out in
the recovery room and he hurt himself trying to get up, so they had to go back in
and sew him up again. I figured you knew about it.”

Nina’s stomach was churning. She had to force herself to remain calm. “I didn’t understand
what you said. What did this have to do with me?”

“Just this morning,” said Stan. “He asked me to find out the address of this cop named
Jenkins in Seaside Park. Something to do with your father’s murder. So I called around
and got it for him. The next thing I know the doc left work. A couple hours later
we get a call at the prison that Dr. Q is in surgery. Apparently, he went looking
for this cop’s nephew in some
sleazy motel in Seaside Park. Some guy came in and shot at them. The nephew’s dead.
The other one’s here in the hospital, too.”

Oh my God.
Andre!
she thought. He did it for her. He tried to find Calvin Mears for her. A Puerto Rican
guy got shot, Mrs. Jenkins had said. A Hispanic man, someone else had said.
Gemma
. She had asked about the condition of the Hispanic man. And Nina had never even put
it together that it might be a doctor of Mexican descent.

“Are you all right, honey?” asked Carla Mazurek. “You look a little green around the
gills. Do you want to sit down? Stan, let her sit.”

But Nina waved away their concern. “Where’s his room?” she asked.

Stan peered at his wife. “What was it, hon? Three …”

“Three ten,” said Carla promptly. “But they wouldn’t even let me go in. They let Stan
go, but I had to wait in the lounge.”

“Thank you,” said Nina. “Thank you both.”

“You can’t just go up there,” Stan warned her. “You have to have …”

Nina was not listening. She tossed her yogurt into a trash bin near the door and began
to run.

T
HE
elevator door opened on three, and Nina quickly looked at the room number guide and
rushed off to the right. Down the hall she saw an armed cop in full uniform standing
outside the door of one of the rooms, his hands clasped over a clipboard in front
of him. Without even looking at the number, she knew. That was Andre’s room. They
were protecting him. He was a witness to the shooting and he was still alive. She
exhaled a deep sigh. He was still alive.

She walked up and spoke politely to the officer. “Excuse me,” she said. “Is this Dr.
Quinteros’s room?”

The officer studied her with an unsmiling stare. “The patient in this room is not
allowed to have visitors,” he said. “Not unless they’ve got clearance.”

“I really need to see him,” said Nina. “He’s … he’s my fiancé,” she said.

The cop picked up the clipboard and studied it.

“Name?” he said.

“Susan …” she blurted out.

“Susan what?” he asked.

Nina blushed, realizing she had been caught out in her lie. She didn’t even know what
Susan’s last name was. “Look, I’m sorry,” she said. “That was stupid of me. I’m not
really his fiancée. I’m a friend. A good friend. In fact, he’s in there because he
tried to … do me a favor.”

“Name,” the cop repeated stubbornly.

“My name is Nina Avery …”

The cop ran a pen down the list of names on his clipboard. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he
said. “You’re not on this list.”

“But … if you would just stick your head in there and ask him, I’m sure he’d tell
you that he wants to see me. Please, could you just ask him?” Nina knew she could
be seductive when she wanted to be. She summoned all her powers of persuasion and
tried to win him over. “Please.”

The cop glared at her. “You are not on the list,” he said. “And if you don’t move
along now, I’m going to have to get somebody up here to escort you out of the building.
Is that clear?”

Nina closed her eyes for a second and pictured Andre’s face. His fierce, intelligent
eyes, which seemed to be able to look into her heart. She thought she had driven him
away the other night. But it turned out that he had simply decided to take on her
problems and tell her about it afterward. You did this for me, she thought, and you
don’t even know I’m here. But I’m not going to leave until I see you and let you know
… She took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I get it. Okay. I’m leaving.”

The cop watched her go suspiciously. She started back down the hall in the direction
of the elevators, trying to think of some way she could get in. When she reached the
nurses’ station, she stopped. The nurse behind the desk was fairly young and had long
shiny curls.

“Hi,” said Nina.

“Hi,” the nurse said pleasantly.

“I love your hair,” said Nina. “It’s really beautiful.”

The nurse smiled and patted her healthy curls. “You wouldn’t want to have to wash
it every day,” she said.

Nina forced a smile. “No, I’m sure. Listen, can you tell me how Dr. Quinteros is doing?
I’m a friend of his, and they won’t let me in to see him.”

“I’m sorry,” said the nurse. “We’re not permitted …”

“Well, how can I get my name on that list of visitors? I mean, we’re really close
and I know he would want to see me.”

“I’m sorry,” said the nurse. “We have nothing to do with that. That’s a police matter.”

Nina wanted to pound the desk in frustration, but she controlled herself. “Look, if
one of you is going in there, could I give you a note to take to him, just to let
him know I’m here?”

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said, a slight chill in her tone. She swiveled around in her
chair, reaching for some charts on the wall beside her desk.

All right, Nina thought. Plan B. Not that she had a plan B. She stepped away from
the desk and looked down the hall toward Andre’s room. The cop was still standing
there, barring the door, staring straight ahead. Halfway down the hallway was
an exit sign over a stairwell, and beside that was a lounge across the hall and one
door down from Andre’s room. Nina thought about it for a minute. She knew very little
about Andre’s life, but there were bound to be other people whose names were on that
clipboard list who might come to visit him. If I wait in the lounge, she thought,
and keep an eye on his room, maybe I can waylay one of the “approved” visitors as
they are going in and explain it to them. Somebody who looks sympathetic. It was worth
a try. She went and got a drink from the fountain and then slipped into the lounge.

It was a small room with a sofa and two chairs. There was a magazine rack with some
dog-eared issues of
Newsweek
and
Ladies’ Home Journal
, and a bunch of LEGOs scattered on the wall-to-wall carpeting. A TV was on in the
corner, the laugh track blaring. There was no one else there at the moment. She was
glad of that. She didn’t feel like making small talk. Besides, it was immediately
clear that she could not watch the door to Andre’s room without the aid of a mirror,
and she knew how strange that was going to look. She rummaged in her satchel and pulled
out a compact. She opened it and moved her chair so that she could see the room in
the mirror with her back to the door. It could prove to be a tedious wait, but it
was worth doing. She only wished that Stan Mazurek hadn’t already been and gone. She
realized now that he’d been trying to warn her about this situation when they were
talking in the cafeteria.

Nina held up the compact and looked into it as discreetly as possible. She couldn’t
really do anything else but sit there, and she was wondering what in the world she
was going to do to pass the time. She couldn’t read, or call anyone on the phone.
She glanced at the TV in the corner occasionally, but only for a second. Then she
resumed her vigil.

All at once, she saw the stiff cop moving and realized that someone was coming toward
the door. This could be her
opportunity. She sat up and stared hard into the mirror. But then her shoulders slumped
as she realized it was only a nurse. She could see the side of the nurse’s smock,
and her painfully thin arm and bony wrist supporting a small tray.

The nurse moved the tray to her other hand as she reached for the doorknob with flashing,
beringed fingers. Nina sighed, and then suddenly, a shock went through her like a
lightning bolt. For one moment, the nurse was reflected in the tiny round mirror as
she opened the door to Andre’s room. It was only a glimpse, but in that glimpse Nina
recognized the pale, narrow face. And in that second, all the doubts that had been
nagging at her, swirling in her mind, coalesced.

Nina jumped up from her chair with a cry and bolted out the door. The cop’s head swiveled
at the sudden movement and he glared at her as she crossed the hall. “That woman that
just went in there,” Nina cried. “You have to stop her. That’s not a nurse. I know
her. I know who she is.”

The cop put his hand on his holster. “I told you before that you can’t go in there.
What are you doing still hanging around?”