This Life: A Novel (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

June 14

Miami
,
Florida

While her red-eye
flight from
New
York
to
Miami
was still in the air,
Blake received a text message from Edith: Miami Hospital, Department of Behavioral Health Services.> Blake immediately
phoned for a taxi to meet her, Matt, and Suki at the airport and take them
directly to UMH. They arrived at the hospital not long after the patients were
served breakfast, and since patients were allowed guests at breakfast and lunch
on Sundays, Blake and her bodyguards got trays from the hospital cafeteria and
carried their meal to the BHS dining room.

Margot sat, her plate
untouched, at a table with one other patient gulping his food as if he hadn’t
been fed in a week. Blake, Matt, and Suki crowded around the table. Matt and
Suki tucked into their food with good appetites, but Blake felt awkward about
eating while her best friend sat silent, head bowed, uninterested in the bacon,
eggs, and grits in front of her.

Blake eyed her own tray
of ham-and-cheese croissants and orange juice, and had an idea. “Hey, hon.
Would you rather have my breakfast? I’ll be glad to swap.”

There was no reaction
from Margot, but the other patient at the table looked up, his face alight with
hope, and offered, “If you don’t want that, I’ll eat it.”

After pausing to think
of a polite reply, Blake said, “I’ll keep that in mind.” Evidently satisfied,
the hearty eater returned his attention to his grits.

Minutes passed without
a word from anyone. At last Blake nibbled a ham-and-cheese croissant and said, “This
is really good, for hospital food. You should try it.” She held an untouched
one out to Margot.

Her friend glanced at
the food, then slapped it out of Blake’s hand. It went flying, coming apart in
midair, the ham splashing down in the grits of a patient at a nearby table, one
half of the croissant with the cheese stuck to it falling on the floor, and the
other half bouncing off the back of a patient’s head. The patient promptly
dived under the table, screaming, “They’re doing it again! Stop them, make them
stop!”

“You could have given
it to me,” sulked the hearty eater at Margot’s table. He snatched the other
untouched ham-and-cheese croissant off Blake’s plate and ran away with it.

Matt watched all the
mayhem with slack-jawed alarm. Suki continued serenely eating her Cheerios,
except for a pause to whisper to Matt, “Never a dull moment in an insane
asylum, it seems.”

That whisper got Margot’s
attention, however. “I am
not
insane,” she snarled, and got up from the
table and tromped out of the dining room.

Blake abandoned her
tray and hurried after Margot. When she heard footsteps moving fast behind her,
she knew Matt was following them. Suki, probably, was devouring her cereal and
observing life in a psychiatric ward.

Margot plunged into an
open door, and Blake found that it was a private bedroom. A television was
tuned to some televangelist, but the sound was muted. Margot threw herself on
the bed and lay on her side, with her back turned to Blake.

For a minute or maybe
two, Blake stood in the doorway looking at her friend.
What can I say to
help her?
In all the years she’d known the woman, she’d never seen her so
angry and helpless.

If that’s all I’ve
got, it’s better than nothing. No way am I going to fly from
New York
to
Miami
and never even really
talk to her.

“You know, Margot, we’ve
known each other twelve years now. I remember you and Thomas hadn’t been
married long when he introduced us. He hadn’t talked you into giving up your
flower shop yet. You were outgoing and energetic and enjoying every moment of
being alive. No wonder he fell in love with you. So did I, in a different way
of course.”

She stopped, thinking
of Margot as she used to be. A totally different woman than the one who’d just
tried to kill herself, and was now outraged at being still alive and rejected
by her husband.

“Before you met Thomas,
and for almost a whole year after you met him, you had a life of your own and
it made you happy. If you were happy without him once, you can be happy without
him again. Why don’t you start another florist business?”

“Why don’t you fuck
off,” Margot responded, in a shaky voice.

I know that voice.
You sound that way when you’re feeling something you don’t want to.
Blake
allowed herself a fleeting smile.
So I accomplished something by coming
here, thank goodness.

“There’s something I
need to give you before I go. I was going to save this until your birthday, and
give it to you along with a present, but I think you need it now.” Blake opened
her purse and took out the note and autograph she got from Amanda Brown, the
night she went out with Brett for the first time. “I went to a dinner club one
night, and Amanda Brown happened to be performing. I asked her for an autograph
for you, and she wrote a note to go with it. I’ll just put it on top of the TV.”

She laid Amanda Brown’s
note on the television set, as promised. Then she stepped to the edge of the
bed and patted Margot’s shoulder, and didn’t mind when Margot flinched at her
touch. “I love you, lady. If you need anything at all, you tell the staff here
to let me know. I’ll see you when you’re feeling ready to face the world again.”

Blake turned around and
nodded at Matt. He walked her back to the dining room, where Suki had finished
breakfast and sat watching the large flat-screen television with the patients.

“Come on, Suki,” Blake
said. “You and I can spend the day visiting my mom, and Matt can see his woman while
we’re back in
Miami
. We’ll fly back to
New York
in the morning.”

#

Jacinta Bertrand was
happy to see Blake, but saddened to hear of Margot’s suicide attempt. “I won’t
lie to you,
mija
. When we lost your father, there were times I thought
about killing myself. But I had you, and I had my work. Now I look back, and I’m
glad I stayed. My daughter makes me proud, and there are people alive today who
might not be if I hadn’t been their nurse. Your friend will be glad someday
that you saved her life.”

“I think so too, Mama.”
Blake squeezed her mother’s hand.

They were sitting
outside on lawn chairs. Jacinta had just recently ceased needing to wear braces
on both legs and her left arm. She’d winced when she lowered herself, with help
from her second-shift nurse, into the lawn chair. But now she was watching
cottony clouds drift overhead, breathing in the crisp ocean air, so happy she
glowed.

Suki was nearby,
casually practicing some jujitsu moves she needed to master to earn her fourth-degree
black belt. Abruptly she stopped, raised a hand to shade her eyes from the
bright afternoon sunlight, and stared down the winding island road. “Boss, are
you or your mom expecting company?”

“Not me,” Blake said,
and stared down the road herself. She couldn’t see anything yet, but she wasn’t
surprised. Suki’s senses often seemed to be supernaturally keen.

“Me neither,” said
Jacinta. She labored to sit up straighter, and the nurse rushed to her side to
assist her.

In a matter of seconds,
four people came into view around a curve in the road. As they got nearer to
Jacinta’s condo, Blake realized that two were wearing island security uniforms
and two were
Miami
police officers.

Suki turned her head to
look at Blake. “This isn’t going to be good news.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Blake? Have you had
some kind of trouble?” Jacinta’s dark eyes were locked on Blake’s face, reading
her expressions like a book.

“Lang and I ran into
each other in
New
York
.
That’s all. I can’t think of any reason why
Miami
police would be coming to see me about
that, but who knows.” Blake shrugged and awaited the arrival of the officers.

“Well…maybe it’s about
the drunk who hit me.” Jacinta chewed her bottom lip, consumed by doubt and
worry.

A few minutes later the
two security men and the two police officers turned into Jacinta’s driveway.
They halted there for a minute, carrying on a whispered conversation among themselves.
Suki gave them her full attention.

“There’s been a fire,”
the bodyguard told Blake as the four men crossed the lawn to reach them. “One
of your
Miami
properties has burned
to the ground, Boss.”

“You heard us talking?”
one of the police asked Suki, his eyes in danger of popping out of his head.

“She probably reads
lips,” the other police officer suggested.

“I heard you fine. You”—Suki
gestured at the policeman who’d spoken first—“had your back turned to me. I
couldn’t possibly have been reading lips.” She turned her usual blank face to
the second officer. “And you decided to be the bad cop, and your friend here
will be the good cop.”

Blake wanted to scream
because yet another disaster had struck her, and she wanted to laugh at the
facial expressions of the police officers as they looked at each other in alarm
because their plan had been ruined before they ever got started. She shut her
eyes, took a deep breath, and forced herself to stay calm. Opening her eyes
again she said, “I suppose, from all that, the fire must have been arson. Is
that right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the first
officer managed, his voice faltering.

The second officer
stood up straight and looked down his nose at Blake, evidently determined to
take control of the situation. “You had motive to hire someone to burn the
place down, Ms. Bertrand. We got an anonymous tip that you’re having financial
trouble because of that place you bought in
New York
, that Spears thing. Our informant said
your investment partners are threatening to call in their loans to you.
Insurance money could be real useful to you right now.”

Don’t let them
intimidate you
, Blake told herself.
You’re innocent, and you can afford
damned good attorneys and investigators to prove it.
“I can prove I’m
already making other arrangements to solve that problem.”

“Well, then you’ve got
nothing to worry about.” The second officer winked at the island security
guards, who both sneered appreciatively.

For the first time,
Blake realized that she and her mother weren’t welcome on the island. She
understood now why Suki had started the conversation by unnerving the police
and island security, and wondered what else the bodyguard’s keen ears had heard
them say while they thought themselves out of hearing range.

“You’ll need to come
with us to the station and give a statement to the detective working this case,
ma’am,” said the first policeman, finding his courage again.

“Hire an attorney
before you talk to them anymore, Boss,” Suki advised. “You’d be surprised how
many people prefer private security to the police, because some people go into
law enforcement to be thugs with a badge to protect them.” She was giving the
second police officer an icy stare that Blake was grateful wasn’t aimed at
herself.

“Let’s get this over
with.” Blake got to her feet and bent down to hug and kiss her mom. “Don’t
worry, Mama, they’ve got it all wrong. I’ll clear this up and see you again
before I go back to
New York
.”

“Be careful,
mija
,”
Jacinta whispered as a tear rolled down one cheek.

“I’ll contact Antonio, Boss,”
Suki said as she fell into step next to Blake, following the police officers
and island security. “He’s got a cousin who’s a lawyer. They should be able to
recommend a good criminal attorney for you.” A few seconds later, though Blake
hadn’t heard anyone say anything, Suki growled, “Because she’s got a
right
to an attorney, you prick.”

“Criminal?!” Jacinta
gasped.

They’d barely climbed
aboard the police speedboat when Suki, who had been texting, said, “Get your
BlackBerry out and take down this name and number, Boss. Antonio’s cousin said
the best criminal defense attorney in
Florida
works for the firm our security agency uses. We happen to
have a number to reach him on weekends.”

Blake entered the
attorney’s name and number in her BlackBerry’s contacts list, and before the
police boat reached the mainland, she was arranging for her new defense
attorney to meet her at the station.

#

June 14

New York
,
New York

Lang Bertrand soaked in
his
Manhattan
hotel room’s hot tub,
drinking iced vodka and congratulating himself. Sal and Luca had burned down
the money-laundering Cuban restaurant in Morningside during Blake’s flight from
New York
to
Miami
. Making good use of
Brett’s tales of his time with Blake, Sherry had anonymously phoned
Miami
police about Blake’s
financial woes with the Wishman Spears.