Red House Blues Page 18

  Suzan had a fleeting image of being enfolded in comforting masculine arms. They would share secrets until the day nurse came on duty. God, I must be more concussed than previously suspected.

  The reality saw her padding at slug speed in blue hospital socks up two flights of stairs to ICU, gasping in pain at every step. She had thought to avoid being spotted in an elevator and ushered back to her room. She got as far as half way down the hall to Nick’s room before being headed off by a linebacker in scrubs. A sentimental cupcake of a linebacker as it turned out who, after hearing her improvised tale of lost love and languishment, let slip that Nick had checked out. For a frightening second she thought he meant . . . on seeing her knees buckle, linebacker clarified that her “lost love” had been transferred to convalescent care that afternoon, the location of which he couldn’t or wouldn’t divulge. Suzan was too late. And seemingly back to square one. The guy might be anywhere. But at least she had learned he was still alive.

  The linebacker expertly escorted her via elevator back to her own room, making sure a duty nurse tucked her in with a sleeping pill to curb her wandering ways. Not that she needed it. Suzan was in no shape to go running out into the night chasing phantoms. She welcomed dreamless oblivion.

  Morning arrived with a parade of medics, who all seemed to have been clued into Suzan’s midnight ramble around the hospital. Suspecting it signified some brain damage they had missed, she was wheeled off for another MRI. Even after they failed to find anything suspicious they delayed her discharge for another day and a half just to be on the safe side. Suzan was going mad with frustration but since her every fiber felt as if it had been put through an industrial model food processor she accepted the additional day of pain killers with as much grace as she could muster.

  Claire showed up after lunch with a box of Dilettante Chocolates. Suzan treated her to chapter and verse of her fruitless expedition to the ICU, accepted the chocolates and sent her off find out what facility they had transferred Nick to.

  If only she knew the guy’s last name. All she had was a hazy memory of large brown eyes set in a generous face framed with damp crisp curls. A soft Byronic face. A face made for laughing with a stubble-sprinkled chin that spoke of a man who had been way too busy and engaged that morning to bother with shaving.

  Wonder what he looks like now after tangling with the truck? For that matter, what did she look like? She had avoided looking in the bathroom mirror but her face felt like a slab of brisket. With time and luck their injured flesh and bones would knit into an approximation of their former selves but something had altered in Suzan that would never be made whole again.

  From the start, her agenda had been mindlessly simple. Find out what happened to her husband, to her marriage. She hadn’t been thinking clearly. It took someone slamming her face into a wall to make her realize that love had nothing to do with her need to understand Sean’s mysterious death. No, it may have been years since she felt anything resembling love for him. It was guilt that had brought her to Seattle. Guilt for having betrayed him. Yes, there was that word again. The word Sean himself had flung at her like a keen edged knife as he escaped their marriage. She had betrayed him by not loving him enough to save him, by not caring enough to notice his life was falling apart. Suzan almost envied his escape because now she knew that on a certain level she would never escape it so cleanly as he had.

  Chapter 23

  “May I help you?” asked the front desk duty nurse at Madison Health and Rehabilitation.

  “I hope so,” said Suzan. “I’m looking for a man named Nick who was admitted yesterday from Harborview. I wonder if I could visit with him for a few minutes?”

  “What is his last name?” she asked, looking at her computer screen.

  “That’s a problem. We were in the same accident but I didn’t catch his last name before the ambulance took him away.” Suzan motioned to her ravaged face, hoping to inspire sympathy.

  “If this is about insurance you’ll have to discuss it with your agent. I can’t let you talk to the patient about anything like that.”

  “No, no, it has nothing to do with the accident. I just want to ask him about something.”

  She wasn’t buying it and Suzan’s imagination had gone dormant. She thought, what the hell, I’ll try a variation of the lost love tale I had used at Harborview.

  “You see, I think we were in love. Or are, I mean. But my memory is all scrambled from the concussion and I can’t remember very much at all. Not even his last name.” She summoned a quivering, swollen lip. “I think if I see him something might start to come back. Please.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” she said with a sigh. “Oh, well, okay. I know I’m going to regret it but I’ll see if he’ll see you. What’s your name, if you remember it?”

  “Suzan Pike.”

  She disappeared down the hall to the right on squeaky white shoes.

  The nurse returned faster than she expected.

  “He knows you,” she said, as if she’d just learned planet Earth was flat after all. “But make it a short visit. He really ought to be resting.”

  She led Suzan to a large bright room containing two hospital beds, one of which was occupied. After the nurse reluctantly left, Suzan sat down heavily in the bedside chair. Her knees were getting shaky. The man wasn’t the only one who needed to rest.

  “Hi. Remember me?”

  “Widow Pike, the Fir Street stalker,” he said, keeping his eyes shut. “How could I forget? As you can see I’m not in the best shape to play host this time.”

  “That makes two of us. I just got out of Harborview after my own misadventure on the streets of Seattle.”

  Only then did he open his eyes.

  “Holy shit, what happened to you?”

  “Someone maybe didn’t like the way I looked. Or maybe they didn’t like the questions I was asking.”

  “Someone beat you up? Who?”

  “Wish I knew. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Someone nearly killed the both of us and it would be nice to have a few answers. You didn’t just decide to run a red light into a truck, am I right?”

  “The brakes gave out,” he said, but he didn’t sound too convinced.

  “So, you are saying there is no possibility that someone tampered with your scooter? With it sitting out beside the house under a tarp?”

  “Sure, someone could have, but why would they?”

  “That’s what I am asking you. Someone smeared me all over a retaining wall a few nights back after I left your house. Where I had been trying to find out what Sean might have left in your room,” she said. “I think his notebooks are around somewhere and their contents pose a threat to someone. Or that someone thinks they do. That’s only a theory of course. Best I can do."

  “You do a lot of thinking,” he said. “And way too much talking.”

  Nick closed his eyes again. If anything he was paler than when she had come into the room.

  He had a cast on his right forearm. Obviously the tip of the iceberg. It was a selfish, stupid thing to barge in and dump her suspicions on the poor guy. This had been a terrible mistake. She had no right to worry him when there wasn’t a thing in the world he could do about the situation from a hospital bed. No scribbled notes of Sean’s could ever be worth the pain Nick had suffered already. Too many people had already been hurt. Should be ashamed of myself.

  She would sneak out while he dozed. The nurse would be back soon to usher her out anyhow. She got up and started for the door.

  “Okay, Pike,” whispered the man she thought was asleep. “I didn’t want to believe someone tried to kill me. I mean, why would they? As far as I know I don’t have any enemies. But it’s possible there is some lunatic with an axe to grind. As much as I have a bad feeling I shouldn’t trust you, you can help me get the hell out of here. If you tracked me down so can someone else and when they do I don’t want to be trapped in this bed.”

  “How am I supposed to accomplish that?” s
he asked. “Pick you up and carry you out the front door? Why don’t we just call the police and have them put a guard on you?”

  “Right, we’ll tell them we think some unknown person tampered with my broken down old Vespa on the off chance I’d be killed but we’re not sure and we don’t know why. Sorry, Pike, but that won’t fly. The cops wouldn’t send so much as a meter maid over here on anything that flimsy.”

  “Stop calling me Pike. I’m beginning to hate that name. I’m convinced that if it wasn’t for Sean Pike neither one of us would be here.”

  “Okay . . . Suzan. You know what I say is true, though. I’ve got to get out but you won’t have to carry me. I’m not completely helpless. A few broken bones and cracked ribs. Can you find a wheel chair? There may be one down the hall by the entry. Then you can wheel me out a side door where we can get a taxi.”

  “You don’t look well enough to get out of bed to me. Wouldn’t you have been sent home if all you had were a few broken bones?”

  “Where would they send me, back to Fir Street? I’m stitched up and taped together well enough but I’ll need better nursing than I’d be likely to get from my housemates,” he said. “Especially if one or more of them wants me dead for some reason. Hell, when I’m stronger I’ll go back to California. My family has a farm in Napa Valley. I can heal in the sun once I get there. But for now, I’ve got to get out of this place with you or without you.”

  “We won’t need a taxi,” said Suzan. “My friend Claire is circling the block trying to find a parking place. When she gets in here I’ll ask her to tell the nurse I need a wheelchair to get out to the car because I’m suddenly feeling faint or something. We’ll load you in it, then Claire will distract the nurse somehow while I push you out the side door.”

  But that’s not what they did. Claire arrived with the voice of reason, pointing out that if they actually managed to spirit Nick out of the convalescent center the cops would very shortly be looking for two female kidnappers. So Claire became Nick’s sister up from Napa Valley to take him home to recuperate.

  “Where to now?” she said, after they had bedded Nick down on the back seat of the Ford.

  “I don’t know. We can’t take him too far. Where are you staying?”

  “The Courtyard Inn, down by the airport.”

  “Well, that’s as good as any. Let’s go there. We’ll get him a room under a fake name and let him rest for a few days.”

  “You’re both going to rest,” said Claire. “You are as big a mess as he is and if you aren’t careful you and mister no-name will be right back in the hospital.”

  “His name is Nick, as well you know,” she said. “I’ve been thinking it might be a good idea to get him out of Seattle but he’s not up to air travel yet. What do you think about taking him back to Bellingham with us? We could be home in two hours and he’d be safe there. He’s right that he can’t go back to the Fir Street house. It’s too dangerous since we don’t know who tampered with his brakes or who beat me up but both incidents seemed to have something to do with people at that house. ”

  “I’m glad you’re finally being sensible. What we don’t know could get someone hurt more than they already are. There are too many unanswered questions. If there is a loose cannon, you guys need to be out of range.”

  “Is anybody going to ask me if I want to go to Bellingham? I don’t, in case you’re interested," said Nick from the back seat.

  “We thought you were asleep,” said Suzan.

  “Yeah, right, with you two deciding my future in the front seat. No chance. And for your information my name is Nikos Theophilos, of a long line of kick ass Greek sons-of-bitches who don’t take to being pushed around by you or anybody else. You can run back to Bellingham but I’m going after the asshole who messed up my scooter and wrapped me around a truck.”

  “That would sound more impressive, hero, if you could walk unassisted to the bathroom,” said Claire.

  “We have to be realistic,” said Suzan. “The police have no leads, we have no leads. We have no chance of tracking down whoever is behind this . . . I don’t know, crime spree or whatever it is. Personally all I want at this point is to stay alive a little longer.”

  “You would be right except for one thing,” said Nick. “The police don’t have your husband’s infamous notebooks. I do.”

  * * *

  Claire moved Suzan’s gear out of Linda’s while the two walking-woundeds waited in the car. Half an hour later she checked Suzan and Nick into a room a few doors down from her own at the Courtyard Inn. Suzan had lost the coin flip so she was bunking in with Nick. Not in the same bed of course but the man couldn’t be alone. Neither of them could. Just when Suzan would gladly have strangled the man for holding out on her, she was sharing accommodations with him. But if indeed he had the notebooks she was willing to tough it out, at least for the time being.

  Aggravating. Here he had had them stashed away somewhere the whole time she wandered around town like Timmy searching for Lassie. Why hadn’t he told her he had them when she was at the house that day? Why hadn’t he turned them over once he knew who she was?

  Suzan managed to contain her irritation until Claire got back from a take-out run to the Denny’s Restaurant up the street. Nick had claimed the bed closest to the bathroom and collapsed on the floral bedspread after kicking off his shoes. He hadn’t even attempted to untie the laces and hadn’t asked for her help. Just as well since she was in no mood to cater to him at that particular moment.

  Claire divvied up the burgers, fries and Cokes. Nick chomped into his burger like he was afraid it was going to get away. Not an easy task one-handed. How could he have an appetite? Suzan bit into a French fry that tasted like a salted chopstick.

  “You had no right,” she said through clenched teeth, crushing the bag of fries.

  “I had no right to do what, sweetie?” asked Claire.

  “Not you, him. Nick had no right to keep those notebooks from me. As Sean’s widow they belong to me. He knew that and didn’t say a thing about having them until we got him into the car.”

  “What’s your problem?” Nick wiped a smear of catsup off his chin. “For that matter how do I know you are who say you are? You and your pal practically abducted me. I wouldn’t be here now except I wasn’t up to getting out of the convalescent center on my own.”

  “Abducted!” Suzan screeched. “I didn’t hear you putting up much of an argument. In fact you practically begged us to get you out.”

  “I’ll admit after seeing how beat up you were I started rethinking the accident and I got spooked. If some maniac was actually trying to kill me I would have been a sitting duck.”

  “Of course there’s someone trying to kill you, you idiot! You aren’t saying you’re having doubts about that, are you? After what happened to Sean, to you and me. And what about Kiki Zell and the guy who owned the deli?”

  “What are you talking about? Who’s Kiki? And what’s this about a deli owner?”

  “You emailed me about Zell,” said Claire. “But are you saying there’s some link between her death and what’s happening now? And who is this deli guy?”

  Damn! Of course they didn’t know. Suzan hadn’t had time to fill either of them in on what Marla had told her.

  After apologizing for the oversight, Suzan made short work of bringing them up to speed.

  “You believed Marla’s story?” asked Nick.

  “I’m not that brain damaged. I hit the internet at Linda’s. It wasn’t hard to find news reports on the murder of the deli owner. There was quite a controversy in the Central District, community leaders shouting racism in the investigation. Marla was right about that. She was also right that he was killed practically on the front porch of your house. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it from one of your housemates.”

  “None of them is the chatty type which suits me fine. I get along okay with Alexis but she doesn’t volunteer much either. All she told me about the prior occupant of my room was
that he had died. Nothing at all about another killing.”

  “Probably thought it might hurt her chances of renting the room,” said Claire.

  “She’d be right. I would have thought twice about moving in if I’d have known people were getting killed right and left there.”

  Nick’s bed, being used as a picnic blanket, was scattered with burger wrappers and empty catsup tubes as the three finished eating.

  “Why did you move in?” asked Suzan.

  “Why?”

  “Yes, why that place? Plenty of other rooms for rent all over town, I would think.”

  “I found it on Craig’s List, the price was right, not far from Seattle U,” he said. “It was going to be temporary while I looked around for something better.”

  She had a lot more questions. All she knew was that he grew up in Napa Valley. What was he doing in Seattle? But she would let it go for now; he was obviously wearing down.

  “One thing for sure,” he said, lying back against the pillows. “I have no doubt who messed up my Vespa. Has to be Ferlin.”

  “That creepy hippy?” said Suzan. “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he knows I have the notebooks, that’s why. Or he suspects that I do. I came home early a few weeks ago,” he said. “Nearly walked in on Ferlin searching my room. I watched from the doorway while he pulled up some boards in the closet floor and pulled out a packet of something.”

  “Loose floorboards has got to be the ultimate cliché,” said Claire.

  “That’s what I thought too but that’s the way it was,” he continued. “Before he could spot me I ducked back around the corner. At the time I didn’t think he saw me. Now I’m not so sure,” he said. “I figured whatever was in the packet didn’t belong to Ferlin. Drugs sprang to mind considering what I knew about the previous renter.”

  “How did you get them?”