Sitting at the bottom of her hill just before pulling into her driveway, I glanced at my watch for the last time as I drank the remaining solution. 1:35
P.M.
If I was going to eat or drink anything it would have to be by two to stay on the safe side. I looked in the rearview mirror, and sure enough, my teeth were a little dark. I uncapped the bottle of water, filled my mouth enough to swish it around, and spit. Better. I drove up the steep drive, got out of the car, and rang the doorbell.
“Look at your poor face!” she exclaimed when she opened the door. She put a comforting hand against the side of my face, and I fought against cringing away from her touch. Did she notice? I needed to get more convincing if I wanted to get Owen alone.
I remembered the quip I had made to Roger at the Pima Pistol Club about having a run-in with an air bag. I repeated it just to get into character, and started to feel like Brigid Quinn. “Do I smell coffee?” I asked, as I put my tote bag on the hall credenza as I always did, hoping the sag from the weight of my FBI special wouldn’t show, taking just a little extra care to put it down gently so the clunk of metal against wood wouldn’t give it away.
“You sure do. I’ll get some for you. Come on in the kitchen.”
“I can go say hello to Owen and join you in a minute.”
Her back had been turned to me as I followed her through the living room, but now she faced me as she continued moving backwards, as gracefully as a dancer would, into the kitchen. Maybe she did the Tango Tour after all. She said, “Owen’s fine, he’s not going anywhere. I want to hear about Gemma-Kate.”
“Is Annette with him?” I asked, trying to make it sound like idle curiosity.
“No, she’s out for a while. Birthday card for her daughter or something.”
Mallory turned back, and I followed her into the kitchen, where we had sat so many times before in chummy fashion at the table in the nook by the bay window that overlooked the back patio. I sat down where I could see the digital time on the microwave. 1:25, it said, ten minutes earlier than my watch in the car, which might have been, how much, four minutes ago? Longer? I made a decision and did a quick calculation that according to this clock I had until 1:50 before the activated charcoal might fail to work.
“Would you rather have wine?” Mallory asked. “I have a nice Cab blend I’ve been saving. Only got an eighty-five, but I’ve heard good things.”
I gave what I hoped was a convincingly regretful shake of my head, then watched Mallory pour us both coffee from the same pot and bring the cups over to the table without adding anything to mine. She could have always done it this way, knowing that a bit of prescription drug couldn’t hurt her if she took it in small doses. Now that I knew who, what, Mallory really was, every gesture, every affect about her struck me differently. For example, I considered for the first time how lately she sipped her coffee or wine so delicately, and often did not finish it. I thought it was about avoiding calories, but when we were friends she always finished the wine.
Mallory had introduced the topic of Gemma-Kate, and Gemma-Kate was an easy topic. Part of me hated myself for dissing her after what I had just found out, but I swore I’d make it up to her. So I laid it on thick.
Mallory shook her head back and forth three times, each shift marked by a “mm.” She took another deliberate sip of coffee, choosing her words in advance. If I didn’t know her now, I wouldn’t have noticed how careful she was. “So you think Gemma-Kate was slipping you antidepressants and that’s what caused all your symptoms? What about the Parkinson’s?”
“Well, not that, I guess. But the rest, the anxiety, insomnia, even hallucinations and fever.”
“But how did she get them? They’re prescription.”
“You can get anything shipped in from India.” The phone should be ringing about two minutes ago, I thought, steeling myself against letting my eyes shift to look at the clock on the microwave oven.
“How did you find this out?” Mallory asked, unable to keep from smiling, at what I couldn’t know.
“Find out…”
“That she ordered the drugs from India.” My thoughts did some tap dancing of their own. I started to say, “She used my credit card,” but I stopped, heart pounding with the near mistake. Mallory would know I couldn’t have found a charge for the drugs because she knew Gemma-Kate didn’t do it. Instead I said, “Where else?”
“I wonder how long it would take. Doesn’t seem like there would have been enough time,” Mallory said. Was she looking just a little more alert, even though her body was draped comfortably in the kitchen chair? Maybe I’d lost the knack for this, or maybe I’d never gone undercover with someone who knew me as well as Mallory did. I just knew I wanted the phone to ring before there were many more questions and I dug myself into a hole before I got what I came for.
“But not Carlo,” Mallory said, leaving the drug shipment question behind and going to another one. Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly as she studied me. Did she suspect me because I was accepting Gemma-Kate’s guilt so easily? Or was it because she had given me something that should have taken effect by this time? If so, why did she need something to happen now? It was never imperative in the past that I have an immediate reaction; better if it was delayed, after I was away from her for a while, so as not to create suspicion. Could she have found out what I had discovered? Could she read it on my face, that I wasn’t her best friend anymore? Maybe Mallory was hypersensitive to others’ liking or disliking her. Or was I suddenly reading meaning into a conversation, a look, that had always been there and meant nothing at all?
If only I could be certain whether something was supposed to be happening to me. I wanted again to look at the clock, but Mallory was fixing me so steadily in her gaze I didn’t dare. She’d know I was looking at the clock and ask why. She’d had the past six months to observe me to an extent I hadn’t matched, and she knew me that well.
“No, not Carlo,” I finally said. Come on, Plan B.
She must have run out of questions for the time being, or knew that much more probing might sound suspicious. “So what else have you been doing lately?” Mallory asked. “Anything interesting going on at church?”
“I don’t spend a lot of time there. I get uncomfortable around people who feel guilty because they want to use their organs for a while before they donate them.”
Mallory laughed to hear me joke again the way I always did, and then switched to serious. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her face bland but her eyes like sparks.
All I could think of was my conversation with Sig Weiss and how we weren’t talking about Gemma-Kate at all, like I had thought at the time. The superficial charm, the overriding motivation to satisfy your every desire, the chameleon-like behavior that comes from years of observing normal people … Sig and I had been talking about Mallory. “Nothing,” I said.
“Yes there is. Remember when we were having that little bonding moment out by the pool and you asked whether we had to watch
Beaches
together? You always make jokes when you’re uncomfortable. Or nervous. What’s making you nervous, sweetie? Is it really Gemma-Kate or is it something else? Come on, I already know.”
The nerve in my neck that comes as a warning of danger sparked. “What do you know?”
She stared at me for a couple beats before she said, “That plain coffee just isn’t the thing for right now. Hold on a minute.” She got up and went into the living room, out of my sight. I took the opportunity to glance at the clock. 1:45. Five more minutes and I wouldn’t be able to count on that stuff working. That was, five more minutes if I had calculated right to begin with.
Mallory came back to the table gaily rubbing the dust off a bottle of Talisker. “There’s some would say using a twenty-five-year-old whisky for Irish coffee is a sacrilege. But I say liquor is made for man, not man for liquor.”
“I shouldn’t. I promised Carlo I wouldn’t drink in the middle of the day.”
“You made that promise before the bad seed moved in with you. It doesn’t count.” Mallory twisted out the cork from the bottle. The seal had already been broken before she came into the room. She poured a generous amount into my mug, and a somewhat less generous amount into her own. I wondered if the same stuff in the coffee was in the whisky. Or maybe she knew alcohol would increase the effect of whatever she had given me. I sipped the mixture. So did she, so I didn’t think it contained anything more toxic than what she had put in the coffee. I have to admit even at that moment I thought it was good and hoped the charcoal was still working, if it ever had.
Mallory’s cell phone rang with the melody of “Some Enchanted Evening.” She glanced over to where it sat in its little charging station. “I’ll let it go to voice.”
Da da DA da da da …
“Good Lord, no. Could be a Humane Society emergency or a Symphony Guild catastrophe. Besides, I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, and just in case I needed to show some effect, “I’m still not feeling too well.”
Da da da da da DA
She stopped me from getting up. “You haven’t mentioned how you’ve been feeling lately. You know”—she paused, trying to appear sensitive—“those other symptoms you were having. Did you make that appointment with the neurologist like Tim told you to do?”
The phone stopped ringing; she must have waited too long to answer it, and it went to voice mail.
“I’ll be back,” I said, recognizing I couldn’t suddenly not have to pee or whatever it was I was hinting at. I, too, had to work a little harder at being myself. “And then I want you to remind me to rake you over the coals for telling Carlo what I told you the other day. I asked you not to.”
Mallory looked appropriately contrite. It was only now occurring to me how talented she was at behaving like a human being.
Da da DA da da …
I pointed toward the phone as I got up. “Sounds important.”
While Mallory went to answer the phone I walked out of the kitchen, making sure the angle of the walls was such that she wouldn’t catch me going into the master bedroom instead of in the other direction to the guest bathroom. On the way I grabbed my tote off the hall credenza. I could hear her talking to someone, Gemma-Kate preferably, but anyone would do. Mallory said, “No, I didn’t know I had an appointment with the conductor. For a photo shoot?… When did you say it was?… I’m so sorry. Does he want to reschedule?”
Yup, that would be Gemma-Kate. Plan B. She was good enough, and Mallory was egotistical enough about having her picture in the paper, that they could be on the phone for a while. If this wasn’t such a deadly game I was playing I would have chuckled.
I don’t know what I would have done if Owen was asleep. I wonder if he ever was. He was watching the door when I came through it. It also struck me for the first time that he always kept his eyes on the door. I wondered briefly if he lived his whole life in fear, wondering when Mallory was going to finish the job. It was as if I was seeing everything for the first time in a different light. But think of that later.
I put my tote bag on the side of the bed, reached in for the weapon I’d brought with me, and pulled it free. I pushed both the tote and the gun just under the bed, easy for access but unable to be seen by anyone entering the room.
I leaned over the bed, glancing at the heart monitor to see his pulse rise slightly at the sight of me. I said a quick prayer to Who Knows that my questions wouldn’t send him into one of those episodes where he bucked his vent. “I’m sorry I don’t have time to prepare you for this, Owen, but I’m in a hurry and need to know quick. Did Mallory do this to you?”
Owen’s eyes widened until I could see all the terror that had been stored in his soul while he had been kept a captive here, held down by nothing but his own body and these silken sheets. That terror poured out from his eyes, but it didn’t look like there was any less inside him. His answer wasn’t necessary, but I still watched for the blink. He hesitated. Then blinked once.
No.
“Come on, Owen, this may be your only chance. Don’t be scared. She can’t hurt you anymore.”
One. Two.
Yes.
I could still hear Mallory talking to Gemma-Kate across the house. I said, “Did Joe find out? Joe Neilsen.”
Owen started to blink erratically, and I thought he might be having a seizure. But it didn’t take long before I picked up a pattern as his eyelids fluttered, squeezed shut, and fluttered again. Short short short long long long short short short. For anyone who’s ever been in trouble it was simple.
SOS.
“Fuck,” the word formed silently between my lips, not daring to so much as allow that
k
to click in my throat.
Then his blood pressure monitor started to beep loudly. Other than that, I noticed for the first time, there was silence in the house. Still hoping I had retained my cover, I didn’t let on that I was aware of Owen’s warning, and said, “Would you like me to read a little to you, Owen?”
“Owen’s right, Joe didn’t know,” I heard Mallory say behind me. “Or at least didn’t know what he was seeing when he came over too soon and caught me putting No Salt in Owen’s feeding tube.” I heard her suck air between her teeth the way she did when she was testing a new wine, as if saying the words out loud tasted good in her mouth. My left hand went down for the gun I had placed underneath the bed but within reach.
“Uh-uh,” Mallory said. “I noticed your tote bag wasn’t on the credenza where you left it.”
I stopped and turned around to see her with a .32 in her hand instead of her cell phone. It looked quite natural, like she knew how to use it. A little nervous movement around the muzzle, not quite cold-blooded, but steady enough to shoot straight, and a large enough caliber to do sufficient damage at this range.
“I thought you hated guns,” I said, stupidly.
Her words were stone cold but her lips twitched nervously. “You must have me confused with a different Mallory Hollinger,” she said.
“So you figured it out,” Mallory said.