Lanyon, Josh - Adrien English 04 - Death of a Pirate King (18 page)

Or so that Jake would see me?

Either way it was puzzling. Maybe I wasn’t exactly clear for
whose benefit that little performance had been staged, but I was dead sure it
hadn’t been an accident. That meeting had been directed as any scene in a play.

Why?

Chapter Fifteen

I knew the minute I was ushered into Dr. Cardigan’s office on
Monday morning that the news was not good.

Dr. Cardigan was seated at his desk frowning over a file that
I had a suspicion was mine. He rose, shook hands, invited me to sit. I sat and
glanced at the many smiling photos of his children and grandchildren on the
bookshelves lined with medical tomes.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, sitting down again.

His black cherry gaze rested seriously on my face, and I
figured this was not a rhetorical question. “Good,” I said determinedly.

He nodded like everybody said that and we all knew it wasn’t
true. “Fatigue? Some difficulty catching your breath?”

“Fatigue -- but nothing unusual.”

“Are you finding your arrhythmia a little worse?”

I think he could see by my expression that struck home.
“Well, we’ve got your test results back and there are some things we need to
talk about.”

I nodded automatically.

“I don’t think this is going to come as a surprise.” He was
studying my charts again. “You’ve been largely asymptomatic for the past
fifteen years, but your last ECG indicates changes in ejection fraction and
enlargement of the left ventricle.” He looked up inquiringly. Apparently I was
supposed to ask an intelligent question around about then.

I said, “Okay. In layman’s terms?”

“The pneumonia has aggravated your heart disease. Your heart
is working harder with fewer results.”

I nodded, trying to process.

He looked up, scanned my face. “We’ve discussed surgery in
the past. It’s now a matter of when, not if. I’m going to refer you to a
cardiac surgeon --”

I missed a bit of the next part. Open heart surgery. Not my
favorite thing.

I asked, “How soon would he have to operate?”

“Your surgeon will make the determination once he’s examined
you. Once symptoms present, it’s best not to delay.”

I sighed. Rubbed my jaw. I felt broadsided. I guess I should
have seen it coming, but I really didn’t feel that ill. Tired from the
pneumonia, naturally. Stressed.

Dr. Cardigan said, “We want to perform surgery before the
left ventricle is irreversibly weakened. Repairing the valve is preferable to
replacing it, but that’s often not possible when the damage has been caused by
rheumatic fever.”

I nodded. I’d done a fair bit of reading on valve replacement
the first time the subject came up. Repairing the valve not only increased my
odds of both short- and long-term survival but lessened the risk of stroke and
worsening my heart failure.

Studying my face, Dr. Cardigan said, “I know this isn’t the
news you wanted, but it is not, by any means, a grim prognosis. It’s not a
routine procedure, I’ll grant you, but there are over a hundred thousand heart
valve surgeries performed annually in the United States alone. Most patients
experience marked improvement in health and spirits.”

“Great,” I said.

“The recuperation process is a slow one, but there’s every
likelihood that you’ll make a complete recovery. Your overall health is good.
In fact, with surgery you may discover you no longer suffer from the arrhythmia
at all.”

So, really, everything was fucking terrific! Why did I have
the ridiculous desire to cry?

* * * * *

“See! He likes you,” Natalie said triumphantly.

I stared down at the scrawny scrap of fur cautiously sniffing
my hand.

“He doesn’t like me. He thinks I’m going to feed him.”

“Now who’s being a cynic? Anyway, every bookstore should have
a cat.”

The cat -- assuming it was a cat and not some beige bug-eyed
refugee from outer space -- slunk uneasily down the counter, and flinched at
the flutter of
Mystery Scene
pages as
a gust of warm air blew in from the street.

It was Monday afternoon, and I was not in a great mood after
my trip to Huntington Hospital. After leaving the med center, I’d stopped off
for some lunch I wasn’t able to eat, then spent an hour or two wandering around
the Paseo. I’d stopped in at Apostrophe Books and bought a copy of Paul Kane’s
unauthorized biography, and then finally steeled myself to go home.

The sight of a flea-bitten alley cat -- okay, alley kitten --
on the antique mahogany desk that served as my sales counter did not improve my
precarious mood.

“Nat,” I said, “I don’t want a cat.”

“But he’d be good for you, Adrien. There are all kinds of
studies about how pets help people live longer -- just petting a cat can lower
your blood pressure. And he would be company for you.”

“My blood pressure is okay,” I snapped. “At least it was five
minutes ago. And I don’t want a
cat
for company.”

The cat cringed at my raised voice, and slither-ran down the
counter, sending papers flying before he leaped to the back of a nearby chair
and balanced there, sinking his little claws into the leather.

“Now you’ve scared him!” she exclaimed, scurrying to retrieve
the scattered flyers and receipts. “He’s just a baby!”

“A baby
wha
t
? He looks like a cross between a
lemur and Gollum.”

“He’s starving.”

“Then feed him and put him back in the alley where you found
him.”

“I didn’t find him,” she said indignantly. “He came in on his
own.” She gave me an expectant look. Like, what? This was supposed to be the
universal sign that I and this feral cat were Meant To Be?

“He’s filthy,” I said, and to prove my point, the little
beast balanced on three legs and proceeded to scratch itself briskly behind its
torn ear with the fourth. “He’s got fleas. He’s probably disease-ridden.”

“You sound like Lisa,” Natalie said, quite unforgivably.

I gave her a long look. “I do not want this cat,” I said.
“No, Nat. Not in a hat. Not in my flat. Not in the store, not any more, just
out the door -- if you please.”

I thought that was pretty good for off-the-cuff, but she was
unimpressed. “He’ll die out there!”

“Or you’ll die in here. Take your pick.” At her expression, I
sighed. “Honest to God, Natalie. I don’t -- I can’t take on the responsibility
for a pet right now. And if I was in the market for a pet, it would be a dog.”

A big dog. That ate cats for lunch.

Apparently Natalie’s case of selective deafness had grown
worse while I’d been out. As though I hadn’t said a word, she said, “And I’ll
watch him during the day while you’re working this case.”

“I’m not --” I amended, “I don’t know that I’m going to do
any more sleuthing. It’s taking up a lot of time I don’t have.” I hoped that
wasn’t as portentous as it sounded.

Even before Dr. Cardigan had advised me to take things easy
for the next week or so before my surgery, I’d decided that it wouldn’t be a
good idea for me to keep poking around in Porter Jones’s death. Not because it
was dangerous -- it hadn’t been so far -- and certainly not because of Jake.
No, it was after leaving Paul Kane’s boat the evening before. It bothered me
the way Kane had manipulated me -- and Jake -- for his own amusement. At least,
I couldn’t see any other reason for his behavior the evening before. And it
made me uneasy. I already didn’t like him, and now I didn’t trust him.

True, that left me squarely in Detective Alonzo’s sights as a
murder suspect, but it sounded to me like Jake was guiding the investigation
toward Ally Beaton-Jones.

Natalie was eyeing me curiously. I said lamely, “Besides, Guy
is allergic to cats.”

She didn’t say it, but I could see what she was thinking:
that Guy -- at least as far as she knew -- hadn’t been around since last
Thursday. Hadn’t even called.

I missed Guy. I missed him a lot right now.

“Feed him a can of tuna and put him outside,” I said. “He’s
an alley cat. He’ll survive.”

“He might not! He’s just a few months old!” She was getting
angry now, and -- oddly enough -- I was getting angry too.

“Then
you
take him
home.”

“You know Lisa won’t allow animals in the house.”

What the hell was a healthy, twenty-something-year-old woman
doing living with her parents anyway?

“Then call the pound. I don’t care. It’s not my cat, and this
is not my problem.”

She stared at me like I’d morphed into something that
belonged in a Playstation. Even the cat seemed to be staring at me with those
E.T. eyes.

I tried to bring it down a notch. “Natalie,” I said
placatingly, “Have a heart. I can’t deal with this right now. You can understand
that, can’t you?”

She was still not speaking to me when I left to take Emma to
her riding lessons.

* * * * *

While I was watching Emma go through her paces, Jake called
and left a message on my cell phone. I didn’t discover it until I was back at
the bookstore.

His recorded voice sounded terse and self-conscious.

“It’s possible you’re onto something with Nina Hawthorne. It
turns out she was at Paul’s the morning of the party. There’s still no
indication of how she might have introduced poison into the cocktail mixture,
but it might be worth talking to her.”

Why tell me? He was the police. It was his job to check this
stuff out. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was using this development with
Nina as an excuse for contacting me. Was he -- like Paul -- worried I might
pull out of the investigation? He didn’t agree with any of my theories so far,
so why the hell would he care? Wouldn’t it be easier, really?

Or was I the only one struggling with old feelings?

I listened to the message again, started to dial Jake, and
then stopped myself. There was nothing to discuss. Not really. If I called him
it would be because I wanted to talk to him, and that way lay madness.

I opened a can of Wolfgang Puck’s tortilla soup and made
myself eat it, browsing through a stack of books that had arrived that morning
from publishers. I’d been looking forward to Richard Stevenson’s new one for
months. There were enticing offerings from favorites P.A. Brown, Neil Plakcy,
and Anthony Bidulka -- and a promising first book by new author Scott Sherman
(although if I had to read one more mystery about a hustler turning detective,
I was going to shoot myself). I flipped pages and listened absently to the
sounds of the street settling down for the evening outside my window.

Rising, I went to turn on the stereo and listened to the
opening notes of Snow Patrol’s “You’re All I Have” from
Eyes Open
.

I tried not to think. I especially tried not to think about
Guy.

I could call him, of course. If I called him and said I was
ill and needed him, he’d be here in a minute.

But that would be the wrong reason to call. And the wrong
reason for him to come back.

I remembered that I had bought Paul Kane’s unauthorized
biography, and I went downstairs to retrieve it. For a moment I stood in the
silent gloom of the store, staring through the plastic dividing wall.

Nothing to see but ladders and scaffolding. A couple of drop
cloths. A generator sat to one side beside a pile of broken plaster. There were
coils of wire, cans of paint. Nothing sinister lurked there. I was just getting
jumpy in my old age.

I retrieved my book and returned upstairs.

The book was called
Glorious
Thing
, a nod to Paul Kane’s role as the pirate king in the fantasy flick
The Last Corsair
. This was the film that
had made Paul Kane a star -- maybe a minor star as Hollywood galaxies went, but
a star nonetheless. I’d seen the film a couple of times, and I had very much
appreciated Kane’s acting -- along with other things. Well, what was there to
object to in watching a beautiful male animal run around half-naked for two and
a half hours? Even if the dialogue did consist of creaking lines like, “I swear
by all that is holy, I will have my revenge!” and “What kind of demon are you?”
(That last was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but had anyone asked me,
I’d have been happy to explain that there was, in fact, a fairly complex demon
hierarchy.)

I wasn’t far into the book before I sussed that the author,
Bonnie Kirkland, was not a member of Paul Kane’s fan club. It was hard to put
my finger on what it was. For the most part she seemed to be sticking to facts
-- everything seemed properly attributed and footnoted. And, if anything,
Kane’s background was one that should have generated sympathy. Born Humphrey
Horfield in Bristol, England, he was orphaned at an early age and placed in
institutional care. He ran away when he was fifteen to become an actor. He
changed his name and supported himself as a rent boy on the streets of London.
Talent, his extraordinary good looks, and luck won him a number of small roles
in theater productions, but his big break came in 1980 when he won something
called the SWET Award for Best Newcomer for his role as Phineas in
A Separate Peace
.

He played the role again in a film version, and then moved to
the States where he landed a number of increasingly large parts in movies --
some bad, some good, but all seeming to move his career forward. But the most
significant thing during that period was the friendship he formed with wealthy
entrepreneur Langley Hawthorne, who had recently put together his own film
production company, Associated Talent.

Hawthorne thought Kane was going to be this generation’s Cary
Grant, and he had invested considerably in him. But it was more than a business
investment. Hawthorne had befriended Kane -- practically made him one of the
family. Without actually saying so, Bonnie Kirkland managed to convey that she
thought this was a mistake on Hawthorne’s part, and that Kane was a charming
and manipulative user.