Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 01 - Scorpion House (17 page)

“I’ll bet you a thousand dollars. Bet?” Graham said.

Lanier snorted. “I’m with Paul.”

“A lethal dose of nicotine is point-five to one-point-oh milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Susan weighs about forty kilos, so it would take twenty to forty milligrams to kill her. Maybe ten to make her seriously sick. A cigarette delivers one or two milligrams, and a twenty-one milligram patch delivers about one milligram per hour. So even if she chain-smoked two while wearing the strongest patch on the market, she’d still have only about three, maybe four, in her bloodstream. Not enough to produce the reaction we just saw.”

Horace Lanier grabbed the arm of a chair and sat down heavily. “What if she forgot she already had a patch on? Say, she put it on her back and forgot it was there, then smoked a couple of cigarettes, remembered she had a date, and slapped on another patch?”

“That’s possible, I suppose, but it still wouldn’t be enough,” Graham said. “Did you see two patches on her?”

“No, just the one on her arm. But I didn’t look at her back.”

Paul cut in. “I heard about a case where someone had poked a hole in a nicotine patch, so the victim got the whole dose at once.”

“Possible, I suppose.” Graham lapsed into a moment of silence. “I don’t think even that would do it. But I’m not certain.”

“We need to call the hospital and make sure they don’t throw that patch away.” Paul said. He put his fingers to his temples as if he was struggling to stay focused. “Listen up. Does anyone but me think we’ve had too many crises too close together to chalk them up to coincidence?”

“You mean first Joel, and now Susan?” Lanier tilted his head, looked at Paul.

“I mean Joel and Susan and the scorpion in Lacy’s bed and then the ceiling collapsing on her.”

“Are you suggesting these things are all connected?” Graham wheeled around, his voice crackling with alarm.

“I’m suggesting we should think about it.”

* * *

Horace Lanier called the hospital and told them to save any nicotine patch or patches they might find on Susan. The nurse who took his call hung up and called out, in Arabic, “The American woman. Donohue. If you find any patches on her, do not remove them.”

* * *

Lacy needed something wet to take care of the gin-induced cottonmouth setting in after she normally would have been asleep. She slipped past the west hall door and saw a light coming from what she thought was Roxanne’s room. Since Roxanne was still at the hospital with Susan and probably would be until dawn, she would want someone to turn off her light for her, Lacy decided. She knocked first, in case Roxanne had returned without being noticed and thought she heard a soft answer but she couldn’t be sure. She cracked the door open and peeked in.

She was wrong. This wasn’t Roxanne’s room. Kathleen Hassan, kneeling at a sort of altar or shrine along one wall, turned slowly, languidly, toward her intruder. She didn’t appear to be alarmed at the intrusion. A half-dozen candles burned on the altar or whatever it was. Kathleen, her hands folded and resting on its surface, looked at her but said nothing.

“Excuse me,” Lacy whispered and closed the door.

* * *

Paul went to the roof with one of his yo-yos and found Lacy already there, huddled against the dome on the eastern end, her arms wrapped around her knees. The floodlights at the temple were out now, bringing forth stars by the thousands. He sat down beside her.

Lacy spoke first. “So you think all this bad luck is connected?”

“Just a thought.” He pulled the yo-yo from his shorts pocket and slid the string loop around one finger. “What do you think?”

“We can scratch one item off. My accident in the burial chamber was just that—an accident. I knew better than to go in there. I knew it wasn’t safe but I saw something that looked like a bone and I didn’t stop to think. My head hit a ceiling beam that wasn’t very well supported and
crash
. It came down on my head. It was simply my fault. Nothing mysterious about it.”

“Okay, three things. Let’s deal with those.” Paul turned the yo-yo, rubbing it between his palms. His wire-rimmed glasses slid to the end of his nose. “The scorpion in your room. How did it get there? Did it walk in or was it put there?”

“I have a hard time believing it walked in.”

“Me too. So somebody probably put it there.”

“But who’d want to hurt me? I have no beefs with anyone here.” She thought of Shelley Clark who would certainly take exception to the scene between her husband and Lacy in the burial chamber, but the scorpion incident was long before that. “Don’t forget that my room had been Susan’s room until an hour or so before we went to bed and no one but Susan and I knew we’d switched rooms. Susan must have been the target. The scorpion wasn’t wandering around the room. It wasn’t hiding under the dresser. It was between the sheets.”

“And tonight, again, Susan is the victim.”

“So who’d want to hurt Susan?”

“Are you kidding me? How about everybody?” Paul jumped up turned to face her. “Horace Lanier can’t stand her. He had a fit when he heard she was coming back again this year. And Roxanne! You heard her tonight. She was mad enough to strangle her. And the other night after the meeting with the locals, she was fit to be tied. Remember, Lacy, Roxanne
lives
here. This is her life. If Susan gets us thrown out, Roxanne is hurt more than anyone else.”

“Kathleen is still mad about Susan stealing the linen from her room, although it was Kathleen’s own fault it got scorched on the stove.” Paul hadn’t heard about that scene, so Lacy explained. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but Kathleen seems like your resident nut case.”

“No, Bay’s the nut case.”

Lacy laughed, lowered her head to her knees. “A little while ago … maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this … I went into her room and found her kneeling at some sort of altar or shrine or something. Candles burning all over the place. What was that about?”

“Don’t know. But Kathleen is a weird one. If she has any religious beliefs, I’ve never heard her say anything about them.”

“There was that argument between Graham and Susan about Horace taking over Joel’s job identifying the plant species. Remember?”

Paul backed up and sat on the roof of the retaining wall. He dropped his yo-yo, spinning, over the side a couple of times and then said, “Oh right. I remember. What was it he called her? A cartwheeling something?”

“I don’t know.” Actually, Lacy did recall the c word, but preferred not to go there. “What about Shelley?”

“Aha! Poor little scared rabbit, Shelley. Let’s see, now. Susan opposed her joining the group to begin with. Susan argued with her darling husband. Shelley gets jealous when a woman even looks at Graham. Maybe Susan looked.”

Then she’ll for sure be out to get me
, Lacy thought. “We haven’t talked about Joel Friedman yet. Who killed him?”

Paul’s hand froze and the yo-yo dropped and rose on its string in ever-diminishing transits. “Who killed him? What do you mean?”

“I haven’t told anyone before, and you’ll probably laugh, but I found a smear of Lanier’s special unguent on Joel’s bed sheet in a spot where it couldn’t have been unless it was wrapped around him. And I saw a blob of that unguent on Joel’s arm that night.” Lacy went on to explain the whole thing to Paul.

Paul didn’t laugh. He walked over to where she was sitting and ran his hand over the top of her head. “Who would have wanted to kill Joel Friedman?”

“Not a living soul, as far as I know.”

* * *

Dave Chovan sat beside Susan’s bed as dawn was breaking. She had been pronounced dead more than an hour ago, after a frantic night in which the entire emergency staff had done everything in their power to bring her back. At this point, her body was completely naked, and he pulled the sheet up to her shoulders. Somehow it seemed important to preserve her modesty even though, as a doctor, he paid no attention to such things. But this was the woman he had intended to take to dinner at the Old Winter Palace tonight. The woman who had charmed him with her big eyes and cheeky attitude. That woman deserved a bit of privacy.

A nicotine patch still clung to her right arm, up near her shoulder. He’d noticed it earlier and was surprised no one had removed it. He pulled it off, examined the sticky side, folded it in half, and dropped it in the medical waste container.

Roxanne Breen appeared in the doorway. “I can take a ferry back, Dave. You don’t need to drive me.”

“I want to drive you. Give me a few minutes to check and see if there’s anything else …” He started to pull the sheet over Susan’s face, but stopped. “What the
hell
?”

“What is it?” Roxanne approached the bed.

“What the hell is this?” He lowered the sheet, raised Susan’s right arm. The armpit was a bright, angry red. He lifted the left arm. It looked the same. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life!”

“Is it a rash?”

“I don’t know, but I’m definitely going to find out.”

L
acy awoke to breakfast smells and wondered if Bay knew anything about the events of last night. She listened for sounds from her end of the building, heard nothing, and got up. Graham’s, Shelley’s, Lanier’s, and Susan’s doors were all closed. Only Paul’s door was open. She was certain Susan couldn’t have returned from the hospital last night. Even if they had revived and stabilized her, they’d surely keep her a few days. But she had to check.

Opening Susan’s door, gently, she peeked in. The room, as she expected, was exactly as they had left it last night. The luggage tag Dave had used as a tongue depressor still lay on the floor. Her gaze swung around to the built-in bench and stopped on the dyed linen swatches she had left there yesterday. She would need them today. But Graham said nothing should be touched because this might be a crime scene and it should be left exactly as it was.

But that wouldn’t apply to her linen swatches, would it? It wouldn’t matter if she took those back. She picked up the swatches, then found another one, a stray, on the floor. She grabbed it, shook it out. Did a double take.

It looked as if it had been tie-dyed, with purple streaks on a tomato-red background. Nothing she had given Susan yesterday looked like this. By process of elimination, she determined this was the sample from the acidified cochineal solution, but when she’d given it to Susan it had been a uniform tomato red. Where had this purple come from? It was in haphazard streaks, as if someone had swiped the cloth across … what? The color of cochineal, she recalled, was pH dependent and it turned purple in a base. Someone had rubbed this swatch against something alkaline, but what?

As she was closing Susan’s door Shelley Clark ran past, one hand over her mouth. Graham stepped out from the door adjacent to Shelley’s, yawning and scratching his stomach. “What’s up with Shelley? Is she barfing again?” he mumbled, then yawned again.

* * *

“This is very difficult for me, but I must tell you. Susan died last night. She was pronounced dead about four this morning.” Roxanne had called them together and they all sat around the computer table in the antika room.

Bay, who had overheard the talk around the sparsely populated breakfast table, threw her knotty hands in the air and called out in a shivery voice, “Selket! I told you someone was going to die. Now, two people are dead! Selket will have her way!”

“Who?” Shelley asked.

“The scorpion goddess,” Roxanne muttered. “Pay no attention.” She cleared her throat and went on. “Do any of you know Susan’s family? We were fortunate that Lacy took care of notifying Joel’s wife, but unless one of you knows Susan’s parents—I know her parents are still alive. I’ve heard her mention them—the job will fall to me.”

No one said anything.

Roxanne heaved a sigh. “All right. I’ll do it. Now. There will be an autopsy to determine what happened. We still don’t know. Dr. Chovan—Dave—will call us as soon as he has anything to report. For now, he asks that we leave Susan’s room as we left it last night.”

“Why?” Kathleen barked.

“I don’t know. I’m just telling you what he told me. Oh, one more thing. Did any of you notice a rash on Susan’s arms, in the area around her …” Roxanne doubled her arms up, chicken-style. “Under her arms?”

Everyone at the table looked confused.

Paul said, “The last we saw of her she was wearing nothing but a bra above her waist. I was very close when I was giving her CPR. If she’d had a rash under her arms I think I’d have noticed.” He glanced around the table.

Shelley Clark looked as if she’d been punched by Mike Tyson.

* * *

Lacy fooled around in the lab for a while but couldn’t concentrate. Graham sat at the bench on the opposite side of the room, writing notes in a composition book. A couple of times, Lacy glanced up and caught Graham looking at her, but neither of them said a word. At length, she walked out, found Paul in the antika room, and asked him if he’d take a walk with her. Both went to their own rooms for hats.

Roxanne stood at Susan’s door, fumbling with a double handful of keys. “Oh dear. Dave told me to lock this room, but we so seldom lock anything inside, I haven’t the vaguest idea which key goes to which lock.”

* * *

Lacy and Paul headed north down the drive, both with their fists jammed awkwardly in their shorts pockets. The soreness in her chest was lessening, her brush with disaster in the tomb now reduced to a large bruise on her shoulder and several long but healing scrapes. At the bottom of the hill the driveway ran into the road leading left to Hatshepsut’s Temple and right toward the house Howard Carter lived in when he was exploring King Tut’s tomb. They turned right.

“Do you know anything about Susan’s family?” he asked.

“Not a thing. You?”

“I did talk to her a few times when she was here last winter. I was staying in Saqqara then, but coming here fairly often to use the library at Chicago House. It’s a strange family. Susan told me her parents didn’t like her. They never had. She said she has an older sister who is pretty and musically talented. She plays piano and sings. And let’s face it, Susan was never a knock-out. Not particularly feminine, either.”