Chapter 18
Ben was efficient, sharp as a tack, and freaked out.
He said he was fine but I could tell he wasn’t as copacetic as he pretended.
Pacing at the foot of my hospital bed, he made calls and sent texts so quickly I was pretty sure I was hallucinating until the nurse told me they’d cut off my supply of the good stuff hours before.
She shooed him out of the room when she couldn’t get a good blood pressure read for me, only letting him back in once my vitals were checked and I did one of the breathing tube thingies to show I wasn’t being stoic about my ability to breathe after inhaling smoke.
“Contractors are coming out this afternoon to assess the damage,” he said tersely. “They can’t do anything until the entire place is signed off by the arson team but Heath said that shouldn’t take long. It’s fairly cut and dry, given the confession and your own witness statement.”
“Well. Silver lining.”
He shot me a quick, sour glare. “I need to go out and meet them in about an hour.”
“I’ll be fine. Not like I can go anywhere—between you and Heath, you’ve got the staff here keeping me on lockdown.”
“Because I know you’ll try to get up and leave, or ask to use the phone or borrow someone’s laptop and—”
“And,” I said, stifling another yawn. My millionth of the day.
“I’m not in any shape to do anything. I’m getting surgery in the morning,” I added, pointing to my broken arm, in need of a plate now thanks to Gwendolyn’s tender mercies.
“And someone took my clothes. As laissez-faire as I am about nudity sometimes, walking bare-butt down the streets of Malm’s Corner isn’t exactly high on my list of good times to be had. Especially in this weather.”
Ben huffed and I thought I saw the barest crinkle of a smile in the corner of his eyes.
“Muffin is inconsolable, you know. He’ll be glad to see you at home.
That reminds me—I need to have the contractors look at that pocket door, too.
Strong enough to withstand a Cane Corso onslaught but not strong enough to prevent Tony’s claw marks. ”
“Poor puppies,” I crooned, a little mush-brained even without the drugs. Exhaustion, headache, and lingering narcotic effects, I supposed, were making me emotional. “What about Charlemagne?”
“Everyone’s at home. I’ve just had to close off the affected rooms for the time being.
They’re crime scenes.” He eyed me carefully, taking a few shuffling steps closer until he could gently put his hand on my arm.
Unlike Heath’s solid, sure touch just a few hours earlier, Ben’s was butterfly-light, delicate really.
Like he was afraid I’d shatter. “I’m glad you’re okay.
As okay as possible,” he corrected. “Heath told me Gwendolyn had been planning to make it look like an electrical fire but decided to use the lighters and papers after having doubts. She had some tools in her bag...” He shook his head, fingers fluttering against my wrist. “She probably wouldn’t have been able to engineer the catastrophic blaze she’d been dreaming of, but I don’t want to think about the what if. ”
“She was the one who pushed me into the water,” I said. “She tried to kill me then, too.”
“She admitted to that as well. She’d gone to the boat to look for any other evidence, anything that might have indicated Pamela was there. She couldn’t get on it—they’d moored it too far from the jetty for her to even try. But when she saw you, she thought you recognized her.”
Ben’s phone chimed with an incoming text and he glanced at it, lips firming into what I privately called his Professionally Annoyed expression. “The contractors are early. I need...”
“Go on, I’ll be fine.” I moved my arm away reluctantly, grabbing the huge remote attached to the bed and clicking the television on.
“I’ll just entertain myself with a zillion episodes of Friends.
I think one of Max’s movies might be on.
Maybe I’ll film a little update for my socials while I critique it. Oh... crap. My phone!”
Ben chuckled, giving my wrist a firmer squeeze this time. “We’ll get that sorted, too.”
***
BEING IN THE HOSPITAL is a lot of hurry up and wait.
And a lot—a lot—of boredom. My phone was technically evidence for now so I was at a loose end until it got released.
Ben was gone for hours, and Heath had to work—the audacity!
Sienna and Carmel showed up around three in the afternoon to make sure I wasn’t dead, which was sweet of them and also relieved a bit of the crushing ennui.
“They tossed the room looking for anything Tubbs had on Pamela Sommers,” Carmel confided in a hushed tone. “Just tore it up!”
“We’re suing his estate and those ladies for damages,” Sienna added, grim satisfaction in her tone. “I already asked our lawyer and she’s drawing up papers today.”
“Oh, before I forget!” Carmel pulled a pretty paper box out of her shoulder bag. “I know it’s your favorite and thought maybe you could do with something nice right now.”
I peeked under the lid and barely restrained my happy wiggle. “You made me baklava? I love you, Carmel, and were I a woman, I’d woo you beseechingly.”
“Good lord,” Sienna muttered under her sister’s peals of laughter, “that head injury was worse than Heath said.”
Clarence came by as the sisters were leaving, eyes wide and cheeks flagged with pink. “Oh my god,” he gasped as he hurried to my bedside. “Everyone in town is talking about you!”
“Again,” I sighed.
“Is it true you fought off an armed intruder with a knife? Marcy Simon—she lives across the street from Witte House, do you know her?—well, she saw them taking a bloody lady out earlier today and she said it looked like she’d been sliced up with a butcher knife!”
“Oh my god,” I echoed. “No. She was attacked by the cat.”
“You have an attack cat?”
“I seem to have acquired one, yes.”
The trickle of visitors was steady after that.
Belinda and her mother popped in before Clarence left, the three of them hustling out together when a nurse came in to check my vitals again.
Cherry stopped by to make sure I, in her words, wasn’t worse than everyone thought.
She grimaced as her kid did somersaults against her ribs.
“I’ll be glad when he’s out,” she’d admitted.
“He’s either going into gymnastics or cage fighting.
Either way I’ll be glad when he’s not doing it inside. ”
“Hey, um, I have a question about... everything,” I said when she perched on the edge of my bed, the chairs not accommodating to someone nearly full term with a huge baby.
“If your folks didn’t explain how this happened,” she patted her belly, “I’m not gonna be the one to spoil the surprise.”
“Ha. No. I mean everything.”
She held up a hand before I could continue. “I don’t know much about it, Damien. Anything to do with Beth Ellison is going to happen in LA. And anything to do with you... Well, you’ll know before I do.”
“Ugh.”
“Pretty much.”
“What about my pap stalker? Are you guys going to take that seriously or what?”
Anmorata’s snarky comment about Paul Santos haunted me. I didn’t want to consider he might know who was doing it but it was a duck situation. It looked and quacked and smelled like one.
“There’s only so much we can do, Damien. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth of it. You’re better off getting a PI and seeing if they can track down whose doing it, then send a cease and desist.” She shrugged, struggling to her feet with a wince. “At least that’s what I’d do.”
I nodded, letting her change the subject for a few minutes until she had to go meet her boyfriend downstairs. “It’s our anniversary,” she said with a small smile. “I’m hoping my present isn’t baby stuff. I’m gonna be so pissed if it’s more onesies.”
I chuckled softly, closing my eyes as she shut the door behind her.
I wasn’t sure how long I drifted, just long enough for them to bring a dinner tray with gelatin, juice, and black coffee—pre-surgery meals are the worst—and leave me with the news playing overhead on the telly.
People came and went a few more times, checking my vitals, taking the tray away untouched.
I drowsed.
The chime sounded to signal the end of visiting hours without a return of Ben or Heath.
Around ten, another nurse came in to introduce himself as the night shift, writing his name—Marco—on the whiteboard and adding a smiley face. “Oh, someone left you a message,” he said, smiling like the little drawing he left. “How sweet!”
I couldn’t read it as he bustled around me, sending me to the bathroom with orders to pee in a jug so they could measure it—ew—and asking if I needed help showering.
“I might’ve said yes last summer,” I joked, “but I’d better do it on my own now.”
He laughed. “No jealous boyfriends in this hospital, please. We’ve got enough going on!”
Finally, finally, after I’d carefully washed with the drying hospital soap, been cajoled into a cup of gelatin and a plastic bottle of apple juice, I was left alone and could read the whiteboard without someone chatting a mile a minute.
Damien—I’m sorry. Nate says good luck.
—P.S.
There was nothing after that and it took my foggy brain a minute to realize it was initials, not a postscript. “Shit!”
Marco was back in my room almost before I moved my finger off the call button. “Problem?”
“Did an older woman come to visit me? I dozed off earlier and,” I gestured to the board. “Someone left me a note. I’m just trying to figure out who.”
He shot me a bemused look. “You had a good deal of visitors, hon. The gals at the desk can’t stop talking about those two broody boys. Oh, Clary—he’s a doll. He was here just as I was coming on shift. That teenager and her mother? That a niece or something?”
“Uh, no. Kind of a friend, I suppose.”
“Hmm. The Moons. And your grandmother.” He winked, fussing with my blanket and adjusting my IV line so it didn’t pull on the cannula in my arm.
“My grandmother,” I repeated hollowly.
“Older lady, curly hair. Had your brother with her.” He fanned himself, shaking his head. “If I wasn’t married, I’d have definitely slipped him my number. Hey, I didn’t think you were from around here. Your granny looks so familiar, I swear I’ve seen her in town.”
All I could do was nod. “Yeah. You probably have... Um, do I need to dial nine or something to call out? I need to check in about my dog.”
Marco showed me how to use the room phone—dial nine, wait for the double tone, dial 9 again, then the area code, then the number, then pound and oh my god why is it so complicated—and left me alone finally. Again.
Heath answered the station phone on the third ring.
“Hey,” I said, cutting off his practiced, professional greeting. “Pamela Sommers was here. Within the past few hours.”
“I know,” he said on a sigh. “We’ve already got her in custody, waiting for a transfer to Portland.”
“What? How?” I struggled to sit up, ignoring the pangs in my arm and head.
“She turned herself in. Said she was tired of being afraid...” He trailed off. “Are you alright?”
Sinking back, I closed my eyes. “Not really. No.”
“Well, maybe this will perk you up. We might have a lead on your pap stalker. Marcy Simon—”
“She’s very observant.”
He snorted softly. “Well, she called in a concern about someone skulking around Witte House this morning. Albie brought in the guy before lunch. He’s not talking but his phone had pictures of you from around town.”
“Christ.”
“This is the part you won’t like. We had to let him go with a warning and a ticket for trespassing.”
“What?”
“Sorry, Damien. We couldn’t prove he’d done anything other than trespass on Witte House property. The pictures he had of you were from out in public areas.”
“His name wasn’t Paul, was it?”
There was a click of keys then Heath said “No. Cliff. Cliff Cassidy.”
“Okay. Okay, thanks.”
And, in a move that would get me one hell of a glare from my mother, I hung up without saying goodbye.