Chapter Thirty-Two
Thirty-Two
Harper froze. This was no faulty latch.
Could Asher have returned? No one had entered; one of the blessings of a small apartment was that she would have seen anyone who might have come in. And the little landing outside the door was empty.
Harper…
She heard the voice in her head, just as she had in the Perles Mansion. And then the requiem began, starting low, growing louder.
“What do you want?” Harper heard herself say aloud. She repeated, almost shouting to be heard over the rain: “Isabel? What is it? What do you want?”
“Harp?” Tariq asked, sounding groggy. “What’s going on?”
Harper went to look out the window.
A woman stood on the lawn outside her apartment, dancing in the rain. But this was not Isabel. This time the woman wore a bright pink gown, emblazoned with turquoise flamingos.
“Ellen?” Harper called out, though surely Ellen could not hear her over the wind and rain.
Tariq came up to stand behind her. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, but Ellen’s outside, in the rain,” said Harper, pulling on her boots and slipping a raincoat over her nightgown. “I think she’s sleepwalking.”
“Wait a sec. I’m coming with you.”
Tariq quickly dressed, and they hurried down the stairs. Harper kept an eye out for Isabel’s apparition, but the only one on the lawn was Ellen. She was laughing.
“Don’t startle her or try to wake her up,” Harper warned Tariq. “That can be dangerous to sleepwalkers.”
Ellen stopped dancing and looked at Harper and Tariq. “Hello, my dears. My, you must be cold. Don’t you realize it’s snowing? And Oliver! So good of you to come by. It’s been years.”
“Oliver who?” Harper asked.
“I think she means me,” Tariq said. “I don’t think she’s sleepwalking, Harp.”
Ellen started reaching out as if grabbing at something floating in the air, then began singing. “Things go better with Coca-Cola! Things go better with Coke!”
“Ellen? Why don’t we all get inside, out of the rain,” Harper suggested gently.
Ellen laughed. “Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat!” She made a gesture as if pulling a bell. “Ding! Ding!”
“What’s wrong with her?” Harper asked quietly as much to herself as to Tariq. “Ellen?”
“Let’s get her to the hospital,” said Tariq.
Harper and Tariq sat in the ER at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, waiting for word on Ellen’s condition.
“What were those songs she was singing?” Tariq asked.
“Commercial jingles,” Harper said. “The first was obviously for Coca-Cola, and the second was for Rice-A-Roni.”
“She a big cola drinker?” Tariq asked.
“No. But those jingles were popular in the 1960s, when she was a young woman, so maybe that’s why.
I’m just glad she wasn’t singing the old Band-Aid jingle, or it would be stuck in my head for weeks.
I’ve still got the earworm of Why, why, why, Delilah…
” Except when it was drowned out by the requiem that repeated, incessantly, in her head.
“Do you think Ellen might be suffering from dementia?”
“No,” Harper said, surprising herself with her ferocity. “Not unless it developed overnight.”
“It could be an undiagnosed UTI. That happened once with my grandmother, and she started talking about the mob putting a hit out on her.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. Ellen’s pretty careful with her health,” said Harper. “I spent the whole day with her the other day, and she was totally fine. She would have told me if she wasn’t feeling well. Something weird has happened.”
Tariq remained silent for a moment. “I know you care for her, Harp. But dementia and other possible health conditions will need to be ruled out, given her age.”
“Fine. Then the doctors will rule them out,” Harper said flatly. She got up and moved to another chair. “Excuse me. I need to call Jonathan.”
Jonathan Sundvold sounded shocked when Harper told him what had happened to his mother. He thanked her for calling, and said he’d drive down first thing in the morning.
Harper hung up and realized Tariq was no longer in the waiting room. Fair-weather friend, she thought. She had just fired off a text telling him what she thought of people who abandoned other people in ER waiting rooms, when Tariq walked up carrying two cups of coffee.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” he said, handing her one. “It’s from the vending machine.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
“That’s all right. We’re all a bit tired and stressed out.”
“And don’t read the text I just sent you. I plead temporary insanity.”
Tariq handed her his phone. “Delete it. Otherwise, I’ll read it, and it sounds like no good can come of that.”
“You’re a peach,” said Harper as she took his phone and hit delete. “Which reminds me, I saw something on your phone earlier—”
“Family of Ellen Sundvold?” someone called out.
Tariq and Harper stood up, and a doctor approached them.
“Good thing you brought her in when you did,” he said. “She’s responding well to the treatment.”
“What are you giving her?”
“Intravenous physostigmine. You were right to suggest she had been poisoned: We tested for several common botanical toxins and got a hit. I’m going to admit her, and we’ll see how she’s doing in the morning.”
“But she’ll be okay?” Harper asked anxiously.
“I’m guardedly optimistic. She’s in pretty good health, overall, but her age makes me cautious. She doesn’t remember how she ingested it, which isn’t surprising in these cases. Take a look around her house, see if you see anything unusual or out of place that might be the source of the poison.”
“Can we see her?”
“We’re about to take her upstairs. I’d like her to get some rest. The nurses will take good care of her.”
“Please tell her that her son will be here in the morning.”
“Will do. And if you find anything suspicious, bag it up carefully and bring it in for testing. That stuff’s dangerous.”
Bleary-eyed, Harper and Tariq returned to her apartment. The sky was gray and rainy, the dawn barely a glow on the horizon.
“So, I saw a weird text on your phone,” Harper said as they shook the rain off their umbrellas, left them by the door, and hung up their coats. They had driven home in silence, each lost to their own thoughts.
He raised one eyebrow. “At the hospital?”
“Before that. Last night, right before we found Ellen.”
“You were looking at my phone?”
“Sorry—you were asleep, and I wanted to turn the sound off so it wouldn’t bother you. But I accidentally saw the message.”
“It’s okay, Harper. You’re welcome to look at my phone anytime you like.”
“Thanks, I guess. Anyway, Penny texted something about covering up for you, providing you with an alibi.”
He held her gaze. “And?”
Harper hesitated a moment, but then blurted out: “On the ghost tour night, the night we found Delilah, you were late.”
“Really, Harp?”
“And your shirt was dirty.”
“The other day you were asking about me being in Delilah’s will,” said Tariq in a careful tone. “If there’s something you’d like to know, why don’t you just come out and ask?”
Harper felt awful to be entertaining suspicions about Tariq.
But she could not stop thinking about how Grant had fooled her for so long, and how easily her father had lied about everything.
She knew she was a poor judge of character, especially where men were concerned.
Could Tariq’s nice-guy act be just that? An act?
“According to Detective Serrano, Delilah left you twenty-five thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money for someone you say you hardly had a relationship with anymore.”
“I don’t know what to say, Harp,” said Tariq, pulling his coat back on. “If you honestly think I’m capable of such a violent act, then you should keep your distance. You’re good at that.”
Harper opened her mouth to speak, wanting to say something, anything, to explain herself. And even though she didn’t really believe Tariq could do such a thing, she wanted him to come out and deny it. But he did not.
Tariq opened the door and grabbed his umbrella. At the last minute he paused and said in a soft voice, “Don’t forget to bolt the door behind me.”
A moment later, Harper heard the sound of his boots on the stairs as he hurried down to the yard, crossing the driveway and heading to his car.
Harper slumped against the door and groaned. That clinched it. She was a bona fide disaster at romance.
What’s worse, she felt like she had just lost her best friend.