Chương 4
“Arthur called a local reporter from the hallway before hospital security took his phone.”
Eleanor stared at her.
“What did he say?”
“We do not know.”
“He was restrained for less than three minutes.”
“He used less than one.”
The old admiration Eleanor had felt for Arthur’s competence returned in a distorted form. Even cornered, he had understood that the first public version of events mattered.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“We preserve the device, obtain legal authority to examine the phone, interview everyone, and wait for evidence instead of conclusions.”
“And Arthur?”
“He may be released tonight.”
Eleanor stood so abruptly that the veil slipped from her lap.
“He threatened Audrey on a recording.”
“He said everyone believed him.”
“You heard the rest.”
“We heard a chair move, a gasp, and the recording stop.”
“He altered her medication.”
“We have documents that may have been altered and device information that requires forensic verification.”
“He came here to take the evidence.”
“Or he came because someone told him Dr. Hayes had called police. Intent must be proved.”
Eleanor bent to retrieve the veil. Her back protested, and for one humiliating moment she could not reach it without placing a hand on the chair.
Maya picked it up before she could.
“Thank you,” Eleanor said.
Maya returned it carefully. “I’m sorry.”
Eleanor looked at her. The young woman’s eyes were wet, though she had not cried.
“What for?”
“I spoke to him.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. Arthur called asking whether any of Audrey’s belongings were still here. I told him I was completing the inventory this week.”
“Did you mention the tote?”
“No. But he asked about it.”
Ortiz opened her notebook again. “You did not tell me that.”
“You did not ask whether he called yesterday.”
“Did he sound concerned about anything specific?”
“He asked if we had found a little recorder. Then he laughed and said Audrey used to make voice notes because medication made her forget things.”
Hayes pushed himself out of his chair. “Maya.”
“I thought it was grief,” she said. “People ask strange questions after someone dies.”
Eleanor put the veil into her coat pocket.
“People ask the questions they are afraid someone else will answer.”
She walked into the hallway.
The brightness hurt her eyes.
Hospital employees had begun gathering at a respectful distance. A nurse pretended to read something on a tablet. Two residents stood near a supply cart, speaking too quietly. The officers were gone, but a strip of rainwater remained where Arthur’s shoes had been.
At the elevator, a woman holding a vase of yellow flowers pressed the button for Eleanor.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” the woman said.
Eleanor did not know whether she had attended the funeral, recognized the dress, or had merely seen grief before.
“Thank you.”
The elevator arrived. Eleanor stepped inside and turned.
Dr. Hayes remained outside with Maya and Detective Ortiz.
“Robert,” Eleanor said.
He looked at her.
“If you destroy anything to protect this hospital, I will destroy you with it.”
His worried gray eyes did not leave hers.
“I know.”
The doors closed.
On the first floor, the hospital lobby smelled of coffee, wet wool, and the lemon cleaner used on polished floors. Eleanor passed the gift shop where Audrey had once bought a stuffed blue whale for Sam after one of her own scans. The whale still sat on the shelf above his bed, though he had asked twice for permission to throw it away and twice changed his mind.
Outside, rain slid across the black car waiting at the curb.
Eleanor’s driver hurried around with an umbrella. She had forgotten he was there.
“Home, Mrs. Vance?”
She paused with one hand on the open door.
Across the drive, a reporter stood beneath the hospital awning, speaking into a phone. He saw Eleanor and straightened.
Her driver lifted the umbrella to block his view.
“Yes,” she said. “Home.”
During the twenty-minute ride, Eleanor played no recording and made no calls. She sat with the black drive in her fist while Baltimore moved past the rain-streaked window in fractured pieces: a pharmacy sign, brake lights, a boy in a yellow jacket chasing a bus, a woman shaking water from a folded newspaper.
Her phone continued to vibrate.
At a stoplight, she opened Sam’s messages.
He had written:
Aunt Claire says Dad had an argument with a doctor
Then:
People are outside
Then:
Grandma please answer me honestly
Eleanor typed three different responses and deleted all of them.
At last she wrote:
I am coming home. We will talk in person.
Sam replied with a thumbs-up, an answer so ordinary that Eleanor pressed the phone against her chest.
The Vance house stood behind a low stone wall in Roland Park, too large for the three people who had once lived there and absurd for the one person who lived there now. Cars lined both sides of the street. Mourners clustered beneath umbrellas near the gate, while television vans occupied spaces intended for neighbors.
Arthur had succeeded. Whatever he had told the reporter had transformed a private police inquiry into a public dispute before the flowers from Audrey’s grave had begun to close in the rain.
The driver stopped at the service entrance.
Eleanor entered through the kitchen.
Her housekeeper, June, stood beside a counter crowded with casseroles, pies, and aluminum trays. June had removed her shoes and wore house slippers beneath her black dress.
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “Your phone—”
“Where is Sam?”
“In the library with his aunt. There’s an officer outside the door. Mr. Bell from the foundation keeps asking to see you, and a woman from Channel Eight says Arthur told them you’re trying to frame him over an inheritance.”
Eleanor took off her wet coat.
June reached for it, then stopped when she saw Eleanor’s hand closed around the drive.
“What is that?”
“Something Audrey left.”
May you like
June’s face changed.
She had worked for the family since Audrey was twelve. She had packed Audrey’s lunches, concealed two bad report cards from Eleanor, and once driven across Maryland at midnight because Audrey had been too embarrassed to call her mother after a college boyfriend left her at a concert.
