She’d come in no further than the front door. Her purple puffer coat was unzipped, but she still wore her pom-pomed hat and gloves. With her porcelain doll face, flushed from the cold, she could have been taking a breather from the slopes. Really, everything about her belonged in a catalog for Fair Isle sweaters, or an advertisement for a ski lodge in Aspen. Everything except the fanatical gleam in her eyes.
“Hi, Jamie,” she said brightly. “It’s good to see you.”
If I hadn’t been an hour from death, I would’ve walked right up to her and snapped her neck.
But I was. That was the point.
“Okay, where was I? Before this one’s attempt to prematurely kick the bucket?” She rested against her doorframe, hands in her pockets.
“You were gloating,” Milo offered.
“Yes,” Holmes said, leaning forward. “Do go on, it’s fascinating.” She had that cataloging look to her, with her fingertips pressed together and that line at the bridge of her nose. I noticed, then, that there was a briefcase at Holmes’s feet, a pair of plane tickets resting on it. Bryony’s terms, fulfilled.
Her eyes flicked to the two of them, and then back to me. “I don’t want to bore you,” she said, clearly thinking about her getaway.
“Tell me,” I coughed, in an attempt to stall her. “Dobson. How?”
“Poor thing,” she said. “I’d come over to check your vitals, but I think little Charlotte here might react poorly to my hands on you. A shame. You know, this orthomyxoviridae surrexit nigrum virus doesn’t have a precise countdown clock. It isn’t a bomb. Really, you could croak at any time. So I’ll honor your last wish.” She put a hand to her heart in apparent sincerity. “I’ll do that. Isn’t that how all those stories always end? The hero explaining everything to his hapless confidant? You are a Watson, after all, so let’s stick with tradition.”
Holmes wasn’t listening, it was clear. Her eyes were fixed on Bryony’s boots. Slowly, her hand stole over to her brother’s, and she took it. For comfort, or for another reason, I wasn’t sure. So I clamped my eyes on Bryony, giving her the captivated audience she obviously wanted.
“Lee Dobson. Nasty thing, wasn’t he? One of my first patients back in September, with a mean case of thrush. He had to come in for a follow-up, and I think he thought . . . well, you know. Attractive older woman, lusty young man. He was trying to impress me. Asking all these ‘oblique’ questions about narcotics, opiates. For a friend. They always say it’s for a friend. How does someone react to heroin? As opposed to morphine? To oxycodone? Did they go nonresponsive? At what dosage? How pliable were they? Were they still able to have sex?”
Holmes’s shoulders went stiff, her jaw set. Part of her was listening, after all. Beside her, Milo’s expression was set in a determined blank.
“Oh, I was happy to oblige him and answer his questions. I had no qualms about it. Because how many other students at this school could be depraved enough to do drugs of that caliber? I knew I wasn’t pointing him toward the innocent. Why, yes, I told him, your friend will be euphoric. So happy, so lazy, so unwilling to move. They should be careful, I said. Terrible things can happen to girls when they’re that high. He thanked me profusely. Nearly wrung my hand off. And I had the satisfaction of knowing that I was sending our little whore here exactly the man she’d been asking for.
“And after that he kept coming back. It was clear he was infatuated with me. You can see why, of course.” A smile crept over her face like a poisonous fog. “I can see you are, too, Jamie, from the way you look at me. I knew it the day that you got into that tussle with my Lee, the starry-eyed look on your face. Don’t be ashamed. I did pageants, you know. Won quite a few prizes. But no. No, I was talking about Lee Dobson and that protein powder.