“No worries. Unless you’re one of those Tofurky people. I can’t help you with that. But we ordered a big bird. We got enough to feed Macy’s parade, the New York Knicks and whoever. You just call me.”
She squeezed my arm and then sashayed down the hall toward the exit door. I looked after her, touched that she would offer to share her holiday with us. The harsh reality I was facing softened for a moment.
Night nurse Marie gave me a sympathetic look and directions to Lada’s room. Finding it was easy—the clinic was small—only ten rooms to a floor. The top of a medical chart labeled “Levervitch” stuck out of the plastic holder outside on the wall. I opened the door a crack, hesitating. The overhead lights had been turned off and the curtains drawn. What shape would she be in?
My stomach rolled as I stepped cautiously into the darkened room, leaving the door half open so I wouldn’t have to turn on the lights. Lada had fallen asleep propped up on her pillows. A beeping monitor tracked her vital signs. She looked like Yoda—the bald spots on her scalp showing through unkempt wisps of hair. They’d clipped an oxygen tube under her nose, and she had a bruise blossoming on the pale, thin skin around the IV stuck in her skinny forearm. The bones in her wrist seemed as delicate as bird bones.
I sank into the chair by the wall and put my head in my hands. I began to cry silently. We’re such vulnerable creatures, I thought. At least Lada hadn’t died or become a vegetable. She was still Lada. But if they sent me to prison, how could I continue to help pay for her care? If she defaulted on payments, they’d transfer her out of The Cedars to some state-run nursing home where she’d get bedbugs and bedsores. I was sick at the thought, and time was running out. The noose was tightening. Gubbins told me so when I called him after Detective Roche’s visit.
“I’m afraid this strengthens their case substantially. The most compelling argument for your innocence—not having access to a gun—has just been eliminated,” he said.
“But I didn’t take the gun,” I protested, my voice shaking. “It’s all circumstantial. You know there have been more summer home break-ins this season. The burglary was a coincidence.”
It had to be a coincidence. It had to. The other option was unthinkable.
“An inopportune one. You have no alibi. And a strong motive.”
“It doesn’t make sense. Why would I kill them now, after all these years? Answer me that one.”
Please give me a reason not to go down that road, Mr. Gubbins. Please.
“The DA will say your wounds reopened when Hugh and Helene moved here.”
“They moved here last May. It’s November. Why would I wait?” I croaked.
“Helene pushed you over the edge when she joined your Pilates class. Your resentment and hatred got out of control. The DA will also try to prove you found out about your ex-husband’s retrospective somehow—the one just announced on the radio today on your friend’s show.”
I thought of Hugh’s letter. He’d told me about the retrospective.
“You were enraged that your story would be in the public eye again,” Gubbins said.
“But the murders put my story in the public eye!”
“Good point. We can use that.”
“Use it now, before this goes any further,” I pleaded.
“I’m sorry, Nora. But I have to advise you to get your affairs in order. We need to prepare for the possibility of an arrest warrant in the next few days.”
I instinctively distanced the phone from my ear. “Oh no. No. No. Don’t say that. I don’t want to hear that.”
“Nora. You need to stay focused. Try to breathe.”
I brought the phone closer, still panicked, but willing myself to listen.
“If it comes to that, there will be court costs when I file the motion for bail, so I’ll need that fifteen thousand dollars as soon as possible.”
“Jesus. The bail. How high will it be? It’s a murder charge.”
“A double-murder charge,” he corrected me. “We’ll get you bonded for that. I know people . . . There’s one other thing I’d like you to be aware of.”
“What? What else could there be?”
“A polygraph test. It’s up to the judge whether to admit it, but the DA may ask for one.”
Lada shifted in her bed, startling me. Recounting the conversation with Gubbins had my stomach in knots. I should call Grace. Tell her about Aunt Lada’s condition. And my neighbor’s missing gun. But what if her certainty about my innocence wavered? I couldn’t cope with that right now. I couldn’t.
I clung to the facts that were still on my side. A) I’d never traveled beyond my immediate surroundings during previous sleepwalking episodes. But what about the leaves and twig in my hair? Where had they come from? B) I’d always woken up in the midst of an episode, so I couldn’t have broken into Mance’s house to steal a gun. Or committed two murders miles from my bed. But what about washing my jeans, and those blazing lights in the Coop the other morning? I’d almost certainly been sleepwalking, and I hadn’t woken then.
Terrible thoughts kept creeping in. Thoughts of sleep killers. Kenneth Parks butchering his in-laws. That father slamming his innocent infant into a wall. A killer lived inside me; my vicious fantasies attested to that. But had the unspeakable demon murdered in a white-hot rage while my human side slept? Had it gone on a bloodthirsty rampage?
I reminded myself there were still other suspects. Tobias. Stokes. An unknown lover. But even a trace of self-doubt could cause enough anxiety to skew a lie-detector test. Television crime dramas had taught me that. I had a giant glob of self-doubt living in my belly. It was a horror movie in there.
Whatever happened, I would need a war chest—fast—to pay for legal expenses and what might soon be a small army of caretakers for Lada, not to mention the clinic’s bill. I resolved to call Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips’s auction houses tomorrow and offer the sketchbook to whichever one set the highest opening bid. I worried that even an expedited sale would take more time than I probably had.
I pulled myself together and looked around Lada’s room for a tissue. There was a box of Kleenex on the heating unit by the window. I rose to fetch one.
“Nora?” Lada wheezed.
I rushed to her side. She still hadn’t opened her eyes.
“Welcome back. How do you feel?”
“I’m sorry to be so much trouble,” she whispered.
“No apologies.” I patted her arm.
“I’m an old car. My parts are rusted. I belong in the scrapyard.”
“Don’t say that. Take it back,” I demanded, my fear turning me shrill.
She opened her eyes. They were vacant. Her voice was flat.
“I can’t take care of myself anymore. Vashna nee to kak dolga tuy prozsheel, a kak horoshow zsheel.”
“In English, please.”
“How well you live makes a difference. Not how long. I can’t even get out of the bathtub. What kind of life is that?”
She turned away from me, her chin trembling. My heart melted.
“All you need is a little help. They have people here who can help you, Aunt Lada. I’ll arrange for someone.”
“And pay with what?”
“Let me worry about that.” I stroked her cold, bony hand. “Lada?”
“What?”