An Illustrated Death, page 19
“Hello?”
“Lynn? Lynn, Bianca’s been hurt. In the studio. The ambulance is coming, but someone needs to be by the road to show them where to come. Now.”
“What happened?”
“Just go. If they can’t find her right away, she’ll—” I didn’t finish. I waited for the click as Lynn hung up.
Immediately the phone rang again. I pressed the green symbol with a bloody thumb.
“How are you doing?” the 911 operator asked into the room.
“We’re okay.” I hope.
“She still conscious?”
“I think so.”
“Keep her talking. They’re on the way.”
The click of disconnect.
For a moment I couldn’t think of anything to talk about. Bianca’s face was already white, her freckles like blood pricks.
“It’s going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.”
“Why did she . . .”
“It was an accident. You were in her way.”
“Am I going to die?” she whispered.
“Of course not! You have to relax—no, don’t move.”
Her eyes closed. She seemed to be having trouble breathing now.
“Bianca, let’s think about the illustrations you want in your book.”
“My book?” It was a whisper.
“You know. Your poems. Your wonderful poems.”
Dear God, don’t let her die. Don’t let her die, don’t let her die.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
WHEN THE DOOR creaked open and banged back against the wall, the floor dropped away beneath me. Eve was back with another knife. While I was trying to protect Bianca she would stab me and we would both die. I made myself look anyway and saw Claude and Lynn escorting a small army into the room.
Voices, a confusion of technicians carrying equipment, blue-suited police. Claude and Lynn stepped back against the wall, looking terrified. I pushed myself up from the floor, wanting to weep with relief when the technicians took over. I had probably done everything wrong, but they would know what to do. I fought the urge to retreat to a corner and sit with my hands over my face.
Everyone was demanding to know what happened.
“Are you hurt?” An East Hampton town policeman with grizzled graying hair was staring at my blood-spattered sweatshirt.
“No, I’m okay.” I looked down at my hands still covered in Bianca’s blood and pressed them on the table to keep standing upright.
“Tell me what happened.”
“Her mother—stabbed her.”
“Where’s the mother now?”
“I don’t know. She ran off.”
“Mama?” Claude interrupted us, shocked. “Are you talking about my mother?” Incongruously he was wearing his maroon dressing gown over his slacks, and leather slippers.
The policeman ignored him. “She had a knife?”
“She came to see who was in her husband’s studio.”
“She thought someone had broken in?”
“I don’t know what she thought.” I swayed and leaned heavily on the table. “She started talking, starting rambling about her husband and the au pair and—”
“Don’t listen to her,” Claude cried, his thin face pained. “Since my father’s death, my mother’s had all kinds of fantasies about what happened. I doubt she was even in the studio tonight.”
The policeman stared at him. “Well, somebody stabbed her.” He gestured at Bianca and we all turned to watch two EMTs in light green scrubs lift the stretcher from the floor. A third seemed to be clearing a path though no one was in the way, and opened the door. As Bianca passed us I tried to tell how she was by the way she looked. But she was already hooked up to tubing and had an oxygen mask over her face.
As soon as Bianca was gone, Claude thrust a hand toward me but spoke to the policeman. “She’s lying about my mother. My mother couldn’t have been here, she’s an invalid. She’s been asleep in the house for hours. This woman and my sister obviously had a fight, probably over money. She got angry and stabbed Bianca, then got worried and called for help.”
Even though I knew Bianca could tell them what had actually happened, I felt a splash of terror. What if she never regained consciousness and I was arrested? There were no other witnesses to explain what had happened and I didn’t expect Eve to confess. I knew in the confusion I had grabbed the knife hilt. What had Regan said about innocent people being railroaded for crimes they never committed? Bianca would die and I would go to jail. “I’m calling Frank Marselli!”
“You’re not calling anyone,” the policeman said gruffly.
“But he’s the detective on another case here. He’s with Homicide.”
“Suffolk County?”
“Yes! Out of Hauppauge.” I looked around for my small silver phone, then saw it on the worktable, still smeared with blood. I was too weak to reach over and pick it up. Instead I inched around the worktable and collapsed on the metal stool, propping up my head. Finally I picked the phone up and scrolled down. When Marselli’s name appeared, I punched the dial button. My hand was shaking so much I could barely hold the receiver close enough to my mouth.
The phone rang into an evidently empty room, and I thought of all the unimportant times I’d been able to reach him. Now when I needed him most, when everything was a matter of life and death . . . I waited for a prompt to let me speak to someone else. Finally another officer picked up and identified himself.
“My name is Delhi Laine,” I mumbled. “Please tell Frank Marselli to come out to Springs to the Eriksons. Eve Erikson stabbed her daughter.”
“It’s not true,” Claude cried. His pale face had taken on an odd reddish blush. He grabbed the policeman’s arm. “This ‘detective’ you let her call, he’s her boyfriend. He’ll believe any story she tells him. She’s threatened my sister before.”
The policeman looked at me, betrayed.
I shook my head. I could not begin to explain anything. What if Claude actually believed what he was saying? Marselli was my only hope.
“Okay, let’s calm down here. We’ll sort things out when he gets here.”
“Whatever you say. I’m going to check that my mother is okay.”
“Sir, no one is leaving right now.” He glanced over to the door where the younger policeman stood guard and gave a nod.
And so we waited.
It reminded me of the times I had taken my children to the emergency room with fractures or high temperatures or to get stitches. Lynn stood on Claude’s far side, looking stricken, but keeping her thoughts to herself. Claude spent the time glowering at me, now and then giving his head a quick shake, as if my lies were not to be believed.
I wanted to annihilate him.
The nauseating smell of Bianca’s blood lingered in the room.
Finally I heard the door open. But it was only Puck, who had seen the police car and lights on in the studio. I saw the younger cop bar his way, then step outside to talk to him.
“Ask him to check on my mother,” Claude called after them. “Make sure she’s okay.”
Back to silence. I wondered where Eve was now. Would she admit to stabbing Bianca? A further, frightening thought: Would she even remember?
In a moment the younger cop came back in alone. He had nothing to report.
MARSELLI ARRIVED A few minutes after nine. He looked as if he had come from home, in jeans, a Special Olympics T-shirt, tan windbreaker, and black Nikes.
He took in the scene, then moved to the older policeman, flipping open his ID. “Who’s the stabbing vic?”
“Young woman, name of Bianca Erikson.”
“Witnesses?”
He jerked his head at me.
“Figures,” Marselli muttered.
That did not bolster my confidence.
“She’s the one who did it!” Claude broke in.
I still couldn’t tell if he believed that. He was making up the story that Bianca and I ever fought about money. Yet what had she told him when I asked to be paid? Had she said that I was demanding money? Why had I ever brought it up? Surely he was just upset that I had accused his mother. If someone had accused my mother of a crime, I would be disbelieving and look around for someone else to blame.
Marselli jerked his head at the older policeman and they went into a private huddle over by the fireplace. Marselli seemed to be doing most of the talking. When he returned to us, he said to Claude, “Did you see what happened?”
“Of course not! She was the one who called and told us what she had done.”
I opened my mouth, but Marselli waved me quiet.
Lynn spoke up. “She said we should wait for the ambulance and bring them down to the studio, which we did. All she said was that Bianca was hurt.”
“Okay, you can go. Good-bye.”
But now Claude seemed cemented to the floor. Lynn pulled at his arm and pried him loose. At the door, he turned. “Don’t believe anything she says about my mother. She’s lying to save her own skin.”
“Not a fan of yours,” Marselli said when he was gone.
“No.” I felt too weak to explain anything, but I made myself tell Marselli what had happened when Eve came to the studio. It was hard to admit, but I added, “I guess I upset her more. I accused her of murdering her husband because he was having an affair with the babysitter and then killing Gretchen so that she wouldn’t tell anyone. But I think that’s what really happened.” I stopped talking and my eyes pooled. “If Bianca doesn’t make it . . .”
He studied my face. “She’s critical?”
“She lost so much blood. Those other policemen wouldn’t let me call the hospital to find out.”
That wasn’t totally true. But they had told me I couldn’t call anyone.
“She’s at Southampton?”
“That’s what somebody said.”
He called his office and asked to be put through to the hospital. I could hear only his side of the conversation. “E-R-I-K-S-O-N, Bianca.”
A pause, a couple of “Uh-huhs,” more listening, and then, “Okay, thanks.”
I knew he was going to tell me she had died. Instead he gave me a slight smile. “She’s out of surgery. She’ll be okay. Fortunately someone here kept her from bleeding out.”
I assumed he was talking about her rescue by the EMTs, then realized he meant me.
All the fears I had been holding in spilled over. I put my face in my hands and sobbed.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
“YOU HAVE TO tell me,” Bianca insisted. “Tell me exactly what she said.”
I shifted in the green vinyl visitor’s chair. Even though Bianca was out of danger, they were keeping her in the hospital to monitor her for infection. She was still paler than normal, and her ice blue eyes were tugged at by lines I had never noticed before.
Earlier that morning I had given Marselli a detailed statement of what Eve had said in the studio. But as he had pointed out to me, Eve had said very little that was incriminating. I had been the one making accusations and she had never denied them. They were holding her for stabbing Bianca. Because the autopsy found that Gretchen had been drugged, they were checking Eve’s pharmaceuticals to see if any matched what had been found in Gretchen’s system.
“She was upset about your father and Sonia,” I told Bianca now.
“Really? I thought that was over. It was just a flirtation on his part. I guess she took it more seriously. My father could have that effect on people. Sometimes he seemed larger than life.”
There was the scrape of feet on linoleum outside the door, and I turned to see Claude and Lynn staring at me. Claude grasped his wife’s arm as if marshaling the strength to rescue his sister.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “I want you out of here now!”
“Wait outside please, Claude,” Bianca said. “We’re talking.”
“But you don’t know what she’s done.”
“You mean saved my life? After Mama stabbed me?”
“It wasn’t Mama. She—”
“Claude, I know what happened. I was there, okay?” Her cheeks had developed two bright red circles that were not a healthy color. “Wait outside. You too, Lynn.”
Claude scowled, but they disappeared from sight.
“He keeps insisting it was me,” I complained. It sounded childish as soon as I said it.
“Of course it wasn’t you. It was my mother. But it was an accident. She must have seen the lights on in the studio and thought an intruder had gotten in. She had the knife to protect herself. It was the first time you had stayed until dark. Unfortunately she was holding the knife when she ran into me. Why don’t the police believe that? Puck said they arrested her!”
“They didn’t arrest her. They’re questioning her. After all, you almost . . . didn’t make it.” I was sure Eve hadn’t meant to hurt Bianca so badly. But I had seen her flash of pique, her anger at Bianca’s role in my being there, as she pressed the knife toward her.
“How can they blame someone for an accident?”
I looked at her and knew she wasn’t strong enough to hear the truth. She looked so thin and insubstantial in her hospital gown. “They need to ask her questions about Gretchen.”
“Bessie . . .”
“Bessie may have helped by carrying the body downstairs and out to the pool. But your mother . . .”
Bianca reared back. “That’s impossible. Did Bessie blame my mother? I thought she loved Mama.”
Not enough to go to jail for her. The problem was, as soon as Bessie had been released from questioning, she and her whole family had headed south. Their neighbors told police that they had relatives in Mississippi, but no one knew any names or places—at least none that they were willing to share.
“My mother would never hurt Gretchen.”
“Bianca, I never said that. But she did pour lye down Sonia’s throat.”
“What are you talking about?” Now she looked puzzled. “Sonia drank it herself. My mother wasn’t even here when it happened. She was down in Charleston. My grandfather had had a heart attack and she flew down. She was there for a week.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure, I was here when it happened last May. It was a terrible accident, but my mother didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Had I gotten everything wrong?
CHAPTER FIFTY
WHEN I CAME into the hall, Claude and Lynn were leaning against the pale yellow wall. Both of them looked tired. He pushed up from the wall like a coiled spring.
Quickly I said, “Claude, Bianca needs to tell you something.”
He gave Lynn an I-told-you-so look and bumped past me.
As soon as he was gone, I said to Lynn, “I have to talk to you. It’s important.”
She didn’t look surprised. “I’m already late for the shelter, but—you could come there in about an hour. It’s called A Safe Haven. In Sag Harbor.”
“Okay, fine.”
“Let me give you directions. We try to keep the location a secret. Woman in trouble have a phone number they can call.” She told me how to find the shelter, then added, “Come around eleven-thirty. Before noon anyway. I’ll be in my office.”
A SAFE HAVEN was located on a residential street of large homes in Sag Harbor. With its widow’s walk, the cupola where an anxious wife could stand and scan the harbor for signs of her husband’s ship, there was little to distinguish this house from the other sea captains’ homes. Most had historic plaques by the front doors.
I went up wide wooden steps flanked by fading pink hydrangeas, and knocked on the paneled door.
Lynn herself answered and brought me down a hall. We passed a large room, its pocket doors slightly ajar. I was startled to hear feral grunts and cries from inside.
Lynn laughed. “It’s a self-defense class.” She kept going until we came to a small parlor near the end. The bay window on the side facing the house next door gave the room a formal feeling, but the stiff Victorian furniture had been changed out for soft hand-me-downs. Several framed prints from Godey’s Lady’s Book made the room feel reassuring. I sank into the sofa and Lynn took a chair on my right.
“We had an incident last year that made us super-careful. We keep our location secret, but an ex-husband followed his wife, his former wife, home from a prenatal visit and shot her on the steps outside.”
“My God! Did she . . .”
“Yes, and she left behind a two-year-old. We still don’t know how he knew about her doctor’s appointment. It really made us ratchet up security though.” She looked pensive, then added, “You said you had something important.”
“It’s about Sonia.”
Her mouth curved into a reluctant smile. “It’s not like I’m a priest or therapist, but—I’ll tell you as much as I can.”
“Thank you.”
“Sonia came here after she was beaten up by the man she lived with. Not the first time. He was older than she was, an important figure on Broadway, and she had come here from Minnesota to act. So she put up for him too long. The old story, he was obsessive and then abusive. Meanwhile, she had no money. She needed a job and a place to stay, and Bianca needed someone to help with Morgan. I thought it would be a perfect match. Except that . . .”
“She got involved with Nate.”
“So you know about that. I still don’t know how serious he was. He was flattered and she was completely smitten. And she was accessible, living right on the compound. When Eve had to go down to Charleston for a week, Sonia was in the studio every night. Everyone knew it.”
