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Fountain of Death(89)

By:Jane Haddam


“You ought to go up and see her, then. She’s been more or less conscious all day from what I hear, though I wouldn’t think she’d be doing much talking yet. I hear she’s very depressed. You ought to go and try to cheer her up.”

“Maybe I will,” Dessa Carter said.

Claudia Dubroff opened a door with no name sign on it at all and stepped through it.

“Here we are,” she announced. “The staff lounge. It’s even got a coffee machine that makes hot chocolate.”





3


IF IT HADN’T BEEN for the request from Gregor Demarkian to stick around for the meeting tomorrow morning at ten, Frannie Jay would have already been gone. She wanted to be gone even before the meeting. She hadn’t murdered Tim Bradbury. She hadn’t even known Tim Bradbury. It was bad enough to have to deal with the police when you had actually done something wrong. Then she thought that she had an obligation—to Fountain of Youth, because they had hired her in spite of knowing everything there was to know about her background; to Magda Hale—and she knew she had to stay. All this publicity about the murders couldn’t be doing Magda’s business any good, especially right before the nationwide tour. Frannie would stay long enough to give Gregor Demarkian the help he needed tomorrow. Maybe that would be enough.

It was ten o’clock at night now, and Frannie had her clothes lined up in piles across her bed. There weren’t a lot of them. Seven complete leotard-and-tights work-out combinations. Seven pairs of white athletic socks. Two pairs of white work-out shoes. Then there were only a few things: turtlenecks, jeans, button-down blouses in pastel colors, one dress, one pair of loafers, one pair of heels. Frannie found it hard to look at these things, harder, even, than she found it to look at the one thing she had left of Marilee: a small pink cap, knitted out of stretchy yarn, that they had given her in the hospital.

Frannie picked up the cap and put it in the duffel bag. She had taken it everywhere with her since Marilee died. She had even taken it with her to jail. Was there ever going to be a time when this didn’t matter to her anymore?

There was only one thing Frannie was sure of: It was time to leave New Haven. She should never have come back here in the first place. She shouldn’t stay now that she knew it was wrong. Tomorrow was not only the day of Mr. Gregor Demarkian’s important meeting. It was also the last day of the special seminar week. Once she finished her classes, they wouldn’t be counting on her for anything. They would have time to find someone else to lead step aerobics on a regular basis.

Frannie took two pairs of underwear out of the stack: one for tomorrow morning and one for tomorrow afternoon after her classes. She put the rest of her underwear in the duffel bag. She took out a shirt and a clean pair of jeans. She put those aside, too. She could get away with the sweater she was wearing as long as she didn’t spill anything on it. She put the rest of her things in the duffel bag and pulled the string at the top of it closed, tight. The string was a fashion statement. The real closure on the duffel bag was a short, heavy-duty zipper: Frannie pulled that closed and fastened it to the body of the bag with the tiny padlock that had come with it.

Maybe I’ll go to Montana, Frannie thought. Or Vermont. Or Oklahoma. Somewhere I’ve never been before.

There was a knock on the door. “Frannie?” Nick Bannerman said.

Frannie froze. She hadn’t seen Nick Bannerman for hours. She hadn’t even run across him in the halls. It was as if he had been hiding from her.

“Frannie?”

Frannie went to the door and stood right in front of it. It was such a big, heavy door. It had a good bolt lock on it. If she locked herself in, Nick would never be able to break the door down.

Nick would never want to.

“Frannie,” Nick said again. “For God’s sake. Open up, will you please?”

The door isn’t locked, Frannie thought irrationally. He can come right in. Why doesn’t he come right in? She reached forward and pulled the door open abruptly, making a breeze.

Nick was standing in the hall in his dark outdoor jacket. He looked like an African-American version of Lou Reed in that television commercial from a couple of years ago.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

Frannie stepped back away from the door. Nick came in. Frannie shut the door again.

“Well,” Nick said. His eyes were on the duffel bag.

“I was packing,” Frannie said. “I thought that, after tomorrow, you know, I’d move on.”

“I thought you had family here.”

“I do. I don’t talk to them much.”

“Do you have any idea where you want to move on to?”