Pendergast [07] The Book of the Dead(165)

He turned toward her in a rush. “Listen, Laura—”

“No. You listen.” She wrapped her other hand around his, squeezed it tightly. “It doesn’t matter what happens in that room. Do you understand me, Vinnie? Because whatever happens, happens to both of us. We’re in this together.”

He swallowed. “I love you, Laura Hayward.”

At that moment, the door of the courtroom opened and the court clerk called his name. Thomas Shoulders rose from the bench, caught D’Agosta’s gaze, nodded.

Hayward gave D’Agosta’s hand a final squeeze. “Come on, big boy,” she said, smiling. “It’s showtime.”





81





Afternoon sun bronzed the hills of the Hudson Valley and turned the wide, slow-moving river into an expanse of brilliant aquamarine. The forests that covered Sugarloaf Mountain and Breakneck Ridge were just leafing out in new bloom, and the entire Highlands wore a feathery mantle of spring.

Nora Kelly sat in a deck chair on the broad porch of the Feversham Clinic, looking down over Cold Spring, the Hudson River, and the red brick buildings of West Point beyond. Her husband prowled back and forth at the edge of the porch, now and then gazing out over the vista, other times darting glances up at the genteel lines of the private hospital.

“It makes me nervous, being back here,” he muttered. “You know, Nora, I haven’t been in this place since I was a patient here myself. Oh, God. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you, but when the weather changes, I can sometimes still feel an ache in my back where the Surgeon—”

“You’ve told me, Bill,” she said with mock weariness. “Many times.”

The turning of a knob, the soft squeak of hinges, and a door opened onto the porch. A nurse in crisp whites stuck out her head. “You can come in now,” she said. “She’s waiting for you in the west parlor.”

Nora and Smithback followed the nurse into the building and down a long corridor. “How is she?” Smithback asked the nurse.

“Much improved, thank goodness. We were all so worried for her—such a dear thing. And she’s getting better every day. Even so, she gets tired easily: you’ll have to restrict your visit to fifteen minutes.”

“The dear thing,” Smithback whispered in Nora’s ear. She poked him playfully in the ribs.

The west parlor was a large, semicircular room that reminded Nora of an Adirondack lodge: polished ceiling beams, pine wainscoting, paper-birch furniture. Oils of sylvan landscapes hung on the walls. A merry fire leaped and crackled in the massive stone fireplace.

And there—propped in a wheelchair in the center of it all—sat Margo Green.

“Margo,” said Nora, and stopped, almost afraid to speak. Beside her, she heard Smithback draw in his breath sharply.

The Margo Green who sat before them was a mere shadow of the feisty woman who had been both academic rival and friend to her at the museum. She was frighteningly thin, and her white skin lay like tissue paper over her veins. Her movements were slow and considered, like someone long unfamiliar with the use of their limbs. And yet her brown hair was rich and glossy, and in her eye was the same spark of life Nora well recalled. Diogenes Pendergast had sent her to a dark and dangerous place—had almost ended her life—but she was on her way back now.

“Hello, you two,” she said in a thin, sleepy voice. “What day is it?”

“It’s Saturday,” Nora said. “April 12.”

“Oh, good. I hoped it was still Saturday.” She smiled.

The nurse came in and bustled around Margo a moment, propping her up more comfortably in the wheelchair. Then she walked around the room, opening curtains and fluffing pillows before leaving them again. Shafts of radiant light streamed into the parlor, falling over Margo’s head and shoulders and gilding her like an angel. Which in a way, Nora thought, she was: having been brought almost to the brink of death by an unusual cocktail of drugs administered to her by Diogenes.

“We brought you something, Margo,” Smithback said, reaching into his coat and bringing out a manila envelope. “We thought you might get a kick out of it.”

Margo took it, opened it slowly. “Why, it’s a copy of my first issue of Museology!”

“Look inside, it’s been signed by every curator of the Anthropology Department.”

“Even Charlie Prine?” Margo’s eyes twinkled.

Nora laughed. “Even Prine.”

They pulled two seats up beside the wheelchair and sat down.

“The place is just plain dull without you, Margo,” Nora said. “You have to hurry up and get well.”