Mystery

“And I’m so glad to see you,” he said. “Even here. Nancy, I heard that—”

She held up a hand to stop him. “Before we get serious, does anybody want a beer?”

Hattie shook her head, and Tom and Sarah said they would split one.

“You’ll split one, all right,” Nancy said. She went to a small refrigerator next to the sink and removed three bottles; took two glasses from a shelf; popped off the caps, and came back carrying the bottles by their necks in one hand and the glasses in the other. She gave a glass and a bottle each to Tom and Sarah, sat down and raised her own bottle. “Cheers.” Tom laughed, and raised his own bottle to Nancy and drank from it. Sarah poured some into her glass and thanked Nancy.

“If you’re not going to use that glass, maybe I will have a little bit, after all,” Hattie said. Tom poured some from his bottle into the empty glass and Sarah did the same, and then they all sat smiling at each other for a moment.

“I wondered about you, you know,” Nancy said to Tom.

“I know you did,” Hattie said.

“Wondered what?” Sarah asked.

“Well, Tom had this special thing inside him. He saw things. He saw how I felt about Boney right away. But I don’t mean just that.” She pointed her beer bottle at Tom and squinted, trying to get the right words. “I don’t really know how to say this, I guess—but when I looked at you in the bed sometimes, I used to think you’d be something like a really good painter when you got older. Because you had this way of looking at things, like you could see parts of them nobody else could. Sometimes, it looked like the world could just make you glow. Or tear you apart inside, when you saw the bad.”

“I told him that,” Hattie said.

Tom had the strangest desire to cry.

“It was like you had some kind of destiny,” Nancy said. “And the reason I’m saying all this is, I can still see it.”

“Sure you can,” Hattie said. “It’s clear as day. Sarah can see it.”

“Leave me out of this,” Sarah said. “He’s conceited enough already. And anyhow, it isn’t what I can see, or what you can see, or even Tom can see, it’s—” She gave Tom an embarrassed look, and threw up her hands.

“It’s what he does,” Hattie said. “That’s right. Well, he must of done something, because Boney rode all the way out to see me today and gave me a cock and bull story about Tom Pasmore getting ready to sue him and the hospital, and how if the boy or his lawyers showed up, I was to turn ’em all away. And a minute later, here comes this tall fellow, and I thought he was a young lawyer, until I took a good look at him.”

“Boney did what?” Nancy asked, and Hattie had to repeat the whole story.

“I asked why you were suspended,” Tom said. “And he got flustered. The place was full of police.”

“Flustered,” Nancy said. “This was today? At the hospital?”

Tom nodded.

“Oh, dear,” Nancy said. “Oh, damn. Oh, shit.” She jumped up and went to the back of the room and opened a cupboard and banged it shut.

“That’s right,” Hattie said. “That boy died.”

“Oh, hell,” Nancy said.

Sarah reached for Tom’s hand, and held it tightly. “Does this have anything to do with that letter? Because Tom told me—”

He pressed her hand, and she fell silent.

Nancy turned around, angrier than Tom had ever seen her.

“Why were you suspended?” Tom asked.

“I wasn’t going to let him die alone. He needed someone to talk to. You remember how I used to come in and spend time with you?”

“They ordered you to stay away from him?”

“Mike Mendenhall was getting weaker and weaker—in a coma most of the time—I wasn’t going to let him be all alone those times when he was awake. And it wasn’t an order—nobody ordered us to stay out of that room. After the first time Boney learned I was giving time to him, he reminded me that he asked the nursing staff to do no more than change his linens and attend to strictly medical functions. And I said, if that’s an order, I’d like to see it posted on the board, and he said he was sure I understood that he could not do that.”

“Did Mendenhall talk to you, when he was conscious?”

“Of course he talked to me.”

“Would you tell me what he said?”

Nancy looked troubled and shook her head. Tom turned to Hattie. “Two kinds of law, two kinds of medicine. Isn’t that what you said at your house, Hattie?”

“You know I did,” Hattie said. She had her hawk look again. “I didn’t say, quote me, though.”

Tom said, “I’ll tell you why I’m asking about this.” And he told her about his realization that Hasselgard had killed his sister, about his letter to the police captain, and everything that followed. Nancy Vetiver leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and listened. “That letter is the real reason you’re here instead of your apartment.”

“I said you must of done something, and I guess you did,” Hattie said. “Tell him, Nancy. You can’t get him in any deeper than he already got himself.”

“Are you sure you want to hear this, Sarah?” Nancy asked.

“I’m leaving the island in two days, anyway.”