The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller

Chapter Thirteen Lisa Scottoline

Charley Middleton-Perez floated in that netherworld between wakefulness and sleep, anxiety tugging at the edge of her consciousness like a toddler at the hem of his mother’s skirt. She knew at some vague level that she was in a hospital room, that her husband Jack was asleep in the chair beside her, and that the doctors had given her meds to help her rest. From outside in the hall came the faint rattle of a cart gliding over a polished floor and people talking in low voices. She didn’t care enough to eavesdrop. She remained in the drug cocoon, pharmaceutically insulated from her fears.

Unfortunately, it was wearing off. And no drug could quell these fears, not forever. So much had happened, almost all at once. In her mind’s eye, she saw the scenes flicker backward in time, a gruesome rewind. Someone had tried to kill her. They’d murdered her mother, and she had seen her dead on the floor, her lovely features contorted and a blackening pool of blood beneath her head, seeping into the grains of the oak floor, filling its lines like a grisly etching.

Troubled, shifting in the bed, she flashed on her father running for his life. And her husband Jack had risked everything to save them both.

But there was one life he couldn’t save.

She heard a slight moan and realized that it came from her. She was waking up, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Closer to wakefulness than sleep, she felt an emptiness that she realized was literally true. She was empty now.

The baby was gone. The baby she had carried for the past five months, within her very body.

She had loved being pregnant, every minute of it. They had tried for the baby for so long, and she couldn’t believe when they’d finally gotten pregnant. She’d memorized baby books, and from day one of her pregnancy, was mindful that every spoonful she put into her mouth and every sip of every drink, she was taking for them both. She ate plain yogurt, gave up her beloved chocolate, fled from secondhand smoke and refused anti-nausea meds when her morning sickness was its worst. Her every thought had been to nurture the baby, one they’d both wanted so much.

Jack, Jr.

She had decided to name him Jack, Jr., and Jack would have loved the idea. Now she would never tell him her plan. He hadn’t wanted to know whether the baby was a boy or a girl, so she’d kept it from him too, though she was bursting with the news.

Surprise me, he had said, the night she had found out, a smile playing around his lips. And she had felt so full of love at his uncharacteristic spontaneity that she had thrown her arms around him and given him a really terrific hug, at least by pregnancy standards, which was from three feet away.

She shifted on the bed, and her eyelids fluttered open. She caught a glimpse of light from the windows, behind institutional-beige curtains. The brightness told her it was morning, though of which day, she didn’t know. Before her eyes closed again, she spotted Jack, a sleeping silhouette slumped in a chair, his broad shoulders slanted down. His head, with his sandy hair rumpled, had fallen to the side; he would have a crook in his neck when he awoke.

She felt an ache of love for him, together with an ache of pain for their loss. His son. Their son. A son could continue to redeem a family name tainted by his grandfather’s shady dealings. He had become one of the most respected lawyers in New Orleans, if not Louisiana, and his secret motive was to silence the whispered sniggering behind hands, the malicious talk of Creole mob connections and worse. He’d served on several committees to allocate Katrina relief funds, and his work to help the hurricane victims had gained him some national attention. For him, a baby son represented a new, brighter future.

I’ll take one of each, Charley, he said one night, as she rested on his chest after they had made love. He had been tender with her in bed, even more so than usual, moving gingerly over her growing tummy. Neither wanted to do anything to hurt the baby, the two of them as spooked as kittens.

But now there would be no baby, no son, no redemption. Only emptiness.

She blinked, then closed her eyes, feeling tears well. She didn’t cry, stopping at the edge of emotion, afraid to fall into the chasm of full-blown grief. The drugs were preventing feelings from reaching her, distancing her even from herself. She must be having some kind of delayed reaction. The night she’d miscarried, she’d been so scared when she heard that she was in danger and Harry, too, that she hadn’t had time to react to losing the baby, much less to mourn him.

Her eyelids fluttered again, and the background noise grew louder. She was waking up; there was no avoiding it. She realized that the talking wasn’t in the hall, but it was her husband’s voice. He was saying, “Don’t worry, she’s asleep and should be up in an hour or so.”

She looked over, her vision clearing, and realized that he hadn’t been asleep, but on the cell phone, which was tucked in his neck.

“Okay, good luck,” he said into the phone. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“Jack?” she asked, her voice raspy.

“Hey, sleepyhead.” He closed the phone, rose, and came over to the bed with a warm smile. “How you feeling?”

“Fine.” She didn’t feel like telling the truth, not now.

“That was your dad, checking on you.” He sat on the bed and stroked her hair back from her forehead. “Good news. He’s fine. He’s joined forces with some people he seems to have faith in. I gotta believe he knows what he’s doing.”

“He does.” She felt relief wash over her. A professional, her father knew who to trust and who to run from.

Perez leaned over and gave her a soft kiss. “So all we have to worry about now is you.”

Suddenly a burst of laughter came from the open door, and they both looked up in time to see a stout nurse in patterned scrubs bustle into the room, her hand extended palm-up. “Give it here, buddy!” she said to Perez. Her voice was a louder than was polite, but she was laughing.

“No way.” He laughed, too.

“We had a deal,” the nurse shot back, and without missing a beat, she grabbed the cell phone out of his hand. “Your husband works too damn hard,” she said. “I told him he can’t use his phone in the hospital. Now I’m confiscating it.”

Perez rose, mock-frowning. “Who are you supposed to be? Nurse Ratchett?”

“You know, your poor husband hasn’t eaten since yesterday lunch,” the nurse said. “He won’t leave your side.”

“Aww.” She felt a pang of guilt. The nurse couldn’t know that Jack was guarding her in case the killer came looking for them.

“All the other girls are crushing on him, but I’m impervious to his charms.”

“Impossible,” Perez said with a smirk.

She was feeling safer now that it was morning and her father was OK. Plus the hospital was waking up, the hallway increasingly noisy. “Jack,” she said, “why don’t you go get some breakfast? Take a break.”

“No, I’m fine.” He dismissed her with a wave but the nurse grabbed his arm.

“Go, get out. I have to check some things on your wife, and I’d throw you out, anyway.”

Perez said, “You OK, Charley?”

“Yes. Please, go. Eat something.”

Perez nodded, then eyed the nurse with amusement. “Gimme my phone, Ratchett.”

“When you come back.”

“But I need to make calls.”

“Go and take a break.”

“Sir, yes, sir.” Perez mock-saluted as he left.

“So how are you doing?” the nurse asked. She had a pleasantly fleshy face, with animated blue eyes and a freckled nose, and she wore her wiry, reddish hair back in an unfashionably long ponytail.

“Fine, I guess.” She wasn’t about to open up about her feelings to someone she hardly knew. The nurse tugged over a rolling cart, slid out a digital thermometer, and replaced its plastic tip.

“Open wide.”

She obeyed like a baby bird, and the nurse stuck the thermometer into her mouth.

“You slept well, and your color looks good. I need to check your vitals.”

The thermometer beeped. The nurse slid it out, read it quickly, then replaced it in the cart.

“You’re back to normal,” she said.

“Great. Is that what you have to check out on me?”

“No, I just said that to give us some alone time.” The nurse took the blood pressure cuff from a rack on the wall and began wrapping it around her patient’s upper arm. “I wanted to see how you were feeling. Really feeling, I mean. It’s tough, emotionally, I know. I missed once, myself.”

Missed. That must be the lingo.

“You will get through this, I promise. Take your time.” The nurse squeezed the black rubbery bulb, and the pressure cuff got tighter and tighter.

“Excuse us, ladies!” called a voice from the door. A doctor entered, and two interns followed like a flying wedge of white coats.

“You’re early, doc,” the nurse said, her smile fading. She let the cuff deflate rapidly.

“Our chief weapon is surprise,” the doctor said, and the young interns laughed.

“Please, no more Monty Python.” The nurse rolled her eyes, folded up the blood pressure cuff, and stuffed it back in the wire rack. “I can’t take any more.”

“Ha! And now for something completely different.” The doctor approached the bed with a sly smile, and the interns laughed again.

“Get ready to fake-laugh, Mrs. Perez,” the nurse said as she patted her arm. “They’re men, so they’ll buy it.” She handed over a cell phone. “Oh, I almost forgot, here’s your hubby’s phone.”

“Thanks,” she said, not recognizing it as Jack’s. He must have gotten new one.

“See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.” The nurse hustled from the room.

“I’m Dr. Lehmann, and these are my interns, but you don’t have to know their names. Think of them as Palin and Gilliam to my John Cleese.”

She fake-laughed, and the nurse was right. He bought it. Dr. Lehmann had a square jaw and long nose, and he smelled of fresh cologne. His expression was warm — until it changed.

“Well, my dear, you’ve been through hell.”

“Yes.”

“We did get some reports back, which we need to talk with you about.” Dr. Lehmann frowned almost sternly, a pitchfork folding in the middle of his forehead, under steel gray hair like Brillo. “Your blood work shows unusual hormone levels, consistent with certain medications. Have you taken anything we should know about?”

She blinked, confused. “No, not at all.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing at all. I won’t even take a baby aspirin.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Well.” Dr. Lehmann frowned at her over the steely top of his glasses. “I won’t mince words. To be frank, your levels are consistent with someone who has taken RU 486.”

She didn’t understand.

“Mifeprex. It’s best administered under a medical supervision. But unfortunately, it’s commonly self-administered by women who want to induce miscarriage, much later in their pregnancy. It’s commonly known as the abortion pill.”

She couldn’t see where he was going. “Okay, but what does that have to do with me?”

“Perhaps you wanted to end your pregnancy.”

“Me? No. No way.” She felt stricken. “Never.”

Dr. Lehmann eyed her, plainly doubtful. “Many people who administer the pill themselves in the later trimesters don’t realize that it’s very dangerous and could lead to extreme loss of blood, which is what happened in your case. You could have bled to death.”

“You think I tried to give myself an abortion?”

“Yes, I do. You can tell me the truth or not. Up to you.” Dr. Lehmann paused as if for a confession.

“Is that why I miscarried?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Your levels can be explained by only one thing. In fact, they suggest you took two pills. You wouldn’t be the first woman to have thought of that, either. Still, it’s very, very dangerous.”

“No, that’s not what happened! I did not take the pill, any pill. I never would. I wanted this baby.”

“I’m merely telling you what your blood work reveals.”

“Then it’s not my blood work. There’s been a mistake.” She looked at his lined face, then the equally grave faces of the interns. “There must have been a mistake.”

“Look, Mrs. Perez, this is your business. I want to emphasize to you that it would be unwise to ever do this again.” Dr. Lehmann’s expression softened. “No judgment here. I’m concerned only for your safety.”

She tried to function. “How does it cause an abortion, this pill?”

“The bottom line is that after the pill is ingested, severe cramping occurs and the fetus is expelled. When medically unsupervised, as in your case, it necessitates a D & C to be complete.” Dr. Lehmann checked his watch. “We must be going. Grand rounds this morning. We’ll check on you, later.”

She watched them go in silence. After they had left, her thoughts tumbled over one another, fast and furious. She hadn’t taken an abortion pill, much less two. But she’d had cramping that night, so severe she’d doubled over from them. The cramps had started sometime after dinner.

She thought back to that awful night. She and Jack had had their typical Friday night dinner, which he routinely cooked as an end-of-the-week treat for her. He’d made chicken with rosemary and mashed potatoes, her favorite. He even shooed her from the kitchen when she’d tried to help and had served it to her at her seat, doling out extra mashed potatoes, over her protest.

The memory made her heart stop.

No.

She shook her head. It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t make sense. The blood work had to be wrong. Any other possibility was unthinkable. Impossible. There had to be a mistake.

She tried to puzzle it out, turning the cell phone over and over in her hand. Its smooth metallic finish caught the light from the harsh overhead fluorescents, and she flipped it open on impulse. The tiny, multicolored screen showed the menu and on impulse, she pressed the button for the call logs. On the screen appeared a sharp-focus highlighting of the last call that had been received. It should have shown that it was her father, but the caller’s name didn’t read DAD or even HARRY.

Instead, it read: MOZART.

Huh?

Why would Jack call her father Mozart? Puzzled, she flipped through the menu to the address book and skimmed the address list. The names were in alphabetical order, and she skimmed them: BACH, BEETHOVEN, BRAHMS, CHOPIN, HANDEL, LISZT, MAHLER, MENDELSSOHN, SCARLATTI, SCHUBERT, SCHUMANN, SHOSTAKOVICH, SIBELIUS, TCHAIKOVSKY, VIVALDI.

What?

They were all composers. But Jack didn’t know anything about music; her father was the music expert. What was going on? It looked as if the names were some kind of code, on a cell phone she hadn’t even known existed.

What was happening? Who was Mozart? Had Jack heard from Harry? Had he lied about that? Why would he? Was Harry really okay? Suddenly, she didn’t understand anything. The miscarriage. The abortion pills. A secret phone with coded addresses. Her heart thundered in her chest. Her mouth went dry. She needed answers.

She pressed the button for MOZART, thumbed back to the call log, and pressed the button for the MOZART profile. It contained no real name, no email and no other information except for the phone number, which had too many digits. What did that mean? Then she realized there was a country code in front of the number. She didn’t know which country it was, but she knew it was an international number.

She pressed the buttons for two more profiles, HANDEL and LISZT. Both profiles were international calls, too, with no other information, like real name, email, or home phones. Why would Jack have a cell phone entirely — and solely — of international numbers? He’d never even traveled abroad; she was the world traveler of the two.

What about the baby?

She pushed the button and recalled MOZART, whoever the hell that was. The phone rang three times.

“Vukasin,” answered a man, in a thick accent she couldn’t identify.

She pressed End, her heart hammering. Who was Vukasin? What was going on? She couldn’t puzzle it out fast enough. Something was horribly wrong, and Jack would be back any minute. She didn’t know what to do. Confront him? Then she realized that this Vukasin guy could call back and blow her cover.

There was only one thing to do.

She hurled the cell phone to the hospital floor with all her might. The phone’s plastic back sprung open, and the slim orange battery flew out, skidding to the wall in front of the chair.

Just then Perez appeared grinning in the doorway. “Honey, I’m home!”

She arranged her face into a wifely mask and turned sheepishly to the door. “Please don’t be mad,” she said, willing herself to act natural. “The nurse gave me your phone but I dropped it.”

“Damn, Charley.” Annoyance flickered over his handsome features. “It was a new one.”

“I noticed. Sorry.” She eased back into bed, watching her husband with new suspicion. “Did you buy one of those insurance contracts for it?”

“No.” He strode to the chair, bent down, and began picking up the pieces of the cell phone. “Looks like all the king’s horses and all the king’s men…”

“…can’t put it back together again?” She finished his sentence with ersatz remorse.

“Nah, but that’s OK.” He slipped the plastic shards of the phone into his jacket pocket and turned to his wife with a smile she had loved so much it broke her heart.

Did you kill our baby?

Did you try to kill me?

But she wouldn’t ask him anything, just yet. She had to calculate her next move. Until she knew more, the best course was to keep her mouth shut and her eyes open.

She wasn’t Harry Middleton’s daughter for nothing.