Make Quilts Not War (17 page)

“I suppose not, but it’s what they teach us to say. It seems like a better thing to say than ‘I know you’re in pain, but let me add a little more,’ don’t you think?”

“I guess,” Harriet said and only then realized the nurse had efficiently drawn two syringes of blood while she was talking.

“These will go to the lab just to be sure there wasn’t anything nasty in whatever was splashed on your arm. They’ll check to see if you absorbed anything into your bloodstream.”

“We recovered enough liquid from the bottle to test,” Detective Morse said as she came through the curtain.

“Great, so I didn’t need the blood test?”

“I’m sure they need to test your blood in any case, but we sent the bottle and liquid to the forensic lab for analysis.”

“I suppose you’re going to yell at me for being involved in yet another crime,” Harriet said and leaned her head back on her pillow.

“Actually, no. From all accounts, you were an innocent victim in this little drama. And the perp seems pretty upset that she got you and not whoever she intended to attack. Given the rather specific location, and the events of the last few days, I’m going to assume Jenny was her intended target.”

“Did she say she was trying to hit Jenny?” Harriet asked.

“She’s talked nonstop since we took her into custody, but none of it makes sense. She hasn’t mentioned Jenny by name, but it’s clear she was the target. I talked to the nurse who helped you and her daughter, but now I’d like to hear what you saw.”

Harriet described the blue-suited woman and the sequence of events that led to her being burned.

“Did you see or hear anything else that might shed some light on this incident?”

Harriet thought about Bobby and the story he’d told her but then rejected the idea of telling Morse before she’d had a chance to talk to Jenny.
She
should be the one to tell Morse about her brother, if she thought it was relevant, not Harriet.

“There was an incident of bleach being thrown on a show quilt a few years ago in Houston,” Harriet said. “It turned out to be a case of a sore loser in a civil lawsuit. Maybe this is something like that.”

“Maybe, but that would imply a relationship between Jenny and the perp.”

“Unless the woman got the wrong quilt altogether. Everyone involved in this show is in costume. Lots of people are wearing Afro wigs and big sunglasses with granny dresses.”

“Hopefully, the woman will calm down and tell us what this is all about. She wasn’t carrying any ID, so we don’t know who she is or why she might have done this. So far, she’s yelling something about her father. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Not at all. I’ve never seen that woman before in my life.”

A tall man in green scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck came into the curtained room.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave, Detective,” he said.

“I hope you feel better soon,” Morse said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I’ll check back with you tomorrow.”

“I’m Doctor Mitchell,” the new arrival told Harriet, “and I’m going to take a look at that burn. If that’s okay with you.”

“Sure,” Harriet said. She wasn’t sure what he’d expected her to say.
Did people in this situation refuse treatment?
she wondered.

The nurse—Mary Gonzales, according to her name tag—pulled a bundle wrapped in blue cloth from a cabinet and unfolded it next to her arm. It contained a pair of bandage scissors and several pairs of tweezers, along with a plastic tray. Mary removed the ice packs, and Dr. Mitchell moved Harriet’s arm onto the cloth and began cutting away the glove. Harriet turned her face away and studied the curtain on the opposite side of her cubicle. Whatever else they were going to do to her arm wasn’t anything she wanted to see. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

Someone must have slipped pain medication into her IV while her eyes were closed, because when she opened them again, her arm was wrapped in a new dressing, and Lauren was sitting in a chair at her bedside.

“How long have I been asleep?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

“Shhh.” Lauren held her forefinger to her lips. “Listen,” she whispered.

Harriet could hear two voices coming from one of the cubicles farther down her row.

“That was one of the strangest cases of food poisoning I’ve ever seen,” a woman said.

Harriet looked at Lauren.

“She sure recovered quickly,” a deeper female voice com
mented.

“Yeah, just in time to avoid the stomach pump.”

“She made a real point of the fact that Dr. Jalbert’s housekeeper made the soup she’d eaten.”

“Funny how no one else got sick.”

“Hard to imagine how vegetable beef soup poisoned even one person. Especially since it was served hot, according to the patient.”

“If you ask me, she was faking,” deep voice replied. “It’s a
shame people like that are willing to waste our time and resources when
there’s a waiting room full of sick or hurt people who really do
need care.”

“It takes all kinds, I guess,” the first woman said.

Harriet and Lauren heard the crinkling of paper and the sound of a broom. Michelle and Aiden must have gone.

“You’ve been out at least an hour. I passed Aiden and that witch he calls a sister as I came in. I assume that conversation was about her,” Lauren said. “She was screeching about Carla trying to kill her.”

“Oh, my gosh! Michelle is trying to get Carla fired,” Harriet
said.

“Seems like,” Lauren replied. “I think we need to call your aunt now. I mean, it’s great to let her and Jorge have their moment at the prom and all, but she needs to be here with you. Your nurse was just in here a while ago asking if you’d had a tetanus shot recently. I told her I didn’t have a clue. If your aunt was here, she’d know.”

“She doesn’t have her cell phone with her.”

“Robin has hers—she never goes anywhere without it. Connie, too. She’ll have hers in Rod’s coat pocket.”

“Let’s wait until you take me home. As soon as they figure out that I don’t need a tetanus shot, I should be good to go. My arm is bandaged, so I assume they’re through with it.”

“I asked while you were napping. They want to wait until the test results from the liquid in the bottle are back. They want to be sure the crazy lady didn’t add anything poisonous besides the acids.”

“Did they give any idea how long that would take?”

“Not really,” Lauren told her. “If you’re going to lay there and whine, I’ll go see if I can find anyone who can tell us anything. If they don’t say you’re leaving in the next thirty minutes, I’m calling Robin. The prom is going to be ending in an hour or so, and your aunt is going to be looking for you. She knew you were going to be protesting, right?”

Harriet nodded and closed her eyes. The next thing she knew, Dr. Mitchell was at her bedside holding a clipboard full of papers.

“Your blood test looks okay so far. You should see your regular doctor tomorrow and have your dressing changed. Have you had a tetanus shot recently?”

“Sadly, yes,” Harriet replied. The nurse was looking it up on a tablet. “I was hit on the head and had to have a couple of stitches. They gave me one then.”

“The nurses told me you’re a bit of a regular here,” Dr. Mitchell said. “Anything you can do about that?”

“I was an innocent bystander tonight. My friend may have been
the target, but I was just watching her station while she took a
break.”

“Maybe you need new friends.”

He proceeded to recite a litany of cautions, care instructions and medication instructions and finished by handing her a printout of prescriptions for pain pills and burn ointment for some smaller splash spots away from the main injury.

“You get to leave,” Lauren said as she came through the curtained doorway. She stopped when she saw the doctor. “Oh, sorry,” she said and moved to the other side of Harriet’s bed.

“As your friend said, you get to leave,” Dr. Mitchell said with a smile. “Since you’re a frequent flyer, I’m sure they have your insurance information, but if anything has changed, take care of it on your way out. Don’t get up until someone comes and gets you with a wheelchair.”

“
Now
can we call your aunt?” Lauren asked as soon as the doctor was gone.

“I guess I can’t avoid it any longer.”

Lauren had her cell phone out and was dialing Robin before Harriet had stopped speaking.

Lauren pulled into Harriet’s driveway and parked as close to the studio door as she could. Harriet recognized Connie’s car along with her aunt’s silver Beetle, Robin’s minivan and the older model Mercedes Aiden let Carla drive.

“How was the prom?” she asked as she came through the door, a sheepish smile on her face.

“What were you thinking, not letting anyone call us?” Aunt Beth demanded.

“Let the girl sit down,” Mavis scolded. She must have come with Aunt Beth, Harriet thought. Likewise, DeAnn was sitting beside
Robin. With the exception of Jenny—and Sarah, whom they
hadn’t seen in weeks—all of the Loose Threads were present. Harriet assumed the monitor receiver in Carla’s left hand meant Wendy was asleep somewhere out of earshot.

She sat down in one of the swivel chairs that had been pushed up to her cutting table. Lauren went through the kitchen door, returning a minute later with a throw pillow from the living room sofa. She put it on the table beside Harriet.

“Elevate,” she said.

Harriet put her arm on the pillow and settled herself.

“So, what happened?” Aunt Beth asked, unable to keep the
stern look off her face.

“I was an innocent bystander,” Harriet protested, and then related the whole story one more time.

“No one seems to know who the crazy lady is,” Lauren added when Harriet was finished. “They actually brought her to the hospital instead of the jail because she was acting so crazy. I heard one of the nurses say they had to sedate her and would be sending her to the psych ward.”

“We need to talk to Jenny,” Harriet said. “Not only about why the acid thrower would want to attack her, if, indeed, that was the intention but also, I didn’t get a chance to tell her that her brother wanted to talk to her. He came to me and claimed he isn’t using
drugs anymore, and that he needed to warn Jenny about
something. He said she was in danger.”

“Do you think he was talking about the woman who threw the acid?” Mavis asked.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Harriet said thoughtfully. “He was lurking around waiting for me to convince Jenny to talk to him. The woman was also wandering the aisles. If I saw her, he must have, and if he knew she was the danger, why wouldn’t he have stopped her?”

“Maybe he was afraid of what she was going to do,” Aunt Beth suggested.

“But he was the one who tackled the woman and threw her bottle of acid out of reach. Then he just disappeared. If he knew she was the danger, why did he wait until she threw the liquid?”

“Maybe he misjudged the level of danger,” Robin suggested.

“But he said Jenny was in danger. He said he’d laid low, but they’d found her anyway. Somehow, that doesn’t seem to match with one crazy woman.”

“What did the doctor say about your arm?” Connie asked. “Is it terribly painful?”

“They didn’t really tell me much,” Harriet said.

“Actually, they had a lot to say,” Lauren told them. “Harriet’s too drugged with pain medicine to remember it all.” She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket, unfolded it and handed it to Aunt Beth. “She’s supposed to keep it level or slightly elevated, and she’s supposed to call her doctor tomorrow and have the dressing changed. And she’s supposed to take antibiotics just in case, and pain meds, and they said her own doctor could tell her about plastic surgery in the future.

“The police are testing the brew from the bottle to see what-all was in it. They’re pretty sure it was both hydrofluoric acid and something like sulfuric acid. They want to be sure they got the hydrofluoric stopped. I guess it heads for your bones when it can.”

“So, there you go,” Harriet said. “To answer your other question, it
is
tender but the pain meds are keeping it in check. Can we talk about Jenny, please?”

“I’m not sure what else there is to say about Jenny until she comes and tells us what’s going on,” Robin said. “Then we can find out what, if any, trouble she’s in.”

Robin hadn’t actively practiced law since her children had started school, but she kept her license current just for these occasions.

“I bet acid lady will turn out to be our tire slasher,” Lauren said.

“We need to find Jenny’s brother,” Harriet said. “Not to minimize the damage of the tire-slashing or the acid-throwing, but Bobby seemed way more worried than one crazy person would warrant.”

“Honey, you’re starting to repeat yourself,” Mavis said.

“Sorry,” Harriet said. “Here’s a new topic for you. Aiden was in the ER. Any guesses as to why he was there? And, Carla, you don’t get to play.”

“Michelle is trying to get Aiden to fire me,” Carla blurted out before anyone could make a guess. “She said my soup poisoned her, and she made Aiden take her to the emergency room. Aiden left me a message on my phone, and Terry brought me home but they’d already left for the hospital.”

“Oh, honey, that’s terrible,” Connie said.

“You can’t get food poisoning from hot soup,” Mavis stated. “Not if you brought it to a boil.”

“Terry searched Michelle’s room, and he found two empty bottles of syrup of ipecac,” Carla said.

“So, she poisoned herself?” DeAnn asked, frowning.

“No one else had any of the soup, because Aiden worked late, and Terry took Wendy and I out to dinner, but Terry thinks she waited until Aiden was home and then drank a dose to make sure she produced the right effect at the right time.”

“And she blamed Carla,” Robin said in a clipped tone.

“Apparently,” Harriet said.

“That’s really bad,” DeAnn said.

“What a psycho,” Lauren said.

Mavis looked at Beth and then Connie.

“We may need to stage an intervention here,” she said. “Inter
fering with Harriet and Aiden is bad enough, but trying to get
Carla fired and ruining her reputation in the process is not acceptable.”