conceding to myself that he’d also taken a new interest in me, at least until something better—something named Breanne—showed up again.
Madame fixed her determined eyes on me. “And I believe he’s also shown a new deference and concern for his…family.”
I sighed. “I admit that Matteo has dropped hints that he’d like to…see more of Joy.”
“And you, my dear.”
“He may want that, but it’s not something I think is wise for either of us,” I replied diplomatically, hoping I’d led Madame to a soft landing.
“But you still love him,” Madame shot back—an assertion, not a question. I met Madame’s expectant gaze.
“Oh, Madame…you know love was never the problem.”
TWENTY-ONE
IF I ever write a manual on how to be an amateur detective, I will add a chapter on one of the most important assets any investigator can have—an impeccably dressed elderly woman who arouses absolutely no suspicion and can talk her way into or out of any situation. A woman whose presence is so imperious, so gracious, almost no one will question her motives or rudely ask about her business.
Even in these days of heightened security—bordering on paranoia here in New York City after the 9/11 attacks—Madame was easily able to charm herself past the nurse at Bellevue Hospital’s front desk and up to the tenth floor, where we were told Mr. Jeffery Lugar was resting comfortably in a semiprivate room.
Bellevue Hospital occupies a twenty-five-story, multimillion dollar patient-care facility in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Manhattan. Founded in the 1600s, the facility includes both adult and pediatric emergency facilities, along with the psychiatric emergency services with which most people associate the place. The entire facility became a part of the New York University School of Medicine in 1968. Currently its attending physician staff numbers twelve hundred and its house staff more than five hundred residents and interns.
Despite its impressive credentials and history, however, once you step out of the elevator and into one of the wards, Bellevue is much like any other hospital—white walls, white-clad nurses and staff, a medicinal smell that barely masks the scent of sickness, decay, and death.
Okay, maybe I’m being a bit too morbid, but aside from the time I spent in the hospital delivering my daughter, Joy, my memories of visiting such facilities are not fond. One of my employees died in such a place, barely a month after I took over management of the coffeehouse again. That was not a good memory, and as I walked the sterile halls, I vowed that I would never again visit a prison and a hospital in the same day.
At the nurses’ station, Madame inquired after Jeff Lugar. A middle-aged registered nurse checked the roster. “You’ll find Mr. Luger in room ten-fourteen. I believe he already has several visitors, but I’m sure he will be delighted to have a visit from his immediate family.”
“Nothing says loving like a visit from Grandma,” I whispered.
“Shush, Clare,” warned Madame.
But the nurse’s assumption proved my assertion—nobody suspects a well-dressed elderly woman of shady behavior. Nobody.
“You’ll find Mr. Lugar’s room all the way down at the end of the hall, the last room on the left,” said the nurse in a chipper voice.
As we proceeded down the corridor, a young man emerged from room 1014 just before we reached it. Before he noticed either of us, I clutched Madame’s arm and stopped her.
“Clare? What’s the matter?”
“That man,” I whispered. “I’ve seen him before. Twice before.”
The person who came out of Jeff Lugar’s room was the young man with the white-blond crewcut—the one Esther Best dubbed the “Billy Idol clone.” Mr. Eighties had been hovering around the coffee bar right before the poisoning—at least according to Esther—and then he had been at Tad Benedict’s investment seminar. Today the mystery man wore a black silk suit and a narrow scarlet tie; the sleeves of his jacket were rolled up his forearms 1980s style—to reveal a complex map of purple and blue tattoos. A blue and yellow badge dangled from his lapel. I’d seen plastic cards just like them—worn by the Fall Fashion Week staff at Bryant Park when I’d visited Lottie at the large central tent nicknamed the Plaza.
I watched, waiting for the man to turn and see us—and perhaps recognize Madame, too, from our evening aboard the Fortune. (Though I’d been in my Jackie O disguise, Madame was now dressed as elegantly as she had been on that night, and a woman of her presence was not easily forgotten.)
A voice called from the room, low