Читать книгу Blood Wine - John Moss - Страница 5

Strange Bedfellows

Morgan telephoned Miranda in mid-evening to see how she was doing. She was touched and a little irritated by his concern. It was warm but she was wearing flannel pajamas, purple moose printed on white. Morgan was in boxer shorts, which he wore as pajamas, and a T-shirt from Home Hardware.

“You want me to come over?” he said.

“I’m watching Buffy reruns.”

“The Vampire Slayer? Good grief.”

“It’s not hepatitis, it’s postmodern.”

“Postmodernism is over, Miranda. Before anyone figured out what it was. ”

“You watch Survivor.”

“For the organized spontaneity.”

“Have you ever watched Buffy?”

“Not without feeling guilty.”

“For what, Morgan? Sex and death, short skirts?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

They bantered for a while, then Morgan signed off and returned to his book, letting Miranda get back for the closing credits of the best show on television; she admired the moral complexity.

It is a lot easier to be right than good, in a world where irony is how things actually are.

Morgan was reading wine books. He was trying to find information on Philip Carter’s Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Even Hugh Johnson didn’t list it.

The label was puzzling. Like the better French wines, it stated in small print, Mis en bouteille au château, and there was a pen-and-ink sketch of a generic chateau. The agent exclusif was Baudrillard et fils, Avignon, but the chateau was not actually named. The odd spelling on the label, ChâteauNeuf, one word, capital C capital N, was peculiar, but led nowhere. The vintage was signified on a separate neck label, 1996.

It was not one of those frou-frou bottles, with the glass melted into a languorous shape, covered with fake dust as if it had been mouldering deep in the cellars for an age, like some of the more urgently marketed Châteauneuf-du-Pape found in upscale wine stores throughout Canada and the States. It was a fine wine, presented in a bottle as sleek and muscular as the wine it contained.

The grapes were unidentifiable. The wine was a blend of the pliant and the austere, sun-rich from the stony hardscrabble southern landscape, suitably named for the doughty popes of Avignon who made it their favourite drink.

Having been opened for three days, it was beginning to take on a madeirized note, but Morgan swirled a bit in his glass and found the air cleaned it up.

Suddenly, he recognized a taste, a hint on the nose, of something strange but familiar. Not Châteauneuf-du-Pape, something else. At a wine tasting once, a blind tasting, they had been given a mystery wine. No one guessed it, and it turned out to be a Cabernet Sauvignon from Lebanon, with just a touch of Merlot to soften it, and, if he remembered right, a bit of Cabernet Franc for the spice.

Morgan had attended a couple of tastings organized by the Opimian Society but found them frustrating because, while he had the nose to appreciate the flourishes in their esoteric discussions, he lacked the resources to buy their selections. He was sufficiently discriminating that he remembered the mystery wine. That pleased him.

Miranda was searching a long shot on the news of black-bearded men thronging the streets of, she wasn’t sure where, angry and relieved there wasn’t a woman in sight, when she was startled by a knock at the door. It must be Morgan; he had slipped by the security door without buzzing. She was pleased. She knew right now he needed her as much as she needed him. It’s funny, she thought, how men feel violated when someone close to them has been damaged. It was flattering but oppressive, like they should be able to control the world.

She opened the door.

A young woman stared through her, wavered, then collapsed. Her legs splayed awkwardly to the side so that it was difficult for Miranda to drag her inside. Miranda knew she wasn’t dead, not even dying. She recognized the kind of emotional exhaustion she had seen before when someone has witnessed a brutal crime against a loved one, a child or partner. Sometimes they collapse when an ally approaches to share the pain.

Miranda closed the door. The woman lay on the floor, very still. Her blond hair fanned over the hardwood, although her face rested against the scatter-rug that had bunched up under her head and shoulders. She was wearing a grey skirt and a designer T-shirt; bare legs, sandals, not a lot of make-up, well-manicured nails, clean hair, no rings, a thin gold chain around her neck, wrist wrapped around the strap of a voluminous Monica Lewinsky handbag. Her eyes were glazed, unblinking, and vacant.

Miranda stepped back. She had never seen the woman before in her life.

As she squatted down beside her, her white flannel pajamas imprinted with grazing moose struck her as weird.

“Have we met before?” she said.

No response, but the woman was conscious.

“Hey,” she said, gently shaking the woman’s shoulder, “do you know me?”

Miranda felt a strange surge of empathy.

“Come on,” she said, trying to get a grip on the woman to help her up. “Let’s get you comfortable, then we’ll introduce ourselves. No? Okay.”

Miranda lowered the woman’s head gently against the rug and walked back into the living room. She sat on the sofa so she could see into the hallway, where the woman lay very still, breathing softly. She got up and went into the kitchen and poured herself a straight Scotch, single malt. She sat down again on the sofa, contemplating her guest.

“Can I get you anything?” she called, feeling ridiculous. After a long pause, she added, “If you want to talk, you know.…”

Miranda tried to think clearly. If I wasn’t traumatized by recent events in my life, what would I be doing now? What should I be doing?

She got up and walked closer as a pool of water spread slowly from under the young woman onto the hardwood.

“Oh jeez,” Miranda exclaimed. “You can’t pee there.”

With the strength of propriety, she lifted under the young woman’s torso, hunkered down, swung a limp arm over her own shoulders, and hauled her to the bathroom, the woman’s legs dragging behind, inscribing a wet trail on the floor.

Miranda was shaken. She had been confident the woman was in shock of some sort and would snap out of it. Now she wasn’t so sure. Then she decided the urination wasn’t from poison or drugs but a natural release of the muscles, as if the woman had found safe refuge after a sustained surge of adrenalin and her body relaxed beyond appropriate limits. It could be worse, thought Miranda.

It did not occur to her to call the police; she was the police. It did not even cross her mind to call her partner. This was personal, something she had to deal with herself. That seemed logical at the moment — just the two women, both victims in a baffling and hostile world.

Miranda slid a bath towel under the woman’s body, folded another, and put it under her head. Then she sat down on the floor beside her, leaning against the cool porcelain tub, and drew her knees up against her chest. She reached over and with the back of one hand gently brushed the woman’s blond hair away from her face. Her eyes flickered and for a moment Miranda thought they were beckoning to her, trying to make contact, but they went dull again.

Miranda got up, switched on the heat-lamp and fan, and resumed her position, as if she were keeping vigil. With the overhead on as well, the light in the room was tinged with amber and the rumbling of the fan filled the air with a brittle noise, like wind over dry grass.

The young woman — Miranda could see she was not a girl, she must have been in her mid to late twenties — looked radiant in the amber light, but she lay very still, almost like a corpse on display at a wake, except she was turned to one side and breathing.

Miranda touched her again on the forehead then let her fingers drift over her cheek, finding reassurance in the warmth of her flesh. Miranda stared at the woman’s blue eyes, waiting for a person to appear in their depths, someone who could explain what was happening to both of them.

The web was a last resort. Morgan preferred books for such an inquiry; he wanted to turn the pages of wine books and revel in the graphic design of grapes and landscape among blocks of text in a pleasing variety of fonts. But nothing he owned showed a listing for Baudrillard et fils in Avignon or anywhere else. Nothing for a Châteauneuf-du-Pape called simply that, ChâteauNeuf-du-Pape. He realized in a satisfying small revelation that this might be its name, the Ninth Château; there was no break between Château and Neuf and there was a cap on the N. Or perhaps Neuf simply meant New and was nothing more than an aberrant spelling.

There was nothing on the Net.

This was a quandary not unrelated to the strange death of Philip Carter. It was Carter’s bottle — he had to have bought it somewhere. It must have an origin, however obscure. He thought about Carter’s Lebanese friend and felt a wave of revulsion sweep through his gut, but he could not conjure a connection between the hint of Lebanon in the wine and the man who assaulted Miranda.

Rising from the sofa, Morgan smacked his shin against a painted wood chest he used as an end table. It was precariously stacked with books and magazines so that its dimensions were illusory, and when he hit it a number of them clattered to the floor. While on his hands and knees to retrieve them, the faded black- stencilled lettering caught his eye. S. Sutter, 1789. This was on a field of thick green paint, worn and cracked by time into a lustrous patina.

Morgan paused and ran his fingers over the letters. After his parents died, when he had retrieved the chest from the shed that his mother called the summer kitchen in the home they rented all their lives in old Cabbagetown, he used it to pack the few possessions they had worth keeping, and then only for sentimental value. This was when Cabbagetown was still a slum, before it became urban chic. These were the sole remnants of his childhood among the working poor.

This was also the beginning of his interest in country antiques. When he got the painted pine box home and cleaned it up, he discovered the stencilling. After a bit of research he found it was a woman’s dower chest built in the Niagara Peninsula, probably Welland County, Bertie Township, and that it had belonged to Sarah Sutter, who married Jacob Haun in 1794. The Sutters were Loyalists during the American Revolution. Sarah’s father, having served fourteen months imprisonment in New Jersey for his British sympathies before coming to the Niagara area in the summer of 1785, was refused compensation; it was judged that “he had not come within the British lines” during hostilities, but only afterwards in hope of recompense.

Morgan sat back on the floor, staring at the box. Why was he thinking about this? Why was he rehearsing in his mind the facts he had dug up about an antique hope chest?

He trusted his own discursiveness; it sometimes led to intuitive leaps where unlikely connections, once made, would suddenly seem inevitable.

Was it the chest itself, with the traditional bracket base, the rural Pennsylvania Chippendale coping, the austere slab face with its tiny lock opening, the thick, worn paint, or was it Sarah Sutter, whose father established Sutter’s Mill in early Toronto before the American invasion? No, it was Niagara. Something about Niagara.

Morgan got up from the floor and wandered distractedly into his kitchen, where the ChâteauNeuf-du-Pape stood open on the counter. He poured himself two fingers in a brandy snifter and swirled it vigorously, then held it to his nose and inhaled a deep draught of the pungent aroma, redolent with sunbaked soil and ripe fruit.

As he closed his eyes to savour the smell of the wine, wheels clicked into place like a slot machine coming up with a winning set. Lebanon and Niagara, unexpected locales for the origin of fine wines, and a mysterious wine labelled as ChâteauNeuf-du-Pape but not from the Avignon region — these connected.

He had heard of the millions to be made in counterfeit wines but he had never taken the rumours seriously. Not because he did not think such things happened but because it seemed a frivolous crime, relatively harmless to all except those willing to pay exorbitant prices for exquisite small pleasures.

Suddenly, he envisioned Miranda’s assailants as operatives in an international conspiracy of epic malevolence, concerned with illicit wine trade on a major scale.

He knew of a twenty-four hour wine merchant in Rochester who had the best fine wine offerings in the northeast. He called and got an assistant manager who assured him, yes, they did carry ChâteauNeuf-du-Pape, some very good vintages, and could give a reasonable discount by the case, along with a lower invoice, if required, to offset excessive Canadian tariffs.

Miranda heard the telephone ring. She was still sitting on the bathroom floor. She had been there for four or five hours. She could remember time expanding as if she were an observer watching two women, neither of whom seemed familiar.

Post-traumatic stress disorder; the observing Miranda knew about such things and even thought it might be an appropriate term, perhaps for both women. It didn’t mean anything — it was not a diagnosis, it was a description.

She could envision Morgan on the other end of the line giving his Clint Eastwood scowl, which would shift too quickly into a sly Kevin Spacey grin and then, because no one was answering, his face would collapse into a Jack Nicholson sneer or a Mel Gibson smirk, or, if he could muster it, a blue-eyed Paul Newman smile, even though his eyes were deep brown.

No, that sequence would be if he thought she was in bed with her lover. He would have another set of faces for this, whatever was happening now.

He doesn’t know how he looks, she thought. Maybe nobody does. For the most part he was stone-faced, displaying only the subtlest nuances of character, like all the great screen actors. Some people thought he was cold. Others thought he was cool.

He was only forty-two, but she never thought of him in terms of young actors like Ewan McGregor or Brad Pitt. They had not yet done enough in their lives to transcend the roles they played. And never like Al Pacino, De Niro, or Hoffman, who were inseparable from their roles.

The phone kept ringing in a monotonous jangle, like a giant insect blindly searching its prey.

Morgan was childish, sometimes, but only with her. He would recite bits of nursery rhymes or schoolyard jingles, sometimes delightfully, absurdly obscene, always inappropriate, although he almost never swore. You can take the boy out of the schoolyard, she thought, but …

Time passed, and she could hear voices and a key rattling in her door.

Then Morgan was beside her. The building caretaker who let him in had gone back to bed. Morgan touched her, and she touched the blond woman’s cheek.

“Hello, Morgan,” she said.

“My goodness, it stinks in here,” said Morgan.

“I’m okay,” she said. “You were going to ask if I’m okay. I’m okay. This is my friend, she’s okay.”

“You’re not,” said Morgan. “I’m going to call an ambulance.”

Suddenly, as if she had been slapped in the face or jarred with defibrillators, Miranda returned to herself.

“Morgan! No ambulance, no cops.” She placed her hand around the back of his neck and drew herself upward as he rose to his feet.

“My God,” she said. “I’m stiff.”

“And who is this?” said Morgan. “You’re both filthy.”

“I’m okay, Morgan. I’m okay. Let’s get cleaned up here.”

Morgan turned on the shower and in a surreal, almost balletic sequence of movements, he and Miranda got the young woman into the streaming water, where Miranda, still in her pajamas, stripped off the woman’s soiled clothes and handed them out to Morgan, who tossed them in the tub and then went for a bathrobe, which they wrapped around the young woman, who appeared conscious of what they were doing but did nothing to assist. He took her into the bedroom and spread her out on top of the sheets, noticing there was still residue around her wrists, possibly from duct tape, then he returned to assist Miranda, who was tangled trying to get out of her drenched moose-grazing flannel pajamas. He helped her into and out of the shower then towelled her off before wrapping her in a clean white beach towel and leading her into the bedroom to sit on the edge of the bed beside her erstwhile companion.

“Why are you here?” said Miranda ingenuously, implying it was a pleasant thing to have him drop in, but a bit of an intrusion.

“I wanted to talk about wine. When I called, there was no answer — who is this? She obviously needs help? So do you —”

“And you’re here, Morgan. She came to me, I’m the help she was looking for. We’ll help each other, Morgan. How can I help you? You want to know about wine? You’re the expert, but I’ll tell you what I can.”

“Miranda …”

“She came to me, Morgan, because she needs me. Philip sent her.”

“Philip!”

“I know he’s dead. I’m not confused. But she’s a link between him and the man who killed us, killed him.”

“How do you know?”

“Statistics. Logic. How often does a discombobulated blond turn up at your door, how often does a corpse turn up in your bed? Both extremely unlikely. The chances of these two events happening in the same week to the same person, astronomically unlikely. Ergo, it’s magic, or there’s a causal connection.”

“We’ve got to call Spivak, see what he can make of her. We’ve got to get her to a doctor. Does she talk?”

“Call Ellen Ravenscroft.”

“What?”

“Call Ellen Ravenscroft, she’s a doctor.

“She’s a coroner, this woman’s alive —”

“Morgan, are you with me on this? She came to me. Not to the police, not to the hospital, she came to me.”

Morgan reached out and felt her forehead. Miranda leaned against the pressure of his hand. He stood up, and bending over her, he lowered her back onto the bed beside her new friend, who had closed her eyes and seemed to be asleep. Miranda closed her eyes as well and drifted off as he watched her.

He wandered out into the living room and down the hallway. The floor was sticky with drying urine. He got a sponge-mop from the kitchen, dampened it with a little water and some vinegar from under the sink, and cleaned the floor from the hall through to the bathroom. He put the mop away after rinsing it and stood in the bedroom doorway, surveying the strange scene of the two women asleep on the bed.

He started back to the living room, then turned and taking a light blanket from the back of a chair, he covered the sleeping women, tucking the blanket close around them as if they might catch a chill, even though the night air was seasonably balmy. Through an open window he could hear the ambient hush of the city.

When the security door buzzed, he let Ravenscroft in without checking to see who it was. She had been surprisingly cheerful when his call wakened her. He met her at the door.

“Thanks,” he said softly.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “Where is she? And there’s no point in whispering, we’ll have to wake her up anyway.”

Ellen walked into the bedroom and flicked on the overhead. “My God!” she said. “There are two of them?”

Morgan had not told her about the stranger. He had said Miranda seemed to be suffering from post-trauma shock and had asked for Ellen by name.

Miranda stirred, and without opening her eyes mumbled, “Hello, Ellen Ravenscroft.”

“Hello, Miranda Quin. And who are we in bed with this time?”

Miranda’s eyes flashed open. She glared at the medical examiner, then shut them again and smiled. “She’s my friend.”

“And what’s your friend’s name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can your friend talk? I think she’s awake. Are you awake, Miranda’s friend?”

The woman’s blue eyes flickered then stayed open, clear but expressionless. Ellen pulled back the blanket and scowled at the strange array of bathrobe and towel covering the two women.

“I gather this was your doing,” she said to Morgan.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Very gentlemanly, Morgan. Very modest. But perhaps a sheet would have been enough. It’s sweltering under there. You go on out to the living room and I’ll see what I can do with these two. Come on, love,” she said to Miranda. “We’ll start with you. Up you get.”

As Morgan left the room, the M.E. was struggling to get Miranda mobile. From the living room he could hear thumping and bumping but could not imagine what, exactly, was going on.

After a surprisingly short time, Miranda and Ellen emerged from the bedroom with the stranger between them. Ellen had dressed both in baggy sweatshirts and pajama bottoms. Morgan got up and Ellen helped the two women to the sofa, where they sat side by side, both looking dazed as if they had just woken from a long sleep.

“I’ve checked them over,” said Ellen, addressing Morgan as if the women were not there. “Miranda’s fine. I mean physically. They both are. I think we might try a tranquillizer.”

“I don’t do tranquillizers,” Miranda snapped.

“But then again, perhaps we won’t try a tranquillizer,” said Ellen, pausing, “on either of them. Goldilocks here is in deep shock. She may have been sedated, but everything’s working fine. I’d feel better getting her to a hospital —”

“No hospital,” said Miranda.

“— or not. I don’t think she’s in any danger. I don’t think either of them are.”

“I think we’re both in danger,” said Miranda.

“If someone was trying to kill you — ” said Morgan.

“— we’d be dead.”

“Did you check her bag?” Ellen asked.

“No,” said Morgan. “What bag?”

“In the hall,” said Ellen. “It’s not Miranda’s.”

“Not my taste,” Miranda explained.

“And I figured it’s not yours, Morgan. Therefore, it must be Miranda’s new best friend’s. It’s blond-appropriate.”

Miranda smiled.

Morgan retrieved the bag from the floor of the hall. He brought it back into the living room and set it on the glass-topped coffee table. All three women leaned forward, anxious to see what was inside. Morgan realized this was the first sign the stranger had shown of interest in anything not bottled up in her own skull.

He pulled out a gun, dangling it carefully from the trigger guard. He sniffed it then set it down gingerly on the glass.

“It’s been fired,” he said. “Fairly recently.”

He removed item after item from the bag, setting each on the table in a random display. Mostly it was cosmetics and toiletries. There was a wallet and change purse, both empty. In the shadowy depths at the bottom was a large crumpled-up wad of used tissues.

Morgan turned to the young woman. “What’s your name?” he asked. They were stunned when she responded.

“I think Michelle,” she said. Her cobalt-blue eyes began to take on personality, as if she were finding her way inside toward the light.

“How do you know Miranda?” he asked.

Her eyes flicked in Miranda’s direction but she said nothing.

“What happened?” Morgan asked, speaking in a voice intended to project gentle authority. “Where’d you come from, why are you here? What’s your last name, Michelle?”

She directed a conspiratorial glance at Miranda. “I’m tired,” she said, trying to get up from the sofa. “I’d like to sleep.”

“Me too,” said Miranda, rising and helping the young woman. “Thanks for coming, Ellen. I’ll call you in the morning. Night, night.”

She began to lead the woman who called herself Michelle into the bedroom.

Morgan stopped them. “What’s going on?” he said.

Miranda looked into his eyes, asking for patience. “Will you stay?” she said. “Sleep on the sofa?”

“I think I killed a man,” said the strange young woman.

“We’ll talk in the morning,” said Miranda.

She looked at Morgan and shook her head slowly, as if to acknowledge her friend was delusional. Morgan walked Ellen to the door as the other two women went into the bedroom.

“What the hell was that?” said Ellen. “She killed someone?”

“I don’t think so, I don’t know.”

“She’s been through something major. You should get her downtown.”

“Yeah. I want Miranda in better shape when we do. It’s not going to change anything, letting them sleep.”

“They’re not friends, you know, Morgan.”

“I know, but Miranda needs her, and they seem to connect. I’ll be right here.”

“You want me to stay?”

“No, I’m fine. Thanks for coming. I’ll call when we get this sorted out.”

“Good luck. You all right?”

“Fine, just fine.”

“G’night love,” she said, leaning forward and kissing him on both cheeks. She walked out, pulling the door shut behind her.

Morgan went back to the glass coffee table and picked up the Lewinsky-esque bag. It still felt heavy. He prodded the large clump of soiled tissues at the bottom with a ballpoint then turned the bag up and emptied it over the table. A wad emerged slowly, breaking free from where it had adhered to the inside of the bag, and then rapidly unravelled across the glass, a flurry the colour of diluted blood.

Morgan’s eyes focused on the massive gold ring before his mind could grasp that he was looking at a severed human hand. Unmistakably male. He was surprised at how cleanly it had been cut away at the wrist and how little blood there was at the stump end. He was surprised at how well-manicured the nails appeared, with their cuticles neatly done, the edges evenly curved.

They were sitting in an anteroom of the psychiatric ward of a hospital. Outside, they could see rooftops of other hospitals that lined University Avenue in a stalwart display of public health-service efficiency. It was mid-morning, the June sky a radiant blue with cotton clouds hovering in random swatches as if smog were only a rumour.

Miranda listened as Spivak berated Morgan with enough exaggerated indignation to make it obvious he was not actually angry, just frustrated.

“You sat there! You sat there all bloody night long, staring at a bloody disembodied hand. With a smoking gun on the table. With a homicidal amnesiac. You didn’t call in? What the hell were you thinking? They needed their beauty sleep?”

“Yeah,” said Morgan.

“Did you nod off yourself, is that what happened, did you stretch out and you were so goddamned laid back you fell asleep?”

“Yeah,” said Morgan.

“Morgan,” said Miranda.

“No, I didn’t. I was thinking.”

“You and your goddamned thinking —”

“You should try it,” said Miranda.

“Thank you, Detective,” said Spivak, turning to Miranda. “You’re quite alert after a good night’s rest.”

A doctor came through locked double doors and approached Spivak’s partner. They talked and Eeyore Stritch walked over to the others by the window.

“She’s fine,” he said. “They’re going to release her after lunch.”

“She doesn’t know who she is,” Morgan exclaimed.

“Can’t arrest her for that,” said Spivak, joining them at the window. “But for a severed hand in her handbag, we could hold her for that.”

“On what charge?” said Miranda.

“Committing an indignity on human remains,” said Eeyore Stritch.

“We don’t know if the rest of the guy’s dead,” said Morgan. “Maybe he gave it to her. Chopped it off as a keepsake.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll want to know where she is,” said Spivak. “Don’t lose her.”

“She’s not with us, she’s not ours,” said Morgan.

“She is now.”

“We’re running the prints on the hand,” said Eeyore Stritch. “So far, nothing local, not in Canada. We’re running a DNA comparison, too, to see if there’s any connection with your guy, Miranda.”

“Which one?” said Miranda.

Morgan said, “What about her prints?”

“We’re running them as well.”

“And the gun?” said Miranda.

“No, well, we should hold her on that,” said Spivak. He hacked repeatedly into a handkerchief then continued. “It’s illegal, carrying a discharged weapon, concealed.”

“It wasn’t concealed,” said Miranda.

“It was in her purse.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s concealed.”

“Debatable,” said Miranda. “What about prints? Were there bullets?”

“On the gun? No prints —”

“Why would she wipe it clean, then put it back in her purse?”

“And no bullets, it was empty.”

“You don’t even know how recently it was fired.”

“She’s not licensed.”

“You don’t know that,” said Miranda. “Her ID is missing.”

“It’s not registered.”

“So the gun is illegal, she’s not. You saw her wrists, somebody duct taped her wrists. She was a victim.”

“Detective,” said Spivak, “we’re not charging her with anything yet. You two keep an eye on her. Morgan’s still on the force —”

“I’m suspended, not fired.”

“We’ll come back for her,” said Morgan.

“Whatever. Keep in touch.” Spivak nodded to Eeyore Stritch and the two of them sauntered down a corridor leading to the elevator, leaving Morgan and Miranda facing each other in silence.

After a time, Miranda got up and paced around the room, then returned to sit beside Morgan.

“Why didn’t you call in last night?”

He shrugged.

“Why not? What were you thinking?”

He grinned. “You needed rest.”

“Why, really?”

“I’m not sure.” He stretched awkwardly against the hospital settee so that he could reach into a side pocket of his pants. He pulled something out, clutched in his fist. Holding his hand out toward her, he slowly unclenched his fingers. Lying in his palm was the massive gold ring. Slowly he closed his fingers over it and started to slide it back into his pocket, then changed his mind and held it out to Miranda. She held it in her cupped fingers, hefted it as if testing for weight, then dropped it into her purse.