Chapter 6 Chapter 6: Unexpected Visits
I didn't sleep again.
I stayed sitting on the edge of Ethan's bed listening to the guards shouting orders in the garden, the splash of the water when they finally pulled the body out, Derek's voice on the phone with someone in a tone I didn't recognize, cutting and low. At six-thirty the sky started to lighten and I was still barefoot, with the burn on my shoulder stinging under the gauze I'd put on myself.
I took Ethan's hand.
"Ethan, this is crazy, but it was you."
The monitor read eighty-two, eighty-two, eighty-two.
Nothing. I think seeing that drowned body shook me more than I thought. I argued with her right here, and now she's dead; unless you got up to kill her, I don't understand what happened.
I sighed, exhausted, and it was only seven. Gloria knocked on the door and came in with a tray of coffee and an aspirin.
"Ma'am, I brought you something. Mr. Manuel is expecting you at nine in the study."
"Thank you, Gloria."
"And Laura."
"Yes?"
"Change your uniform, please. Don't go to the study like that."
I went to my room. Showered fast, put on a clean uniform, changed the gauze on my shoulder that was already yellow, and went down to the study at nine sharp because Manuel was the kind of man who measures you down to the minute.
I found him standing by the window, cane in hand, with the face of an old man who hadn't slept either.
"Laura."
"Manuel."
"Sit."
I sat and he walked over to the desk, leaned against the edge, and looked at me for a long time before speaking.
"Last night an employee died in this house."
"I know."
"Beatriz Linares. Twenty-two years old. She'd been with us seven months. My daughter-in-law hired her for the service of the east wing suite. She drowned in the pool between ten and midnight, according to the doctor."
"Drowned?"
"She drowned. That's what the report says."
"Manuel."
"Laura, I don't interrupt you. Don't interrupt me."
I went quiet. The old man had a different tone that morning, colder, more patriarch.
"The report will say accidental drowning. There will be no autopsy. There will be no police. It's my house, my employee, my decision. Do you understand?"
"I understand."
"Now the question, Laura. Do you know anything about this that I don't?"
"No."
"Think carefully before you answer."
"Manuel, I'm telling you the truth. Yesterday Beatriz poured boiling tea on me on purpose. She burned my shoulder, look —" I pulled the collar of my uniform down a little so he could see the gauze. "I threw her out of my husband's room and I told her in front of him, out loud, that I wanted to kill her. That I did. Kill her, no."
Manuel looked at the gauze. He tightened his jaw.
"Who told Beatriz to throw that tea on you?"
"I don't know. But someone told her I was only the nurse. Someone in this house made it clear to her there would be no consequences if she burned me."
"Someone who doesn't know you're the wife."
"Or someone who does know, and wanted to test me."
Manuel stayed quiet for a long moment.
"Laura. I'm going to tell you something and I'll say it once. If anyone in this house lays a hand on you, you come to me before anyone else. Before Derek. Before my daughter-in-law. Me. Is that clear?"
"It's clear."
"Now go see your husband. And don't eat or drink anything that Gloria doesn't bring you personally. Did you understand?"
"I understood."
I left the study with my pulse up and a feeling I didn't like. In this house someone had killed a maid who'd tried to burn me, and no one was going to tell me who. Welcome to the five-year contract.
I left the study with my pulse up. I went up the stairs with the sense that this house was teaching me to live with a new fear every morning, and it was already nine-twenty and I already had two fears that day.
I opened the door to the suite.
And I stopped in the threshold.
Marcelo was standing next to Ethan's bed, leaning over his brother's arm. In his right hand he had something I couldn't make out clearly, because the moment he heard the door he straightened up sharply and slipped his hand into the jacket pocket. A quick movement, quicker than a normal gesture should be. The kind of movement a man makes when he's caught.
He saw me.
He smiled. But the smile came late, half a second late, and I was trained to notice half-seconds in dying patients. I noticed that one.
"Nurse. Good morning."
"Mr. Marcelo."
"Marcelo."
I didn't answer the name this time. I stayed at the door without moving forward, with my hand still on the knob, watching the hand in his pocket.
"What are you doing in this room, sir?"
"I came to see how my brother is doing."
"Did Mr. Manuel authorize it?"
"I don't need anyone's authorization, nurse. He's my brother."
"Visits to the suite are restricted, sir. Medical order and family order."
"I'm family."
"Mr. Manuel's orders."
His smile tightened.
"Nurse, I'm telling you I'm the patient's brother."
"And I'm telling you I'm his nurse, and in the absence of Mr. Manuel or his mother, I decide who is in this room."
We looked at each other.
He still had his right hand in his pocket. He hadn't pulled it out. He was gripping it — you could tell by the shape of the fabric of the jacket.
I took a step forward.
"I'm asking you to leave, sir."
"Of course, nurse. How touchy. I just came to see my brother for a moment."
He adjusted the collar of his jacket with his left hand. The right one didn't come out of the pocket. That's what stuck with me the most, the hand that didn't come out. Men, when they have nothing to hide, take both hands out. The ones with something in a pocket they shouldn't have, fix the collar with the other one.
He walked toward the door. I stepped aside the minimum. As he passed me he paused for a second.
"Take care of my brother, nurse. He's very valuable to this family."
It was the same line from the first day. Same tone. And this time it sounded uglier.
"I'm taking care of him, sir."
He left.
I closed the door, slid the bolt, and rushed to Ethan's bed. I checked the arm where Marcelo had been leaning. The vein in the bend of his elbow, the same one the IV was going through. I looked at the catheter. Intact. I looked at the skin around it. Nothing. No new puncture, no hematoma, no redness.
I checked him all over. Neck, chest, arms. Nothing visible.
I got here a second before, I thought. A second. If I'd knocked twice on Manuel's door, if I'd gone up the stairs more slowly, if Gloria had stopped me in the hallway to tell me something. A second.
I grabbed the phone from the suite. I dialed security.
"Derek."
"Mrs. Cavalier."
"Come up to the suite right now."
"Two minutes."
Two minutes. He knocked. I opened.
"Derek. Can you explain to me what this house has twenty guards for if the owner's brother walks into the main patient's room without anyone announcing him or stopping him?"
"Was Marcelo here?"
"Marcelo was here with something in his hand that he put in his pocket when he heard me coming."
"What something?"
"I don't know, Derek. I didn't see it clearly."
Derek tightened his jaw. Exactly the way Manuel tightened his.
"Ma'am. I apologize."
"Apologies aren't worth anything, Derek. People are dying in this house and anyone can walk through any door. What are your men for?"
"Ma'am. I promise this doesn't happen again."
"Derek. If the next person who walks into this room without me knowing sticks something in my husband's vein, the next person going out on a stretcher will be you. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
"I understand, ma'am."
He nodded sharply, once, and left, closing the door with the soft click as always.
I sat next to Ethan. I took his wrist. The monitor read eighty-three, eighty-four, eighty-three. Normal. I looked at his face. If Marcelo had managed to inject him with something, the monitor would be rising or falling by now. It wasn't doing either.
"Ethan. If you can hear me: your brother was here. With something in his pocket. I think it was a syringe."
The monitor read eighty-four.
"Ethan. If you can hear me and you're confirming it to me, squeeze my hand."
I lowered my fingers onto his. I waited.
Nothing.
I waited longer.
"Ethan."
Nothing. His face was still. The monitor at eighty-four.
An hour later I heard noise in the garden.
Men's voices, several of them, and a commanding voice above the others. I went up to the suite window and pulled back the curtain with two fingers.
Below, at the service entrance, was Derek. Standing. Speaking to a group of guards formed in a semicircle, black uniforms, faces of poorly hidden fear. I couldn't hear the words, but I could see the arms. Derek wasn't gesturing. Derek was moving his right hand once, pointing at a man, the man would step forward. Then he'd move it again and point at another, and another would step forward.
He was making them line up.
He counted them. Eight men. He said something short that I didn't hear. He turned around and walked back to the house. The eight men stood there a moment not knowing what to do, and then, one by one, they began to walk toward the side exit.
I went back to the armchair.
Twenty minutes later Gloria knocked on the door. She came in with the lunch tray, covered with a white cloth, and set it on the table. Broth, bread, fruit, mineral water. Safe food. Gloria's food.
"Thank you, Gloria."
"Laura."
"Yes?"
She hesitated. Put her hands on her apron.
"This morning they fired every night-shift guard."
I went still.
"All of them?"
"All eight, ma'am. Mr. Derek personally. They were given an hour to collect their things and leave the property."
"Reason?"
"It wasn't stated officially, but I heard it was because of what happened this morning."
"What happened this morning?"
Gloria looked at me.
"That Mr. Marcelo walked into the east wing suite without anyone announcing him."
I lowered my eyes to the tray. I picked up the glass of water with both hands because mine were starting to shake.
"Gloria, thank you."
She nodded, turned around, and left.
I stayed alone with the tray, with my sleeping husband, and with the new sense that a war I hadn't declared had just begun in this house.
Outside, somewhere in the garden, the guards were leaving, and I wondered which of the eight had opened the door that Marcelo had used that morning, and which of the ones who remained would open the next one.
