The Whole Enchilada by Diane Mott Davidson Page B

going to get involved. But I would have to be careful.
    â€œThere was a box,” I said. “On the front porch. Drew thought it was one of his mother’s collages, back from the framer.”
    â€œWe have it,” said Tom. “The collage is of Patsie Boatfield. She’s wearing a blue-striped dress in a photograph in one of the squares, and some of the cloth is in another.”
    â€œOh, I know that dress,” I said. “She used to wear it to the fencing meets, because she had this idea it was good luck for the team. Then she spilled bleach on it somehow, and she told me she couldn’t wear it anymore. What other materials were in the collage?”
    â€œBits of jewelry, seashells, photographs of Colorado ghost towns, and some pressed flowers. Patsie said she had the collage made for her new husband, Warren Broome. Said we could keep it as long as we needed it.”
    â€œWas there anything else in the box?” I cocked my head at the wall in front of me. Did hospitals really think pale green was restful? The color was that of mold ruining a good piece of cheese.
    â€œYup,” Tom said. “There was a note in the bottom, with a number on it. Typewritten, so it’s no help. It said, ‘Twenty-five K.’ ”
    â€œTwenty-five thousand? Dollars? For framing a collage?”
    â€œThe collage wasn’t framed. It was in a Plexiglas container. Our guys are trying to track down who sent the carton it was in . . . What are you doing?”
    â€œI want to get out of here,” I said impatiently. I swung my legs over the side of the bed. Pain flooded into the left thigh. I pulled the IV out of my arm.
    â€œGoldy, don’t. You’ve had all the tests, but they want to keep you for observation.”
    â€œI’m fine. And if there’s one thing I learned in Med Wives 101, it’s that as long as you pay your bill, you can check yourself out of the hospital whenever you want.”

8
    A las, if only it had been that easy. Within forty-five minutes, I was ready to scream.
    Granted, I had physical aches. But waves of psychic pain—the memories of Holly; the regrets; the new information from Tom: We’re treating this as a homicide, we have to consider the possibility that Drew poisoned or otherwise harmed his own mother —threatened to engulf me. These were heavier, more tangible somehow, than my sore leg and throbbing head. They made me feel vulnerable. Any little thing—Tom’s absence while he dealt with the cashier, Julian’s disappearance to pick up my prescriptions, Arch locating Tom’s car and bringing it to the exit, then rushing off to get his Passat—threatened to put me over the edge. Sitting in the insisted-upon wheelchair by the exit, I stewed and considered hollering about the injustice of it all.
    One thing Tom had given me was my cell, which the nurse’s aide said I could use. I checked my voice-mail messages: three, all from Marla.
    â€œHow are you?” said her disembodied voice. “I feel like hell. I need you to tell me it was all a bad dream.”
    The second: “Goldy? Where are you? Pick up your phone!”
    The third: “Okay, now I’m both worried and pissed, and I’m going to stay up until you call! And it doesn’t matter if it’s in the wee hours. Patsie Boatfield stayed and helped bring stuff in from outside. She never really knew Holly—”
    The message cut off. I checked the time on my cell: just after 1 A.M. My watch had magically disappeared. Even while reluctantly conceding that removing a patient’s watch might be hospital policy, or that my discount-store timepiece might not be working so well anymore, now that it had spent some time— Don’t start screaming, I told myself—underwater, I punched in Marla’s number.
    â€œWhere in the hell have you been?” she demanded before the phone had even rung one full time.
    I gave her