Last to Know: A Novel(15)

“Shit, you don’t mean you think the girl…”

“I never just ‘think,’” Harry said, already heading toward the nurses’ station. “I find out.”

*

Bea Havnel was in a small private room at the end of a very long corridor, far enough away, Harry guessed, to make it difficult for the media to access her. Not that TV cameras or even a cell phone would stand much of a chance; the nurses were on full alert and a uniformed cop stood guard outside her door, which was firmly closed. And anyhow Harry and Rossetti were accompanied by the doctor who had attended her in Trauma.

The doctor took her chart from the slot on the door and glanced at it, brows raised, in astonishment. “She’s amazing,” he said, turning to Harry, “coming through a fire like that practically unscathed.”

“How exactly ‘unscathed’?” Harry asked.

The doc shrugged as he opened the door. “See for yourselves,” he suggested, lifting a hand in greeting to his patient, who was sitting up in bed sipping orange juice through a straw.

The doctor introduced them and Bea Havnel threw the detectives a soft glance from under her lashes.

Unburned lashes, Harry noted. And unburned hair. Apart from a bandage on her right wrist, there was no evidence of what the girl had just gone through. Except perhaps the scared look in the back of her eyes, behind the sweet-little-girl smile that Harry had to admit was endearing.

“I’m so sorry for what you just went through,” he said. “I have to ask some questions but if you feel unable to talk we can come back later.”

“No. Please.” Bea waved a slender white hand at the chair next to her bed. “I need to talk to someone, I need to ask you…” She hesitated. “I need to know about my mother.”

Harry’s eyes met Rossetti’s briefly. He hated being put in the position of messenger of doom.

“It’s all right,” Bea said quietly. “I can guess what your answer is. I was with her when it happened.”

“When exactly what happened?” Harry asked. He and Rossetti were still standing by the bed, uncomfortable in their roles.

“It was all so sudden.” Bea put down her glass of juice. She crossed her arms defensively over her chest, clutching her shoulders with her hands. She was wearing a blue-flowered hospital garment that was way too big for her and in which, Harry thought, she looked even more childlike.

“I saw the explosion,” Harry told her. “I was on the opposite side of the lake.”

“Oh God, then it must have been you who saved me!” Bea reached out to him and instinctively Harry took her hands in his. “Oh my God,” she said again, gazing at him in wonderment. “If it were not for you I might not be here.”

“Yes, you would,” Rossetti said briskly; this was after all a police inquiry. He checked his notes again. “You ran from the house with your hair alight, dunked yourself in the lake, saved your own life, in fact.”

“I remember now, there was also a small boy,” Bea said. “He wanted to save me. So sweet, so very sweet. But it was you who loaded me into the helicopter.” She was looking at Harry.

Her wide-blue-eyed smile not only touched Harry’s heart but reached into the pit of his stomach. He had never met a girl quite like this; even in her shocked state with the loss of her mother looming he knew she would be the kind of good polite woman who later would send a thank-you note written in her own hand, not simply a printed card. Whatever the mother might have been, she seemed to have raised her daughter properly.

“Please,” Bea said softly, “you have to help me.”

“Anything we can do, miss—er, ma’am.” Rossetti stumbled over his words, succumbing to her charm, making Harry smile too.

“Detective Rosssetti is correct, Ms. Havnel,” he said. “Just tell us what we can do for you.”

Throwing back the covers, Bea slid out of bed. Clutching the short flowered hospital gown around her, she stood silently, all long white legs, long blond hair wisping over her shoulders. There was something eerily childlike about her yet Harry had the gut feeling she knew exactly who she was as a woman, and how to use the power of her gentle beauty.

Now she turned that full power on him. “You came to tell me about my mother,” she said. “I know she’s dead. I was with her when it happened. I just wanted to know if you’d found her body.”

She was shivering and Harry reached for the terry bathrobe hanging behind the door and put it around her shoulders. She seemed to sink into it, then sink into the chair Rossetti held out for her.

“Tell us how it happened,” Harry said gently, standing directly in front of her. Rossetti stood to one side. They were in the classic interrogation positions of “good cop, bad cop,” though neither of them believed they were interviewing a criminal. Bea Havnel was a victim.

Bea clasped her hands in her white terrycloth lap. “My mother’s name is Lacey Havnel. She is fifty-four years old. I am twenty-one. My father…” She hesitated, looking embarrassed. “Well, the truth is there never really was a father, at least not one I ever met. There were always men with my mother but never a father.” She smiled hesitantly up at Harry. “I had to learn to fend for myself. Especially with a mother like mine.”

“Like what, exactly?” Harry asked.