The Kind Worth Saving (Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner, #2)(82)
She got back to her house at five the next morning. At the inn, she’d managed to extricate herself from the tangle of sheets, and then the room itself, without waking George.
After making coffee she sat on the back deck, watching the early morning mist burn off, wondering why she didn’t get up early more often. She felt as good as she’d felt in a long while. It was cold, but she’d changed, after getting home, into jeans and a thick sweater, and the coffee mug was keeping her warm for the moment. Why was it that when you swam in icy water in the summer your body acclimated to the cold, but in cold air you just kept getting colder? When her coffee was gone, she went back inside the house. On the island in the kitchen was her purse. She pulled out the burner phone that she’d gotten the day before from Addie Logan and looked at it. It was a flip phone with a small digital screen and didn’t do a whole lot more than make phone calls. Her instructions for later that morning were pretty simple. Call the Boston Police Department and tell them there was a bomb placed in the oncology wing of the Boston Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where Henry Kimball was currently recovering. She knew they’d try to keep her on the line, and she’d been wondering if it made sense to say more, maybe that her husband had died of cancer and she was getting her revenge. But there was no real reason for her to do that. The call was only a slight diversion, and maybe not even necessary. Addie Logan had told her that she worked for seven years in a hospital as a receptionist, and she said that bomb threats were not uncommon, but all personnel were immediately notified and it put the staff on edge. It would make it a little easier for her to walk into Henry’s hospital room and take care of him the way they’d discussed.
Joan wondered if it really made a difference calling in the bomb threat, but she also thought it was Addie’s way of making sure Joan was at least somewhat involved with the plot to kill Henry Kimball. It would also potentially connect Joan with what happened to Henry if they could prove she was the one who made the call, and for that reason, Joan was considering not making it. She just wasn’t sure yet. Maybe it would help Addie, and if Addie was able to get rid of Henry, Joan’s life got safer, in return. She decided to make a game-time decision.
When it was ten thirty Joan went to her car and removed the transponder, leaving it in the garage as she drove two towns over to the busy lot of one of the farm stands that sold pumpkins and apple cider doughnuts during the fall season. She had the flip phone with her but had left her own phone at home. She wasn’t sure it was going to make any difference that she wasn’t near her house if she made the call but decided it couldn’t hurt. She sat in her car, the engine turned off, the window cracked. It was a weekday but there were a lot of cars in the lot, city couples hunting through the pumpkin piles for perfectly round specimens, taking pictures of one another for their Instagram accounts. She decided to make the call. She trusted Addie, actually, or at least she trusted that she hadn’t suggested the bomb threat as a way to implicate her in the crime.
At exactly eleven she dialed the number for the Boston Police Department, then holding her mouth open the way she’d practiced at home, she said, “I’m calling to report that there is a bomb in the oncology wing of the Boston Memorial Hospital.” The words sounded garbled in her own ears, but the woman on the other end of the line calmly said, “Can I have your name and where you’re calling from?”
“The bomb will go off in ten minutes. I don’t want to hurt anybody, but I want to destroy the building. You’ve been warned.”
She hung up, skin buzzing. She put the phone in her pocket and got out of the car, wandering through the displays of pumpkins to the large market building. Outside were pallets covered with fall produce, apples, squash, brussels sprouts still on the stalk, plus piles of decorative gourds and ornamental corn. She skirted around the building, passing a parking lot that was for employees only, and found a half-filled dumpster. She pulled the SIM card from the phone, snapped it in half, then threw the pieces, along with the disabled phone, into the dumpster.
Instead of going straight home, she wandered through the market, picking up a half gallon of apple cider and a frozen chicken potpie. Driving home she listened to NPR, curious if there’d be anything about an evacuation at Boston Memorial, but there was nothing, of course. And there was nothing on the news that night, after she’d eaten half the chicken pie, while flipping through news channels and drinking wine. Of course, if everything had gone according to plan there would be nothing on the news. All that would have happened was a fake bomb threat, and a patient in critical condition suffering an entirely predictable brain hemorrhage. Neither event would be remotely newsworthy.
She was starting to fall asleep on the sofa in front of a Real Housewives marathon, so she forced herself up the stairs, stripped out of her clothes, and slid under the bedcovers. Her bones were heavy, and she realized she hadn’t really properly slept in two days. Twenty-four hours ago she’d been in bed with the man in the white linen suit. His name suddenly escaped her. Even though she was exhausted she went through the routine she used every night to fall asleep, closing her eyes and imagining herself tipped back on the surface of the sea, sun baking her skin, the cool water keeping her afloat, and the sky impossibly blue.
Chapter 37
Lily
That morning I cleared all my possessions from Henry’s apartment, gave Pye enough food to last two days, and was outside in the cold dawn before most of the world had woken up.