One hand dropped over the rim of the table and, light as an autumn leaf drifting from its tree, found itself on Tom’s knee.

  “We’re partners,” Tom said. But, he did not move his leg, or brush the fallen leaf away.

  “Mister Danzel, would you…” She hesitated, considering. “I need help.”

  “Medical help. The meth, you mean?”

  If she was surprised that he knew of that, she gave no indication. “No, I…I’m afraid…I need…there’s no one to protect me. I’m so alone.”

  “You’ve got your sister,” he said.

  64 Victor J. Banis

  She might not even have heard that. A nurse had come in.

  Prudence seemed for a moment to forget the man sitting next to her. She stared at the nurse as if mesmerized. The fingers on Tom’s legs went still.

  “That nurse,” she said.

  “What about her?” Tom looked too, and saw nothing remarkable. A short, somewhat roundish woman, close cropped hair, with that air of precision nurses often had.

  “That smock she’s wearing…”

  “They call them scrubs.” He had learned that from Chris. The nurse’s tunic was a riot of black and green swirls on a background of white. Nothing especially remarkable, he thought. “It’s kind of loud, isn’t it? Pretty, though. It looks like marble.”

  “Yes. Exactly. Like marble.”

  She remained in a trance. Tom looked at the nurse again, trying to grasp the significance of her costume.

  Stanley came back just then. “It looks,” he said, “like we’ll have to wait for the dining room to reopen if you want a glass of wine.”

  “Oh, never mind,” Prudence said, waking from her odd reverie, and standing so quickly that she jostled the table. The coffee in her cup sloshed over its rim onto her saucer. “Saks is calling me. I’ve got some shopping I have to do. I just stopped by to see how Daddy was doing. It’s been nice chatting.” She grabbed her jacket from the chair, smiled insincerely at Stanley, gave Tom an exaggerated wink, and was gone as quickly as that autumn leaf, now blown before the wind.

  “High strung,” Tom said, watching her go.

  “Not high enough, I’m thinking. I saw her feeling you up.”

  “You’ve got eyes in the back of your head.”

  “I’ve got eyes where you never dreamed eyes could be.”

  DeaDly Silence 65

  Tom gave him a grin. “Not to worry, baby, I’m not turned on by fruitcakes. And this one might just be the queen of fruitcakes.

  How’d you do?”

  “Not so badly. While you were busy playing kneesies with our incipient psycho, I was chatting with the nurses. Chris always says, if you want the real skinny about how any sort of hospital facility functions or the lowdown on its doctors, talk to the nurses.

  Ideally, when they’re on break, and can talk freely. Probably it’s less successful in an operating room, but they don’t have one of those here. Any cutting will be done in the nurses’ lounge.”

  “And what exactly did you talk about? Not, I’m guessing, a glass of wine for Miss Prudence.”

  “That subject never came up, I was fibbing to her. I didn’t think she needed any stimulants. Beyond the kind a man can provide.”

  “She didn’t get that either. A disappointing day for our little heiress, I guess you’d call it.”

  “As a matter of fact, my new friends and I chatted about a certain nurse Norman Shandler, formerly employed right here in River City. And not a single one of those three ladies believes he could have made the mistake he’s accused of. Meticulous, is the word most often used to describe him. Careful to a fault. And other nurses know, about that sort of thing.”

  Tom frowned. “So maybe Patience is right. Maybe it was a murder attempt. But that raises not only the question of who, but why is her father so adamant in insisting it was an accident?”

  “Because, maybe, he knows who did it? Maybe because he’s trying to protect someone?”

  “Brother Zack? He’s the logical suspect, isn’t he? I think we’ll have to talk with him soon. But, really, if the father knows something, he’s made up his mind not to share it with us. And apart from the would-be murderer, there’s nobody else who can tell us anything.”

  “Well, there is one person,” Stanley said with a sly grin.

  66 Victor J. Banis

  “Norman Shandler, of course,” Tom said. “Only, he’s gone missing, and…” He glanced sideways at Stanley. “Don’t tell me…?”

  Stanley took a scrap of white paper from the pocket of his jacket and waved it like a handkerchief. “Ta da.”

  “Where?”

  “San Diego. He’s got a sister there. He told a couple of his coworkers that’s where he’d be, but not to let their bosses know.

  He’s afraid, they tell me.”

  “Afraid?”

  “He thinks most certainly someone did try to murder his patient. And he thinks they might go after him too.”

  Tom nodded. “In his shoes, I’d probably think the same way too.”

  “So now…?”

  “We go to San Diego, naturally.” Tom finished his coffee and got up. “After we look in on Abe Pendleton. Just a safety check.”

  It wasn’t until they were in the elevator, riding up to the third floor, that Stanley said, “Maybe you should go to San Diego on your own.”

  Tom gave him a puzzled look. “Why?”

  “If someone really is trying to murder Abe Pendleton, I think one of us should stick around town.”

  “And you’re thinking it should be you? Stanley, you’re a magnet for trouble.”

  “Not this time. I’m not accepting any rides from strangers.

  Besides, you know I don’t like flying.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I decided I no longer like flying. Besides, Nurse Shandler is gay. He’ll be more likely to open up to you.”

  DeaDly Silence 67

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The same thing that made me think Sister Prudence would talk to you more freely if I wasn’t there.”

  “But she didn’t. Talk more freely, I mean.”

  “Well, there you have it,” Stanley said. “You never can be sure how people will react. My guess is that this Nurse Shandler will like talking to you better. Especially if you wear boxers.”

  The elevator door wooshed open. To their surprise, Patience Pendleton—unmistakably her this time, with her hair pulled back tightly and her severely cut business suit—with a young man Stanley recognized at once.

  “Zack,” he said. “We were just talking about you.”

  Zack Pendleton looked like his sisters—enough like, in any case, that one could recognize the family ties. He had the red-gold hair and the wide, poached egg eyes set in the same pale complexion. He was tall, though, and while both women were compact, Zack was gangly, with that oddly disjointed look that tall, long-limbed men sometimes got. His hands with their long fingers were bony, skeletal almost, and his thin legs looked inadequate to support his body.

  Zack gave them no more than a glance, however, before he turned his attention back to his sister.

  “You can’t stop me from seeing him,” he said. “He’s my father too. For the moment, at least.”

  “You know how the two of you get along. Or don’t get along, rather. I don’t want him disturbed,” Patience said.

  “He’s been disturbed all his life. As long as I’ve known him anyway.” Ignoring Tom and Stanley, he brushed past her and started along the corridor toward his father’s room. Patience glowered at his retreating back, looking for a moment as if she meant to run after him and physically stop him. Then, with a defeated gesture, she turned in Stanley’s direction.

  68 Victor J. Banis

  Stanley looked at her directly, intending to give her a commiserating smile. But the look in her eyes when she returned his glance startled him. Surely he had been mistaken; surely he had not seen that glimpse of amused contempt in her eyes before she dropped them and assumed once again that patient, aggrieved demeanor of the constant caregiver?

  But what had it meant, that oddly challenging glance? Why did he have, once again, the sense that Patience Pendleton was staging some kind of drama for their benefit? And if she was, was Zack a co-director, or just an innocent and unprepared actor on the stage?

  “Well, we wanted to talk to him,” Tom said. “Some other time, I guess.”

  “It’s always some other time with Zack,” Patience said, and seemed to dismiss her brother from her mind. “Did you meet with my father?”

  “Yes. He’s convinced that the business with the insulin was an accident,” Tom said.

  “He doesn’t want to face the reality. It’s not a pleasant possibility, is it, thinking that someone might want to kill you?”

  “Doctor Skelton thinks it was an accident too.”

  She waved that idea away with one gloved hand. “They’re afraid I’m going to sue. And I might yet. If I find that nurse…”

  Stanley started to say something but Tom gave him a quick nudge with an elbow, and Stanley instead clamped his lips shut.

  “We met your sister, too,” Tom said.

  “Prudence?” With this, at least, they had managed to surprise her. “She was here? I thought she was at home, sleeping.”

  “Far from sleeping,” Stanley said. “She seemed downright, oh, I don’t know, lively.”

  Patience snorted. “I’ve no doubt. I pay a nurse good money to stay with her. Wasted money, apparently. This does not make DeaDly Silence 69

  me happy. If you’ll excuse me.” She left them and started down the hall in Zack’s wake.

  “Well, it looks as if the patient will have plenty of company,”

  Tom said. “I don’t guess we need to keep an eye on him at the moment.”

  They took the elevator back to the main floor and crossed the lobby under the watchful gaze of a glowering Mason, standing behind his reception desk. He looked as if he might at any moment pounce on them. Stanley was glad when the beveled glass doors had closed behind them.

  “If his daughter is to be believed, Abe Pendleton screwed his way into a fortune.” Tom said. “But that old man up there, he doesn’t fit that image, does he?”

  “‘Oh, the youth of the heart, and the dew in the morning,’“

  Stanley quoted, “‘You wake and they’ve left you without any warning.’ He was younger then, sweetie. Things change.”

  “I wonder what else changed for him.”

  § § § § §

  They had just gotten back to the apartment when Stanley’s cell phone rang, a tiny and tinny snippet of Can-Can. It was Patience Pendleton.

  “It’s happened again,” she said without preamble. “Someone’s tried to kill our father.”

  chaPter nine

  This time, as it turned out, Patience had come into her father’s room to find that the IV had been removed from his arm.

  Deliberately, she was convinced.

  “Without his insulin, he would eventually go into another coma,” she said. “He might not come out of this one. Especially if no one noticed.”

  When Tom and Stanley got back to the nursing home, however, they found Abe Pendleton no less adamant about this incident than he had been about the other.

  “It’s a lot of nonsense,” he said gruffly. “I pulled the IV out of my arm myself, if you really want to know. It was driving me crazy, itching. I asked the nurse twice to change it, and when she didn’t, I waited till she left the room and then I just yanked it out.

  That way she’d have to replace it.”

  “You weren’t concerned about going without your insulin?”

  Tom asked.

  “For, what, twenty minutes? Half an hour? They pay close attention here. As well they should. This place is costing me a pretty penny, I don’t mind telling you. It wouldn’t have been more than minutes before a nurse came by to check on me. I was going to make sure she saw what I had done.”

  “And that other time? The insulin overdose?” Patience said.

  He rolled his head sideways on the pillow. “We’ve been all through that before. I can’t believe you called detectives in over that. The doctors have explained it. I’ve explained it. The nurse on duty made a mistake. Yes, it was a serious one, but he’s gone now. But that’s all it was, a stupid mistake. Not some conspiracy to murder me.”

  “How did the meeting go with your son?” Tom asked in an abrupt change of subject.

  72 Victor J. Banis

  Abe’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Zack? He’s got his dander up. It doesn’t mean anything. And before you get any ideas in your head, I pulled the IV out after he had gone.”

  “Don’t ask me. Zack was already gone when I got here,”

  Patience said when Tom glanced at her.

  Not, Tom thought, by the obvious route through the lobby, where they had been. Of course, the building would have other exits, but it was curious that Zack should have used them to avoid once again meeting his sister—or the detectives she’d hired.

  § § § § §

  “If Abe Pendleton is the target of a murderer,” Stanley said when they were again on their way home, “He’s certainly determined not to protect himself.”

  “I really need to talk to that nurse,” Tom said. “Those flights are pretty frequent. Why don’t you just drop me at the airport and with any luck I can be back late tonight, or first thing in the morning.”

  There was no more suggestion of Stanley’s going too. Stanley was glad and having thought about it, Tom had concluded an evening alone might be a good thing for Stanley. He’d been all dithery lately. Whatever was bothering him, maybe he’d have a chance to sort it out on his own.

  “Just, please, Stanley, try to stay out of harm’s way while I’m gone, will you?”

  “Cross my heart,” Stanley said with the appropriate gesture.

  § § § § §

  Later, at home alone, Stanley found it amusing that Tom thought he couldn’t be on his own even for a single night without getting into some kind of a trouble. At the same time, though, on another level, it annoyed him too. It was like he was some kind of retard.

  Okay, it was true, he had more than once managed to get himself into jams from which as it happened Tom had to rescue DeaDly Silence 73

  him. Well, you couldn’t walk around on eggshells all the time, could you? He didn’t know why these things happened to him, they just did. It wasn’t like he invited disasters to befall him.

  This time, though, he took a vow that nothing would. Tom wouldn’t be back until late tonight or sometime tomorrow morning, and Stanley had made an unshakeable commitment to keeping his nose clean the whole time. He’d been thinking things lately that he ought not to be thinking, and he had resolutely pushed those negative thoughts out of his mind. He would be chaste not only in body but in spirit as well.

  He had stocked up the kitchen with all the things he liked to eat—frozen pizzas and packaged macaroni and cheese and gallons of Dr. Pepper, so he wouldn’t have to go out to any restaurants.

  No bars, either. It was too easy to get into trouble in a gay bar. This was San Francisco, and they lived on the edge of the Castro. When wasn’t there at least one delicious looking hunk on the prowl in one of those bars?

  Lately, he’d had to struggle with the itch. He felt guilty, he knew it was stupid, but there it was. He’d lived all his adult life racking up scores of hot men, and now he was limited to just one. Yes, a very fine one, but he couldn’t help the fact that other guys still turned him on. Not enough to do anything about it, happily. But it was a difficult temptation to deal with, and resisting temptation had never been his strong suit.

  So, then, no gay bars while Tom was gone. That was safest.

  He’d stocked up too on a bunch of DVDs, favorite movies, and another stack of things he’d been meaning to watch and hadn’t gotten around to. Plus a selection of old Falcon tapes, which he liked better than the newer stuff, in case he got to missing Tom too much. He intended to be the perfect little homebody until Tom got home.

  To which end, he’d watched Casablanca once again, quoting from memory much of the dialogue along with the actors on the screen: Bogart and Bergman and Claude Rains and Sydney 74 Victor J. Banis

  Greenstreet and Peter Lorre—they just didn’t make actors like that anymore.

  He had eaten all of a pepperoni pizza, despite his initial intention to limit himself to one slice. Which he’d decided was silly. Who ate just one slice of a pizza?

  He was finishing the pizza when the phone rang. “I couldn’t arrange to see our nurse tonight,” Tom said, “but I talked to him on the phone. He was a little reluctant, but I convinced him to meet with me in the morning. And I persuaded him to see me super early, so I should be back in good time tomorrow morning, probably by mid-morning. I’ll call you when I’ve got a reservation.”

  Which left Stanley feeling more up in the air than he had before. A part of him was disappointed that Tom would not be back the same night. He ignored the part of him that wasn’t.

  He considered an old Doris Day musical, from before she’d become a virgin, as he thought of it, and looked at the covers of a couple of Falcon tapes—and was overcome with restlessness.

  The men on the covers of the Falcon tapes made him hot, but not do-it-alone-and-get-it-over-with hot. He’d gotten spoiled, having someone in the same bed with him every night, ready and willing to take care of business.

  He tried watching some regular television, but whoever had described that as mental masturbation had been entirely right. He decided to go out.

  Not out out, of course, not to the bars, he wasn’t that foolish and he was very much mindful of his vow to avoid any kind of mischief. There were plenty of other directions to walk than toward the Castro, however, and that was the whole idea—to walk, to walk off that restless energy.

  By the time he got home, he fully expected he’d be ready for one of the tapes, and a good long wank, followed by a night’s sound sleep, safely away from any threat of trouble. Tom would be so proud of him.