A Knight at the Opera (10 page)

"Sure, I did. I'm not a nitwit. It was from Bank of America. It looked to me like a
credit card bill."

"Did you notice who it was addressed to?"

"I did. I wrote the name down in my little notebook." She frowned. "Uh oh."

I could see where this was going. "Which was in your purse, which got
stolen?"

"That's right. Damn it!" She winced with pain and rubbed her forehead with her
right hand. "Damn it," she repeated, but in a quieter voice. "It was a funny name, too, but I
can't remember what it was."

"Don't worry about it," I told her. "Maybe tomorrow, or whenever the drugs
wear off, the name will come to you. Meanwhile, I have another question. If you left your
car at the Safeway, and someone stole your purse, how did you get to the hospital?"

She stared at me blankly. "I have no idea."

The nurse had rejoined us. "Ms. Deacon, we're going to move you into a private
room now. The doctor wants you to stay overnight, so we can monitor your condition. With
a concussion, you have to be careful." She turned. "You gentlemen are going to have to
leave."

"Can we stay long enough to get her settled into a room? Then we'll get out of
here and let her rest."

"That would be fine."

Maurice and I tagged along as two attendants wheeled Jana down the hallway,
into an elevator and up to the fourth floor. We hung around in the hallway outside her
room until the attendants came out. Maurice waited outside while I padded quietly into her
room. She appeared to have dozed off. I didn't need to watch for signs of her breathing,
because they had her hooked up to a monitor that was beeping reassuringly at regular
intervals.

I reached over to kiss her forehead. There was a large lump on the left side of
her head, covered by gauze and surgical tape. She'd taken a considerable blow. I gently
caressed her face and slipped out of the room, returning to the hallway outside.

"Let's get out of here."

"Sounds good to me," Maurice said. "I'm beat."

"Actually, we have one stop to make before you get your beauty sleep."

"Yeah? Where are we going?"

"On a mission."

He growled, "I hate it when you say things like that. Like we haven't had enough
excitement for one day."

An hour and a half later, having completed our task, I was back at Fort Larsen,
lying in bed but not able to sleep.

I couldn't stop thinking about Jana.

My first stop on Thursday morning was Rose Medical Center. I had called the
nurse's station at around seven-thirty to find out how Jana was doing--and when they were
going to let her go home. At first, they said they couldn't give me any information. I pointed
out that I was the patient's transportation home, and a woman told me the decision to
discharge any patient was normally made by nine o'clock.

I stepped into her semi-private room a few minutes before nine, carrying a
Safeway shopping bag. The morning
Clarion
was cradled under my arm, in case she
needed reading material.

Jana was sitting up in bed, eating scrambled eggs and hash browns from a plate
on the tray table in front of her. The other bed in the room was vacant.

"Good morning. You look like you're doing better."

"I am," she said. "I'm starving."

Knowing her appetite, especially for foods that weren't good for her, I figured
that was a good sign. She'd started trying to change her diet habits when she took up the
heavy duty exercise regimen, but it was turning out to be an uphill battle.

She was hooked on comfort food.

I pulled the cushioned brown chair up to a spot next to the bed. "Has a doctor
been in to see you?"

"Two of them. They call themselves 'hospitalists' now. One woke me up at two
o'clock in the morning. The other one came in about an hour ago. They say it's a relatively
mild concussion. I can go home this morning." She gazed down at the cast on her left arm.
"Evidently, my arm took the brunt of the blow."

"You're not going home." I told her.

"What do you mean? The doctor said--"

"I know what the doctor said. But you're not going home. You're coming to Fort
Larsen. Until we figure out who assaulted you, and why, I think you need to be somewhere
safe."

She stiffened, ready to protest, because as we both knew, Jana didn't take orders
from anyone. But something held her back--either the determined look on my face or the
pain from her headache.

Probably the headache.

"What are you telling me?"

"This." I reached into the shopping bag, pulled out a small black handbag and
handed it to her.

She stared first at it, then at me, then back at the handbag. "This is my purse.
How on earth did you get it back? Did you find the guy who bonked me on the head?"

"It was never really gone. After we left here last night, Maurice and I drove back
to the mall and scouted around. We found it in some bushes. It looked like someone had
just tossed it there."

She set it on her lap and felt around in it with her good hand, taking an inventory
of the contents. When she was done, she said, "Everything's here. My wallet, my keys.
Everything. Even all the cash. Adam, I don't get it."

"I don't either," I admitted. "Whoever mugged you last night wasn't interested in
robbing you. The only thing he seems to have taken is that envelope."

"That's really weird. There couldn't have been anything that valuable in
there."

"Apparently it was valuable to someone. By the way, I solved the mystery of how
you got here last night. After we picked up your purse, Maurice and I drove around until we
found the security guard. He told us he found you lying on the ground outside the parking
structure and called for an ambulance."

She looked concerned. "Did he also call the police?"

"No."

"Good," She was emphatic.

"Why good?"

"I'd rather that nobody know about this. How does it look for a private
investigator to get herself beaten up? After all the self-defense classes I've taken, I can't
believe someone was able to take me down that easily."

"Where was your gun?" I asked. She regularly carried a Glock G20. It was
licensed and she knew how to use it.

"In the glove box. I didn't think there was any way I'd need it. So what did that
security man have to say?"

"Not much. At first, he wouldn't talk to us at all. But I gave him a hundred dollars
and he became more talkative. He said he didn't realize you'd been assaulted. He just
thought you'd passed out on drugs or something. He didn't seem like the brightest bulb in
the chandelier."

"For all the difference it would have made," she said in a dejected tone. "The
man who assaulted me was long gone by then. I just don't understand why he came at me
like that."

"Have you done anything lately that might have made someone mad?"

She looked crosswise at me, apparently figuring I was trying to be funny, so I
added, "I'm not being facetious. I can't imagine anyone assaulting you to steal a credit card
bill, assuming that's really what it was. What kind of projects have you been
handling?"

"Nothing extraordinary. Polling neighbors near a restaurant in Aurora to ask
them to support a proposed liquor license, investigating a few prospective employees for
an employment agency. Nothing that seemed even remotely dangerous."

"What did this man look like?"

"I don't know. I only saw him for a few seconds. I remember the black mask, and
that he was wearing gloves. Mostly, I remember that metal handle he was waiving
around."

"Was he big? Small?"

"Just average, I think."

A nurse came into room. "Are we ready to go home, dear?"

An irritated look flashed across Jana's face, and I knew she was about to make an
inappropriate comment. "We" weren't going anywhere. She hated being
patronized--especially by waitresses and, as I now knew, by nurses. She was on a one-woman crusade
to persuade people not to call strangers "dear" or "honey."

Deciding to diffuse the situation. I stepped forward and said affably, "I'm her
ride. Is there any paperwork she needs to sign?"

The nurse, oblivious to the wrath she had narrowly escaped, handed Jana a
clipboard and ball point pen. "Take your time, sweetie." She wheeled and left the
room.

I grinned at Jana. "Take your time, sweetie."

She made her inappropriate comment, directing me to do something that is
physically impossible. Then she pushed the clipboard in my direction. "Here. You're the
lawyer. You read through all this junk."

After skimming through the various forms, I said, "They're fine. You can sign
them. You're only agreeing to give up your firstborn child." She ignored that, took the pen
and wrote her name. As she did, something occurred to me. "Last night, you said you'd
written down the name of the person who was getting the credit card bill."

"I did?"

"Yeah. You said it was in your purse. In your little notebook."

"Oh, right. I forgot about that." She rummaged through the handbag until she
found a little yellow notebook. She flipped it open and skimmed through the pages. "Here it
is. His name was Karl Markowsky." As I stood there gawking at her, feeling an
uncomfortable tingling on the back of my neck, she pursed her lips, straining to remember
something. "Adam, why does that name sound familiar?"

"Because he's the man who went over the balcony at the opera on Saturday
night."

* * * *

Before we left the hospital, the nurse provided Jana with a written "post release"
treatment plan, which consisted of Tylenol and icing the lump on her head every few hours.
The form also warned Jana of symptoms to watch out for, such as dizziness, fatigue,
confusion or ringing in her ears. I noted that it didn't include any proscription against
fighting with masked men carrying weapons, but I decided to keep that to myself.

The plan was that I would drive Jana to Cherry Creek, so she could pick up her
car, then I'd escort her to Fort Larsen, making sure we weren't being followed. There was
space in my garage where she could park. She had tried balking, but I pointed out that
whoever stole her purse could have taken a look at her driver's license, which still had her
home address on it. She'd promised me months ago to get it changed, but she still hadn't
gotten around to it.

When we arrived at my house, I de-activated the alarm and we went inside. Her
laptop had been safely stowed in the trunk of her green Corolla, and she brought it into the
house, tucked under her right arm. I carried the remainder of her things: her purse, the ice
packs the nurse had given us, and the soft shell briefcase she used as a portable file cabinet.
I knew there was Tylenol in the medicine cabinet upstairs.

In the little utility room next to the garage, Jana kicked off her shoes and headed
for the den. She looked wobbly, and told me she needed to lie down because her head was
throbbing. We got her stretched out comfortably on the couch. I wrapped one of the ice
packs in a towel and gently rested it between her cranium and the arm of the sofa.

She said, "Are you in a hurry to get to the office?"

"No. Diana knows I won't be in for a while, and she knows how to reach me if
necessary. Do you want me to stay?"

"Sure. Does she know what happened?"

"Only the bare outline."

"What about Maurice?"

"He knows. You told him yourself last night. Remember?"

"Vaguely. Can we talk?"

"Of course." Knowing what she'd just been through, I wasn't worried that this
was one of those "we need to talk about
us
" discussions. I sat down in the
overstuffed chair next to the couch. "What about?"

"I'm trying to figure out what happened last night. I mean, what was really going
on."

"Go for it. I'm listening."

"I know someone lured me to the mall and apparently attacked me with a tire
iron, or whatever it was. The question is, why? And who? Do you have any ideas?"

"A few," I admitted. "It strikes me that if his primary goal was to hurt you, he
wouldn't have stopped when he had you helpless on the ground. I think this is really about
that envelope How sure are you that it was a credit card bill?"

"I'm not. I didn't open it, It just looked the way credit card bills look."

"You're sure it was Bank of America?"

"Yes."

"And it was addressed to Karl Markowsky?"

"Yes. I was very careful to spell it right."

"What about the address?"

"A post office box. I didn't need to write it down, because I already know the box
number. Adam, this may sound crazy, but are you sure the dead man was really
Markowsky? Maybe--"

"Good question. Frankly, I wouldn't know him from--well, from anyone," I told
her. "I never met him. But I know who can tell us for sure."

I reached for my cell phone.

Joyce Markowsky answered on the fourth ring. "Hello?"

"Joyce, this is Adam Larsen."

"Good morning. I've been hoping you'd call, but I didn't want to bother you.
Have you heard from Conner or Larry?"

"No. I thought I'd give them a few days to think things over before I started
pressing them. We also need to wait until you get appointed as the personal representative
of Karl's estate. Have you talked with the lawyer who drafted his will?"

"I left him a message, but he hasn't called me back. His receptionist said he's out
of the office for the rest of the week."

"Then we probably shouldn't start pressing your partnership issue just yet.
Have you gone through the credit card bills?"

"I have. I had all of them in a file cabinet here at home. And I don't know
whether I should be happy or disappointed. There's nothing out of the ordinary in any of
them. Gas stations, dry cleaners, Starbucks, half a dozen restaurants I know Karl liked. No
surprises at all."

"That's good news. Meanwhile, I have a question for you. This is going to sound
strange, but how sure are you that the man who went over that balcony on Saturday was
Karl?"