I hadn’t intended to visit Lynn that day, but after I passed the ruin that had been her home in Bedford, I realized that I was only ten minutes away from the hospital. I decided to stop in. I’ll be honest: I’d seen pictures of that beautiful house, and now, witnessing the charred remains, it hit me how very fortunate Lynn had been to survive. There were two other cars in the garage that night. If that fireman hadn’t noticed the red Fiat she usually drove and inquired about it, she would be dead now.
She had been lucky. Luckier than her husband, I thought as I drove into the hospital parking lot. I was sure I wouldn’t have to worry about running into cameramen today. In this fast-paced world, Lynn’s brush with death was already old news, only interesting if someone was arrested for setting the fire or if Lynn herself was found to be a co-conspirator in the looting of Gen-stone.
When I got my visitor’s pass at the hospital, I was directed to the top floor. When I stepped out of the elevator, I realized it was for patients with big bucks. The hallway was carpeted, and the unoccupied room I passed could have been in a five-star hotel.
It occurred to me that I should have phoned ahead. My mental image had been of the Lynn I’d seen two days ago, with oxygen tubes in her nostrils, bandaged hands and feet—and pathetically grateful to see me.
The door of her room was partially open, and when I looked in, I hesitated before entering because she was talking on the phone. She was reclining on a divan at the window, and the change in her appearance was dramatic. The oxygen tubes were gone. The bandages on her palms were much smaller. A pale green satin robe had replaced the hospital-issue nightshirt she had been wearing on Tuesday. Her hair was no longer loose but once again was swept up in a French knot. I heard her say, “I love you, too.”
She must have sensed my presence because she turned as she closed her cell phone. What did I see on her face? Surprise? Or for an instant did she look annoyed, even alarmed?
But then her smile was welcoming and her voice warm. “Carley, how nice of you to come. I was just talking to Dad. I can’t convince him that I’m really all right.”
I walked over to her, and realizing that I probably shouldn’t touch her hand, I awkwardly patted her shoulder, and then sat on the loveseat facing her. There were flowers on the table next to her, flowers on the dresser, flowers on the night table. None of the arrangements were the kind you grab in the hospital lobby. Like everything else about Lynn, they were expensive.
I was angry at myself for immediately feeling a sense of being off-balance with her, as though I was waiting for her to establish the mood. In our first meeting in Florida, she’d been condescending. Two days ago she’d been vulnerable. Today?
“Carley, I can’t thank you enough for the way you spoke about me when they interviewed you the other day,” she said.
“I simply said that you were lucky to be alive and that you were in pain.”
“All I know is that I’ve had calls from friends who had stopped talking to me after they found out what Nick had done. They saw you, and I guess they realized that I’m a victim along with them.”
“Lynn, what do you think about your husband now?” It was a question I had to ask, the one I realized I had come here to ask.
Lynn looked past me. Her mouth tightened. She clasped her hands together, then winced and pulled them apart. “Carley, it’s all happened so fast. The plane crash. I couldn’t believe Nick was gone. He was larger than life. You met him, and I think you sensed that. I believed in him. I thought of him as a man with a mission. He’d say things like, ‘Lynn, I’m going to beat the cancer cell, but that’s just the beginning. When I see kids who were born deaf or blind or retarded or with spina bifida, and know how close we are to preventing such birth defects, I go crazy that we’re not out there with this vaccine yet.’ “
I had met Nicholas Spencer only once, but I had seen him interviewed on television any number of times. Consciously or unconsciously, Lynn had caught something of the tenor of his voice, of that forceful passion that had made such an impression on me.
She shrugged. “Now I can only wonder if everything about my life with him was a lie. Did he seek me out and then marry me because I gave him access to people he might not have known otherwise?”
“How did you meet him?” I asked.
“He came to the public relations firm where I work, about seven years ago. We handle only top-drawer clients. He wanted to start getting publicity for his firm and get the word out about the vaccine they were developing. Then he started asking me out. I knew I resembled his first wife. I don’t know what it was. My own father lost his retirement money because he trusted Nick. If he deliberately cheated Dad as well as all those other people, the man I loved never even existed.”
She hesitated, then went on. “Two members of the board came to see me yesterday. The more I learn, the more I believe that from beginning to end Nick was a fraud.”
I decided it was necessary to tell her that I would be writing an in-depth article on him for Wall Street Weekly. “It will be a chips-fall-where-they-may article,” I said.
“The chips have already fallen.”
The phone at the bedside rang. I picked it up and handed it to her. She listened, sighed, and said, “Yes, they can come up.” She handed the receiver back to me and said, “Two people from the police department in Bedford want to talk to me about the fire. Don’t let me keep you, Carley.”
I would love to have sat in on that meeting, but I had been dismissed. I replaced the phone on the receiver, picked up my purse, and then thought of something. “Lynn, I’m going to Caspien tomorrow.”
“Caspien?”
“The town where Nick was raised. Would you know anyone you’d suggest I see there? I mean, did Nick ever mention any close friends?”
She considered my question for a moment, then shook her head. “None that I can recall.” Suddenly she looked past me and gasped. I turned to see what had startled her.
There was a man standing in the doorway, one hand inside his jacket, the other in his pocket. He was balding and had a sallow complexion and sunken cheekbones. I wondered if he was ill. He stared at the two of us, then glanced down the corridor. “Sorry. I guess I’m on the wrong floor,” and with that murmured apology, he was gone.
A moment later two uniformed police officers replaced him at the entrance to the room, and I left.