Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

as I’m here, is it okay for me to take Dashiell around for bedtime visits?”
    “I wonder,” Eli said. Then he paused. “I hate to impose, but as long as you’re going to do that, Rachel, would you take Dashiell to see David? But ask Homer or Molly to go with you, please.”
    I nodded. “Has there been any word from the hospital?” I asked, looking at Eli, and when he didn’t look at me, looking at Nathan, then Samuel.
    “No change,” Eli finally said. “We’ll stop by on our way home.”
    “Your doctor friend?”
    “Yes?”
    “Could he, would it be possible for me to go over really late with Dashiell, after I finish here?”
    “Rachel, you need your rest, too. Look at you. Your eyes are all red. You look so—”
    “I’d really like to go.”
    “I’ll make sure it’s okay.”
    “Why don’t you come with us now?” Samuel asked. “That would be okay, wouldn’t it, Dad?”
    “I want to take Dashiell around first. I think that’s important,” I said, nodding for emphasis. “But thanks for asking.”
    It was also a great time to check Eli’s office, since he was going over to St. Vincent’s and then home.
    I turned to head back to the stairs and saw Janice. She’d found her purse. I couldn’t miss it against the gray suit.
    There was something else I couldn’t miss as well. It wasn’t Harry’s office she was coming out of, brushing her hands against each other; it was Venus’s.
    Arlene and Bailey were waiting at the front door. As Janice joined them, I saw Arlene’s eyebrows go up.
    “It wasn’t there,” Janice said.
    I didn’t get it. It was right in her hand. But no one elaborated for my benefit. They walked out into the heat, and a split second later, looking through the sidelight where David usually stood, I saw Arlene’s arm go up for a taxi, God forbid they should wear out their Gucci shoes walking to the subway.
    Eli had gone to get his briefcase. When he returned with it, both sons followed their father out. Watching them leave, I wondered if I’d made a mistake, not going with them. Couldn’t one of them kick out the plug of the ventilator or screw up the IV line? But then I remembered Nurse Frostee and all those monitors at her station, and I knew that Venus was safe. At least for now.
    Walking up the stairs, figuring I’d start at the top and work my way down, see who was in the mood for a little visit, I began to think about David. Nathan said they had to protect him. And Venus had told me he did get violent sometimes. She’d told me to be careful.
    Still, in view of all the other things that had happened here, I wasn’t buying the story. It was too convenient, having someone to blame who couldn’t defend himself, a scapegoat whose apparent guilt would allow the whole incident to evade police scrutiny.
    It was, in fact, if it weren’t true, a brilliant ploy. Now all I had to do was determine which one of the players was smart enough, and greedy enough for power, to have figured it out.
    And cold enough to have acted upon it.

Chapter 24
    I Brushed Away the Dirt

    I started with Charlotte, singing her to sleep with Dashiell occasionally howling along, his subtle way of telling me to keep my day job. The princess was so taken with Dashiell she removed her crown and tried it on him. But I had to call a halt to her fun when she tried to secure it with bobby pins. I passed David’s door without knocking. I’d visit him later, with Homer. We visited the guy we’d seen carrying his shoe around. He laughed when Dashiell kissed him. He seemed to be an awfully nice man who’d simply lost his way as he got old.
    Some of the old people seemed to get sweeter as they got more senile, going back to childhood and, in doing so, shedding all the burdens that come with being an adult. A few, like Cora and Dora, perhaps because they were a pair, stayed peppery. Still, what you saw in either case was pretty much what you got. Those with autism were infinitely more complex and unpredictable.
    We stopped in on a man who appeared to be in his thirties. Or forties. He said his name was Richard. But then he asked if Dashiell’s name was Richard. I thought of telling him it wasn’t, but didn’t bother. By then, Dashiell had hopped up on the bed, and for a while both Richards, cheek to cheek, communed. When I told him we had to go, he reached for my hand and patted it. I promised I’d come by again as soon as I could.
    Dora wanted to see the dog, but Cora didn’t.
    “I have