Death's Savage Passion by Jane Haddam Page A

three days? I remembered Tony Marsh didn’t smoke. I didn’t remember much of anything else.
    I tried to sit up again. Reality was fluid. The hospital bed was less manageable than a waterbed.
    “Tony,” I said. “Three days. What have I been doing here for three days?”
    He said, “Sleeping.”
    I nodded. I needed cigarettes, and coffee, and chocolate, and Nodoz, and maybe even something stronger. My head was full of cotton candy.
    “I know I’ve been sleeping,” I said. “I figured I’d been sleeping. What am I doing here?”
    Tony looked surprised. “You don’t remember? You called 911.”
    I thought about that. I remembered calling 911. I remembered Sarah English dying. I remembered Marilou Saunders going to pieces in Dana’s reception room.
    “Okay,” I said. “That takes care of Sarah. What am I doing here?”
    “Sarah?” Tony said.
    “Sarah English who died,” I said. “Who I called 911 about. Marilou Saunders was standing there holding Sarah English and then we called 911 and we put her on the couch and then she died—at least she looked dead enough—damn, Tony, I know —”
    “Marilou Saunders from television?” Tony said.
    “Tony.” I said.
    Tony was shaking his head. “You called 911 and reported a poisoning,” he said. “We got it all on tape. You can hear yourself if you want.”
    “Of course I called 911 and reported a poisoning,” I said.
    “And they got there and found you poisoned,” Tony Marsh said.
    “Found me poisoned?”
    “Arsenic,” Tony said sagely. “Are you having amnesia? If you’re having amnesia, we should maybe call Dr. Heilbrun. You’ll like Dr. Heilbrun.”
    It is remarkable how little patience I have when I’m sick and hungry and denied cigarettes. I was literally grinding my teeth. Worse, I was getting confused. Being confused scared me to death.
    “Tony,” I said. “You’re a homicide detective. If you’re here, somebody must be dead. I’m not, so who is?”
    “Nobody’s dead. Miss Damereaux thought you’d like to see a friendly face. We arranged it.”
    I tried again, cotton-candy head, swollen tongue, blocked nasal passages. “I was in Dana Morton’s reception room. There was Marilou Saunders and she was holding Sarah English, who is somebody visiting me from Connecticut. Sarah English was all doubled over and trying to throw up. She—”
    “You threw up,” Tony said. “It was all over the carpet. How could you eat ratatouille quiche for lunch?”
    “I didn’t eat anything for lunch.”
    “You threw up a lot before we got you down here,” Tony said. “That’s what caused all the trouble.”
    “Tony,” I said. “Where is Sarah English?”
    Tony did his blink act. “You’ll like Dr. Heilbrun,” he said. “He pumped your stomach; he made it seem like football.”
    Phoebe had been down in the lobby getting coffee. By the time she got back to my room, I had given up trying to explain anything to Tony Marsh. I was lying in bed, going over and over the last things I remembered before passing out. Sarah. Marilou. The coffee. I thought about the coffee, and the arsenic. I thought about Sarah sick all over Dana’s rug. I thought about cigarettes.
    Nothing about that time was clear. Nothing would come together. I kept seeing disembodied pictures, like pieces of a rebus. Silver bangles. An empty patch of carpet. My head ached.
    Tony paced the floor at the foot of my bed. “The problem we’ve got now,” he said, “is reconstructing your day. Just in case this wasn’t random. We don’t know where you had lunch. We don’t know who you had it with—”
    “I didn’t have lunch,” I repeated wearily.
    “You had ratatouille quiche,” Tony said positively.
    I let it go. Sarah had had ratatouille quiche. Ratatouille quiche was exactly what Sarah would have ordered for a first lunch in New York. I thought of that rattle in Sarah’s throat. I gave it one more try.
    “Coffee,” I said. “It must have been in the