“Connor!” Nora sprang from her seat and tried to help him off the floor. “C’mon,” she said. “Try to get up.”
He struggled to his feet, his legs like rubber. She guided him to the bathroom in the hall. Connor fell to the floor again, nearly passing out. Nora lifted the seat of the toilet, and he tried to crawl to it.
“I’m… I’m… going to be sick,” he muttered between gasps of air. He was beginning to hyperventilate.
“Let me get you something to take,” she said, her voice ripe with panic. “I’ll be right back.”
She ran into the kitchen while Connor labored to raise his head above the lip of the toilet. His body was an inferno, and not just his stomach anymore. Sweat gushed from every pore.
Nora returned with a glass in her hand. In it was a clear liquid, fizzing. Looked like Alka-Seltzer. “Here, drink this,” she said.
Connor took the glass, his hands trembling. He could barely lift it to his mouth, so she helped him. He took one sip, then another.
“Take more,” she said. “Finish.”
He took another sip before clutching his stomach again. Connor clamped shut his eyes and clenched his teeth, the jaw muscles so taut that they looked ready to burst from his skin.
“Help me,” he begged. “Nora!”
Seconds later, it was as if his prayers had been answered. The awful trembling began to subside. As quickly as it started, it was ending.
“I think the medicine is working, honey,” said Nora.
Connor was back to breathing normally. Some of his color had returned. He opened his eyes, slowly at first, then wide. He breathed out a long sigh of relief. “What was that?” he asked.
That’s when it all started again.
Only ten times worse. The trembling was now a series of brutal spasms that shook his body. The gasping became a quick and horrible suffocation. Connor’s face turned blue, his eyes fully bloodshot.
The glass fell from his hands and shattered. His body violently convulsed, and he was writhing in pain. His hands reached for his neck, desperate for air.
He tried to scream. Couldn’t. Nothing came out of his mouth.
He tried to reach for Nora. She took a step back.
She didn’t want to watch and yet she couldn’t turn away. All she could do was wait for the shaking and convulsing to stop again, which it finally did.
Permanently.
Connor was lying on the floor of one of the bathrooms in his 11,000-square-foot Colonial.
Dead.
Chapter 19
THE FIRST THING Nora did was to clean up the broken glass off the bathroom floor.
The second thing was to scrape the remains of the omelet down the disposal, turn on the disposal, then thoroughly wash the plate, fork, and omelet pan.
The third was to fix herself a stiff drink.
Half a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue, straight up, and it was gone in about half a second. She poured herself a little more and sat down at the kitchen table. She gathered her thoughts. Went over her lines. Drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
It was showtime.
Nora calmly walked over to the phone and dialed. She reminded herself: The cleverest liars don’t give details.
After two rings, a woman picked up and said, “Nine-one-one Emergency.”
“Oh, God!” Nora screamed into the phone. “Please help me, he’s not breathing!”
“Who’s not breathing, ma’am?”
“I don’t know what happened, he was eating when all of a—”
“Ma’am,” the operator interrupted. “Who’s not breathing?”
Nora sniffed, her lungs heaving. “My fiancé!” she wailed.
“Is he choking?”
“No!” she cried. “He just started to feel sick and… and… then he…” Nora stopped. She thought unfinished sentences might be more convincing on 911 tapes.
“Where are you, ma’am? What’s your address?” asked the operator. “I need an address.”
Nora alternated between sputtered words and more crying until she’d finally given Connor’s address in Briarcliff Manor.
“Okay, ma’am, stay put. Try to be calm. An ambulance will be there right away.”
“Oh, please hurry!”
Nora hung up the phone. She figured she had maybe six or seven more minutes to herself. Plenty of time for the last bit of cleanup.
The bottle of Johnnie Walker would stay out, she decided, as would the glass she poured it in. After all, who could blame her for having a drink at a time like this? The pill bottle, on the other hand, would definitely not stay out.
She placed it back in her suitcase, burying it deep in her medicine bag, which itself was buried deep beneath her clothes. Were anyone ever to find it and read the label, they’d see that she took 10 mg tabs of Zyrtec for her seasonal allergies. Asking to borrow one would be extremely ill advised, though.
Nora zipped the suitcase closed and carried it up to the master bedroom. There, she applied the finishing touches in front of a full-length mirror. She untucked her T-shirt from her jeans and yanked on the collar a few times. She followed that by vigorously rubbing her eyes to make them red. With a flurry of blinks she forced out a few more tears to further streak her makeup.
There, that ought to do it.
Nora was ready for the next act.
Chapter 20
KIND OF EXCITING, actually. A rush. The all-important third act of the drama.
Flashing lights and the ascending scream of a siren filled the driveway. Nora ran out the front door, hysterical, screaming, “Hurry! Please, hurry! Oh, please!”
The paramedics—two young men with short-cropped hair—quickly grabbed their bags and hustled into the big house.
Nora rushed them to the hallway bathroom, where Connor’s large frame was sprawled out on the floor.
Suddenly she fell to her knees, weeping uncontrollably, her face flush against Connor’s chest. One of the paramedics, the shorter of the two, had to drag her back out to the hallway to make room for himself and his partner. “Please, ma’am. Let us work in here. He might still be alive.”
For the next five minutes, every effort was made to bring Connor Brown back to life, and every one of those efforts failed. Ultimately, the two paramedics exchanged that knowing glance, the silent recognition that there was nothing more they could do.
The older of the two turned and looked back over his shoulder at Nora, who stood by the doorway in a seemingly shock-induced haze. His face said it all, no words were required, but he uttered the redundant “I’m sorry.”
She took her cue and burst into more tears. “No!” she yelled. “No, no, no! Oh, Connor, Connor!”
Minutes later the Briarcliff Manor police arrived. It was routine procedure, Nora knew. Connor being pronounced dead at the scene meant they got the call. Another screaming siren and more flashing lights in the driveway.
A few of the neighbors had gathered to look on. It seemed that Nora and Connor had just been joking about their watching them have sex only moments ago.
The police officer who did most of the talking was named Nate Pingry. He was older than his partner, Officer Joe Barreiro, and clearly the more experienced of the two. Their purpose was simple: prepare a report detailing the events leading up to, and the circumstances surrounding, the death of Connor Brown. In other words, the necessary paperwork.
“I know how hard this must be for you, Mrs. Brown, so we’ll try to do this as quick as possible,” said Pingry.
Nora had her head buried in her hands. She was sitting on the ottoman in the living room, where the paramedics had practically carried her. She looked up at the policemen, Pingry and Barreiro.