Last Scene Alive

"That would help. I wonder how Tracy is. She tried to kill me!" I said, amazed all over again. "Did I tell you she was watching this morning?"

Robin turned red. "While we ... ?"

"Yes, while we."

"Oh, God." His face scrunched with revulsion.

"Yeah, me too."

"But it was great, wasn't it?" he said, bending closer. "You want to think about that while the doctor takes these stitches?"

"It would be better than thinking about someone actually sewing on me."

"Do you remember how you ..." he whispered in my ear, and then the doctor came in. She began her work, chatting all the time to Robin, but I kept my eyes fixed on his face, and I knew he was thinking about that morning, too.

When she was through she gave me a list of instructions and told me I could go. Robin rescued my glasses and we left the hospital. I glanced at Robin doubtfully from time to time. This was surely a lot of trouble for a fragile new relationship.

Robin opened his car door for me, and went around to the driver's side. After he got in, he put the key in the ignition, but then he paused. "I know you're tired right now, but I need to talk to you."

Oh, no. Here it came. "Sure," I said, my voice empty of emotion.

"I feel guilty as hell. Tracy said she hit Celia with the Emmy?"

"Yeah."

"And she attacked you. It seems like I bring nothing but trouble to a relationship."

"I was just thinking the same thing about myself."

His eyebrows raised in a question.

"My first long-term boyfriend marries someone else and then divorces, my first husband dies, my short-term boyfriend shows back up and there's a killer stalking him."

He laughed. When Robin laughed, his whole thin face was involved. "I left my short-term girlfriend behind, hooked up with my agent, had a disastrous relationship with her, dated an actress who was strictly out for herself, then went back to my short-term girlfriend to get her stabbed, apparently."

"Can we actually date without killing each other?"

"I think we have to try," he said.

"I think I need to go to sleep," I said.

Robin took me back home, and helped me undress and get into bed. Okay, maybe that was overdoing it a little, but I think a woman deserves some bed rest after she's been stabbed. I called the library to tell Sam I wouldn't be coming in on time. I explained why in as few words as I could manage. He was so miserable he hardly seemed to care.

Robin said he'd be downstairs with his laptop, and I snuggled down in the bed. I could hardly believe it was only early afternoon. The morning had been packed with more incidents that I usually encountered in a week. Maybe two weeks. I'd had great sex, found out a coworker was a terrorist, started buying a house, and been stabbed in my kitchen. Busy day.

And it wasn't over yet.

I woke up about four. My arm was very sore, but it was bearable as long as I didn't move it too vigorously. I got some pants on by myself, and actually zipped and buttoned them. Getting the nightgown off over my head was much worse, and pulling on a knit shirt was just as bad. But finally I managed, and crept downstairs very slowly.

Robin was asleep on my couch, his laptop plugged in on my desk. He'd carried my phone to the couch with him, and it was moving up and down with the gentle rise and fall of his chest. He snored, like a big cat. It was a large noise, but oddly delicate.

I padded into the kitchen barefoot, and made some coffee. I looked outside to see a day that had gone gray and windy. Rain was coming up. I watched a swirl of gum leaves sweep past the window, yellow and red and brown. Indian summer was definitely over. I looked at the thermometer mounted outside the window. It had dropped twenty degrees since this morning.

While the coffee perked, I found a notepad with messages in Robin's slanted, narrow handwriting. My mother had called, which was no surprise. I should have called her. My sister-in-law—well, my stepsister-in-law—had called, too. So had Sally. And Arthur.

The last name Robin had written was "Will Weir." I wondered what the cameraman could have to say to me. Though everyone else deserved to be called back before Will, his was the number I dialed first, out of sheer curiosity.

"Weir," he answered. I knew he must be on a cell phone, but it was the best co

"You called me?" I asked, after I identified myself.

"Right. The newspaper reporter who was here today, doing a story for your local paper... she said that a woman who claims to have killed Celia had attacked you. Is that true?"

"Yes," I said, promising myself I'd grab Sally Allison and stuff her head in a food processor. Violent images were coming easily to me today. "It was Tracy, the young woman who served the food at the caterer's truck?"

"The reddish-haired girl," he said, after waiting a second for his memory to kick in, I assumed.

"That's her."

"Why did she say that?"

I looked at the phone. I was glad Will couldn't see that look. "Well, because she had a bee in her bo

"But why would she attack you?"

This had me stumped. "She thinks that Robin and I have a relationship now," I said, feeling very awkward.

"That is a little quick," he said, his voice as dry as toast.

"Robin and I are old friends," I said, as neutrally as possible.

"I remember, from the book. Well, Mark and Joel wanted to know if it was because of something that happened on the set..."

"No," I said, not following his line of reasoning, but willing to dismiss it as my own woolly-headedness.

"Mark brought some books by the library yesterday," Will was saying.

"Yes."

"Some books Celia had borrowed?"

"Yes."

"They were in her trailer when she was killed?"

Were we playing twenty questions here? Robin slouched into the kitchen, his hair rumpled and his face creased from the throw pillow on the couch. He came up behind me and wrapped his long arms around me. I snuggled back against him.

"Yes," I said again, hoping he'd get to the point soon. I tapped his name on the list with my finger, so Robin would know to whom I was speaking. I could feel him nod.

"The thing is, she'd borrowed some books from me," Will was saying.

"Oh, gosh. No wonder you want to know about the books." I never loaned books, myself. You never got them back, or if you did they had peanut-butter fingerprints on them, or smelled of other people's cigarettes or pets. "Aside from a batch of paperbacks, there were two hardbacks about the sixties, and one home health book. Those were Lawrenceton library books, though. I'm really sure."

"A home health book?" His voice sounded weaker.

"Yeah, the kind that you use when you want to diagnose your own illness. Poor thing."

"You think she figured out what she had?" Weir sounded horrified.

"I know she had. There was a bookmark on the page for Huntington's chorea."

A long silence fell. Robin poured himself a mug of coffee, asked me in mime if I wanted one, too. I nodded emphatically.

"She knew," Will repeated, his voice just as shocked as it had been the first time. "Oh, my God."

"I'm sorry if I've upset you," I said, actually feeling a little on the impatient side. "What books were you trying to find?" I took a sip of coffee. The groggy nap hangover began to fade. My eyes strayed to my other phone messages. I had a lot of things to do, and my arm was burning.

"Books," he said blankly. "Oh, right, I'd loaned her some paperbacks. You said Mark also brought a few paperbacks to the library."

"Yes, that's what I said." He could have asked Mark before he called me.

"I'll drop by the library and have a look through those books," he said. "They're not important, but I stuck a letter in one of them, and I need it. When will you be working?"