Decorating Can Be Murder: Chapter 7

In last month’s installment, Sarasota was still buzzing about Cliff Roles’ arrest for two murders. Meanwhile, Mr. Spryke was eclipsed in the competition for wealthy widow Doris Dickens’ affection and patronage by young Marco Massimo, and Mary Alice realized her husband was having an affair. Then Mr. Spryke received a call from novelist Stephen King’s wife, Tabitha, asking him to drive to Casey Key that night to discuss redecorating their home. Following the directions she gave him, he drove off a boat ramp and into the water, where he seemed doomed to perish.

“Any brain damage?”

“Some.”

“Permanent?”

“Too early to tell.”

“How long did he stop breathing?”

“We’re not sure. Maybe 30 seconds. Maybe a couple of minutes.”

“Wow. And he’s still alive. Any other injuries?”

“A sprained back. And two broken fingers.”

“Broken fingers?”

“He must have gone into some sort of adrenal frenzy trying to get the door open. A childlike panic.”

Childlike panic, my ass, thought Mr. Spryke as he lay there in the hospital bed. They thought he was asleep, which is what he wanted them to think. You can learn a lot by pretending to be unconscious in a hospital bed. People rambled on about your most intimate personal matters, as if you weren’t even there.

It had been three days since his “accident.” Or was it four days? He wasn’t sure any more. They were pumping him full of narcotics and blood thinners and God knows what else. Everything was hazy. Except for one thing. Tabitha King was trying to kill him.

Of course he told them. As soon as he regained consciousness it was the first thing he said. “Arrest her!” he shouted in a husky, slurred voice. “She’s the Collectible Killer!”  

“Now, now,” they said. “Everything will be just fine.” Then they gave him another shot.

Time passed in strange, jerky frames. One moment he was dreaming of dark shapes and hanging moss and strange lights. And that awful water, getting higher and higher. He was pretty sure the two fishermen who rescued him had come to visit. A picture must have been taken, as one appeared in the newspaper. It made a heartwarming tale, but the Herald-Tribune missed the real story—Tabitha King was trying to murder him.

What a cunning woman. She was the reason behind her husband’s success, people whispered. If people only knew! That late-night phone call, so seductively hitting his vulnerable weakness—a decorating job for a celebrity—and so adroitly setting the trap—a winding path to murder, calibrated in feet and yards and hedges and gates and trees, until he suddenly reached a cliff and drove right off, or in this case, straight down a very steep boating ramp and right into the bay at its deepest point.

Even Rick and Mary Alice didn’t believe him. That was the worst part. They were his closest friends, his innermost confidants. And all they did was go, “Hush, hush, you just rest.”

And then that awful word, first whispered out in the hall but now bantered about shamelessly right in his room every time he closed his eyes—dementia.

Never had he felt so alone or so vulnerable. The more he told the truth, the crazier they thought he was. And if he kept his mouth shut, he was a sitting target for Mrs. King on her second try. 

A nurse walked in. He had not seen her before, and his antennae went on high alert. He remembered a picture he had once seen of Tabitha in Sarasota Magazine. She was doing something for the homeless in Bradenton. It was a while back, but he did remember that she was middle-aged, with dark, longish hair parted on the side.

Just like the nurse.

“And how are we doing?” she exclaimed.

“Fine.”

“Are we awake?”

“We’re awake.”

Mr. Spryke looked at her carefully. Two things were immediately apparent. She could easily be Mrs. King—right age, right hair—and she could easily smother him with a pillow in about two seconds flat.

The nurse went over to the window and peered out at the sunset. “It’s getting dark,” she said, and she pulled the curtain closed. Her hands were big, and she seemed to be flexing her fingers. She turned to face him.

“Are we ready for our enema?” she asked.

So that was it. A poison enema, just like the Kennedys did with Marilyn Monroe. Well, he would fight it. He would fight that enema with the least breath in his body.

“I don’t need an enema.”

“Doctor’s orders.”

“I don’t care for them.”

“Who does?”

She disappeared into the bathroom. He heard a drawer open and things being moved around.