The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [66]
Jameson added, “She spent three weeks getting it just right.”
“A room of light and nothing else. A room of night and nothing else.” Nada had been a teenager, obsessed with poetry but not very good at composing it, when she read those words to a reporter from the Chicago Reader. She now imagined the team of painters and decorators and contractors working under Myra’s direction to make it happen.
“Wait,” Myra said, stepping toward the large window. “Close the door, Gary.” She turned something under the sill—a knob or a switch—and a shade descended from inside the white silk valance. In seconds, daylight had been sucked from the room, along with the breath from Nada’s lungs. She was surrounded by almost total darkness.
“My God,” she said.
Myra must have turned the switch again, as the blackout shades reversed direction and the room reflected the light again. Nada walked to the window and scanned the green-and-red gardens below and the towering black Hancock above. Nada never trembled. She never cried when she didn’t want to.
She wanted to now, though. “Thank you,” she said.
Myra’s long fingers wrapped Nada’s wrists. “I know this must be strange for you. But it means so much to my husband. In the meantime, I wanted this place to be perfect. A sanctuary.”
Myra quickly went over house procedures. Laundry and housekeeping. Dinner in the dining room each night at 7:00 p.m. Nada was free to attend or not, but Myra encouraged her not to miss too many of Molly’s “deliciously creative meals.” The kitchen was available anytime. Nada could help herself or Molly would fix her something.
“If you need to use the phone—” Myra began.
“I won’t,” Nada said. Myra told her where it was anyway.
Jameson asked where her car was parked and said he would have it moved off the street and into the garage beneath the grounds. Her luggage would be brought to her room.
“There’s not much,” she said.
“I’ll show you the tiles in the morning and we can talk about next steps,” Jameson said. “But I hope you can make dinner tonight.”
Nada told him she had nowhere else to be and then waited for them to leave so she could turn the switch on the wall that would bring back the night.
20
IT FELT MORE like a country club lounge than a waiting room, with wide leather chairs and heavy briefcase-size art books instead of news and gossip magazines. Footsteps on the new carpet left impressions that slowly evaporated like breath on a window. Hanging on the walls was real art, abstract and probably expensive, although Kloska was no expert. The receptionist was attractive and wore a designer dress and mid-high heels and expensive glasses, possibly for show. She wore her brown hair up and sat at a narrow desk, polished clean except for a small laptop. There was no sign to indicate the nature of the business or even its name, Executive Concierge, which still wouldn’t hint to passersby that this was a medical clinic. Not that there would be many passersby eighteen floors above Michigan Avenue.
Nice as it was, Kloska didn’t think the patients of Executive Concierge spent much time sitting in the waiting room. They paid a lot of money to do away with the small and large inconveniences of health care. This waiting room was for other people. Like cops.
Dr. Russo eventually appeared with an apology and a smile and waved Kloska and Traden back to his office, which was as plush as the waiting room, if slightly more cluttered. It had medical books at least, and a few triathlon medals, and a monitor that silently flashed and scrolled the day’s business news. The detectives settled into another set of leather chairs and the doctor asked what he could do for them.
“We have some questions about Marlena Falcone.”
Russo shut his eyes reverently and then opened them. “Yes. We’re still a mess over that. Any idea yet who might have done it?”
Kloska shook his head. “Nothing to talk about. I’m still trying to get my head around her professional life. I mean, what did she do, exactly? I thought she lost her medical license seven years ago.”
“Marlena