Silver Scream : A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery

But no one did, and when she turned the knob she

discovered that the door was firmly shut.

SEVENTEEN

SLOWLY, SHE OPENED the door and peered into the

hallway. A pair of orderlies had their heads together

by the elevators. Wanda was sitting at the reception

desk. A doctor in scrubs was talking to a nurse at the

far end of the corridor. None of them seemed interested in Room 704.

But someone was. As she’d turned the knob to

open the door a few inches, she’d heard footsteps

close by. Not the soft, almost noiseless tread of

shoes worn by members of the medical profession,

but high heels. Tap-tap-tap. They’d stopped

abruptly just as Judith had looked into the corridor.

The door on the right of Angela’s room was open.

Moving as silently as possible, Judith looked inside. It

was dark, but she could tell that the single bed was

empty. On a whim, she opened the bathroom door and

flicked on the light. Nothing. Leaving the light on and

the bathroom door open, she went to the closet. Nothing there, either. But just as she was closing the closet

door, she heard the tap-tap-tapping again. Quickly

switching off the bathroom light, she hurried into the

corridor. The tableau remained the same, except that

the orderlies by the elevators had gone.

270

Mary Daheim

Judith walked softly to Room 702, on the other side

of Angela’s private room. There a light glowed above

the bed, where an old man with paper-thin skin

breathed with noisy effort. Judith gave up. She

couldn’t search every room. Besides, she reasoned, the

high heels might have belonged to a visitor who had

tried to get into the wrong room.

But she didn’t quite believe it. Feeling defeated, she

headed for the elevators. There was one good thing

about her visit, though. As she exited on the main floor,

Judith felt a sense of freedom at leaving the hospital

under her own power. It hadn’t been that way when she

exited Good Cheer on a cold day in January. She’d

been wheeled out to a cabulance and had spent the following week learning to walk again.

Fifteen minutes later she was back at Hillside Manor.

Joe was sitting in the living room, studying Bill’s chart.

“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. “I

was about to file a missing-persons report.”

Judith explained everything except the hospital

visit. She had a question of her own that wouldn’t wait.

“What about Mother? It’s eight o’clock. She must be

starving.”

“Your mother is fine,” Joe replied. “Arlene brought