The Syndrome (12 page)

Ramon nodded thoughtfully, and frowned. “She didn’t go out a lot,” he said. “Didn’t have a lot of people over.”

It was Adrienne’s turn to nod.

“Someone that pretty, you’d think …” He let the thought die, then changed the subject. “What about Jack?” he asked. “What’s going to happen to him?”

Adrienne shook her head. “I don’t know. My landlady lives upstairs and—she’s not real big on dogs.”

“‘Cause I was thinkin’,” Ramon said. “Maybe I could take him—I mean, if you don’t want him—if you can’t
have
him. I
like
dogs. And since it’s Nikki’s dog … it would be kind of special.”

Adrienne thought it over—for about half a second. “Well, that would be … just great!” It occurred to her that Ramon had had a crush on her sister.

“Only … if you could keep him for a week or maybe two?” Ramon suggested. “I’m just changing roommates and I got to square it with the new guy. I mean, I can make it a condition. This guy I got lined up, if he doesn’t like dogs—I just find someone who does.”

Adrienne nodded enthusiastically. “Absolutely! A couple of weeks. No problem.”

Ramon looked pleased. “Well, that’s great,” he said.

She put his business card in her handbag, and the laptop in its case, which was on the floor beside the desk. Then she clipped the leash to Jack’s collar, slung the computer case
over her shoulder, and stepped out into the corridor. Together, she and Ramon rode the elevator down to the lobby, and went outside.

“You want a taxi?”

Adrienne shook her head. “I’ll walk him, first.”

The doorman nodded, and they shook hands. “So … I’ll wait to hear from you,” he told her.

She smiled and, at a tug from Jack, lurched toward the curb.

Ramon beamed. “I’m a dog owner,” he said to no one in particular. “How about that?”

She was standing in the crowd on the platform at Metro Center, waiting for the Red Line train that would take her to Cleveland Park. And the train was going to be there any second. Adrienne knew that because the glass discs at the edge of the platform were beginning to blink, a staccato light show that she could see between the legs of the waiting passengers. Approaching the platform and peering to the left, she saw the train’s headlight flickering in the tunnel. Somewhere, a telephone began to ring.

But not in her dream. The phone was real, and the Metro was a phantom. She knew this even as she dreamt about it, but knowing didn’t make any difference. The dream still had her in its grip as she fumbled for the receiver on her bedside table.

“Hello?”

The voice at the other end identified itself as “Ms. Neumann,” from the Medical Examiner’s office. “I’m calling about Nicole Sullivan’s remains? Who am I speaking with?”

The word—
remains
—made Adrienne sit up, and the act of sitting up lifted her out of the dream. “This is Nikki’s sister. Half sister. Adrienne Cope.”

“The police report lists you as the next of kin.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, we need the name of a funeral home—whoever’s going to process the rem—”

Adrienne interrupted. “I understand.”
Process the remains?
As if Nikki were a kind of cheese or information.

“And?”
The clerk’s impatience was palpable.

“I’ve never done this before,” Adrienne explained. “So … I haven’t really decided—”

“I can fax you a list, if you have a machine,” the clerk suggested.

“I do,” Adrienne replied. “I have one right here.” She gave her the number, and the clerk said that she’d wait for a reply.

“There’s a release for the remains. So we can send them wherever you tell us.”

“Okay.”

“If we could have it back this afternoon? That would be good,” the clerk added.

“I’ll get it to you right away,” Adrienne promised, returning the receiver to its hook. Then she got out of bed, threw on some clothes, and attached the leash to Jack’s collar. Mrs. Spears didn’t allow pets in the house, but “under the circumstances …” she’d agreed that Jack could stay until next weekend, by which time Ramon would be able to take him in.

Jack was already at the door, slapping it with his paws, eager to go for his walk.

As the two of them left the house, they entered a patch of garden on the way to the garage, where Adrienne pushed a button that sent the segmented door rattling up from the floor. With the door curling into the roof, Jack yanked her into the alley behind the houses.

Out on the street, Adrienne was thinking that although she didn’t have time to take care of the dog, she was going to miss him. It was amazing how many people stopped to talk—ostensibly to her, but actually to Jack. Though it was only a block away, it took her almost ten minutes to get to Heller’s Bakery. There, she tied the leash to a parking meter and went in to get a sweet roll, emerging a few minutes later with a croissant for Jack.

By the time she got back to the apartment, the fax machine was disgorging the last page of a multipage fax from the Medical Examiner’s office. Jack jumped onto the couch and curled up, as Adrienne retrieved a handful of pages from the floor. At a glance, she saw that they comprised an alphabetized list of establishments providing “mortuary services” in the District of Columbia.

She called the Albion Funeral Home, which was near the top of the list. The man at the other end had the soft and confidential voice of a used-car salesman on Qaaludes. When she interrupted his spiel to make it clear that she wasn’t interested in an elaborate service, he offered, without missing a beat, the most “economical” alternative, one that involved no “viewing” or “service” and a “classic,” if “basic,” coffin. Even so, it was soon clear that even the simplest burial was going to cost thousands of dollars.

In his silky voice, Barrett Albion belittled the amount, noting that “We take most of the major credit cards with the exception of American Express.” When Adrienne fell silent at the prospect of the expense, he reminded her that “the estate will often release funds for this purpose.”

Once again, she hesitated. She’d imagined a decent funeral for her sister, with her friends and relatives gathered in mourning, there to remember her. But there wasn’t any way for that to happen, really. She’d looked in Nikki’s computer, and there wasn’t anyone, really. Just Adrienne, Ramon, the building superintendent, and her shrink. Amtrak and Avis. Tom Yum Thai.

The truth was, Nikki didn’t have any friends. Not really. Not at all.

“What about … cremation?” Adrienne sputtered. She could hear the funeral director catch his breath at the other end of the line.

After a moment, he replied, “Well, that
is
an option.”

“Fine,” Adrienne shot back in a voice so sharp that Jack’s ears came to attention. “Let’s do that, then.”

Albion sighed. “We only cremate twice a week,” he told her. “On Tuesdays and Fridays. So it will be Saturday before we can—”

“Saturday’s fine.”

But even as she selected this “alternative,” Adrienne felt queasy about it.
There ought to be a ceremony
, she thought.
Something.

She and the funeral director nailed down the remaining details, including the number and expiration date of Adrienne’s Visa card and the selection of a “receptacle.” The most “economical” was a blue cardboard box—“really rather tasteful.” Adrienne couldn’t face the idea of “a box,” and opted for an urn, the “classic.” And yes, she would be the one to claim the urn once the “treatment” was completed.

“Will you pick it up in person?” Albion asked. “Or would you rather we had it sent? We could FedEx—”

“I’ll get it myself in person,” Adrienne replied, thinking,
FedEx? They want to FedEx my sister to me?
As she hung up the phone, she burst into tears. Jack lifted his muzzle from the compact circle that he’d formed, and issued a questioning woof.

Wiping the tears from her eyes, Adrienne went to the kitchen table, and began to make a list.

She had always been a list maker, imposing order on chaos, even if it was only on paper. When Marlena died, Adrienne had helped Deck sort through her foster mother’s belongings. She’d come upon Marlena’s trove of memorabilia: a fat folder for each child. In Nikki’s folder: valentines made of doilies, snippets of fabric lace, faded red construction paper. Wild,
even gorgeous, drawings in magic marker. Elaborate and intricate cutout snowflakes. Poems. In Adrienne’s folder: a stack of straight-A report cards, some tidy little snowmen, and some of her childhood lists, carefully printed on loose-leaf paper.

1. Brush teeth
   

2. Make bed
   

3. Eat breakfast
   

4. Play
   

Yes, she had been a child who felt it necessary to remind herself to “play.” Unlike the spontaneous and chaotic Nikki, whose motto was, if anything,
Play it as it lays.
She, Adrienne, had been the “good” girl to Nikki’s charming and spectacular rogue. Nikki never did her chores without being nagged to death, never came home on time for dinner or from dates, always cajoled her way into getting extensions on her school projects. Nikki was always in trouble, and yet … Everyone loved her. She lit up the room, even if she sometimes made you want to roll your eyes. Because you wouldn’t believe, you couldn’t believe, someone so beautiful and vivacious could be so daring—
and so funny. How did it happen?
Adrienne wondered.
How did someone so … glorious … turn into a recluse?

It made her wonder. It made her shudder.

As for her own lists, which were meant to keep everything in order, the last one had included:
Dinner with Nikki.
But it had not included Barrett Albion, a funeral urn, or a sniper rifle.

Adrienne gave her head a quick little shake, as if to clear her mind, and opened the organizer notebook in which she kept her many lists. One by one, she enumerated the things she had to do:

1. Fax release to Neumann.
   

2. Urn—Albion—Saturday.
   

3. Amalgamated docs—memo to Slough.
   

4. Visa: limit?
   

She thought for a moment. What else? There was something else. And then she remembered.

5. Will.

She hadn’t really looked at it. Just the one glance in Nikki’s apartment. Enough to tell her that she was the executor.

She looked at her watch, and saw that it was 9:15. She had a meeting that afternoon with Curtis Slough to discuss some “worrisome” documents in the Amalgamated case. And the truth was, she hadn’t even finished annotating the papers, much less writing a memo about the ones they should try to protect. She just hadn’t had—didn’t have—wouldn’t have—the time. And yet, she’d have to find it.

She really ought to take a day off, or even two, but how could she when she had this Amalgamated thing hanging over her head? It would take too long to bring anyone else up to speed. And it was the first substantive case she’d worked on for the firm. If she let them down in the middle of discovery … well, she might as well look for a job adjudicating parking tickets.

Do it by the numbers
, she told herself.
Just do what you have to do, one thing at a time.
And so she did.

She filled out the release for the M.E.’s office, and faxed it to the officious Ms. Neumann.
Cross that off.
Then she dialed the number on the back of her Visa card and listened with gritted teeth to a long and irrelevant spiel on tape. Finally, she heard the option that she wanted, tapped the number eight, and learned that the cost of her sister’s cremation would not exceed the limit on her Visa card. In fact, she was surprised to learn that she had more than two thousand dollars in credit—the result of a recent upgrade to Platinum status.

So she crossed that off, too, and began to feel a little better.

Going into the bedroom, she pulled on some clothes,
tugged a hairbrush through her hair, and did the sixty-second makeup (mascara—lipstick—a dab of foundation on her forehead). Then she grabbed her keys, gave Jack a pat, and rushed out the door.

Only to return an instant later for Nikki’s laptop. Because why not use it until the new one was delivered? She hated not having one.
Even so …
, she thought as she closed the door behind her, if she was going to take it to court, she’d do well to find a more subdued carrying case than the flaming pink Cordura number that Nikki had used.

When she got to her office, she found that Slough had left a message of his own, saying that he couldn’t do lunch after all—so how about tomorrow? That gave her an extra day to deal with the Amalgamated documents. And handle the will.

It was in the laptop’s carrying case and, as she took it out, a chord of sadness ran through her. The pathos of her sister’s death was impossible to ignore, emblazoned as it was by the banner-ad at the top of her last will and testament.

Wills were not something that she’d ever handled before. She would probably have to file it with the Clerk of Courts, close out her sister’s bank accounts, deal with the insurance (if there was any), and …

It occurred to her, suddenly and for the first time, that Nikki had not been broke. Her Eurotrash boyfriend (or, more accurately, his parents) had settled a sum of money on her. Half a million dollars. It must have been invested. Even in a money market account, it would have pulled in twenty-five thousand a year. So even with the apartment in Georgetown and the twice-a-week visits to her Cleveland Park shrink, it was hard to see how Nikki could have made too much of a dent in four years. It wasn’t like she ever
went
anywhere.

The realization that she might inherit that money, which she then could use to pay down her student loans, sent a frisson of excitement—and a feeling of shame—through her. She didn’t want Nikki’s
money.
That is, she
did
, but … She didn’t want her sister’s death to be like winning the lottery.

Her eyes drifted down the page: