Marcia Talley - Dead Man Dancing

‘You were out of it last time I visited.’ I managed to dredge up a smile. ‘I’d come by to tell you how much I enjoyed your paso doble.’

Jay raised a hand, waved it feebly, then let it fall on to the covers. ‘I really screwed it up big-time, didn’t I?’ He turned his head, trying to catch his wife’s eye. ‘I keep telling Kay I’m too old for this, but she doesn’t listen.’

‘Old, schmold ! You guys were great. And the choreography you arranged for Hutch and Melanie knocked everyone’s eyes out.’ I patted Jay’s hand, and was surprised when he winced again, and jerked it away.

Kay shot me a warning glance. ‘His skin’s really sensitive.’

‘Sorry. I didn’t know.’

Jay managed a feeble grin. ‘Seems I’m always causing trouble.’ He turned his head on the pillow. ‘Kay, could you pour me some ginger ale, please?’

While Kay filled a plastic glass with ice, popped open a can of ginger ale and began to pour, I filled them both in on the party a few nights previously. ‘And did you hear that Tom and Laurie won several firsts at the Sweetheart Ball? They were over the moon.’

Jay nodded and replied with obvious effort. ‘Tom called to tell us. I’m pleased, very pleased. They’re hard workers, and super serious about dance. I’m referring them to Paul Pellicoro and Eleny Fotinos in Manhattan. I’ve done about all I can for them here.’

‘Pellicoro? Is that the guy who taught Al Pacino to tango in Scent of a Woman ?’

Kay answered for her husband. ‘Right. You may have seen them interviewed on TV.’ She popped a flexible straw into the ginger ale and held it for Jay while he took a sip, then another, then another. Swallowing seemed to be a problem. Jay held up a hand, and Kay moved the ginger ale away.

‘And while we’re talking about talent, do you think your future brother-in-law will give up the law for dance?’ Jay asked me.

I grinned. ‘I doubt it. Ten years out, and he’s still paying off his student loans. But he’s gung-ho, full-steam-ahead for the Shall We Dance? competition.’ I explained as well as I could about the arrangements Hutch was making so that his firm could function for the months they’d be without him.

Kay held out the glass. ‘More ginger ale?’

‘No thanks, sweetheart. I think I’ll take a nap now.’ He exhaled slowly and closed his eyes.

‘I’ve tired you out, Jay. I’m sorry.’ I started buttoning my coat and headed toward the door.

Kay set the ginger ale down on the bedside table, leaned over her husband, adjusted his pillows, and smoothed a long, lank lock of hair out of his eyes. Suddenly she gasped, withdrawing her hand as if she’d received an electric shock.

‘Kay!’ I whispered. ‘What’s wrong?’

Kay turned to me, her eyes wide and frightened, like an animal caught in the headlights. Tears welled up, spilling over on to her cheeks. Silently, she held out her hand. In it lay a hank of her husband’s handsome, blue-black hair.

‘He’s losing his hair?’ I glanced at the pillow where Jay’s head rested and noticed other strands that had separated from his head when he moved it. It can happen suddenly, just like that, with chemo. One night you’ve got hair, the next morning you’re standing in the shower and it’s falling out in clumps, swirling around the drain at your feet.

But Jay wasn’t on chemo.

As I stood there looking from Jay’s littered pillow to Kay’s ravaged face, I remembered something I’d read in an Agatha Christie novel written late in her career and not one of her best – The Pale Horse . Mark Easterbrook, the writer-hero realizes that somebody’s been poisoned with thallium. ‘But one thing always happens sooner or later,’ he says. ‘The hair falls out.’

I took Kay by the shoulders, soothing her, trying to calm her down, although under the circumstances saying, ‘There, there, it’s going to be all right,’ seemed pretty hollow.

At least she’d stopped shivering. ‘Kay, have the doctors tested Jay for heavy metal poisoning? Arsenic? Or thallium?’

‘I don’t know,’ she bawled, clutching the lock of her husband’s hair to her bosom with both hands.

I located Jay’s call button on the end of a cord clipped to the bed rail, and punched it repeatedly. ‘When the nurse comes, you have to tell her about the hair.’

Kay sucked in her lips and nodded silently, but I wasn’t sure my words were getting through.

‘Honey?’ It was Jay calling to his wife from the bed. ‘What’s wrong?’

She rushed to his bedside. ‘Oh, Jay! Your beautiful hair is falling out. Hannah thinks it could be heavy metal poisoning.’

With some effort, Jay raised a hand and rubbed it across his brow and over his temple, coming away holding a few strands of hair. ‘I’ll be damned.’ Under the circumstances, he was surprisingly calm.

A nurse appeared in the door. ‘How can I help?’

Kay stared, and pointed to me.

I told the nurse what I suspected.

The nurse, young, freshly-uniformed and scrubbed, considered me with cool, green intelligent eyes. ‘Of course. I’ll call the doctor right away.’

‘Heavy metal?’ Jay asked after the nurse had left. ‘Isn’t that how they murdered that Russian guy?’

At the mention of murder, Kay gasped.

‘For heaven’s sake, Kay. Who the hell would want to murder me?’ Jay turned back to me. ‘Thallium, wasn’t it?’

‘Alexander Litvinenko? They thought so at first, but it turned out to be polonium-210. Much more toxic,’ I hastily added, although from what I remembered of the newspaper accounts at the time, thallium poisoning could be pretty deadly, too, especially if you didn’t diagnose it in time.

‘Ha! Seems I’ve been poisoned by spies!’

As sick as he was, the man hadn’t lost his sense of humor.

‘Thankyouthankyouthankyou ,’ Kay gushed into the phone the next day. ‘You were absolutely right, Hannah.’

‘Jay has thallium poisoning?’

‘Once they knew what they were looking for, they found traces of it in his urine. The blood work was complicated and took a bit longer, but it’s come back positive, too, so there isn’t any doubt.’

I smiled into the phone. ‘It’s amazing the useful facts you can learn from reading mystery fiction.’

‘An Agatha Christie novel, you said? Who would have thought it?’

‘Christie was a smart old dame. A lot of research went into her books.’ Before we could drift off on a literary tangent à la Oprah’s Book club, I asked, ‘What do the doctors say, Kay? Is Jay going to be all right?’

‘No guarantees.’ Kay rushed on, breathless. ‘No one here is underestimating the seriousness of Jay’s condition, but they’re forcing fluids, and have started him on the antidote, a course of Prussian Blue. Fingers crossed he’ll respond and turn the corner…’ She paused. ‘He’s in such pain now that the simple weight of his hospital blanket is agony.’

‘I’ll keep you both in my prayers,’ I said, thinking that I needed to update Eva so she could add Jay’s dicey condition to her prayer list, too. Unlike some pastors, Eva never claimed to have a direct line to God, but it seemed to me that previous problems I’d referred to her had had a good record of being rubber-stamped ‘solved’, so why knock a good thing?

‘We hope they don’t have to do dialysis,’ Kay continued, ‘but Jay says he’d happily let them cut off his left arm if it’ll take away the pain.’

‘Does Jay have any idea where he picked up the thallium?’ I’d been doing some research since my visit to the hospital, and I knew that thallium wasn’t that easy to obtain. Having been banned in the US since the mid-1980s, unless you worked for a company that manufactured thermometers, optical glass, semiconductors or green fireworks, it wouldn’t just be lying about.