"I'll get you to the doctor," Detective Stone promised. "After I’ve taken care of this one."
Mimi lay face down on the ground, her hands cuffed behind her back.
I nodded weakly and drifted off again into peaceful oblivion.
The next thing I heard was Nick's voice. "We need to get her off the ground before she catches pneumonia. The ambulance should be here in a few minutes."
A hand slipped carefully behind my neck, and with the other, he supported my sound shoulder. "This might hurt. I'll try to lift you, OK?"
Again, I nodded.
"Steady now." Ange put her arm around my hip to prop me up. Together, they half-carried me toward a clearing where the ambulance was already waiting.
I saw car tracks. Ange noticed my confusion. “The police have taken Mimi away you were still unconscious. God, Bex, that was close," Ange sniffled.
"Too close," I said. "But I hope it's all over now."
I spent the night in a hospital bed after an X-ray confirmed a broken collarbone. Nick was worried that I might have a mild concussion, and he wanted to ward off pneumonia.
I had argued to let me go home, but in the end, I had given in. My head throbbed. My shoulder was on fire, and I was shivering from the wet ground and the shock.
Even though I'd figured out it was Mimi, when I realized that my aunt had given her a novel about an unfaithful woman planning to murder her husband, coming this close to following my aunt to the grave had shaken me to the core.
"I'll look after the cat," Ange promised, "so you don't have to worry."
I nodded, too tired and sore to do more.
I hoped Cosmo had made it home safely and was back inside. Had I left the cat flap open for him? I couldn't remember. But I couldn't change or do anything about it anyway.
"Keys in my pocket," I said.
"Leave it to me." She pressed a kiss on my forehead.
"Do you want me to call or contact anyone? Alex? Your ex?"
"No. Not tonight." At Nick's insistence, I swallowed a pill and drifted off into dreamland.
Chapter thirty-nine
In the morning, the pain was still there, but Nick promised me I'd feel more comfortable in a few days and prescribed some pain medication.
Ange picked me up just before lunch and drove me home. "I've put a few frozen meals into your freezer. You need to get a microwave."
"One day," I said. I couldn't tell her that microwaves supposedly threw off your vibes.
"Cosmo has been fed." She bit her lip. "There's one other thing."
"Yes?"
She waited until she had helped me upstairs and onto the sofa, with a jug of lemonade, my painkillers, a slab of lemon box pie, and Kleenex next to me on the side table.
"Break it to me gently if it's bad news," I said.
"Not bad news, but I have to take you to the police station for your official statement later today. The detective wanted to interview you in the hospital, but Nick put his foot down."
"I think I can handle that," I said.
"I'll pick you up at three. And see to it that you get some rest, unless you want me to stay with you."
