I told them what Edie had told me. “I’m going to go to UHS and see what I can learn.”

“Did you decide to do that before or after you found out that Jonathan was going to be there?”

I didn’t justify Hilary’s question with a response.

Jane stood up. “I’ll drive you. I’m probably the only person here who’s safe to be behind the wheel.” We’d all graciously pitched in during the evening to drink Jane’s share of wine, a team effort designed to ensure that Baby Hallard remained unpickled.

Hilary jumped up. “I’ll come, too.”

“Why?” I asked.

“You could probably use some moral support. Besides, nobody I’ve called at the police station will talk to me. This could be the best chance I’ll have to meet your detective. Maybe I can talk to him about my book. And you said he was just my type.”

I knew from experience that it was useless to argue with her. And I had wanted her to meet O’Connell. Maybe this wasn’t the ideal situation for a setup, but it would do.

“I’ll get Matthew,” said Emma, already heading for the door to the basement and Sean’s workroom. “He can ask the doctor what happened and then translate for us. Plus, I want to see this Beasley guy. I never took English 10.”

Luisa looked up from where she was now sitting alone. “So, my choice is either to go to UHS with all of you or to stay here, in which case you’ll probably expect that I’ll use that time to finish the dishes?”

Jane nodded.

Luisa cast one glance at her perfectly manicured nails and another at the dishes, pots and pans that still littered the kitchen counter. With a shrug she went upstairs to get her coat.

We piled into Jane’s car, which was new since I’d last visited her. Even under the circumstances, we had to mock her. “This was the real reason I knew you were pregnant,” said Hilary. “I mean, why else would anyone have a Volvo station wagon?”

“It could be worse-they could have gotten a minivan,” Emma said. She was perched on Matthew’s lap in the front passenger seat.

“We looked at minivans,” said Sean, from where he was wedged in the rearmost seat.

“I thought we agreed not to tell anyone that,” said Jane in an even tone. The snow was coming down hard, and the windshield wipers beat a steady rhythm as she steered carefully along the slick roads.

“That we looked at minivans? They’re very practical.”

Hilary gave a moan of what seemed to be genuine pain. “Don’t you know that it’s a slippery slope? First the Volvo station wagon. Then in a couple of years it will be a minivan with a built-in DVD playing a nonstop loop of Finding Nemo. Next thing you know, you wake up one morning and you’re a middle-aged Republican with sensible hair.”

“I think you may have skipped some stuff between Finding Nemo and middle age,” Matthew pointed out.

“And Jane already has sensible hair,” added Luisa.

Miraculously, there was an empty parking space on Mount Auburn Street directly in front of UHS. In the ground-floor lobby, we decided that only a couple of us would go up, since the seven of us at once would likely cause somebody administrative to protest, even if visiting hour regulations had gone by the wayside. Over Hilary’s protests, I chose Matthew to accompany me. Besides scaring people to death, I had no idea how somebody could cause somebody else to go into cardiac arrest, but Matthew was the most likely candidate to help me find out. And if we did have any trouble getting in, he was probably the best qualified to run interference at the nurses’ station. When Matthew went into his professional doctor mode the Shaggy resemblance completely disappeared.

We emerged from the elevator and stepped into the fifth-floor lobby less than thirty seconds later. Because she’d pulled similar stunts on more occasions than I could count in the past, I shouldn’t have been surprised to find Hilary chatting up the nurse at the front desk. How she’d managed to beat us up there was a complete mystery to me, but I had a feeling it would stay that way.

I waved to the nurse as if I knew exactly what I was doing and where I was going and hurried off with Matthew. We’d only walked a few yards when we ran into Detective O’Connell rounding the corner of the hallway. He’d lost the suit jacket since I’d seen him that afternoon, as had Officer Stanley, who was trailing in his wake. O’Connell paused when he saw us, looking up with a tired expression.

“Detective O’Connell. Hi. Rachel Benjamin. Remember me? We met this afternoon?”

“What are you doing here, Ms. Benjamin?” His voice, as before, was polite but wary. He must be having a very long day. Officer Stanley stood silently by, which, judging by his silence when I’d met him before, must have been his role.

“Sara’s friend, Edie, called me. She seemed pretty worried, and she mentioned that you would probably want to talk to the people who visited Sara today. And I wanted to check in on Sara and see if I could help out in any way. I’ve brought a friend of mine, Dr. Matthew Weir.”

O’Connell turned to take in Matthew. “Why does that name ring a bell?”

“A couple of your colleagues came to visit me yesterday. I run a free clinic in Roxbury, and one of the murdered prostitutes was a patient of mine. Rachel’s an old friend, and we were having dinner tonight when she got Edie’s call. I was hoping to have a word with the doctor who’s treating Ms. Grenthaler.”

He nodded. Then he looked over Matthew’s shoulder. “And you are?”

I followed his gaze. Hilary, despite the three-inch spike heels of her boots, had silently crept up behind Matthew. She gave O’Connell a radiant smile, the one that usually reduced men to slavering beasts. “Hilary Banks.”

“And what are you doing here?” O’Connell was not one for slavering, apparently, but his tone was courteous enough.

“I was at the dinner, too. But I’ve been hoping to meet you. I’m writing a book on the prostitute killer, and I’ve heard that you’re just the man I should talk to.” Hilary said “man” the way some people said “chocolate” or “caviar.” I guessed that she’d found my assessment of O’Connell accurate.

“You’ve left messages for me, haven’t you? At the station?”

Hilary nodded.

“I thought the name was familiar.” A vein pulsed in O’Connell’s temple that hadn’t been pulsing before, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad sign for Hilary. He turned back to me. “Just for the record, Ms. Benjamin, can you tell me about your whereabouts this evening, before you were at dinner with your friends?”

I quickly sketched out where I’d been since I’d met with him on the business school campus. “Then Edie Michaels called, and I came right down here. Can you tell me anything about what happened?”

“Was it suspicious?” asked Hilary. “Do you think it was foul play?”

O’Connell sighed. “The doctors are concerned that something abnormal occurred and we’re looking into it.”

“And you think it may be related to the prostitute killings? That’s why you’re working both cases?” O’Connell raised an eyebrow but didn’t answer Hilary’s questions.

“Was she given a stimulant or amphetamine of some sort?” asked Matthew. “There aren’t many other reasons why an otherwise healthy twenty-five-year-old woman would suddenly go into cardiac arrest. It sounds like her head injury wasn’t serious and that she was in stable condition.”

O’Connell sighed again, but there was something about Matthew. People instinctively trusted him, and they told him things they might not tell others. “We think somebody might have put something in Ms. Grenthaler’s IV bag. It’s being checked out, and they’re also doing blood tests to see if there’s anything unusual in her bloodstream.”

“You mean, somebody just walked right in and tampered with her IV?” I asked.

“How did the three of you get in?” replied O’Connell.