The Council of Ten Read Online Free

behind her thoughts to a point where Doris wondered if she would ever be able to speak again.
    Much to Doris’s surprise, Morris Kornbloom arrived twenty minutes after the police located him at his health club.
    “My God, what a day you’ve had,” he said with a sigh. “All this shock. It’s a wonder you’ve held up this well, my girl.”
    He always called her that and she hated it, she admitted, because more than once she had wondered hopefully if Kornbloom, a fifty-seven-year-old widower, might not have considered asking her out. The difference in their ages was offset by the fact that his sunken face and thin white hair made him appear older than he was.
    Now Kornbloom the doctor went about checking her blood pressure and pulse, then probed his stethoscope all around her chest.
    “Everything seems fine,” he reported. “But I’m going to leave you these pills to be on the safe side. Take one every four hours and two before bed.” And he set down a small bottle of white pills on her night table next to her red life ones.
    “What about Sylvia?” Doris asked hesitantly.
    Kornbloom returned his instruments to his black bag. “She’s been hospitalized just as a precaution. The shock of finding her friend—your friend—was very hard on her. She’s under observation. Just overnight, you understand. Give it a few hours and you can visit her. Late this afternoon would be my suggestion.” He paused. “I’m not leaving until I see you take one of those pills. They’ll help you relax.”
    Morris Kornbloom gazed at her with honest feeling, and in that moment Doris longed to tell him about the missing glass of water and the struggle at Fannie’s that hadn’t been a struggle at all. But to draw a link between these apparently random occurrences would mean having to tell him about the Business, because that was the only possible connection, and to accept that was to accept responsibility for the death of her friends, thanks to a conscience that after five years had decided to make itself heard. Help for her might have been a phone call away, but it hurt too much to admit that the circumstances indicated she should place it.
    “Well, Morris,” she began, fighting to hide her fear, “get me a glass of water so I can swallow all the pills you want me to.”
    Doris took a cab to the hospital, arriving at four o’clock. She had called ahead at three, so Sylvia would be expecting her. Nothing would be mentioned about Fannie until tomorrow; nothing, either, about the possible connection to the Business.
    Sylvie had a private room on the third floor of Good Samaritan Hospital, which was located in West Palm. The menu featured an international fare and the luxurious private rooms overlooked the ocean. If you had to get sick, it was probably the best place of any to come to, but Doris hated it, as she hated all hospitals. Hated the smell of them, the feel—everything. Other than the tests she’d taken, which resulted in a prescription for her red life pills, she had never spent a night in one and wasn’t about to start now. Unless Sylvie wanted her to. Sylvie came first, and if she didn’t want to be alone, Doris would have a cot wheeled in, would even pay the daily rate if necessary.
    The elevator opened directly before the third floor nurse’s station and Doris was surprised to see Morris Kornbloom standing there next to a man she recognized as Sylvia’s doctor.
    “Morris, what are you—”
    His face was a mask of stone, providing her answer before the question was even completed.
    “No, Morris, no!” she wailed above her own faintness.
    “Respiratory failure, Doris,” he said, exchanging a glance with Sylvie’s doctor. “It happened very suddenly. There was nothing—”
    “Oh, God,” Doris heard herself break in. “They killed her, too. Right here in the hospital and they still found a way! ”
    “Doris—”
    But it was too late. She was already sliding down the wall her shoulders had found, never