Time seemed to stand still, and I hesitated, inching forward. It was like a freeze-frame in a movie. A hyperaware ness had kicked in. I was suddenly aware of the crickets chirping in the hibiscus bushes in the front garden, the sweet fragrance of the magnolias drifting into the hallway. And the hammering of my own heart in my chest.

Everything seemed normal, and yet different. I took another look, squinting in the semidarkness, my heart beating like a rabbit's. Yes, the door was definitely open. A fraction of an inch.

I remembered I had left the radio on, tuned to an oldies station, and the melancholy sounds of "Moon River" were wafting under the door. My heart lurched as I tried to make sense of the situation. I was the last one out; had I simply forgotten to pull the door shut?

The wood on the doorjamb is warped from the Florida humidity, and it takes a pretty hefty tug to close it properly. I must have been careless when I barreled down the steps with Mom, Lark, and Pugsley. That was the only logical explanation. In my eagerness to get to Sweet Dreams, I'd stupidly left the door unlocked.

Nearly giddy with relief, I felt my pulse ratchet down and I gave the door a tentative little push. It swung open immediately. The first thing I noticed was that the living room was a little darker than usual. Funny. The table lamps were turned off and the only source of light was the bright overhead fixture in the kitchen. Lark calls it the "operating room light" because it casts a harsh white glow over the breakfast table, tingeing everything a fluorescent blue. I thought I remembered leaving a reading lamp on, the big ginger-jar one next to the sofa, but I wasn't really sure.

I shut the door quietly behind me, taking stock of the situation. Everything looked normal, the dinner dishes still sitting in the sink, the sliding door opening onto the balcony, Pugsley's chew toy lying on the Navajo rug.

And of course, the silky notes of "Moon River" drifting out from the radio.

I was fumbling for the light switch when suddenly a figure clad all in black dashed out of the bedroom and rushed straight toward me. Instant panic. A scream froze in my throat as my mind scrabbled in a million directions, trying to come to terms with the unthinkable.

I was going to die. Or suffer horribly, or be torn apart, or maybe even be eaten alive. (I'm embarra.s.sed to say that being threatened with death tends to bring out the drama queen in me. It would probably take years of a.n.a.lysis to explain this annoying personality quirk.) Images of every slasher flick I'd ever seen flipped crazily through my mind, like I'd uncovered a giant Rolodex of B movies. Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, all whizzed by at twenty-four frames a second.

The intruder leapt toward me like a panther. My heart lurched as I jumped to one side, but I was too slow and I slammed my knee against the sharp edge of the end table. It was like being trapped in one of those awful anxiety dreams when you try to run but your legs have suddenly turned to concrete and you flail helplessly, rooted to the spot.

I felt a powerful body pinning me against the wall, and then I dimly saw a hand raised in the air, followed by a crashing blow to my head. A stick? A baton? A baseball bat?

Whatever it was, it hurt like h.e.l.l.

I was down for the count, my nails scrabbling the length of the wall as I crumpled to the floor. I was vaguely aware of the front door opening and shutting.

The intruder had left. I knew that I had to get up, find the phone, and dial 911. But somehow, it all seemed like too much trouble, and I could feel my eyelids fluttering like b.u.t.terflies as the darkness started to close in on me, warm and comforting.

As I drifted into oblivion, the song played on, the lyrics blending with my scattered thoughts, just below the level of consciousness. Who had just broken into the condo? Who had hit me over the head? I took shallow breaths, kept my eyes tightly shut, and listened to the final stanza of "Moon River," trying to figure out the puzzle. It's a beautiful song, but Andy Williams was no help at all, crooning about dream makers and heartbreakers.

Because whoever had hit me over the head certainly wasn't my huckleberry friend.

"OhmiG.o.d, ohmiG.o.d, ohmiG.o.d," I could hear Lark chanting. I was still flat out on the floor, and she was bending over me, while Pugsley swiped me with his fat tongue, treating me to a blast of doggie breath. "Maggie, are you all right?" she shrieked.

"Of course she's not all right," I heard Mom say. "She's got a lump on her head the size of a golf ball. Somebody must have really walloped her."

I made a halfhearted motion to sit up and was immediately hit by a wave of dizziness and nausea. "Just stay still, Maggie," Lark implored as she eased me back down. "The paramedics will be here any minute."

"Para . . . ?"

"Paramedics."

"Don' need para, para, whatever you said," I mumbled. My voice sounded as thick as if I'd been on a weekend bender, and I could hardly get my tongue around the words. I gingerly touched the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth and tasted blood. Was I missing any teeth? Maybe my jaw was dislocated. I had a sharp pain on the left side of my face, and it felt like someone was jamming me in the ear with a screwdriver, the remnants of an old TMJ problem.

"Who could have done this?" Lark wailed. "Maggie, did you see who it was? Was it just one person, or was there a gang? And how in the world did they get in?"

"Shhh," Mom said, kneeling down next to me and taking my hand. "She's not supposed to talk."

"Why noth?" I gurgled.

"Well, because . . ." Mom shot me a quizzical look. She thought for a moment, idly rubbing my hair back from my face. "That's what they told us on Stolen Pa.s.sions. I played a nurse and Marco was brought into the ER with a concussion, remember? I said to him, 'Don't try to talk.' " She used her throaty television voice and played the line as if she was doing a final taping. "It was just one line, but I put my heart and soul into it." She paused for effect. "Don't try to talk."

She looked at me. "I said it just like that, with that exact intonation."

"Tha.s.s amazing. How dith you rumembah dat?" I said with an effort. "The parth 'bout not tawking if you haf a concuss'n."

"Rumembah? Oh, remember. You always remember your first line in the business, dear," she said cheerfully. "Three years of waiting tables and finally my big break. A speaking part in a soap!"

I tried to get up but sank back to the floor. It was easier to think lying down, I decided. At least the living room had stopped twirling like a Cirque du Soleil dancer on a silk streamer, and I could feel myself drifting off to sleep.

It was only later, when I was being lifted into an ambulance on a stretcher, that I realized Lola was still holding my hand, her face a mask of worry. "Sho whah happened to Mahco in the hoshpital?" I said gamely, trying to lift her spirits. "On Shtolen Pashions. Did he evah talk aftuh you ashed him not to?"

Mom smiled. "Mahco?" She looked blank. "Oh, Marco. No, dear, Marco never talked again. Well, not after Rinaldo broke into Seabrooke General and shot him in the head." She turned to the paramedic, who was a dead ringer for Edward Norton. "Memory loss," she said in a stage whisper. She tapped her own temple to demonstrate postconcussion amnesia. "Could be the sign of a head trauma, you know. Probably something you'll want to mention to the doctor." He nodded, hopped in after me, and closed the ambulance doors behind him.

Just before I drifted off to sleep again, I saw Mom waving a hanky at me through the window.

When I woke up half an hour later, I was in Mayberry.

There was Opie at my side, staring at my IV pole. Just the two of us. I blinked twice. Yep, he was still standing there, in full cop regalia, looking a little pale around gills, his freckles standing out like a bad case of chicken pox against his white skin. Either I looked worse than I imagined, or he just had a thing about hospitals.

Then I realized we weren't alone and we probably weren't even in Mayberry. The hunky-yet-annoying Rafe Martino was standing in the corner of the cubicle talking to Mom and Lark, who seemed to be hanging on his every word.

Then I heard a soft woof and glanced down at the floor. Pugsley! Sitting in his oh-so-chic yellow and black tartan dog carrier, a knockoff of an Abercrombie and Fitch model I saw at a doggie boutique at the Sawgra.s.s Mills. He was pawing at the mesh door to get out, his little feet tapping a sharp staccato that set my teeth on edge.

"How'd you get the dog in here?" I said slowly. Every word was an effort. I was surprised to find that my voice was thin and hollow, hardly more than a whisper. I sounded like I was a hundred and ten years old. I felt strangely distant from everything, one level removed, as if I was watching a not-very-entertaining movie.

And I wasn't really in a hospital room, I realized, doing a quick survey. But it was definitely some sort of medical center, maybe an emergency room. It looked like a holding area, because I was lying on a hard metal table with a canvas curtain drawn for privacy. From the horrible sounds coming from outside the curtain, I'm glad I didn't have access to the visual. I heard a series of piercing wails, a few m.u.f.fled Spanish curses, and what sounded like somebody coughing up a lung.

"The dog," I repeated in a stronger voice. "What's he doing here?"

This time three faces turned to me, and Mom rushed over to cover my forehead with kisses. "You're awake! Thank G.o.d! We've been so worried about you. They think you might have a concussion."

"The dog," I said with great effort. "How did you ever sneak Pugsley in here?"

Mom looked puzzled. "Well, we didn't have a choice. We had to bring him with us," she said, glancing at Martino, "because your whole apartment is a crime scene. Just like on CSI."

"A crime scene?" I vaguely remembered being hit on the head. Maybe I had a brain injury.

And it must have been a h.e.l.l of a wallop, because I couldn't stop thinking about Andy Williams.

She couldn't keep the excitement out of her voice. "They have people dusting for fingerprints and looking for trace evidence." Trace evidence? She lowered her voice as if she was about to reveal the secrets of the universe. "I overheard them talking. They're doing a BOLO on a guy in a Ford Mustang. BOLO means 'be on the lookout for.' It's cop talk."

I nodded. "That's nice." I had no idea what she was talking about.

"Your neighbor, Mrs. Higgins, saw the Mustang parked down the street. And she's never seen it there before so we think it might belong to the perp."

I tried not to smile. The perp? What perp?

Mom would have loved to have been deputized by Martino and been part of the team. She'd never make it as a cop, though. She had to shoot a .357 Magnum in a B movie once, and she said it felt as if she were shooting a toaster. The producer brought in a firearms instructor for her, and after squeezing off a few dozen rounds at the range with a twenty-two, Mom managed to get through the scene with a prop gun.

Opie cleared his throat. "Um, ma'am, if you're feeling up to it, we have a few questions we need to ask you about the events that occurred tonight."

"Okay." I shivered a little and sank back into the pillows.

Someone had jacked up the air-conditioning, and the cubicle was as cold as Montauk in December. Mom hurried to cover me with a white blanket that was as thin as tissue paper. "But first, I want to hear about Pugsley," I said stubbornly. "How did you get him past security? And where are we, by the way?"

"Cypress Grove Memorial. The emergency room. We didn't have to sneak Pugsley in here," Mom said confidentially. "I said he was a helper dog. They have to allow them in public places, you know. It's a federal law. I said we'd left his harness and identification back in the apartment in all the confusion."

Twenty-two-pound Pugsley a helper dog?

"But he's not a helper dog." I glanced over Mom's shoulder and saw Opie rolling his eyes, obviously eager to get on with the Q and A.

"Yes, dear, but he's not going to tell them that, is he?"

"What exactly do you remember about the events that transpired?" Opie whipped out his notebook, ballpoint poised. I remembered Rafe introducing him as Officer Duane Brown, but he'd always be Opie to me.

"Not very much." I reached up and touched a sore spot on the back of my head and winced. "I hit my head," I said slowly, "because it was so dark in the apartment."

I saw Lark and Mom exchange a look. Wrong answer. Funny how fuzzy my mind had become. My brain felt like it was stuffed with wet Kleenex, and my thoughts were skittering in all directions. It was hard to focus. Maybe I really did have a concussion.

"You're saying you tripped in the dark?" Opie raised his sandy eyebrows.

"No, wait, I remember now!" I said, sitting up straight in bed. "The door was open, and the apartment was very dark. I was trying to figure it all out when somebody came barreling out of my bedroom. He was dressed in black, I think, and he pushed me against the wall and clobbered me." My heart beat a little faster, just remembering the scene.

Opie was dutifully writing this all down when a nurse came in to take my vitals. A cell phone jangled, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rafe slip out into the hall.

"Can we bring her home now?" Mom asked the nurse. "It's been a long night."

"We're waiting for the results of the CAT scan; the doctor will be in soon." The nurse stifled a yawn before vanishing through the curtain.

Opie was chafing at the bit, eager to get back to his questioning. "So the intruder in your apartment was definitely a male?"

"I couldn't tell." I squinted my eyes and tried to recall the menacing figure. I had no idea whether it was a man or a woman; my heart was in my throat at the time.

"You said 'he,'" Opie pointed out. He looked pleased with himself, as if he had made a deduction worthy of Her cule Poirot.

"I guess I just a.s.sumed it was a guy," I said, trying to focus. "He was about five-ten or -eleven, and really strong. I remember that because he sort of picked me up and slammed me against the wall. And then he hit me with something; I don't know what."

"Oh, my poor baby," Mom moaned.

"What happened next?"

I shook my head. "That's all I remember. Until now." I paused and looked over at Mom and Lark. "You put me in the ambulance," I said smiling. "We were talking about Rinaldo shooting Marco in the head."

"A shooting?" Opie asked, puzzled. "When did that happen?"

Mom quickly explained the complex plot points of Stolen Pa.s.sions, and Opie listened politely, eyes glazed. I looked over at Lark and grinned. We both knew that once Mom got started talking about her soap career, she would be good for hours. I sighed and put my head back on the pillow. Maybe there was time for a quick nap before Rafe came back.

"I can't believe they don't have any suspects," Mom said a couple of hours later. It was after midnight, and I'd been discharged from the hospital in record time, with a few ibuprofen and a copy of my CAT scan. My instructions were to relax, drink plenty of fluids, and call my own doctor later that day. I thought longingly about slipping into bed, but Mom insisted on making me a cup of herbal tea, a vile concoction laced with sa.s.safras root.

"They think it's just a break-in," Lark said, "maybe neighborhood kids looking for money or something to p.a.w.n."

I thought of the powerful figure in black. This was no neighborhood teen. Whoever was in the apartment wanted something, but what?

"Was anything taken?" I looked around the living room. Everything looked fine.

"The silver candlesticks are gone." Lark gestured to the distressed oak mantelpiece over the fireplace. It was completely bare except for a wilting fern in a ceramic pot.

Oops, somehow I'd missed that. I'd picked up a pair of candlesticks at an estate auction a couple of months ago. They were British and very nice, but they had a few dents and weren't really that expensive, which made me doubt the theory of it being just a botched robbery.

"Why would anyone break in and just take a pair of candlesticks? There are a few other things here that are more valuable," I said. "Cameras, jewelry . . ."

I suddenly remembered my jewelry box in the bedroom. I'm not into baubles, but I do have a nice set of pearls and an antique cameo that I'd hate to lose.

Lark must have read my mind, because she said, "Relax, he didn't take anything from the bedroom. Maybe he just ran in there to hide when you opened the door." She paused. "He did knock over a few files, though. Did you have anything important in there? There was a whole stack of papers lying on the floor by your briefcase. It looked like he might have been going through them, or maybe he just tripped over them when he ran out. The cops aren't sure."

"Any fingerprints?"

Lark shook her head. "They didn't say anything. I know they dusted for them." She thought for a moment. "You're sure there wasn't anything important inside your briefcase?"

"I'm positive. Just some show ideas. Certainly nothing worth stealing." My head was throbbing and I popped a couple more ibuprofen, but I might as well have scarfed down some M&M'S. I was already regretting my trip to the hospital. It would have made more sense to go to the local drugstore and buy a bottle of Advil.

Plus, Rafe had never reappeared, and Opie had finished his questions just as the doctor appeared to sign my discharge papers. All in all, it had been a wasted evening. I could only hope that my health insurance covered the cost of the ambulance ride and the ER visit.

I decided to call it a night, ignored the open briefcase and the tangle of papers fanned out on the floor, and fell into bed. Everything could wait till morning. Just before drifting off to sleep, I remembered that I'd never called Dr. Abramson, my prospective show guest. I'd have to make my apologies in a few hours.

Chapter 17.

"Land sakes, you look a mess, girl," Vera Mae greeted me when I zipped into WYME that afternoon. "You're so pale you could be one of those Goth chicks, you know, the ones with the black lipstick and the body piercings? It looks like you've already got the black eye shadow thingy goin' on." She leaned over to peer at me. "Upper and lower, I'd say."

"Thanks," I said dryly. I glanced in the mirror. I was dead white, with the same ghostly pallor Helena Bonham Carter sported in Sweeney Todd. Except on her it looked s.e.xy.

"How're you feeling?"

"Like I've gone three rounds with Mike Tyson," I moaned. A wave of dizziness came over me and I sat down abruptly in the reception area, wishing I could bag the show and go back to bed. I felt like my head was stuck in a vise. "So what's on the agenda for today?"

"You are, sweetie; you're the big news," Vera Mae said, showing me the call book. "There's a lot of buzz about the break-in, and your fans want to make sure you're okay. The phones have been ringing off the hook, and I thought Irina was going to have a psychotic break."

Then she handed me the spot log, which lists all the commercials scheduled for my time slot that day. "I asked Big Jim to tape the live ones for you, and the rest are already in the can. I didn't think you'd feel like messin' around reading cemetery ads or plugs for Dora's House of Beauty."

"Thanks, Vera Mae. You are so right. I don't know what I'd do without you. Don't ever leave this place, okay?" I stifled a low moan. My head felt like a trick cigar; it was threatening to explode at any moment.

Vera Mae grinned. "Don't worry, honey. I'd never leave WYME. I'm a lifer."