pouring down his face.
Why?
There was only one person who could answer that question. I hoped that she was still awake. I cut right, a little too closely to the long black limo behind me and to my right, and swerved to hit the entrance ramp to the Four-Forty Parkway. I heard the blast of a horn as I cut the guy off and realized he was veering to follow me.
Great, I thought, as much as I’ve got on my mind, and I get into a traffic hassle with somebody. This is a bad town for that. In New York City, drivers honk at each other as a way of communicating. Down here, it’s an invitation to a gunfight. And I wasn’t in the mood.
I laid down on the Ford, valves clattering away like Flamenco dancers under the hood, and pulled away. Around seventy, I checked the rearview mirror and saw that he’d dropped back. Guess the guy figured it wasn’t worth it. He was right.
I greased onto the exit chute for Hillsboro Road, squealed tires through the horseshoe turn, and melted into the traffic. Up ahead of me, the exclusive Green Hills homes sat darkened, quiet, well-tended, well-guarded.
I turned right onto Golf Club Lane and slowed. A couple of blocks up, I slowed even further to make the turn onto Rachel’s driveway. The house was mostly dark, except for a few lights in the upper right corner of the house that were still burning.
I turned into the driveway and geared down to pull the slight hill. I was halfway up the driveway when I spotted it, slammed on the brakes quickly, and doused the headlights.
There was another car in the driveway. One I hadn’t seen before: silver, looked foreign. Maybe a BMW, perhaps a Mercedes. Too dark to tell. I could just see the tail end of it poking out of the shadow cast across the backyard by the house. I couldn’t see much of it, or read the license plate, but I knew I hadn’t seen it there before.
Rachel had company. I looked at my watch: 10:15. I sat there for a second, wondering if I should go on up and knock on the door. Probably just a neighbor. But what if it wasn’t?
No matter what, I hadn’t called first. And it would be unspeakably intrusive, I thought, to drop in uninvited this time of night. That just isn’t done in polite society. Besides, it was probably either her parents or Conrad’s. They might not appreciate an unknown man dropping in on the widow unexpectedly. Might give them the wrong idea.
After all, Conrad’s funeral was tomorrow. Out of respect, I ought to wait at least another twenty-four hours before moving in.
What followed was a restless night, full of dreams that shot at me like movie clips, disjointed faces: Conrad lying under me again, the police, the bash on my head, lying on a hospital floor with the young blond nurse kneeling over me, only this time the nurse was Rachel, then she was LeAnn Gwynn, and then finally, Marsha Helms. I woke from the dream when I was lying on an autopsy table with Marsha standing over me.
I came to in a cold sweat, the sheet twisted around me in knots, the chattering window unit straining to blow cold air on me in my attic apartment. I focused on the clock and discovered it was a little past seven. They were burying Conrad today, in less than seven hours, and I didn’t even have a handle on who he was. I untangled myself from the sheets and stumbled over to the air conditioner. On especially humid, close nights, the damn thing tends to freeze up. I turned it off and pulled off the plastic cover; it was frosted over in white.
No matter. My cold sweat had evaporated into goose bumps, and I found myself shivering in the morning air. I wandered into what passed for my kitchen, plugged in the coffee, then went for the bathroom.
I don’t usually shower first thing in the morning. I like to wake up slower than that, ease into the day with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. But this morning, I needed a bigger jolt than caffeine could handle. The hot water ran over me and felt marvelous, warming me up, bringing color back. Then for the last fifteen seconds, I twisted off the hot water faucet and let the cold sling down on me like a shower of needles.
The outside door to my apartment led onto a rickety metal landing, with a flight of rusting stairs down to my landlady’s backyard. I walked down and grabbed my paper off the front lawn, then trudged back to get my coffee.
There was a short article on the front page of the Metro section headlined SLAIN DOCTOR BURIED TODAY. There was nothing in the story about the cause of death, so I hoped that meant the autopsy results weren’t in yet.
The more I thought about it, the more I thought all hell was going to break loose when the autopsy results came in. If Marsha’s suspicions were on target-and I knew from years past that they usually were-then this investigation would blossom from almost no official suspects to a truckload of them. The drugs Marsha suspected, one would assume, could only be obtained in a medical setting. That meant virtually anyone at the hospital could be guilty: James Hughes or any other medical student; the exceedingly lovely Dr. Collingswood or the infatuated Dr. Zitin or any other resident; or any nurse Conrad ever hit on, including LeAnn Gwynn, the one who loved him.
LeAnn Gwynn’s story, which had seemed so convincing last night, didn’t hold up so well in the hot light of the day. I believed every statement she made except the last. Maybe she didn’t kill him. But if she did, she wouldn’t be the first person to kill a lover. Maybe he’d decided to end their affair. Murder’s been committed for less.
And what was that business about spanking? Was she kidding, or did Conrad, besides everything else, have a kinky side?
I picked up the phone and dialed the morgue. It was probably too early for Marsha Helms, but I knew my old buddy Kay Delacorte would be there. The shifts changed at seven, but she always came in at least a half hour early to make sure everything was under control.
“Forensic Science Center,” she said.
I deepened my voice. “Hello, darling.”
“Well, if it ain’t Conway Twitty.”
“In the flesh, my love,” I said, back to normal.
“Yeah, but whose flesh?” She laughed out loud. “Bad joke to make at the morgue. Too early.”
“You got that right. Listen, Kay, I’m looking for Marsha. She in yet?”
There was a long, tense pause over the phone. Kay was messing with me again.
“Business or pleasure this time?”
I thought for a second. “Maybe both.”
“Yeah? In which order?”
“Definitely pleasure. Pleasure’s always first whenever I see you guys.”
“You slick bastard, you. Hold on, I’ll ring her.”
A second later, Marsha picked up the phone. Her voice was too bright and cheery to be fully real; either she was glad to hear from me or she wasn’t awake yet.
“Morning, Harry. How are you?”
“Great, babe. How you doing?”
“That’s Dr. Babe to you. And I’m fine.”
“You going to Conrad Fletcher’s funeral today?”
“I hate funerals,” she said, voice fluttering with horror at the thought. “They’re so morbid.”
“And doing autopsies for a living isn’t?”
“Hey, that’s just business. Besides, you get used to it after awhile. It’s like playing with jigsaw puzzles.”
“I’ve never seen a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces would squish through your hand when you tried to pick them up.”
“To answer your question, Mr. Smart Guy, no. I’m not going to Conrad Fletcher’s funeral. If I went to the funeral of every stiff that came through this door, I’d be a professional funeral goer-toer.”
“Good point. Well, I’ve got to. I not only knew the guy; it’s business for me.”
“So have fun. Sing a hymn for me.”
“Listen, Marsh, I got to be at the funeral home at two. Thought maybe you’d like to get lunch before. What do you think?”
There was more silence from her end. “So what are you looking for this time?”
“Nothing,” I said, which was at least partly true. “I just remembered what you said the other day. About calling you. What do you say? C’mon, you gotta eat.”
