an excellent safety record.’
‘I’m sure you do, Mr Parmitt,’ Farley said, and got to his feet, and said, ‘We’ll talk later.’
Lesley Mackenzie was again seated on the vinyl sofa. She started to rise when Farley entered, but he patted the air, saying, ‘Stay there, Ms Mackenzie, we’ll sit and talk.’
He sat at the other end of the sofa, half-turned to face her, and said, ‘You’re a friend of Mr Parmitt’s. Known him long?’
‘Only a few weeks,’ she said, and opened her purse on her lap. ‘I’m a real estate agent in Palm Beach,’ she explained, and produced her business card. ‘My card.’
He accepted it, looked at it, tucked it away in his shirt pocket, looked at her.
She said, ‘Mr Parmitt was thinking of buying in Palm Beach, and I showed him some places, and we started to date. In fact, we had an appointment to look at a house, not a date and when he didn’t show up, I didn’t know what to think. Then I read about the what is it? attempted murder in the Herald, and I came here as soon as I could get away.’
Farley saw no reason to disbelieve the woman. She was who she claimed to be, and her relationship with Parmitt sounded about right. In fact, her hurrying down here all the way from Palm Beach suggested to Farley she’d had some idea of her friendship with Parmitt blossoming into something more. She wouldn’t be the first real estate woman in the world to wind up marrying a rich client. They walk into all those bedrooms together, and finally something clicks.
Well, more power to her. Farley said, ‘I have to tell you, Ms Mackenzie, at the moment he doesn’t remember much. Doesn’t remember the shooting at all, doesn’t remember coming to Florida. Right now, he might not remember you.’
The slow smile she gave him was startlingly powerful. ‘Trooper,’ she said, ‘or Sergeant. What do I call you?’
‘Sergeant,’ he said, pleased and grateful that she made the effort to get it right.
‘Sergeant,’ she said, ‘if Daniel Parmitt doesn’t remember me, I’m not half the woman I think I am.’
Farley always found himself growing awkward and foolish when a woman talked dirty in front of him. He blinked, and tried a half smile, and said, ‘Well, you can go and have a word with him if you like. The only thing, the doctor said, try not to get him excited.’
She laughed. After she left, he could feel the blush still hot on his face.
6
Lesley was shocked by the look of him. She hadn’t known what exactly to expect, but not this. He was like some powerful motor that had been switched off, inert, no longer anything at all. The look in his eyes was dull, the hands curled on his lap seemed dead.
Wouldhe remember her? It had seemed to her that the best way to handle that sheriff sergeant was to give him the idea she and Daniel had something sexual going, because if that wasn’t the reason for her being here, what wasthe reason? Also, she could see that he was one of those men made uneasy by talk about sex from a woman, and it would probably be a good idea to keep him off balance a bit.
But in fact, if Daniel was as harmed as he looked, maybe he really wouldn’t remember her, maybe her imprint wasn’t that deep with him.
There was a white-coated intern in the room, seated in a corner on a chrome and vinyl chair, writing on a form on a clipboard. He nodded at Lesley and said, ‘You can talk with him, but not for long. You’ll have to get close, though, he can’t speak above a whisper.’
‘Thank you.’
A second chair stood over beside the bed. Reluctant, wishing now she hadn’t come, that she’d merely telephoned to find out what his situation was though then she wouldn’t have found out what she needed to know about the three men she went over to that chair and sat down and said, ‘Daniel.’
His eyes had followed her as she crossed the room, and now he whispered, ‘What day is it?’ The whisper was hoarse, rusty, and barely carried across the space between them.
She leaned closer. ‘Monday,’ she said.
‘Four days,’ he whispered.
‘Four days? What do you mean?’
‘Auction.’
‘What? You aren’t still thinking about that.’
He ignored her, following his own lines of thought, saying, ‘How do you know I’m here?’
‘It was in the Herald. You were shot and the people who shot you were killed by’
‘Herald? Newspaper?’
‘Yes. On Saturday. I couldn’t get here till now.’
‘Lesley,’ he whispered, ‘you’ve got to get me out of here.’
Now she was whispering, too, almost as inaudible as him, because of the intern, who was paying them no attention. She leaned closer yet to whisper, ‘You can’t leave! You can’t even move!’
‘I can do better than they think. If I’m in the paper, somebody else could come to finish me.’
This was the subject she really wanted to talk about, and the main reason for her trip here. The three robbers. She whispered, ‘It’s the people you want to steal from, isn’t it? Do they know about me?’
‘Different. Not them.’
