“Will you promise to drive it the same way you drove me here tonight?” Tony asked Josh.
“Scout’s honor.”
Josh had never been a boy scout, but there was another reason Tony was willing to consider it. The pair of panties was still in his pants pocket, which at the moment hung on a peg on the wall of the examining room. Fortunately, his wallet had been in another pocket, so he was able to retrieve his insurance information without pulling them out, but he was feeling a fair amount of guilt at violating Josh’s privacy.
CHAPTER 23
Tony remembered the way to Carol’s apartment so well that he could have driven it blindfolded. As it was, he was driving it with one leg. He was thankful for Josh’s SUV. At least he didn’t have to rent a car, in addition to making hefty lease payments on the Porsche. He forced himself not to worry about what Josh was doing with his car.
During his few free moments at work, he had used the time to worry about something else: what to do with the panties. He couldn’t bring himself to turn them over to Detective Croyden. He couldn’t rat out Josh, especially since he would have to drive Josh’s car to the police station to do it.
Josh had been super nice to him ever since their little “talk,” during which Josh had said he would move out within thirty days. He hadn’t mentioned moving out since, and there was no evidence that he was looking for another place to live. He hadn’t violated Tony’s rules about having loud visitors over on work nights. He was still a slob, but Tony could live with that. At least Tony knew Josh’s habits. And he always paid his rent on time. What would life be like with a new roommate he didn’t know anything about? It would be risky, to say the least.
While he was driving to Carol’s apartment, Tony thought some more about the panties. Even though he had finally opened his mind to the probability that Josh was somewhat of a misogynist, he still couldn’t picture him as a cold-blooded murderer. Josh might have looked up the address of the Hotline office in Tony’s notebook. He might have gone to the office out of curiosity. He might have seen Joy come out. He might even have accosted her, verbally, perhaps tried to make a date with her. But murder her? Tony couldn’t picture it.
But this line of reasoning fell apart as Tony thought once again about the panties stuffed into the bottom of his attache case. He couldn’t explain them. And they badly needed an explanation.
Here was Carol’s apartment building. Fortunately, a parking place appeared, on demand, on the street close to the entrance. Unfortunately, Carol lived on the second floor and there wasn’t any elevator. Tony had practiced using the crutches on his own stairs; going up last night, coming down this morning. It had not been easy.
He was glad that none of the apartment dwellers was watching as he made his way up the stairs, trying not to fall, trying not to look too awkward. It was like attempting to play a new sport at which one has no experience. That he made it to the second floor without disaster was a major relief to him.
As he rang the bell to Carol’s apartment, he realized that he was looking forward to seeing her. That quickening of his pulse, that feeling of glad anticipation-they returned as he waited for her to open the door. When she did open the door, she looked as good as he had pictured her, except for the expression on her face.
“Tony, what happened to you?”
“I, uh, fell down.”
“You didn’t tell me. Oh, you poor dear. Are you all right?”
She gave him a gentle hug, which he couldn’t return because his hands were holding the crutches.
“It’s just my knee. It’ll be all right in a couple of weeks. I can make it through the doorway.”
Carol was trying to help him, but she didn’t know how to do it. He smiled a wry smile. Perhaps he should have gotten hurt while they were dating. Then she might have had more sympathy for him.
“Dinner is all ready. Here, would you like to sit in this chair?”
“That should work. I just need room to stretch out my left leg. There’s a bottle of wine in my fanny pack.”
Carol laughed as she extracted the Merlot.
“I can always count on you to bring the right wine, even when you can barely walk.”
He had been using the fanny pack to carry essential papers and other items today because his hands were tied up. Carol had the small table set intimately for two, with candles and even cloth napkins. When he had called her, asking for a little of her time, he hadn’t expected her to invite him to dinner. But he also hadn’t been able to refuse the invitation. What was the occasion? He knew he shouldn’t ascribe any special meaning to it.
Tony sat down in the proffered chair, and Carol took his crutches-and placed them out of his reach. He almost protested; he felt like a prisoner. He watched her as she opened the wine in the adjacent space that was the small kitchen and placed the food on the table. She looked unbelievably good in form-fitting white pants and a purple silk blouse. A blouse that he was sure he could see through in the right light.
And then when she passed through a beam of light pouring in the window, courtesy of the setting sun, he had the revelation that not only could he see through the blouse, but she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath it. He had a sudden and overwhelming urge to bury his face in that blouse. It was a good thing he couldn’t get up. None of the outfits he had seen on the teenage girls even approached this one in sensuality. All his libidinous feelings for her came back. How long had it been since their liaison had ended? How long had he been celibate?
Tony barely noticed what he was eating. The Caesar salad, the barbequed ribs, the mashed potatoes, the wine; he ate and drank them automatically, but didn’t taste them as they entered his mouth and slid down his throat. Carol chatted about various things, and he agreed with everything she said-for a change. Until she started talking about the Hotline.
“You know that Josh called me because he was worried about what had happened to you since you started working at the Hotline.”
“Yes. Remember, you called me and told me.”
“But I didn’t know what he was talking about until I saw you with that teenybopper at the Beach House.”
“I work with her on the Hotline.” He kept his voice even. And if it was Shahla that concerned her, he knew that her concerns were different than Josh’s.
“Right. But as I recall, it was rather late at night. And she had the kind of innocent good looks that men can’t resist.”
Tony decided that silence was his best option at this point and was thankful once again for his Hotline training. He put a large bite of mashed potatoes into his mouth so that he couldn’t say anything.
“Okay, I’ll get off it.” Carol smiled a thin smile. “After all, it’s none of my business anymore.”
“Let’s talk about the reason I wanted to see you,” Tony said after swallowing the potatoes.
“You said you wanted to show me a poem that might have something to do with the girl’s murder. What was her name?”
“Joy.”
Carol had been an English teacher for a few years before she became disgusted with principals who didn’t back her and the lack of discipline that made teaching difficult. She had quit teaching and gone into the computer industry. She was making far more money than she would ever have made as a teacher. Tony explained the circumstances of finding the poem but not the fact that Shahla had been with him. Don’t borrow trouble.
“If you gave the poem to the police, how is it that you still have a copy?”
“I entered it into a computer, being careful about fingerprints, of course.”
“Were there any fingerprints on it?”
“Only a couple of mine before I started being careful. Whoever wrote the poem was even more careful than I was.”
“So, as I understand it, what you want me to do is to read the poem and then tell you who wrote it.”
“Yes, please, if you would be so kind.”
They both laughed. This was more like it.
“All right. But before I perform this feat, let’s have dessert.”
Tony had several more opportunities to observe the enticements inside Carol’s blouse while she cleared the table. He saw the mole on her breast that had bewitched him once upon a time. He realized that he badly needed
