Digging a card from my purse, I scribbled my name and cell phone number, handed it to him, and squeezed his hand.
“If you come across the missing file, please let me know. And please call when Dr. Cagle wakes up.”
Looper looked down at the card, flicked a glance at Slidell, came back to me.
“I will definitely call
He turned to Slidell.
“You have a really special day.”
Looper’s left hand still gripped the phone so tightly his wrist cords bulged like the live oak’s roots.
Slidell lit up as soon as we hit the sidewalk. At the Taurus, I opened my door and waited out his Camel moment.
“Think there’s any point to swinging by the hospital?” I asked.
Slidell flicked his butt, ground it with the ball of one foot.
“Can’t hurt.” Blotting his forehead with one wrist, he yanked open the driver’s side door and jammed himself behind the wheel.
Slidell was right. It didn’t hurt. Nor did it help. Walter Cagle was as dead to the world as Looper reported.
His doctor could offer no explanation. Cagle’s vital signs had stabilized and his heart showed no damage. His white count, EEG, and EKG were normal. The man simply wasn’t waking up.
We’d barely left the hospital when Slidell started in.
“Sounds like trouble in queen city.”
I did not reply.
“The princess thinks the contessa was getting his weenie stroked behind his back.”
Nope.
“And he don’t like the fact that the whistling gypsy lover is a looker.”
Catching the look on my face, Slidell fell silent. It didn’t last.
“Suppose Looper and that Gestapo secretary are describing the same squirrel?”
“It’s possible.”
“Think Cagle was seeing this guy on the side?”
“Looper may have imagined the romantic angle. It could have been anything.”
“Such as?”
I’d been asking myself that same question.
“Such as a potential student.”
“Gestapo Gert said the guy asking for Cagle wasn’t a kid.”
“Adults enroll in college courses.”
“Someone interested in a program would have left a message at the department office.”
True.
“A workman of some sort.”
“Why meet the guy in a coffee shop?” Slidell asked.
“An insurance salesman.”
“Ditto.”
“Walter Cagle is a grown man.”
Slidell snorted. “Squirrel probably vacations at the Y.”
Slidell’s homophobia was getting on my nerves.
“There are any number of persons with whom Walter Cagle might have shared a cup of coffee.”
“A pretty boy with drop-dead good looks that nobody close to the guy ever laid eyes on?”
“A lot of men fit that description,” I snapped.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Real men?”
“Ball busters!”
“You know any?”
“My daughter’s boyfriend,” I shot back without thinking.
“You sure he’s a boy?” Slidell patted his hair, flopped one wrist, snorted at his own joke.
