Something in his voice makes me stop, but I don’t turn back to look at him. I am afraid of what I might say, or of what I might see in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “I didn’t mean all that. It’s just that…I mean I…oh, hell.” Suddenly he grabs my shoulder and spins me around to face him. Before I know what’s happening, his lips descend on mine, crushing, urgent, and wonderfully needy. It takes all of a millisecond for my irritation to give way to total forgiveness and pure, unadulterated lust.
His tongue finds its way past my lips and I swear it reaches the bottom of my toes. One of my hands is pinned between us, the palm flat against his chest, the backside of it pushing against my breast. I can feel the rapid thrum of his heart and the incredible heat of his skin radiating through his shirt.
When he finally lifts his lips from mine, it is all I can do not to whine and whimper, to beg him for more, to throw him down on the porch and rip his pants off him to see what treasures lay beneath. Because judging from the feel of the humps and bumps that are pressed up against my nether regions, it is quite a treasure to behold.
He releases me so suddenly I almost fall over. “I gotta go,” he says. And just like that, he is gone. I watch in stunned disbelief as he walks away.
“Well, well, well,” Desi says behind me as Hurley climbs into his car and starts it up. “Isn’t this interesting? A homicide detective with the hots for one of his suspects. A suspect who just happens to be barely married to his other suspect.”
“What the hell was that?” I ask her, watching Hurley’s taillights disappear down the drive. “I mean what the hell
Desi laughs. “Oh, man. You’ve got it bad. Mom isn’t going to be happy about this, you know. It’s bad enough you’re giving up a doctor, but for a cop? She’ll shit a brick.”
“And then find some obscure reference to brick-shitting in one of her textbooks,” I add with a laugh. “Some bizarre disorder like pica, but with it coming out instead of going in.”
“What’s pica?”
“It’s a craving that makes people eat weird stuff, like dirt or clay.”
“Then I’d say that detective is the one with the pica. ’Cause it sure looked to me like he wanted to eat you.”
“Mmm,” I murmur. “Kind of felt that way, too.”
Chapter 22
My attendance at the hospital celebration was not only a sartorial disaster, it was only minimally successful in terms of getting any useful information about Karen. But Marjorie’s comment to Mick—about how he should talk to Molinaro about some nursing problems he was having—gave me an idea. I realize that the wives, some of them anyway, might know a fair amount about the business end of their husbands’ work. There is one wife in particular who I think will fit this bill, one who wasn’t at last night’s reception.
Arthur Henley’s wife, Lauren, isn’t like many of the other doctors’ wives. Status and wealth seem to mean little to her. She attends most of the requisite social events and holds her own with the other wives, but she always seems apart from it all, never buying into the catty discussions or monetary pissing contests. She is tiny but strong, pretty, and well put together—one of those petite, graceful women I hate standing next to since it makes me look and feel like the abominable snowwoman.
David and I have shared dinners with the Henleys a number of times, both at their house and ours. As a result, I’ve come to know Lauren a little better than I do most of the other wives. What’s more, I like her. She has an eager curiosity about her husband’s work and a good knowledge of medical facts and terminology despite no formal training. She is clearly intelligent, generally confident, and occasionally, often amusingly, outspoken—at least in matters of general interest. Since she has an MBA, she is involved in the business end of her husband’s practice and tends to it by going into the office a couple of days each week. The rest of the time, she busies herself making a comfortable home for Arthur and their two school-aged daughters.
It all looks great on the surface, but unfortunately, Arthur and Lauren Henley don’t have the perfect marriage any more than David and I did. While Arthur isn’t exactly a philanderer, he does have a mistress named Ruth he has kept on the side for nearly five years that I know of. And there lays the heart of my dilemma.
I’ve met Ruth a couple of times, and damn if I don’t like her, too. She is an earthy, warm woman who is quick to laugh and seems totally at ease with herself. What’s more, her interest in those around her seems utterly genuine—if it’s merely an act, it’s a damned good one. And she seems content to play second fiddle to Lauren whenever necessary.
For a straying husband, Ruth is the perfect mistress; to a wife, she is an utter nightmare. For me, she is a never-ending ethical debate. As a wife, I feel compelled to place her in the enemy camp. After all, wives know that mistresses are conniving, manipulative, money-grubbing whores who will perform any sex act at any time and pretend to love it even if they find it as appealing as scraping five-day-old roadkill up from the highway during an August heat wave. Even wives who were once mistresses believe that, ignoring their inherent hypocrisy.
But Ruth doesn’t fit the typical mistress mold. Of course, I have no way of knowing what her and Arthur’s sex life is like, but the rest of Ruth is as warm and personable as a woman can be. Which leaves me feeling like a traitor whenever I am around Lauren.
Perhaps that’s why there is always a certain wall between Lauren and me; even though we get along well enough, we aren’t what I would call close. I know that if I’m to have any hope of getting personal information out of her, I’m going to have to strengthen the bond between us somehow. I need to find something that will tie us indelibly together as coconspirators.
And the answer is obvious: Ruth. Lauren and I are both women scorned. Women betrayed. We are members of an elite and exclusive club, one that requires a banding together. But while the answer may be clear, my willingness to use it is shaky at best. Arthur isn’t obvious about his affair; in fact, he takes great pains to keep it under wraps. But in a town as small as Sorenson, secrets are hard to keep. Maybe Lauren already knows about Ruth, I surmise, but if she doesn’t, do I want to be the one to tell her? Not only does it feel kind of mean, the whole thing could backfire and blow up in my face. Telling Lauren something as explosive as this might make her so angry that I’ll lose whatever camaraderie we do have.
No matter how I look at it, it is a gamble, but one that offers the promise of worthwhile rewards. I figure I’ll meet with Lauren and try to get the information out of her without playing the Ruth card, maybe by hinting around the idea of Arthur as a suspect in Karen’s murder. If that doesn’t work, I’ll have to decide how far I want to push the issue—a decision I know I won’t relish making.
Though I figure Lauren is my best chance at getting to some facts, I briefly consider adding some of the other doctors’ wives to my mental interrogation list. I mull over and discard Marjorie Dunn; even if she does know something about Mick’s business interests, getting it out of her will be damned near impossible. Then I consider Gina. She knew what Robert Calhoun was going to discuss with Sid last night and seems to be up to speed on Sid’s business dealings in general. And she’d all but begged me to call her and do lunch, so why not take her up on it? I’m not sure if I’ll get anything useful from her but I figure it’s worth a try.
I get out of bed early on Saturday morning and plan my strategy over coffee and a half-dozen oatmeal cookies. First I call Lauren, explaining that I want to drop by to discuss something with her. She graciously extends an invitation, as I knew she would, and I arrange to come out around ten. I then place a call to Gina to set up a lunch date. Knowing how busy Gina’s schedule is, I expect to have to wait several days before we can meet. But Gina surprises me by suggesting we get together that day. Sorenson only has a handful of restaurants and nothing that might be called fancy. So after a brief discussion, Gina and I agree to meet at noon at Carver’s, a sit-in family restaurant that is one step above the typical fast-food outlet and serves the most wonderful turtle sundaes.
I head out for Lauren’s house a short while later, my nervousness making me feel restless and fidgety. I arrive fifteen minutes early, and to kill time, I drive around the neighborhood, noticing as I make the first circuit that a burgundy-and-gray van seems to be following me. It stays far enough back that I can’t see who is behind the wheel, but something about it strikes me as familiar. I watch it in my rearview mirror, trying to remember if I know someone who drives such a van.
