“I’m calling to ask a favor of you.”
“Okay,” I say hesitantly.
“Your husband has been approved for discharge from the ICU but his doctors don’t feel comfortable sending him home alone. Not to mention the fact that he doesn’t have a home to go to at this point. And he is refusing to stay on the medical floor. So I’m wondering if you would be willing to let him stay with you for a day or two, to watch over him.”
I’m stymied. I can’t believe David has sunk so low as to pull Molinaro into this. Though I must admit it’s quite brilliant of him since he knows how much I fear the woman. “I don’t know if I can,” I say, knowing Molinaro might be mentally fitting me for a pair of cement overshoes already. “I have my job and other obligations.”
“What obligation can be more important than family?” she counters. It’s a question loaded with double entendre when I consider that it’s coming from a rumored ex mob boss. “Besides, your office already informed us that you are off duty for the next few days.”
“Tell him that, not me,” she says. And then the line goes dead. I throw the phone onto the couch in anger, making Hoover scuttle off to the other side of the room. Then I head across the drive and knock on Izzy’s back door. Dom answers a few minutes later.
“Uh-oh,” he says, eyeing me warily. “What got your panties in a wad?”
“It’s my frigging ex,” I grumble. “They’re releasing him from the hospital and I’ve been coerced into letting him stay with me for a day or two, like I need that complication in my life right now.”
“How can I help?”
“Do you have an extra set of sheets I can borrow? I want to make up the couch as his bed so it’s crystal clear to him what kind of favor this is I’m doing for him.”
“Sure, hold on a sec.” I wait a minute or so until Dom returns carrying a stack of linens and a pillow. He hands them to me and says, “If you need to escape, you know we’re here.”
“Thanks.” I head back to the cottage, move my cell phone to the end table, and pile the linens on one end of the couch. I grab the pillow and start stuffing it into the case when my phone rings. I start to grab my cell from the end table, but when I hear it ring again I realize it isn’t my main phone, it’s the throwaway. I walk over, snatch it out of the charger, and flip it open.
“Hello?”
“Mattie?”
It’s Hurley, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “Where are you?” I ask, sounding more irritated than I mean to. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“It’s probably best if you don’t know for now.”
“Has Richmond talked to you yet?”
“He called me and ran the whole lawsuit thing with Minniver by me. I told him I’d already decided to move the fence to placate the old man.”
“Is that true?”
“No, but with Minniver gone there isn’t anyone to contradict me. It will placate Richmond for a while, but once he gets the fingerprints off that gas can and finds out about the altercation David and I had, I’m sure he’ll come back to me.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“Just stick as close to Richmond and the investigation as you can.” Great, I think. Now I have even less of an excuse to escape further gym tortures from Helga. “And keep me posted on any new developments. I’m going to stay off the radar for now. I left my cell phone at home in case anyone tries to trace it so I’m calling you from a throwaway cell. For now I’d like us to communicate using the throwaways only. Did the number I called from show up on your caller ID?”
“Hold on,” I say, taking the phone from my ear and looking at the display. “No number,” I tell him. “It just says out of area.”
“Good. Get a pen and I’ll give you the number. You can store it in the caller ID but give it a phony name of some sort.”
“Okay, hold on again.” I rummage around in my purse until I find the pen and notebook Hurley had me bring along for our trip to Chicago. “Go ahead,” I say when I’m ready. He gives me the number and I scribble it down.
“Anything new you can tell me?” he asks when I’m done.
“Yes, as a matter of fact.” I fill him in on Helen’s story about the car and the name of the person who rented it.
“Very clever,” Hurley says when I reiterate my conversation with the car rental employee.
“Does the name Leon Lindquist mean anything to you?”
“No, but that doesn’t surprise me. You’d be surprised how easy it is to come up with a fake ID and credit card. Anything else?”
“No.”
“Okay, I’ll give you a call tomorrow to see if anything else has come up.”
I start to agree, but then remember my deal with David. “Um, why don’t you let me call you instead?”
There’s a pause and then he says, “Why? What’s going on?”
I don’t want to tell him, but I don’t see any way around it. “David’s going to be staying with me for a few days.”
My pronouncement is met with silence.
“It’s only for a day or two, just to keep an eye on him while he recovers.”
“I see.”
“I’m making up the couch for him to sleep on.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”
He’s right, I don’t. So why do I feel compelled to do so?
“Call me when you can,” he says. And then he disconnects.
Chapter 28
After hanging up, I look up the number for Callie’s sister and hit redial. The phone rings a couple of times and then flips over to voice mail. Rather than leave a message, I hang up and make a mental note to try again later.
I stash the throwaway cell at the bottom of my purse after entering the number Hurley gave me into its memory. After a little debate, I assign the number to my nephew, Ethan.
When I arrive in the ICU to pick David up, he is sitting on the edge of his bed wearing scrubs and smiling. “I really appreciate you doing this,” he says, climbing into the wheelchair the nurse has insisted he ride in.
When we get to the patient loading area out front, the nurse hesitates. “Which car is yours?” she asks.
“The hearse,” I tell her.
David shakes his head. “I forgot you were driving that thing.”
“Hey, it’s in better shape than your car at the moment,” I tell him, knowing his was destroyed in the fire. “Take it or leave it.”
After we get into the car and I pull away from the hospital, David says, “What did you do to your foot?”
“I tripped over a tree root when I was running to the house last night and broke a couple of toes.”
“You ran to save me?”
“Don’t go reading things into it that aren’t there, David,” I say, scowling. “It was adrenaline that made me run, nothing more.”
He sighs heavily and an awkward silence fills the car for a couple of minutes. Then he says, “Look, I know you’re not happy about this. I get that. And I know I’m a schmuck for what I did to you . . . to us. But can we try to put the past behind us for the next couple of days and just be civil? No relationship talk, no future talk, just two
