“No problem. If you don’t mind, I’m going to hang until Hurley’s out of surgery, too.”
“Thanks, I’d like that.”
“Want to head up to the surgical waiting room?”
“Not really. Alison’s up there.”
“So?”
I fill him in on what happened the other day when Hurley overheard me talking to Alison, and the scene that took place in the ER a little while ago. “I’ve totally destroyed my chances with Hurley,” I conclude. “Alison clearly has her clutches in him at this point, and while I’m glad he has someone, I don’t think I can stand to watch the two of them mooning over one another.”
Izzy looks at me with a sad expression and shakes his head. “You are so clueless sometimes,” he says.
“Tell me about it. If I’d known Hurley was standing there I never would have said those things about him.”
“That’s not what I mean. Come on.” He stands, pushes his chair in under the table, and takes my tray of dirty dishes.
“Where are we going?”
“Upstairs.”
I follow him to the elevator and from there to the third floor surgical waiting room. I expect to see Alison sitting there waiting, but there’s no sign of her. One of the OR nurses, a young gal named Kate, appears.
“Mattie! Glad I found you. David wanted to let you know that Detective Hurley is doing very well. He’s in recovery. The knife nicked an artery in his shoulder but we were able to suture it up and stabilize him. You can come in and see him if you want.”
She’s extending me a special privilege since I know that family members and visitors aren’t typically allowed in the recovery area. I’m grateful but also wondering if the courtesy was extended to anyone else. “Is Alison Miller in there?” I ask.
Kate laughs. “Not hardly. She left right after we came up from the ER because Detective Hurley kept asking for you the whole way. He kept saying he wanted Mattie, and needed Mattie, and where the hell was Mattie, anyway. Alison was pretty ticked and lit out of here in a snit.”
“He said all that?” I say, stunned.
“See,” Izzy says. “I told you you were clueless.”
I remember the stab of sadness and jealousy I felt when I saw Hurley looking up at Alison earlier as they were leaving the ER. I had no idea he was asking for me. “Wow,” I say, still digesting it all.
“Yeah, wow,” Kate agrees. “You are one lucky lady. And may I add that you have superb taste in men. That detective is one heck of a hottie. So come on.” She turns toward the recovery area and motions for me to follow behind her. “It’s not nice to keep a hottie waiting.”
Chapter 48
It’s been just over a week since Jackie Nash revealed that she’s a few fries shy of a Happy Meal, and everything is right with the world. Well, almost everything. Jackie is locked away inside a mental institution up north and though it’s now known for sure that she killed Shannon Tolliver and Carla Andrusson, it’s unlikely she will ever stand trial. After the incident in Nelson’s office, she withdrew into a babbling, incoherent puddle of scarred human flesh. Word has it she is catatonic and the few slim threads of reason that remained in her brain have finally snapped.
The blood DNA evidence we sent to Madison came back and proved a match for Jackie. When a cut was discovered on the bottom of her right foot—most likely incurred when she stepped on a piece of the broken glass we found in Shannon’s kitchen—it became clear that she was at the scene at the time of the murder. During a search of Jackie’s house, the cops found the blood-covered shoes she was wearing with a neat little hole sliced through the bottom of the right one. It also became clear to me why I thought something about Jackie was different whenever I saw her. The scarring from the fire left her with contractions that made her favor her left leg, but the cut on her foot, which was beginning to show signs of infection, had her favoring the other leg, too, giving her an awkward limp, different from her usual.
Erik Tolliver is now free and totally exonerated. I heard through the hospital grapevine that he resigned from his position there and has plans to move to Arizona where his mother lives. Carla’s and Shannon’s funerals were held within the last few days, both to stunning turnouts. Carla’s death has left me with residual feelings of guilt I may never work through. The funerals were somber, sad affairs, but they also left me with a sense of closure and new beginnings.
And speaking of new beginnings, Bjorn Adamson and Irene Keller are the latest hot item in town. Rumor has it they plan to wed in a few days, a date that seems a bit rushed to me, but I suppose their respective ages has something to do with that. Bjorn’s new catheter bags seem to be working well and now that Irene is in the picture, I feel confident that I will no longer have to worry about urine duties.
William-not-Bill and my mother have been on two dinner dates already, and judging from the fact that they were both reportedly banned from the Peking House restaurant after returning their plates five times each because they weren’t clean enough, I’m guessing it’s a match made in heaven. I won’t be at all surprised to learn that William-not-Bill is going to become my next stepfather sometime in the near future.
Rubbish and Hoover have settled in nicely together and so far the lost-and-found ad I placed in the local paper a few days ago hasn’t garnered any responses. I’m hoping that continues to be the case because the little furball has wormed his way into my heart. It’s a bit frightening how fast he’s growing however, gaining weight with more ease than I do, and that’s without the benefits of ice cream.
David and I seem to have reached a détente in our relationship. He’s still not happy about our breakup and doesn’t want to talk divorce yet, preferring to “wait it out and see what happens.” But his denial doesn’t bother me as much as it once did because I think the reality of my growing feelings for Hurley is starting to sink in. Plus David’s making an effort to be fair with our money situation. He handed over the check for my car and while I briefly considered using it to buy some wheels that were a little less conspicuous, the hearse is kind of growing on me and Hoover loves riding in the back of it. There are enough peculiar smells in there to keep any dog happy for a long, long time.
Despite all the good that’s come out of the events of the past couple weeks, several downers remain. The nanny cam in Luke Nelson’s office, and some password-protected files on his computer made it clear just how twisted the man is. Investigators found nearly two dozen videos of him drugging and sexually assaulting seven of his female patients. The resulting emotional backlash has been horrifying for the victims, a situation compounded by the fact that Luke Nelson has apparently disappeared from the face of the earth. Despite a nationwide APB and the involvement of the FBI since there is reason to suspect he engaged in similar activities when he was in Florida, there hasn’t been a single sighting or report of him being seen anywhere. Though I suspect he’s far away from Sorenson by now, the knowledge that he’s still out there somewhere has me looking over my shoulder more often than I like.
I’m pretty easy to find right about now. Two days ago, a picture of my half-naked body standing beside the Heinriches’ Caddy and Bitsy Conklin’s rotting corpse appeared on the front page of a national tabloid. At first I blamed Alison, figuring she’d sold the pictures out of revenge. But then I remembered how Hurley made her turn over the memory card to me, which I had stuffed in the pocket of his jacket I figured out why the dry cleaning lady was so willing to give me a half-price deal. The dry cleaning store has been closed all week and the owners have disappeared. I don’t know how much money they got for the pictures on that card, but it must have been enough for them to relocate.
Despite the front-page picture, the story inside the tabloid barely mentioned me and didn’t include my name. Fortunately, the saga of the battling Heinrich-Conklin offspring and the startling revelations about Bitsy and Gerald’s new wills were deemed more newsworthy than the underwear-clad deputy coroner standing next to the bodies. Of course, that
hasn’t stopped all the locals from commenting on it. The phone in the ME’s office has been ringing off the hook since the paper appeared, and rumor has it Lucien was seen buying up an entire news rack of the paper the day it hit the stands.
One of the few good things to come out of all the events of the past couple of weeks is that Hurley recovered from his injuries. He was discharged from the hospital two days after his surgery and though he’s still a little wan from the blood loss and limited on what he can do with his left arm thanks to some muscle damage there, he’s back on the job and looking as hot as ever. Even better is the fact that Alison hasn’t been sniffing around him of late. And the cherry on this sundae is my dinner date with Hurley tonight, payment on our wager regarding Erik Tolliver’s guilt or innocence.
I’m very excited about it but also nervous as hell. Though I spent a lot of time visiting Hurley while he was in the hospital, so did a ton of other people. I was never alone with him and all of the conversations that took place were centered on the case. We never touched on anything personal and I’m still not sure if he heard my whispered words to him in the ambulance. The closest we have come so far to any sort of personal revelation was when I first appeared at his bedside in the recovery room. He looked up at me, smiled, and said, “It’s about time you showed up.” I told him I’d been there all along, just on the sidelines, and then his nurse gave him a shot of morphine through his IV and he was out until he was taken to his room.
Hoover and Rubbish are sitting on my bed watching curiously as I go through my usual attempts to find something suitable to wear. I try on a blue dress with a tight, low-cut bodice that gives me Grand Canyon cleavage. I add a V-shaped necklace that looks like a dire ctional sign to the river bottom, and finish it off with a pair of navy blue pumps.
“What do you think of this one?” I ask the furballs, promenading for them both. Rubbish yawns, contorts himself into an impossible position, and starts to lick his butt. Hoover cocks his head to the side and whines.
“Yeah, you’re right. Too slutty,” I say, peeling the dress off. Next I try a pair of beige slacks and a black, slightly see-through blouse that shows off some of my new lingerie.
“Better?” I ask the judges, posing again. Hoover just stares at me and sighs; Rubbish hocks up a hair ball.
Ditching that outfit, I next opt for something simpler; black slacks, a long, cream-colored blouse with a mandarin collar, and a low-heeled pump. Hoover, who has just lived up to his name by scarfing up the hairball Rubbish deposited on my comforter, licks his lips and barks his approval. And just in time. A second later I hear a knock on my door.
My heart is racing as I head out to the living room. Hoover follows on my heels, curious and wary since this is the first time anyone has come to the house since he’s been here. I tell him to sit, which he does dutifully, and then I open the door.
There on my doorstop stands Hurley in all his long-legged, dark-haired, magnificently healed glory. He’s wearing black slacks and a black sport coat with an azure-colored shirt that makes his eyes look like the color of the sky on a bright fall day.
He eyes me from head to toe and says, “You look great.”
“Thanks. So do you.”
He grins boyishly and says, “I figured the colors black and blue were appropriate, given the way I’ve spent the past week.”
His words tweak my lingering guilt over what happened and I start to mutter an apology but Hoover, having exhausted his ability to remain patient, makes his presence known by running over to smell Hurley’s feet.
“Who is this?” Hurley says, squatting down and giving Hoover a scratch behind both ears.
“Hoover.” Hurley eyes me skeptically and I shrug. “Trust me. If you spent any time around him at all, you’d understand. I found him last week hanging out by the garbage Dumpster at the grocery store, starving and frightened.”
“It’s about time you came to your senses and got a real pet.”
“Well, he isn’t technically mine yet. He might belong to someone else. I ran an ad in the lost-and-found section the other day.”
Hurley is stroking Hoover along his back and the dog’s tail is wagging so hard he’s thumping out a rhythm on the doorjamb. Can’t say I blame him. I’d wag my tail, too, if Hurley was stroking me.
“You have to keep him,” Hurley says, giving Hoover a final pat on the head and then standing back up.
“I hope to.” I summon Hoover back inside, grab my purse and coat, and shut my front door. “Ready?” I ask Hurley. He nods and takes my coat, holding it for me so I can slip it on. Then he walks over and opens his car’s passenger door for me. I settle inside and fasten my seat belt. Hoover made for a handy distraction at the door, but now my nervousness has returned full force. I’m running dozens of conversational scenarios through my mind, wondering how the evening will play out, curious as to how our relationship might progress by night’s end.
Hurley climbs in on his side and starts the engine. Before he slips the car into gear, he turns and looks at me with a curious smile.
“There’s something I want to ask you,” he says, and my heart does a flip-flop as I think, Here it comes. “That day that Jackie stabbed me, were you riding in the ambulance with me?”
“I was,” I say, swallowing hard. Had he heard what I said? And if so, is he happy about it? Worried? Scared? “Why do you ask?”
And with that I hear my cell phone ring. A split second later, so does Hurley’s. He pulls his from his jacket pocket while I take mine out of my purse, and we both look at the displays.
“Damn,” Hurley mutters.
“Crap,” I mumble at the same time. And then we each answer our respective calls.
Once again, the dead are putting my love life on hold.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2010 by Beth Amos
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010927977
ISBN: 978-0-7582-7321-5
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