“What, Rupert’s going to call up the mayor and say, by the way, did you hire someone to murder your daughter’s killer? Rupert isn’t that crazed. He needs the mayor on his side for a lot of years yet.”
“Then how is he going to accuse me of causing Neal’s death without involving Darryl?”
“Exactly, Evelyn.” Tony spoke in a low gravelly voice that passed for kind. It scared her. If Tony was trying to be nice to her, then the situation must be worse than she could possibly have imagined. “He just hasn’t thought that far ahead yet. Once it sinks in, he’ll quiet down and just forget about you, let it go.”
“I don’t think so. Rupert isn’t the type to forgive and forget. He’ll work out a way to blame it on me.”
“Maybe he’ll say you hired the guy without the mayor’s knowledge because you’re still in love with him,” Tony said helpfully. “The mayor, I mean.”
She glared at him until he left, but once alone she let her face sink into her arms and sighed in utter despair. If a professional killed Neal, they wouldn’t catch him. That left no one in the headlights but her to bear the brunt of the prosecutor’s disappointment. If she lost her job under these circumstances, she could be sure she’d never work again in the field. How could she pay Angel’s college tuition? Or her mother’s medical insurance? How could she go back to rote hospital work, typing blood and prepping Pap smears for hours on end?
What the hell was she going to do?
One thing at a time. She called Melissa’s house and asked her daughter to please meet her at home. Neal was dead and her mother needed her. Angel had never been impressed with the potential lethality of her former nurse. She remained, however, quite angry about the nondisclosure of her father’s past and hung up without answering.
Evelyn put her eyes to her comparison microscope, hiding for a moment between the bright snakes of color that danced before her eyes. Maybe this would turn out to be a bad dream, an overwork-induced hallucination.
Yeah, and maybe I’ll go home to a fifteen-room mansion and a houseboy in Speedos. And a maid. And a cook.
Catering . . . she looked around for the Yellow Pages. What the hell, Angel wouldn’t be home for a while and she wasn’t on the county clock anymore. And she wanted to know that the multiple killer of young women was without a doubt lying on a slab downstairs and would never encounter her daughter again.
Letitia had just packed two cans of Sprite and a romance novel into a leather purse the size of a wheeled carry-on when David darkened her door. She looked up.
“I’m leaving.”
“I need some more help on Neal.”
“I told you everything,” she pointed out, her gaze a direct line of mistrust and disappointment. “And now he’s dead. So why should I tell you any more?”
“I didn’t intend for him to die, believe it or not, even though we think he murdered those two women.”
“Jimmy didn’t kill nobody! Jimmy couldn’t step on a cockroach.”
“Then why did he run away from us?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I really don’t know. I just know he wouldn’t have killed nobody.”
“I think he did. But I still want to find out who killed him. We’re going through all his friends and relatives, but no one is talking. It’s taking too long. We can only spare so many men to canvass at a time, so I need to know who he talked to. Who did he hang out with the most?”
“What do I look like, his social secretary? I just work here.”
“I know, I know. Just give me anything you can. Who did he mention the most?”
She softened in the face of David’s sincerity and grew pensive. “He did used to yak every time he came in here, and since he worked flotation he came in here a lot. Never could shut the kid up,” she added regretfully. “Poor guy. He palled around with the other male nurses. There are only three of them in the whole hospital, always said they were going to form a support group. Ed Tinkins and Leroy Johnson. Aside from them, he had a cousin who came here once or twice, looking for him, picked up his check when Jimmy stayed home sick once. His name’s Max.” Anticipating his next request, she shuffled through the tidal wave of paper on her desk. “Ed is off, but Leroy’s working in Pediatrics. Third floor east.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Obviously no one had posted “Hospital—Quiet, Please” signs in Pediatrics. The cries of unhappy children, each with its own pitch and roll, wormed into David’s ears as he approached the nurses’ station. An angel of mercy with a purple streak in her hair looked up at him.
“Is Leroy Johnson around?”
Suspicious did not begin to describe her attitude. She peered at David as if he were an IRS agent, there to arrest Leroy for a misplaced decimal point. “Why?”
“It’s personal.”
She mulled that over. It took a while.
“Personal how?” she asked.
It occurred to David that he had been up with the birds at four A.M. and was in no, repeat no, mood to be questioned by some punk-rock candy striper. He pulled his badge and leaned closer to her. “None of your fucking business, that’s how. Where is he?”
It did nothing for his mood that she remained unintimidated. However, she did mutter, “Down the hall in 303. Somewhere around there.”
He discovered Leroy Johnson, dressed in a set of bright blue scrubs, adjusting the IV of a school-age girl so thin she might be sucked in if anyone around her took a deep breath. What she lacked in physical presence she made up for in sheer will.
“What is that?” she asked as Johnson prepared to insert a large needle into her IV.
“Vitamins.”
“I don’t need vitamins.”
“Girl, you need vitamins so bad, I could empty a case of Flintstones into you and it wouldn’t make a dent.”
David spoke. “Leroy Johnson?”
Both the nurse and the patient looked at him without concern.
“I’m Detective Milaski, Homicide.”
The girl’s head swiveled back to Johnson. “You kill somebody?”
“Not yet,” he warned. “But there’s always a first time.”
“I just need to ask you a few questions.”
“I’m a little busy here, ace,” Johnson said, but without malice—in fact with such easy grace that David felt like smiling for the first time that day.
“Now what’s that?” the girl demanded.
“Potassium. It will firm up your muscles.”
“Uh-uh, don’t want it. They gave me that stuff when I broke my arm.” Thoughtfully including David, she added to him: “It was so gross. The bone stuck out and I bled all over the car. Daddy had to have the carpet steam-cleaned.” She turned back to Johnson. “They gave me that stuff and my arm just throbbed, all the way up to my shoulder, for hours. I cried, it hurt so bad.”
“I can’t imagine you crying,” Johnson said to her.
“I did and I will. You stick that stuff in me and I’ll have you sued for a violation of patient’s rights.”
Johnson couldn’t stifle a grin. He returned the syringe to the med cart. “Well, I ain’t going to be sticking no potassium where potassium ain’t wanted to be. This is Lissa, Detective. She’s going to be a lawyer.”
“No I ain’t. ‘First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’ Daddy says that all the time. Who have you killed?”
“I haven’t killed anyone,” Johnson insisted. “Unless you, if you don’t quiet down and get some rest. I will remove the offending potassium.”
She giggled.
The two men moved into the hall, which had miraculously calmed. David looked around in surprise.
“It’s dinnertime,” Johnson explained. “Put something in their mouths, it’s the only time they’re quiet. Probably why childhood obesity is on the rise. What do you want, Detective? Jimmy didn’t kill those girls.”
Johnson’s voice resonated as if from a great height, so round and comforting that you appreciate
d everything he said no matter what the actual words were. He could have talked Lissa into the potassium if he had really wanted to, and she would have giggled through her pain. He balanced his weight easily on both heels, looking David in the eye, and David already believed him.
He tried anyway. “What makes you so sure he didn’t?”
“Jimmy couldn’t kill anything. Jimmy could hardly start an IV because he hated pricking these little kids. I don’t know who killed those girls, but it wasn’t Jimmy. Are you going to find out who killed him? I mean, if you don’t already know?”
“What do you mean by that?”
For the first time Johnson looked away. “There’s talk goin’ round.”
“What kind of talk?”
“You guys think Jimmy killed the mayor’s daughter. Now Jimmy’s dead. Maybe the mayor couldn’t wait for the court system.”
“We have no reason to believe that,” David lied. “But speaking of Destiny Pierson, did you meet her when she came to the ER?”
“Didn’t have the pleasure. I heard plenty about her from Jimmy, though.”
“Did he ever mention Lia Ripetti? Ophelia?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“I’d remember a id like that.”
“Did Jimmy ever order medical supplies that weren’t for the hospital?”
“What, like drugs?”
“No, not drugs. Like solvents?”
A frown marred his smooth features. “No. Not that I know of. Jimmy only worked this unit once in a while. I mostly saw him on breaks.”
“Who else did he hang with, besides you?”
“I wouldn’t say he hung with me,” Johnson said—not disloyalty, but a statement of fact. “We didn’t see each other outside of work—got our own lives after quitting time, you know?” He thought for a moment, his face in grave repose while he mentally reviewed past events. “I guess his cousin Max. He mentioned him every so often. He’s got a mess of cousins, I don’t remember all their names. But Max kept him fed.”
“Fed?” David asked, not sure he had heard correctly. A young nurse pushed a cart with wheels that sounded like a train wreck down the hall. She passed them, leaving a wake of disinfectant mixed with Opium.
“He’d get free food from Max all the time. He works for Kopecki Catering, they always got food left over after shindigs. You should see the fancy stuff he’d bring for lunch. Oysters Rockefeller and shit.” Leroy chuckled gently and sadly over his late friend, then gave David a sharp look. “You okay? You look like someone just walked over your grave.”
“Not mine,” David said. “Jimmy’s.”
He pulled out of the hospital parking garage at an unsafe speed as he spoke with Dispatch on a cell phone. They provided him with an address for Christine Sabian’s former workplace, Kopecki Catering, as well as a message from DMV.
“This just gets weirder and weirder.”
“Come again, 417?” the dispatcher asked.
“Never mind.”
Chapter 30
SHE DIALED THE PHONE, then typed in a quick search on MSN Yellow Pages as it rang on the other end.
“Mayor Pierson’s residence.”
“Can I speak to Will, please?”
“May I tell him who’s calling?”
She gave her name and listened to a violin concerto—the man had hold music on his home phone—as the computer produced a dismaying 426 entries for caterers in the Cleveland area and made her hungry as well. There had been no time for lunch. Will picked up the line.
“Miss James?”
“Yes, I—”
“I’m afraid the mayor does not wish to take your call.”
Evelyn paused, momentarily stumped. Either Darryl was still mad or he had begun to distance himself, planning to let her career go down in flames while he floated above the murder of James Neal.
Someday, when she had time, she could learn to hate him for that.
For the moment she said frostily: “I don’t wish to speak to the mayor. I just have a question and I hope you will have an answer. What catering company did you hire for that campaign fund-raiser last week?”
Silence fell as the mayor’s assistant digested what had to seem a bizarre question. But he had made a career of fulfilling any request, no matter how unexplainable, so he excused himself and turned her back over to the violin concerto and the list of caterers. She abandoned the idea of checking each one for Marquis Royale tablecloths. A redundant name—a marquis was already a royal.
When he returned, Will told her: “A place called Kopecki’s. We hadn’t used them before, but the mayor likes to spread business around.”
“I’ll be sure to remember that on election day.”
Evelyn left the building, passing Jason on his way in from a break.
“Going home?” He smirked.
Perhaps she was being paranoid, but he seemed entirely too delighted with the idea that she might be leaving for good. “No, I’m tying up some loose ends on the Ripetti and Pierson cases.”
His face fell at the thought that her job might not yet be up for grabs. “Where are you going?”
“Just checking out a catering company—Kopecki’s.”
“Got a lead?”
“Maybe I’m just getting a jump on Thanksgiving.” Petty, perhaps, but it gave her ego the only boost of a low day.
She pulled out of the lot as the last tendrils of dusk dissolved into a night worthy of Poe. She hated this part of winter—leaving home in the dark and arriving home in the dark. Her eight-year-old car made wet sounds as it stirred up the remaining slush in the gutters. The cloud-stuffed sky threatened rain or snow or some horrible combination of both, and she cranked the heater knob to the end of the red zone.
David had rung only once before Marcus opened the door, a mountain of black skin and expensive fabric. He waited for David to speak as the darkening sky surrounded them.
“Good evening, Mr. Marcus.”
“Just Marcus will do, Detective. I’m afraid Mr. Ashworth cannot see you at the moment.”
“That’s too bad, because we have a matter to discuss, and I’m sure he would rather address it personally.” He held out the emerald ring.
Marcus gazed at it, taking his time while David suppressed a shudder. The icy wind passed through his coat in freezing waves.
“Come in,” Marcus said at last.
David waited in an undersize, rather empty room. No knickknacks or personal touches to distract one from the lush carpets and rich paintings of nautical scenes, probably on purpose. Untrustworthy people were put in this room, with nothing small enough for them to pilfer. Wise in its way, of course, but David wondered if all rich people were paranoid or only the criminal ones. He studied a portrait of the mister and missus.
Ashworth arrived in record time, dressed in somewhat scruffy-looking sweatpants as if David had interrupted his workout. He had obviously received a quick briefing from Marcus and appeared relaxed in the knowledge of exactly what David thought he knew.
“I believe you have something which belongs to me.” He held out his hand.
“This?” David displayed the ring between thumb and forefinger. “No, this belongs to Lia Ripetti.”
“Who is a dead orphan. I’d like the ring back,” he added in good humor. “It cost quite a bit.”
“That would create problems for you, surely,” David pointed out. “Wouldn’t Mrs. Ashworth wonder why she suddenly had two identical rings?” He nodded at the portrait. A woman with Ivy’s coloring sat on a satin divan, one hand crossed primly over the other, the second emerald winking from her finger.
Ashworth followed his gaze. “I see your point. My own fault—I’ve always been lazy about jewelry. It all looks the same to me.”
“Besides, Lia Ripetti wasn’t completely alone. She had a boyfriend. Did she dump you for him?” He didn’t mind irritating Ashworth, but that was not his intention. He wanted to know if Ashworth felt strongly enough about Lia to avenge her death.
“Lia didn’t dump me.” Ashworth fell into an overstuffed leather armchair as if he were tired. Marcus, the silent sentinel, blocked the only exit. “She did, however, end our relationship.”
“When?”
“Last year. Right before Christmas, I believe. Long before she met this Durling.”
“Why?”
“Lia figured—rightly—that I had used her, and expensive gifts weren’t enough of a consolation. Lia wasn’t stupid, and she had pride. I always liked that about her,” he added, almost to himself.
“So you just went your separate ways?”
“Quite amicably.”
“And she kept working for your company?”
“Why not? I’m hardly ever at that office. It’s not like we’d run into each other all the time.”
“She didn’t keep her job by threatening to tell your wife?”
“Lia never threatened anything. She didn’t want anyone to know any more than I did, because, frankly, she felt foolish about it. Like I said, she had pride. Even if tempted during some spiteful moment, she possessed enough intelligence to realize I make a better friend than enemy.”
“So you could keep her in line,” David stated. He had remained standing, pacing along the edge of a Karastan rug. It kept his blood moving.
“You’re not getting it. I didn’t need to keep anyone in line. Lia and I were adults and had an adult relationship. Lia was a very sensible girl, and once she made a decision, that was it. She didn’t go in for shows of hysterical emotion—unlike”—he sighed—“so many women.”
“And yet, when you identified her dead body, you described her as someone you may have met once at some function or other.”
“What do you expect me to say? Oh, yes, she’s the girl I cheated with for a few months last year.”
“Do you even care that she’s dead?”
Ashworth thought for a moment, as if he found this an interesting question. David waited.
“Not a whole lot. I could get misty-eyed and tell you I’m deeply wounded, but the fact is Lia was simply an old girlfriend. I hadn’t even seen her for months. I’m sorry for the girl, of course, but I can’t pretend I formed any real attachment.”
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