And now the person at the center of that was asking him if she was making all that up? Everything he’d promised her, had she just imagined that? Was it all merely a game for Mickey to toy with and then drop when it became inconvenient, difficult, even perilous? Was she, take away the self-serving rationalizations, just another pretty girl to him?
“Was I, Mickey?” she repeated. “Was I making all that up?”
He took his right hand off his ribs and laid it gently on her shoulder. “No,” he told her. “That’s still what this is about.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.” She put her hand over his, then leaned over and kissed it. “So what are we going to do?”
Mickey, with some difficulty, pushed himself up on the bed. “First,” he said, “we’d better find where they hid my clothes.”
The clothes and valuables were hung in a plastic bag in the closet. Mickey’s bed was one in a three-bed room, but the one closest to the door. The other patients in the room had screens pulled around those beds, and the one in the middle had three visitors, chatting away. After she brought over the bag of Mickey’s clothes, Alicia went to the hallway door and stood in it, just inside the room.
Even moving slowly and with great care, it didn’t take Mickey more than two minutes to get on his underwear and pants. He couldn’t get his shirt over the cast, but thank God it had been a cold day and he had his jacket, which served. He called Alicia back to him and she helped him with his shoes, left untied. His socks were just too much trouble to even bother with. They went into his jacket pocket along with the shirt.
She took his good right arm and together they strolled out into the hallway.
The walk out of the hospital was challenging. Dizziness made him come to a dead stop three times. Beyond that, even though it was his left arm that was broken, his left leg had evidently gotten banged up badly as well. Both his hip and his knee throbbed with every step and his ribs were worse-constant pinching pain that kept him from standing straight. Once they cleared the building itself, just walking unimpeded out the front entrance, they hit the drizzle and the biting wind. Alicia was wearing her jeans and hiking boots and a water-resistant ski jacket over a pullover sweater, and she pulled her left arm out of the sleeve and wrapped the jacket over Mickey’s shoulders, holding his right arm, pressing up tight against him.
Nevertheless, by the time they made it out to Alicia’s car at the very far end of the darkened parking lot, Mickey was shivering, his teeth actually chattering, a general pain now diffused by the shaking throughout his body. Alicia opened the front passenger side door and got him into the seat, then spun out of her heavy jacket and draped it over him, tucking it in around him. She ran around the car, got in, turned on the ignition, and set the heater to max.
“It’ll warm up in a minute,” she said. “Then we’ll jam the fan.”
Still shivering, his teeth audible in the close space, huddled down inside the blanket, Mickey could barely get out one word. “Good.”
Alicia revved the engine to speed the heating process, but kept her lights and the windshield wipers off. They were cocooned, the drizzle on the car’s windows preventing them from seeing much outside. In less than a minute, she reached down and turned the fan onto high, and feeling the vent, she nodded. “Better than outside already.”
Mickey, rocking almost imperceptibly back and forth, just shook his head.
Five minutes later, the car was warm enough that he didn’t need her jacket and she gently helped him get it unwrapped from around him. His shivering had stopped and with the surcease of movement, the pain had noticeably lessened everywhere but in his arm and ribs. “No phones,” he said. “In fact, turn it off completely.”
“But what if we have to call somebody?”
“We’ll borrow somebody’s, or find a pay phone. We really don’t want to use your cell. Starting now.”
“Okay.” She held down the button that turned her phone off. “I’m trusting you.”
“That’s a good idea.”
She looked over at him. “So what are we going to do now?”
“Good question,” he said. “Dancing’s definitely out, though.”
“Darn.”
“I know. It’s a disappointment. I’m a great dancer, actually. You ever go to the swing clubs?”
“Not enough. Drawback of working nights.”
“Well, when we get out of this, maybe some Monday or Tuesday…” He lapsed into a thoughtful silence.
And eventually Alicia broke it. “Mickey?”
“I’m thinking. You got any close girlfriends you can trust who live alone?”
She considered for a moment, then shook her head. “Not who live alone, no. I’m about the only one my age I know who does. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking you’re going to have to lie low somewhere where the cops won’t think to look for you, if it gets to that. Plus, we’ve got a car problem. This one might as well have a sign on it, so we’ve got to put it someplace where it can’t be seen.”
“But then we can’t use it.”
“That’s right.”
“So how do I get around?”
“Where do you have to go? That’s not close to your biggest problem.”
“Good point. But how do you get around, for that matter? You don’t have a car anymore either. Plus, you can barely walk.”
“There’s that too,” he said grimly. “You’ve got to give me a minute here.” He gently probed at his head.
“Are you hurting bad?” she asked.
He glanced over at her and tried a smile.
In the living room of her Nob Hill condominium, Gina Roake sipped her Oban and said, “You’ve got a half hour to cut that out completely, buster. I mean it.”
Wyatt Hunt, rubbing her feet on the ottoman between them, gave her a grin. “A half hour from now, I’m betting I’ll have moved on to other things.”
“Promises, promises.”
“You wait and see.”
“I believe I will.” She sighed contentedly, leaned back, sipped her Scotch again. “So how close is our Inspector Juhle?”
“He’s waiting until the DNA work comes in on the semen. But even if he gets a hit, it’s still a long way to Tipperary. It all comes down to whether or not he fired her that morning.” He nodded appreciatively at her. “And if you’re paying attention, I believe that would be your influence at work on Juhle. It’s going to be a while before he makes an arrest again before he’s got the evidence.”
“Let’s hope. You’d think they’d teach that in cop school.”
“They do. Then they get out into the real world and need to make arrests. Especially when they know who did it, as in this case.”
Gina sighed. “And in so many others.”
“Well, yes. No argument there.”
“So they’re convinced it’s this woman Alicia?”
“I’d say yes.”
“What do you think?”
Hunt considered for a moment.
Roake softly kicked his hands. “It’s not a trick question. You don’t have to answer if it’s going to make you stop.”
“Apologies.” Hunt’s hands went back to work on her feet. “What do I think? I think it’s highly unlikely that both Ellen Como and Al Carter independently made up the story about her getting fired the day he gets killed. I think that happened.”
“What does she say?”
“She says not. But then again, she would, wouldn’t she?”
Roake shrugged.
“So then I think,” Hunt pressed, “that if that’s true, if Como fired her, then she had a damn good reason to kill him. Especially if they were intimate.”
“And the scarf establishes that?”
“Pretty much. If it’s his semen.”
Roake brought her Scotch to her lips. “Anybody ever see them together out of work? Maybe going into her place? Some motel? One of Sunset’s residential units?”
“I haven’t heard of that. At work, yeah, according to Ellen. But I don’t think Devin and Sarah have gotten around to asking neighbors, if that’s what you mean. Except, you know, you’re alone together in a limo four or five hours a day, I’m willing to lay odds a determined couple could get in a little nooky from time to time. And it does appear, in fact, that that’s what happened, doesn’t it?”