“I didn’t.”
He nodded. “She probably thought she was hallucinating.”
“One more reason to sign herself into rehab.”
Sly nodded again but said nothing.
“How did you see the whole thing? Were you out there together?”
Sly snorted. “As if I’d voluntarily subject myself to her rotten company. I keep an eye on the building because my daughter lives here.”
“I see.” He really didn’t understand half of what was going on. Perhaps waiting for the details to shake out and concentrating on the matter at hand would be the best thing to do. “I can’t wait until Lila’s out of here. Thanks for watching her, if I forgot to say it before.”And I can’t wait until you’re out of here, too, whether you’re doing me a favor or not.“By the way, where do you live?”
“Nearby,” Sly said. A corner of his mouth curled up, and suddenly Jason didn’t want to know.
The elevator whirred and stopped on the top floor.
“Are you expecting someone?” Sly stood.
“No. It must be Merry.”
Jason strode to the elevator just as Dottie stepped off.
Oh, no. What now?“How did you get up here?”
“Jason, I need to speak to you about earlier…” It was just like her to ignore his question and ask one of her own. She glanced over toward Sly. “Who’s this?” Then she strolled over to the couch, gazed down at Lila, raised her voice and echoed herself. “Who’s this?”
“Shhh… Aunt Dottie. You don’t want to wake the devil.”
“She looks a little rough around the edges, but not exactly devilish. What happened to her? Does Merry know she’s here? She didn’t say anything to me about it.”
“One question at a time, Aunt Dottie.”
Sly glided over to her, took her hand and kissed her knuckles. “I’m Sylvestro Flores… and charmed to meet such a lovely lady.”
Dottie’s mouth dropped open—with no words following, for once.
Jason hoped Sly’s presence might slow her tirade about the wild bird fight, so he let them continue talking.
“Flores? Isn’t that what they said Merry’s last name was in the gossip column?”
“Yes,” Sly said. “She’s my…”
“Sister!”Jason interjected.“Yes, Merry was adopted and she recently found her only blood relative.”
Sly gave him a look that could only be interpreted as reluctantly complicit. “Ah, yes. My sister. We are finally getting to know each other after a lifetime apart.”
“Well, then what are you doing up here? Shouldn’t you be down in Merry’s apartment? I know she’s down there. I checked.”
He and Jason exchanged glances. Sly picked up Dottie’s hand again and gazed into her eyes. Dottie’s jaw slacked and she stared at him without blinking.
“You need to go back to your own apartment. There’s nothing going on here. Nothing happened earlier tonight to concern you. You just came up here to say ‘hello’ and ‘goodnight.’ I was introduced to you as Jason’s friend, Sylvestro.”
A moment later he released her hand, and she blinked a couple of times, appearing confused.
“You know, it’s funny, but I came up here just to say ‘hello’ and ‘goodnight.’ Now isn’t that silly of me? I didn’t need to swipe Ralph’s keycard to do that.”
“No, you didn’t. Maybe next time you can call on the phone.”
