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She wiped a finger, professionally, across his forehead.
“There’s irritation. It’s a caustic of some sort. You need a long hot bath.”
“If he’s coming in here,” Inspector Wohl said, resigned to the inevitable, “he’s going to take his clothes off first.”
Fifteen minutes later, attired in the robe Amy had been wearing when she appeared at the top of the steps, Detective Payne entered Inspector Wohl’s living room. Inspector Wohl and Dr. Payne were now fully clothed.
“I am under instructions to apologize for accusing you of being drunk,” Wohl said. “You want a beer?”
“I’d love a beer,” Matt said.
Wohl walked into his kitchen, returned with a bottle of Ortleib’s, and handed it to Matt.
“I am under further instructions to question you kindly, having been reminded that you are undoubtedly in a condition of grief shock,” Wohl said. “So why don’t we start at the beginning?”
“I don’t like your sarcasm, Peter,” Amy said. “Look at his face and hands! He’s been burned! Have you got any sort of an antiseptic lotion?”
“Listerine?” Wohl asked. “Where did you get that stuff on you, anyway?”
“No, not Listerine, stupid!”
“On a pier, or near a pier, near the old refineries in Chester,” Matt said.
“Where you had followed, you said, Mr. Atchison?”
“That will have to wait until I do something about his face and hands,” Amy said. “I probably should take him to an emergency room.”
“I’m all right,” Matt said.
“You must have something around here,” Amy said to Peter Wohl.
“Look in the medicine cabinet,” Wohl said. “You were telling me you followed Atchison? And I was asking you where the hell you got the idea—”
“Stop it, Peter,” Amy ordered. “For God’s sake, what’s the matter with you?”
She glowered at him, then marched into the bedroom. Thirty seconds later she was back, triumphantly displaying a tube of medicine.
“This will do,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me you had it?”
“I don’t even know what it is,” Wohl said.
Amy daubed the ointment on Matt’s face, then rubbed it in on his hands.
“Give me that, I’ve got a nasty scratch on my leg,” Matt said.
Wohl looked.
“I’m just dying to learn where you’ve been besides on a pier in Chester,” he said sweetly.
“I got these in the bushes outside the Yock’s Diner on Fifty-Seventh and Chestnut. That’s where I saw Atchison and Foley.”
“You have been a busy little junior Sherlock Holmes, haven’t you?”
“Peter, for Christ’s sake, at least hear me out!”
Wohl glared at him.
“OK. Fair enough. We’re back at square one. Start at the beginning.”
