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She carried a personal grudge against Rory Smilow that went back several years. As for Steffi Mundell, she knew her by reputation only. The assistant D.A. was universally regarded as an unmitigated bitch who thought her shit didn’t stink.
Loretta couldn’t say why she hadn’t spoken to them or made her presence known. Something had compelled her to keep her head lowered, her face down, pretending to be asleep. Not that either would have given a flip about her one way or the other. Smilow would have looked at her with disdain. Steffi Mundell probably wouldn’t have recognized her, or if she had, she wouldn’t remember her name. More than likely they would have said something passably civil, then ignored her.
So why hadn’t she said something? Maybe it had given her a sense of superiority to be unseen and unobserved while she eavesdropped on their conversation, first with the doctor, then with each other.
Earlier in the evening, before she had started feeling sick and had to drive herself to the emergency room, she had heard about the Lute Pettijohn murder on TV. She’d watched Smilow’s press conference. He had conducted it in his typically efficient and unflappable manner. Steffi Mundell was already horning in where she wasn’t wanted or needed, overstepping her bounds, which it was said she was good at.
Loretta chuckled. It did her old heart good to see them grappling for clues and following dead-end leads. The investigation couldn’t be going very well if their only possible witnesses were people sick with food poisoning. One thing was certain: Smilow didn’t have a viable suspect or he wouldn’t be chasing down emergency room patients.
Loretta glanced at the wall clock. She had been waiting for over two hours and was feeling worse by the minute. She hoped help would be coming soon.
To pass the time and keep her mind off her personal miseries, she stared through the plate-glass window at the spot, now empty, where their car had been parked. Rory Smilow and Steffi Mundell. Jesus, what a dangerous combination. God help the luckless murderer when they did catch him.
“What are you doing here?”
At the sound of her daughter’s voice, Loretta turned. Bev was standing over her, fists on hips, eyes judgmental, not at all happy to see her. She tried smiling, but felt her dry lips crack when she stretched them across her teeth. “Hi, Bev. Did they just now tell you I was down here?”
“No, but I was busy and couldn’t get away until now.”
Bev was an ICU nurse, but Loretta figured she could have asked someone to cover for her for five minutes if she had wanted to. Of course, she hadn’t wanted to.
Nervously she wet her scaly lips with her tongue. “I thought I would come by and see… Maybe we could have breakfast together.”
“When my shift ends at seven, I will have put in twelve hours. I’m going home to bed.”
“Oh.” This wasn’t going even as well as Loretta had hoped, and she hadn’t held out much hope that it would go well. She picked at the buttons on the front of her dirty blouse.
“You didn’t come here so we could have breakfast together, did you?” Bev’s voice had an imperious tone that grabbed the attention of the admitting nurse. Loretta noticed her glance at them curiously. “You ran out of money, so you couldn’t buy your booze, so you came begging to me.”
Loretta lowered her head to avoid her daughter’s angry, unmerciful glare. “I haven’t had a drink in days, Bev. I swear I haven’t.”
“I smell it on you.”
“I’m sick. Truly. I—”
“Oh, save it.” Bev opened her pocketbook and took out a ten-dollar bill. But she didn’t hand it to Loretta; she forced her to reach for it, adding to her humiliation. “Don’t bother me at work again. If you do, I’ll have hospital security escort you off the premises. Understand?”
Loretta nodded, swallowing her pride and her shame. The rubber soles of Bev’s shoes squeaked on the tiles as she turned to go. When Loretta heard the elevator doors open, she raised her head and called plaintively, “Bev, don’t—”
The doors closed before she could finish, but not before she could see that Bev’s eyes were averted, as though she couldn’t bear the sight of her own mother.
Sunday
Chapter 8
It just didn’t make sense.
Unexpectedly, out of the blue, you meet someone. It’s like getting a gift for no particular reason. The attraction is instantaneous, strong, and mutual. You enjoy each other’s company. You laugh, you dance, you eat corn on the cob and ice cream. You have sex that makes you feel like you’ve never known what it was all about before. You fall asleep in each other’s arms and feel more content than you can remember feeling, ever.
Then you wake up alone.
She’s gone. No so long, no goodbye. No hasta la vista, baby. No nothing.
Hammond thumped the steering wheel of his car, angry at her, but angrier at himself for giving a damn. Why should he care that she had run out? Hey, he had had a terrific Saturday night. He’d had great sex with a gorgeous stranger who had accommodated him in bed, then, being even more accommodating, had disappeared, leaving no strings attached. The dream date, right? It didn’t get much better than that. Ask any single male his number one, primo fantasy, and that would be it.
So accept it for what it was, you jerk, he reprimanded himself. Don’t make too much out of it. And don’t remember it better than it actually was.
But he wasn’t making it out better than it was. It had been fantastic, and that’s exactly how he was remembering it.
