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Dr. Jones fixes her beady little eyes on me intensely. It’s nice to get a reaction out of her. These days, it is one of the few things that gives me even a hint of satisfaction. Otherwise, she just blends in with the bland, gray jailhouse walls, like everything else. “I’m specifically referring to the first time the two of you met at the Belmond, Dr. Hastings. How was she?”
I note the way she says my name, like it’s poison on her tongue, the syllables shaken and stirred.
“Oh—” I offer a tight smile.
She does not return the favor. “Whose idea had it been to meet there?”
“Hers.”
“Are you sure?”
“Fairly sure.”
“And how was she when she arrived?”
“Nervous.”
“Nervous?” I study the movement of the pen as Dr. Jones jots notes down on her yellow legal pad. She never shows up with the same one, which makes me wonder what she does with them all. I imagine she has a giant stack piled ceiling-high in her office. She doesn’t seem like the type who has it all together. Not the way she wants to let on. It makes me question my attorney’s motive. Was she just cheap? Or is it something else? If so, I don’t see it. Not yet. The read I get on Dr. Jones is that she’s the type who has ten cats and piles of clutter spread among the excess of belongings she refuses to get rid of. She’s single. And not newly so. Likely every bit by choice as necessity. “Was she always nervous around you?”
“Not really.”
“Your father and hers…they were friends…so you must have run into her often over the years.”
“Several times, yes.”
“And how was this occasion any different?”
“It wasn’t.”
She glances up and then focuses back on her legal pad. “Had you made advances toward her before that day in the coffee shop?”
“No.”
“Did you speak to each other often? At the care center?”
“In passing, perhaps.”
“There was no other contact between the two of you? Before you began treating her father?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But you just said you spoke in passing on occasion.”
“While her father was in my care, yes.”
“But only in passing?”
“In passing or more personally, it depended.”
“During the course of this investigation, it was revealed that Laurel was not the first woman—you indulged in other amorous adventures?”
“I wouldn’t call them adventures.”
“What would you call them, Dr. Hastings?”
“Whims.”
