I pulled my cell phone out of my backpack and looked at it. I knew I should use it to call Guidry and tell him where I was staying and why. Knew I should tell him about the safe, and about the trust. I put the cell phone back in my backpack and drank coffee instead. I couldn’t talk to Guidry until I’d had food.
When Judy plunked down my breakfast, I went about eating it with serious efficiency. Tanisha’s biscuits are like her piecrusts—light, flaky, and delicious. I ate one with my eggs and bacon and saved the other to eat with jelly, like a dessert. I was just about to eat the jelly one when a man slid onto the bar stool next to me and spread a Herald-Tribune on the space in front of him. His hands were pale and bloodless, with stiff black hairs between his knuckles. I saw Judy do a double take, and I looked sideways to see who it was. Dr. Gerald Coffey was so intent on an article he was reading that he didn’t notice who was beside him.
Judy did the same quick question-and-answer routine with him that she’d done with me, then brought him coffee and topped mine off. She gave me a hard look while she poured mine, like she would pound me into the floor if I caused him to leave again. She needn’t have worried. I wasn’t up for another confrontation with him. I just wanted to eat my biscuit and drink my third cup of coffee and go back to Marilee’s house.
I was eating the last crumb when Judy brought his scrambled whites and dry rye. I carefully kept my gaze straight ahead while she set it down, and shook my head when she asked if I wanted anything more.
For a minute or two, Coffey ate silently. Then he cleared his throat. “I think I owe you an apology, Miss Hemingway.”
I still didn’t look at him, and for a moment I couldn’t think of anything to say.
He said, “I don’t blame you for being angry. I was pretty unreasonable when you spoke to me before.”
I turned my head then. “Marilee’s dead, you know.”
His face reddened and for a second his eyes shone with unshed tears. “Look, could we go someplace more private and talk?”
I nodded and slid off the stool. He followed me, and we both left bills with the cashier and went out the front door. I pointed to the Bronco and said, “We can talk in my car.”
I beeped it unlocked and got in the driver’s seat. After a momentary hesitation, he opened the passenger door and got in. We both sat staring straight ahead at people going in and out of the diner. I was too wiped out to do anything except wait for whatever he planned to say.
“I loved Marilee,” he said softly. “You probably don’t believe that, but I did.”
“Why wouldn’t I believe it?”
“You’ve talked to Shuga Reasnor, haven’t you? I’m sure she’s told you that I hated Marilee. She’s told everybody that, but it isn’t true.”
“Dr. Coffey, I don’t really give a gnat’s ass whether you loved Marilee or not. What I’d like to know is how you knew I was talking about Marilee when I told you I was a pet-sitter. I didn’t mention her name, and nothing had been on the news yet about the murders. Not hers and not Frazier’s. So how did you know I was talking about Marilee’s cat?”
“You think I killed her, don’t you?”
“I think it’s a definite possibility.”
He gave a laugh that sounded more like a sob, and pounded his fist against his khaki knee several times to get himself under control.
“I think it was her skin that I loved most,” he said. “She has the most fantastic skin, so smooth, you just want to—”
He broke off and blushed, caught in the act of reliving how Marilee’s skin had felt under his hands. “I’m sure I seem pathetic to you,” he said. “Hell, I seem pathetic to myself. She was like a disease I’d caught, you know? I didn’t intend to start anything with her, it just happened.”
I said, “I’m not making any judgments.”
“Oh, of course you are. And I don’t blame you. I’ll tell you something I’ve never told another soul. I used to look in her windows at night to see if she was with somebody. I would actually hide in the bushes and spy on her.” He shook his head sadly, as if he were watching himself doing that shameful thing and couldn’t get over how dumb it was.
“Love makes people do crazy things,” I said.
“The craziest thing was that even when I saw other men go into her house, I’d still believe her when she told me they didn’t mean anything to her. That I was her only one.”
“Were you watching her when Harrison Frazier went in? Did you go in and bludgeon them both?”
He raised trembling hands in front of his face and looked at them. “Just telling about this makes me shake. But all this was two years ago. If I’d been going to kill her, I’d have done it then.”
“Maybe you waited so nobody would suspect you, and then hired somebody to do it for you.”
“No.”
“You still haven’t explained how you knew it was Marilee I was working for.”
“I recognized the cat’s collar on your wrist. I was with Marilee when she bought it. We got it in New Orleans from a silversmith. It’s one of a kind, I’d know it anywhere.”
“So why did you go apeshit just because you knew I was taking care of Marilee’s cat? You said, ‘I know nothing about this!’ What was it you knew nothing about?”
His Adam’s apple did a nervous bobble, and I got a whiff of sour breath. “Marilee and Shuga sometimes got involved in money-making schemes that turned out to be bogus. I guess I thought they were doing something shady again, and that you thought I was involved in it, too. Because I’d been involved with Marilee.”
I turned the key and started the Bronco. “Dr. Coffey, that’s about the lamest lie I’ve ever heard in my life. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
He gave me a long-searching look, then opened his door. “I didn’t kill her,” he said. “I really did love her.”
I didn’t answer, and he shut the door softly and walked across the parking lot. I watched carefully, but his car wasn’t black. It was a red Porsche that fairly screamed man with little dick. Dr. Coffey might have been telling the truth about being with Marilee when she bought Ghost’s collar. He might even have been telling the truth about recognizing it on my wrist. But he sure as hell wasn’t telling the truth about why he’d jumped up and threatened to call the police when I spoke to him. He’d had some other fear in mind.
Thirty
I still had two more cats to see, and then I drove to the hospital to visit Phillip. I took the elevator to his floor and followed the arrows to the ICU. Even before I got there, I could hear the beeps of heart monitors and the occasional squeal of an IV or blood bag that had emptied. Doctors were making rounds, and the head nurse darted from cubicle to cubicle as private duty nurses stood aside like penitents at Mass while the doctors leaned over their patients. Fluorescent lights gave everybody a washed-out look. I turned toward Phillip’s cubicle, hoping he’d look better than he had before.
He wasn’t there. His entire room had been stripped, even to the wall cabinet unit that had held medical supplies.
I must have looked stricken, because the head nurse jogged over and put his hand on my shoulder.
“It’s all right,” he said. “He went home.”
“I was afraid he had—”
“I know. It’s this place. It makes you expect the worst. To tell the truth, I don’t know why they put him here. His injuries weren’t that critical.”
“It was for the extra security. I’m surprised the doctor dismissed him so soon.”
He looked uncomfortable. “Well, she didn’t. His father came and took him against the doctor’s advice. He said he could recuperate at home just as well as here, and he took him. We couldn’t legally keep him.”