“Or our volunteers keep a supply, if you’d like some,” the perky woman chimed in.
“I forgot about that,” Dr. Suz said. “Why don’t you see if Nancy can find something from this century, preferably the last few months.”
“She already has some visitors,” Nurse Perky chirped as she held a tray to receive the dressing the doctor was changing. To Torie, she said, “They’ll be able to come back when Dr. Pierce is finished, and you’re ready.”
“Thanks.” The idea of visitors cheered her immensely. Maybe Pam had come. Or Dev. Or Todd. She’d left a message at Todd’s hotel as well.
Hopefully Todd was smart enough not to bring the odious Paul Jameson with him.
To her dismay, the first two people in her door were the fire investigators.
“Good morning, Ms. Hagen, how are you feeling?” Sorrels began as soon as he made eye contact.
“Okay, all things considered. Have you been by my house? How does it look?”
The investigators glanced at one another.
“That bad?”
“No, but it doesn’t look good. It’s better than it might be, with the fire department being so close. Structurally, we’ll have to wait for the city inspector to let us know. Evidently, you’ve got some kind of fire retardant in your insulation? That seems to have given some protection to the structure.”
“Oh, I had the house reinsulated several years ago.” Torie was delighted and surprised that the stuff had been of some use. It hadn’t been as insulating as she’d been promised, but if it saved her house, she’d never regret the expense again.
“That might be it. Anyway, your insurance adjuster has been by, and your neighbors have asked after you. Evidently, the whole neighborhood knows you.”
“I used to run the neighborhood association,” Torie explained.
“Ah. That makes sense.”
She wondered what they thought she was up to, by the looks of relief. Drug smuggling? Gang activity? Prostitution? The last thought nearly made her giggle. All the possibilities skittered through her mind as the men continued to comment on the neighborhood and the house.
“There is one thing we need to tell you, Ms. Hagen. It may be a bit concerning to you.”
“Concerning?”
“Yes, your cousin—” Sorrels began.
“Have you talked to him?” Torie interrupted. “I can’t get a hold of him.”
“There’s a reason for that.” The grave look on Marsden’s face had Torie leaping to a terrible conclusion.
“Oh, Lord, something happened to Dev? What? What happened?”
“He was stabbed several times. The attack occurred in a park near the hotel where he was evidently staying.”
“Stabbed?” she screeched. “Is he alive? Is he okay? Where is he?”
Both inspectors made calming motions as they stumbled over their words, reassuring her.
“I’m sorry to break it this way,” began Marsden.
“He’ll be fine. He’s two floors down on the third floor,” Sorrels soothed.
“Who would do that sort of thing? Oh, God, poor Dev.”
“What’s important,” Marsden recovered his composure to continue. “He’s not the one who bombed your house.”
“Of course he isn’t,” Torie replied, highly indignant. “I don’t know why you’d even suspect him.”
“Motive and opportunity,” snapped Sorrels. “I checked your name in our database, Ms. Hagen. You seem to have an unfortunate number of accidents happening around you.”
Torie felt all the blood drain from her face. No one had ever put it quite so boldly before. In fact, she didn’t think anyone but Pam had realized how many of her boyfriends, dates, and lovers had had serious or life-threatening accidents or injuries over the last few years. All within weeks or months of dating her, or breaking up with her.
She was cursed. She knew it.
That’s why she’d turned Dev away, why she’d stopped dating. Why she eluded her friend Pam’s attempts at matchmaking, and basically went to work and came home to her dog.
“It’s true,” she stuttered the word. “I don’t know why, but a lot of the people…men…I’ve dated, have had accidents or…or…”
“Another man died.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t know why this is happening?”
“No. I tried to talk to someone about it, at the police department, but all they did was ask about me. Did I have a stalker or someone who had threatened me, that’s all they asked about. I didn’t. I don’t. I haven’t ever been threatened.”
“Is it possible that your cousin is another victim of this pattern?”
Unable to speak, Torie could only nod.
“We still haven’t located Mister Peterson. His lawyer has reported him missing. Do you know anything about where he might have gone?”
Pulled away from her thoughts about Dev, she frowned, which pulled at the stitches. It hurt.
“No, I don’t. He’d never stand Paul up for a meeting. They were roommates and fraternity brothers. They’re both lawyers, and they worked together at Pratt and Legend before Todd won all the money.”
“Did he have any other kind of relationship with this friend of his?” The words were straightforward, and the detective’s bland countenance gave her no hints to his meaning.
“What do you mean?”
“Was the lawyer involved with your former fiancé, in a relationship of any kind?”
“A relationship? Paul was Todd’s lawyer. Paul was Todd’s best man at our wedding. He was Todd’s best friend. They’d talked about going into business someday, but other than that, I don’t know.” The look of sly innuendo on Sorrell’s face led her to another conclusion.
“Oh, no, not that. You mean like lovers? No way.” The idea gave her the creeps. Having slept with Todd, she knew he liked women. As to Paul, he’d been the campus lothario—known as Love-’em-and-leave-’em-Jameson. She told the detectives about both men’s proclivities with as straight a face as she could manage.
“So what do you think of Jameson?”
Cheap shot. Marsden could obviously read body language and tone.
“I don’t like him, but you’ve obviously guessed that. He never approved of me, or of my relationship with Todd.”
She tried to be brief, but Marsden kept prodding her.
“How do you know he didn’t approve?”
She stalled, but he pressed. Finally she gave in.
“In a drunken rant back in our college days, he told Todd that he was a fool to date me. Then later in grad school, he told Todd he was crazy to marry me, and that we’d be miserable together.
“Even up to the day of our wedding, he tried to talk Todd out of it. When Todd came to tell me he was backing out of the wedding, I thought Paul was to blame and I socked Todd and told him to tell Paul Jameson to,” Torie hesitated, but decided since she’d said this much, she might as well get the rest of the sorry, embarrassing story on the table. “Well, I told him to tell Paul to get, uh, screwed. Except I used the other word, the f-word. I’m afraid the whole church heard it because Paul walked in as I hit Todd.”
“Wow. I’ll bet that caused an uproar.” Sorrels’s eyes were dancing with humor, but his face remained bland. She thought she caught the barest twitch of a smile. She was still mortified to have cussed in church, and to have had virtually everyone in the world she cared about hear her do it.
“Understatement of the century, I’m afraid. So Paul still doesn’t like me, nor I him.”
“And Todd called off the wedding because?”
“He won the Lotto jackpot.”
“And didn’t…ah…” Marsden stopped mid-sentence and busied himself making notes. Evidently he was drawing his own conclusions as to why Todd had called it off.
“I believe we’ll want to talk to Mister Jameson a bit more about your situation, and about Mister Peterson’s whereabouts.”
“It isn’t unusual,” Sorrels spoke now, “for one party in a situation to have…unrequited feelings…for another man. It’s possible that Mister Jameson may know more than he’s telling.”