Great.
I wanted to close my eyes again, but I was afraid of what I’d see. The curtain moved, and Bixby stepped in. He looked at Tim.
“How is she?”
“She is fine,” I replied, before Tim could. “She would love to take a shower.” I didn’t add that I wanted to wash off Jeff’s blood, but I didn’t think I had to.
Tim’s phone started to ring, and Bixby frowned.
“I’ll be back,” Tim said, putting his phone to his ear and walking out.
“You really are fine?” Bixby asked.
“How is Jeff?”
“He’s in surgery.”
Same answer as Tim. Totally wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
“You’re the doctor here. Can’t you find out how it’s going?” I asked.
“You care a great deal for him, don’t you?” Bixby asked, his eyes probing my face.
I knew what he was looking for. “He’s my friend,” I said softly. “Nothing else.” Although as I said it, I remembered how Jeff had held my hand, how he’d called me by my first name, not Kavanaugh. “He’s a very good friend,” I added.
“Oh.” Bixby turned his face slightly, and I could see disappointment.
“We’re not a couple,” I said. “It’s not like that. It’s different.” I struggled with how to describe my relationship with Jeff Coleman. He was a royal pain in my butt, but he had helped me out on more than one occasion, and he created the koi tattoo on my arm, something that was permanent, that would never go away.
As I sat there and thought about him, I knew. I knew that if something happened to him, my life would be a little bit emptier.
I’d never admit that to him, though. He’d get some sort of stupid idea that it meant more than it did. Just as Bixby was having that stupid idea now. I could see it.
I crooked my finger at him and said, “Come here.”
He did, and I sat up so our faces were mere inches apart. And then I kissed him. Gently, because my face hurt more than getting a hundred tattoos at the same time.
It seemed to pacify him, because when he pulled away, Dr. Colin Bixby wore a lopsided grin.
“I’ll go check on Coleman’s status,” he said and went through the curtain, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
Sister Mary Eucharista wouldn’t have been happy with me. I’d kissed the man to make him stop asking me whether I had feelings for Jeff. Don’t get me wrong-I found the guy incredibly sexy. But kissing him to get him to stop asking questions wasn’t exactly right.
I looked at my shirt and the bloodstains and decided I couldn’t stay here like that. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the shooting pain that moved through my body. My neck felt as though there were a vise on it. I moved toward the curtain, slowly, because now my muscles had decided to revolt. They’d been resting, they’d been happy, and now I was making them work after way too much trauma.
The curtain swung open just as I reached it. Tim frowned.
“What are you doing out of bed?” he demanded.
“I need a shower. Please tell Bixby to find me a shower.” Tears sprung into my eyes, and Tim put his arm around me.
“Okay, okay. We’ll find you a shower.” He twisted his head and called over to one of the nurses. “Can my sister get a shower somewhere?” To me, he said, “I can call Bitsy, see if she can bring a change of clothes.”
I’d forgotten about Bitsy. I’d told her she could go home early, and I’d said I’d open up tomorrow. How was I going to manage that now?
A nurse in baby blue scrubs and green Crocs came over to me and smiled kindly. “Do you want to come with me?”
I nodded and followed her down the hall and out a door. She led me to another door and pushed it open. It was a full bath, hospital style, with plain fixtures and handicap rails. The shower had no tub, but a small plastic seat and more rails, in case I couldn’t hold myself up. I might end up making use of them.
The nurse pointed to a soap dispenser.
“We don’t have shampoo,” she apologized.
“I’ll use the soap,” I said.
She shut the door behind her as she left. I locked it and stripped off my clothes. The blood had soaked through my shirt, and the skin around the dragon tattoo was pink. My heart began to pound, and I sat, naked, on the plastic chair, my head in my hands, and I began to sob softly. Somewhere in this building, Jeff was fighting for his life. I vowed to be nicer to him when he got better. I wouldn’t get as annoyed with him.
After a few minutes, I pulled myself together and turned on the faucet, the hot water crashing down around me, beating into my skin and washing away the blood.
The nurse had left me some scrubs, and when I was done, I put them on and found Tim waiting for me.
“Better?” he asked casually, although I could see from his expression that something else was going on.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Cops found the scene. Couldn’t really miss it. Pieces of car all over the place, lots of skid marks. A dent in that light pole you must have hit.”
He was holding something back, though.
“What?” I asked again. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s nothing else there. No car, no injured person. No one at all.”
Chapter 55
“So you think we ran ourselves off the road? That Jeff shot himself?” I asked indignantly. “Or maybe you think I shot him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Brett.”
“Am I being ridiculous? You say that there was no body, no car, like I was lying or something. Like maybe it was all a figment of my imagination.”
“I know you’re not lying,” he argued. “But obviously you didn’t hurt the guy as bad as you thought.”
“There was blood on the hood of the car,” I said, shivering with the memory and looking around. “Where’s Flanigan? Doesn’t he want to take me in or something?”
“You’re being unreasonable,” Tim said, his voice full of exasperation. “Can you remember anything else that could help us?”
I didn’t want to remember anything. I wished I didn’t remember anything.
“Jeff said he saw the car in the side-view mirror. But he didn’t tell me what kind of car it was.”
It had been a little while from the time Jeff and I left to the time I called Tim. If the guy wasn’t hurt too bad, he probably drove away. It had felt as if we’d slammed into the other car pretty hard, but maybe it wasn’t as bad as it felt.
“Do you really think it could’ve been Dan Franklin?” I asked.
“He came after you this afternoon. He ran from us. He seemed a little squirrelly when we questioned him, although he had answers for everything.”
“Did he pick up his car from the shop after getting his timing belt?” I asked, emphasizing the words “timing belt” as though that was just a cover. Because it might have been.
I remembered something else. “What about Will Parker? He met Franklin at the Convention Center, right?”
“Franklin says he called him to pick him up and take him to work.”
I vaguely remembered him telling us that.
I thought about Parker and how Jeff and I had followed him from the Convention Center.
“Sanderson. Martin Sanderson. The owner of the Love Shack, that wedding chapel across from That’s Amore,” I said.
“What about him?”
“Parker went there from the Convention Center.”
Tim frowned. Oops. He didn’t know Jeff and I had followed Parker. But considering where Jeff was now, I wasn’t going to worry about it.
“Remember I asked you about that license plate number? Will Parker was driving the car registered to Martin Sanderson.”
I filled him in on how Jeff had followed Parker, adding that Parker ended up at Murder Ink, where we found him with Bernie.
Tim scratched his chin. “He said he was there for a tattoo?”
“That’s what Bernie said.” As I spoke, I realized how stupid that sounded. Parker had been to my shop earlier for a tattoo touch-up. He hinted he might want more ink, but it seemed too soon to head to another shop for another tattoo. But what other reason would he have to go to Murder Ink?