“I have no idea that that’s what he’s doing.”
“Bull. When I had too much to drink and hit a tree with the seventy-one Mercedes I had before I got the seventy-three, the whole thing was handled by state patrol. That’s how they do accidents in this state. I know, ’cuz I asked.”
“Jack, I don’t know—”
“Yeah, yeah, you said that already.” He stood up. “All right, I’m walking across the street to my own house.”
“Jack? You’re not angry, are you?” I asked anxiously as I walked him to the door. “I really don’t know what Tom is doing now. But I want to help with…with you feeling better about Doc Finn.”
“Uh-huh.” He heaved on his jacket and opened the front door. “Let me tell you something I learned in the years before I became a recovering lawyer.”
“Jack—,” I began, but he held up his hand.
“I always know when a witness is lying.”
DOGGONE IT, I thought, as I cleaned up Marla’s dishes. I wasn’t lying. Okay, I did suspect that Tom’s disappearance from the O’Neal wedding was related to the discovery of Doc Finn’s body. But I knew no more about the situation than Jack did.
When Tom finally came home, it was almost nine o’clock. I’d kept the ragout going on a low simmer, just in case.
“Miss G. You should have gone to bed. I’m sorry I’m so late.”
“Did you eat?”
“No. I’ll fix myself a plate.”
“Sit,” I commanded. Tom washed his hands and slumped at the table. He shut his eyes tight, either from exhaustion or to block out what he’d seen that evening. When I put a dish of cooked penne, steamed broccoli, and ragout in front of him, you’d have thought it was steak on the QE2.
“Oh my,” he said. “This looks wonderful.”
While he ate, I gave him an animated account of the rest of the day after he’d left, the reception, packing up with Julian, the visits from Marla, Jack, and Charlotte Attenborough. He shook his head and smiled briefly. But then the smile vanished.
“Can you tell me what kept you down at the department?” I asked.
“I can, but you can’t mention a word of it to anyone, especially that nosy lawyer godfather of yours.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Last night, a driver going west up the canyon spotted a reflection in the rain. Called in that she thought a vehicle might have gone off the road and landed down in that deep ravine where folks dump trash sometimes.”
“Yeah, I know the spot.” Despite the no dumping sign, people didn’t chuck their unwanted furniture and garbage down that hillside sometimes; they did it as a matter of routine.
“Last night, state patrol had their hands full with accidents in the rain, but they finally got around to checking that ravine. And there was Doc Finn’s Porsche Cayenne, on its side.”
“Did he slide off the road?”
“The mud has made it impossible to tell exactly what happened. But state patrol called us after they’d spent about an hour down in the ravine.”
The taste of acid filled my mouth.
“Somebody,” Tom continued as he pushed his plate away, “came down into the ravine and used a rock to break the driver’s-side window. It looks as if whoever the person was then used another rock, or something, to smash in Doc Finn’s skull.”
“The rocks couldn’t have come loose somehow, when the Porsche slid into the ravine?”
“No, Miss G. That’s why state patrol is good at what they do.” He shook his head. “Doc Finn was murdered.”
7
I slumped into the kitchen chair closest to Tom. My feet and hands were suddenly freezing. “So, what are they up to now, down at the department?”
“The ME’s been called. They’ll try to do the autopsy as soon as they can. And our department is analyzing the contents of Finn’s car, to see if that will give us any leads. There are only a couple of houses nearby, and our guys have canvassed the whole area. But nobody saw anything.”
“Do they have any idea where Doc Finn was going?”
“Yeah. He had his cell in the car. According to the Received Calls on there, he got a call from your godfather last night, but that went straight to voice mail. Before that, there was a longer call. It came around half past seven Wednesday night, from Southwest Hospital, from inside a patient’s room. He saw a neighbor as he was backing his car out of his driveway, and he said he was off to see an old patient. Only problem is, that room is on the maternity ward, and the patient in that room was out with her husband looking at their baby at the time. And she’s never been a patient of Doc Finn’s. She’s never even heard of him.”
“No security cameras recording the goings in and out of the patient’s room, I take it.”
“Nope. My gut tells me we’re talking about a clever killer here. Of course, during visiting hours there are all kinds of people in the hospital, so basically it could have been anyone.”
“Did Doc Finn even have any patients in Southwest Hospital at the time?”
“That’s something we’re checking on.”
I hugged my shoulders, but that couldn’t dispel the chill I was feeling. “You know Jack’s going to be devastated that his pal was murdered.”
Tom nodded. “I figured.”
“He really wanted to talk to you to night. He waited here a long time, wondering where you were, asking questions. Said when he hit a tree, remember, not long after he got here? State patrol handled the whole thing. He kept asking me why you were down at the department. It was almost as if he knew something was wrong with Doc Finn’s accident.”
Tom pulled out his small notebook. “Almost as if he knew something was wrong, huh?”
“Oh, Tom, for heaven’s sake. Doc Finn was Jack’s best friend.” My tone grew hot and defensive. “And anyway, Jack wanted to talk to you.”
Tom pushed his chair back from the table. “Well then, maybe we should oblige him. Care to take a walk across the street?”
“You’re going to interrogate my godfather?”
“I’m just going to ask him a few questions.”
“Tom!”
“Trust me, Goldy, your godfather is a wily old coot. He can read people the way preachers recite Bible verses. If he even sniffs this is an interrogation, he’ll lawyer up faster than you can say, Glory Be.”
I gritted my teeth and reached for my trench coat in the hall closet. While Tom waited for me on the porch, I felt a pang of guilt that we were going over to Jack’s with the intention of…well, what ever it was we were intending to do. I dashed back into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Sauternes, a little seventy-five-dollar-a-bottle number that a grateful client had given me. So far, I hadn’t had the heart to open it.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Tom asked me when I appeared on the porch with the wine.
“I’m taking Jack this bottle—”
“Put it back.”
“Can’t I just—?”
“Absolutely not. Y’ever hear of the old saying, ‘Beware the gift giver’?”
“I can give Jack something if I want to!” I retorted. “I just brought him bread this morning!”
“He sees us coming? With you holding that? He’ll think, Here comes Tom the cop with his wife, my godchild, and she’s holding a bottle of wine that she thinks she’s going to pimp me with, so I’ll tell them all the dirt on Doc Finn.”
“Tom!”
“You trust me on this, or not?”
Well, of couse I did. I put the bottle back. But I felt my nerves becoming even more frayed…and they’d been unraveling ever since Tom had arrived home.
“Tom, Gertie Girl, come in.” Jack’s tone was grateful as he opened his massive door, a large sculpted oak number that he had picked up at a salvage yard.