“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
I hang up and make a quick scan of my fridge for something of my own to take along and eat while I’m there, but despite my love of food, I’m not much of a cook. My idea of a home prepared meal is when I set the table before the delivery guy shows up. The best I can come up with for now is a half-eaten tub of cottage cheese and some strawberry jam. I hastily toss the two together in the cottage cheese container, and shove it and a spoon in my purse.
Five minutes later I pull into the parking lot of a small strip mall that contains a karate school, a mail store, one of those dollar stores, and Dr. Luke Nelson’s counseling services. Not the most auspicious location but perhaps it’s only meant to be temporary.
The front room of the office is set up as a small waiting area with a smattering of chairs, a couple of end tables, and one coffee table bearing a dozen or so out-of-date magazines. A sign on the wall by the door at the back of the room instructs visitors to take a seat and wait for the doctor. The chairs look worn and used and it makes me wonder just how well Dr. Nelson is doing. Given his self-proclaimed busy schedule, I expected something a little classier.
At the moment, the back room door is open and I get my first look at Luke Nelson as he gets up from behind a desk and walks out to greet me. He’s a tall and relatively handsome man, with a head of thick blond hair, blue eyes, and the slender build of a runner. He’s wearing glasses but, rather than making him look bookish or nerdy, they combine with his rather patrician features to lend him an air of sophistication and casual intelligence.
“Ms. Winston, I presume?” he says, and I note that his voice has the practiced smoothness I’ve come to associate with most people in his profession. It’s supposed to sound objective, encouraging, and soothing, but to me it always sounds as if there’s a hint of oily slickness in there.
I walk over and extend my hand. He takes it, and though his handshake is just the right amount of firm and friendly, his skin is cool and clammy.
“Thank you for taking the time to meet with me,” I tell him, pulling my hand back and resisting an urge to wipe it on my pants. “I’ll try to be as brief as I can.”
He glances at his watch and says, “Well, you have a little over half an hour. Come on into my office.”
I follow him into the adjacent room, which is furnished with the same worn, well-used-looking furniture I saw in the waiting area. A desk—bearing the half-eaten remains of a Subway sandwich—and a high-backed office chair are set against the back wall. There is a computer on one side of the desk and the other end holds a stack of charts, leaving Nelson and his lunch in the opening in the middle. A smaller, upholstered chair sits on the opposite side of the desk, angled so that it looks toward the side wall of the room. A bookcase filled with a variety of hefty medical tomes covers the wall to my left, topped off by what appears to be an artificial plant. To my right there is an open door leading into another room. The glimpse I get of this adjacent area is a bit of a surprise. I see a cushy-looking stuffed leather chair, a comfy couch, what appears to be a Tiffany floor lamp, and a tasteful but expensive-looking Persian rug. Clearly the bulk of Nelson’s expenses have gone into his consultation room, which I have to admit looks cozy and welcoming.
He gestures toward the chair in front of his desk and then settles into the larger one behind it. “I hope you don’t mind if I finish eating,” he says, picking up his sandwich and taking a bite, making it clear that it doesn’t matter to him whether I mind or not.
“Not at all,” I say, setting my purse on the floor. “In fact, I brought along something myself and if you don’t mind, I’ll join you.” I fish my container of cottage cheese and my spoon out of my purse. Playing at his own game, I rip the top off the container and have a spoonful at the ready in seconds. I think I see the hint of a smile on his face as I shove the concoction into my mouth, but it’s there and gone so fast I can’t be sure.
He swallows but my mouth freezes midbite as I realize my cottage cheese is one step away from being rancid. Belatedly I glance at the freshness date and see that it came and went well over two weeks ago. I force myself to swallow what I have and set the rest of it aside.
“So,” I say, wishing I had thought to bring something to drink, “tell me about your relationship with Shannon Tolliver.”
He arches one brow at me. “Well, no one can accuse you of beating around the bush. What happened to her is truly tragic.” He tries to look the part but it feels forced. “There isn’t much to say, really. I liked her. She was a very attractive lady. We went out a few times but it wasn’t a real steady thing. In fact, I hadn’t seen her for a week or so before her death.”
“How long were you dating her?”
He looks up at the ceiling a moment, then says, “Off and on for a couple of months.”
“Were you intimate?” I expect to startle him with this question, but I’m disappointed.
“Yes, though not at first,” he answers without hesitation.
“And were you exclusive? Or were you seeing someone else?”
He stares at me for a few seconds, then further delays his answer by picking up his sandwich and taking another bite. Given that he didn’t blush or hesitate in the least when answering the intimacy question, I’m curious as to why this one would throw him. It’s apparent he wasn’t expecting it.
He chews slowly, swallows, and then says with a smile, “I don’t really see how my dating life outside of Shannon is material to your investigation.”
“Where were you on the night Shannon was killed?”
“Let’s see. That was Friday, wasn’t it?”
I nod.
“I came into work around ten in the morning and did my usual chart reviews. Then I had patient appointments every hour from noon to six. I took an hour for dinner here in my office and made some phone calls. I ordered a pizza, so I’m certain that can be verified, as can the phone calls. Then from seven to eight-thirty I headed up a group therapy session here. After that I went to Somewhere until one o’clock or so.”
I start to ask for clarification on the somewhere but then realize he means the bar.
“Then I went home to bed.”
I nod thoughtfully. “It should be easy enough to check on the bar and the pizza delivery,” I tell him, realizing his alibis cover our new window of time for Shannon’s murder, “but I’d like verification of the appointments from your patients.”
He makes a frowny face and says, “Well, I’ll have to ask my patients for permission first. Confidentiality and all that, you know.”
“Of course. I don’t need to know why they were here, just that they were, and that they saw you.”
“I’ll see what I can do but it may take me some time. I don’t have an office assistant so I’ll have to contact each patient myself in between appointments.”
Clearly he is running the office on a pretty tight budget. It makes me curious about his past. “You’ve been here what . . . six months or so?”
He nods. “Yes, give or take a week.”
“Where were you before you came here?”
“Florida.”
“Wow, that’s quite a change. What made you move up here?”
“I didn’t like the heat and humidity. Plus I grew up in the Midwest.”
“Here?”
“Indiana.”
He is being careful to answer my questions with the bare minimum of information, offering nothing extra. Though it could be nothing more than good old-fashioned Midwestern reserve, I suspect he is being intentionally cautious and wonder why.