“Thanks, man,” Aaron says.
Hurley just nods. His scowl is gone and in fact, he looks downright chipper. I focus on keeping my expression neutral, hoping not to show how devastated I am by his actions.
“Yes, thanks, Hurley,” I echo, snapping my phone shut. “That was very sweet of you.”
“Anytime. Now if you folks will excuse me, I have some business to tend to.” With that, Hurley strides across the lobby and out the front door.
“I’m sure you folks have things to do as well,” Aaron says, “so I guess I’ll be going too. I’ll give you a call in a day or two, Mattie.”
“Sure. Okay.” I try to force a smile onto my face but it isn’t easy. On the inside, I’m one hormone release away from crying. Aaron walks over, gives me a quick buss on the cheek, and then follows Hurley’s path to the parking lot.
“Very interesting,” Izzy says as soon as the front door closes.
He is still grinning and I give him a hurtful look. “I’m so happy my agony amuses you,” I whine.
“Agony? Why are you in agony? You have two incredibly handsome, eligible bachelors interested in you. I should think you’d be dancing.”
“Apparently Hurley doesn’t give a crap who I date,” I pout. “He was more than happy to help the matchmaking along. And I doubt Aaron is seriously interested. I know his type. They like to play with a new toy every week or so. I doubt I’ll ever hear from him.”
“I doubt it, too,” Izzy agrees. “Especially since Hurley gave him the wrong number.”
I settle into the library, which is empty, and shut myself inside. I’m not sure if Hurley wanted me to know what he was doing when he gave out my number but the fact that I do has boosted my spirits considerably. Now all I have to do is decide whether or not to let him know that I know.
Putting those thoughts aside, I take out the recorder I retrieved from Carla and start playing it back. At first it seems pretty routine. I hear Nelson talking to Carla, offering her a cup of her favorite hot tea, and reviewing what they discussed at their last session. I feel a twinge of guilt, knowing how private this discussion is meant to be. Even though Carla has given me permission to listen to it, I still feel a little slimy doing so. Carla discusses the fact that she and her husband have been sleeping in separate bedrooms for several months, and when Nelson asks her how she feels about that, she offers up a one-word answer: “frustrated.”
Less than a minute later, just as I’m beginning to doubt my motives and hate myself for what I’m doing, the tone of the session takes a dramatic shift. Carla’s voice becomes slurred and muted. I hear Nelson call softly to her but her only response is a grunt. And then all I can hear are background noises; rustling, a sliding sound, a wet sound, heavy breathing, and more grunting. After a few minutes there is an odd, rhythmic noise followed by a distinctly male sound that is unmistakable.
I’m sitting on the edge of my seat now, my ear glued to the recorder. I start to feel ill and swallow hard, glad I haven’t eaten anything. The only sounds I can hear on the tape are more rustling and an occasional exertional type grunt. Then there are several minutes of relative silence where all I can hear are two people breathing.
Finally, some forty-five minutes into the session, I hear Nelson call to Carla again and this time she answers. Then they pick up their conversation where it left off.
I turn the recorder off and sit stunned for a moment, considering what I just heard. Suddenly Carla’s odd demeanor starts to make horrifying sense. I toss the recorder into my jacket pocket and quickly head for the parking lot.
Less than five minutes later I’m at Carla’s house but she doesn’t answer when I ring the bell. I peek through her garage windows and see that her car is gone. Frantic, I pull out my cell phone, ready to call Hurley. But before I can dial, the phone rings. It’s Izzy.
“Hello?” I answer impatiently.
“Where are you?” Izzy asks. He sounds a bit testy himself and I can’t say I blame him since I didn’t tell him I was leaving the office.
“I had an errand to run,” I say vaguely. “Sorry, I forgot to tell you.”
“Well, drop whatever you’re doing. We have a death to investigate and I figure you’ll want in on this one since it’s at the office of that shrink you dislike so much.”
Chapter 43
I drive the hearse as fast as I can toward Luke Nelson’s office. I’m in a state of panic and kicking myself for believing Carla when she told me she hadn’t listened to the tape and not recognizing the meaning behind her mood change. Of course she listened to the tape. How could she not? I’d been a fool to believe her.
Now I fear she has killed Luke Nelson, and while I am no fan of the man, particularly after what I heard on the tape, I feel somewhat responsible.
The usual crowd of onlookers and emergency vehicles are already on the scene and the entrance to Nelson’s office is being guarded by a uniformed police officer. There are two ambulances parked out front. One of them is empty and I assume the EMTs are inside, but the crew for the other rig is lounging around outside their rig.
I pull in behind the loungers and as I get out of my car, one of the EMTs says, “You’re a bit premature, aren’t you?”
I know most of the EMTs in town from working at the hospital, but this guy is a new face. I give him a puzzled look and say, “Why do you say that? Isn’t there a death here?”
“Well, yeah,” he says in a manner that makes it clear dumbass should follow. I adore our local EMTs but this newbie clearly has a bit of an attitude. “But the ME’s office hasn’t even arrived yet so I don’t think they’re going to let you take the body.”
“I am the ME’s office,” I tell him, using my own you nitwit inflection.
He looks confused for a moment and glances from me to my car and then back to me again. And suddenly I understand. I keep forgetting that my car is now a hearse.
“That’s a little tasteless, isn’t it?” he says, nodding toward the car.
Newbie has picked the wrong time to screw with me. “You want to know what’s tasteless, buddy?” I snap at him. “Tasteless is hanging around a crime scene when you’re obviously not needed just so you can gawk at the dead bodies. Now why don’t you get your ass out of here? Your village is missing its idiot.”
Newbie looks stunned by my outburst, causing me a nanosecond of regret before my larger misgivings take priority. As Newbie backs away from me and climbs into his rig, Izzy pulls up and parks behind my hearse. My guilt over Carla must be apparent because as soon as Izzy gets out of his car, he says, “What’s wrong?”
“I think it may be my fault that Luke Nelson is dead,” I tell him sotto voce.
“He’s not,” he says, closing his car door and heading for Nelson’s office. This response is so far from what I expected, I’m rendered speechless. I fall in behind him and, because the length of my one stride equals nearly three of his and I’m so wildly distracted by all the questions racing through my mind, I nearly run him over twice along the way.
Even though I now have reason to believe the world would be a much better place if Nelson wasn’t in it, I’m relieved he isn’t dead. Not only because of my own guilt but because I want to see him suffer. Death would be much too easy an escape for him.
I start to relax a little when I realize I’ve jumped to some pretty incongruous conclusions about Carla. I assumed that if she wasn’t home, she would be here. But she could be anywhere. Maybe she didn’t listen to the tape after all. Maybe her strange attitude earlier really was due to a lack of sleep, like she said.