“Tell us about the car,” Officer Boxx inquired. “It
was a beige medium-sized sedan. Any idea how old or
what make?”
“Very clean,” Renie answered, “so I thought it was
fairly new. It was shaped like so many cars these days,
especially the Japanese imports. Bill and I have a Toyota,
about the same color as the car I saw. In fact, our car
looks like every other car these days. Sometimes I get
mixed up in a parking lot and try to get into the wrong
one. My husband and I call our Toyota Cammy. Except
Bill says Cammy is a boy. I don’t agree. Cammy’s a girl.”
“Can’t you tell by looking underneath?” Torchy
laughed aloud at his joke.
“I never thought of that,” Renie said with a straight
face and a flashing eye.
“License plate,” Boxx put in. “Did you get any kind
of look?”
“Ah . . .” Renie bit her lip. “I didn’t notice.”
The young policeman frowned. “Do you remember
if it had in-state plates?”
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Her eyes half closed, Renie seemed to be concentrating. “Yes, I think so. I can see it from the rear as it
headed toward the parking lot. I’m a very visual person.”
“Huh?” said Torchy.
“I’m a designer, an artist by trade,” Renie explained.
“I see more than most people do, but sometimes I don’t
realize it until later.”
“But you didn’t see any letters or numbers,” the policeman prompted.
“No.” Renie looked chagrined.
“So this car went where after hitting Mr. Kirby?”
Torchy inquired.
“Toward the parking lot,” Renie replied. “You can’t
see much of the lot because of those evergreen trees
and shrubs. Anyway, I was riveted on Mr. Kirby.”
“How is he?” Judith broke in.
“Kirby?” Torchy turned around. “Broken leg,
bruises and so forth. Kid stuff.” The security guard
touched his head, presumably where he’d been shot.
“He’ll live.”
“That’s more than his wife did,” Renie declared.
“She never got out of this place alive.”
“Now, now,” Torchy said in a soothing tone. “That
was a different matter.”
“How different?” Judith asked.
“Well,” Torchy began, then paused and scratched his
bald spot, “she had an operation. And then . . . well,
maybe she was taking some stuff on the side. You
know.” He winked again.
“Actually,” Renie said, “we don’t know. Mr. Kirby
doesn’t think his wife was taking ‘stuff on the side.’
Have you talked to him, Security Officer Magee?”
Torchy gave a little jump. “Me? Why, sure. That’s
SUTURE SELF
85
my job. But what do husbands know about what wives
do when they’re not with the old man?” He winked a
third time. “Or the other way around, for that matter.
Besides, she was an actress. You know what those theater people are like.”
Renie held up a hand. “If you wink again, I’ll
have to kill you. Yes, I know something about theater people. But the real question is, what do you
know about the untimely deaths of three well-known
local residents in this very hospital? Isn’t that your
business?”
Johnny Boxx had strolled to the door, maybe, Judith
thought, in an effort to disassociate himself from
Torchy Magee. “If you think of anything else,” Boxx
said to Renie in a courteous voice, “let us know.” It was
clear he meant the police, not security.
“I will,” Renie promised.
Torchy lingered after Officer Boxx went out into the
hall. “Let me know first,” he said to Renie, his jocular
manner evaporating.
“Sure,” Renie said, her brown eyes wide with innocence.
Judith pushed herself up on the pillows. “Drugs,
huh?” she said in a conspiratorial tone. “Fremont and
Somosa both, I heard. And Bob Randall committed
suicide. How horrible.”
Torchy’s close-set gray eyes narrowed. “Where’d
you hear all that?”
Judith shrugged. “Hospital scuttlebutt. You know
how people like to gossip.”
The security man, who had been midway to the
door, stopped at the foot of Judith’s bed. “Don’t pay attention to what you hear. Of course,” he went on,
lightly caressing the iron bedstead rail, “sometimes
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Mary Daheim
truth has a way of getting out.” Once again, Torchy
winked.
“That’s so,” Judith said, smirking a bit and ignoring
Renie, who was making threatening gestures at Torchy
with her cheese knife. “It’s hard to imagine why Bob
Randall would kill himself. It’s even harder to imagine
how he did it.” She gave a little shudder, which wasn’t
entirely feigned.
Torchy frowned. “I’m not sure I know yet. That is, I
couldn’t say if I did, of course. That’d be telling tales
out of school.” Torchy gave the bedstead a quick slap.
“Gotta go. No rest for the wicked.”
The security man left. The cousins stared at each
other.
“What do you think?” Renie inquired.
“I think,” Judith said slowly as her eyelids began to
droop, “that no matter how Bob Randall died, it wasn’t
suicide. I’m willing to bet that it was . . .”
She fell asleep before she could finish the sentence.
SIX
JOE AND BILL arrived shortly after three o’clock.
Both had already heard about Bob Randall’s sudden
death. Joe was wild; Bill was thoughtful.
“I don’t get it,” Joe raged, pacing up and down the
small room. “There’s nowhere you can go in this entire world and not run into a dead body. If I shot myself right now with my trusty thirty-eight, and you
entered a cloistered nunnery tomorrow, the first
thing you’d find is the Mother Superior’s corpse,
carved up like a damned chicken!”
“Joe,” Judith pleaded, “you know I was apprehensive even before . . .”
“Post-op anxiety, depression, fear—it could play
out that way,” Bill was saying quietly to Renie, “but
I doubt it. On the other hand . . .”
“I’ll have you moved,” Joe said, suddenly stopping between the cousins’ beds. “To some rehab
place; I think there’s one connected to our
HMO . . .”
“. . . Bob Randall may have been overcome with
family difficulties,” Bill continued. “Maybe, when
he signed that release before surgery, he envisioned
his own mortality and . . .”
“No, what am I thinking of?” Joe said, catching
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himself. “There’d still be a damned body somewhere.
It’s hopeless, it’s beyond comprehension, it’s . . .”
“. . . given his other problems, Randall felt his life
was unbearable.” Bill turned his palms up in a helpless
gesture.
Judith turned toward Bill. “What did you say? About
Bob Randall’s family problems?”
Bill gave Judith a vaguely apologetic look. “Sorry. I
shouldn’t have mentioned it. You see, I’ve been treating Margie Randall for some time.”
“What?” Both cousins shrieked at Bill.
“Good God almighty!” Joe exclaimed under his
breath and fell into Judith’s visitor’s chair.
“You never mentioned Bob Randall’s wife as a patient,” Renie said in an accusing tone.
“Of course not,” Bill replied calmly. “I don’t disclose my patients’ identities to you unless it’s someone