“Can’t you just go barelegged?” Izzy whines. “We’re already ten minutes late. And none of the clothing stores are going to be open at this hour.”
“I can’t go to this thing barelegged. It’s October. Not only would I freeze to death, it’s an absolute fashion faux pas.” The freezing part is a minor exaggeration. While it is true that my legs might feel a little cold, panty hose aren’t likely to make a big difference. Besides, my tolerance for cold has always been pretty high. Having a layer of blubber does provide for a few advantages.
“A fashion faux pas?” Izzy echoes, his tone reeking with irony as he steers me out the door and to his car. “My, my. Aren’t you a regular Martha Stewart.”
“As if Martha Stewart knows anything about fashion,” I sneer. “She has an entire closet filled with denim shirts.”
“You’re just jealous. I think she’s an amazing woman,” Izzy taunts.
“She’s not a woman. She’s an alien life form.”
“Hey, just because you’re not woman enough.”
“Oh, puh-lease,” I shoot back. “Just because I don’t spend all day spray-painting pine cones or making hors d’oeuvres out of phyllo dough and cocktail weenies doesn’t mean I’m not a woman. Hell, even Martha doesn’t do that stuff. She has an entire corporation of employees who do it for her. I’m telling you, the woman’s a total fraud. I’d suggest she hang herself, but I don’t think I have the patience to wait for her to grow some hemp so she can make her own rope.”
I realize we are already halfway to the hospital. “Hey, pull in to the Quik-E-Mart up here, would you?” I say. “I saw a rack of panty hose when I was in there the other day.”
Izzy hits the brakes so hard that the vehicle behind us, a gray-and-burgundy van, has to swerve onto the shoulder to keep from rear-ending us.
All the Quik-E-Mart has for panty hose is a generic brand with the world’s biggest lie stamped on the front of the package: ONE SIZE FITS ALL. I pay for them and dash back out to the car.
Izzy peels out as I kick off my shoes and go through an array of gymnastic contortions trying to get the panty hose on. By the time I’m done, I have an indentation in the middle of my forehead from the button on the glove box, a cramp in my thigh that makes me want to cut my leg off, and a panty hose waistband that is currently riding somewhere in the region of my pubic bone. I give Izzy a dirty look as he tries, unsuccessfully, to suppress his laughter.
“You’re a misogynistic creep,” I tell him.
“Au contraire,” he protests. “I adore women. They are the most entertaining creatures I’ve ever encountered. Just because I don’t want to sleep with them doesn’t mean I don’t like them.”
When we arrive at the hospital, I manage to squeeze myself out of the car and do a quick tug-pull-wiggle maneuver to get my hose in the best possible position. I stretch the material as far as it will go but as we walk toward the entrance, I can feel them slipping downward as the material contracts back to its normal size. I try minimizing my leg movement as I walk, hoping that might slow their descent.
Inside the hospital auditorium, a crowd of a hundred or more has already gathered. I hang my shawl on a nearby coat rack and then scan the room, marking my potential targets for the evening.
Sidney Carrigan and Arthur Henley—the other general surgeons in Sorenson besides David—are huddled in a corner with Joe Weegan, an internist. Cary Snyder, a plastics man who has sucked the thighs and bellies of at least half the women in the snooty neighborhood along Lakeside Drive, is chatting by the punch bowl with Mick Dunn, whose specialty is orthopedics. David is here, too, apparently none the worse from his overnight stay in a jail cell. He looks frighteningly handsome in his dark suit as he laughs at something he’s just heard from Garrett Solange, a neurosurgeon and one of David’s closest friends.
I recognize other faces, too, doctors whose specialties only occasionally involve surgery, like the OB/GYN and pediatric docs—a couple of whom are women—and the urology guys. I mentally add them to my list of targets, but put them at the bottom. If Karen Owenby had something going on with doctors who worked in the OR, I figure I’ll have a better chance of finding out what it is if I question the “regulars.”
I lean over to share my thoughts with Izzy only to discover that he has disappeared. I figure there’s no sense wasting any time and zero in on the corner where Sidney, Arthur, and Joe are standing. But just as I take my first step, someone grabs my arm and yanks me back. I turn around and find myself face-to-face with David, and suddenly, looking at the expression on his face, it isn’t hard to imagine him as a killer.
Chapter 17
David hauls me off toward an exit and I go along willingly for a few steps, mainly to avoid a scene. But when it looks like he is going to drag me outside, I put on the brakes and shake his hand loose of my arm.
“If you have something to say to me, David, say it here.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me? You deliberately sandbagged me!”
“What are you talking about?”
“That detective, Harley—”
“Hurley?”
“Whatever,” he says irritably. “He said someone told him they’d seen me entering Karen’s house on the night she was killed. And since I wasn’t there, it’s a boldfaced lie. Who else besides you would have a reason to say something like that?”
I stare at him, incredulous. “You really think I’d lie about something that serious? Why? Just to settle some imagined score or give myself some slight advantage over you in the divorce?”
“You said it, not me,” David hisses through his teeth. “And being tried for murder isn’t what I’d call a slight advantage. Christ, I know you’re pissed, Mattie, but I never thought you’d stoop this low.”
“I didn’t.”
“Bullshit,” he says loudly, louder than he meant apparently because he flinches, takes a quick glance around, then leans in closer and drops his voice. “Why would someone make up a lie like that? I wasn’t there, Mattie. So why would someone say I was? What could anyone possibly have to gain by doing that? Anyone other than you, that is,” he adds with a sneer.
“Damn it, David. I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. And frankly I’m surprised you think I would.”
“Are you trying to tell me you aren’t pissed as hell with me? That you wouldn’t do anything to pay me back for the hurt I’ve caused you?”
I suck in a deep breath and try to calm myself before I speak. “Yes, David. I’m trying to tell you that I’m not pissed at you. Oh, I was. You’re absolutely right about that. I was righteously pissed when I discovered you and Karen that night. But I’m over it. Way over it. Right now all I feel toward you is overwhelming indifference. With a little pity thrown in for good measure.”
I can tell from his face that I’ve succeeded in wounding him, and for a brief moment I feel triumphant. Then I remember that I once loved this man and thought we would spend the rest of our lives together. God, how I want to believe him, to believe that he is innocent and that he still cares. But he’s lied to me before and I just can’t make myself believe in him now.
“Glad to see Lucien got you out of jail,” I say with all sincerity, thinking it might lighten his mood.
“No thanks to you.”
“I had to tell the truth, David.”
“Is that all you told? Or did you throw in a few lies, too?”
“Actually, all I told Hurley was that I saw Karen and you together on the night she was killed. I didn’t tell him you were fighting, or that Karen slapped your face.”