“Well, you might as well have told him. How the hell was I supposed to know what you did or didn’t reveal? Once he made it clear that you’d told him Karen was there that night, I assumed you’d told him everything. So I admitted to the argument before I realized he didn’t know about it. You love making me look like a fool, don’t you?”
“You seem to be pretty good at that all by yourself.” I am tired of bucking his accusations, defending myself when I haven’t done anything wrong. So I decide to turn the tables on him. “Why didn’t you tell me Karen was pregnant?”
His face falls and he looks away, scanning the room as a muscle twitches violently in his jaw.
“I wasn’t sure if you knew,” he says finally, killing my hope that he hadn’t known. He turns and looks at me. “She told me about it that night, the night she died. That was the first I heard of it and, to be honest, I wasn’t sure I believed her. And I figured that even if she was pregnant, I couldn’t be sure it was mine. I always used protection. I didn’t want to endanger my health. Or yours.”
“How very considerate of you,” I say snidely, not missing the fact that my safety was thrown in there as an afterthought. “You know as well as I do that nothing is 100 percent perfect, David.”
“The point is, I think she was sleeping with someone else,” David says feebly.
“Who?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not sure. But when I tried to get into one of the on-call sleep rooms one night, it was locked and I could hear…you know…sounds…heavy breathing and grunting coming from inside. Later, I saw Karen come out of that same room carrying a pile of sheets and the bed in the room had been stripped. But whoever she was with must have already left because there was no one else in there.”
“When was this?”
David furrows his brow as he thinks and I feel a funny little ache as I remember how endearing that gesture used to be to me. “I’m not sure,” he says, “but I believe it was after you moved out.”
“Do you know who was on call that night?”
“Yep, it was Arthur Henley. But it couldn’t have been him in the room because he was in an OR at the time along with Cary Snyder, working on a multiple trauma that came in through the ER.”
“Regardless, it doesn’t change the fact that the baby might have been yours, does it?” I say flatly.
David’s shoulders sink and his whole body sags. He drops his gaze to the floor, no longer able to look me in the eye. “No,” he says wearily. “It doesn’t.”
“I heard that Karen had some kind of investment scheme she was working on with some of the docs. Do you know what it was?”
“Investments? No idea.” He looks away as he answers and I know he is lying.
“Right,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “Now who’s telling lies?”
I leave him standing there and work my way to the middle of the room, watching the crowd. There’s another tap on my shoulder and I whirl around in anger thinking David is back for more, but instead I find myself face-to-face with Alison Miller, Sorenson’s ace reporter. She is wearing a knee-length red dress made out of some shimmery material that looks great with her olive skin and dark hair. The effect is somewhat diminished, however, by the camera she has hanging around her neck. Alison never goes anywhere without a camera.
“Hello, Alison.”
“Hey, Mattie. Saw you chatting with David. What’s the scoop? I hear he spent the night in the lockup.”
“He did.”
“What was the charge?”
I give Alison a sardonic look. “Like you don’t already know,” I say.
She laughs. “One of the first things they teach you in any journalism class is to always verify your information. I just want to make sure all the facts jibe.”
“I don’t want to talk about David.”
“Okay. How about that new detective, Steve Hurley?”
I can’t help but notice the slightly breathless tone in her voice. “What about him?”
“Is he a hunk, or what?” she says, fanning herself. “I mean the guy is seriously cute! He’s got great buns and those long, long legs. And the eyes! My God, those eyes! Bluer than my morning glories.”
This isn’t good at all. It looks as if Izzy was right—Alison is sniffing around Hurley for more than just news. “Hurley also has a full head of hair, Alison,” I point out. “I thought you went for bald guys.”
“That was last year. This year I’m into hair. And I wouldn’t mind running my fingers through those locks of Hurley’s. Yum, yum.”
Fickle wench. “Try to control yourself, Alison. You’re going to start drooling in a minute.”
She laughs again. “I know but I just can’t help it. That guy makes me crazy. Don’t you think he’s gorgeous?”
“He’s okay, I suppose.” I utter this with great nonchalance, trying to look bored. No way am I going to let Alison know that I want to rip her eyes out.
“Okay? Just okay? You must be in shock over this David thing, Mattie.”
“Whatever.” I let my gaze drift off into the crowd, the perfect image of indifference.
“Well, I’ve got a date with Mr. Gorgeous next Friday night,” Alison says.
“A date?” I screech, my head whipping back around to her. So much for indifference. “With Hurley?”
“Yup. I can’t wait.”
Man, how I want to wipe that smug smile off her face. “Where is he taking you?”
“I don’t know. Dinner somewhere. If I’m lucky, it will be at his place.” She wiggles her eyebrows a few times and gives me a little nudge with her elbow. And suddenly I see it in my mind: an intimate little dinner for two with Alison and Hurley making goo-goo eyes at one another over a candlelit table. I feel like crying.
“Oh, look,” Alison says, pointing across the room. “There’s the mayor. Photo op! Gotta run.”
She disappears into the crowd while I try to obliterate the image of her and Hurley from my mind. I remind myself that I am here for a reason. I have people to see, things to find out, doctors to talk to. I scan the room, searching out the faces I need as I tap into my knowledge of the surgeons.
Table talk, as OR chatter is sometimes called, can range from golf techniques and the latest film releases to last night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy. It often invites the occasional personal revelation as well. Thus, I often knew who had a happy marriage and who didn’t, who was sleeping with someone else and who was merely thinking about it…a fact that made the irony of not knowing these facts about my own husband much more bitter.
In the past, my insider knowledge has led to some awkward situations when I found myself sharing a social circle with the other wives. But I played my role well over the years, listening but never blabbing. This only strengthened the surgeons’ trust in me, and with that trust came more knowledge.
Consequently, I am currently armed with enough ammunition to do some serious damage to several of them. It is ammunition I am holding in reserve, only to be used if I’m desperate to get them to talk to me. For I can’t be sure how they’ll treat me now that I’m no longer an insider.
I move three names to the top of my mental list, two of them, Mick Dunn and Arthur Henley, because I know they have slept with women other than their wives. The third name on my list is Sidney Carrigan’s. While I’m not aware of any infidelities on Sidney’s part, the mere fact that he has piles of money makes him a likely target for any investment scheme Karen might have cooked up. Plus, I feel that Sidney, more than any of the others, will still talk to me. We’ve always gotten along extremely well.
Sidney is in his early fifties, tall and slender, and has avoided the paunch some of his contemporaries have succumbed to. His hair is dark but graying at the temples, his features strong and patrician. His family money is evident in his impeccable manners, the expensive cut of his suits, and his air of confidence and privilege. He rubs elbows with the rich and famous on a regular basis and rumor has it he is even close friends with Steven Spielberg.