Читать книгу The Secret Lives of Doctors' Wives - Ann Major, Ann Major - Страница 13

A former linebacker for the University of Texas A&M, Joe Benson loomed behind his polished mahogany desk like a sleek, dark bear who looked slightly embarrassed to find himself all dressed up in a three-piece power suit. He had hooded black eyes, heavy brows and a strong jaw. His glossyblack hair might have curled if hadn’t been clipped so close to his scalp. Not that his hushed office, his attire or his military haircut were enough to dispel Rosie’s feeling that he wasn’t quite tame. Still, at least he was sober.

“So, how long have you been living with Yolie?” he asked, his curious voice oddly soft for so large a man.

Control. This man was into control. Just like Pierce had been.

“I don’t see what that has to do with—”

“Right. It’s just that she’s such a great woman.” His eyes lit for a second or two at some forbidden memory before he caught himself.

“Yolie told me you two used to date before you married Bridget and adopted Jennifer.”

“Did she now?” His smile was quick and a little uneasy. Then his cheeks reddened and the smile vanished.

No way would Rosie repeat what Yolie had said on the matter.

I never could figure out whether he was attracted to me or to my big house and money. He’s extremely ambitious, you see, but then that’s what makes him good at what he does.

“Well, no hard feelings. Bridget’s great, and Yolie’s like a sister to me now,” Joe said, a little edgily.

Bridget was an ice cream heiress with a large fortune. Joe was her fourth husband. Yolie said Bridget, who seemed all fluff, had had him sign an airtight prenup.

“Yolie mentioned you were in some sort of a jam.”

“Well…not yet. Hopefully, not ever.”

“If I were you, I’d trust her judgment. What’s wrong?”

Without further preamble, Rosie told him about her involvement with Austin’s front-page murder victim. She repeated a few of the most damning things she’d said to everybody about her revenge fantasies. Joe’s frown deepened when she told him about her bra and panties.

When she finished, he propped his big brown hands together and leaned forward. “Rule number one. Don’t say anything to the police unless I’m there.”

“But don’t they have the right to question me?”

He held a finger against his lips and shook his head. “You let me worry about doing right by the police, little girl. All you need is rule number one.”

Little girl? She was forty. Not that she was about to admit her age.

“But…”

At his dark frown, she fell silent. She hated it when terrified patients and their families kept asking her the same questions over and over again.

“I don’t like it that you know Nash, who’s in charge. Or that he took the call about your missing granddaughter. You dumped him, you said. Judging from the time frame, he’d already been at the scene. Obviously, he was suspicious. He could be holding a grudge.”

“From high school?”

“Did you kill the good doctor?” Joe asked, his eyes boring into her, which gave her a worse feeling than when he’d pinched her.

“Of course not!”

“You just told everybody in this town you wanted to.”

“I was joking.”

“A lot of people are going to think it’s odd that you saw him the same night he was murdered. That’s quite a coincidence. Cops don’t like coincidences. Neither do juries.”

Rosie squirmed as droplets of perspiration tickled her spine. “If I had stabbed him, trust me, I would have aimed a lot lower.”

Benson winced. “I wouldn’t share that with anybody else. Understand?” After her nod, he sucked in a long breath. “So, is there anything more you think you should tell me before we call it a day?”

Again she remembered being panicked in her Beamer that night, racing past the fancy houses carved into the limestone cliffs and oak trees of Westlake Hills, each fake palazzo more outrageously posh and ridiculously overdone than the last one—mock Tudors with skylights, Tuscan villas constructed out of plywood.

“Any little detail? A car parked out back? A cigarette butt on the drive? Anything?”

She remembered how she’d heard something in the next room when Pierce had been about to make love to her. She’d made him go check it out, so she could run. But why load Benson down with too much information?

“There is something?” he said, seeing through her.

“Not really.”

He insisted that they go over everything again. Their meeting went fifteen minutes longer than the designated hour, but he never hurried her. Why would he, at his hourly rate? He simply listened, nodding thoughtfully from time to time, looking increasingly dissatisfied as she repeated her story. Once in a while he jotted a note to himself.

She finished with a question. “Is it okay if I go to his memorial service?”

He sat up straighter and shook his head. “I think you should be as inconspicuous as possible. Do what you normally do. Don’t change your habits. Don’t act too interested in this case.”

“That’s going to be hard.”

“Go to work as usual. Since you weren’t in his life on a regular basis before his death, I wouldn’t go to the service. Oh, and watch your mouth from now on. And I’d avoid reading the papers.”

How could she act like she wasn’t involved, when she was? Pierce had deliberately drawn her into his life again. Why? Had he been afraid? Had he known who was in the next bedroom? Had he known he was in danger? Had he been protecting her? Himself? Or had he really wanted her? Was that why he’d been so angry when she’d accused him of using her in his marriage battles?

When Joe pushed back his chair, she got up silently.

He came around the desk and took her hand. She felt lighter, somehow, after talking to him. It was as if she’d seen a priest and confessed.

Her relief was unwarranted. So far, he’d done nothing but listen. But then the most important emotions in people’s lives were often based on illusions, like her messy relationship with Pierce.

She let Joe pat her hand even though she wanted to yank it away. “You tell Yolie I said hello, you hear? And call me first thing when Detective Nash contacts you.”

“You really think he’ll—”

“With any luck he’s got the murder weapon and the murderer behind bars as we speak.”

“But if he doesn’t—”

“Sooner or later he’ll send a man with a badge to knock on your door. When he does—”

“Rule number one,” she replied meekly, even as she wondered if she should wear gold beads to Pierce’s memorial service.

No, severe white cuffs against black would have just the right stark touch; as would her two-carat, fake-diamond ring. No way could she appear ringless around all his ex-wives, who had so many carats they could barely lift their hands.

“If only all the rest of my clients were as obedient as you,” Joe said.

She smiled, and he grinned as if he was very pleased with himself.

No sooner had Rosie stepped out of the firm’s offices than she was rethinking Benson’s advice.

Not go? She’d never forgive herself if she didn’t go to Pierce’s service.

Rosie was shaking her head back and forth as she observed Yolie’s reflection.

“Okay, sweetie. You win.” Yolie looked glum as she replaced her red frilly dress in the closet and pulled out a sober black one.

“Good decision,” Rosie said. “You did say that, in situations like this, appearances are everything.”

Yolie’s scowl deepened at being bested with her own words. She looked very cross indeed as she unzipped the more conservative choice and stepped into it.

“Happy? I look like a nun now,” she growled as she turned toward Rosie. “A F-A-T nun. I wish you’d be as smart as me and do what Joe told you to do.”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t go to Pierce’s memorial service. I was engaged to him!”

“Not something to brag about, sweetie! And it’s just too damn bad for you everybody in this burg knows it.”

“And I was there at his house right before—”

“That’s the point! Nobody is supposed to suspect that, you obsessed idiot! You need to lie low. Book a session with Nan or maybe catch a movie.”

Rosie guessed now wasn’t the time to confess she’d just canceled her session with Nan because it conflicted with Pierce’s service. And she didn’t plan to make any more appointments, either.

Where had therapy gotten her, anyway? She was forty, single, a slumlord, and now possibly a murder suspect. It was time she realized she was a grown-up in the big, bad world, time to come to grips with the fact she had to fly solo.

“I want to know who killed him. I feel…like since I was there, I’m somehow responsible. Maybe I should have looked around downstairs. Maybe I could have prevented—”

“And what if you had? Then you’d be in a cardboard box today, about to be sprinkled on your favorite mountaintop, too.”

“You could have a small point,” Rosie conceded.

“So, let’s look at this from the bright side. You got what you wanted. He’s dead. So, forget about him. And quit reading all those newspaper stories.”

“I have this feeling I’ve missed something, and that I should make it right.”

“Let it go. Let him go. Use that overdose of compassion and curiosity you were born with on your patients. Folks who stick long noses into hot flames get nose hairs singed.”

“Right,” Rosie said, looking down at her watch. “But if you don’t hurry, we’ll be late.”

“You’re still going? Did you hear anything I said?”

When she straightened and began buttoning the white cuffs of her black dress, Yolie let out a howl. “Lady Long-nose, you bought a new dress! You did!”

Fortunately, Darius and Todd honked from the drive just then, distracting her. Yolie raised the window and hollered down to them to hold their horses, she’d come when she was damn well ready.

“So, you finally convinced them to go,” Rosie said.

“Not easy, let me tell you. They’re as hardheaded as their father. Would you button my neck?” As she turned her back to Rosie, Yolie began spritzing her golden hair so that it stood on end. “Pierce was hardly the saintly father the papers made him out to be. But how would it look if his sons didn’t go?”

She picked up her purse and scooted out the door. “There’s nothing like death to turn us into hypocrites, is there? I’ll be so glad when this is over and I can quit pretending I’m a grieving ex-wife. Weird role, isn’t it?”

Over? Rosie’s temples grew hot as a weird sensation of panic swamped her. Feeling hopeless, she trailed Yolie down the stairs.

When would it be over—for her?