Murder Can Spoil Your Appetite (31 page)

“I wasn’t that badly hurt, honestly,” I said in my most soothing manner. “I was feeling pretty rotten, though, and I just wasn’t up to getting in touch with anyone. But I’m doing a lot better now,” I hurriedly put in. “In fact, I intended to make a few quick calls immediately after dinner—you being at the very top of my list, of course. Umm, and speaking of dinner, Jackie, I just sat down to eat. Why don’t I phone you in the morning when I’ll really have time to talk.”

“Never mind. I’m coming right over—and don’t tell me not to. You can certainly use a hand. I’ll bring you a copy of the
Post,
too, in case you haven’t seen it.”

“Look, you’re a doll for wanting to help, but Lou—the police lieutenant I’ve been partnering with in Riverton—is here. And we’ll be having kind of a working session.”

“Oh.” She sounded deflated. “Are you sure you’re up to that?”

“Actually, it’s probably good for me. It’ll take my mind off my aches and pains.”

“All right. But you’ll holler if I can do anything, won’t you?”

I assured her—three times—that I would.

“Well, if you’re positive you don’t need me tonight, I’ll see you in the morning.”

The exchange terminated with Jackie’s grave: “And Dez? After that cop goes home, don’t forget to lock all your locks.”

Next, I heard from my old friend Pat Martucci, formerly Altmann, formerly Green, formerly Anderson. Apparently another
New York Post
reader.

Her voice instantly betrayed how shaken she was. It took some doing to get across to her that I wasn’t even in the vicinity of death’s door. And then I had to expend more energy to dissuade her from rushing over to minister to me. “I really appreciate the offer, Pat,” I said, “but I was just about to go to sleep when you phoned.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow, then.” Her tone dared me to argue.

The third caller was my next-door neighbor Barbara Gleason. She was at her cousin Roberta’s, she explained, and not more than five minutes ago she was flipping through today’s
Post
when there it was—this
frightening
story about me. “According to the paper, you have a broken leg and maybe even a concussion. But you could have been killed!”

“You’re telling me.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Not too terrible. And luckily, the doctors ruled out a concussion.”

“That’s a relief, anyway.” Barbara’s voice rose sharply. “But who would want to do this to you?”

“I can’t even guess.”

“That damn job of yours,” she muttered, going on to notify me that upon reading the article her heart had actually come to a dead stop for a couple of seconds. I managed one or two clucks to commiserate with her distress (for which I felt she considered me at least minimally responsible), then said that I’d speak to her in the morning. Oh, no, she protested. She was leaving for home immediately in order to stop in and see me this evening. Believe me, persuading her that it would be better if she held off for a day was no easy chore.

Lou looked at me quizzically when I hung up. “The news seems to have gotten around fast, huh?”

“Yeah, thanks to a story in the
New York Post
—a reporter showed up at the hospital yesterday.”

“Well, I hope they had the good taste to include your picture,” he joked en route to the oven.

Fortunately, that clever man had thought to keep everything warm while I was tied up on the phone. So just minutes later we were redevoting ourselves to what I considered a bona fide feast.

In fact, deciding that it merited a contribution from me, too, I insisted that for dessert we put aside the kumquats and pineapple chunks in favor of what was left of the macadamia brittle in my freezer. (And in view of my addiction to Häagan Dazs and considering that at present the mechanics of grocery shopping were kind of a question mark for me, this was no minor gesture.)

As soon as our dining extravaganza was over, Lou helped me hobble back to the sofa, after which he insisted on straightening up in the kitchen.

When he returned to the living room, he took the chair across from me. “Now that we’ve gotten some nourishment into you, I’d like to hear about the accident.” He looked somber.

“It wasn’t an accident.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that somebody tried to kill me.” And I related the details of the hit-and-run.

“Any
possibility
it was accidental?” Lou asked hopefully.

“No.”

“Christ. Did you see who it was?”

“I’m afraid not. The headlights practically blinded me—the brights were on.”

“How did you get to the hospital?”

“Apparently about a minute before I got rammed, some man had come out of one of the buildings there. And he called 9-1-1.”

“Do you think he might be able to give us something?”

“Uh-uh. Not according to the member of New York’s Finest who came to talk to me in the hospital. Sullivan—the witness—told him it was too dark to even be sure of the color of the car, much less make out the license number.”

Lou stared down at the floor for a second or two. Then, looking up at me, he whispered, “I can’t tell you how bad I feel, seeing you like this, Dez.”

I swear there was pain in his eyes.

Alone in the apartment now, I gave in to the fear that I’d been attempting to suppress since my return from the hospital.

After triple-locking the door (which, I assure you, hadn’t required Jackie’s admonition), I stood there hesitantly. If you want the truth, I even considered jamming a chair under the knob, but I was instantly embarrassed that something like this had even crossed my mind. I mean, it was hardly befitting a licensed private investigator. Still, it would have been foolhardy to ignore the fact that someone had tried to murder me and, for all I knew, would try again. So I removed my .32 from its extended hiatus in the dresser (where it had managed to get entangled in a pair of black lace panties), then loaded it and placed it in the top drawer of the night table, next to my bed. This, I told myself, was a much more PI-ish way of handling things.

Brushing my teeth a short while later, I thought of Lou. I smiled inside at the memory of him coming into the apartment, his arms dragged down by the weight of bag after bag of Chinese food. And then my heart contracted as I envisioned the pain I’d seen in his eyes later on.
Hold it,
I cautioned.
You cannot allow yourself to make a big deal of these things. He might have reacted in exactly the same way if it had been Pete Peterson or any other good friend who was injured like that. But yet—

I interrupted the thought, forcing myself to focus on something else.

Just before Lou walked out tonight, he’d suggested that I stay home for a while and leave it to him to continue checking out the motels and talking to da Silva’s people until I was up to those things. I had promptly vetoed the idea, of course. “I hope to be back on the job by Tuesday—Wednesday at the latest—and we’ll do our investigating together.” I would hire a car service to shuttle me to and from Riverton, I told him. (I could afford it; I was certainly getting paid enough.)

Which reminded me. I had to call my client in the morning and fill him in on everything.

A moment after this I remembered something even more important: From now on I intended to study my notes as if my life depended on it. I gulped then, realizing that it very well might.

 

It was like a circus at my place on Sunday.

Barbara Gleason woke me out of a sound sleep when she appeared at my door at a little after ten, toting a breakfast tray. And before I got the chance to finish eating, she was instructing me to make out a shopping list.

While Barbara was at D’Agostino’s, Jackie showed up with pea soup, roast chicken, and a sweet potato, which she notified me were to be my dinner. She was also carrying yesterday’s
New York Post.
“I’ll put this where you can reach it,” she said, depositing the paper on the end table to the left of the sofa, within an arm’s stretch of where I’d just planted myself. I was trying to get my hands on it when she was back from the kitchen, demanding that I relate Friday morning’s events. Following which, she began to pepper me with questions. Then as soon as she’d wrung everything possible out of me, she rose from her chair and marched purposefully out of the room. She reappeared with a dustrag and some furniture polish clutched in her fist. Voicing a protest at the top of my lungs did nothing to dissuade her from attacking my apartment.

Jackie was heavily into her chores when Barbara returned from the supermarket. And as Barbara was unpacking the groceries and Jackie was running the vacuum, Pat Martucci arrived and insisted on preparing my lunch. (I couldn’t convince her that I wasn’t the least bit hungry.)

It wasn’t until after one that Barbara finally went back next door, only to be replaced minutes later by my across-the-hall neighbors Harriet and Steve Gould, who brought with them what was apparently a hastily purchased pineapple upside-down cake.

“I just found out—the super told me. Why didn’t you call me?” Harriet scolded.

I made my apologies and was about to retell the story of my hit-and-run for the benefit of these latest visitors when the doorbell sounded again. This time it was Mrs. Simmons—or maybe her name was Simon; I barely knew the woman—who also lived on my floor. She presented me with a home-baked apple pie, evidently figuring it was worth the effort if it meant she’d have a crack at hearing the gory details.

In the midst of all this activity the phone rang incessantly with calls from concerned friends, curious acquaintances, and two infuriating click-in-the-ear wrong numbers.

Fortunately, however, by four o’clock the telephone was silent and everyone except Jackie was gone. And I had my fingers crossed that she’d soon be following suit. As long as she was still here, though, I figured I might as well use the opportunity to tell her about Al. I mean, how angry could she get at someone with this bruised and broken body? Nevertheless, to tilt the odds even further in my favor, I underscored my suffering by staring down at my damaged limb with an exaggerated grimace. Only then did I confess the breakup to her.

“I couldn’t help it, Jackie,” I explained sadly. “It just wasn’t there. You can understand that, can’t you?”

Her lips parted and instantly closed, clenched together in a thin, straight line. Finally she shrugged. “I suppose those things happen,” she mumbled magnanimously.

Now, the fact is, my leg really
was
giving me fits. Plus my throat was feeling the effects of all that storytelling. And I was so tired I could barely keep my head up. I said flat-out that I had to take a pain killer and lie down for a while.

That was okay, Jackie told me. She’d watch TV until I woke up; she wanted to stay and heat up my dinner for me later. (She was really extending herself, I thought, particularly since I knew that—in spite of her restraint—I’d just made it to the top of her shit list.)

“Listen, Jackie,” I protested, “I can’t thank you enough for everything you did today, but I think I can stick that dinner in the oven by myself. Really.”

“I don’t mind hanging around. You never can tell. You might need help with something.”

I insisted I could manage. She worried that I couldn’t. In the end, I practically had to shove her out of the door—but not before planting a big kiss on her cheek.

I crawled into bed feeling very grateful for having friends like Jackie and the others. I mean, I’d never been so pampered in my life. It was like being surrounded by a bunch of mother hens. And this included Steve Gould, who had insisted on making me his “special” glogg—to keep up my strength, he’d said. It was special, all right. I would have given anything to have him walk away for a second so I could unload it on my ficus tree—which was dying anyway.

At any rate, they’d all been great. I’m sure I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

 

I was pulled out of an extremely pleasant dream by a very insistent telephone. I growled my hello into the receiver.

“What’s wrong, Aunt Dez?”

“Ohhh, Ellen, it’s you. Nothing’s wrong. I was just taking a nap, that’s all. How was Florida?”

Ellen’s response was a two- or three-minute rave review of her visit there. It was wonderful, she gushed. Her whole family was positively enamored of Mike—even her mother adored him. (Well, I’ve already explained about
that.
) “How did you spend Thanksgiving?” she asked. “Did you at least get together with a friend?” When I didn’t reply at once, she said hesitantly, “I hope you weren’t home alone.”

I couldn’t think of any answer but the truth. “No, I worked. And then later I ended up in the hospital. But don’t worry, I’m okay.”

“Wh-what happened?” Ellen’s voice was quivering.

My attempt to reassure her about the extent of my injuries, along with the subsequent recounting of the incident itself, must have prompted at least a half-dozen “Oh, my God’s.”

I’d barely finished when she announced firmly, “We’ll be right there.”

“Don’t be silly, Ellen. I—”

“Have you had supper yet?”

“No, I’m going to eat as soon as we’re through talking.”

“Don’t. Mike and I will bring something up. We’ll see you soon.”

Of course, I was over ninety-nine percent certain that Ellen had Chinese food in mind, since that’s the type of food Ellen almost always has in mind. And while I love my dim sum and Peking duck as much as the next person, there was still enough of that stuff in my refrigerator to feed the entire Chinese army. “That’s not necessary, really. Jackie prepared a whole chicken dinner for me, Ellen.”

But Ellen had already hung up.

One look at me, and my niece burst into tears.

Thank goodness Mike was there to calm her down, since I wasn’t able to make any headway there.