V.I. Warshawski 04 - Bitter Medicine (41 page)

I turned to face him, gestured with my right hand, but didn’t speak. I couldn’t put my feelings into words. I hadn’t known Peter well enough to be eating my heart out for him. His bones and brains on the desk top flashed into my mind. Horrifying, yes. But not my personal burden.

By rights I should be on top of the world. Humphries and Sergio were both being held without bond, Sergio in the prison wing of county hospital while his shoulder healed. The weekend Herald-Star had had a field day with Dick, showing him at his most pompous. He had called to chew me out after we got Humphries down to Twenty-sixth and California for the second time in twenty-four hours. Maybe, as Lotty said, my reaction to him was childish, but I’d had a good time-he was in way over his head with criminal law and didn’t want to admit he didn’t know as much about it as I did.

Tessa had come to visit me Saturday morning before I left for the country, grateful I’d cornered Malcolm’s murderers and contrite she’d ever doubted me. She’d arrived at the same time as Rawlings, who wanted to check up on me and work on our statements. I’d half hoped to take him up on his dinner offer, but he and Tessa left together to get lunch. That didn’t really trouble me, either-Rawlings was amusing, but it’s not good for a PI to get too sociable with the police. So why did I feel wrapped in a cocoon of lethargy, barely able to keep awake?

Mr. Contreras was looking at me anxiously. “Life goes on, doll. When Clara died, I thought, boy, this is it. And we’d been married fifty-one years. Yep. We were high-school sweethearts. Course, I dropped out, but she wanted to finish and we waited to have the wedding until she did. And we had some fights, cookie, fights like you never saw the like of. But we always had the good times, too.

“That’s what you need, doll. You need someone tough enough to fight with you, but good enough to give you the good times. Not like that ex of yours. How you ever came to marry a guy like that I’ll never know. No, nor that doctor, neither. I told you he was a lightweight. Told you the first time I laid eyes on him…”

I stiffened. If he thought not having a husband was troubling me… Maybe I was just burned out. Too much city, too much time spent in the sewer with people like Sergio and Alan Humphries. Maybe I should get out of the detective business-sell my co-op, retire to Pentwater. I tried picturing myself in this tiny town, with twelve hundred people who all knew each other’s business. A quart of Black Label a day might make it tolerable. The idea made me give a little snort of laughter.

That’s right, doll. You gotta be able to laugh at yourself. I mean, if I laid down and cried for every mistake I ever made, I’d a drowned to death by now. And look at the good side. We got a dog. At least, you got a dog, but who’s going to walk her and feed her when you’re out to all hours, huh? She’ll be company-long as she don’t pee on my tomatoes, huh, girl?“

When Peppy realized he was talking to her, she dropped the stick she’d been gnawing to lick his hand. Then she bounded back to the stick, picked it up, and dropped it next to me, her tail making a great golden circle in the sun. She nudged me hard with her wet nose, slapping me with her tail to make sure I got the point. I pushed myself up to standing. While the dog danced herself into a crescendo of ecstasy, I picked up the stick and hurled it into the setting sun.