Блейз Клемент - Cat Sitter On A Hot Tin Roof

I said, “As long as they’re feeding you good, it might not be such a bad idea to let them wait on you until your ankle stops hurting. That racket from the TV bother you?”

She rolled her eyes. “Plays that thing all day long. I think she’s a little, you know.” She twirled her forefinger at her temple with gossipy pleasure. “Poor thing, nobody comes to see her.”

More than likely, nobody had come to see Cora either, but she obviously considered herself more popular than her roommate because I was there. When you get down to it, it’s not the fact of things that are important, but how we interpret them. She had more color in her cheeks now that she had perked up, and fear had left her eyes. My own fears were back in the box where they belonged too. Cora was okay, and Bayfront Village had done the right thing to put her in the nursing unit where they could take care of her.

Behind the curtain, the TV noise stopped and an oily male voice said, “And how are we today?”

I stood up straight with my ears tingling. Where had I heard that voice?

A shaky old woman’s voice answered. “I’d of stayed in Mississippi if it hadn’t of been for the hurricane.”

With icy contempt, the man said, “Do you have any idea how weary I am of hearing you say that?”

Cora and I stiffened and gave each other raised eyebrows.

With more force to her voice, the woman said, “I’d of stayed in Mississippi if it hadn’t of been for the hurricane.”

The man said, “God, what a waste of time and money! All you decompensating old Binswangers should have been smothered at your first cerebral infarcts.”

The back of my neck prickled, and I spun to glare at the white curtain. I didn’t know what a Binswanger was, but I knew the man had just said something cruel.

A moment of silence followed, and then his oily voice again. “You and the rest of the world will be better off when you’re gone.”

I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I said, “What the hell?” and stepped around the curtain to confront the woman’s nasty visitor. All I saw was a man’s broad back hurrying out the door. The bastard hadn’t even had the grace to say goodbye. I took a moment to make sure the woman was okay, then hurried to the door and looked down the corridor. An elderly man in a wheelchair was pushing himself down the hall, but he didn’t look as if he had enough air in him to speak above a whisper.

A nurse came out of the room next door and saw me scanning the hall. “You need something?”

I said, “A man was just in here. Did you see him?”

“A man?”

“He was talking to Cora Mathers’s roommate. I don’t know her name.”

“Grayberg.” I noticed she didn’t give a first name. Maybe when you stop normally responding to other people, they stop thinking of you as a two-named person.

“He said some cruel things to her.”

The nurse studied me. “Are you related to Cora?”

“He told Mrs. Grayberg she should have been smothered when she had her first stroke.” That wasn’t exactly what he’d said, but it was what he’d meant.

She said, “I didn’t see you get off the elevator. The nurse’s station is right by the elevator, and I didn’t see you get off.”

“I took the stairs. Oh, that’s probably where he went. He went down the stairs.”

“What did he look like?”

“I just heard his voice and saw his back as he left. He was big.”

“Ms. Grayberg watches TV a lot. Maybe it was a man on TV.”

“No, it was a real man.”

She turned away and started down the hall. Over her shoulder, she said, “I’ll watch for strange men.”

I could tell she didn’t believe me. When I thought about it, I didn’t blame her.

I went back to Cora’s room and spoke to Mrs. Grayberg. “Was that your son who was just here?”

Her face twisted in a rictus of despair. “I’d of stayed in Mississippi if it hadn’t of been for the hurricane.”

I couldn’t think of any appropriate answer, so I turned up the sound on her TV and went back to Cora’s side of the curtain.

I whispered, “Was that Mrs. Grayberg’s son?”

“Is that her name? We haven’t actually met, what with her being so loony and all. I wouldn’t worry about her boy. I don’t imagine she even heard him.”

From the despair I’d seen on the woman’s face, I thought she’d heard plenty, but I didn’t say so. It was probably better for Cora to be complacent about him than to be vaguely alarmed like I was.

I promised to come back the next day, kissed the top of Cora’s downy head, and retraced my path past her roommate’s bed. She had stopped crying and gave me a slight smile.

She said, “I’d of stayed in Mississippi if it hadn’t of been for the hurricane.”

From the other side of the curtain, Cora laughed. I gave Ms. Grayberg a friendly wave and hoped nobody told her that Florida got hurricanes too.

As I went down the stairs, I probed all the corners of my mind, trying to remember where I’d heard the man’s smug, pompous voice before. But it was like trying to dislodge a speck of lettuce stuck in your back teeth. Every time I thought I had it, it stayed locked in place.

I made it all the way to the parking lot before I remembered where I’d been when I first heard the man’s voice. It was so unlikely that I sat in the Bronco and argued with myself for a long time before I pulled out my cell phone and called Guidry.

He answered with a curt, “Guidry here.”

I said, “I was just at the Bayfront Village Nursing Unit, and a man came in the room to talk to the woman in the other bed. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but you need to know who he was.”

A beat or two passed, and Guidry said, “Dixie, I’m not even going to try to understand what you just said. Do you have something to tell me?”

I stuck my tongue out at the phone and took a deep breath.

“Cora Mathers is in the nursing unit at Bayfront. She has a roommate named Grayberg. While I was visiting Cora, a man came to visit Mrs. Grayberg. I didn’t see him because a curtain was between us, but I recognized his voice, and I’m positive it was the same man who called Laura Halston while I was at her house. She said she met him at Sarasota Memorial in the emergency room. Maybe he’s a doctor. Or a nurse.”

“You didn’t see him. You didn’t talk to him. But you’re sure it was the same man.”

“I know it sounds crazy, but he has a distinctive voice, and he speaks in a peculiar way. He left before I could get a look at him.”

“Peculiar how? Lisp? Stutter?”

“He talks like a college professor too full of himself. Pedantic. Prissy.”

“So you want me to go to the hospital unit over at Bayfront and ask this Mrs. Grayberg about him?”

“Well ah, Mrs. Grayberg is a little bit senile. She might not be able to give you much information.”

Guidry heaved a deep sigh. “I can’t talk any longer, Dixie. I’ll catch you later.”

He clicked off without saying goodbye, leaving me staring at the phone and wondering what he was avoiding telling me.

17

Idrove home in a fog of fatigue and fury. Even though I’d told Guidry about the other men who’d been irrationally drawn to Laura, I knew it was her husband who had killed her. The man had to be completely insane to think he could follow her to Siesta Key and kill her without anybody knowing. His colleagues would know he was gone, and everybody who knew him and Laura would suspect him the minute her murder became public knowledge. If he’d been a nobody, he might already be cooling his odious heels in a jail cell. Since he was famous and wealthy, he would have an attorney to forestall the moment when homicide detectives talked to him. Guidry was probably collecting irrefutable evidence before he moved.