Interior Motives (15 page)

But he seemed to have followed through on the expected repayment. And Cissy had showed up with a loan officer from the Bank of Wilmont ten minutes before the doctor walked in. It looked to me like a cordial, even warm, meeting.

I left. There was nothing for me to see.

And then it was Friday. The dreaded day. But I couldn’t ignore my looming date any longer. Chris would be here to pick me up at six thirty. To keep my mind off my darker fears, I ransacked my closet for decent clothes for the evening.

Since I hadn’t dated in over five years, I found nothing I considered suitable. But I also refused to make such a big deal of the event as to spend hours in a mall.

When my room looked like the site of a tornado touchdown, I finally settled on a soft cream shirt and a tone-on-tone cream, bias-cut, long satin skirt. Then my nerves had me dressed and ready by five forty-five. Midas trotted up, gave me his intense brown stare, and walked away. Even he could tell I was too freaked to play.

“Arrghh!” This wasn’t good. But I knew a good way to banish anxiety. With a glance at the clock, I headed for my chaise longue, my Bible, and time with my Lord.

By the time the doorbell rang, I thought I was ready to face Chris. But the Chris in our living room wasn’t the Chris from my sixth-grade class. He wasn’t the Chris in cop shop Smurf blues either. This Chris was an attractive blond man, dressed well if casually, with a smile that said he liked what he saw.

Hordes of butterflies filled my middle, and my palms grew damp. I prayed he wouldn’t notice my nerves.

He seemed oblivious. “Ready?”

No!
“Yes. Let’s go.”

He carried the conversation on the drive to the restaurant. He started out with a handful of funny cop stories, then followed those with a detailed retelling of his
Keystone Kops
efforts at a snowboarding park last winter.

When I quit laughing, I said, “That’s because you’re a surfer boy at heart. Come on. Tell the truth. Don’t you just have this great big craving for a board and a wave? With your blond hair and that tan, you’d fit on any California beach.” He held up his hands as if to fend off the idea. “Don’t blame me for my mom’s Scandinavian genes. I’ve never even been to California. I’d be lost without the rain.”

“Speaking of lost . . .” I told him about Bella, the Balis, and Bend.

We laughed—again—and I realized how many laughs we’d shared, more than I’d had in ages. That finally put me at ease.

The conversation flowed; my noodles and chicken, rich with Asian herbs and peanut sauce, were amazing; and I couldn’t believe how much fun we had together.

That is, I had fun until my evil shadow walked in.

Lord? How could you let Dutch choose this restaurant this
night?

Yeah, sure. It was a great new eatery, and it got a great deal of good buzz, but honestly. Was there nowhere I could go without tripping over the guy?

I shrank deeper into the booth and hoped he didn’t see me, hoped Chris didn’t see me trying to disappear— Houdini I am not. I wasn’t so paranoid to think Dutch had followed me, but I could’ve and should’ve saved myself the effort of trying to hide. At least where Chris was concerned. He noticed Dutch moments after I did.

“Isn’t that your partner over there?”

“Partner?” I squeaked. “Are you nuts? He’s like bad wallpaper on my back—I can’t scrape him off.”

“I thought you two worked together.”

“We’ve had to work together because we were both hired for the same three jobs. Unfortunately, dead bodies turned up at each of those jobs.”

“Something like a Typhoid Mary syndrome?”

“Something like a contractor plague, if you ask me.”

“But he was innocent, as innocent as you.”

I sighed. “That’s why he’s still on the loose, free to torment me daily.”

Chris sat back and looked at me. “You’re kind of intense, Haley. Maybe you’re driving him nuts too. Especially with your Sherlock Holmes impersonation.”

“Low blow, Smurf man! I had no choice—”

“Smurf man? I’m not blue. What’s that all about?”

I shrugged. “It seemed to fit back when Marge was killed. You know, the blue uniform.”

“Wrong shade of blue, and you’d better not even think you can get away with calling Lila Papa Smurf.”

That made me laugh again. “Blue is blue. But no. Not her. She’s not Papa Smurf. She’s the karate chop cop.”

Chris choked on his mouthful of tea. After he swallowed, he mimed zipping his lips.

I winked. “Not a word, huh? She doesn’t like it.”

“I’d like to keep my job.”

Then we talked about his job. He spoke of his dedication with passion and energy. He was smart, funny, attractive. He did noble work, and he clearly liked me. But something wasn’t there.

I liked him, but as the friend he always should have been. There was something missing, a certain spark I didn’t feel while in his company.

I sighed and looked toward the front of the room. There sat what was missing. As I looked, he must have sensed my gaze, because he raised his head, noticed me, tightened his jaw, and stared back. I sat motionless, silent. I let the realization soak in. Moments passed.

Then, beyond Dutch, a man and a woman entered the restaurant.

A shudder ran through me.

I froze.

When I finally moved, I reached across the table and grabbed Chris’s hand. “Look.”

I couldn’t believe it. The woman I knew. The man, not at all. Not personally.

But it shocked me to see Tedd enter the restaurant on Dr. Roberto Díaz’s arm. My stomach flipped. I felt not so good. There were a million reasons to doubt the man’s innocence, even when I didn’t know him. And now I had to connect him to Tedd.

My friend.

My therapist.

I
didn’t have to connect them; the connection was there, twenty-five feet away from me. Both of them were doctors. Both had treated Darlene Weikert. Could one be involved in her death? Could both?

Dear God, no!

10

I couldn’t say what bothered me most, but between the mind-meld eye lock with Dutch and the sight of Tedd on Dr. Dope’s arm, my evening was ruined.

Chris noticed. He sighed. “Ready to go?”

I nodded.

He held out his hand to help me out of the plush booth. “Interesting evening,” he murmured.

“More like interesting patrons at this joint,” I countered under my breath.

He chuckled. “Do you count us in that interesting crew?”

“We can’t escape. We’re all part of the Weikert case.”

“I don’t think there is a Weikert case, Haley. It’s all in your overactive imagination.”

“Let’s see how overactive my imagination is when I hand you the killer on a silver platter.”

“No peanut sauce, please.”

“I’m going to do you a favor and ignore that supergross comment.” As I ignored away, I headed for the doctors’ table.

“Aw, Haley, no. Come on . . .”

Chris’s wail didn’t slow me a bit. At tableside, I plastered on the best smile I could dredge up. “Fancy meeting you here, Tedd. But I guess this is
the
place these days. Never know who you’re going to find when you come to eat.”

The tint of deep rose beneath the caramel skin on her cheekbones revealed my therapist’s discomfort. “Hi, Haley. Yes, I’ve heard great things about the food here. I figured we ought to see if it lives up to the raves.”

“Oh, the food’s great. I’ll hold off my verdict on the patronage though. At least for a while.”

Her blush deepened. “Let me introduce you to Dr. Roberto Díaz, from Tijuana. He’s here on business. We’ve known each other for some time now.”

I faced Dr. Dope. “Hi. I’m Haley Farrell. Welcome to my part of the world.”

He stood, gave me his megawatt charmer smile, and clasped my hand in both of his. “The pleasure is all mine, Ms. Farrell.” His voice bore the faintest trace of an accent. “Seattle is one of my favorite cities. Its people are some of the friendliest I’ve ever met.”

His eyes slanted toward Tedd with his last words. I followed his gaze and noted my shrink’s ever-greater discomfort. Swell. It looked like there was more than just business between these two. And one was a suspect in Darlene’s death.

Too bad.

“We share—or maybe
shared
is the better word—another acquaintance, Dr. Díaz. I understand you treated Darlene Weikert with an unconventional serum.”

His jaw tightened, and he sat. Without an invitation I pulled out one of the two empty chairs at the table. Behind me, Chris groaned. Tedd had no choice. She waved him to the last empty seat.

Once we’d all settled, I zoomed back in on Dr. Díaz. “How can that hormone, something that’s not proven to treat diseases like cancer, help a woman close to the end of her life expectancy?”

Dr. Díaz leaned forward, his expression intense. “The HGH isn’t a specific treatment for the malignancy, Ms. Farrell—”

“Call me Haley. Everyone else does.”

He dipped his head. “Haley, the HGH—human growth hormone—promotes tissue repair and cell regeneration in bones, muscles, and vital organs and supports the immune system so that it can better fight infection and disease. When humans age, their levels of HGH drop to a fraction of those produced during youth. I’m sure you can see the connection for someone battling a terminal disease.”

His lecture recapped what I’d learned on the Internet. “Forgive me, Doctor, but your last statement shot my skepticism right out into stratospheric orbit. If this HGH is as good as you say, then why doesn’t every doctor have every patient pop it like an M&M?”

“It is a serum, not a pill. There is no popping. And the research is fairly new. Some of the best studies were conducted in the ’90s. It often takes many in the medical community much longer than it should to accept new therapies.”

“How well has this stuff been tested?”

“Consider this: we’ve used it on children with poor growth curves for decades. It can’t be that harmful if we give it with good results to our most vulnerable patients.”

“Yes, but those kids’ bodies don’t have the HGH they should have for them to grow normally. Now you’re talking grown-ups. There’s not a whole lot of growing going on. It seems to me, if the production goes down with age, then there has to be a good, natural reason for the drop.”

“It declines because our bodies begin to wear out and can’t make as much as they once could. Supplementation could prevent that wearing out process to a great degree.” “I see you’re of the chicken-before-the-egg mentality, but let’s get back to my first question. How would HGH help a woman who’s about to die of cancer?”

He leaned back in his chair, studied me, then shrugged on one side. “My examination didn’t lead me to believe Darlene was that close to death. Her last checkup was only six weeks ago. I noted signs of improvement. She’d gained weight, and her color had returned. She also said she’d begun to regain her energy. I require regular monitoring of all HGH patients, since it is a hormone. If anyone fails to comply, I write no more prescriptions. Darlene never missed an appointment.”

He’d given me much to think about, but one thing stood out. “You say Darlene wasn’t on the brink of death.”

“A physician can always make a mistake, but what I saw leads me to see her death as sudden and unexpected—that is, barring some complication I don’t know about. I have no idea what the autopsy discovered.”

I sighed. “Liver cancer—”

“Well, well, well,” my evil shadow drawled. “What a cozy foursome. I see Wilmont’s favorite homegrown snoop has teamed up with the law tonight in a generous serving of Thai and a side of clumsy grilling. Hope you skip the indigestion she usually dishes up with it.”

The table wasn’t big enough to hide me, so I opted not to crawl under it. A sideways glance caught my tablemates’ varied reactions. Dr. Dope looked horrified. I can’t blame him. Dutch was brutal and rude. Tedd gaped—I didn’t know what to say either. And Chris? Chris’s eyes were glued to me, a speculative gleam in those California-surf blues.

It took me a couple of minutes, but I did get my voice back. “I don’t see how you can say I’d cause indigestion. You’re the one who’s disturbed us.”

“You’re the one poking around their business. I just stopped by for a polite hello.”

“Polite? You’re out of your gourd. Bella’s cats at their worst are more polite than you—”

“Kiddies, kiddies,” Lila said. “Why is it that every time I see the two of you, you’re locked in a battle of wits?”

The door to the joint was getting quite a workout.

“He’s rude—”

“She’s a busybody—”

“Hi,” she said, her hand extended toward Dr. Dope. “I’m Lila Tsu, homicide detective with the Wilmont PD. And you are . . . ?”

The good doctor stood. “I’m Roberto Díaz. From Tijuana, here on business. Pleased to meet you.”

It takes a great deal to surprise Lila, and it takes an experienced observer to catch her well-controlled surprise. The quick blink and the flare of her nostrils told me everything. To my satisfaction, she narrowed her eyes.

“Are you Darlene Weikert’s Mexican physician?”

Dr. Díaz tightened his lips and gave a curt nod.

The detective’s gaze never left his face. “If I might be so bold . . . what brings you to Seattle?”

“Since I’m certain you’ll find out, and since I have nothing to hide, I can tell you I came to settle a loan. Darlene helped me with the funds I needed to complete the purchase of a lab that came on the market while I waited for funding from a European pharmaceutical company.”

Lila nodded.

This time I was the one he caught off guard. I hadn’t expected him to tell her about the lab or the funding. He’d just admitted his need for money. That need cast a shadow of doubt on his innocence. But then again, would a guilty man tell a cop that much?

“Well,” I said. “It’s been lovely, hasn’t it, Chris? We should head on out, don’t you think?”

My date gave me an amused look. “I aim to please, Haley. Let’s go.”

Dutch snickered.

I glared.

Lila said, “Haley? I hope you remember my previous warnings. Leave the . . . what does Dutch call it? Oh, yes! Leave the snooping to the professionals—us.”