climbed his refuse-strewn stairs, he wondered if there was a chance that
Ted had made a mistake with the DNA analysis. As far as Jack was
concerned the victim had had a transplant.
Jack was rounding the third-floor landing when he heard the telltale
sound of his phone. He knew it was his because Denise, the single mother
of two who lived on his floor, didn’t have a phone.
With some effort, Jack encouraged his tired quadriceps to propel him up
the final flight. Clumsily, he fumbled with his keys at his door. The
moment he got it open, he heard his answering machine pick up with a
voice that Jack refused to believe was his own.
He got to the phone and snatched it up, cutting himself off in
mid-sentence.
‘Hello,’ he gasped. After an hour and a half of full-court, all-out
basketball, the dash up the final flight of stairs had put him close to
collapse.
‘Don’t tell me you’re just coming in from your basketball,’ Laurie said.
‘It’s going on nine o’clock. That’s way off your schedule.’
‘I didn’t get home until after seven-thirty,’ Jack explained between
breaths. He wiped his face to keep his perspiration from dripping on the
floor.
‘That means you haven’t eaten yet,’ Laurie said.
‘You got that right,’ Jack said.
‘Lou is over here, and we were going to have salad and spaghetti,’
Laurie said. ‘Why don’t you join us?’
‘I wouldn’t want to break up the party,’ Jack said jokingly. At the same
time he felt a mild stab of jealousy. He knew about Laurie’s and Lou’s
brief romantic involvement and half wondered if the two friends were
starting something up.
Jack knew he had no right to such feelings, considering the ambivalence
he had about becoming involved with any woman. After the loss of his
family, he’d been unsure if he ever wanted to make himself vulnerable to
such pain again. At the same time, he’d come to admit both his
loneliness and how much he enjoyed Laurie’s company.
‘You won’t be breaking up any party,’ Laurie assured him. ‘It’s going to
be a very, very casual dinner. But we have something we want to show
you. Something that is going to surprise you and maybe even make you
want to give yourself a boot in the rear end. As you can probably tell,
we’re pretty excited.’
‘Oh?’ Jack questioned. His mouth had gone dry. Hearing Lou laughing in
the background, and putting two and two together, Jack knew what they
wanted to show him; it had to be a ring! Lou must have proposed!
‘Are you coming?’ Laurie asked.
‘It’s kind of late,’ Jack said. ‘I’ve got to shower.’
‘Hey, you old sawbones,’ Lou said. He’d snatched the phone from Laurie.
‘Get your ass over here. Laurie and I are dying to share this with you.’
‘Okay,’ Jack said with resignation. ‘I’ll jump in the shower and be
there in forty minutes.’
‘See ya, dude,’ Lou said.
Jack hung up the phone. ‘Dude?’ he mumbled. That didn’t sound like Lou.
Jack mused that the detective must be on cloud nine.
‘I wish I knew what I could do to cheer you up,’ Darlene said. She’d
made the effort to put on a slinky silk teddy from Victoria’s Secret,
but Raymond hadn’t even noticed.
Raymond was stretched out on the sofa with an ice pack on his head and
his eyes closed.
‘Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?’ Darlene asked. She was a
tall woman over five feet ten, with bleached blond hair and a curvaceous
body. She was twenty-six years old, and as she and Raymond joked,
halfway to his fifty-two. She’d been a fashion model before Raymond had
met her in a cosy East Side bar called the Auction House.
Raymond slowly took his ice pack off and glared at Darlene. Her bubbly
vivaciousness was only an irritation.
‘My stomach is in a knot,’ he said deliberately. ‘I’m not hungry. Is
that so difficult to understand?’
‘Well, I don’t know why you are so upset,’ Darlene persisted. ‘You just
got a call from the doctor in Los Angeles, and she’s decided to come on
board. That means we’ll soon have some movie stars as clients. I think