“You couldn’t take a leave of absence instead of quitting?”
“The truth is, Vic, I’m sick of that clinic. I’ve been doing it day in and out for eight years and I need a change.”
“And staying home to nurse Guillermo will be the relief you’re looking for?”
She flushed a little. “Can’t you say what’s on your mind without sarcasm? I know what you and Lotty think—that at thirty-four I should divorce my mother and make a life for myself. But my family isn’t a millstone for me the way it might be for you or Lotty. And anyway, didn’t you come close to being murdered, looking out for your aunt Elena last year?”
“Yeah, but I sure hated doing it.” I played with a loose thread on the easy chair. Another thing I could do if I’d gone to a high-end law firm: buy new living room furniture. “I helped nurse my mother when I was fifteen and she was dying of cancer. And my dad, who died of emphysema ten years later. I’d do it again if I had to, but I couldn’t give that kind of care to someone who wasn’t important to me.”
“That’s why you’re a detective, Vic, not a nurse.” She held up a hand as I started to speak. “I’m not sacrificing myself, believe me. I’m burned out at the clinic. I need a change. That’s what Lotty can’t understand: she puts so much of herself, so much energy, into those patients that she can’t see why someone else wouldn’t want to. But being at home, wrestling with one medical problem, it will give me time to think, to decide what I should do next.”
“And you want me to sell that to Lotty?”
I didn’t blame Carol for wanting to leave the clinic. I’d burned out at the public defender’s office after five years, and Carol’s work was much more intense than mine had ever been. But of course, Lotty felt betrayed. She had no family to speak of—a brother in Montreal and her father’s brother, Stefan, were her only relatives to survive the Second World War—so she couldn’t understand the calls family make on you. Or maybe she had some hidden resentment of those lucky enough to have families making demands on them?
My doorbell rang before I could chase that unpromising thought further. I looked through the peephole at Mr. Contreras’s face. Opening the door, I felt my blood begin to boil.
“Sorry, doll, I know you don’t like to be bothered when you have company, but—”
“You’re right. I don’t. And I can’t even remember the last time you didn’t come huffing up ten minutes after my guests arrived to see who’s here. Look. Carol Alvarado. Not a man after all. So go back downstairs and give it a rest, okay?”
He put his hands on his hips and looked a little ugly. “You have been way out of line lately, Vic. I mean way out, how you been talking to me. If I left you alone like you’re always claiming to want it, you’d be dead now. Maybe that’s what you want, for me to leave you alone and let you get drowned in a marsh or let someone put a bullet through you.”
Yes, he’d saved my life all right, and that meant he thought he’d acquired property rights in it. But looking at his angry stare, I couldn’t say something that would hurt him so painfully. I couldn’t bring myself to apologize, but I asked in a milder tone what had brought him up to the third floor.
He frowned for another few seconds, then decided to let it go. “It’s that lawyer up the street, that Pichea. He’s downstairs trying to get a posse together, and of course Vinnie Buttone is only too happy to sign on. I was sure you’d want to know about it.”
“Posse to do what?”
“To get the county to come for the old lady’s dogs. He says they’ve been creating a nuisance for twenty-four hours and no one’s answering her bell.”
I remembered wondering why she hadn’t come to her window this morning. “Isn’t the boy worried about Mrs. Frizell?”
“You think something’s happened to her?” His eyes grew large in his weather-beaten face.
“I don’t think anything. She might not answer her door because she knows it’s Pichea and he’s a pain in the tail. On the other hand, she might be unconscious in the bath. I think before we get the county to haul her dogs away we ought to see where she is and what she has to say.”
He trailed behind me when I returned to the living room to describe the situation to Carol. “I’m going to see if something’s wrong with her. I know I’ve just been lecturing you against succoring the world—but I would appreciate on-the-spot medical expertise if she’s had a stroke or something.”