And so had Joe.
She hesitated, then picked up the phone again. This time she called St. Vincent’s.
Sam was in a regular room and able to see visitors.
Again she hesitated. Then she glanced at the clock. She could get to St. Vincent’s and back in plenty of time. She wouldn’t take her own car. She would have Tim, the morning security guard, call for car service, and the driver could just wait for her while she was at the hospital. She could be back in no time.
Even as she made the arrangements, she felt guilty.
She told herself that she didn’t owe anyone anything, that she was a free woman who could come and go as she pleased. Even so, she felt guilty.
After all, she’d promised.
But it was broad daylight, and she needed to see Sam Latham.
But she had promised.
As her mind warred with itself, the phone rang. She was going to let the machine get it, but she heard Joe’s voice and picked up.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” he returned. “Listen, I forgot I had an appointment. I’ll be a few hours longer. Is that okay with you?”
“I’m sure I can fill the time somehow,” she told him.
“Okay. Let’s say I’ll be back around two or two-thirty.”
“Perfect,” she told him.
Okay, so she still felt guilty. But, really, the promise had been made during the last conversation, when he wasn’t going to be gone nearly so long. That had to make it null and void. She had said that she would find a way to fill the time, and she would.
She left her apartment, making sure to lock up, and hurried to the elevator.
If he’d been blindfolded, he would have known where he was.
No matter how much antiseptic was used, no matter what kind of air filtration was in place, a morgue smelled like a morgue.
Even in the entry rooms.
Joe was grateful to be in good standing with the police. He didn’t even need to show his credentials when he arrived; Judy, at the desk, knew him well.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said.
“Hey, handsome.”
“You’re too kind.”
She was a big woman, round and rosy-cheeked, fiftysomething and always pleasant. She was the perfect person to meet the public in such a place.
“Hey,” she said, laughing. “The living always look handsome to me.”
“Ah, shucks, be careful or all these compliments will go to my head.”
“Better be careful—your head could swell up like a balloon if I really got going,” she teased. “But you’re not here to flirt.”
“No. Judy, ’fraid not. I need to know who was on the Thorne Bigelow autopsy.”
“Oh, that was Frankie.”
Not many people could have used such a casual reference. Frankie was Dr. Francis Arbitter, one of the most renowned members of the medical examiner’s office. He was a down-to-earth guy, but his expertise had earned him a reverence over the years that made most people speak of him with awe.
“Is he available?”
“I’m sure he’ll see you.”
A phone call sent him through the double doors and down the hallway to autopsy room number four.
Francis Arbitter was alone. There was a corpse on a Gurney, but a sheet covered the torso and limbs. There was a huge gash on the head of the middle-aged, bearded man who lay there, but there was no sign of blood. The body had been washed for the exam that was about to take place.
Frank was at his desk, munching on what appeared to be a ham and cheese on rye. “Joe!” he called with a smile, and he rose. He was a tall, well-muscled man who looked like he should have been playing fullback instead of solving mysteries at a morgue. But his tousled, thinning hair and Coke-bottle glasses gave him a little bit of the mad-scientist look that was more befitting to his chosen calling.
“Sit, sit,” he said, drawing up a chair from behind one of the other clinically clean desks in the room.
Joe took a seat. He’d been in plenty of morgues, but he never became as accustomed to working with the dead as Frank, who got right to the point.
“If you just wanted to shoot the breeze, you’d have called to meet for a beer somewhere. So what’s up? I’m guessing it’s the Thorne Bigelow murder.”
“Good deduction,” Joe said.
“Well, speaking as Dr. Watson here, I’d have to say I learned something from Holmes,” Frank said shrewdly. “You’ve worked for Eileen Brideswell before. She knew Thorne, so I assume she intends to use her resources to help the police find the murderer. After all, she has a lot at stake.”
Joe decided not to correct him and explain that he wasn’t working for Eileen but had been pretty much forced to take the case by Genevieve. He wasn’t surprised that Frank had made the assumption that his appearance had to do with the case, but he was surprised that Frank seemed to think that Eileen had a lot at stake.