by Metsy Hingle
“Definitely. Especially when it comes to something that’s important to me.”
“Like your stomach.”
He nodded. “And the woman I make love with,” he advised her, and Kelly’s pulse started skipping again at the hungry way he watched her. He reached for his glass of milk, drained it. “Besides being particular, I’m also real big on rules.”
“Like not letting good food go to waste,” she said, trying to lighten the conversation. She wasn’t any good at this sort of stuff, never had been, and was at a loss what to do with Jack.
“Yes. You gonna finish that milk?”
She shook her head, handed him her glass. “Thanks,” he said, and finished off her milk. He set the glass down, looked directly at her with those piercing blue eyes. “I also have rules about casual sex. I don’t engage in it.”
Kelly flushed. “If you’re worried that I…that we…”
He leaned over the table, caught her chin, kissed her. “I’m not asking for a health report. I’m simply giving you fair warning. Tonight meant something to me. You mean something to me and I’m not going to let you push me away. So get used to the idea.”
“Jack,” she began, but he silenced her with another quick kiss.
“Quit trying to analyze what’s happening between us, Kelly, and accept it. I have.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“It’s only complicated if you make it complicated. I don’t know what he did to make you so afraid to trust, but I keep telling you that I’m not him.”
“I know that.” And never in a million years could she mistake Jack for Garrett. “His name was Garrett Scott,” she told him. “I met him when I was working out on the West Coast. He was a struggling author, working on a book with a photographer as a main character. He came to one of the shoots I was doing for research for his book.”
He slid over onto the floor beside her, held her close. “What happened?”
“He was movie-star handsome, like so many of the men on the West Coast. But unlike most of them, he wasn’t at all self-centered. He was kind and sensitive and generous. And he seemed really interested in my work and me. We became friends, started spending a lot of time together. I showed him some of my noncommercial work and gradually told him more and more about myself. I expected him to withdraw once I told him about…about the psychic thing. But he didn’t. Instead he made me believe that it wasn’t a bad thing, that it made me special somehow,” she said, her voice cracking as she thought back now to what a fool she’d been, to not have listened to the things he didn’t say.
“You don’t have to explain,” Jack told her.
Kelly shook her head. “I want to. So that you’ll understand.” After a moment, she continued, “We became lovers. And I began to believe that Garrett was right. That maybe it really was a gift instead of a burden. I admitted that unconsciously it probably even helped me with my work. I’d learned to control and compartmentalize my own emotions. And I guess, as a result, I’d become good at reading other people’s moods without…without poking around inside their heads and it carried over into my work. Even with the most temperamental models and actors, I’d be able to judge their moods, knew just what to look for in a shot to make it good, to make the emotion come through.”
“I’m sure that’s why you’re so good at your job.”
“Maybe. Anyway, Garrett was always asking me questions about my work, about me, about what I felt, what I saw when I looked through the camera’s lens. I was naive enough to believe it was because he cared about me, because he wanted us to be closer. I actually thought he loved me.”
“Kelly, baby, don’t,” he said, brushing the tears of humiliation from her cheeks.
“I need to,” she said, because she wanted him to know, wanted him to understand. “I thought it was strange that Garrett never shared anything with me about his own work. But he claimed he was superstitious and that he never discussed his work before it was published. Deep inside, I think I knew he was lying, but I ignored all the little signals that something wasn’t quite right and convinced myself that because I loved him my inner radar was off.”
Jack said nothing, simply held her close and waited for her to continue.
“By this time, I’d given him a key to my apartment. I was doing pretty well, making good money, so I’d splurged and gotten myself a nice place to live. Your sister would have been proud of me. It was bright and airy and had lots of windows,” she said, recalling Meredith’s description of her New York flat.
“It sounds like something Meredith would like.”
“Garrett loved it.” Oh, how he’d loved it, she thought, recalling how he’d wanted to move in with her. And even though she’d allowed him in her bed, all those years in Catholic school and knowing that Sister Grace would disapprove had made her refuse. Shaking off the hypocrisy of her actions, she continued, “Since Garrett shared a small apartment with two roommates, he said it made it difficult for him to write, so he started spending a lot of time at my place working on his laptop when I was out on a shoot.”
“What happened?”
“One day I came home from a shoot early. I’d just been offered a plum assignment and wanted to celebrate. I bought champagne and a new dress. When I got home, Garrett was in the shower, but his laptop was sitting there, still on with the section he’d been working on up on the screen.” Kelly swallowed. “It was about me, the fast-rising photographer who was making a name for herself by using her psychic powers to capture her subjects when they were most vulnerable. He claimed I invaded their souls, searched out their secrets. It wasn’t true, none of it was true,” she said, furious over the lies and distortions.
“I know it wasn’t,” he whispered, holding her even closer.
“When he came out of the shower and saw that I’d read the lies he’d written, he said he was doing it for us, for our future, that he wanted to surprise me with the news that he had an offer for the book. But I knew he was lying and I told him so. I told him just what he was thinking, all the anger he was feeling and that he didn’t have any offer on the book, that he’d been turned downed by every publisher he’d approached.”
Determined to finish, she said, “It was the wrong thing to say because he went ballistic. All that ugliness I had refused to allow myself to see came out then. He told me what a freak I was, that he was glad everything was out in the open now because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could have gone on pretending to love a frigid, messed-up bitch like me.”
“I’d like to wring the son of a bitch’s neck with my bare hands,” Jack grumbled.
She smiled, warmed by his gallant streak. Jack was right. He wasn’t Garrett. Nor was he anything like him. Jack was an honorable man, the type of man she could fall in love with if she wasn’t careful. But that was one mistake she had vowed never to make again. She’d survived losing Garrett, survived his betrayal, and had managed to rebuild her life. But she wasn’t sure she could survive having Jack look at her with revulsion someday as Garrett had. And he would. It was only a matter of time before he would, she reasoned. So she would simply keep things in perspective. She’d accept and enjoy the physical relationship between them while it lasted, and once she found the answers surrounding Sister Grace’s death, she would see justice done and then leave New Orleans for good. But she would take with her the memories of Jack.
“Are you still in love with him?”
“No,” she answered honestly. “I moved to New York when it was over and after a while I realized I was more ashamed and angry with myself than hurt by Garrett’s betrayal, because I had fooled myself into believing that I was someone I wasn’t.” She turned in his arms, cupped his jaw. “I’m not like other women, Jack.”
He caught her hand, planted a kiss in her palm. “I know that.”
But he didn’t believe her. And because she wanted a little more time with him, she didn’t fight it.
“I’m going to have to leave soon and I’ll be gone most
of the day.”
“You’re going out of town?”
Jack hesitated, then said, “To Mississippi. We located Gilbert’s ex-wife and Leon and I are driving over to interview her this morning.”
She sobered at the mention of the dead doctor. “Do you think she’s involved in his death?”
“She sounded bitter enough on the phone to want him dead, but she was nowhere near here when he was shot. I’m hoping she’ll be able to give us a lead on who might have wanted him dead. We’re going to find the killer, Kelly.”
She didn’t doubt him. And when he found the killer, he would also find a link to her. The realization had her stomach pitching again. “Whoever she is, she’s my flesh and blood,” she said aloud.
“She’s related to you by blood. That’s all,” he insisted. “And since I’ve got two whole hours before I have to pick up Leon, I’m not going to let you spend it worrying about some woman you don’t even know.”
She knew he was trying to ease her worries. Trying to follow his lead, she asked, “Then how do you propose we spend those two hours, Detective?”
“I’ll give you two guesses.”
“Watch a movie.”
“Nope,” he said and began to kiss her neck.
“Play cards?” she suggested in a voice that had grown breathless as his tongue traced the shell of her ear.
“Wrong again. Why don’t I just show you?” he told her, and reached for the belt of her robe.
“As I told you on the phone, Detectives…what were your names again?”
“Callaghan and Jerevicious.” Jack supplied his and Leon’s last names to the former Eugenia Gilbert, now Eugenia Phillips. After more than a week, they’d finally been able to connect with the woman and had driven to the small Mississippi town to see her.
She poured them each a cup of hot tea. “Milk?” she asked in that thick, lazy drawl so common in Mississippi natives.
“No thanks,” Jack said.
“No thank you, ma’am,” Leon replied.
She added milk to her own tea, stirred it and picked up the cup. She sat back in her chair. “Well, as I told you on the telephone, I was sorry to hear that Martin is dead, but I’m not surprised. What does surprise me is that someone didn’t kill him before now. The man was absolutely no good.”
Spoken like a bitter ex-wife, Jack thought. “I take it your divorce wasn’t an amicable one.”
“No, it wasn’t,” she said, her lips thinning. “The man humiliated me so badly that I left Pass Christian. That was more than fifteen years ago and I’ve never set foot in that town since.”
“I’m sorry to have to dredge up bad memories, Mrs. Phillips,” Jack told her as she dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “But anything you can tell us about your ex-husband might help us to catch his killer.”
She tucked the handkerchief back into the sleeve at her wrist. “What is it you want to know?”
“When was the last time you saw your ex-husband?”
“In the Hines County courtroom at the time of our divorce.”
“Have you spoken to him recently?” Leon asked.
“Actually, I did,” she told them. “He called me out of the blue about a month ago, wanting to borrow $5,000. As if I would lend him a dime.”
“Mrs. Phillips, did he say what he wanted the money for?”
“No, but if I had to guess I would say it was for gambling debts. He always had a problem with that. I imagine with the casinos on the Gulf Coast now, he’d have managed to get himself into quite a bit of trouble.”
“Did he say how he intended to pay you back?” Jack asked, going on the assumption that Kelly had been right. That Gilbert had been killed when some type of deal went wrong.
“He claimed he was expecting a large amount of cash in a few weeks and swore that if I’d lend him the money, he would pay me back with interest.”
Jack exchanged a look with Leon as he remembered Kelly’s description of Gilbert meeting with someone who had a bag of money. “Did he say where he was supposed to be getting the money from?”
“Oh, he gave me some nonsense about collecting money due him from the family of a former patient.”
“Did he happen to tell you the name of that patient?” Leon asked.
“No. And I didn’t ask him either. I told him not to call me again and hung up the phone.”
“Mrs. Phillips, can you think of anyone who would want to kill your ex-husband?” Jack asked.
“Probably more people than you have space to list in that little book you’ve been scribbling in,” she told him. She took a sip of her tea, then set the cup down on the saucer. “Detective Callaghan, if you’d asked me that question fifteen years ago, I’d have told you. I hated Martin when we divorced and I’d have been only too happy to put poison in his tea.”
Leon stopped with the cup midway to his mouth and set it down on its saucer.
“And now?” Jack asked.
“Now I’m married to a good man, an honest man who doesn’t put his shoes under anyone’s bed but mine. So I don’t waste my time thinking of ways to get even with Martin anymore.” She blotted her lips with the linen napkin and set it aside. “But from what I’ve heard over the years, Martin collected enemies like most people collect postage stamps. There was a new one every few weeks.”
“Any idea who some of those enemies were?” Jack asked.
“Take your pick. Business associates whom he swindled, people he owed money to, angry patients and their families. Martin was a charmer, always working an angle, looking to make the big money quick. He could have been a great doctor, made a good living. Instead he was into shortcuts, living too fast and too high, taking too many risks.”
“Is that why he started performing illegal abortions?” Leon asked.
“So you know about that,” Eugenia said. “Yes. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I found out later he’d been performing them on underage girls for some time and eventually it cost him his license. I understand there were a lot of angry parents, and one girl’s parents threatened to make him pay. You might want to check out some of them.”
“We will.” But they’d already checked out several of the complaints filed against Gilbert. So far, the people’s alibis checked out. “We noted your ex-husband had quite a number of lawsuits filed against him, but only one actually went to trial. According to court records, the other cases were dropped. Do you have any idea why?” Jack asked because this had bothered him from the moment he began investigating the doctor’s past.
“I suspect it had something to do with his ‘good friend’ in high places,” Eugenia Phillips replied. “But apparently not even his ‘friend’ was able to bail him out of that last mess he got himself into.”
“His good friend in high places?” Jack prompted.
“That’s what Martin used to call him. Or her. I was never sure if it was a man or a woman because Martin wouldn’t tell me who it was. It was one of his little secrets,” she said, a grimace crossing her face. “Martin was a very ambitious man, especially when he was younger. He’d go out of his way to curry favor with people he thought might be able to help him someday.”
“What kind of favors?” Jack asked, although he suspected he knew.
“I never asked. And he never told me. But he was always fawning over the rich folks and politicians in town, ingratiating himself. If someone called in the middle of the night because they had a problem or needed a prescription, he was only too happy to help.”
“Can you remember the names of any of those people?”
She gave them a few names of politicians and others she claimed were society types. “Apparently all of his kowtowing paid off because the first time he got in trouble, his ‘friend’ took care of the problem for him.”
“When was that?”
“Oh, I guess it was about twenty-five years ago. You have no idea how terrified I was when he came home nervous as a cat in a tub of water. He’d performed an abortion on a fifteen
-year-old. The poor girl had started hemorrhaging and had to be taken to the hospital. I was appalled and worried sick. I was sure he was going to lose his practice and that we’d be sued. He left the house and didn’t come back all night,” she said. “The next morning when he finally came home and I asked about the girl, he told me to forget he’d said anything. The problem was taken care of and I was never to mention it again.”
“No charges were filed against him?” Leon asked.
“Not as far as I know. After that, he never said anything about his work to me. I only learned about the lawsuits filed against him around the time of the divorce.”
“Mrs. Phillips, do you have any idea who that friend of his was?” Leon asked.
“Not really. But because of the way that thing with the girl was hushed up, I assumed it was someone political and that he or she was pretty high up the ladder.”
“Why’s that?” Jack asked.
“Because I don’t think the local sheriff could have kept it out of the newspapers.” She glanced at her watch and stood. “I don’t want to be rude, Detectives, but my husband, Conrad, is due home shortly from his golf game. And I’d prefer it if you weren’t here when he arrives.”
Jack stood. So did Leon. “Of course. You’ve been most helpful, Mrs. Phillips. Thank you for speaking with us.”
“Yes, ma’am, thank you,” Leon echoed.
After she showed them to the door, Jack turned and asked, “Mrs. Phillips, one more question if I may.”
She nodded.
“We haven’t had any success in locating the records for your former husband’s practice. Do you have any idea what might have happened to them?”
She shook her head. “If anyone knows it would probably be Eve.”
“Eve?” Jack repeated.
“Eve Tompkins. She was Martin’s office nurse,” she said with a scowl. “Or at least that was her official title. The little trollop was always after him. I was against him hiring her from the start. But Martin insisted she was good with the patients and that she needed the job. What she needed was a man of her own, if you ask me. I divorced him when I came to his office one afternoon and found her…servicing him. If there was anyone who knew Martin’s secrets, Eve would.”