if you had money, connections, and access to a private plane, anything was possible. So, the solution to Kenneth’s depression and their marital problems was going to be Amantha. God help us all.
My list now had some interesting entries. Drugs, from where? Private plane, owned by whom? Travel to Europe? How many times, with whom? What kind of art did Kenneth produce? Who bought it? Where did they get all their money? The more I wrote, the more questions I had.
How much money did a person make writing poetry? Even with a Pulitzer, did people really buy poetry books? Yes, Neville had his writing groups, but how much money could he be earning from them? Certainly not enough to pay for all that rehab, plus the month at the spa in Europe, plus the private plane. And the private adoption of Amantha. Did they buy that little girl? I shuddered. This whole thing was beginning to give me the creeps.
Moving on: Who else was in the group? There was Joseph, Neville’s right-hand man. A long-time colleague from back in their “salad days,” as they called them. They’d been to Vietnam together, come back and gotten jobs together at some place in midtown, writing copy for advertising. The end of the “Mad Men” era, I suppose. I couldn’t picture either one of them in that milieu, wearing skinny ties and shiny black shoes, writing jingles for soda pop and then going home in the evening to their wives, whom they avoided talking to and having sex with. Smoking all day until their fingers were stained yellow. Hair greased back so they still felt hip and young, even though it was killing them to be working for “the man,” selling junk food and sitting in a crappy 8 x 8 office all day long. Joseph now wrote violent stories about taking ears off gooks, while Neville changed diapers and wrote about loving cock. I put a star next to his name.
Leslie, a relative newcomer to the group, was another frustrated Neville groupie. Her unrequited love of the poet manifested itself in weekly offerings of baked goods, erotica, and Neville’s oblivious exploitation of the poor woman. I knew that Leslie had spent hours babysitting for Amantha at the drop of a hat, and I had witnessed firsthand how she ran to get the baby whenever Kenneth was out. How many times had I watched her dandle Amantha on her lap over the past year, only to have Kenneth swoop in and snatch her away? While Leslie was no friend of mine—I’d laughed aloud when she produced a knitted bonnet for the baby that I genuinely thought was a potholder or one of those things you use to scrape ice from car windows—I knew that she’d never harm a hair on Neville’s head. Now, if Kenneth was dead, I would definitely put her in my top ten. But unless Neville did something horrid like tell Leslie to stay away from Amantha, I couldn’t see her stabbing him with a knife.
Javi, the sullen Serbian novelist, was an enigma to me. He could be a nice guy, I was certain, but I had no evidence of either the niceness or, to be quite frank, the gayness. This was a very sexually amorphous group, I suddenly realized. Only Paxton was definitively straight, in the sense that he was married with a couple of kids and a wife that he talked about all the time. Wow, what a boring guy to be in a writing group. He must be a killer!
The door jerked against my back, and then I felt someone pounding on it.
“Miss, are you all right? Miss? Oh my God, should I call for help?”
I squirmed to the side, opened the door a crack, and peeked out.
“I’m okay,” I said.
“Have you fallen? Can you move?” a young woman asked. “I’ll get some help.”
“No,” I shouted. “Stop right there. I haven’t fallen. I can get up. Just wait a minute. I’m just sitting here, quietly, trying not to wake my neighbor in the bed there.”
“Too late,” Friday said. “I’m awake now. Thanks.”
I opened the door. The little nurse was clutching her chest.
“Are you okay? I’m sorry I scared you,” I said. I helped her get to the chair.
“I couldn’t find you in the bed, and then I couldn’t open the door, and I saw your face down there by the floor,” she gasped.
“Oh my God, you’re giving the nurses heart attacks now. You’re going to kill us all,” Friday said. I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was smiling. Then again, maybe not; it was hard to be sure.
I poured her some water and watched as she drank it.
“I’m fine. You just take a minute there. Do you want me to go and get someone to help?” I asked. “That’s a good idea. I’ll just ring the buzzer.”
She was looking a little green around the edges.
“Maybe you should lie down on the bed for a minute. What do you think?”
She wouldn’t do it, but she did fold over and put her head between her knees. Maybe that’s why she was on the night shift, so she wouldn’t have to interact with actual live patients.
I shook Friday by the foot when I passed his bed.
“Keep an eye on her, will you?” I said. “I think she might hit the floor any minute now. I’m going to get some help in here.”
As I went down the hall, I heard him sigh, “Oh, Jeez,” and the mattress creak as he got out of bed.
When I got back to the room with another aide in tow, Friday was sitting on my bed and the nurse was sprawled across the chair with a facecloth over her eyes.
“What happened?” I asked as one woman rushed to help the other.
“And what are you doing with that?” I said to Ty. I grabbed my notebook from his hands. “I didn’t give you permission to read this.”
“You left it here, in plain sight,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was, so I just had a little look at it. Now, if you could share some of your fascinating insights with the police department, we might be able to clear this case in a jiffy.”
“Sarcasm does not become you,” I said. “And I was just trying to sort things out. You know, someone is trying to make it look like I was involved with Neville’s death, and I have no idea why that would be. I have an interest in figuring out who did this, too.”
He groaned. “Please, in the name of all that is holy, do not try to help me solve this crime. The last thing I want is an amateur detective mucking around in my evidence.”
He went back over to his side of the room and started digging in the locker for his clothes.
“I think it’s time to check out of here,” he said.
The nurse, walking slowly out the door with the assistance of the aide, stopped and said, “I don’t think so, officer. You have to wait for the doctor to come by in the morning.”
“No, I don’t,” he said.
He pulled out a pair of wrinkled trousers.
“You can keep her as collateral, but I am out of here. I’ll get some rest at home, and if my nose starts to bleed or my vision starts to get blurry, I’ll come back.”
He pulled the pants on over his boxers and then tossed away the johnnie. I caught a glimpse of a nice chest and a well-defined set of abs before he pulled on a shirt.
“In the meantime,” he continued. “You might want to put some restraints on the doc over there to keep her in the bed so she doesn’t scare anyone else half to death.”
I relaxed on the bed, enjoying his display. The two women, heads shaking, left the doorway, promising to return with some papers for him to sign.
“What’s the big rush?” I asked.
He flopped into the chair, rubbing his eyes.
“My head is killing me,” he said.
“So, stay a few more hours. You’re not going to be able to do much right now anyway. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s the middle of the night.”
He squinted at me.
“Can you turn off that light