propped on the end of his nose and file folders, complete with rings from coffee cups, were stacked haphazardly, a computer was near his right shoulder and a bulletin board behind him was filled with pictures of several different crimes. Snapshots of Pam’s wrecked Mercedes, Pam’s bloody body, the charred remnants of a huge semi and the gaping hole in the guardrail were in one grouping. Marla had trouble dragging her eyes away from the macabre images of twisted metal and the dead woman. She shivered when she remembered that night and Pam’s terrified screams.
“I heard someone at your number called 911 the other night requesting an ambulance, only to turn it away when it arrived.”
“Bad news travels quick,” Nick observed.
“Computers. Everything’s linked these days.” Paterno looked from Nick to Marla. “So what happened?”
There wasn’t any reason to hide the truth, so Marla told him about getting sick and opting to go to the clinic to meet Phil Robertson. All the while she spoke, Tony Paterno leaned back in his chair, chewed gum as if it were the last piece on earth, and scratched notes to himself on a small yellow pad. When she finished, he looked at her over his glasses. “You were pretty lucky from the sounds of it.”
“I guess.”
“What made you sick?”
“I don’t know.”
Paterno slid a glance at Nick. “Good thing Mr. Cahill here is so handy with wire cutters. Real lucky that he was around.”
“Very,” Marla said lifting her chin a notch. She heard the insinuation in the cop’s question, a silent accusation that she’d been with a man other than her husband, but she refused to rise to the bait.
“You’ve moved back into the house?” Paterno asked Nick, his dark, assessing eyes studying Marla’s brother-in-law.
“As of that night, yeah.”
“Why?”
Nick grinned, that wide, don’t-try-to-bullshit-me smile that Marla had seen more often than not. “I guess I finally succumbed to family pressure.”
“From whom?”
“My mother. My brother.”
Paterno’s eyebrows elevated. “You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who lets himself be led around by the nose.”
“Depends on whose doin’ the leadin’,” Nick drawled, his blue eyes sparkling in challenge and even Paterno’s lips twitched. “I figured it was time. The other night convinced me.”
“Because Mrs. Cahill got sick?”
“Because she nearly died.” Nick’s grin evaporated. “As you said, it was a good thing I was around.”
Paterno nodded and scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully. “So where was your husband?” he asked Marla.
Good question. “Out. On business.”
Paterno picked up a report, adjusted his glasses and said, “It says here the 911 call came in at 11:50 p.m.”
“That’s about right.” Nick crossed his legs, propping one battered Nike on his other knee.
Paterno wasn’t satisfied. “Pretty late for business, don’t you think?”
She bristled a little, heat climbing up the back of her neck, though she, too, wondered about her husband’s mysterious whereabouts. What was he up to? Why didn’t she trust him? And why did she feel she had to defend him to this cop who was just doing his job? “Alex doesn’t keep banker’s hours.”
“Neither do a lot of us.” Anthony Paterno dropped the page onto his already overburdened desk, then folded his hands over the entire messy pile of papers. “Mrs. Cahill, can you think of any reason why anyone would want you dead?”
“You think someone is trying to kill me?” she asked, her heart pounding. It was the second time within a couple of hours that someone had suggested what she’d tried to shrug off as paranoia.
“If your story is accurate, then someone deliberately got in the path of your car. Now your thinking’s still a little fuzzy, so I wouldn’t jump to too many conclusions on that alone, but you did nearly die the other night and I was just wondering if anyone could have given you something to make you vomit, knowing you might suffocate?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I ate with my family downstairs. It was the first time I’d come down to take a meal with them and I had to have soup as my mouth was still wired shut. Later I had something to drink. I kept water or tea or juice near the bed and it was usually brought up by someone on the staff. But I wasn’t given any different medication or anything.” She decided to be as forthright as possible with the detective. Leaning forward, she placed her elbows on the edge of the desk. “I guess I’d better tell you that I thought there might have been an intruder in my room that night.”