Part 8 (1/2)
”She worried about him?”
”Some.”
”Just in case there was two of them, suppose you give me the name you know.”
”Richard Holton, Attorney at Law.”
”The only name?”
”The only boyfriend, I'd say.”
Stanger sighed and looked discouraged. ”Same name we've got, dammit. And he drove his wife over to Vero Beach to visit her sister today. Left about nine this morning. Put through a call over there about an hour and a half ago, and they had left about eight to drive back. Should be home by now. This is still a pretty small town, McGee. Mr. Holton and this nurse had been kicking up a fuss about Doc Sherman's death being called suicide. That's the SS in the note, I guess?”
”Yes. She talked to me about the doctor.”
”What's this about... let me find it here... here it is, 'memory and digital skills'?”
”It doesn't mean a thing to me.”
”Would it have anything to do with the doctor not not killing himself?” killing himself?”
”I haven't any idea.”
”Pictures make you feel sick?” Nudenbarger asked.
”Shut up, Lew,” Stanger said.
It was past midnight. I looked at my watch when the phone rang. Stanger motioned to me to take it and moved over and leaned close to me to hear the other end of the conversation.
”Travis? This is Biddy. I just got home. Tom found her about twenty minutes ago.”
”Is she all right?”
”I guess so. After looking practically all over the county, he found her wandering around not over a mile from here. The poor darling has been bitten a billion times. She's swelling up and going out of her mind with the itching. Tom is bathing her now, and then we'll use the Donned. Sleep will be the best thing in the world for her.”
”Use the what?”
”It's electrotherapy. She responds well to it. And... thanks for being concerned, Travis. We both... all appreciate it.”
I hung up and Stanger said with mild surprise, ”You know the Pikes too?”
”The wife and her sister, from a long time ago. And their mother.”
”Didn't she die just a while back?”
”That's right.”
”They find that kook wife?” Nudenbarger asked.
”Tom Pike found her.”
Nudenbarger shook his head slowly. ”Now, that one is really something, I swear to G.o.d! Al, I'll just never forget how she looked that time last spring she was missing for two days, and those three Telaferro brothers had kept her the whole time in that little bitty storeroom out to the truck depot, keeping her boozed up and bangin' that poor flippy woman day and night until I swear she was so plain wore-down p.o.o.ped that Mike and Sandy had to use a stretcher to tote her out to-”
”Shut your G.o.dd.a.m.n mouth, Lew!” Stanger roared.
Nudenbarger stared blankly at him. ”Now ”Now what in the world is eating you, anyway.” what in the world is eating you, anyway.”
”Go out and check in and see if there's anything new and if there is, come get me, and if there isn't, stay the h.e.l.l out there in the car!”
”Sure. Okay.”
After the door had closed gently behind the younger man, Stanger sighed and sat down and felt around in the side pocket of his jacket and found a half cigar and lit the ash end thoroughly and carefully. ”Mr. Tom Pike should send that wife off someplace. Or watch her a little more close. She's going to go out some night and meet up with some bug who'll maybe kill her.”
”Before she kills herself?”
”Seems like if a man has good luck in one direction, McGee, it runs real bad some other way. When she lost the second kid, something went wrong in her head. I say it would be a blessing if she had made a good job of it when she tried. Mr. McGee, I think it would be a good thing if you stayed right in town for a few days.”
”I want to help if I can. I didn't know Penny Woertz very long. But... I liked her a lot.”
He pulled on the cigar. ”Amateur help? Run around in circles and get everything all confused?”
”Let's just say it wouldn't be quite as amateur as the help you're running around with right now, Stanger.”
”It like to broke Lew's heart when they picked him off his motor-sickel and give him to me. What you might do, if it wouldn't put you out any, is see if Rick Holton made the trip he said he made. It's unhealthy for me to check up on a man in Holton's position. I think maybe Janice Holton would be easy to talk with, easier for you than me.”
Once again I remembered Harry Simmons, and I said, ”If she phones you to check on me, confirm the fact that I'm an insurance investigator looking into a death claim on Dr. Sherman.”
”Going to her instead of to Holton himself?”
”Just to see if she thinks he's sincere in believing it was murder or if he's been faking it in order to snuggle up to Nurse Woertz.”
He whistled softly. ”You could lose some hide off your face.”
”Depending on how I work up to it.”
”If they'd both been in town, both Rick Holton and his wife, and they weren't together, I'd want to make sure I knew where she was at the time that girl got stuck with the shears.”
”She capable of it?”
He stood up. ”Who knows what anybody will do or won't do, when the moon is right? All I know is that she was Janice Nocera before she married the lawyer, and her folks have always had a habit of taking care of their own problems in their own way.”
I remembered the pictures of her and the kids, the ones I had taken out of Holton's wallet. Handsome, lean, dark, with a mop of black hair and more than her share of both nose and mouth, and a jaunty defiance in the way she stared smiling into the lens.
”And I'll be checking you out a little more too,” he said, and gave me a small, tired smile and went out.
10.
PAGE ONE of the Fort Courtney of the Fort Courtney Sunday Register Sunday Register bannered LOCAL NURSE SLAIN. They had a suns.h.i.+ny smiling picture of her that pinched my heart in a sly and painful way. bannered LOCAL NURSE SLAIN. They had a suns.h.i.+ny smiling picture of her that pinched my heart in a sly and painful way.