Read Online Compliments of a Friend by Susan Isaacs - Free Book Online

the doorway, blocking his way.
    “Is it on Barbara Giddings?” I asked. “She was obsessed with Vanessa. She knew about the two pill cases. But she didn’t know there were vitamins in them. She thought they were full of uppers and downers, or at least that’s what she’s saying now. And then there’s the problem of access. Could Barbara really have gotten into Vanessa’s handbag not once, but twice: to get the capsule, then return it to the pill case?”
    Kim decided to revert to amusement. It was as if he’d left all traces of his former neutrality back at his desk.
    “The new wife? Is that what you’re going to say next?”
    He waited, a pleasant, anticipatory expression on his face, as if he were waiting for a comeback from a standup comic.
    “Same problem of access. How could she have done it without Stan’s complicity?”
    “Then you’re saying …”
    He waited again.
    My problem wasn’t whether Kim was interested. I could see he was, if only to the extent that, if he were the diligent type, he’d review the case the instant I left. The problem was that if he were a shrewd department politician without a conscience, he wouldn’t now holler murder, not when he’d already gone public and declared it a suicide.
    “Listen,” I told him. “I teach history on the college level. Plus, I work in a public library that serves a population of thirty thousand.”
    “I assume you’re trying to make some point. What is it?”
    “I know from a bureaucracy standpoint,” I told him, “it might seem to you that saying it’s a homicide now is like announcing ‘I goofed.’ But it doesn’t have to be viewed as your mistake. More than likely, it could be sloppy work by the medical examiner’s office, or by the first cops on the scene, or something. And you could be the hero because you had doubts and the courage of your convictions and went after the truth.”
    “And what is the truth?” Kim asked.
    Before I could answer, a voice from behind me, in the hall, called out to Kim: “How’s it going, Andy?”
    Oh God. I knew whose voice that was. I could not bring myself to turn around and look.
    “Not bad. How’re you doing, man?”
    “Not bad, either,” the voice said. The footsteps continued down the hall for another second or two. Maybe it wasn’t extrasensory perception that made Nelson stop, but a cop’s sensitivity to some infinitesimal motion. For all I know, it could have been my telltale heart.
    Nelson looked lousy. He looked wonderful. His salt-and-pepper hair had turned white, a cool white, the hair that tycoons have on a better class of TV series. His skin, however, had lost its luster, and he now had the chalky color of a lifelong civil servant. But at least, though I didn’t dare give him the once-over, his body still seemed fine. His eyes were still gorgeous, large and velvety brown. For that instant, they did not leave my face. Naturally, I immediately thought there was some hideous flaw he’d spotted, one of those imperfections of middle age I couldn’t see because my eyesight has gone to hell: a giant hair growing out of my nose, my entire jawline covered by a Texas-shaped liver spot. I held my hands tight to my sides so I wouldn’t reach up and feel for what was wrong and swallowed hard. And nothing more happened. Nelson gave me a barely perceptible nod and walked on.
    Now all I wanted was to get out of police headquarters. But I forced myself to talk to Detective-Sergeant Kim.
    “You and I both know who had access to Vanessa’s things a few months back.”
    “You’re talking about Stan Giddings?”
    “We know Vanessa …”
    Was trying to hold an intelligent conversation too much stress on my heart? Would I say Here’s what I think and then simply drop dead? Poor Kate. Poor Joey. Both parents’ hearts couldn’t take the stress they were under. But I had to say something to Detective Sergeant Kim.
    “We know Vanessa was too much for Stan Giddings. Pushing him farther than