Dead Man Docking - Mary Daheim [63]
“He’s still missing.”
Biff cursed under his breath. “That Giddon woman’s gonna drive me ’round the bend. C’mon, Rick—you know anything I don’t?”
Judith heard Rick chuckle. “Do you think I’m holding back on you, old son?”
There was a pause. “Well—you do sometimes. I mean, you got all that stuff running around in your head like so many rats in a sewer—no offense, Rick—but you don’t always open up until you’re sure of a thing. You know what I’m saying?”
“Yes, I do, Biff. It’s my way of solving cases. No point in tipping my hand too soon. I may have misread my cards or misjudged another player. Be patient. I’d better get back to the dining room now. Keep me posted from your end.”
“Right.” There was a brief silence. Judith pretended she was talking into the phone. But Biff spoke again. “I might as well use the facilities while I’m here. Will they throw me out because I’m not dressed like the rest of the swells?”
“Of course not,” Rick said. “I’ll go with you. Say, I hear there’s a horse named Sweet Pea running down at…” His voice died away as the pair entered the men’s room.
Judith moved to the far end of the phone booths. She mis-dialed twice before the phone finally rang at Hillside Manor. Wilbur. The name was distracting her. She’d heard it before, but couldn’t recall where or when. The last twenty-four hours had been so full of new names and places and—
“Joe?” she said in a startled voice. “Is that you?”
“Of course it’s me,” he said, sounding hoarse. “I’ve got a cold. Where are you? Where’re the cough drops?”
“I’m still in San Francisco,” Judith replied. “The cough drops are in the medicine closet by the decongestants and the nose drops. How did you get a cold?”
“Standing out in the rain waiting for Bill’s lunatic to drop that damned Oscar out of the hospital window,” Joe said in an annoyed tone. “It took two hours and four firefighters from Bayview.”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course I’m serious. Where’s the decongestant?”
Judith could hear rummaging in the background. Joe must have taken the phone into the bathroom. “The middle shelf,” she said. “There are two bottles. One’s blue and the other one’s green. Use the blue one. It’s for nighttime symptoms. Is your throat sore?”
“Sore as hell.”
“Gargle with warm salt water.” Judith waited a moment. “Do you see the cough drops?”
“No. Yes, here they are. Ooof!”
There was a clatter followed by muffled swearwords. “I thought you were at the jail, not the hospital,” she said after the cussing turned into a cough.
“That was later,” Joe croaked. “The nut was at Bayview Hospital for evaluation. Then he got unruly. That’s when he made a dive for Oscar.” Joe sneezed a couple of times. “I still can’t find the cough drops.”
“I told you, they’re by the decongestant.”
Silence. Judith waited, visualizing Joe’s search of the medicine closet. The red-and-gold box was probably right in front of him.
“I found them,” he said, coughing again. “They were on the floor. I guess I knocked them off the shelf.”
“You couldn’t have gotten a cold this fast,” Judith said. “It must have been coming on earlier. Or maybe it’s allergies.”
“Bunk. I don’t have allergies. I know a cold when I get one. It started about two hours ago. We didn’t get back from the jail until almost eight. The rain was coming down in buckets, not like the usual drizzle.”
Judith didn’t want to hear the details—although if Joe kept talking about his misadventures, she wouldn’t have to reveal hers. “Bill must be glad he got Oscar back,” she remarked.
“I had to lend Bill twenty bucks,” Joe replied, his speech apparently further hampered by the cough drop he was sucking. “He only had forty and change on him.”
“You mean for Oscar’s ransom?”
“Right.” Joe sneezed some more.
Judith held the receiver away from her ear an inch, as if the germs could travel along the phone line. “What about the helicopter?”
“We tricked Lorenzo on that one,” Joe said. “One of the medevacs landed on the hospital pad and we told him it was his chopper. That’s when he fell out the window.”
“He was threatening to jump again?”
“No, he was trying