Chapter 23

I spent most of the day sprawled on the sofa, my feet on the coffee table. I was at an impasse until after the meeting, when hopefully I'd have something to work with. What I had right now told me there was a very dangerous person out there, but it didn't tell me the first thing about who he was. And until I could start working on that, I might as well be the rent-a-cop hanging around at night for all the good I could do.

Cecelia did things in the kitchen, which is more purely her domain even than her weight shed, but she spent most of the time in her sewing room. Ever since I got her that industrial sewing machine she's started making almost all our clothes. She hasn't yet attempted a pair of jeans, but I think she's toying with giving that a try. She has done skirts, shirts, blouses, dresses, all sorts of stuff. I expect that when it's time for a new nightgown she'll make it rather than buy it, though that sort of thing doesn't wear out real fast. About the only thing I suppose we'll keep buying is underwear – somehow I can't see Cecelia making unmentionables, though she's certainly got the ability.

I had the radio remote by me, and I alternated between station surfing, and listening to a Lefty Frizzell compilation. There's only one country station in town that would even know Lefty's name, much less play his music. He's not my favorite country singer, but he wasn't bad, sounding a little bit like Hank Williams. In fact, at one point when I was younger I'd thought one of his songs was a Hank tune.

I'd finished Nimitz Class and was now reading one of Jake Page's novels. I'd just recently ran across Page, and found him to be a good writer even if at least some of his stuff did issue from the UNM press. His Mo Bowdre mysteries are nearly as good as Tony Hillerman's, and they rate up there with the Neil Hamel series – and above the Charlie Parker mysteries. All these series deal with New Mexico, though Hillerman's Navajo mysteries have more to do with Arizona, since the Big Rez is mostly in that state. This one was The Lethal Partner, and while I thought I knew who was killing Anglo women in Santa Fe at the rate of one a week I wasn't sure, and I've learned over the years that while I might be a pretty good detective in real life, mystery writers are smarter than crooks, and they're too smart for me. When I do manage to solve the puzzle in a mystery novel it's by accident, because I've given up trying to do it.

Finally it got to be 3 o'clock, and I got dressed and had a snack before heading out to the clinic. The snack was a piece of Cecelia's cheesecake, this one laced with ribbons of cactus honey we'd brought back from the Mojave Desert. The chill of the refrigerator had thickened the honey, of course, and its stiff sweetness combined with the richness of the cheesecake was absolutely fantastic. The contrast of colors was special too – cactus honey is dark, and against the light color of the cheesecake I thought it looked wonderful. I might be hungry after the meeting, but for now I wasn't ready to eat for a while.

By the time I left Cecelia had finally put away her sewing and gone out to her weight shed. I put on my hat and jacket and went out to tell her I was leaving. When she's sweating is the one time she doesn't want me holding her, so I just kissed her shiny face while she held a curl, her bicep as hard as a rock and just about big enough, if had been a rock, to fit into the palm of a throwing hand. She looked so beautiful I hated to leave, but I knew she'd be there when I came back.

I drove to the clinic through early rush hour traffic. There was a time when rush hour in Albuquerque wasn't too bad, but these days the number of cars, and the incomprehensible manners of the drivers, make it irritating if not flatly dangerous. I've seen people suddenly cross three lanes of traffic, without using the blinker, to make a left turn. I've seen people make a left turn while steering with one hand, holding a cell phone with the other, and shifting gears somehow in the process. Albuquerque drivers come nearly to a complete stop when turning into a parking lot, don't begin accelerating away from a stop light until they've crept 50 yards or so, and think that when the speed limit's 40 it means 50 and vice versa.

I got to the clinic in one piece and only somewhat fed up with the traffic, which is about par for the course. I found the front door locked, which I'd expected since the time was after the place closed. I knocked on it, letting the gold and ruby ring Darlia got me for my birthday two or three years ago tap on the glass. Usually I don't wear anything but my wedding ring, but for some reason I'd taken a notion, and slipped Darlia's gift on while I was dressing.

It was just half a minute or so before I saw someone coming. It was a woman in scrubs, and she unlocked the door and let me in, locking it behind me. "You must be Mr. Carpenter," she said. "I'm Davey."

"Well, I'm glad to meet you," I said, sticking out my hand.

She took it and grinned. She had short medium brown hair, and was one of those women on whom "pleasingly plump" isn't a euphemism but the simple truth. She would never make it as a model, but her proportions were as they ought to be, she looked cute as all get-out, and as far as I could tell in the scrubs her belly didn't bulge much. "I'm glad to meet you too," she said. "You look like your voice."

"And you look like a Davey," I told her. "Or a Davina. Either way, your name fits you somehow."

She colored just slightly. "Thank you. If you'll come this way..."

I followed her down the hall, and to a conference room that I knew I'd seen before, when I'd checked the security, but which hadn't really registered in my memory. Dr. Bernard was there, as were two other women in scrubs. Davey sat down between the other women, and I sat all by myself on the side of the table nearest the door so I could see all of them.

"I won't keep y'all any longer than I have to," I began. "I know y'all want to get on home. I appreciate y'all being here, and I appreciate Dr. Bernard allowing this meeting." I was certainly saying y'all a lot, but it is a useful contraction.

"What I'm trying to do in general," I said, "is figure out who's threatening this place. I've concluded that he's a very real danger, and I want to locate him before he does anything stupid. What I'm doing here in particular is trying to get as much information as I can. I take it y'all have either taken a call from this critter, or seen at least one of the letters?"