Blood on the Street (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #4)

deeply, she began counting. At twenty, she opened her arms and, knees still to her chest, rolled from side to side keeping her back flat on the floor. Better. Finally she came up on her knees, sat back, and lowered her torso into a flat position on the floor, reaching out with her arms, stretching, breathing into the tightness in her lower back.
    Although almost rigid with exhaustion, she knew if she didn’t deal with it now, she’d never be able to get out of bed in the morning.
    The soup began to make sissing noises. She came out of her crawl and cautiously tried to stand. And did. Turning off the flame under the soup, she went into the bathroom and scrubbed her face. She ran hot water into Carlos’s deep marble tub and poured a capful of raspberry-scented bubble bath, which was stationed with the shampoo on a Lucite table nearby.
    A bowl of hot soup, Carr’s water biscuits with butter, and her gnawing hunger was eased. It was too late to call anyone. There were messages, she’d seen the machine blinking, but she didn’t want to know about them. Not tonight. She wanted to think everything through: Brian’s murder, Rona—the phone call—Wetzon hadn’t been able to hide that Rona’s call had brought her to Lincoln Center, but she’d glossed over where she’d taken the call, so for now, no one knew she’d broken into Dr. Jerry’s office. She sighed. Penny Ann, poor Tabitha, Dr. Jerry Gordon, Tony Maglia. Richard Hartmann, Alton Pinkus. Smith. Twoey. Silvestri. Her whole life. It was so complicated.
    She poured herself a glass of orange juice on the rocks and rinsed the empty soup bowl, stacking it in the dishwasher. The biscuits went back on the shelf but in an airtight Ziploc bag. A plastic bag, like the sequins.
    And it was the sequins she was thinking about again when she lowered herself into the steaming, raspberry-scented foam with an “Aaaah.” She took a sip of the orange juice, set the glass on the floor, and lay back in the suds, resting her head on the rim, closing her eyes. Floating. Everything was such a mess. Relationships were so messy. Look at Penny Ann and Tabitha. Rona and Brian. Smith and Twoey. But weren’t those extremes?
    Why couldn’t things have just gone on the way they were? She shook her head emphatically and was rewarded by a swatch of hair sliding from her topknot. Reaching up with both hands, she took all the pins out of her hair and dropped them on the black-and-white marble tiled floor. Her ash-blond hair tumbled from the knot and fanned out in the water like a wet curtain.
    I am a mermaid, she thought. Doesn’t anyone understand that?
    The phone bleated from the wall just above her head, and she started, splashing water on the floor. Good God! It was after one o’clock. Who would be calling this late? She lay back in the tub listening to the bleat, watching the phone upside down. Reaching back and up with her hand, more suds and flow, she picked the receiver from its wall hanging and put it to her ear. “Yes?”
    “Did I wake you?” Silvestri’s voice was scratchy and gruff, as if he had a cold or was emotional, or something. Forget that.
    “No.” The water had gotten cool. She turned on the hot spigot.
    “Are you in a water bed?”
    “I’m in the tub. Carlos has a phone in his bathroom.”
    He cleared his throat. “I’m not going to try to explain—”
    “Good.” He knew her well enough to know it was highly unusual for her to be up this late, and she wasn’t going to make it any easier for him.
    “Les.” He cleared his throat again. “I’m not good at this.” He left her an opening wide enough to dance a chorus line through, but she said nothing. She wanted him to keep talking. People always talked to fill a vacuum. And there certainly was a vacuum between them. “Are you listening?” he said.
    “Yes.” She turned off the hot water and lay back again.
    “I hate this crap. Look, I want us to be together.” Again he left her an opening. When she didn’t fill it, he said, hotly, “I’d like to kick your butt for—”
    “Oh, I see. You want us to be together and you want to kick my butt.” If she weren’t so miserable, she would laugh.
    “You want to misunderstand, don’t you?” She could hear him coming to a boil.
    “No. Being together means just that.”
    “This is my job.”
    “I know that. I have a job I love also. But there’s no give with you. You went down there and suddenly I no longer exist. Do you honestly think I’m