Hotline to Murder

a helluva bruise and some lacerations to boot. I’ll bet you didn’t get those falling down in your house.”
    “No,” Tony agreed. “I got those falling down a hill.” A paraphrase of the old nursery rhyme kept singing in his head: “Jack and Jill went up the hill, to see two siblings playing. Jack fell free and broke his knee….”
    “I’m going to give you a pair of crutches,” the doctor continued, “and a flexible knee brace. But I don’t want you putting much weight on that knee for a couple of weeks.”
    “Will I be able to use that leg to shift gears in my Porsche?”
    “I don’t want you even bending your knee as much as it takes to get into a Porsche. You need to be driving something big and roomy, with automatic transmission, that will allow you to keep your leg straight. And you’re lucky this isn’t your right knee or you wouldn’t be able to drive at all.”
    Lucky? How was he going to work? How was he going to do anything?
    “I know what we’ll do,” Josh said. “We’ll swap cars. You can drive my Highlander and I’ll drive the Porsche.”
    “If he hadn’t volunteered to trade you, I would have,” the doctor said smiling. “It’s always been my dream to own a Porsche, but with a wife and two kids….”
    Tony had never let anybody drive his Porsche, and he would have rated Josh near the bottom of his list of possibles. But Josh had taken care of him tonight; he had not only driven him here, but stayed with him for hours while the paperwork ground slowly, and sicker and more seriously injured patients gained priority over him.
    “Will you promise to drive it the same way you drove me here tonight?” Tony asked Josh.
    “Scout’s honor.”
    Josh had never been a boy scout, but there was another reason Tony was willing to consider it. The pair of panties was still in his pants pocket, which at the moment hung on a peg on the wall of the examining room. Fortunately, his wallet had been in another pocket, so he was able to retrieve his insurance information without pulling them out, but he was feeling a fair amount of guilt at violating Josh’s privacy.

    CHAPTER 23
    Tony remembered the way to Carol’s apartment so well that he could have driven it blindfolded. As it was, he was driving it with one leg. He was thankful for Josh’s SUV. At least he didn’t have to rent a car, in addition to making hefty lease payments on the Porsche. He forced himself not to worry about what Josh was doing with his car.
    During his few free moments at work, he had used the time to worry about something else: what to do with the panties. He couldn’t bring himself to turn them over to Detective Croyden. He couldn’t rat out Josh, especially since he would have to drive Josh’s car to the police station to do it.
    Josh had been super nice to him ever since their little “talk,” during which Josh had said he would move out within thirty days. He hadn’t mentioned moving out since, and there was no evidence that he was looking for another place to live. He hadn’t violated Tony’s rules about having loud visitors over on work nights. He was still a slob, but Tony could live with that. At least Tony knew Josh’s habits. And he always paid his rent on time. What would life be like with a new roommate he didn’t know anything about? It would be risky, to say the least.
    While he was driving to Carol’s apartment, Tony thought some more about the panties. Even though he had finally opened his mind to the probability that Josh was somewhat of a misogynist, he still couldn’t picture him as a cold-blooded murderer. Josh might have looked up the address of the Hotline office in Tony’s notebook. He might have gone to the office out of curiosity. He might have seen Joy come out. He might even have accosted her, verbally, perhaps tried to make a date with her. But murder her? Tony couldn’t picture it.
    But this line of reasoning fell apart as Tony thought once again about the panties stuffed into the bottom of his attaché case. He couldn’t explain them. And they badly needed an explanation.
    Here was Carol’s apartment building. Fortunately, a parking place appeared, on demand, on the street close to the entrance. Unfortunately, Carol lived on the second floor and there wasn’t any elevator. Tony had practiced using the crutches on his own stairs; going up last night, coming down this morning. It had not been easy.
    He was glad that none of the apartment dwellers was watching as