No Immunity

been easy to tell her about Hope Mkema, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to do that. “I’m not speaking of what Jeff did in Africa, or after. But I was there for less than a month and so sick I had to be airlifted out.”
    “But you went there to be where Jeff was, didn’t you?”
    “Look, here’s the truth. I didn’t like your husband in med school—he was a bore. I wasn’t pleased to find him in Africa, where he’d become an officious bore. And I certainly wouldn’t have come flying out in the wilds here for anything less than the threat of massive contagion that an officious bore wasn’t about to report to the health department. I don’t know what you and Jeff and the sheriff and God knows who else is involved in, but—”
    “Jeff and I, we are not involved in anything together. All we share is a name.”
    “You were worried enough about him to find me a car and point me out of town. Jeff is missing. You’ve got a safe house here. Where else would he be?”
    “I don’t know. That’s my whole point.” She seemed to deflate back against the porch railing. “I don’t love Jeff anymore. Love can be a flimsy commodity in a small town with few choices. But I’ve been around him all my life and I know him. Jeff never went anywhere without leaving word with his receptionist. But today he did. He’s just gone, and for all I know he’s dead.”
    Kiernan could see her shivering. “Let’s go inside.” Inside, the first thing that hit her was the heat; it seemed to steam off the floor, off the threadbare Oriental carpet, from the tapestries that curtained the doors and windows, from the smiling nineteenth-century faces in huge gilded frames above antique love seats, inlaid mahogany, and pink marble tables. The wavering light of the oil lamps made the room almost alive. But if this was a safe house, the guests had cleared out any evidence.
    “I’m going to believe you,” Connie said, flexing her arm and eyeing her swollen elbow. In jeans and a heavy sweater, she looked as if she’d broken into this bastion of gentility.
    “Do or don’t. Your choice.” The hastily stacked magazines on the marble tables and the streaked ashtrays announced a frantic cleanup. How many frightened, confused women were beyond the closed parlor door? She didn’t ask. The less she knew about the safe house, or who Connie was sheltering at the moment, the less danger she would be to them. Jeff Tremaine was not here, that she did accept.
    The sofa beckoned. Suddenly Kiernan realized how exhausted she was. The troubled sleep last night after Tchernak’s outburst seemed years ago. And now the soft cushions... She chose the one hard chair next to a marble table and lay the gun at her side.
    Connie disappeared through a narrow doorway and returned with a bottle. “Drink? We could both use one.”
    “You go ahead.” She wasn’t that sure of Connie. “Just tell me what’s going on here. Start with the dead woman.” Connie perched on the arm of the brocade sofa. Her free hand tapped hard and quick on her thigh. Her mouth tightened, and the lines around her eyes deepened as she studied Kiernan.
    “I thought you said you’d decided to trust me.”
    “To believe you. Trust is too much to ask on a couple hours’ acquaintance.”
    “I trusted you when I bought the truck.”
    “And look where that got you!” Connie laughed, and the fragility of that sound said more about her precarious state than had anything before.
    “I didn’t have any choice, Connie. And neither do you. I know you’ve got a safe house here. I don’t want to endanger it, as long as it has nothing to do with the dead woman in Gattozzi.”
    Momentarily her jaw tightened, then she sighed. “Okay. I’ll have to trust you on that too. The truth is I need to know what you’ve found out. If I don’t figure out who that woman is, someone from the county or the state is going to start nosing around—”
    “What do you mean? She was one of your—”
    “No, Kiernan, she wasn’t. That’s the whole point. If a guest of mine had come down with a condition as horrifying as that woman’s, I would have had her medevacked to Las Vegas even if it meant every reporter in the state crawling all over this place. No way would I endanger everyone here and in Gattozzi. I grew up in Gattozzi; I’ve known those people all my life. No way would I—”
    “Then w ho the hell is she and how did she get into the morgue?”
    “That’s the question,