Page 145 of Hanging and Burning

“No. He’s having an exchange transfusion.”

“What’s that?”

“It can be many things,” she said, employing a professional tone. “It is, as it sounds, the removal and replacement of the body’s blood supply. Usually, it is obtaining donated blood or plasma. But in this case, they are treating his blood with stem cells and then replacing it.”

“That sounds like it takes some time.”

“Hours.”

“I need to ask him a question. Is he conscious?”

“He has his cell phone with him.”

“It’s turned off or something.”

“The doctors must have decided that he wasn’t to be disturbed, or that they weren’t.”

“Okay. Ask him to call when he can. It’s pretty important.”

“I will.”

An hour or so after talking to the nurse, I saw a light-mauve-colored Kia Soul slow down and then nose its way up into the driveway of the chocolate triplex. She got out of the new car and then stalked rather than walked up to the front door of the three-story building.

I glanced at my car clock. It read 4:12.

I waited thirty-two minutes before making the trek back to the second floor. There I pressed the bell, three slow chimes and then two quick ones, waited half a minute, and then she opened the door.

Her eyes were bloodshot, and her shoulders slumped. Her pale white skin seemed moist.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hi,” she greeted, sneering confusion, “What—what are…?”

“I’m working with the police. They tapped me because I was looking into a thing your boss was involved with.”

“Oh.”

“Can I come in, Cosette?”

She took a few backward steps, then turned away and went to sit on a rose-colored couch. There was a similarly upholstered chair at the end of the couch. I could have taken the chair, but instead I sat next to her.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She turned to face me and said, “Why would anybody want to kill Paulie? I mean, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“The police think that it might have been some nut that his people were keeping away from some movie star or something,” I said, weaving the tale as I spoke it.

She nodded, holding back tears.

“Yeah,” she said. “But there wasn’t anybody. We get notes from kooks now and then, but nobody ever makes any real threats. And, anyway, he was probably dead before anybody else got there. He’d been alone in his office all morning. I finally used my key on the door, and—and—and found him.”

She collapsed against me, crying for all she was worth.

I didn’t feel bad comforting her. I was there for another reason, and holding her while she cried would get me closer to my goal. But she also needed to be soothed.

“It’s all right, Cosette. There was nothing you could do.”

“I looked into the office,” she confessed.