confided. “According to what I heard, the doctor was burning the candle at both ends.”
Kyle took the list from Jaren and folded it, putting it into his pocket. “Was he married?”
The receptionist pushed her glasses up on her nose before she shook her head. “Divorced. Twice.”
Kyle nodded as if he’d expected to hear something like that. “We’ll need his ex-wives’ addresses, as well,” he told the receptionist.
Carole caught her lower lip between her teeth. She was obviously thinking.
“I’d have to get in touch with one of his colleagues at the hospital to get those for you. Dr. Barrett doesn’t have that kind of information accessible on his computer.” Her expression was apologetic. “He is—was—extremely private that way.”
Jaren looked toward the study. The three crime-scene investigators had left the door open. They were combing the area but all she could see was the body on the rug.
“Could be a crime of passion,” she speculated. She turned back to Carole. “You wouldn’t know if Barrett had any current girlfriends, would you?”
Carole’s short brown hair swung from side to side as she shook her head. “Like I said, Dr. Barrett was very private.”
“That’s okay, we’ll ask around. And if you can think of anything else—” Jaren reached into her pocket to give the young woman her card, then stopped. She flashed an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid I don’t have any cards printed up with my cell number on them yet.” She turned toward her partner. “O’Brien?”
“Yeah, I got one.” Reaching into his pocket, he took out a card and handed it to the receptionist. Despite the gruesome scene in the other room, Carole smiled up at him. For a moment, she seemed to forget about the circumstances that had brought them together.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“Guess I’m due for a hearing test,” Kyle commented as they walked out of the office several minutes later.
“Excuse me?” Jaren asked.
“Well, I’m obviously not hearing as well as I should be.” Reaching the elevator bank, he pressed the down button. “Because if I were, I would have heard Barone say that you were primary on this.”
The elevator arrived. She stepped inside and turned toward the front. They were the only two people in the car. “Sorry. I tend to be a little enthusiastic.”
He laughed as the doors closed again. “Is that what you call it?”
She knew she was going to hate herself for this. “What would you call it?”
“Being a pain in the butt.”
The best way to deal with things was through humor. She reverted to it now. “Potato, po-ta-to,” she replied with a quick shrug of her shoulders. She saw him taking the list that Carole had given them out of his pocket. She nodded at it. “So, how do you want to do this?”
What he wanted to say was alone, but he knew that wasn’t going to get him anywhere. She apparently had the sticking power of super glue. Still, he decided to give it one try. “We could divide the list between us.”
“I’m still new here,” she reminded him. “I would have thought that, since you’re primary on this,” she deliberately emphasized, “you’d want to question these people together—to make sure I don’t mess up.”
He wasn’t in the mood for sarcasm. “Rosetti, I don’t want to do anything together,” he told her, “but it looks like I have no choice.”
The elevator came to a stop and they got out on the ground floor. She followed him out of the building. “Tell me, is it just me who sets you off, or is it having a partner in general?”
“Yes.”
The single word hung in the air. Jaren took a breath. This had the makings of one hell of a long day. “Okay,” she declared, as if she knew where she stood.
And she did. Barefoot in hell. But she’d survived worse and she was going to survive this. She made herself a solemn vow that she would.
Their next stop was the hospital where Richard Barrett performed his mini miracles—skillfully reattaching nerve endings against defying odds. Everyone they spoke to on the floor attested to the fact that the surgeon had no equal. On a scale of one to ten, he was a twelve.
But when it came to being human, that number dropped to a two.
The woman in the administration office was able to provide them with the names and addresses of both the former Mrs. Barretts.
Armed with both the list of patients and the addresses of his ex-wives, Kyle made the decision to interview the latter first. Sixty percent of the time, whenever a homicide victim was married or estranged, the search for the killer had to go no further than that person’s spouse or former lover.
As it turned out, spouse number one was immediately dismissed. According to the doorman at the apartment building where she lived, Wanda Barrett had become Wanda Davenport a little over a week ago and was currently in Spain on her honeymoon with her brand-new husband. The doorman said he’d never seen the woman look so happy. For the time being, they believed him.
Spouse number two wasn’t out of the country, she was in her apartment. Once Kyle identified himself and his partner and told the woman the reason they were there, Alison Barrett, a slightly overweight brunette with scarlet nails and a mouth that formed a wide frown, became livid.
‘That bastard!” she shrieked. With a swing of her hand, she knocked over a statue of Cupid that had been perched on a pedestal. It hit the marble floor, shattering. In her fury, she appeared not to notice. “He finally found a way to get around paying me alimony.”
Jaren glanced at Kyle to see his reaction to this display of unbridled temper. “With all due respect, Mrs. Barrett,” she said, “I don’t think that death by wooden stake would have been his first choice to avoid making payments to you.”
“You didn’t know Richard,” she fumed, pacing. “Life with him was hell and I thought that now, at long last, I’d be compensated for it.” Her eyes flashed with unsuppressed fury. “But he found a way to wiggle out of it.”
“Your grief is touching,” Kyle commented.
Her eyes blazed. “You want grief, Detective? Grief was being married to him and being treated as if I was some sub-intelligent species. He thought he was God and should have been worshipped accordingly.”
“If you felt that way about him, why did you marry him in the first place?” Jaren wanted to know.
Alison sighed, frustrated. “Because Richard could be very charming when he wanted. The problem was, once we were married, he didn’t want to be. He was out all day, out all night. Like some damn werewolf.”
Jaren’s eyes met Kyle’s. The exchange was not missed by the victim’s ex-wife. She quickly backpedaled.
“Not that I thought he was one,” she assured them. “Or a
