How Do I Love Thee? Read Free

stranger.
    ‘No kin,’ Death replied. ‘No boyfriends or lovers either, as best I know.’
    ‘Hey, thanks a lot!’ I complained. ‘Do you want to open the window so you can shout it with a loudspeaker?’
    ‘Sorry,’ Death replied, ‘but let’s face it; it’s no secret. If a pretty celebrity like you had a life in this town it would be all over the tabloids.’
    ‘She sounds well enough to me,’ said the stranger, taking to his feet. He strode to my bed where he hooked his scrawny hip onto my sheets and introduced himself as Detective Sydney Symes, currently on exchange from Homicide to the General Investigation Unit.
    Slimy Symes
, I thought, as he rested his hand a little too close to mine. With his crooked smile and pinstriped jacket, a caricature of him sketched automatically in my head, recast from a bank clerk to an underworld hit man.
    ‘Why do you want to waste time with me?’ I asked, scratching my chin. ‘When you should be out catching bad guys? Or have you already caught your quota this week, Detective?’
    ‘Please don’t take offence,’ Death interrupted, as if I needed him to defend me. ‘She’s usually the sweetest, shiest, most demure creature that ever picked up a paint pen. But she’s taken quite a shock and I dare say the little devil whowhispers inspiration into her cartoons is currently running loose in her head.’
    ‘That’s quite all right, Doc.’ Slimy Symes levelled his beady eyes at me, even though he’d never really taken them off me. ‘No offence taken, Mrs Hossted. To answer your question, we don’t have quotas anymore. We used to,’ he added with a twitch of that crooked smile. ‘But now we’re allowed to catch as many bad guys as we like. And yes, that is why we’re here.’
    Still with his eyes fastened on my face and neckline—and only then did I notice that someone had swapped my luxurious white towel for an ugly blue hospital gown—he turned his nose briefly to introduce Detective Clyde Moser as he entered: big as a footballer, with a dazed look that made him look too stupid to know if Mickey Mouse was a dog, a mouse or a cat.
    ‘We’re here to investigate your stalker,’ Symes said, slugging me with a bombshell.
    ‘My
what
?’
    On the heart monitor, the green line spiked like the silhouette of a petrified porcupine, and I was glad, after all, that the nurse had switched off that infuriating beep before she’d left.
    ‘Now, now, Mrs Hossted.’ Symes raised his hand with the natural flair of a cadet who’d spent too long directingtraffic. ‘There’s no point denying it. We found his notes all around your apartment.’
    Moser pulled a briefcase out of his butt, or wherever else he’d been keeping it, and snapped it open near my feet to withdraw a clear plastic bag full of smiley-faced post-it-notes.
    My mouth fell open, eyes bugged out, and even if I knew what to say and trusted these jokers enough to say it, I don’t think I could have uttered a word, since my pulse throbbed, face tingled, and that green line on the heart monitor broke into a dot and began to breakdance all over the place.
    ‘Now, we can ensure it stays out of the papers to protect your privacy,’ Symes promised as the bed began to shake with the growing intensity of an earthquake. ‘But we need you to tell us everything you know about your neighbour, Dr Martin Cage.’
    ‘Seizure!’ Death shouted, and the next thing I knew, I was standing in a cemetery.
    Thick fog obscured everything, like midnight, although the sound of a garbage truck somewhere nearby made me think it was early morning. Ahead of me, at a crossroads in the cobbled path, a globe of yellow light probed the wet mist from an overhead streetlight.
    Thank God
, I thought. At least it wasn’t a white light calling me upward!
    I walked towards the lamppost, hoping for a little warmth on my bare arms since the hospital gown was split down the back and offered even less comfort than my bath towel, but no matter