“You like that, don’t you, Mr. Mad Scientist?” Marilee asked on a heavy breath.
Martin tried to say yes but couldn’t manage the word.
Marilee kissed and nipped, rubbed and tickled her new friend, and so their talk about lost wives and barren parasites came to an end.
3.
Through the summer months, Marilee and Martin got together every couple of weeks or so. Martin discontinued his subscription to the dating service; Marilee did not. Twice every other week, Marilee went on PFP-provided dates; every week between, she saw Martin once and went on one PFP date. She didn’t feel guilty because Martin was preoccupied with his research and charitable and profit-making surgeries. He was often out of town, in Detroit, Tijuana, or Oakland, doing facial reconstructions, scar and tattoo removals, and more delicate operations. He never asked what Marilee did when they weren’t together; neither did he talk about love, long-term commitment, or children.
Marilee was grateful for Martin’s detachment. She didn’t want to marry him, live with him, or get any deeper into his life. He was extraordinarily knowledgeable and a surprisingly skillful lover. And when they were together, he listened to her every word and remembered everything.
But her other lovers were better-looking, better-heeled, and, well, more normal.
By the first of August, she was thinking that it was time for the relationship with Martin to end. She said to herself that it was because of the mosquito bites she got whenever he stayed over. Martin liked fresh air and was always opening some window. That very morning she decided to send Martin a text saying that she thought they should end it.
Maybe an hour after her decision, Odell Wade came to visit her at Rehnquist, Bartleby, and Rowe.
“Miss Frith-DeGeorgio,” the receptionist, Viola Wright, said over the intercom.
“Yes, Viola?”
“A Detective Wade of the NYPD is here to see you.”
Marilee gasped involuntarily and felt a sudden chill.
“What does he want?”
“He says he needs to ask you some questions about a friend of yours.”
“Tell him that I’ll be right down.”
She spent the next three minutes trying to think whether there was any reason the police would be after her. She had a small stash of marijuana in her medicine cabinet at home, and she’d declared herself as a private business on her tax forms, using her yearly sale of poorly constructed pottery at a street fair as the proof. When her mother died, she discovered a secret bank account of twenty-six thousand dollars that she’d cashed out without telling her siblings . . . Maybe that was it. Maybe the NYPD was going to arrest her for bank fraud.
She thought about running. RBR was on the thirty-seventh floor of a Midtown office building, but there was an emergency stairway. Who could she turn to? Certainly not her brother, Will, or her sister, Angelique—one of them might have turned her in. Her friends wouldn’t shield her from arrest.
Finally she realized that Martin Hull was the only person she knew who might help. He liked her and would probably drive her to another state if she asked.
The idea that Martin was the only person she knew to turn to was sobering. He was the closest person to her, and she was already planning to break off that relationship. What did that mean?
This dose of inexplicable reality somehow steeled Marilee. She decided to go to reception and face the music.
Odell Wade was sitting on one of the three rose-colored sofas across from Viola’s desk in the kidney-shaped room with walls of blue-tinted glass.
“Detective Wade?”
“Miss Frith-DeGeorgio?”
The policeman stood up. Marilee’s first impression was that he was devastatingly handsome. Tall and tan, with sandy hair and auburn eyes; his straw-colored suit hung very well on his lean and probably powerful frame. His smile seemed genuine.
“How can I help you?” she asked.
The policeman glanced over at the dark-skinned, wary-eyed receptionist and said, “Is there someplace where we can talk privately?”
Marilee’s office looked out over Central Park. It was a balmy August day, and they could see all the way to Yonkers.
“What do you do here?” Wade asked, sitting next to her in one of the two chairs designated for clients and visitors. Marilee was appreciating his lips, which formed into the shape of a partly flattened Valentine’s heart.
Seated upon the other chrome-and-orange padded chair, she squirmed a bit, thinking that there was something wrong with the cushion. It was then she realized that her dress was tight.
“Social media for the advertising arm of the firm,” she answered, thinking, Am I getting fat?
“Like Twitter and Facebook?”
“And MyTime, Get It, Lost Treasure, and about a hundred more platforms.”
“You like the work?”
“Not really. I used to run my own business, but now I’m just paying the rent.”
“I don’t want to take up too much of your time, Ms. Frith-DeGeorgio—”
“You can call me Marilee.”
“Marilee. Do you know a Dr. Martin David Hull?”
“Yes.”
“I’m investigating him, the NYPD is.”
“About his wife?”
“He told you?”
“He said that his wife and some doctor guy ran away and the police were looking into it. But they showed up in Europe somewhere and the case was closed.”
Detective Wade sighed and, with his eyebrows alone, denied Martin’s claim.
“He brought us a letter,” the detective said. “A letter he claimed came in an envelope postmarked from Amsterdam. But he didn’t have the envelope, and there was no fingerprint other than his, nor were there any DNA markers to say that the letter actually came from his wife.”
“Didn’t she write the letter?” Marilee asked. “Couldn’t you check the handwriting?”
“The body of the letter was printed by computer, and the signature was close but different enough to cause concern.”
“And did you look in Amsterdam?”
“We found an address that a Sonora Simonson and Philip Landries had once possibly stayed in. But it was in a transient area, and there was no one who could identify their photographs. We have no evidence that they ever left the country.”
“So you think that Martin murdered them?”
“We don’t know what happened. Has he said anything to you?”
“Only what I already told you,” Marilee said. “Why are you only asking now? I mean, I’ve been seeing Marty for two months. He thinks the investigation is over.”