you can complete your residency.’ A client called him away before he finished eating, and he left me with the tab.”
“Give me his phone number. I’ll give the man a lecture.”
“He died when I was in my third year.”
Garner shook his head and cursed under his breath. He had the sense that Cat meant to cheer him up with that story, but it only deepened his melancholy. If there was a worthy point, he hoped she would make it soon.
“It must have been hard to cope with that,” he said.
“If I had been in a different career, I might not have survived,” she said. “But everyone is so grateful and affirming. I can find all the acceptance I need in my patients.”
“Regardless, you didn’t deserve that kind of treatment from your father, Cat, girl. No one does.”
He heard footsteps cross his threshold on the floor above.
“Garner? You down there, old badger?”
On a typical day, the sound of Dotti Sanders’ voice was one that brought on a certain amount of hearing loss in Garner. Today, oddly, Dotti’s sweet and heavy perfume grabbed his attention. Of course, it overpowered the fresh air and had apparently killed all sense of smell in her own nose, but Dotti’s energetic personality could be highly motivational, especially when it came to selling rafting trips to visitors. Garner wasn’t interested in any whitewater today, but he could use some strong motivational energy.
Her thick ankles and trendy neon walking shoes—something orange and sparkly designed for the twenty-and-under crowd—appeared on the third stair from the top. She bent at the waist and peered under the hanging lights in his direction.
“Hiya, Miss Marple.” Originally, he’d not given her the nickname in kindness. She was an energetic, ubiquitous, sugary sweet busybody who didn’t know a thing about plants and wanted him to educate her. He hadn’t known at the time that she was fond of the fictional detective and thought he was paying her a high compliment. That revelation came later, when she suggested he participate in the Women’s Auxiliary Group reading of an Agatha Christie novel.
“Got any murders for me to solve today?” she asked him, bent and clutching the rail. Her curly gray locks bobbed, and he feared she might do a somersault down the stairs. On purpose.
“I lost a rosemary plant.”
“Rosemary’s impossible to kill, you told me.”
“And yet I did it.” Garner pointed toward a sorry-looking woody shrub without a hint of green on it.
“What a man you are, able to do the impossible.”
“I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”
“Hi, Dr. Ransom.”
“Hello.” The tone of Cat’s voice was so flat that Garner turned to look at the doctor. She appeared stricken by Dotti’s interruption.
“Or we might say it was bound to happen in a dark place like this,” Dotti continued, still talking about the herb. “It’s just beyond me that you can keep anything alive down here.”
“And yet I run a successful business doing it.”
“Yes, well, there you go, doing the impossible again. Forgive me, Garner, but it’s a cave in spite of these glaring lights. I fear I’ll come down straight into the jaws of a saber-toothed tiger. I’ve come to fetch you for lunch.”
“But I just ate breakfast.”
“Nonetheless, an hour with a friend will do your heart good.”
“My heart is perfectly healthy. And as you see, Cat’s here.”
“The good doctor is welcome to join us, if she has the stomach for it. Don’t be a meathead, dear.”
“What’s this, Marple? You never give a gentleman notice?”
“That’s ridiculous. I’ve had two husbands, and neither of them ever needed notice if I had food to put in front of them. It might be a stretch to say they were gentlemen, but that’s neither here nor there.”
“But what makes lunch so urgent today?”
“The sandwich shop has come up with some new ‘mountaineer’ concoction, and I want to try it.”
“What’s on it?”
“They say it’s elk, but if it is, it’s got to be a freezer-bitten slab from last year’s hunting season.”
“An elk sandwich?”
“With grilled onions and banana peppers. And melted cheese to cover up the horror of it all.”
“My heart might be worse off after lunch than before,” Garner said, raising his eyebrows in Cat’s direction.
She said, “I’ll have to advise against it.”
“They’re calling it a ‘seasonal special,’ ” Dotti said. “That means they don’t need repeat business, just enough people to buy it one time. I tell you, that Mazy is cleaning out before the men start to bring back their fresh kills. Can you believe the things