Leanne eyed Cassandra nervously as she stood there glaring at her with an anger she didn’t understand. “W-what’s wrong?” she asked sleepily. “What did I do?”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve trying to get my last name out of my mother in such a sneaky little way,” Cassandra accused.
Leanne was still baffled. “What are you talking about?”
“Mrs… oh, what did Cassandra say her last name was?” the nurse mocked. “You know damn well I never told you my last name!”
“Ok, calm down,” Leanne insisted, growing angry as well. “I was just trying to be polite to your mother.”
“Bullshit you were! You later asked to use my computer.”
“What else was I supposed to do?” Leanne shouted. “I’ve done nothing but lie in bed and read since you hit me! Besides, by the time I’d gotten around to asking if I could use your computer, I still didn’t have a last name. I don’t know what deep dark secret you’re hiding, but what the fuck do you want from me?”
“Panelli!”
“What?”
“It’s Panelli. That’s my last name. You happy?”
Leanne thought a moment, then shrugged. “A name is just a name, but it’s a start.”
Cassandra’s expression softened and she slumped against the doorjamb. “Just don’t ever do that again, Leanne. We agreed that there wouldn’t be any questions.”
“I thought that agreement meant not asking about whatever it is you’re hiding.”
“You know what it meant. You’re a smart girl.”
Leanne’s sleep-fogged brain shifted towards Cassandra’s mother. Fucking bitch. Now she had to be extra careful about what she said to the gossiping woman, though she knew deep down from a logical standpoint that the woman wasn’t “gossiping” and was only looking out for her daughter. “Look,” she finally said. “I can’t go on with all this secrecy anymore, Cass. I need to know what’s going on so I can make a decision.”
“A decision?”
Leanne nodded. “I won’t turn you in if you’re running from the law, but I’ll need to decide if I should go live somewhere else or not, depending on what you tell me. If it’s something that could implicate me, then I need to make other arrangements.”
“It’s too late.”
“What?” Leanne said, shocked.
“There’s no turning back now. You’re in too deep, deeper than you think.”
Leanne’s heartbeat sped up. “Are you telling me I can’t leave? Have I unknowingly implicated myself just by being here or something?”
“It’s not that you can’t leave. You can leave, but yes, you’ve already been associated and connected to me for a few days now. That much can’t be undone, even though I would always swear you had nothing to do with it. It’s true, you didn’t. But once I tell you about it, you can no longer say you didn’t know anything. My only real concern is telling you what happened, then having you decide to leave and go to the police. Even though what happened was purely an accident and there’s no evidence to tie me to it that I know of, you just never know. There could be a hair or a fiber or something like that. You could bring my whole world down upon me.”
“And if I don’t?”
Cassandra, now seated at the edge of the bed, looked at Leanne. “Well, that would be wonderful, of course.”
Leanne placed a hand on Cassandra’s arm. “It can’t be that bad. If it were, you’d have hit and run altogether, or dropped me off at the ER before running.”
“I work there, remember?”
“You could’ve placed an anonymous call.”
“Nothing’s anonymous. Calls are usually traceable.”
“You could’ve left me there.”
“I could have, yes. That would’ve been the easiest thing to do. But then the guilt would’ve eaten at me. I’d always wonder who you were and if you made it, that sort of thing.”
“Do you feel guilty over whatever it is that happened?”
Cassandra thought a moment, then said, “Sorry, but not guilty. I’m sorry it happened, but I don’t feel guilty about doing what I did.”
“Sounds like a case of self-defense to me.”
“Not quite. More like an accidental death.”
“Like my case could’ve been.”
“But with totally different circumstances. Look, I’m really tired. I’m usually home by 11:15 and in bed by 11:30. I worked overtime and things were hectic as hell. So could we finish this discussion when I’m not so beat?”
Leanne nodded. “Yeah, as long as it does get finished because I don’t just need to know, but I want to know.”
“Do you need anything before I crash?”
Leanne shook her head.
“Good night, Leanne.”
Alone in her darkened room a few minutes later, Leanne wondered if she should feel disappointed or relieved that Cassandra hadn’t invited her into her bed that night. Earlier, that’s what she’d been hoping she would do.
Deciding she was too tired to ponder it too much, Leanne fell into a restless sleep filled with disturbing dreams.
Leanne and Cassandra were up by eight, which seemed to be the pattern they’d fallen into, or at least Leanne had anyway. Both had showered and eaten, and then Leanne limped behind Cassandra and into the living room, where she helped her set up her laptop.
“Ok, you should now be all set,” said Cassandra.
“Thanks, Cass.”
“Now I don’t know you any more than you know me, so use your best judgment as to where you go and what you do online, ok?”
Leanne nodded.
“I don’t want you engaging in any illegal activity that could come back to haunt me. I’ve got enough haunting me as it is.”
“I understand,” said Leanne.
“Ok, on with it, I guess,” Cassandra said, taking a sip of her coffee. “I guess this is as good a time as any.”
Leanne gazed intently at Cassandra, anxious to learn her secret.
With a deep sigh, Cassandra began her story. “I was married twice. The first guy, the one I had my son Luca with, died in a car accident when Luca was ten. Five years later, I remarried. The guy was like a dream come true, straight out of a fairytale. Last year, I began to suspect my blue-eyed saint was cheating on me. I asked him outright if he was seeing anyone, but he swore that he wasn’t. I didn’t believe him, though. The lack of intimacy, the long hours at work—“
“What does he do?” Leanne interrupted.
“He’s an accountant for a prestigious law firm.”
“So you believed he was seeing someone else and…?” Leanne prompted.
“And when I couldn’t get a straight answer even though his behavior suggested he was, I made the stupid mistake of hiring someone.”
“A private detective?”
Cassandra laughed bitterly. “I wish I had had sense enough to hire a PI, but instead I hired someone to perform a little test of sorts.”
Leanne gazed at the nurse quizzically.
“I have a friend who is friends with what you could call a high-class call girl. Supposedly, there’s a difference between hookers and call girls,” Cassandra explained with a roll of the eyes.
Leanne laughed and said, “Sort of like the difference between strippers and exotic dancers, I guess, but what would I know?”
“On a few occasions, Brittany would have Angel along with her when we’d go out to lunch or something like that.”
“Brittany’s your friend and Angel’s the call girl?”
“Yes. So we start chatting about whatever one day, when we meet at a café down by the river. Eventually, Brittany senses something’s wrong and she just won’t let up. I try to insist nothing’s wrong, but she urges me to open up, saying Angel’s heard it all and can be trusted and all that stuff.”
Leanne took a sip of her now tepid hazelnut coffee.
“So I finally open up and express my concerns about Leonardo and they both listen with a sympathetic ear. I didn’t know much about Brittany’s friend at the time. Just that she was twenty-six and went to college in the daytime. I don’t know what she was studying and I really didn’t care.”
“But she worked at night as a call girl to pay her tuition?”
“Or drug habit if she had one,” Cassandra said with a shrug.
“How old’s Brittany?”
“Thirty-two. Anyway, I told them of my suspicions and then Brittany came up with a bright idea. Why not hire Angel to test him by putting the moves on him and seeing how he reacts? After all, Angel was every man’s fantasy come true – big-breasted, long-legged, platinum blond and slender.”
“Wow,” Leanne said, “that’s quite a test to conduct.”
Cassandra nodded and went on. “Angel was known as Starlight to her clients and so we agreed that that would be the name she would use. I gave her a hundred bucks and told her where Leonardo had lunch during the week. The only problem was that sometimes he ate alone, other times he didn’t. Angel, or Starlight, certainly couldn’t approach him if he were dining with colleagues or clients.”
Leanne nodded understandingly. “That’d definitely be awkward; to go up and hit on a guy who’s eating lunch with his fellow coworkers or clients.”
“Indeed, it would be. But Angel was able to catch him alone the very next day. She went over to his table and asked if she could check out what kinds of sugar packets were in his condiment tray since hers were nearly empty. Then she—“
The doorbell rang, cutting off Cassandra’s sentence.
Damn! thought Leanne. Why did so many things have to happen at the wrong time?
Cassandra got up off the couch and strode over to the door. When she opened it, a young redhead of average height and weight stood just outside of it. “Oh, hey, Brittany. Come on in.”
So this was Brittany?
Introductions were made, and then Brittany went to use the bathroom.
“Not a word,” Cassandra hissed in her ear.
Leanne wondered what the sexy Italian nurse would do if she did utter a word.
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