“He didn’t want to take his shoes and socks off,” she said. “He was hiding his feet. Didn’t want anyone to know.”

I sat up in the water, remembering the notation I made from the coroner’s report, severe ischemia of the toes and feet.

“Didn’t want anyone to know what?”

“Ugh…Callie, it was awful,” Sidra said. “Gangrene.”

“In his toes and feet?”

“All the way up past his ankles,” she said. “Apparently, at first it was just one toe. But Wendell knew what that meant. He was going to put it off for as long as he could. He wore the circulation stockings and everything, but in the end it didn’t help.”

“I don’t understand.”

“From the diabetes,” Sidra said. “You can get gangrene. The toe starts to turn purple. Once it sets in, you have to amputate.”

“Amputate the toe?”

Sidra shook her head.

“No, by the time Marion finally realized what was going on and made Wendell go to the emergency room Sunday morning, all ten toes and both feet were involved. He was scheduled to have both legs removed at the knee yesterday. That’s the only blessing in his death, really—it happened before he had to go through the operation.”

I was stunned. Why had no one mentioned this to me before? Worse than that, I realized, was that I hadn’t ferreted out this information on my own. Was I so out of practice as a detective that I hadn’t even thought yet to piece together the events of Wendell’s final days?

“Go back a little bit,” I said. “What happened Sunday?”

“Sunday morning, getting ready for church, Marion came into the bathroom just as Wendell was coming out of the shower. His feet were black, something he had managed to hide from her for several weeks.”

“Ugh.”

“As soon as she saw it, Marion called an ambulance and had Wendell taken straight to the hospital.”

“I can imagine.”

“The doctors said that the feet would have to come off. Wendell was very depressed and upset. We all were.”

“Of course.”

“They wanted to do the surgery on Monday,” Sidra continued, “but Wendell refused to have the operation then. He scheduled it for Tuesday instead. He said he needed Monday to finish some important things at work.”

Suddenly, I remembered Gwen on the telephone that first time I came into the office on Monday morning. She had been trying to reschedule a business appointment. Mr. Smythe’s surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning, she had said. If you can’t meet with him today, it’ll be at least three or four weeks before he’s available again.

Why hadn’t I looked into that further before now?

“The poor man,” I said, trying to imagine how it would feel to know you’d be losing both of your legs the following day.