Decker bought him another tea, noticing Leek had also finished the cinnamon bun. “Are you hungry?”

“How about a whole-wheat roll and some jam, if you don’t mind.”

Decker said, “Talking’s good for your complexion, Leek. You look a whole lot better.”

“I hate to say this, but I feel a whole lot better.”

Decker bought him a roll. “Confession’s good for the soul. Tell me why you and Tandy stopped your affair.”

“She stopped it when it was clear to her that no matter what the circumstances were, I wasn’t going to marry her.”

“What the circumstances were…” Decker repeated. “Meaning you knocked her up?”

McKay slapped some strawberry jam onto his wheat roll and took a big bite. “I don’t know how it happened. I was careful. I mean real, real careful! Nothing without a rubber—two rubbers. It was the last thing on earth I wanted. We didn’t even do it that much. And half of the times when we did do it, I couldn’t even come. I don’t know how she became pregnant.”

“All it takes is one time.”

“Yep.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“I don’t know. I assumed she got an abortion. I gave her money. I don’t ever remember seeing her pregnant. But she was so fat, she could have been and I wouldn’t have noticed. If she did have the baby, she must have given it up for adoption. I know she doesn’t have kids now.”

Decker tapped his pencil against his notebook. “Let me ask you this, Leek. She stopped sleeping with you after you made it clear you wouldn’t marry her even if she had the baby, right?”

“Right.”

“So what did she say? I don’t want to sleep with you anymore?”

“It wasn’t that honest a thing. She just started avoiding me…stopped inviting me over to her apartment. That’s where we did it. I certainly wasn’t going to have her over to my place.”

“And weren’t you worried?”

“Worried? Are you kidding, I was relieved!”

Decker said, “You weren’t concerned that she’d reveal your investment scheme when you turned her down matrimonially?”

McKay stopped eating. Once again, his complexion took on a sickly shade of pewter.

Decker said, “As a matter of fact, Leek, I see Tandy getting very angry and threatening to expose you—which she obviously didn’t do. Now I have to ask myself why.”

“Maybe she felt loyal to me,” the nurse whispered. “Old feelings die hard.”

“Maybe you offered her another incentive to keep her mouth shut. Like you knew she was in trouble because she was misrepresenting herself as an RN when she was only an LVN.”

“Shit—”