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Tex studied the ceiling for a moment, as if to draw inspiration from the dead fly that was stuck there, dangling from a single leg, the poor thing.“Um…”

“Look, I understand if you don’t want to tell me,” said Odelia. “Doctor-patient privilege and all that. But I just need to know if there’s even the slightest possibility that the man wasn’t responsible for his own death and that the suicide was staged. “

“Well, all I can tell you is that Dino Wimmer was probably the last person in the world to want to take his own life,” said Tex, finally having accessed that part of his brain where his patient files were stored. “Because he’d told me just last week that he’d made an important decision. He hadn’t told his wife yet but he was finally ready to take early retirement and move down to Florida to start a second, more leisurely stage of his life.”

“Florida?” asked Odelia, visibly surprised. “That doesn’t sound like a man who’d kill himself, does it?”

“No, it most certainly doesn’t,” said her dad.

“He didn’t have a recent health crisis or something? Some terminal illness?”

“Nothing of the kind,” said Tex. “The man was under a great deal of stress, owing to his line of work. But apart from a minor cholesterol issue and that stress—which he planned to resolve by taking early retirement and moving his family down to Florida—he had nothing to worry about. He was, all things considered, as healthy as an ox. Healthier, probably.” He smiled before himself, then eyed the cross trainer located in a corner of his office with fondness. “His wife sold me on this wonderful piece of machinery.” He gestured to the device. “Said I looked a little peaked lately, and told me I should be more active—work out more. So I bought this thing on her instigation and have been faithfully putting in my daily minutes in between patients ever since.”

Odelia smiled.“Dad, don’t tell me you’ve been working out?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I have,” he said proudly. “And my resting heart rate has returned to the safe zone. It’s a miracle machine, and I can recommend it to anyone.”

I noticed a small television set had been placed on top of one of the metal cabinets in Tex’s office, and was displaying an episode of Diagnosis: Murder. Looked like we’d disturbed Tex in the middle of a workout, which explained his flushed appearance.

“Look, Dino Wimmer was happy, healthy, and full of zest and zeal. The only thing that seemed to trouble him was the fact that his daughter was dating some weirdo, as he called him, and some minor trouble at the office, which he said he’d deal with forthwith. So if you’re asking me if the man committed suicide or was murdered, I’d go for the latter.”

“But who would want to murder him?”

“That,” said Tex as he spread his arms, “I cannot tell you, honey. That’s your department.”

On the small television screen Dick Van Dyke was staring intently at a knife which had been removed from a dead man’s back. It seemed like an ominous sign of things to come: if Dino really was murdered, this case had just turned into a murder inquiry.

Chapter 10

Odelia walked out of her dad’s office feeling a little heady. So it was entirely possible that Rose had been right after all. How surprising. But that also meant that she would now in earnest have to start looking for the killer.

She still found it hard to wrap her head around the fact that Dino Wimmer had indeed been killed. It changed her entire outlook on the case. And as she was still thinking through the ramifications of this discovery, she caught sight of her grandmother’s face. The old lady looked bored. Bored and unhappy. And so in a flash of inspiration she said, “I need your help, Gran.”

Gran immediately perked up. She even sat up straighter, as she’d been slumped in her chair, working out some scrabble dilemma. “You do? What do you need?”

“I think this case has just officially turned into a murder inquiry. And I’m going to need all the help I can get to bring the killer to justice—if indeed there has been a murder—the jury is still out on that one, so to speak.”

“You need my help catching a killer? Yes!” said Gran, actually pumping the air with her fist. “Tell me what you need and I’ll get it done. If you need me to squeeze some witness for information, I’ll squeeze him like a lemon. If you need me to lean on some heavy to give me the lowdown on the victim’s financial situation, consider it done.”

“I’m going to need to talk to all the people involved in the case,” she explained, “and to save time I think it’s best if we split up in teams. Could you and Scarlett maybe talk to Dino Wimmer’s neighbors? Ask them if they saw something last night?”

“Suspicious activities,” said Gran, nodding seriously. “I like your thinking, honey. And I’m way ahead of you. I’ll call Scarlett right away and we’ll start canvassing that neighborhood like it’s never been canvassed before. Consider it done!”