Cutwork by Monica Ferris Page B

big. His chin, under the goatee, was square—and double, which might explain the hairy cover he’d grown over it. His hair seemed to be thinning at the crown; when he tilted his head, the tied-back part was lifted and showed how carefully he’d combed it to disguise the thinning area. She smiled at herself when she realized she found this sign of vanity touching.
    Shelly didn’t believe in love at first sight—not true love. On the other hand, she’d experienced that powerful, unexpected, inexplicable attraction to a member of the opposite sex twice before—she’d married the first one—and so she recognized it when it happened again now. Ian Masterson, a big, masterful-looking man, was not at all her type. Nevertheless, he radiated some variety of sex appeal, charm, charisma, or whatever-it-was that brightened her eye and rattled her heart.
    Ian continued, “A few years ago, Robbie got sick—muscle aches, vomiting, temperature. He thought it was flu, and went to bed; but when it didn’t get better, his wife sent him to his urgent care clinic—and they put him in the hospital. A blood test had come up positive for hepatitis C.”
    Shelly said, “So they’re the ones who made the mistake.”
    Ian shook his head. “No. They did a liver biopsy, and found some very early signs of cirrhosis. They asked him if he drank, which he did, but he lied about how much, so they concluded the cirrhosis was from the hepatitis.”
    “Anyway, drinking doesn’t give you hepatitis,” said Betsy.
    Ian smiled at her. “No, it doesn’t. But they asked him about his sex life and drug use, because unprotected sex and dirty needles are the two most common ways of getting the disease. He said he hadn’t messed around on his wife, and the only people who stuck syringes into him were doctors and nurses.”
    Shelly asked, cocking her head pertly, “So did he have it or didn’t he?”
    Ian said, “The virus was there. The blood tests showed that.”
    Betsy asked, “Did they learn where he got it?”
    “It turned out he’d had a blood transfusion back in the late eighties after he ran into someone’s elbow during a touch football game and ruptured his spleen. Back then they didn’t test donated blood for it.”
    “I never heard of a disease that has an incubation period that long,” said Shelly. “Well, except maybe AIDS.”
    “Hepatitis is another one, it seems.”
    Betsy said, “And so they told him he was dying. Are you saying this was a motive for murder?”
    “No, I’m just telling you how he came to be at the art fair, instead of writing ad copy.”
    “I still don’t understand.”
    “What happened was, they told him he had a year to live, maybe two if he took care of himself. They got the symptoms under control, gave him some medicine that made him damn sick, and released him.”
    “How long ago was this?” asked Betsy.
    “Three years.”
    “Well, hey, didn’t he ask about a new liver?” asked Shelly.
    “Hepatitis C lives in your whole system, so all that would happen was that the new liver would be infected, too—and much faster, because of the immune-suppressing drugs he’d have to take.”
    “You seem to know a lot about all this,” remarked Betsy, and Shelly managed to drag her attention away from Ian to Betsy. Normally, Betsy had the quiet, helpful demeanor proper to a small business owner, but now there was an edge to her pleasant alto voice, and a keen look in her light blue eyes. Shelly was thrilled to get this glimpse of the sleuth she knew resided in her friend and employer. And Ian was supplying the clue! She returned her attention to Ian.
    Who, oblivious, was nodding. “We had some deep conversations, Robbie and I. But he didn’t die. It turns out that whatever made him sick wasn’t hepatitis C. They think maybe it was what he thought he had in the first place: flu.”
    “They had faulty equipment for testing,” guessed Shelly, wanting him to look at her.
    “No, he really had the