by Cathy Tully
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“That woman is lower than a snake’s belly,” Larraine said, drumming her fingers on her arm while she leaned against a file cabinet. “There’s no way you are practicing medicine without a license.”
Susannah studied her office manager. The smile lines around her mouth had hardened into a furious scowl. Even her white hair seemed to darken a shade.
“I’m not worried about that,” she said, trying to convince herself as much as Larraine. At least her knees had stopped shaking. Again, she relived her days with the NYPD and remembered the caution and vigilance that had been ever by her side. She never spoke of the unexpected health problem that had made her unfit for duty, preferring to focus on the present. But this was a fear that she had lived with since the day she had taken a tumble down a long flight of underground stairs and woken up in the hospital. It was a fear of not being able to measure up. It was the voice that told her that she would crash and burn, bringing the roof down on top of her and her staff.
But now, it was fight back or roll over, and she was not someone who rolled over.
Larraine stopped drumming and leaned forward, propping her glasses up on her curls and examining Susannah. “Well, I’m glad to hear you feel so confident,” she said.
“I don’t feel confident at all.” Susannah’s voice had an unfamiliar edge to it, and she regarded Larraine. “Did you hear the glee in her voice? She was thrilled to think she had something on me.”
Larraine bobbed her head and cleared her throat.
“I wondered if she was setting me up as the bad guy from the beginning, but now I’m sure of it.”
Larraine pulled her glasses down and swiped at her nose. “I hope not,” she said, a slight catch in her voice. “I’ve been praying for the detective. It wouldn’t hurt you to pray on it too.”
Susannah nodded. Larraine had a faith in prayer that Susannah simply did not share. Action had always guided her life and solved her problems. She massaged her chin, thinking. There was not a modicum of evidence in her office that could point to her involvement with Anita’s death, but law enforcement officers could misconstrue simple facts—like Detective Withers had done about her trip out of town. They merely had to be convinced they were right. She shivered.
What was it that had the detective convinced she was right? There were people who thought chiropractors were quacks that broke patients’ necks and gave them strokes, but none of that was relevant here. Obviously, Detective Withers didn’t have confidence in her abilities, but why had she confiscated bottles of herbal supplements?
“I’m not going to take this,” she said, surging out of her chair and wincing when it hit the wall.
Larraine frowned. “What are you going to do?”
Susannah paused, her hand smoothing her hair. “I’m not sure, but I can’t sit by while this detective trumps up a case against me. I’ve been thinking I need to fight back, but what I need to do is solve this thing.”
“Maybe you should hire a lawyer instead,” Larraine offered, looking over her glasses at Susannah, a trick she used to look intimidating. Susannah bit her lower lip to keep from laughing; she loved Larraine, but a tough cookie she was not. “My son-in-law’s daddy is with Buchanan, Hinton, and Norris. In fact, he’s the Norris. Winston Norris. They have a reputation for being the toughest law firm in the county. I could give him a call.”
“Sure, that would be fine,” Susannah replied, but her voice trailed off. She knew Larraine’s suggestion was sensible, but lawyers were expensive. So were emergency room visits; she glanced at the spot where she had stuffed the hospital bill. A sour taste flooded her mouth as she remembered Marcie’s comment about destroying a business with gossip. She needed this to be over—and soon.
“Larraine,” she said, taking a breath, “we don’t have the luxury of letting lawyers duke it out. By the time they’re finished, it may be too late.” Everyone knew that lawyers dragged their cases out. The longer it took, the more money they made. Her stomach twinged. She had no choice but to dig in and solve this thing herself. “I need your help.”
“Anything, sweet pea.”
“Fiona tells me Anita wasn’t as well liked as we thought. She didn’t pay her vendors on time and found herself in disputes with local merchants. Then the detective questioned me about the argument I heard at the restaurant. I need to know what else Anita was hiding. Could you use that church grapevine to dig up some details?”
Larraine blanched, something Susannah wouldn’t have thought possible. “I’d like to help.” She paused. “But you know I don’t cotton to gossip.”
“I understand.” Susannah nodded. “Don’t think of it as gossip, think of it as helping me with an investigation. I’m not asking you to spread rumors. I’m asking you to ferret out some information.”
Larraine looked intrigued.
“If we don’t get some answers soon, we will all be out of a job.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Iris Duncan emerged from the side entrance of the lower level of Henry County Hospital with her car keys in hand. Her black hair was sleeked into a high ponytail like she had worn the first time Susannah had met her.
“That’s one hungry girl,” Bitsy commented, as they watched her stride into the parking lot with purpose. They had been sitting in the parking lot for an hour, waiting for Iris’s shift to end, and Susannah thought she saw cracks in Bitsy’s patience. Her hands, which had been draped loosely over the steering wheel, now gripped it so forcefully that her fingernails dug into her palms. Her foot was poised over the accelerator, and there was an excited gleam in her eye.
After Detective Withers’s appearance at her office, Susannah knew she had to discover what killed Anita. Last night, over coffee and a dessert of gluten-free peach cobbler, Susannah had told Bitsy, “The key is to find out how she died.” She scraped her fork across her plate, sweeping up the sticky remains of the cobbler. “So let’s call Roman, and we’ll go have a talk with Iris Duncan.”
“We don’t need him. Let’s ride up to the hospital and talk to her ourselves.”
“Shouldn’t we wait until Roman is on duty to go?”
“I don’t want to bother him with this.” Bitsy waved Susannah off. “He’s got the PTSD and needs to keep things chill.”
“Chill? He’s spending time with you.” Bitsy and Roman had resumed their previous close relationship. Without being told, Susannah knew a romance was blooming.
Bitsy preened. “I know how to kick back and help a man relax.”
Susannah eyed her friend. “Are you sure you know what the word relax means?”
“Shoo.” She waved her nails. “I’m worth a little extra stress.”
So now they sat, watching Iris get closer. As she neared, Bitsy shot out of the parking place, immediately jamming her foot on the brake, laying the shortest stretch of rubber that anyone would ever see. Susannah, arms outstretched, braced against the whiplash injury she knew she had just sustained.
Iris stopped in her tracks only feet from the Explorer, one hand on her hip. In one quick motion, she pulled a semiautomatic pistol from under her scrubs and aimed it through the passenger-side window. Iris’s lips flattened and her nostrils flared.
Susannah raised her hands in surrender. “Are you crazy?” she gasped, her breathing short and fast. “I said ask her to dinner, not use your truck to ambush her.”
Bitsy waved. “Hey, Miss Iris, it’s me, Bitsy, Roman Broady’s friend.”
Iris blinked.
“That’s a real nice pistol you got there. Is that a Sig Sauer? I like your holster too. Is that one of them Thunderwear holsters?”
Iris lowered her shoulders and nodded. She replaced the two-tone gun in its holster beneath her navel.
“Anyways, you won’t be needing it,” Bitsy continued. “We only wanted to invite you to dinner.”
To Susannah’s surprise, Iris’s face relaxed, the color returning to her olive complexion. She threw back her head and barked with
laughter. “Roman told me you were a wild one.” She chuckled, looking past Susannah directly at Bitsy. “You remind me of my brothers.” She paused. “I miss them.”
Bitsy made a finger gun and pointed it at Iris. “There’s more where that came from. Hop in.”
Iris was still grinning when she received her value meal from the RicoTaco drive-through. Both she and Bitsy were calmer than Susannah thought appropriate after a near-death experience.
“Where are we headed?” Iris asked, stuffing a burrito into her mouth as Bitsy accelerated down the interstate ramp while chomping on a sugar-covered cinnamon churro.
“This little snack here has got me hungry for a real dessert,” Bitsy said, brushing the sugar off her pants and slurping at her sweet tea. “I reckon we could make it to that Dominican pastry shop in Stockbridge.”
“What are you doing here, anyway? Roman told me you were going to visit a cousin for few days.”
Bitsy inhaled and sputtered sweet tea from her nose. Susannah grabbed the wheel as Bitsy stowed her cup and rubbed at her nose. “That hurt,” she said, and then grinned at Iris in the rearview. “I came home early.”
Susannah twisted in her seat. “You asked us not to bother you at work.”
“Asked? Ordered is more like it. Roman kinda freaked me out by showing up with you two.” Iris nodded, licking her fingers. “I owe him, but I need to keep my job. Anyway, he told me what’s going on. I guess you’d want to know about the dige levels, then.”
Susannah’s eyes widened.
“What’s a ditch level?” Bitsy asked.
“Not ditch,” Iris said. “Dige, it rhymes with fridge. Comes from digoxin. It’s a chemical compound of a heart medication, and your departed friend ingested enough to stop a clock.”
Susannah waited to hear what came next. Digoxin, also known as digitalis, was a drug obtained from the leaves of the foxglove plant. She crumpled into her seat, deflated. The pieces were falling into place. High digitalis levels were harmful to the heart and could cause death. Anita had been found dead outside Peach Grove Chiropractic with no signs of a struggle because she had not been attacked.
She had been poisoned.
Detective Withers had confiscated her herbal products because she suspected that Susannah was hiding poison among the liquid herbs.
“It would be consistent with taking a heart medication like Lanoxin,” Iris explained, eyeing the churro in her hand. “She could have overdosed on her medication. It’s been known to happen.”
“She never mentioned that she took any medications,” Susannah murmured.
“Maybe she didn’t want nobody to know she had a bad ticker,” Bitsy offered, one hand on the wheel, the other on her drink, which she used to punctuate her comments. “Like my Uncle John Coltrane Long. He used to carry his pills around in an empty RC Cola can. You could hear him rattling all the way down the block.”
Iris shrugged and took a bite of her churro. “It’s also an active component found in the foxglove plant.”
“So what’s that mean?” Bitsy asked.
“If she didn’t take heart medication,” Susannah said, “then she was poisoned.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Susannah sat at her computer, head in hand, regretting the shot of espresso she’d downed earlier in the evening. It was time for bed, but the last of the caffeine jitters kept her awake and worried. Detective Withers had not disclosed the high digitalis levels in Anita’s blood, but it would inform her progress on the investigation and push her toward certain suspects and away from others. In this case, out of Colin’s garage and into Susannah’s clinic.
Her eyelid twitched. Perhaps there was a reason to suspect the herbal supplements. She glanced at the massive Compendium of Plants, a reference book for herbal medications. If Anita had been taking digitalis, certain herbs could interfere with its actions or even cause side effects. It was imperative that she find out what medications Anita took. She glanced at the screen with dry eyes. Right now, she had to finish her research on poisonous plants.
Both she and the detective knew that anyone could go to a gardening center and buy foxglove, but not many people would be aware they were purchasing a poisonous plant. Some die-hard gardeners would know, as would people who had knowledge of herbal remedies—like herself. She knew that nothing in her office would have traces of digitalis in it, but someone in Peach Grove knew how to use this poisonous plant. The proof was in the blood test.
She glanced at the picture on the right side of the web page. Much to her surprise, information on digitalis was easy to find. She knew, like a punch in the gut, that the detective had visited the same sites. Wikipedia had a page dedicated to it, with a vibrant picture of a dark pink common foxglove plant decorating the sidebar. She tapped a finger on the textbook she had pulled from her bookshelf and considered the poisonous plant. While the shrub oleander had also come up in her search, there were more references to foxglove and its varieties. The plant had been known for centuries by herbalists for its poisonous properties and was associated with death and witchcraft, evidenced by its alternative names: dead man’s bells and witches’ gloves. Interestingly, its first medicinal use for treating heart disease dated back to the 1780s.
On perusing the images she had retrieved, she found that many varieties of the showy foxglove flowers reminded her of blooms she had seen in this area. If she hadn’t seen them in a neighborhood garden, then she had seen something similar. Incredibly similar.
She rubbed her neck and glanced at the clock in the corner of her screen. Eleven fifteen. She rose and entered the kitchen, filling a glass with water and draining it. Plunking the glass on the counter, she returned to her computer and initiated a search for images of other tubular-shaped flowers. Perhaps Anita had been in contact with foxglove, thinking it was some other plant.
She scrolled past bright pictures of tropical flowers, most of which she didn’t recognize. The tubular orange flowers of trumpet vines were fairly common here in Georgia, but a vine could never be confused with the tall, heavy stalks of the foxglove. At the middle of the page, she stopped.
Clumps of pink flowers peeked out from behind grasslike fronds. Penstemon had colorful tubular flowers on tall spikes, and Susannah knew if she hadn’t been intently looking for differences, she would easily confuse it with foxglove. The hue of Penstemon “Garnet” was off, but not by much. It could pass for a sister to the foxglove pictured on the Wikipedia page. A few more clicks brought her to photos of hollyhocks and snapdragons. She remembered hollyhocks from her grandmother’s yard in New York, but this variety sported a flower of an almost identical shape to the foxglove’s, growing on a single tall stalk. The snapdragons, on closer inspection, would never pass muster as a tubular blossom, but at a glance, the vibrant pink shade growing on a tall stem cut a similar form, especially to an uneducated eye.
She sat back, digging her toes into the carpet, fatigue finally seeping into her limbs. She peered once again at the doppelganger plants.
They were all confusingly similar to foxglove. Anyone around here could add the dead man’s bells to their home garden and surround it with some nonpoisonous vegetation, and no one would be the wiser.
She interlaced her fingers behind her neck and stretched, pondering the properties of the poisonous plant. All parts were poisonous, and from what she had discovered, the only creatures that could consume it unharmed were moths and their larvae.
Questions formed in Susannah’s mind. How common was it for people to grow foxglove without realizing what it was? Could Anita have poisoned herself with it? It didn’t seem plausible. It seemed more likely that she would be taking medication for heart disease rather than unwittingly poisoning herself.
Chewing a cuticle, she ignored the slight flutter in her stomach. Anita had never mentioned a medical problem, but though Susannah had been acquainted with her for many years, they weren’t close. Most of their interactions had been at the Business Association meetings—not the preferred place
for opening up about your personal health matters.
She thought about what she knew about Anita and concluded that she could recall very little of importance. In fact, Susannah couldn’t remember any personal details that Anita had confided. A melancholy descended upon her. The usual mundane items of life and business came to mind, but no confidential tidbits surfaced. They had chatted, while sharing coffee, once a month for years, but aside from what everyone knew—Anita lived with her mother, who helped her care for Dolores, her teenage daughter—she didn’t know much else. Had she even met Anita’s mother? Susannah sighed. Unlike some people who quickly became overly familiar, dumping private facts into their conversation too soon, Anita was reserved. One could even say tight-lipped. In all the years they’d been friends, Anita never mentioned how she came to the United States or what had brought her to Peach Grove.
Of course, Susannah had never asked.
Susannah felt another tug of guilt. What kind of friend had she been? Had she ever invited her here? She looked around as if the answer lurked behind the curtains. She didn’t have to search for it; it echoed around her brain.
No. No. No.
So, why did she think that Anita took no medications? It was possible she had a mild case of heart disease. Many of Susannah’s patients took medications to lower blood pressure or statins to lower their cholesterol yet showed no outward signs of ill health.
She reread the medical website, which listed digitalis as a popular treatment for congestive heart failure, and frowned. The symptoms of congestive heart failure were outwardly noticeable, unlike high blood pressure, which was considered a silent killer. But fatigue and weakness were definitely not things she associated with someone as active and vivacious as Anita. The last time they sipped their café together, she had looked strained, but Susannah had written it off to the everyday stresses of running a business. There had been no other signs of disease.