by Camy Tang
“I’m fine,” she said, although it came out a bit muffled because her teeth were chattering. “I’m at Mr. Rivers’s pond. The man who attacked Edward tried to drown me.”
“Is he still there?”
“No, I think he’s gone. I saw him walking toward the highway. He had been talking to a woman on his cell phone. And, Detective? I don’t think he knows I survived.”
“I understand. I’ll be right there.”
“Please h-hurry,” she stammered. “It’s cold.”
He arrived with Aunt Becca, Naomi and Monica, as well as an ambulance. They arrived in unmarked police cars, presumably so they wouldn’t attract attention while driving through town and on the highway, since Rachel’s attacker didn’t know she wasn’t dead.
At first, when the cars turned off the highway and approached the pond, Rachel worried that they were more thugs sent by whoever that man’s employer was. Then the detective rushed out of one of the cars, followed by Aunt Becca and her sisters.
“I was so worried,” her aunt said as she was smothered in her embrace. Naomi and Monica joined them in a group hug.
Enfolded by her family, Rachel felt her eyes well up and she buried her stuffed nose in Aunt Becca’s woolen car coat. Their bodies pressed in on her like a warm comforter.
As they released her, she wiped her eyes, and Detective Carter clasped her shoulder in a gentle grip. “I’m so sorry, Rachel. I was only a few seconds behind you, but it was enough.”
“He took me out with formaldehyde,” she said. “I recognized the smell because I use it in the lab.”
“Just before he came out to the waiting area, I got a phone call—do you remember that?”
She nodded.
“Someone had called the police station saying they had information on Edward’s poisoning, and they wanted to speak to me. That’s why I said I’d be right behind you. But when the caller was connected to me, the line was dead. He’d hung up.” His brows came down over his gray eyes. “I think the caller was the man who kidnapped you. He needed to distract me so he could separate us.”
“How did he get me out of the hospital?” By now, a paramedic had wrapped a blanket around her and was checking her vitals.
“We’re not sure. I asked the nurses, and they said they’d seen a woman faint and a male nurse carry her into a room. But when I went there, the room was empty.”
“Did you trace the call?”
“It was from a cell phone, and the signal went dead.”
Then she remembered. “The man was talking on a cell phone, but then he threw a second cell phone and maybe the battery near the pond.” She pointed to the general area, and the detective barked orders to a few policemen to search for it.
“Now, tell me what happened,” Detective Carter said.
Rachel described waking up in the car, tearing through the duct tape, swimming from the drowning car and seeing the man walking away.
“You said the man was talking on his cell phone to a woman?”
“I think it was a woman. When I heard the pitch of the voice I thought it was a woman. But I couldn’t hear well enough to understand what she was saying or to recognize if I knew her.”
“We’ll examine the discarded cell phone and get a tow truck to get the car out of the pond,” the detective said. “We also have been talking to the man we arrested, Randy, and his lawyer. We have hopes he’ll cooperate soon.”
“Horatio, you have to protect her,” Aunt Becca told him. “Now that Edward’s in the hospital—”
“How is he?”
“We didn’t see him, but we spoke to his brother and mother last night at the hospital,” Naomi said. “The doctors said that he was poisoned with strychnine, but since he only drank a little of the tea, and because that paramedic was at the restaurant to treat him right away, he’ll be fine. They’ll release him in a few days.”
Thank You, Lord.
Monica had been talking to the paramedic who had examined Rachel, and she now put an arm around her sister. “They’ve cleared you to go. Let’s get you home and put you in a hot shower.”
“Dad was frantic,” said Naomi. “When we arrived at the hospital last night and you were missing, we had to tell him, and I’ve never seen him so upset. He asked all of us to stay up with him last night praying for you.”
“Dad did that?” Rachel had never known her father to be so open about his faith.
“God heard our prayers,” Aunt Becca said, and she drew close to Rachel’s side to give her a squeeze. “Praise Jesus, He kept you safe.”
“Yes, He did.”
The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.
EIGHTEEN
Edward had never felt so vulnerable and exposed as he did lying in that hospital bed. At the same time, he fought the burning in his chest to get up, get dressed and do what he could to protect Rachel.
A snore came from the corner. Alex sat rumpled in the chair, asleep. After arriving at the hospital and discovering Rachel was missing, Alex had immediately gone out to find any contacts he had who might be able to help find her. Once she’d called Detective Carter early this morning, Alex had come back to the hospital and collapsed in a tired heap.
But Rachel was still in danger. That man was still after her. The identity of whoever hired him was still a mystery.
And Edward lay in a cotton gown in a hospital bed, his body weak and strangely aching, as if he’d worked all day in the fields at the farm.
That had been some sip of tea.
Alex’s snores grew in volume, and Mama, who had been reading out loud from her Bible, sighed and shut the book. “He is shamefully drowning out the words of God.”
Edward laughed, although it hurt his stomach. “He was up all night, trying to find Rachel. He didn’t get back here until almost eight this morning.” Edward had learned that when Detective Carter had called to tell Alex that Rachel was okay, Alex had been almost two hours away up north, following a lead from a friend who was a trucker. He’d turned around, but it had taken him a while to get back to Sonoma.
“Praise the Lord she’s all right,” Mama said.
“She’s still not safe, Mama.”
His mother’s dark eyes were reproachful. “Jesus saved her from being drowned. Don’t you think He’ll continue to watch over her?”
He hadn’t thought of that.
“You have been antsy. And it’s not a good kind of antsy, either. I think that what you’re feeling is more about you than it is about her.”
More about him…?
No, Mama didn’t understand. Edward needed to be feeling better, to be up and out of this bed. He shouldn’t have taken her to that restaurant in the first place—he’d been too complacent once that man Randy had been captured. He should have been more alert. He should have been… He should have done…
“What are you thinking about?” His mama’s gentle admonishment cut through the noise in his brain. “It’s distracting you from God’s voice.”
Distractions. Her words convicted him, even through all the recriminations in his head. Senseless noise. They drained him even more than the poison had, leaving him empty.
His thoughts were distractions, ripping into him, tearing him into a million pieces.
He needed to put the pieces back in place.
He needed God to put the pieces back in place.
Lately, he hadn’t been trusting God enough. And despite realizing that, here he was, still not trusting Him enough.
Lord, I’m just too scattered right now. I’m empty. I’m weak. I’m…broken.
Had he been trying to be Superman, trying too hard in the face of all the troubles facing Rachel?
Slowly, the pieces fell into place again. Lord, I lift all these things up to You.
That’s all he needed to say. It’s all his heart needed to say.
Rachel surprised him by coming to the hospital early that afternoon. Her smile as she saw him made the imprisoning hospital room suddenly feel like a b
rightly sunlit field.
She embraced him, smelling strongly of lavender and citrus, as if she’d taken a fresh shower. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said.
“Ditto.”
“Hi, Carmella, Alex.” She gave his mama a hug, and Alex bussed her cheek. “I’d have been here sooner, but I needed to wash the pond water out of my hair. I smelled like a sewer.” She sat in the chair next to his bed.
He teasingly tweaked her chin. “After what you told me on the phone, I half expected you to smell like a rotting fish.”
She made a face. “Don’t even joke about that.”
“I wasn’t expecting you here so early. You should be resting.”
“So should you.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’ve been resting all day.”
She took his hand. “I didn’t want to be away from you.”
He ran his calloused fingers over her smooth ones, feeling new cuts in her hand. “From the duct tape?” She’d told him what happened over the phone earlier that day.
“It doesn’t hurt.” She squeezed his hand. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
If he’d drunk more of that tea… If the paramedic hadn’t been there… God had been taking care of him, as well as Rachel. “Did your family come with you?”
“Aunt Becca is, uh…taking extraordinarily long to park the car.”
“Actually, I ran into Horatio in the parking garage,” Rachel’s aunt Becca said as she walked in. She smiled at Edward, but her eyes were serious. So was the face of Detective Carter, who followed her into the room.
“Naomi drove separately because she had to stop in at the spa first,” Becca said. “She’ll be here in a few minutes. She’ll probably kill us, but I want to hear what Horatio found out.”
“News?” Edward asked Horatio.
Horatio nodded. “Randy, the man you captured, confessed in exchange for a lighter sentence.” Mama hmphed. “Lighter sentence? Doing community service? Send him to my farm—I’ll put him to work.”
“Not community service,” Horatio assured her.
“So who hired him?” Rachel asked. “Gloria Reynolds.”
“What?” Rachel shot to her feet.
Becca echoed her cry. “Our spa client, Gloria Reynolds?”
Horatio nodded grimly.
“But…I just saw her this morning at the spa!” Becca’s voice rose in a wail.
“You did?” Horatio went on alert. “When?”
“After we dropped Rachel off at home to shower, one of the receptionists called about an aesthetician who was accidentally double booked, so Naomi and I went back to the spa. I was at the appointment desk when I saw her walk in.”
“Was she supposed to be there?”
“Gloria Reynolds has booked several appointments for the past few days, one or two every day. So when she came in today, I didn’t think anything of it,” Becca moaned. “She didn’t have an appointment today, but I thought perhaps she’d come to collect something she left behind in the women’s bathroom from her appointment a couple days ago. She pays the fee for the spa’s Tamarind membership, which means she can use the Tamarind women’s lounge anytime she likes. She left after only a few minutes.”
“So you didn’t speak to her?”
Becca shook her head. “But maybe Naomi saw her or spoke to her.” She took out her cell phone. “I’ll text her and ask her to hurry up and get here.”
“What else did Randy tell you?” Edward asked Horatio.
“The name of the other man is Lee,” Horatio said. “Randy said he and Lee have partnered together several times. Lee is the muscle, Randy is the tech.”
“So it was Randy who dismantled the security system in my greenhouse.”
“And that’s why he was the one at the spa, trying to break into the card-key lock,” Becca said.
“Gloria had told Randy and Lee to steal a few basil plants and destroy the rest—to sabotage your product launch,” Horatio told Rachel. “But Edward interrupted them before they could finish the job. They also didn’t realize that just tossing the plants around wouldn’t kill them, especially since Edward was able to move and replant them so quickly afterward.”
“Don’t give Edward all the glory,” Alex said from the corner with a yawn. “I helped replant all those basil.”
“Hush,” Mama said, with a shake to Alex’s shoulder.
“Randy said that once Gloria had the plants, she ordered them to kill you, which was why they tried to run you down on your bike. But then after that, she told them that she also needed the scar-reduction-cream formulation in addition to the plants.”
“That explains a lot,” said Rachel. “I wondered why they’d tried to run me off the road, since my death at that point wouldn’t enable them to get the formulation data. She apparently changed her mind, which was why they tried to get into the spa after that.”
“They were the ones who stole the laptop, thinking it was Rachel’s. When they realized it had nothing on it, they returned it with a GPS tracker in the case, but they didn’t realize until Randy tried to steal it in San Francisco that it was Naomi’s computer and not yours.”
“So that confirms why he just ran away without the laptop,” Rachel said.
“Randy also confessed to sneaking into your room at the house when Lee rang the doorbell as the fake UPS delivery-man,” Horatio said. “They had hoped you’d have your research data on your computer at home.”
Rachel shook her head. “It was all on my computer at work.”
“That means it was Gloria who bribed Stephanie to steal the formula,” Becca said.
Horatio nodded. “Randy said that Gloria called him to tell him to kill Rachel because she had gotten the formula.”
“It would make sense,” said Rachel slowly. “Once I was out of the way, Gloria could take as much time as she wanted to develop her scar-reduction cream. Even with the formulation and a freelance cosmetics lab already set up and ready to go, she’d still need several months to verify the formulation and grow the number of mature basil plants that she would need.”
“She was eliminating the competition.” Becca put an arm around Rachel.
“Randy told me that he hadn’t wanted to kill me,” Rachel said to Horatio. “Does he still insist that’s true?”
He nodded. “He says that’s why he didn’t shoot you in the restaurant parking lot. Lee apparently has no qualms, which is why he tried to poison your tea and then kidnapped you to make you disappear.”
“Why that elaborate scenario to drown me? Why not just shoot me?”
Her callous way of discussing it made Edward wince.
Alex opened his mouth as if to answer her, then glanced at Mama and Becca and shut his mouth.
But Rachel saw the motion. “What?”
Alex hesitated.
“Just tell me.”
“It’s less messy,” Alex said. “Your body in a stolen car, sitting in a pond for who knows how long. Any evidence would be gone. And the police wouldn’t definitely know, right away, that you were dead.”
“It would probably have initially changed our search tactics,” Horatio admitted.
“Did you arrest Gloria Reynolds?” Becca asked.
Horatio’s mouth formed a frustrated line. “She’s been missing for a couple days already.”
“But I saw her this morning,” Becca protested.
“She apparently discovered Randy had been arrested—possibly from Lee—and she left her house soon after we took Randy into custody. Her husband says she hasn’t been home since.”
“Surely her husband knew what she was doing, or else why didn’t he report her missing?” Becca’s eyes sparked.
“He says he thought she had gone to her sister’s place for a few days. He also says he didn’t know where she’d gotten the scar-reduction-cream formula.”
“Well, what does he know?”
“Two years ago, she had commissioned a cosmetics lab to make some diamond-dust cleanser—”
&nbs
p; “This proves she lied to us and did hire Steve Schmidt to steal it off my computer,” Rachel cried. “Did Randy confess to killing Steve, too?”
“He insists Lee did it, and that he wasn’t there when it happened. Ms. Reynolds wasn’t very smart about that cleanser.” A smile hovered around the edges of Horatio’s mouth as he said it. “She simply gave it to several of her husband’s diamond clients to try.”
Rachel gasped. “That formula was terrible. It didn’t even go into clinical trials—my experiments indicated it would cause scarring.”
Horatio nodded grimly. “Those clients are apparently threatening to go public with their experiences, although they haven’t yet filed lawsuits, which is why no one knew about Gloria’s moonlighting in cosmetics. The negative press of legal actions might cause public ruin for Mr. Reynolds’s reputation as a diamond businessman.”
“But what does that have to do with Rachel’s scar-reduction-cream formula now?” Becca asked.
“Among the research notes Steve stole, I had made mention of ideas about a scar-reduction cream made from a basil plant extract,” Rachel answered her. “If Gloria simply gave all the files to the cosmetics lab, they would have had those notes. All Gloria would need to do is find out that I hired Edward to grow basil plants, and the lab would know that’s the project I’m pursuing for our spring product launch. But the lab had the wrong basil plant species name.”
“Her husband said that the lab she’s working with hadn’t met with any success on the new cream. Gloria had her hopes pinned on that cream because if it worked, it would stop the threatened lawsuits against the Reynoldses and even be a testimony to the efficacy of the cream. It also would become a hot new product the Reynoldses could market,” Horatio continued.
“The lab must have suspected they had the wrong species of basil, so she had those men steal the basil from Edward’s greenhouse,” Rachel said. “But in order to catch up to my production timeline, the lab needed the formulation, too.”
“Mr. Reynolds insists he didn’t know his wife had acquired those formulations illegally,” Horatio said. “Right now, I have no evidence against him, just against Ms. Reynolds.”