by Harper Lin
I might get this for myself, too, she thought as she scanned for a matching body lotion.
“I called the prescription in yesterday!” A loud female voice boomed down the aisles. “This is completely unacceptable!”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry,” came a calmer male voice, “but the prescription didn’t come in until after five o’clock.”
“That is not my problem!” The woman shouted. “I’ll have you know that my husband has direct contact with the chairman of the Food and Drug Administration!” Amelia thought that woman’s tone sounded familiar.
“That’s fine, ma’am, but even he can’t change the fact that your prescription came in after five,” the pharmacist said.
“I will have you and your pharmacy reported to the FDA! They’ll investigate why you are withholding medications from patients who have ordered them, and—”
“Ma’am, we aren’t withholding your medication. It just isn’t here yet. We will have your prescription filled by noon,” the pharmacist replied. Amelia clutched the soap and lotion to her as she slowly walked to the end of the aisle and peeked to her right, toward the pharmacy. “All you have to do is come back and…”
“Oh, I’ll be back, all right! I know what you’re doing! And I know who you are! Don’t think I don’t!”
Amelia gulped as she stared.
“Well, my husband will be very interested to know how you people are handling things here!” she bellowed. “Don’t be surprised when the news crews show up and ask what you’re doing with the patients’ medications!”
“Joyce?” Amelia called to her. Joyce’s head snapped in Amelia’s direction like a woman possessed. “Is… everything okay?” Amelia hoped a familiar face and a calm voice might bring Joyce back from the edge, but it seemed to have the opposite effect.
With that same sinister flash of smile, Joyce pointed at Amelia then turned on her heel and stomped out of the pharmacy, leaving the employees and a couple of patrons to hem and haw over the spectacle.
Even though her headache had disappeared, Amelia grabbed a bottle of aspirin, added it to her fancy soap and bottle of lotion, quickly paid, and then rushed to the Pink Cupcake.
When she got there, only Lila was at the truck. A few last-minute stragglers were hurrying into the building to beat the bell. Everything looked normal.
“What in the world happened to you?” Lila asked, squinting. “You look like the devil chased you all the way here.”
“You won’t believe who was at the drugstore making a big, huge fuss.” Amelia pulled out her phone and dialed Christine’s number.
“Hey, girl,” Christine whispered. “I’m supposed to be heading into a meeting in a few. What’s up?”
“Joyce Ross. She ever tell you stories about being ill or having some kind of disease?” Amelia asked while looking at Lila.
“I try to avoid her. But I’ve heard people say she has a wide range of ailments. Not sure what that means, but it seems like once one thing clears up she’s got something new,” Christine replied.
“I think there is something wrong with her, and I’m sure that there is more to this than anyone thought.” Just as Amelia was about to relay the incident she witnessed at the pharmacy, she looked up to see Joyce standing in the doorway at the back of the truck.
“Joyce.” Amelia still had the phone to her mouth. “I’m sorry, Joyce, but you aren’t allowed on my truck. It’s not a personal thing. It’s a safety code.”
“Oh my… is she on your truck?” Christine gasped.
“You and I need to have a talk,” Joyce hissed.
Chapter Sixteen
“What did she say?” Christine asked. “What’s going on? Do you need me down there?”
“Yes.” Amelia said, answering Christine while appeasing Joyce. “I need you to step off the truck, Joyce.”
“You heard what the boss said.” Lila stepped up. She was like a mama bear. “Please, step off the truck.”
Joyce turned and walked down the metal steps, but she wasn’t going to go peacefully. A second later came a whopping bang that echoed through the interior of the truck.
“What?”
“She hit the truck.” Lila gasped.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“I need to talk to you!” Joyce screamed.
Before Amelia could stop her, Lila went stomping down the steps. “Now you just wait one minute!” she shouted, marching up to Joyce. “You can’t take out your issues on our truck! That is vandalism! And I may not know the director of the Department of Agriculture, but I know Officer Friendly, and I’ve got his number memorized. Now if you want to talk…”
Lila tried to lay down the law with a woman who was not too interested in being reasonable. She smiled at Lila, jerked her chin at her, batted her eyes at her and waved her hands like she was putting some kind of curse on her.
As Amelia stepped off the truck, Lila turned and Joyce pushed her out of the way to tower over Amelia.
Lila staggered and lost her balance, falling to the ground just as Christine, Mike Ross, and a member of security sprinted out of the building.
“Joyce!” Amelia put her hands up defensively. “It’s okay! Really, it is!”
“No! You don’t understand!” Joyce yelled. “You have no idea what is going to happen now. Those people, they did this to me before. They say they didn’t get my prescription, but they did. They are holding out on me because they know it makes me sick.”
“Do you think that’s what they’re doing?” Amelia played along as she inched closer to Joyce.
Joyce’s face became stone serious. “It is what they’re doing.” Her voice trembled. “They’re doing it on purpose so things will get messed up again.”
“I’ll bet they are,” Amelia concurred. She looked to Mike, who stared at his wife but obviously didn’t want to get any closer than he already was. “No one listens, though, do they?”
“No!” Joyce barked. “They think I’m making it all up! But I know it’s true!”
“You know what’s true, Joyce.”
Joyce started to sway on her feet. She took a step back and stared at Amelia. “They’re putting something in my pills. It’s not the medicine it’s supposed to be. They want me sick so I’ll do things like I did before.” Her eyes filled with tears.
“It’s okay, Joyce.” Amelia stared as this woman, who was built like an Olympic swimmer, began to crumble and break apart before her eyes.
Christine ran to Lila’s side and quickly helped her up. The side of her blue jeans had a tear in them, and her palms were black with red scratches.
“Don’t say anything, Joyce!” Mike ordered. “It’s okay. You don’t need to say anything more.”
Sirens could be heard coming from a few blocks away.
“You’re just tired, Joyce,” Mike said. “You don’t know what you’re saying. She’s tired. Her medication has been a mess and…”
Amelia reached her hand out to Joyce and gently put her hand on her arm. Joyce’s skin was ice cold to the touch.
It was as if she had found a moment of clarity. Amelia looked into Joyce’s eyes and watched them focus on her face. She saw a hint of recognition and then a deep sadness, which probably filled her whole body all the way to her feet. “I killed her,” Joyce whispered with trembling lips.
“No, Joyce!” Mike yelled.
“I can’t keep this inside me anymore. They’re letting it eat me up from the inside out,” she confided to Amelia.
“Who is?”
“The people who give me my medicine. They wanted to see if I could be trusted. I guess I can’t.” She started to sob, but after a moment, when the police cars screeched to a stop and two uniformed officers and Detective Dan Walishovsky and his partner, Eugene, appeared, Joyce looked at Amelia again. “I’m so sorry.”
Amelia looked to Dan and nodded.
An ambulance pulled up seconds later, and the double doors at the back of the van popped open. Two EMTs hopped out with a stretcher in tow.
“I don’t think she’ll hurt anyone,” Amelia said. She kept Joyce at arm’s length, but the woman made no attempt to fight or resist Dan, who escorted her to the back of the ambulance.
“Mike?” Amelia looked at him with narrow eyes.
Mike thrust his hands in his pockets and stepped up to Amelia.
“She was diagnosed with depression. Something happened, and she needed a little boost so…”
“What happened?”
Mike rubbed the back of his neck and looked around.
“I had an affair. It didn’t mean anything. It was just one time and…”
“With Danielle?”
“No. I never told Joyce who because there was no need. It was over.” He swallowed hard and looked over to the ambulance, where Joyce had been loaded up and Dan was patiently talking to her. Lila and Christine were giving Eugene their versions of what they saw to the uniformed officers. “But she thought it was Danielle. She thought it was the waitress at the restaurant we went to last night. She thought it was the woman who cuts my hair. She thought it was one of the girls on the softball team. She thought it was you. It didn’t matter what I said. The medication she was taking made her see things. Hear things. I thought it would be just a matter of time before her body got used to it or she changed her prescription and everything went back to normal.”
“So you knew she killed Danielle, and you didn’t—”
“Hold on a minute!” he shouted, pointing a shaking finger in Amelia’s face. “I didn’t know anything. I had my suspicions, but I didn’t know for sure. I mean, when she’s threatened to kill half the females in the city, it’s hard to believe she was responsible for this one. Right?”
“And what about Charles Howe? The guy the police have in custody for Danielle’s murder? Were you just going to let that go?”
“N-n-no!” Mike stuttered. “Of course not.” He nodded and shifted from one foot to the other. “I would have said something.”
“When?” Amelia hated to sound so petty, but she could see why John and Mike had gotten along. What a piece of work.
“Look. I don’t have to answer to you, okay?” Mike pushed his hair back from his forehead. “I’m going to be with my wife. Excuse me.”
Mike hustled over to the back of the ambulance and quickly spoke with Dan without turning around and looking at any of the people in the small crowd that had gathered.
Amelia hurried up to Lila. “Lila, why did you try and get in that woman’s way?” She pushed a stray flaming-red wisp away from her friend’s eye. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Lila shook her head. “I think I’ve been hanging out at Rusty’s place too much. Starting to think I can run with the big dogs when I really should be sittin’ on the porch.”
“Why don’t you come inside the building, and I’ll get some antiseptic on those scratches,” Christine offered.
“Yeah, good idea. Thanks, Chris,” Amelia replied.
As her friends walked off, yacking like a couple of old friends, Amelia turned to see Dan approaching. A paramedic slammed the ambulance’s doors shut, and within seconds the vehicle made a U-turn, lights flashing and sirens blaring as they hurried Joyce to the emergency room.
“What do you think?” Amelia took a deep breath and folded her arms over her chest.
“From the little bit I got out of Mrs. Ross, I’m afraid that a mixture of drugs for depression and anxiety with conflicting side effects and questionable dosages caused her to become violent. She killed Danielle Wilcox. That’s for sure. But I can’t say there was malicious intent. Had she not been on those drugs, I think that girl would still be alive today.”
“That’s sad.” Amelia huffed. “What about her husband? Did he say anything to you?”
“He didn’t have to.” Dan rocked on his heels and rubbed his chin. “He thinks I don’t know a guilty conscience when I see one. We’ll be having a good, long heart-to-heart at the station once Joyce is stabilized.”
“What are they going to do with her?”
“Well, first they have to wean her off the poisons she was on. According to her and her husband, she’s been mixing and matching her prescriptions for almost eighteen months.” Dan looked at the ground.
“That explains the stories I heard about her complaining about weird ailments and accidents that never happened.” Amelia looked at the sky. “She was probably hallucinating or thinking her dreams were real.”
“The doctors will have to find a new combination of drugs that keep her stitched up along the sides,” Dan continued. “After they get her regulated and stabilized, they will decide if she’s fit to stand trial. She’ll be in an institution before they transfer her to jail.”
“What a mess.” Amelia slipped her hand into Dan’s. “It’s so easy to think the person responsible for Danielle’s death had horns or fangs or just a black, rotten heart. But that isn’t that woman they just sped away with.”
“No, it’s not.” Dan squeezed her hand. “But I’m afraid she’s going to have to answer for herself, nonetheless.”
“Right.” Amelia shrugged. “You know, there isn’t a real clear-cut bright side to this situation. But you know they don’t have any children. That’s a blessing in disguise if I ever heard one. Not to be morbid or anything.”
“Speaking of children.” Dan looked at Amelia with worry on his face. “How are your kids doing? Any change in the whole wedding drama?”
She didn’t tell Dan about John’s brilliant idea that the kids not attend at all. She was afraid John might come out of the church with his new bride in tow only to find a big yellow boot on their limo.
“They’ve decided to handle things themselves.”
“Is that a good thing, or will I be getting a phone call at three in the morning to bail them out of the pokey?”
Amelia laughed. “No. I’m pretty confident they will handle it with tact. Something their father should have done.”
“I’ll be interested to see how it turns out.”
“That makes two of us.” Amelia smiled when she saw the slight smirk on Dan’s face.
“I’ll keep bail money ready anyway.”
“Well, just in case. Better safe than sorry.”
“That’s right.” Dan slipped his arm around Amelia and kissed the top of her head as he walked her back to the Pink Cupcake.
Chapter Seventeen
“Can’t you savages see I’m on the phone!” Christine yelled, making Amelia hold her phone away from her ear. “Why do we just have a glass of wine together over the telephone when we both really need those boxes of wine from the grocery store? One apiece.”
“Just a box of wine and a long straw.” Amelia giggled. “Hey, you just gave me an idea.”
“Wait. If you’re thinking what I’m thinking…”
“What are you thinking?”
“An alcoholic cupcake?”
“It’s like we share the same brain!” Amelia laughed. “But not wine. Something a little more elegant.”
“Right, like Old Style or Coors?” Christine chuckled.
Neither woman had finished her first glass of wine, but they’d laughed almost continuously since they got on the phone with each other half an hour before.
“That would be a challenge,” Amelia concurred. “But I was thinking more like a White Russian, or maybe a Bailey’s and coffee.”
“Bailey’s and coffee cupcake. Oh my gosh. I can taste that right now. With a frosting…”
“Yes. A frosting that’s just a little bitter, like maybe a cream cheese base or something.” Amelia smiled. “Oh, thank you, Christine. I’m over my creative block, and I owe it to you. Just a few minutes on the phone, and it’s like a miracle just happened.”
“Please tell me you’re going to come back to the factory once or twice a month. It was so awesome getting to see you every day. I’m going to miss that.”
“Me, too. Hey, has Charles Howe come back to work?”
“No.” Christ
ine’s voice was heavy. “Once he was released from the jail, he came back to the office, cleared out his things, and quit. I guess it was a little too hard for him to face everyone. People would be asking if he was okay and what happened in the jail and all kinds of weird things people always want to know.”
“You’re probably right.” Amelia shook her head. “It might just be me, but it sounds like he really loved Danielle. Maybe it was like a sister. Maybe more. But I can understand how he feels. Too many memories.”
“Yeah. I meant to tell you that Penny is doing better, too. That poor thing was carrying the weight of the world on her scrawny little bony shoulders.”
“Nice description, Chris.”
“Well, it’s true.” Amelia heard her take a sip of her wine, so she did the same. “Human Resources got her a therapist. And, in typical corporate style, they offered counseling and therapy dogs to anyone who was feeling particularly affected by the events over the past week.”
“You going?” Amelia snickered.
“I would. They put a chaise lounge in the human resources waiting room. But no. I’m not freaking out about this. I had you there. My girl, watchin’ my back.”
“That’s right.”
Just as Amelia was going to ask Christine if she had heard any more about Joyce Ross, her front door opened.
“Hold on, Chris. I think the kids are home from the wedding.”
Adam and Meg came in the house, laughing and talking.
“Hey! How’d it go?”
“It was fine. The ceremony was boring, but I made sure everyone signed the guest book. I even hunted them down in their seats and in the parking lot,” Adam boasted.
“Well, good for you. They’ll be happy you did that even if you were pushy.” Amelia smiled. “How about you? Did you have fun?” She looked at her daughter.
“It was okay. Dad looked nice. Jennifer looked pretty. But those gold lamé bridesmaids’ dresses were so bright on the beach, it was like they were shining a mirror right in the eyes of all their guests.” Meg giggled.