Gritting my teeth, I took a breath, bent my knees, kept my body rigid then slowly straightened, using the leverage of my body to force the sash to rise. Sweat popped on my brow and the wood of the window dug into my palms as I pushed. Pushed. The heels of my shoes sank into the ground, my jaw ached from gritting my teeth, and still I pushed.
At last, the window shuddered upward—a little, a little, all the way.
“I really need to get more exercise,” I murmured.
Brushing my palms against each other to rub away the sting of the wood, I turned to face the window. All I needed to do now was hoist myself up over the sill and into the building. Piece of cake, right?
I laughed at my delusions of strength then clamped my hand over my mouth.
There was no way this was going to be a quick and easy entry. This was going to be hard and potentially painful. But I wanted to see my cat.
I rested my hands against the windowsill and tried to straighten my arms. My muscles shivered, twitched, and ached, and I’d only managed to lift myself off the ground by inches. Seeking the wall with my toes, I pitched myself forward, head and shoulders through the open window.
My feet scrabbled against the brick. I huffed and grunted, pressed and pushed and tugged and made any movement I could think of that might help me through the window. I whimpered, felt the sting of frustrated tears bite at my eyes. Then I felt my hips rest against the sill.
I was half in the building and half out, hanging from an open window like the incompetent thief in a bad buddy cop comedy. I knew, as I hung there, things were about to get even uglier.
One final push-pull and I tumbled through the window. Head first, shoulder catching the edge of heaven-knew-what that clattered and sent a hail of unknown objects to thump against the floor, I landed sideways on the floor, hip and elbow striking the tiling with enough force to make me gasp in pain.
Profanity followed as I curled into a momentary fetal position. “There must be a method to this,” I said to myself. “Maybe acrobat training or something.”
Slowly, I unfolded myself and sat up.
From the darkness of night to the semi-light of the room, my eyes adjusted rapidly, and I saw far more than the arc of the night-light plugged into the wall beneath the window should allow.
The night-light was clear glass with a small white bulb. Shame, really. There were so many lovely stained glass patterns for night-lights and yet the vet had gone with boring clear.
As I prepared to stand, pressing my hands to the floor so I could push myself up, I knocked the side of my hand against a lightweight object. I turned, looked at the clutter of individually packaged items. Reasoning they must be what I had knocked into with my shoulder, I lifted one of the little packages and brought it to the light. The size and feel of the item inside the paper made me think of a ball-point pen. Given my location, I amended my assessment to syringe, and I nodded as I accepted my medication theory. Indeed. What I held was a package labeled ATROPINE, 1 SYRINGE, and some further information printed in a lighter tone, too faint to read.
I reached to set it back atop the steel table I thought it may have fallen from. It wasn’t until I had gathered the other half a dozen or so boxes I had also knocked over that the memory struck me.
Atropine. The coroner’s office. Lucky Hendricks had mentioned atropine as one of the poisons that were almost impossible to detect. And yet here was the substance, just lying around a veterinarian’s office where anyone could . . .
I froze.
No. Not just anyone. Only people who had access to the private areas of the vet’s office—or who had tumbled in through a window—could put their hands on this substance. And of those people who had legitimate access, one face came clearly to mind. The face of the same person who had access to the stockroom at the bakery.
Nicole.
* * *
Unsurprisingly, my less-than-stealthy entry into the building set a couple of yapper-type dogs into alert mode. They may not have been protecting their home, may not have seen an unauthorized person wandering around, but they knew the noise I made was wrong and therefore worthy of much high-pitched barking.
That was good news for me. It meant I could follow the sound out of the exam room I’d landed in and find the small animal kennels. On my way to find Friday, I could call Diana and let her know what I’d found. She might be surprised to hear I’d talked with the coroner about poisons—and I’d have to confess to it and apologize, maybe over a glass of wine—but she was with Nolan, and according to him, he knew everything about what I’d been up to anyway.
I got to my feet and took the few steps to the door. Reaching into the pocket of my jacket, I closed my hand around my car keys. Rats. Reaching into the other pocket, I closed my hand around . . . nothing. Not even lint. Twin rats. My phone was in the cup holder of my car, acting as a GPS device.
This shouldn’t have been a challenge. There were phones throughout the office. Of course, I didn’t actually know Diana’s number, or Nolan’s for that matter. I stored those numbers in my contacts, obviating the need for memorizing them. But, I could call 911 and ask for a patch through to the precinct.
Thinking that was my best option, I lifted the receiver on the phone by the door. The numbers on the panel obligingly lit. By their glow, a strip of paper to the left became visible. It had names like RM 1, RM 2, SURGERY, RECPT. Great. A networked phone system. A little red light beside RM 2 informed me of where I was. But how did I get an outside line? Did I need one?
I punched in 911. Waited.
No further sound came from the phone.
But somewhere in the building a door slammed.
My heart leapt to my throat; my stomach sank to my knees. The odds of that door being slammed by wind, free roaming dogs, or ghosts were slim to none. I was not alone.
I sucked in a breath intended to calm me. I reasoned I might still be all right. I may not have been the only one creeping around a closed, dark veterinarian’s office under cover of night, but that didn’t mean the other creeper knew about me, right?
Slowly, as quietly as possible, I set the receiver back in its place. The lights winked out. And from my knees, my stomach sent a wave of dread and nausea to the rest of me.
The little red light beside RM 2 told me where I was. And told anyone else in the building the very same thing.
I loved my cat. Before that day I think I never understood the depth of my affection for her. She was sweet to have around, especially when her little warm body curled against my feet at night. She was fun to play with and made me laugh at the way she teased Fifi. I loved her a bunch and more. But I had to get the hell out of the vet’s office.
Breath gone shallow, I turned around and tiptoed back to the window.
Climbing in had been one thing, and it had been hard work for a reason. From the outside, the window was slightly higher off the ground than it was from the inside. Deep foundation? Storage cellar? Didn’t matter. What mattered was that rather than the window ledge being level with my chest as it was on the outside, it was now level with my navel.
I rested my hands on the sill and stuck my head out. Before my motion was complete, I knew that would be the wrong approach. It equated to diving out the window head first, which made the action a whole lot like a frying pan vs. fire choice. I would have to reverse my climb.
I pulled head and shoulders back into the room then tried to hike my leg up onto the window ledge. My hamstring shrieked in protest. The side of my shoe hit the wood. I wriggled my foot, trying to ease my leg farther up and over. My hip lodged a complaint. And the lights came on in the room.
Startled, I lost my focus on the window. My foot dropped back to the floor, and I turned, blinking against the light, hoping to face a nighttime vet tech, hoping to have explaining to do, explaining that would result in a call to the cops—a win for me either way. Lee stood in the
doorway, fury writ deep on her face.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she growled.
“Um. My cat,” I said. “I just wanted to see my cat. You never called. I wanted to see if she was okay.”
“I called your house,” she said, not a hint of kindness in her voice, not a note of nice. “I left a message.”
“Oh. Okay. I’ll just, um—” It hit me anew that I was alone, really alone. Sure I’d had my brushes with trouble in the past, but someone had always been with me. This time, it was only me.
“You’ll stay right where you are,” she snarled.
I put my back to the window. “You should call the police,” I said. “Have them, uh, have them come arrest me for trespassing.”
She tipped her head to the left, ear over her shoulder. “Not yet,” she said.
Fear felt like it opened up a hole in my belly. There was a strange sense of emptiness there, as though all the blood in my body was racing for one extremity or another.
“I should have listened to Nicole.” She took a step toward me. “She warned me you were clever. Said Rozelle was always talking about how clever you are.”
“Where is Rozelle?” I asked, all the while thinking, Please say you don’t know, please say you don’t know.
She tugged forward the handbag draped over her shoulder. Without so much as a glance, she reached inside and withdrew a slim paper package, another of its like falling to the floor. “That’s no concern of yours,” she said. Her voice had gone quiet, almost hollow. The overt anger that had been there when she first turned on the lights seemed to have receded. But this new tone raised gooseflesh on my skin.
She peeled the package open the way you would an elastic bandage, exposed the syringe within.
My mouth went dry and yet I swallowed hard. What was up with that? Frantic thoughts bombarded my brain, none of them making any sense, given the severity of the moment. How could I care at a time like that, that I might have forgotten to lock the car? What did it matter that I still had the hood up on my jacket and I was beginning to sweat? And why was Lee walking around with syringes in her purse anyway?
“Look,” I said, backing hard against the window ledge. My fingers found the sill and I clutched it tightly. “Just tell me how my cat is and I’ll go. We can forget this ever happened.”
“Your cat?” She dropped the paper wrapping. It fluttered to the floor, the top layer curled backward but facing upright. “Don’t worry about it.”
There was something written on the paper, but I couldn’t make it out without giving it my full attention. And I needed to keep that attention on the woman with the syringe.
“This was meant for Rozelle. But I’ll make an exception for you. After I give you this tiny little injection, I’ll make sure your cat is waiting for you in the afterlife. You just hold still.”
Like that was going to happen. After she threatened both me and Friday.
She tugged the small plastic safety cap off the syringe and tossed it away. It hit the floor in the same moment she took her first step toward me.
Exam table to my right, cabinets to my left, I had limited choices for escape. I couldn’t get around the demented woman walking toward me wielding a syringe of who knew what. But I wasn’t keen on throwing myself out the window either.
She took another step, and I went with the only plan I could devise.
Hands gripping the windowsill, I rocked my weight backward then kicked up and out with both legs. I wanted to catch her in the chest, knock her back against the wall. One foot rose higher than the other; only that foot connected. The judder of impact, my foot against her midsection, traveled up my leg and to my hip. I knew I’d hit her hard. But not hard enough to move her far. A half step, no more.
She bared her teeth, jaw clenched, hesitated.
I considered diving out the window. If I did it right, I might hurt a shoulder or an arm. I wasn’t likely to hit my head, and there was an excellent chance I’d be able to get up and run away. But I’d have to be faster than Lee.
She spread her arms and came toward me again. Again I kicked out at her, one leg lower not making contact. The other leg grazed her front—she’d not gotten as close as she had before—and as gravity and lack of muscle brought it back down, Lee took hold of my ankle and yanked.
Ripped off balance, I fell. My fingers slipped from the sill and both my elbows smacked against it as I went down.
Lee didn’t let go until my lower spine hit the ground with a stab of blinding pain.
I yelled, an incoherent shriek of pain.
She fell on top of my foot, her knee pinning my lower leg to the floor.
I did my best to sit up, reach for her, try to keep her from—
“Aaaah!” I screamed anew as the needle slipped effortlessly through the thin fabric of my dress slacks and sank into my flesh. Searing hot pain exploded in my calf, and I cried out again then proceeded right on to a continuous shout of expletives and tears.
She jumped off me, pushed the hair that had fallen from its bun out of her eyes.
“Not so clever now are your six horses,” she seemed to say.
My vision squeezed sideways . . . or the room did. I blinked. Slowly. Her face elongated, chin falling to mid-chest like a fun-house mirror. The fading of functional brain cells warned me what I was seeing wasn’t real, but the terror began to rise within me all the same.
“Water is cat.” I thought she grumbled. And then she spun away from me, spinning and spinning and spinning.
A group of men appeared in the doorway. Hundreds of them. All wearing the same coat. Shouting. Pointing fingers. Shining lights and yelling, Freeze! Freeze! Freeze! The echo went on forever.
My head hit the floor. My eyes closed.
I was so tired . . .
18
I always thought that when you wake up in a hospital, the first thing you’re aware of are the bright lights overhead followed by the sound of a heart monitor comfortingly bleeping away at a steady pace. I have every confidence I got this idea from television.
In reality the first thing I was aware of was an increasing discomfort on the back of my hand. Wiggling my fingers only made it worse. And when I opened my eyes, all I saw, in order, was a honeycombed white blanket that I knew didn’t belong to me, a white board on a yellow wall, and ceiling tiles that looked like they had coffee stains on them.
I lifted my head, lifted my hand, trying to see what the problem was. An IV. That indeed was a problem.
“There she is,” someone said. The voice. I knew the voice. Grandy.
“I’ll get a nurse,” someone else whispered.
And then Grandy was standing beside me, one hand on a bed rail I had failed to notice, the other resting heavily on my shoulder. “How do you feel?” he asked.
“I think I feel like you look,” I said. Dark circles ringed his eyes, he had wrinkles I’d swear I’d never seen before, and he was visibly in need of a shave.
“Thank God you’re all right.”
I wanted to touch him, to reassure him. I tried to lift my arm, the one that didn’t have a needle stuck into it, but it was heavier than it should have been and . . . why couldn’t I bend it?
“Careful,” Grandy said. “You’ve got a little fracture there.”
“What?” I gritted my teeth, girded my loins, and hoisted my arm into the air. A plaster cast reached from mid upper arm to mid forearm.
“Do you remember hitting your elbow at all?” he asked.
“Um.” I had to think, needed to piece back together the last memories I had.
When they came back in a rush, I decided the heck with the pain in my hand. I smacked the mattress repeatedly. “I want to sit up. Help me sit up. Does this head lift? Make . . .”
Grandy was already untangling the control box from the bed rail. A moment later the upper ha
lf of the bed began to rise and that made me happy right up until the pain at the base of my spine asserted itself. I gasped, and Grandy dropped the control box.
“Why does that hurt?” I whimpered.
“You broke your ass,” Grandy said.
I chuckled. “I didn’t know that was a thing.”
“The nurse will explain. There’s a series of bones. Well. They’ll tell you.”
“Grandy,” I said, lifting my head again. It was the only way I could really communicate urgency. “Rozelle. Is she okay? Did the police find—”
His smile was blissfully content. “She’s fine. She’s down the hall, sound asleep.”
“She’s here in the hospital?”
“The doctors just want to keep an eye on her. She was a little dehydrated but otherwise fine.”
“The police found her? Where was she?”
“In Lee’s house. In the basement,” he said. He went on to explain how Lee and Nicole had kept her there, arguing over whether they should let her go and turn themselves in or dose her with the same drug they’d given to David Rayburn. Atropine. Just like Lucky had suggested, and readily available in the veterinarian’s medicine closet.
“But . . . ” I squinted, trying to put thoughts into words. “But why did they drug David in the first place?”
He shook his head. “If I understand it right, Lee wanted to put a permanent end to any opposition to the promenade. She had some notion she could get a job there, get herself out of debt, and put her daughter through college. She saw David Rayburn as getting in the way.”
When he put it that way, I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. “What about Rozelle though?
“You know how Rozelle is.” He smiled fondly. “She wanted to do something nice for Nicole because the poor kid was out of work, too. So Rozie baked her some cookies, and when she dropped them by the house, Nicole confessed everything her mother put her up to. Of course, Lee couldn’t let Rozelle leave after that.”
I followed along, worry and relief for Rozelle chasing circles through my mind, until my thoughts wandered back to my own troubles. There was one thing—well, probably a lot more than that but one primary thing—I didn’t remember at all. “The police found Rozelle,” I said. “But who found me? How . . . The last thing I remember was Lee talking gibberish.”
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