Too Much Blood

by Jane Bennett Munro

  “I think it’s possible that they’ve all been poisoned with an overdose of heparin, and this is not the first time it’s happened.”

  “Really,” she said, sounding skeptical. “Now who exactly are you?”

  “I’m a pathologist at Perrine Memorial Hospital here in Twin Falls.”

  “And how do you know these people have been given heparin? Were they in the hospital there?”

  “No, they didn’t get it in the hospital.”

  “So, they’re all taking Lovenox? Kids and all?” Now she sounded really skeptical.

  “No, it was an oral form of heparin that I suspect was put in those brownies.”

  “Heparin doesn’t come in an oral form,” she told me severely. “Is this some kind of a joke? Because I don’t have time for—”

  “There is an oral form of heparin,” I explained. “It’s called rivaroxaban, and it’s in clinical trials.”

  “Do you know the name of the patient it was prescribed for?” she asked, and I told her.

  Next she asked for the prescription number so she could go online and check it out with the Board of Pharmacy. “I don’t have it,” I said, “but her doctor here is George Marshall.”

  “The gastroenterologist,” she said.

  “That’s the one.”

  Then she asked me the really hard question. “Why were they poisoned?”

  I told her that it was a very long, complicated story, that the woman for which it had been prescribed was suspected of poisoning other people, and that the police were involved, whereupon she thanked me and hung up.

  “Can we go to bed now?” Hal asked.

  “We’d better not,” I said and told him what Dr. Page had told me. “What do you bet Tiffany and Emily are on their way back here in Kathleen’s car?”

  “To burn this house down? Why? The Burkes aren’t here anymore.”

  “Do you want to take that chance?”

  “No, of course not,” Hal said. “In fact, I think I’d better call the police and let them know what’s going on.”

  He did so. By the sounds of it, Darryl Curtis was on duty. “Do you know about Ruthie Brooks and Tiffany Summers?” he asked. “You do? Great.” He filled Darryl in on what Dr. Page had told me. “We think Tiffany is on her way back here in Kathleen Burke’s car. Maybe. I don’t think we’ll be getting much sleep tonight. Great. Thanks—what, Toni?” he asked.

  “Ask him about Ruthie,” I said.

  He did so. “Oh jeez. Okay, thanks.” He hung up.

  “Don’t tell me. Ruthie’s out.”

  “Yep. Her lawyer got her out.”

  “I thought Elliott was her lawyer,” I said, “but Elliott didn’t bail her out this time. I wonder who this other lawyer is.”

  “No idea,” Hal said. “I’ll ask Elliott about that in the morning. I suppose we’d better sleep down here, just in case?”

  I agreed. We stretched out in the recliners under afghans.

  “What do they do to stop the bleeding?” Hal asked.

  “The antidote for heparin is protamine sulfate in the same dose as the heparin they received.”

  “But how do they know how much heparin they received?”

  “Huh. I guess they’ll give it until their anti-Xa’s are normal.”

  “Titrate them, in other words,” Hal said.

  My husband, the chemistry professor.

  “Right. Only, now that I think of it, I’m not so sure that protamine neutralizes rivaroxaban. They might have to depend on fresh frozen plasma to replace clotting factors.”

  “Sounds like they might be in the hospital for a while.”

  “Yeah. Kathleen won’t be needing her car for the duration,” I said. “But I wonder about Tiffany and Emily. Kathleen told Dr. Page that they ate the brownies too.”

  “Maybe they weren’t bleeding yet,” Hal said sleepily.

  Bet they will be by the time they get here, I thought.

  The dogs woke me out of a sound sleep, barking and growling at the front door. I hauled myself out of my recliner and shook Hal.

  “Wha—?” he said.

  “Somebody’s out there.”

  Chapter 28

  Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot

  That it do singe yourself.

  —Shakespeare, King Henry VIII

  “Where?”

  “Outside. Don’t you hear the dogs?”

  Killer and Geraldine were becoming more frantic. They left the front door and raced around the living room, barking at the windows. I looked out the front window and saw nothing.

  “Go wake up Elliott,” Hal said. “I’ll go see what’s going on out there.”

  “The hell you will,” I said. I ran upstairs and banged on the door of the room Jodi and Elliott were sleeping in. Elliott opened it, tousle-haired and bleary-eyed. “What the hell’s all the freakin’ commotion about,” he growled and then seemed to regain full consciousness. “Are we on fire?”

  “Not yet, but somebody’s out there, and Hal told me to get you.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Jodi, you stay put until I call you.” He followed me downstairs, grabbed his coat and boots out of the closet, and put them on. Then he dashed out the front door after Hal. The dogs were gone. I could hear them barking outside. Jodi came down the stairs as I was getting my coat and boots on. “What’s going on?”

  “Our firebug may be here,” I told her. “Hal and Elliott are out there with the dogs.”

  “And you’re going out there too? Not without me, you’re not.” She got her coat and boots too, and as soon as we got ourselves outfitted, we were out the door. By now, several of the children were also awake, and Kevin was preparing to follow us out the door as we left. Jodi closed it behind her to keep the children from getting cold.

  Outside, it looked like a winter wonderland in the moonlight. I heard Hal’s and Elliott’s voices and saw their footprints leading from the porch and around the house to the garage. Kevin came out the front door. “Kevin!” I shouted. “Go out through the kitchen into the garage.”

  “Okay,” he shouted back and went back inside.

  “How’d she get here?” Jodi asked me. “I thought she was in Boise.”

  “She’s got Kathleen’s car. But I don’t see it parked out here on the street, do you?”

  “It might be around the corner,” Jodi suggested. “Let’s go see.”

  “It might be in the alley too,” I said.

  We ran around to the opposite side of the house from the garage. No cars. Then we got to the alley, where I took one look and grabbed Jodi’s arm, pulling her back, finger to my lips. I put my mouth to her ear. “She’s there,” I whispered.

  Kathleen’s car was parked on the side street, just beyond the alley. The trunk was open, and Tiffany was lifting a gasoline can out of it. The dogs, who were inside the backyard fence, were making enough noise to wake the entire neighborhood.

  As we watched, Tiffany unscrewed the top of the can and began to dribble its contents along the fence and the back door of the garage. As she did so, she kept wiping at her face with her coat sleeve. If she managed to set the fence on fire, it would quickly spread to the garage, and then to the house via the kitchen. It was all hundred-year-old wood.

  “We’ve got to stop her before she lights that,” Jodi whispered to me.

  “Go find the boys,” I whispered back. “I’ll stay here and watch her.”

  “Okay.” She disappeared into the shadows.

  I stayed put until I saw Tiffany slosh what looked like the entire contents of the can onto the garage door and put it down. As she drew what looked like a butane lighter out of her coat pocket, I knew there was no more time. “No!” I yelled and ran toward her as fast as I could in snow boots.
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br />   She turned to look at me as I rapidly closed the gap between us. “You can’t stop me,” she said. “I’ll burn you as soon as look at you.” She pointed the lighter at me and lit it just as I crashed into her, knocking her flat. The butane lighter went flying, no longer a threat. But my coat sleeve was burning. I knew that if she managed to push me into the gasoline she’d spilled, it would ignite, and so would I.

  That’s what she was trying to do, all right—use me as a lighter. She grabbed my coat and tried to pull me into the spilled gasoline. I pulled in the opposite direction. Grabbing her by the hair with my burning arm, I managed to set it on fire. She screamed and let go of me long enough for me to tear off my coat and fling it over her head. With her vision obscured, she couldn’t see where she was going when I pushed her into the fence on the opposite side of the alley. She fell to her knees, and I flung myself on top of her and hollered for Kevin, who, last I saw, was supposed to be heading into the garage from the kitchen.

  Kevin opened the garage door just as Hal, Elliott, and Jodi came barreling around the corner into the alley to find me struggling to stay on top of Tiffany as she bucked like a bronco to throw me off. “Help me,” I yelled. “I can’t hold her much longer.”

  Both Hal and Elliott grabbed Tiffany and hauled her to her feet. While Kevin assisted his father, Hal pulled a cable tie out of his pocket and neatly secured her hands behind her. “Fiona’s calling the cops,” he said.

  Jodi picked up my coat and was about to pick up the butane lighter when I hollered, “Stop! Leave it for the cops!”

  That’s when I saw the dark stains Tiffany had left in the snow, and I got my first good look at her face. Her nose was bleeding.

  “What the hell do we do with her now?” Elliott asked. “I don’t want to take her in the house with the kids there, but it’s freezing out here.”

  “The police should be here any minute,” Hal said, and at that moment Tiffany bent forward and threw up. Blood. I could smell it. Hot and coppery.

  “Ugh. That does it,” Elliott said. “Definitely not in the house.”

  “They’re coming,” Jodi said. “I hear sirens.”

  I heard them too. “Maybe we should have had them bring an ambulance too. She’s going to need to be in the hospital.”

  I needn’t have worried. A police cruiser, lights flashing, pulled into the alley, followed by an ambulance. Darryl Curtis and another officer I didn’t recognize got out of the car.

  “How did you know we’d need an ambulance?” I asked Darryl.

  “Your mother asked for one,” he said.

  “Hey!” Jodi called. She was standing by Kathleen’s car, looking in the window. “Look at this!”

  We all ran over to the car and looked in.

  Curled up in the back seat under a blanket was Emily.

  But the car was locked. “Hey, Darryl,” I called. “Does she have car keys in her pocket?”

  By this time, Tiffany had been loaded into the ambulance, and the paramedics were closing the doors. Darryl went over and spoke to them. One of them opened the doors and climbed in, returning a few seconds later to hand something to Darryl. He came over to the car and unlocked it. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Tiffany’s daughter Emily,” I told him. He reached in and scooped her up in his arms. Emily woke up and began to cry, and that’s when I noticed that her face was covered in blood too.

  “I think she needs to go in that ambulance too,” I said. Hal went over to the ambulance and pounded on the driver’s window. He rolled it down. Darryl was right behind him with Emily in his arms. “Got another passenger here,” he said. The paramedics piled out of the ambulance and opened the back doors yet again. One of them climbed inside, took Emily from Darryl, and placed her on the gurney next to Tiffany, who began to cry.

  When we finally got back in the house, everybody was awake. Mum, aside from calling the police and reading my mind, had prepared a quantity of hot chocolate and allowed the children to drink their fill. The stuff she gave us to drink was heavily laced with Kahlua, and it wasn’t long before we were warm again.

  “How did you know we’d need an ambulance?” I asked her.

  “Well, darling, all this talk about Ruthie and her brownies, and Tiffany and her fires … I just thought somebody might be either bleeding or burned or heaven knows what else,” she said, “so I just suggested that they might need one. I assume they did?”

  “They sure did,” Hal said. “Tiffany and Emily were both bleeding.”

  “Emily? Tiffany brought Emily with her? Where are the Burkes?” Mum asked.

  “In the hospital in Boise, bleeding,” I said. “The emergency room doctor called earlier because Kathleen asked her to.”

  “Where was I?” my mother demanded.

  “You’d already gone to bed,” I replied.

  “Tiffany dropped them off and then left,” Hal said. “She took Kathleen’s car. It’s parked out back of the alley.”

  “Are the cops still out there?” Bambi asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “They’ve got to gather evidence. Process the crime scene.”

  “Do you suppose they’d mind if I watched?”

  “Bless your heart,” I said, hugging her with one arm. “I’ll go with you.”

  “You’re going out there again?” Hal asked. “You’re crazy.”

  “Guess we both are,” I said.

  Out in the alley, Darryl and his companion were prowling around with flashlights, looking for whatever they could spot. They’d encircled the area with yellow crime scene tape. The gasoline can had disappeared, and so had the butane lighter. Darryl looked up as we came around the corner into the alley. “Please stay outside the tape. This is a crime scene,” he said automatically, and then he recognized me. “Oh, sorry, Toni. Didn’t realize it was you.”

  I introduced Bambi. “She’s Hal’s daughter, and she’s interested in forensic science,” I said. “Would it be okay if she watches you guys?”

  “Oh, sure. I know who you are,” he said to her. “You’re Pete’s new squeeze. No problem. You just stick with me, kid, and I’ll show you the ropes. No kidding,” he added as he caught my eye. “We’ll take good care of her.”

  I thanked him and went back in the house. The children were already asleep again, and everybody except Mum and Hal had gone back to bed.

  “Well, I guess I know what to get you for Christmas now,” Hal said. “A new coat.”

  “My goodness, kitten,” Mum said. “I didn’t realize that she’d actually burned you.”

  “Better my coat than our house,” I told her. “Besides, I set her hair on fire.”

  “Antoinette! You didn’t.”

  “Well, it was after she set my coat on fire, and I tried to put it out by throwing my coat over her head,” I said. “I was just trying to keep her away from all the gasoline she’d spilled.”

  “Bloody hell,” Mum said.

  I yawned.

  “Sweetie, go to bed,” Hal said. “I’ll stay up and wait for Bambi.”

  I kissed him. “Thank you. I believe I’ll take you up on that.”

  As I climbed the stairs, I reflected that even though Ruthie was still at large, we were all safe as long as we didn’t eat any of her brownies.

  Now, what had she really done with Lance’s Lovenox?

  I still didn’t know.

  Tuesday, December 23

  Chapter 29

  We have scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it.

  —Shakespeare, Macbeth

  Tuesday morning I woke early and walked down to Jim Bob’s for a couple of boxes of doughnuts. By the time I got back, everybody was up, drinking coffee and talking about the previous day.

  I poured myself a cup of coffee, draining the pot. I sighed in resignation. In my house, t
he rule was that whoever emptied the pot set up a new one. So I did, and I started it brewing; and I thought about getting one of those big stainless steel urns that makes thirty cups. We might need one if we were going make a habit of accommodating multiple families in the future.

  Mum said, “Kitten, could I trouble you for a cup of tea while you’re up?”

  “No prob,” I said. I put a cup of water in the microwave and rummaged around in my tea canister for an Earl Gray teabag while it heated.

  “What’s the occasion for the doughnuts?” asked Elliott, helping himself to an apple fritter.

  “Not cooking breakfast for eleven people,” I said, handing Mum her cup of boiling water with a teabag in it and a spoon. “And because we caught Tiffany trying burn our house down, and she’s under arrest, so we don’t need to worry about that anymore.”

  Mum pushed the teabag down to the bottom of the cup with the spoon. “Barbaric,” she snapped. “Why you don’t have a proper teapot, I cannot imagine. Have I taught you nothing?”

  She always said that. Every time she visited us, she said that, and I’d resolve to get one; but then she’d go home and I’d forget all about it, until the next time. So I ignored her and sat down with my cup of coffee, reaching for a glazed doughnut as I did so.

  “I don’t get it,” Jodi complained. “What would be the point?”

  Bambi chose this moment to make her appearance. “The point of what?” she asked, reaching for a doughnut.

  “Burning down our house,” Jodi said. “Or Ruthie’s, for that matter. I mean, Lance’s office and Kathleen’s house, that was one thing, but now we know it wasn’t that.”

  Bambi looked bewildered. “Wasn’t what?”

  “The wills,” said Jodi.

  “What wills?”

  “Jay Braithwaite Burke’s wills,” Hal said.

  “You might as well tell her the whole freakin’ thing, Shapiro,” Elliott said, “because it’s not over by a long shot.”

  “I defer to my wife,” Hal said. “After all, it started with an autopsy.”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “It started in 1990.”