Footprints in the Sand

  Piper’s face felt a bit numb, but she paid little attention as she Googled “Cryder Robbins, M.D.” on her iPhone. Several hits emerged, among them a story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It described a police sting operation designed to catch physicians in the area who were writing multiple oxycodone prescriptions for drug dealers. The drug dealers then turned around and sold the highly addictive narcotics on the street while the doctors were paid huge kickbacks.

  Two physicians had been arrested. A third, Cryder Robbins, had been questioned but never actually charged.

  Piper’s breath caught in her throat. Her notes about the hex symbols were still lying on the bed. She picked them up and looked at them again.

  Her heart pounded as it occurred to her. The birds with the red breasts weren’t merely birds. They were robins.

  And the tears signified what? Weeping, sobbing, crying?

  Crying. Cryder.

  Cryder Robbins.

  Levi had left a record of Shelley Hart’s killer.

  Vin and Jack’s conversation segued from the FBI to Piper. Vin shook his head as he talked about his frustration with his daughter’s lack of fear.

  “It’s like she’s just oblivious,” he said. “Even though I’ve tried all these years to prepare her and get it into her head that there is real evil in this world, sometimes she goes full speed ahead without thinking. I’m always worried about her.”

  “I hear you,” said Jack.

  As she thought back, it all began to fit. Piper recalled Cryder’s dismay at the condo meeting about the tactics that were being used to get owners to sell their places for the Whispering Sands expansion. Roberta Golubock said that Walter’s assistant had threatened to besmirch Roberta’s reputation with some bogus Internet story if Roz didn’t sell.

  Had Shelley found out about Cryder’s history? Had she discovered the same information on the Internet that Piper had? Had she gone to Cryder with what she suspected and threatened to ruin him if he didn’t sell his condo? Had he killed her because of it?

  If Cryder was the one who ran Roz off the road, his treachery while treating her was despicable. Roz had seen a man carrying a woman’s body into the vegetation near the turtle-nesting area, though she wasn’t sure who it had been. But Cryder had to be worried she’d recall something. Roz’s loss of memory after the crash had played right into his hands.

  Piper knew she should get up and go find Jack. He’d know what to do next. Cryder was out on the patio right now. A killer was sitting at their table!

  Her headache throbbed painfully as she rose from the bed. Piper felt very weak, and she realized she was perspiring profusely. The room seemed to spin around her as she crumpled to the floor.

  Jack kept waiting for Piper to come back. All through his conversation with her father, Jack kept stealing glances at the door that led from the inn onto the patio.

  Where was she anyway? It didn’t take this long to get a pair of sunglasses.

  “Excuse me, sir.” Jack said to Vin. “I’m going to see what your daughter is up to.”

  Though her brain was firing rapidly, Piper’s body was paralyzed, and she was finding it increasingly hard to breathe. What was happening? Was she having a stroke? No. That couldn’t be. She was too young for that, wasn’t she?

  She willed herself to reach for the phone, but she couldn’t move. How was she going to get help?

  When she heard the knock on the door, Piper was wild with relief.

  “Pipe, it’s Jack. Open up.”

  She couldn’t answer.

  Jack knocked repeatedly.

  Where was she?

  He pulled out his cell phone and called Piper’s number. He listened impatiently as he waited for her to pick up. She didn’t.

  Just as he was about to disconnect, Jack detected a faint sound coming from the other side of the door. It dawned on him that he was hearing the electronic ring of her cell phone.

  Piper listened helplessly as her cell phone rang. Then she heard the sound of Jack’s footsteps grow faint as he hurried away.

  Oh, my God. What am I going to do?

  Her breathing became increasingly labored. As terrifying as it was to be paralyzed, it was even more alarming not being able to catch her breath. She managed only short, shallow gasps, never feeling that oxygen was really getting to her lungs.

  This is what suffocation feels like.

  Jack rushed up to the reception desk.

  “I need a key for Piper Donovan’s room,” he demanded. “It’s an emergency.”

  “And you are . . . ?” asked the clerk.

  “Jack Lombardi.” He raised his voice as he pulled out his credentials. “FBI.”

  The clerk stared at him uncertainly.

  “Look, I don’t care how you do it. You’ve just got to let me into that room.”

  “Just a moment, please, sir.”

  Jack thought he would go out of his mind as the clerk walked from behind the desk and headed out to the patio.

  “Come on, come on!” Jack yelled. “Don’t you understand? I said it’s an emergency!”

  “I’ll have to check with the manager, sir.”

  Jack pushed the clerk aside and ran out onto the patio. He knew exactly where Walter Engel would be.

  “I have to get into Piper’s room!” he shouted.

  Everyone looked up at him with surprise. Vin was immediately on his feet.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked urgently.

  “I’m not sure,” said Jack. “But something is.”

  Piper gasped for air. To make things worse, she was feeling alarmingly nauseous. She knew if she threw up now, she’d be unable to turn her head to expel the contents of her stomach. She would choke to death.

  She tried to concentrate, to will herself not to heave. Piper prayed as the vomit rose in her throat.

  Get the master key!” Walter commanded the clerk. “Now!”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Cryder as Walter rose from the table to accompany Jack to Piper’s room. The men hurried across the patio, with Vin and Terri following closely behind.

  Jack charged in first. Vin and Terri were right behind him.

  As the door opened, Piper was sputtering and coughing violently.

  “Dear God!” cried Vin when he saw his daughter lying on the floor. He rushed forward and immediately rolled Piper onto her side. He stuck his fingers in her mouth and tried to clear it.

  “She’s blue,” Jack observed as he knelt beside Piper. “She needs oxygen!”

  “We have some up front,” said Walter as he backed out the door. “I’ll go get it and call an ambulance.”

  Cryder came forward. “Let me examine her,” he commanded.

  Piper stared back at him with sheer terror in her eyes.

  Piper!” commanded Cryder. “Can you squeeze my hand?”

  Her fingers didn’t move.

  “Is she having a stroke?” Terri asked fearfully.

  “I’m not sure. Somebody go to my car and get my bag. It’s a dark blue Mercedes, near the front of the lot.”

  Jack grabbed Cryder’s keys and ran.

  Roz and Roberta sat at the table with Umiko. All their other table companions were gone.

  “I hope everything is all right,” Roz said worriedly.

  “Don’t let yourself get upset, Mother,” said Roberta. “It’s not good for you right now.”


  “Cryder is a wonderful doctor,” said Umiko. “If it’s a medical problem, Piper will be in good hands.”

  Roberta looked at the distressed expression on her mother’s face and made a decision.

  “I think we should go now, Mother,” she said. “You’ve been out long enough for today.”

  Roz didn’t protest. She rose from her seat and said good-bye to Umiko. “Would you please call us later and let us know how everything is?” she asked.

  “Of course I will,” Umiko answered, bowing slightly.

  Mother and daughter walked slowly off the patio, through the inn’s lobby, and out to the parking lot. The car Roberta had rented while Roz’s was being repaired was in a handicapped spot. As they approached, Jack was closing the rear door of the car in the next space.

  “Is Piper all right?” asked Roberta.

  “No,” said Jack as he hurried around to the back of the sedan. “She’s not all right. I’m trying to find the doctor’s bag now.”

  While they watched, he popped open the trunk and looked inside. “There it is,” he said with satisfaction. Jack grabbed the satchel, slammed down the lid, and ran. He completely missed the startled look of recognition on the old woman’s face.

  When Jack got back to the room, the doctor had the heel of his hand in the middle of Piper’s chest. His other hand was on top, interlaced with the first. Cryder pushed her chest down and then let it rise before compressing it again. He repeated the process over and over. Jack winced as he heard a popping sound come from Piper’s chest.

  “Stop!” cried Terri. “You’re hurting her!”

  Vin put his arm around his wife and pulled her close. “He can’t stop, sweetheart.”

  “Shouldn’t you breathe into her mouth?” Jack asked desperately.

  Cryder shot him a look. Jack couldn’t read it. Was it fear? Anger? Distaste? Was it possible that the doctor didn’t want to put his mouth on Piper’s?

  “Let me take over,” said Jack. He set the medical bag down next to Dr. Robbins. “I’ve taken the training. You do something else to help her.”

  Jack took the oxygen mask off Piper and checked to make sure there was nothing in her mouth. Then he tilted her head back and pinched her nose. Forming a seal over her mouth with his, Jack breathed in enough air to make her chest rise. At the same time, Cryder wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around Piper’s arm.

  “How is it?” asked Terri.

  Cryder studied the gauge. “Low,” he answered. “Very low.”

  She’s breathing!”

  Jack leaned back on his heels. Piper was inhaling and exhaling with short, quick gulps. But at least she was breathing.

  The ambulance team arrived and took her vital signs. After putting the oxygen mask on Piper’s face, they lifted her onto the gurney and started to roll her away.

  “I’ll take my car and meet you at the emergency room,” said Cryder.

  “What are you doing?” asked Terri as she watched her husband enter the bathroom. “We have to go with Piper.”

  Cryder and Jack looked on as Vin came out holding a paper-wrapped drinking glass. Vin carefully removed the covering and tossed it, then knelt down next to the spot where his daughter had lain. Taking a credit card from his wallet, he scraped up the vomit and deposited it in the glass.

  “I want to bring this with us, just in case they need to test it,” Vin said glumly.

  A crowd of wedding guests had gathered around the ambulance. They watched silently as the attendants slid the gurney inside. Kathy stood in her wedding dress, sobbing. Dan’s tanned face was ashen.

  Brad pulled at Jack’s sleeve. “What can I do to help?” he asked.

  “Pray,” said Jack.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “They don’t know yet,” said Jack, watching the ambulance doors close. “She can’t move. She can hardly breathe, and she puked her guts up all over the floor.”

  It was only after the ambulance and the other cars pulled away that Brad thought of the missing puffer fish.

  En route to the hospital, Piper stopped breathing again. Her mother squeezed herself against the wall of the ambulance while the EMTs continued with chest compressions.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace,” Terri whispered. “Please, let my little girl live.”

  The ambulance pulled into the emergency-room bay. Vin and Jack pulled up immediately behind.

  Two doctors and three nurses were waiting. They flanked the gurney and rolled it inside, listening while the EMT recited the symptoms. The doctors looked at each other and nodded.

  “Let’s empty her stomach and pump in activated charcoal to bind any toxins,” one commanded.

  “Toxins?” asked Vin.

  “Did your daughter eat any seafood?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Vin. “Did she, Terri?”

  Jack interrupted before Piper’s mother could answer. “She never got to the buffet. But she remarked how fishy the gazpacho tasted.”

  “Well, we got a phone call just before you arrived,” said the doctor. “Someone thinks she could have ingested tetrodotoxin. Her symptoms are textbook.”

  “Tetro what?” asked Vin.

  “Tetrodotoxin. The toxin found in puffer fish.”

  Vin stopped, the memory of the dangerous-fish lecture at Mote exploding in his mind. His baby was going to die.

  “What’s the prognosis?” Jack called as the gurney was pushed into the treatment room.

  “The next twenty-four hours are critical. We’ll put her on standard life-support measures to keep her alive and hope that the effects of the poison wear off.”

  Jack went with Piper’s parents to the waiting room, and all three silently sank into chairs. They sat staring vacantly as they contemplated what had happened and feared what might be coming. Several minutes went by until Jack raised his head and looked around.

  “Hey, where’s Dr. Robbins? Didn’t he follow us?”

  Chapter 107

  Tears streamed down Umiko’s cheeks. “I don’t want to leave this place, Cryder.”

  “I know,” Cryder said as he gathered the netsuke from the cabinet in their living room. “But we have no choice. It’s too dangerous to stay.”

  While he’d attended Piper, he had prayed she would die quickly. He’d gone through the expected medical motions to cover himself, all the while hoping that it was just a matter of time before she died. But Walter Engel’s getting the oxygen and calling the ambulance as quickly as he had and Piper’s boyfriend rushing in like a hero to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation had staved off her quick demise. When Vin Donovan took the sample of Piper’s expelled stomach contents, Cryder knew that tests would show the presence of tetrodotoxin.

  They would realize that Piper had eaten puffer fish, and the people at Mote would know that a puffer fish was gone from their tank. The police would investigate, focusing on the guests at the rehearsal dinner as suspects in the theft.

  Admittedly, he wasn’t the only one there. But investigators would soon learn that the hex sign had also been destroyed that night. If she survived, the police would be sure to question Piper about her memory of the symbols. It wouldn’t take long before someone figured out that the hex sign pointed to him as Shelley Hart’s killer. Eventually they would make the connection to Roz’s car crash and to the dead waitress.

  “But I don’t understand,” said Umiko. “Why do we have to go now?”

  He walked over to his wife and took her by the shoulders. “This time I’ve do
ne things much worse than writing prescriptions. Things that could cost me my life.”

  Umiko stared into her husband’s eyes as she tried to figure out what he was saying. “Does this have something to do with Piper and what just happened at the wedding?” she asked.

  He nodded. “And Shelley Hart and Roz Golubock and a greedy waitress who knew too much.”

  Umiko recoiled as the enormity of what he was saying sank in. She collapsed on the sofa.

  “Come on, Umiko,” Cryder urged. “Get up. We have to grab what we can and leave.”

  She stayed exactly where she was. “I’m not going,” she whispered.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Dealing with drug people was horrible enough, but you were my husband and I felt it was my duty to stand by you. But murder is much different. I can’t live with the dishonor of being married to a killer.”

  Sunday

  There are lots of ways

  to cut a cake.

  AMISH PROVERB

  Epilogue

  Piper’s head rested against the pillow. She was pale and weak, but she was breathing on her own. Her heart rate had almost returned to normal, and she could move her arms and legs again. Her parents stood with Kathy, Dan, Aunt Nora, and Walter around the hospital bed while Jack described what had happened as Piper was fighting for her life.

  “When Cryder didn’t follow us to the hospital, we got suspicious. I went back to your room and noticed your iPhone on the bed. It was still open to the last Internet search you did.”

  Piper tried to think. “The article about the drug prescriptions in Atlanta, right?”

  “Exactly,” said Jack. “When I saw Cryder Robbins named, things started to come together.”

  “And then Roz Golubock’s daughter called to see how you were, Piper,” said Nora. “She said her mother’s memory was jogged when she saw Cryder’s open trunk yesterday. There was a shovel in there with a red-and-yellow shaft. Very distinctive. Roz suddenly recalled seeing it on the night the man had carried the woman’s body into the vegetation next to her condo.”

  “The sheriff’s department managed to pull Robbins over as he was driving out of the city,” said Vin as he held tight to his daughter’s hand.