Plot Boiler

by Ali Brandon

  And then she heard a voice calling to her. “Darla! Darla, are you in there?”

  Jake! she shouted back . . . or, rather, she tried to. Her mouth opened, but she heard nothing come from her lips. She realized then that she had made it down the stairs after all and was lying near the register. Hands were on her shoulders, lifting her up against the counter. Jake’s voice was in her ear. “Darla, what’s wrong? What happened? How long have you been lying here?”

  “Oleander . . . Emma,” she choked out, but whether Jake understood her or not, she wasn’t certain.

  “Hang in there, kid. I’m calling an ambulance,” Jake told her.

  Vaguely, she was aware of her friend’s tightly frantic voice as she told the 9-1-1 operator, “I think she’s been poisoned. Oleandrin.”

  She blinked again and saw Mary Ann and Robert both there as well, their features drawn in fear and concern. But what about—?

  “Hamlet,” she managed, trying to hold back a sudden sense of panic on his behalf.

  She had no doubt that he’d be able to get away from Emma, but his feline curiosity could well have done him in. Had the oleander been in the milk, she wondered, or in the espresso? If the former, he might been lured by any leftover foam and been poisoned, too.

  Jake grasped her hand.

  “The ambulance will be here any second. And don’t worry. Hamlet’s fine. He’s down in my apartment right now. He’s the one who let us know you needed help . . . Well, Hamlet and Mr. Plinski.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  It was, Darla decided, quite the most unpleasant night of her life. The EMTs had already started an IV and had her on oxygen as they monitored her vital signs on the way to the ER . . . the trip made worse by the fact she began throwing up at that point. The next step in the ER had been what they’d called a gastric lavage, which sounded civilized enough until she realized they were talking about pumping her stomach. Which they proceeded to do, even though she still had the presence of mind at that point to explain that it probably wasn’t necessary now.

  By the time she woke up in a hospital bed the next morning, she felt almost human again, save that her throat was raw from the tube that had been slid down it. But the worst of the dizziness and blurred vision was gone, as was the nausea. And her emergency room doctor, the cheerful Dr. Gables, had assured her that the fact she’d been treated within an hour of her poisoning meant they’d been able to flush the greatest portion of the oleander’s poisonous chemicals from her system, so that they’d be discharging her by the end of the day if all her vitals remained good.

  Which was all quite fine by Darla. But first she needed to make sure that Hamlet had escaped the store unscathed.

  “Seriously, kid, he’s fine,” Jake assured her, having used her PI credentials and Reese’s name to slip into her room before standard visiting hours. “I swear that cat is half human. He managed to get out of the store and started yowling on the stoop, trying to summon help. It was Mr. Plinski who spotted him first. He was up there on his roof with his binoculars and spied Hamlet doing his mad-cat routine. So Mr. Plinski called down to Mary Ann on his walkie-talkie, and Mary Ann called me. You know the rest.”

  Darla smiled, pride and a bit of awed disbelief filling her at the thought of Hamlet’s heroics. As soon as she was home again, she would call for a nice order of take-out shrimp just for him.

  “He spent the night at my place,” Jake went on, “and now he’s back up in your apartment, all fed and watered. James came over to give him a little moral support. He’s also fending off the media, since it’s turned into a real feeding frenzy over there. I had to run a gauntlet just to get out of my apartment.”

  As Darla stared at her in alarm—What if the news reached Texas? What would happen if her mother and father flipped on the news over breakfast and saw their daughter’s bookstore?—Jake gave her a reassuring smile. “No need to panic. James called your parents already and let them know you were going to be fine.”

  “Thank goodness for that.” Darla sank back against the thin hospital pillows. “I know I was complaining about needing another vacation, but this really wasn’t the way I wanted to get my time off. Do you know when we’ll be able to reopen the store?”

  Before Jake could answer that, another more disturbing thought occurred to her. She shot Jake an alarmed look. “What about my coffee bar, and all the equipment? How can we ever use it again?”

  “Don’t worry, kid. James and I already talked to Reese about that. He has someone who can handle it for you. When they’re finished, you’ll get an official sign-off from the health department and you’ll be good to go again.”

  “Good to go” was good, Darla told herself. Then she sobered. “Have they found Emma yet?”

  Jake nodded, looking pained. “They picked her up last night, and last I heard she’s being held without bail. There’s going to be a mental health evaluation, and then a decision will be made whether to charge her or institutionalize her. Either way, she’s probably going to spend the rest of her life locked up.”

  “She admitted to me that she did it . . . and she also was the one who made Allison sick the night before her tryout.” Darla shuddered. “She seemed to have everything all justified in her head to where it just wasn’t any big deal. The only thing that seems to mean anything at all to her is being a prima ballerina.”

  “Tragic all around.”

  Jake looked at her watch and then rose. “I’ve got to meet with Allison’s parents and finalize things with them.”

  Client paperwork, Darla guessed.

  “As soon as you know when the hospital’s going to let you out,” Jake went on, “give me a call, and I’ll come get you.”

  With Jake gone, and no roommate to contend with, Darla spent the rest of the morning flipping through the television channels and waiting impatiently for her doctor to spring her. The one bit of excitement was when a nurses’ aide walked in grinning and bearing a huge glass vase overflowing with a hothouse’s worth of roses.

  Her first reflexive thought was that Reese had sent them, and a small shiver of delight swept her. Then she took a look at the accompanying card and gave a rueful smile.

  “To one tough broad. Feel better soon. Respectfully. George King,” she read aloud, shaking her head. She could only hope that the King of Coffee didn’t have an underlying motive in sending her flowers. No way was she lining up to be wife number two!

  It was late in the afternoon when Darla finally made her escape. Eager as she was to leave, she was still shaky enough on her feet to feel grateful for the mandatory wheelchair ride. Jake, Robert, and Roma were waiting for her. Jake was at the wheel of Maybelle, the older model Mercedes sedan that Darla’s great-aunt had also left her, and which was garaged a few blocks from the bookstore.

  “Who’s the admirer?” Jake asked with a grin as she caught sight of the veritable rose garden in Darla’s lap.

  “Don’t ask,” Darla warned with a roll of her eyes as Robert helped her into the front seat of the Merc and Roma gave her a welcoming lick.

  The roses came in handy, however, when they arrived back at the bookstore only to find that a news crew was still camped outside.

  “Get ready to tuck and roll,” Jake said, only half kiddingly, as she pulled up behind the news van. Darla ducked her face behind the proliferation of blooms as, flanked by Robert—Roma remained in the Mercedes with Jake—they made a rush for her door.

  With Robert’s help, Darla got up the stairs and inside her apartment, where Hamlet was waiting impatiently for her return.

  “Me-OOW!” he exclaimed.

  But when Darla greeted him with an enthusiastic, “Hammy!” he brushed past her and made a beeline for his food bowl.

  Darla exchanged wry glances with Robert. “I guess he figures his work here is done,” she told the youth. “Time for more important things. Do you mind topping off his kibble?�
��

  By the time Darla was settled comfortably on her sofa—and Hamlet had satisfied the worst of his hunger pangs—Jake had re-parked the car and walked back from the garage with Roma.

  “I’m just a phone call away if you need anything,” Jake reminded Darla, while the little greyhound trotted over to shove a narrow snout at Hamlet. “Robert’s there if I’m not, and James will come by first thing in the morning to run off the press. Oh, and Mary Ann already sent up soup and a veggie casserole. They’re in your fridge.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Darla assured them. “The doctor said I’d just be weak for a couple of days, but nothing critical. And, after all, I’ve got Hamlet to look after me, and y’all for backup. Now, shoo,” she finished, giving them the “bad kitty” treatment.

  Once they’d left, Hamlet deigned to settle on the couch beside her. Darla smiled and gave him a scritch under the chin. “I know you’re not going to take credit for it, Hammy,” she told him, “but you really did save my life.”

  Barely had she said this when the intercom buzzer sounded. Darla jumped, and then shot the offending device an irritated look. “It better not be someone from the local news,” she muttered as she got up to answer. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Reese,” came a familiar voice made tinny by the old technology. “Jake said you were back home again. Are you up to having a visitor?”

  “Sure, come on up,” she said and buzzed him up, leaving her apartment door ajar.

  As she unlocked the door and settled back on the couch to wait for him, it occurred to her that once she would have been concerned about the fact she’d not had a chance to put on fresh makeup or even brush her hair. But now . . .

  A quick knock sounded and Reese walked in.

  “Hey, Darla,” he said, his smile warm. “You’re looking a heck of a lot better than you did last night.”

  “Last night?”

  “As soon as I heard I headed up to the hospital, though by the time I got there they’d already pumped your stomach, and you were pretty out of it.”

  “Great,” she muttered, not even daring to picture how she must have looked at that point. Something that Hamlet dragged in would probably be complimentary.

  Reese, meanwhile, walked over to the dining table, where Robert had put the oversized vase of roses for her. “From your family?” he asked with a nod toward the arrangement.

  “No, they’re from a . . . friend.”

  She hadn’t deliberately meant to hesitate over that last word; rather, she’d simply been a bit reluctant to admit George was the sender. Still, she could see from the subtle shift of Reese’s expression that he took that word to mean something more. He looked a little surprised but nodded.

  “Good,” he said, settling on one of her ladder-back chairs. “Oh, I ran the news van off for you, but don’t be surprised if they’re back in the morning.”

  Then, after an awkward pause, he asked, “So, how are you feeling?”

  Like I’ve had a tube shoved down my throat, was what she planned to say, deliberately wanting to keep the mood casual. But the word she was surprised to hear come out of her mouth was, “Scared.”

  Then she bit her lip and shook her head. “I didn’t mean that. Well, maybe I did. I still can’t believe that a girl I really didn’t even know would actually try to kill me.”

  Abruptly, Reese got up and moved over to the sofa. Hamlet all but flew off, hopping onto the dining table and coyly peering around the fragrant blooms. As for the detective, Reese settled beside her and grasped Darla’s hand, giving her digits a gentle shake.

  “I don’t blame you for being scared. Out-of-the-blue things like this can really throw you for a loop. And running into a psycho like that kid is a one-in-a-million bit of bad luck. Just remember that you have plenty of friends around here who have your back.”

  He chuckled a little, his smile wry.

  “That Mr. Plinski is a pistol. While Mary Ann was busy calling Jake, he was on the horn to 9-1-1 insisting there was an emergency next door, and that one of his neighbors was calling for help.” The smile broadened. “He neglected to mention that the neighbor doing the calling was Hamlet. But he knew something had to be wrong, and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.”

  Darla managed a smile back. “Hamlet knew something was wrong from the start. I just wasn’t smart enough until it was almost too late to figure out what he was trying to tell me. And, like you said, he had my back.”

  She glanced down at his hand, still holding hers.

  “So, do you have time to hang out for a while?” she ventured. “Mary Ann sent up a couple of homemade dishes, so we probably should give them a try.”

  Reese glanced down at their entwined hands, as well. Apparently realizing that the gesture had gone on too long, he abruptly loosed her hand and stood. Darla covered her rush of disappointment by giving Hamlet, who’d leaped back to his spot beside her, a quick pet.

  Reese cleared his throat.

  “Sounds good, but Connie’s waiting downstairs in the car. Oh, I almost forgot, she sent this for you,” he added and pulled a small gold gift bag from his jacket pocket. Handing it over to her, he added, “I’ll get with you tomorrow. The way this case has blown up, I’ll have a lot of questions, so you might want to rest up tonight.”

  He was out the door again as quickly as he’d entered. Darla locked the door after him and then returned to the sofa. Hamlet had taken advantage of her momentary absence to stretch out to full length, leaving her just enough room to squeeze in beside him.

  “Well, Hammy, I guess it’s just you and me,” Darla told him. She gave him another scritch, and he returned the gesture with a rusty purr. Then, brow knitted, she reached for the gift bag. “Let’s see what Connie sent me.” She reached into the bag, and her fingers closed on something cylindrical. Mace? But when she pulled the object out and saw what it actually was, Darla shook her head and rolled her eyes.

  “Lipstick,” she muttered. This probably meant that Connie had been with Reese when he’d shown up at the hospital, and the woman had seen her in all her not-so-wonderful glory after the stomach pumping.

  “But, hey, at least she didn’t cheap out,” Darla told the cat as she saw the name on the tube. “I could buy five of my usual brand for what she probably paid for this.” Pulling off the top, she smiled a little at the vibrant color. “Now that is red.”

  Hamlet gave a meow-rumph of agreement.

  Darla’s smile broadened. “Poor Connie,” she told him. “She keeps bringing up the old chestnut about diamonds being a girl’s best friend. Well, she’s wrong. Cats are girl’s best friend.”

  At that, Hamlet leaped from her lap and sauntered over to the bookshelf. Then, glancing back with wide green eyes, he reached out a deliberate paw and used a claw to snag a book, which promptly toppled to the floor.

  “Hammy, I’ve never actually seen you do that,” Darla exclaimed as she rose, too, and went to retrieve the book.

  Then, glancing at the title, she laughed in delight. It was a nonfiction book she’d bought soon after her divorce, and which she’d always meant to toss into a garage sale, but somehow it had followed her there to Brooklyn. And now, she didn’t need the book, she realized . . . not with Hamlet in the house.

  “So, Hammy, you want to try some of Mary Ann’s casserole?” she asked as she tossed the copy of Soul Mates into the wastebasket by her desk.

  Looking for more?

  Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.

  Discover your next great read!

 

 

 
ilter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share