by Liliana Hart
“Lovely thought,” I said.
“It happens more often than you know,” Cole said. “Come on, Morgenstern is going to meet us in the conference room. He should have everything set up in there. You’ve got everything you need?”
I patted my medical bag. “I’m just doing a swab of the inside of the bottles and then I’ll take everything back to the lab. I have the tox screen to compare the sample to, so it shouldn’t take too long. But I’ve got to send it to the lab in Richmond to get a specific lock on the amphetamines. It could be anything from street cut to a prescription.”
“Aren’t some of the riders in the club doctors?”
“Yes,” I told him. “But I can’t imagine any of the people I met today risking having their license pulled for a fake prescription. They’ve all been established in their careers here in King George for a long time. They’d lose everything. And for what? What would their motive be?”
Cole blew out a breath. “I guess that’s our job to find out.”
Sergeant Morgenstern was a stocky man somewhere in his mid-forties. He had a square head and square body, and his once-dark hair had turned salt-and-pepper gray. He had brown puppy dog eyes that showed intelligence, and the gold wedding ring on his finger looked tight and as if it had been there a long time.
I’d known Morgenstern a while. He was in charge of the forensics team that came to crime scenes to collect evidence, so our paths crossed frequently, but we rarely had reason to interact.
“Hey, Doc,” he said, nodding to me when I came into the conference room ahead of Cole.
“Morgenstern,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Can’t complain,” he said, continuing to set up his fingerprinting kit. He put on a pair of gloves and then took the bag from Cole. He opened it and took out the two water bottles.
I hadn’t paid much attention to the water bottles when I’d been standing over Brett Jorgenson’s body on the side of the road. But now that I looked at them there was something niggling in the back of my mind that bothered me.
“What is it?” Cole asked, staring at me.
“Man, I really need to work on my poker face,” I said.
“Understatement,” Cole said. “But to be fair, you have gotten a lot better at it.”
“I appreciate that,” I said dryly. “There’s just something in my gut that’s not sitting right. When I was at the ride this morning, I noticed everyone riding for Old Dominion had these same water bottles. And Vaughn and Brett Jorgenson have the exact same bicycle.”
Cole raised his brows at that. “You think Brett wasn’t the intended victim?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just a thought. We just haven’t found anything that pops yet for why Brett would be a target. But I can think of even less of a reason for Vaughn to be a target.”
“You want to go ahead and get your swab?” Morgenstern asked.
“Yeah, if you don’t mind,” I said, pulling on my own gloves. “No matter how hard I try I can never manage to escape without getting black powder all over me.”
“Believe me,” Morgenstern said, “my wife feels your pain. I have to change clothes in the mudroom and put my things in a bag before she’ll let me come in the house.”
I took several long swabs from my bag and then swiped the remaining contents of the inside of the water bottles. They’d both been empty when we’d found the victim, so whatever had been inside, he drunk all of it.
I noticed the cotton at the end of the swabs was tinged red when I pulled it out, but I figured I could ask Jack. I wanted to get back to the lab.
I used a pair of scissors to cut off the tips of the swabs, and Cole held a sterile bag open for me so they could drop inside. I sealed the bag and stripped off my gloves.
“That should do it,” I said. And then I looked at Morgenstern. “Good luck. We could sure use a break on this one.”
“No pressure,” he said, giving me a not-optimistic smile.
“I’ll let you know if we get a hit,” Cole said.
I nodded and made my way back out from the way I’d come. But there was something unsettled in my gut that this crime wasn’t exactly as it seemed.
14
I’d gotten complacent over the last twenty-four hours, thinking my life and position had been forgotten. But when I pulled onto Catherine of Aragon I saw the reporters camped out on the street.
Floyd and the accident should have been the story, taking up headline space, but for some reason they seemed fixed on me and my reaction to the bombshell earlier in the week. I pulled under the carport and got all my things together before opening the door and heading up the ramp quickly.
There was a white van and an older model green SUV. There was a camera crew and a blond woman dressed in a red power suit.
“Dr. Graves,” she called out. “Do you have any comments about your husband fathering a secret child? Do you think it’ll cost him the election? Have you filed for divorce? Do you still plan to charge Floyd Parker with vehicular manslaughter while knowing that someone else murdered Brett Jorgenson? Are you and your husband using your positions to take revenge on his opponent?”
My teeth were grinding together by the time I reached the door and got the key in the lock, and I could still hear her pounding out questions when I finally closed the door behind me. I guessed that was Floyd’s advantage of working for the paper. But what I really wanted to know was who had leaked the information that Brett Jorgenson had been murdered. I hadn’t yet released the autopsy findings to Floyd’s attorney. And the only people who knew what Jack and I knew were supposedly the ones working the case.
I made sure to lock the door and set the alarm behind me, and then I headed down to the lab. I felt the urgency pressing against me. It wouldn’t take me long to run tests and make a match to what was found in Brett Jorgenson’s tox screen.
I started the process and was waiting for results when my cell rang. I could hear it ringing, but I couldn’t remember where I’d put it in my rush to get from the car to inside the funeral home.
I checked my pockets and dug in my bag, but then I saw the paper vibrating on my desk and realized I’d set papers on top of it in my hurry. It was Jack.
“Hey,” I said by way of greeting. “I’m just finishing up here now. I should have swab results any minute.”
“Good,” Jack said. “Would you mind bringing the truck and picking us up? Vaughn had a tire blow out and I stopped with him. We’re on the side of the highway. He took a pretty nasty spill.”
I took down the directions to their location and said, “I’m on the way.”
I’d been worried the reporters would try to follow me, but I had nothing to worry about. They were gone when I came back out of the funeral home, less than two hours after I’d entered.
Jack had said Vaughn’s tire had blown over by the state park, so I turned onto Anne Boleyn and then hit the highway since it was faster than the back roads. I had my medical kit in case Vaughn needed attention, and I had the results of the swab test. I still hadn’t heard anything from Cole about fingerprints.
It took me almost half an hour to get to their location. Jack said they’d taken their bikes off the road about half a mile from a roadside vegetable stand. I passed the stand and a few cars that had stopped to see what the farmer had to offer, and I slowed down, looking for their bikes.
Jack was waiting for me and flagged me down, and I pulled to the side of the road and hit the hazard lights.
“Everybody okay?” I asked when I got out.
“He’s just got some bumps and bruises,” Jack said. “And he’s fairly pissed off. That bike is only a week old.”
“Yeah, he told me,” I said, wincing in sympathy.
We walked over to where Vaughn was sitting on the grass. Both of his elbows were bloody and there was a good-sized tear on his leg warmers exposing a bloody knee. Other than that, he looked okay at first glance. But Jack was right. He was definitely pissed.
I’
d learned enough growing up with boys that pride and ego were almost always at stake, so I checked him over silently while he fumed.
“I can clean you up better at the house,” I said. Jack was already loading up the bikes in the rack. “Besides, I figure you could probably use a beer while I kiss your boo-boos.”
He gave me a look and I winked at him. And then I gave him a hand up.
“I’d rather just go home,” he said.
“I know, cowboy,” I said. “But we don’t always get our way. Unless you’re waiting for a tall, dark, and handsome sailor to come by and rescue you.”
Vaughn’s cheeks turned crimson. “How’d you know he was in the navy?”
I kept my head down as I navigated us across the ditch and to the truck so Vaughn couldn’t see my face as I lied. “He was wearing his dog tags this morning.”
Vaughn seemed satisfied with that answer, and we all piled into the truck. I got behind the wheel since Jack was still wearing his cycling shoes.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“I must have hit a rock or something,” Vaughn said. “Those tires are rail thin and at 135psi. It doesn’t take much for them to blow. I’ve just never had one blow quite like that. Normally, I’d just change out the tire and keep riding, but it bent my rim.”
“You’re lucky it didn’t bend your face,” I said.
“This face has a guardian angel,” Vaughn said. “It’d be a crime to mess with this kind of perfection.”
I rolled my eyes but was glad to see he was in better spirits.
“It’s actually rather fortuitous that this happened,” he said. “Now I can pin both of you down and go over some final election issues. Maybe we should call your mother to come over too. We’ve been trying to pin you down for weeks, but you’re slippery. And before you can argue, I’ve already made up my mind you’re not going to get rid of me. I’m going to recover in your wonderful sauna and soak my sore muscles in your hot tub.”
“It’s an election,” Jack said. “People donate money and it’s your job to spend it how you see fit. That’s why you’re in charge of that stuff. And my mother is in charge of getting people to donate the money you’re in charge of. Why don’t the two of you have a meeting and leave me out of it?”
“Oh, we have been,” Vaughn said. “Hey, it’s the least you can do for me. I was supposed to spend the afternoon sailing.”
“With anyone we know?” I asked nosily.
“Maybe,” he said. “So you owe me.”
“Fine,” Jack said. “Call my mother. Make a party of it. But we still have a pesky murder to solve.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve been a huge help in that area too. I truly don’t know what you’d do without me.”
When we got back to the house, I helped Vaughn inside while Jack took care of the bikes. I pointed him to a barstool, cleaned his wounds, and then gave him an ice pack for his knee which had pretty significant swelling. By the time Jack came in, Vaughn’s wounds were tended to and he was nursing a beer.
“Y’all any closer to finding who killed Brett?” he asked.
“I don’t know if closer is the right word,” I said. “But the residue from the inside of his water bottles is a match with the amphetamines that came back in Brett’s tox screen. I’m going to send everything off to the lab in Richmond and see if they can give me something more specific on the amphetamines. I did notice my swabs came back red when I pulled them out. Any reason for that?”
“Electrolytes,” Vaughn and Jack said together.
And then Jack said, “Everyone has their own concoction they use for rides. Gatorade powder, electrolyte tabs, things like that. You hear back from Cole on whether they found prints on the bottles?”
“Not yet,” I said. “And I assume you haven’t heard from Carver.”
“Well, then,” Vaughn said. “I’m going to soak and call your mother. It sounds like the perfect time to do non-murdery things.”
“You’d think that,” Jack said, pressing his lips together.
I waited until Vaughn had taken off to the back of the house where the sauna and hot tub were located, and then said, “I need to talk to you.”
“Come upstairs,” he said. “I need to change anyway.”
He grabbed a couple of bottles of water and I followed him upstairs to our bedroom. He stripped down and turned on the shower.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just a feeling.”
“Feelings are legitimate,” he said. “What kind of feelings?”
“I’m not sure Brett was the target or that he was meant to die,” I said.
Jack sat down on the edge of the tub and drank a full bottle of water. “Because there’s no clear motive?” he asked.
“Among other things,” I said. “Did you notice Brett and Vaughn have the same bike? He said he just got it this week.”
Jack nodded. “And it would’ve been easy to mix up water bottles and bicycles, especially if someone didn’t realize Vaughn had gotten a new bike. But what would be a motive for killing Vaughn?”
“I’m not sure it would have killed him,” I said. “Vaughn is healthy with healthy organs. He probably would have passed out or gotten lightheaded or crashed. But he probably wouldn’t have died.”
Jack was silent for a few minutes while he thought it through. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s something to consider, but we do have some threads to pull with the Old Dominion members. We know for certain it had to be someone on Thursday’s ride who spiked the water and replaced the bottles, accident or not.”
“What about Vaughn’s bike today?” I asked. “Any chance that wasn’t an accident?”
Jack’s mouth pressed into a hard line and he got into the shower. “There’s always a chance. I’ll look at the bike and see if I can see signs of sabotage. We need to call Carver and have him run some new probabilities. I’m about tired of the people I love being targeted.”
15
I was surprised to see Jack’s mom appear on the doorbell app on my phone, and I hurried down the stairs to let her in while Jack was still changing.
I opened the door and she threw her arms around me. “There’s my girl,” she said. “I’m glad to see you home. My son is a moron. I take full responsibility. But I can see he took my advice and crawled across broken glass to get you back.”
My lips twitched and I said, “something like that.”
“Good for you. He needs to suffer a little bit,” she said, winking. “He always did have it too easy in life. But don’t make him suffer too much. He’s still my son, and moron or not, I love him. Though if he makes me lose my favorite daughter I warned him I was going to pick you.”
She hugged me again and then scurried into the kitchen. I’d never seen Jeri Lawson do anything slow. She was a hundred miles an hour all the time, and had more energy in her tiny body than I could even comprehend.
“You look tired,” she said, heading into the kitchen. I followed behind her and watched with interest as she sat on one of the bar stools and then immediately got up again to move around the kitchen. “I’m sure you haven’t been getting any sleep with all that Floyd Parker nonsense. His mother should have drowned him at birth. He’s never been anything but a snot-nosed brat who caused trouble everywhere he went. There’s no way he’s going to pull off a win on Tuesday.”
She went to the refrigerator and pantry and started getting out things to make sandwiches.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
And then to my surprise and horror, she burst into tears.
“Ohmigosh,” I said, looking around to see if someone was going to swoop in and tell me what the heck was going on. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
I’d known Jack’s mom almost as long as I’d known my own mother, and I certainly knew her better than my own mother. But in all my life I could never remember seeing her cry. I went to her and put my arm around her, and she leaned in for a minute.
But she wasn’t the kind of woman who liked to lean on anyone for very long.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, pulling away and tearing a paper towel from the roll to blow her nose.
“It’s been a difficult week,” she said. “As you know. But I guess the call I got this morning was just the icing on the cake. I received a visit from the board of directors of the club yesterday. Apparently, a member had complained about my use of the facility for private fundraisers for Jack’s campaign. Of course, this has never been an issue before and it states in our bylaws that members can use the facility for events.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Anyway, I told them to tell whoever complained to shove it where the sun don’t shine. I know who it is, and she hasn’t been a member that long, but she’s a pain in the behind coming in and wanting to change things and throwing money around to get her way. We’ve been members in that club for thirty years. The board seemed apologetic when they left my house yesterday. But the board president came back today by himself and told me Rich and my membership had been revoked and the watch party and celebration we had scheduled in the ballroom for Tuesday night has been cancelled.”
She started crying again just as Jack walked in. He gave me a questioning look, but I just shook my head as he went over to wrap her in his arms.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “They said I was breaking the bylaws and all this other nonsense, but I helped write those bylaws. I can’t believe they’d just kick us out after all the money we’ve donated and everything else we’ve done for them. I’m a committee head for Pete’s sake. There is something dirty going on here and I’m going to find out what it is. Either that, or I’m going to burn the whole place to the ground.”