“And you need to not be here at all in about ten seconds.” Warren’s nostrils flared and bright circles of color pooled in each of his cheeks.
“Is that a threat?” Fleet said incredulously.
“No. That is a statement about what needs to happen.” The sight of the two men facing off was like something out of Wild Kingdom—gorillas bellowing and beating their glistening chests. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the standoff ended. Warren had won, and Fleet stomped moodily out of the room. Warren stood with his back to Lindsay, his shoulders heaving. After a few moments, he inhaled deeply and crumpled into the chair next to her bed. He was wearing a short-sleeved gray dress shirt. He had broken a sweat, and now the thin material clung to the long muscles of his arms and chest. “I don’t even know where to start,” he sighed. “I suppose I should just say that I’m sorry. For everything.”
Lindsay daintily wiped her nose on a corner of the bed sheets. “Everything, huh? So what would fall into that category?” She pulled herself into a sitting position, cocked her head, and itemized his offences: “Pretending I was your girlfriend, thus ruining any chance I had with a handsome, heterosexual brain surgeon? And making it look to everyone like I am not just your girlfriend, but your mistress, since you are apparently two-timing your Vegas wife, Cynthia, with me?” She smacked her head with the heel of her hand, as if another thought just occurred to her. “Oh! Or dragging me to the library, where I proceeded to find an important piece of evidence, which you took credit for, even as you allowed Fleet to belittle me?”
“And telling Fleet about the break-in at your house, which has now led him to accuse you of being a party to attempted murder.” Warren said, with a guilty nod.
“I wasn’t going to mention that, but, yeah, add it to the list.” Lindsay said. “You know what, Warren? I am never one to hold a grudge. But in your case, I’m going to have to make an exception. I’ve decided to be mad at you for a good long while. You could say you’re sorry again, but I’d still be mad at you. You could punch Fleet in the face for me, and I’d still be mad at you. You could singlehandedly rescue a burning busload of orphans, but I’d still be mad at you.”
“So you’re saying that you’re still mad at me?”
“Yeah, I really am.” Lindsay sighed. “Now that we have that out of the way, tell me about Joe. Is he okay? Did he see the person who shot him?”
Warren appeared grateful for the small reprieve Lindsay had given him by changing the subject. “He’s fine. They think he’ll be discharged tomorrow or the next day. We talked to him just a little while ago. His statement was that he saw someone crouching in the line of trees at the side of your house, acting suspicious. Joe pretended not to notice anything, but started loading his gun—real casual, so it looked like he was just checking the thing over. All he had with him were blanks, but he thought that’d do to scare the guy off. Then he saw that the person in the bushes had a gun, too, and that they were raising it at Joe. Quick as a flash, Joe emptied both barrels at him. That must have been enough to throw off the shooter’s aim. The bullet he fired at Joe ricocheted off the porch rail and hit Joe in the side of the head. By the time you and John got out to the porch, the shooter must have run off through the woods.”
“Did you find anything at my house? Any trace of the shooter?” Lindsay asked.
“Afraid not. We went over the whole scene, but came up empty.” Warren shook his head.
“Then why does Fleet think I’m involved? What could have given him that idea?”
“I did,” Warren said. He leaned in closer to her, his face solemn. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, Lindsay, but your mother is involved with a pretty dangerous fellow.”
Chapter 45
“What does Sarabelle have to do with any of this?” Lindsay couldn’t stand for the woman to be referred to as her mother.
“The day after the break-in, I came back to your house, and I lifted some prints from the door of your shed. I asked a friend in the department to analyze them,” Warren replied.
“I told you that I didn’t want to involve the police!” Lindsay’s voice was shrill with rage. When she and Warren had been friendly in high school, one of the things she most liked about him was his total lack of interest in breaching the wall she had built to guard information about her home life. They made small talk, laughed at the teachers. He had never once asked her about her parents. Now he had blown her private life open for all to see, and the betrayal amplified her rage.
Warren waited a moment for Lindsay to calm down. When he spoke, he was neither defensive nor apologetic. “I was worried about you. I could tell that the break-in shook you up, and I wanted to help,” he said sincerely. “And I was curious. You were acting so mysterious. There were two sets of prints: Sarabelle Harding and a guy by the name of Leander Swoopes. I’m going to guess that it’s no surprise to you that your mother has had a few encounters with the law. Nothing too serious, mind you, worthless checks, forgery, and the like. But this Swoopes guy…” Warren shook his head. “Embezzlement, wire fraud, assault, and an outstanding warrant for trying to strangle his ex-girlfriend. He put her in a coma. She has permanent brain damage.”
Lindsay inhaled sharply but said nothing. Warren continued, “I knew you wanted the robbery kept quiet, but how could I ignore the fact that a wanted criminal was right under my nose? I had to try to track them down. There’s an all-points bulletin out for them and their car. If they’re still in the area, I intend to find them.”
As Warren spoke, Lindsay’s anger metamorphosized into a new emotion…fear. Fear for her father who would be getting a visit from Sarabelle and Swoopes in a few hours, fear that she was running out of time to help him, and, though she hated to admit it, fear for her mother, who might have gotten herself in over her head. “Have you found them?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Warren said. “We got a rush order on a ballistics test on the bullet from Joe’s head. It came back as a perfect match for the one that killed Vernon.”
“Okay, so the same gun that killed Vernon shot Joe, too,” Lindsay said. The tentacles of her mind were finally beginning to grasp the information that was laid out before her. “But there is no way Sarabelle would be involved in anything like that. Like you said, she’s never been mixed up in anything really serious.” A flicker of doubt crept into her voice. “And anyway, I still don’t see why Fleet would think I have anything to do with this.”
“Well, with that new ballistics evidence, the case against Silas is about as solid as Jell-O in a washing machine. He couldn’t possibly have shot Joe, since he was locked up. Morgan’s off the hook, too, because he was attending Silas’s bail hearing at the time Joe was shot. So where does that leave us? It was partly your evidence about what you overheard Silas and Morgan say at the revival that put Silas away and cast suspicion on Morgan. It appears that your mother is linked up with this Swoopes character, and the fingerprints show that they were both at your house just before the shooting—a fact that you failed to inform the police of. You were there when Buford was poisoned, and you were there when Joe was shot. Both Buford and Joe might have information about Vernon’s murder. It looks like some person or people are trying to silence witnesses. You have to admit that, to an outside observer, you seem to be in all the wrong places at all the wrong times.”
“And it was convenient that just as you are casting around for a new suspect, a violent, wanted felon waltzed into town,” Lindsay said.
“Exactly. Neither Silas nor Morgan could possibly have shot Joe.”
Lindsay rubbed her temples. She felt like she had been watching a horror movie with her eyes taped open, and now she was drafted in as the movie’s star. “So what’s going to happen now?”
“Well, Silas was released on bail. Even though the case against him is a damn mess, we still have some good evidence with the diary and the meeting. It’s possible that he contracted someone else to kill Vernon, and that person shot Joe on his orders.”
>
Lindsay looked searchingly at Warren. “Tell me the truth. Do you think Sarabelle and Swoopes could be involved in this somehow?”
Warren opened his mouth to answer but was interrupted by a perfunctory knock on the door, followed by the rapidly entering footsteps of Dr. Peedie, the physician who had been treating Buford. “Sorry to interrupt, Chaplain Harding,” he said, far too excitedly to be genuinely sorry. “They told me I could find you here. I just wanted you to know that you were right. The preliminary test results just came back. As you suspected, Mrs. Bullard’s diet pills were the source of the poison, and the cause of the heart attack. One of the ingredients in them, sibutramine, has a proven link to heart attacks and strokes. It can be incredibly dangerous in high doses. It has been cropping up in counterfeit pills made in China and sold through third parties on the internet. The lab didn’t test for it initially, however, because it’s very rare. In addition to helping identify what had caused Mr. Bullard’s symptoms, you might have saved Mrs. Bullard’s life. Her blood also shows very high doses of the chemical in her body. If she had continued to take those pills, she was risking serious harm.
Dr. Peedie continued. “Mrs. Bullard’s diet pills are so similar in appearance to the tranquilizer that Mr. Bullard had been prescribed that it’s little wonder she, with her poor eyesight, got them confused.” He paused, placing his fist under his chin like Rodin’s Thinker. “But then, one never knows. Could it be that Mrs. Bullard poisoned herself to throw off suspicion?” He shook his head. He was no longer really addressing Lindsay. Instead, his gaze was fixed out the window at some invisible audience. “No, too risky, I would think. Perhaps someone intended to poison them both, but hadn’t given either of them a lethal dose yet? It’s a puzzle, and I am only one tiny, insignificant piece of the jigsaw.” He smiled at aptness of his metaphor. “I wonder if the police will interview me?” He turned his attention back toward Lindsay and involuntarily straightened his tie.
“We will. Definitely,” Warren said, removing his badge from his back pocket, and displaying it for Dr. Peedie to inspect. “I’ll need to hear all about your central role in solving this. For now, though, I need to finish questioning Chaplain Harding here.”
Dr. Peedie’s eyes grew wide. “How incredibly prompt! I only notified the police about twenty minutes ago. I’ll let you carry on with your interview then.” He fumbled in his wallet and handed Warren a business card. He proffered it like a teenage fan asking for an autograph. “That has my number. Oh, wait, let me write my home number on that as well. Call me anytime. Day or night. I humbly offer any assistance that I can possibly give.” With that, Dr. Peedie rushed excitedly from the room.
Lindsay turned back to Warren and said, “Well, it’s nice to see that at least someone is having a good time with all of this.”
“You’re going to have to bring me up to speed on the diet pills,” Warren said, putting his badge back into his pocket. “You always seem to be one step ahead of me.”
“I’ll explain everything I know to you, but only if you do something for me first,” Lindsay said. She fiddled with her IV needle until she was able to draw it slowly out of her hand. She sat up and hoisted her casted leg over the side of the bed.
“Anything.”
“Wrap this gown around me so that it covers my butt. You’re going to help me blow this popsicle stand.”
Chapter 46
Lindsay and Warren followed a path of little-used corridors and stairwells; she wanted to leave the hospital unobserved. There wasn’t any legal bar to Lindsay’s leaving, but she didn’t have time for any unnecessary hassle. The cast on her leg made her feel like she was doing a three-legged race with a sack of concrete as a partner. She glanced again at Warren’s muscular arms, half-wondering if he would try to lift her off her feet the way that Drew had. Warren made no move to do so, however, offering only a supportive arm when she seemed particularly unsteady. They eventually made it, unseen, out to the lot where Warren was parked.
She scanned the lot for his Crown Victoria, but it was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he led Lindsay toward a neon green Honda motorcycle. At first she didn’t believe it was his—it was cartoonish, with paint and chrome that glistened like a display of movie theater candy. The bike seemed incongruous with the buttoned-down template of Warren Satterwhite that Lindsay had constructed in her mind over the past week. This was no Harley—that mid-life crisis bike of suburban male fantasies. Nor was it the kind of cobbled-together amateur mechanic’s bike that her father rode. This motorcycle was a serious, reckless piece of machinery designed to rend the air with a slash of neon green as it sped past you on the highway. Warren inserted a key in the small rear storage compartment and began to rummage inside it. He removed a rolled up pair of Cordura riding pants and a leather jacket. “Here, put these on,” he said, passing the clothes to Lindsay.
Lindsay ran her hand over the heavy fabric. “I don’t think these pants are going to fit over my cast. And it’s way too hot to wear a jacket this heavy,” she complained. The air temperature, despite the early hour, edged toward ninety, and the black asphalt of the parking lot was already unpleasantly warm against her bare foot.
“I’m going to guess that we’d get about three blocks before that blows off.” Warren gestured to the flimsy, blue cotton hospital gown she was wearing. “So, unless you want to be known as the Lady Godiva of Mount Moriah, I’d suggest you try those on.” Lindsay donned the riding gear without further protest while Warren issued more instructions. “Let the pants hang over your feet a little bit so you can put your heels on the footrests without frying your toes.” The clothes swamped Lindsay’s tiny frame. When Warren fixed the helmet on her head, she had the appearance of an astronaut whose spacesuit had been pricked with a large pin and deflated.
Lindsay had asked Warren to take her to her father’s house. Even though Warren took great pains to ride slowly carefully, the roar of the motorcycle didn’t allow for conversation. It wasn’t until they reached Jonah’s house that Lindsay was able to uphold her end of the bargain and brief Warren on how she had identified Versa Bullard’s diet pills as the source of the toxin that had incapacitated Buford. “I guess I need to stop being surprised that you are a better detective than I am, and just kneel before you in admiration and awe,” Warren said, with only a touch of mockery. He helped Lindsay dismount the motorcycle, holding her under the arms as she hoisted her cast-encased leg over the seat.
Lindsay took off the leather jacket and returned it to him. “Before you set up a shrine to honor my deductive genius, could you do me two more favors?” she said. “First, will you please make sure that whichever one of your esteemed colleagues questions Versa Bullard will go easy on her? If you really think I’m such a great detective you will trust me when I say that I don’t think she poisoned her husband on purpose. Mind you, that warning is not so much to protect Versa as to protect whichever unfortunate police officer tries to bully her.”
“You got it. What’s the other favor?”
“Will you let me keep these pants for awhile? I don’t think there’s any way I can get them down over my cast without exposing my delicate underparts to half the neighborhood.”
He shook his head and gave her a look of mock pity. “I really need those pants back right away. I can help you get them off, if you’ll just bend over.”
“Isn’t there some kind of law against aiding and abetting my indecent exposure?”
“If there is, I’d do the time.”
She punched him playfully on the shoulder, as he donned the jacket that she had returned to him and prepared to leave. He paused for a moment, holding his helmet in the crook of his arm. His expression became suddenly serious. He looked at the front of Jonah’s house, and then back at Lindsay, searching her face earnestly. The look was so penetrating that a shiver ran up her spine. She felt like her face was made of glass, leaving the inner workings of her mind on display. “What?” Lindsay demanded, trying her best to draw a curtain over the br
oken machinery of her jumbled thoughts. She had not told Warren about the planned rendezvous with Sarabelle and Swoopes. With her father’s reputation and her mother’s freedom hanging in the balance, she couldn’t risk involving him. The way he looked at her now, with a deep wrinkle of concern creasing his forehead, she felt certain that he knew that she was hiding something.
“Just take care of yourself. That’s all,” he finally said. He kick-started the motorcycle and took off down the street.
Lindsay made her way awkwardly across the dewy grass of her father’s front lawn, dragging her hobbled leg behind her like a villain in a silent film. Jonah’s house, where she’d spent much of her childhood, was an orange-brick bungalow with white shutters and window boxes bursting with red geraniums. There was no front porch, just a half-dozen concrete steps that led to the front door. On either side of the steps grew rows of evergreen bushes, each hand-trimmed into a perfect little cupcake of foliage. An American flag hung listlessly from a pole fixed to the wall next to the door. Attached to the left side of the house was a carport, a steel structure with a roof made of corrugated metal. In the South, a carport could serve as a garage, workshop, laundry room, patio, place to chain your snarling dogs, or all of the above. In Jonah’s case, however, the carport was as neat as a pin, housing only his old Buick, a small storage cabinet, and two green plastic lawn chairs that lay stacked against the wall. Anyone who didn’t know better could be forgiven for thinking it was the house of a fastidious old lady.
Lindsay went around the carport side of the house and let herself in through the kitchen door. She found Jonah asleep at the kitchen table, still wearing the clothes he’d had on the previous night. His Bible lay open on the table next to him. The book was Jonah’s most cherished possession. It bore an inscription from the famous preacher Billy Graham, with whom Jonah had struck up a brief acquaintance at a convention almost twenty years before. The book was beautiful, with an embossed leather cover and gilt-edged pages. Lindsay trailed her fingers lightly over the tissue-thin pages as she walked past the table.
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