Here was a question Faye could answer. “Yes, he does. He has high blood pressure, for sure. And angina and high cholesterol. Maybe some other stuff. I think he takes pills for all those things.” She shuffled through the possessions scattered around the suite, finally locating the pill case that held his daily medications in the bathroom. That day’s compartment, marked Monday, was empty, and the rest were full. “There’s at least one more bottle that he takes when he feels bad.” She found it in the pocket of a pair of pants draped over the desk chair. “There may be more, but these are all I know about.”
“This is for angina,” Davis said, taking the prescription bottle and reading the label.
“Has he had a heart attack?” Faye asked. “He was feeling pretty weak this morning.”
“It’s hard to say at this point. These medications look like the typical middle-aged man’s cocktail—diuretic, beta-blocker, ibuprofen, cholesterol drug, multi-vitamin—but the prescription drugs are generic, so they all look sorta alike. Little white bullets.”
The emergency personnel lifted Judd onto a stretcher and hustled him down toward the elevator. “Meet us at the hospital. We’ll take good care of him.”
Faye had always considered hospital waiting rooms to be obnoxious places, well-stocked with magazines which assumed that the whole world was interested in the serpentine love lives of Hollywood stars. They were also always well-stocked with people suffering through the worst day of their lives. Whenever the volunteer at the information desk rose and called out a name, the shadowed eyes of the waiters not called sunk deeper into their sockets.
She and Joe had spent three hours in medical purgatory when Ross Donnelly burst into the room. “I’m staying at the same hotel as Mr. Judd, and I heard one of the employees say that he’d been rushed to the hospital. How is he?”
Faye was assembling a jaundiced opinion of Ross Donnelly—why would he care so much about a man he just met, unless it was because he was hoping for a favor?—until she remembered Joe asking her much the same question. Why did she care about Mr. Judd, whom she didn’t know well? Why did she care about Bodie and Toneisha and Chuck and Dr. Mailer and Oka Hofobi? What did it matter? She just did.
She answered his question. “The paramedics were still trying to get him stable when they loaded him on the ambulance. That’s all we know.”
Ross sank into the chair next to Faye and looked her full in the face. “I heard that you were the one that found him and called 911. Word in the hotel casino is that you’re the hero of the day. How are you holding up?” He leaned in so close that she could smell his after-shave, and his eyes never left hers. His fingers brushed lightly across the back of her right hand.
The man had impeccable romantic radar. Most guys gave Faye a wide berth whenever Joe was sitting right beside her. His six-plus feet of well-toned muscle tended to have that effect on men. Ross had obviously intuited that she and Joe were just friends, and he didn’t mind making a move on Faye right in front of him.
This made Faye more than a little uncomfortable, so her answer was awkward. “Uh, it wasn’t just me. Joe did a lot, too. And the paramedics, of course.”
Joe, who was a little smoother than Faye, rose and asked, “Anyone want anything from the vending machines?”
Faye and Ross both shook their heads and Joe ambled down the hall.
Continuing her efforts at scintillating conversation, Faye asked, “You’re not from around here, are you? I guess that’s obvious, since you’re staying at the hotel.”
“I’m from Brooklyn, but I came south to go to Emory, and I’ve never looked back. I wasn’t made for ice and snow.”
“They get ice in Atlanta now and then.”
“Yeah, and you should see those Georgians try to drive in it. It’s like amateur night at the demolition derby. I think I need to go further south.”
Faye laughed and said, “I’m from Florida. I’ve never seen snow.” Then she caught herself short when she heard how the light-hearted sound of laughter vibrated in the tense atmosphere of the waiting room.
“I’ve always intended to get to Florida, but I was too busy working. People say I’m a workaholic, but I believe in what I do.”
Faye was trying to decide whether to confess to being a workaholic, too, or whether to ask him to tell her more about the work that he believed in so fervently, when the volunteer at the information desk announced, “Friends of Lawrence Judd?”
She and Ross rushed forward. The volunteer held out a phone and said, “Mr. Judd’s wife wants to talk to the young woman who helped her husband. Is that you?”
Faye noticed that the woman’s statement was carefully phrased to avoid revealing anything about the patient’s condition, or even whether he was still alive. She put the phone to her ear and braced herself for a conversation with a woman freshly widowed.
A quavering voice asked, “Are you Faye Longchamp?” and Faye was confused. Mr. Judd had some health problems, but he was barely over sixty. That was hardly elderly, these days. Did this frail, old voice belong to his wife or to his mother?
“Yes, this is Faye Longchamp. I’m so sorry for your husband’s trouble.” Was that the right thing to say? What if he was dead?
“Oh, my dear, if it weren’t for you, I might have lost him.”
Faye blew out a sigh of relief.
The tremulous voice continued. “I wonder if I could ask a favor of you. Lawrence is all alone down there, and my multiple sclerosis hasn’t let me travel for many years.” That explained the shaky voice, and it explained why a wife solicitous enough to load her husband’s pill box for him wasn’t already on a plane to Mississippi. “Will you talk to the doctor for me? And will you talk to Lawrence, then call me and tell me how he looks? I’m just sick with worry, and the doctor’s in such a tearing hurry to get off the phone. I can’t be sure I understand everything that’s going on.”
“Do you think they’ll talk to me?” Faye asked. “I’m not family, and they’re persnickety about privacy around here.”
The voice was no less quavery, but it grew stronger. “I gave the doctor my verbal permission to speak to you, which he resisted, so I faxed a letter to the hospital giving my written permission. I told him that I had not been married to a lawyer for thirty-five years, only to be shunted aside by his arrogance. And I’ll tell you that, even in my day, Bennett College had an excellent English program, so I have learned to express myself well on the printed page. I trust that my letter melted his fax machine.”
To heck with Joe and his accusation that Faye liked everybody, even ax-murderers. She really liked Mrs. Judd. “Yes, ma’am. I will gladly do battle with the medical system, if it will help you and your husband. Count on me.”
Ross Donnelly had stepped away to give Faye some privacy for her conversation with Mrs. Judd, so he couldn’t hear what she said. It didn’t matter. The few steps he’d taken away from Faye only served to give him some perspective on the woman. Looking at her like this, from head to toe, it was impossible to ignore the fact that she was dressed like a manual laborer. There wasn’t a woman in Ross’ circle of acquaintance who shopped for her work clothes at the army surplus store. Now that he’d met Faye, it occurred to him that he might need to expand his social circle. Because under those shabby clothes was a body that was as slender and shapely as the ones belonging to his debutante friends.
Above that body, under a heavy coat of dust, was a most appealing face. He liked her eyes, not just because of their exotic up-tilt, but because of their unmistakable intelligence. Her sleek cap of black hair didn’t require mousse or spray to do its job of framing Faye’s delicate features. Her skin, the color of dark honey, was stretched tautly over a most determined jawline. And her full lips were soft, but not weak.
He didn’t know what those lips were saying to Mr. Judd’s wife, but he sensed that her words offered comfort. He sensed that Faye was a woman you could count on. He’d never sought out that quality in a woman, but now that he’d seen it, he w
anted it. A hospital cardiac unit was not a propitious place to ask a woman for a first date, but Ross would be looking for a chance to woo Faye. No, not just looking for a chance. He would make his own chance, because that was the kind of man Ross Donnelly was.
Faye was relieved to see that Mr. Judd was conscious and alert. Even better, he made sense when he talked. But the bilious green, ill-fitting hospital gown made him look like a man at death’s door. Cables emerged from beneath the gown, emanating from the general vicinity of his chest. They converged on a fist-sized electronic instrument tucked into a pocket on the front of his gown.
He pointed to the pocket machine, saying, “They say this’ll let them watch my heart beat all night long. If it looks good, I’ll get out of here tomorrow. Did you talk to Sallie? How’s she holding up?”
“Your wife is doing just fine, and you know it, because she’s tough. I understand that she told your doctor where to get off.”
He adjusted the oxygen cannula resting on his upper lip, which had slipped when he chuckled at the thought of his wife chewing out his doctor. “Sallie’s body may not take good care of her, but her mind and her will—well, I’ve never met a stronger woman. No. Let me rephrase that. I’ve never met a stronger person. It looks like my body might be turning on me, too, so maybe I’ll take a page out of Sallie’s book.” Thinking about his wife had brought a bit of color back to the sick man’s face. Faye would like to mean that much to somebody, someday.
“I’ll tell her that you’re looking much better, because you are. But first, she wants me to corner your doctor and get the whole truth out of him.”
“Good luck with that.”
The ER doctor looked like he thought he was way too busy to talk to the friend of a man who was going to pull through. Despite what Joe said, Faye found that she did not, in fact, like everybody.
“We’ve got to watch him a few more hours, so he’ll be here overnight.” He moved toward the door.
“Did he have a heart attack?”
“No.” Apparently deciding that, since she insisted on making him talk to her, then he would just whip out as many polysyllabic words as possible, he went on, “His hypotension and bradycardia have resolved. He responded well to atropine, and there’s no sign of pulmonary edema. We’ll have him on telemetry all night, then send him home tomorrow afternoon if everything checks out. My best guess is that he took an extra beta-blocker or two, since you say he was feeling ill this morning, but it’ll be a few days before we get the lab results to confirm that. It’s a good thing he’s on a fairly low dose, or the extra pill might have killed him. That drug is particularly dosage-sensitive, so taking extra was a bad idea, but it happens more than you’d think. Some people have the notion that if a little is good, then a lot is better.”
Having dismissed a powerful and educated man as someone who might have done something so dimwitted as taking an overdose of a dangerous drug, just on a whim, the doctor took his leave of her.
Tales of the Removal
As told by Mrs. Frances Nail
This is not an old tale, but it is a true one. Stories have to be told, or they are forgotten. Almost two hundred years ago, my people lost everything. Most of Mississippi was ours and part of Alabama, but the United States government wanted our land. And they took it, too.
We were the first. Did you know that? We were the first tribe taken away from our home to the Indian Territory. That’s Oklahoma, now. You ever been to Oklahoma? Me neither, but I’ve seen pictures and movies. Does it look anything like Mississippi to you? How did anybody think us Choctaws would know how to farm or hunt or stay warm in such a different place? I’m guessing that they didn’t much care.
President Jackson wanted us to go. I think he wanted us dead. They taught us his words in school, and I remember them, because they are important. I taught them to my children. We won’t forget. He said:
“That those tribes can not exist surrounded…in continual contact with our citizens is certain…Established in the midst of another and a superior race…they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.”
The great chief Pushmataha went to Washington and asked Congress for help, but he got none. I learned his words, too. He said:
“I can boast and say, and tell the truth, that none of my fathers, or grandfathers, nor any Choctaw ever drew bows against the United States…We have held the hands of the United States so long that our nails are long like bird’s claws; and there is no danger of their slipping out. I came here when a young man to see my Father Jefferson. He told me if ever we got in trouble we must run and tell him. I am come.”
The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was the final straw. It traded all our land here for a scrap of Oklahoma, and it didn’t promise much else. Just a trip west led by people who would be “kind and brotherly to them.” That’s what the treaty said! But do you know what one of the men leading the Removal said? He said:
“Death is hourly among us. The road is lined with the sick. Fortunately they are a people that will walk to the last, or I do not know how we would get on.”
Thousands of Choctaws died on the Trail of Tears that winter, from cold and thirst and starvation. Some of us stayed behind, and we fared little better, but we still had our home. And we had our mother, Nanih Waiya.
While she stands, there will always be Choctaws here.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tuesday
Day 5 of the Neshoba County Fair
“Mr. Judd’s wife was not pleased when I told her that the doctor thought he’d taken too much of his beta-blocker,” Faye asked Joe as she perused the breakfast buffet and settled, again, on a sumptuous pile of biscuits and gravy. “My husband is many things,’ she said, ‘but he is not an idiot.’”
“Doesn’t seem like one to me.”
“So, let’s say Mr. Judd took an extra pill or two. Where did it come from?” Faye speared a chunk of biscuit on her fork and twirled it around in the gravy.
“You didn’t find any other bottles in his room? Not even in the trash can?”
“Nope, and you and the paramedics all saw me looking. I tore that suite apart.”
Joe dug into a pile of eggs and sausage that would put him in need of beta-blockers of his own in about thirty years. “Maybe he took all the ones he had left in the box, one for every day of the week. That would have been six pills too many.”
“No, he couldn’t have done that. Davis said he saw beta-blockers in there. And the ER doctor must have seen some, too, because he knew the dosage. If there had been some missing—say, if the Tuesday and Wednesday slots didn’t have beta-blockers in them—then I think he would have said something definite like, ‘The man took two extra pills.’ Doctors are definite people. Since he said something vague like he thinks Mr. Judd took ‘an extra pill or two,’ then I’d say it’s because he doesn’t have a clue how many he actually took, and he won’t have a clue until the lab tests come back.”
“Maybe there’s nothing funny at all about the pills left in the box,” Joe said. He stopped to chew. “Maybe they’re just what Davis said they were—beta blockers and ibuprofen and stuff. One of each for every day of the week.”
“So do you think he just got sick for no reason?”
“Well, it’s possible. Even the doctor won’t be sure without those lab tests. But, no, that’s not what I meant.” His thought processes were interrupted by more chewing. “I was thinking that maybe those pills are fine, but there was something funny about one of the ones he took yesterday afternoon.”
“You think they were defective?” An unattractive thought surfaced. “Or you think somebody poisoned him.”
“Well, no, I hadn’t gotten that far in thinking this through. I was just crossing the other things off the list. We don’t think he took too many pills, because we can’t find the bottle they came out of. Also, because none of the pills in his day-of-the-week case was missing.”
“Right.”
“So that
only leaves two things. Either he got sick for some reason besides the pills, something the doctors couldn’t find. And it seems to me like they would have looked pretty hard, since he’s famous and all. Or else something was wrong about the ones he took.”
“Well, let’s walk back through the day. I watched Neely put the pills in the box, right out of the prescription bottle…that was filled by Preston Silver. Now that’s a man who I wouldn’t want handling my drugs.”
“Maybe if he was wearing rubber gloves,” Joe offered.
“I don’t think rubber gloves would be enough to keep the Klansman contamination off. But let’s be fair. Chuck had his hands on that pill case, too, earlier in the day. We know Mr. Judd has a habit of leaving it in his glove box, so someone could have tampered with it earlier, and we wouldn’t know. And hotel personnel would have had access to his room, if he’d left the case unattended in there.”
Joe looked at her expectantly, as if there was one more suspect, but he wanted her to be the one who named him.
“Ross Donnelly,” Faye continued slowly. “He was alone in the room with Mr. Judd. He may even have been the last person to see him before his medical crisis.”
Joe nodded, with a facial expression that said he was proud of her.
“I’m still not letting Mr. Silver fill any prescriptions for me,” he said, heading back for seconds.
“Agreed. But I think we have time to stop by his pharmacy before we go to work.”
Silver’s Drugs was a throwback to a simpler time, a time before the nation was criss-crossed with big-box pharmacies that all looked alike. The floors were covered with black-and-white linoleum tiles laid in a diamond pattern. The worn tiles were waxed and buffed to a high gloss. Long, low display racks stretched across the room, and a scar on the floor showed where an old-timey lunch counter had once taken up space now devoted to over-the-counter drugs. High, modern shelving would have been a more efficient use of space, but these old racks apparently held enough of a selection to suit Preston Silver’s loyal customers. Though the store had just opened, there were already several people milling about, waiting for a chance to fill their prescriptions.
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