Danny hung up, glad that the store was in the jewelry district and wouldn’t be hard to find. His only concern was that whatever he could afford would never be as nice as the boulder that Bradford had given Jo when they were engaged.
Thinking of Bradford, Danny’s mood darkened. He had one other errand to complete. After he had the engagement ring in his pocket, his next stop was the hospital.
Alexa was determined to have a fun day with her mom and Uncle Rick, even if they both seemed quiet and tense. Since they had wheels, something that wasn’t usually the case during visitations, she talked them into going to an amusement park that they always passed on the way to Mariner’s Village. Fortunately, the old lady had given Alexa enough cash so that she could afford the tickets for all three of them and buy them lunch and treats besides.
Strangely, Alexa didn’t want to talk about all of the excitement at the estate the night before with Winnie’s arrest. Alexa was terrified that if her mother knew, she might think the place wasn’t safe and try to take her out of there. Rick was such a worrier too, and Alexa knew that even if her mother didn’t have a problem with it, he would.
So she kept her mouth shut, except for telling the story of how Jo’s fiancé showed up from Europe last night and they almost got married but then they changed their minds.
“I was the maid of honor and in charge of the flowers,” Alexa bragged, “and I even decorated Chewie.”
“Jo almost got married, but then she changed her mind?” Rick asked.
“Yeah,” Alexa replied, “she said it was just too soon, too fast. I think they’ll probably have a regular wedding next year.”
They covered the whole park, standing in every line that wasn’t a mile long, getting soaked on the log ride, and eating so much ice cream and cotton candy that Alexa felt sick. The roller coasters seemed to be a big hit with her mom especially, and as the cart was click-click-clicking up yet another steep incline, Alexa glanced at her, to see a wild, expectant excitement on her face.
Alexa knew that was the same look her mom got whenever she went out at night on one of her binges. Just the sight of it made Alexa’s stomach plunge—even before the roller coaster crested over the top of the hill and headed back down again.
Choosing a ring took a long time, much longer than Danny expected, mostly due to the three-sister conference call during which he had to listen to a lengthy lesson on how to pick a diamond and then describe each of his top choices as he narrowed them down. At least the sweet old diamond dealer was very patient, and in the end he gave Danny a “family discount,” despite the fact that they were only tenuously related through in-laws. Danny was no jewelry expert, but knowing Jo as well as he did, his final choice of a ring seemed perfect, and he felt certain she would love it.
He left the jewelry store with the rock in a box in his pocket and a smile on his face, surprised to see that the day was getting away from him. After sleeping late, lingering over breakfast with Jo, driving into the city, and then haggling with his sisters over the phone, it was almost 5:00 PM. Now he was ready to do this one other errand, and then he could head back.
Danny walked the ten blocks to Lexington. When he was almost to the hospital, he ducked into a florist shop, picked out the biggest bouquet of flowers they had, and burdened his already aching credit card with yet another purchase.
As he waited for the woman to ring him up, he noticed a roll of stickers nearby with the words “Heavenly Days Florist” printed in an elegant script of gold and pink. Discreetly, he pulled off a sticker for himself, and when he got outside with the bouquet he took a moment to slap the sticker on his front shirt pocket.
Inside the hospital, he played the role of delivery person to the hilt, suggesting that since the bouquet was so very huge and heavy he’d be happy to deliver it all the way to the patient’s room rather than saddle the elderly volunteer with it. The woman gladly sent him up to the fifth floor. There, he asked for the room for Bradford Quinn and was directed toward the end of the hall.
Danny held the bouquet in such a way that it would block his face, then he lightly knocked, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.
“Floral delivery,” he said.
“Whoa!” he heard Bradford reply. “Who’s that from?”
Danny walked further into room, hiding his face, and made his way around to the other side of the bed. Then he set down the flowers on a rolling table, thrust out a hand, and quickly knocked the call button out of Bradford’s reach. Attached to the rail by a cord, it hung in midair, swinging back and forth under the bed.
On the bed, Bradford sat half propped up, his eyes wide, his face pale. The guy was totally banged up and bandaged, but at least he seemed mentally clear and alert.
“Hello, Bradford,” Danny said. “Remember me? Jo’s friend Danny? I just thought I’d drop by so we could have a little chat.”
25
Jo didn’t know where Danny had gone, but she had an idea it had something to do with making their engagement official. Last night, there had seemed to be no need for a ring, but now, in the light of day, she was secretly pleased beyond belief. What would that feel like, to be able to look down at the ring finger of her left hand and see a piece of jewelry that represented their commitment?
Jo didn’t want to seem shallow, but she simply couldn’t wait.
In the meantime, she busied herself by cleaning up last night’s mess, since Consuela was tied up down at the hospital and none of the part-timers worked on the weekends. As Jo vacuumed the areas where the police had stomped around, tracking dirt, she thought about what it would take to put together a small but elegant wedding.
The only problem she could foresee in their plans was an immediate one: the seven weeks that still remained of Danny’s internship in Paris. He had already said that he was willing to give that up, but now that this current crisis was being resolved, there was really no good reason for him to have to make that sacrifice—no good reason except that she couldn’t bear for them to be apart that long! When they were tossing around potential wedding dates earlier, they had settled on a Saturday afternoon in late August, which would be tough to pull off in such a short time but not impossible. Still, Jo wondered, how could they coordinate a wedding so soon if Danny was thousands of miles away during most of their engagement?
“You’ve looked better,” Danny said to Bradford, taking in the various bandages and bruises. “Must feel pretty rotten too.”
“Get out of here, Danny, or I’ll yell.”
“I’ll get out of here as soon as you tell me what I want to know. Trust me, Bradford. Yelling is not in your best interest.”
“Why should I talk to you?” Bradford asked, trying to reach for the call button but barely able to move his arm.
“Maybe because I’ve figured out a few things,” Danny said. He pulled up a chair and then sat, making himself comfortable. “You see, I heard your little story about the night you played the big hero in Newark, with Alexa. But unlike everyone else, I was having trouble believing that you just happened to be driving through that part of town and just happened to see a teenage girl slumped on the side of the road. You were such a big man and all, saving her like that. Funny, but I’m not buying it.”
“I have no idea what you mean. Alexa had a stroke. She needed my help.”
“Sure she did, but let’s get real. You didn’t just happen to see her at all. You were waiting for her when you saw her fall. Waiting for your little delivery of amphetamines.”
“What makes you think that?”
Danny hesitated, not wanting to reveal that his source was Alexa herself.
“I’ve done some looking around,” Danny said nonchalantly. “And now that I know about all of your nasty little habits, particularly your, uh, business venture with Alexa’s mother, I just can’t help but think that there are others who ought to know about all of that as well. The cops, Jo’s dad, your immediate supervisor at the pharmaceutical company…”
“No,�
� Bradford whimpered.
“Feels pretty scary to be so helpless, doesn’t it?” Danny asked, hating being cruel but not knowing what else to do. “Kind of like how Jo feels not knowing all the facts.”
Bradford shook his head back and forth.
“I told Jo everything I know.”
“Oh, I don’t think you did.”
Danny lifted the receiver from the telephone and began dialing.
“I wonder if Jo’s dad has his cell phone on. I think I’ll start with him. Too bad you’ll have no chance of ever working for Bosworth Industries again.”
“Okay, okay! What do you want to know?”
Danny hung up the phone.
“We can make this quick, Bradford. Let’s start with your conversation in New York with Jo. The way she describes it, getting any real information out of you was like pulling teeth. Makes me think you probably had something to hide—and you were trying to tell her just enough to keep her safe while not having to incriminate yourself in any way. Am I warm?”
Bradford just looked at him, sweat starting to bead up along his brow. Finally, he gave a slight nod.
“So, let’s see. What could be your big secret?” Danny continued. “Maybe that you were involved in the threat on Jo somehow? Maybe that you were double-dealing and triple-dealing behind the scenes and somehow started the ball rolling that put Jo in danger in the first place?”
“Why do you think that?” Bradford asked, averting his eyes.
“Because the terms of her grandfather’s trust were completely confidential, Bradford. However, you knew what Jo stood to inherit if you married her because her parents told you. My theory is that when all was said and done, you blabbed that information to the wrong person.”
The room was quiet for a long moment, and when Danny looked at Bradford, he was surprised to see that the man had tears in his eyes.
“I love Jo,” Bradford said. “I don’t want her to die.”
Seizing the opportunity, Danny leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“If you love her,” he said, much more kindly, “then tell me what I need to know to keep her safe. Someone tried to kill her again yesterday. Nearly electrocuted her with a toaster.”
That seemed to be what Bradford needed to hear to finally make him talk.
“It was my big mouth,” he admitted, closing his eyes. “I blabbed. I told the wrong people that the gravy train might be coming to an end.”
“The gravy train?”
“Yeah. If Kent Tulip gets his way, the Fibrin-X studies will eventually be squelched completely. There goes all of the funding for poor Alexa’s fancy new lifestyle. To make matters worse, if Neil is correct in saying that such a move would spell financial disaster for the pharmaceutical company, then not only would they go out of business, but I’d lose my job, and I’d no longer have access to the Trephedine. Goodbye gravy train for everybody.”
Trephedine? The only “Trephedine” Danny had ever heard of was a nasal decongestant that was sold over the counter at drugstores. Not wanting to communicate his ignorance and call his own bluff, however, Danny focused on the first part of what Bradford had said instead.
“Who are the ‘wrong people’ that you told?”
“My business partner and her boyfriend.”
“Business partner? Alexa’s mom, you mean?”
“Yeah. Misty. And her on-again-off-again loser of a boyfriend, Rick.”
“What did you say to them?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking. I was a little drunk. I told them all about the disagreement in the company about the Fibrin-X and the way the trust is laid out. I said that if I could get Jo Tulip to marry me, the money might keep flowing, but without my influence in the matter, then unless Jo were dead, the well was going to dry up. Like an idiot, I actually said that. Unless Jo were dead. I was speaking theoretically, but I’m afraid Rick decided to handle things literally.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because word on the street a week later was that he’d been asking around about Jo Tulip. The guys at the lab told me that Rick had even wondered aloud how you could kill someone and make it look like an accident.”
Jo put down her book, surprised at how dark it was getting outside. Where was Danny? He’d said he’d be gone a few hours, but this was pushing it. Since he left, she had bid the police hello and goodbye, given Chewie a bath, done her nails, and read four chapters of a novel.
With a strange, uncomfortable feeling, Jo realized that after several days of extra security and round-the-clock bodyguards, she had now swung to the other extreme and was here in this giant house all alone. The thought was unnerving. At least Chewie was with her.
But were the doors even locked downstairs? Jo thought she and Chewie ought to check and make sure. Halfway down the stairs, she realized that at least there was still one person around, the guard in the little hut at the end of the driveway. Her hands shaking, when Jo reached the kitchen she looked up the phone number for the hut on a list on the counter and dialed. She was comforted to hear him answer the phone and assure her that he’d be there all night if she needed him.
“In fact,” he said, “you’ve got a car coming up the drive right now.”
Jo thanked him, hung up, and went to the window, hoping to see Danny’s rental car. Instead, it was the old junker driven by Alexa’s mother’s boyfriend. Feeling relieved to have someone here with her, Jo opened the door as the car came to a stop in front of the house.
Danny dialed Eleanor’s house but got a busy signal. Hanging up, he tried Jo’s cell phone, but there was no answer. He decided to finish his information-gathering from Bradford before trying again.
“Did you confront Rick?” Danny asked Bradford. “Did you tell him about the rumors you heard?”
Bradford shook his head miserably.
“I tried. But he sort of comes and goes. When I went to talk to him, he had disappeared. That’s when I started getting nervous. Misty said he went back to his apartment across the river for a few days to pack up some of his stuff in preparation for moving in with her. But I thought maybe he had gone to Pennsylvania, looking for Jo. I couldn’t take that chance. I knew I had to tell her the truth.”
“Why didn’t you just call the police?”
Bradford looked at him and took a labored breath.
“Why do you think?” he asked. “Because of the Trephedine.”
“Yeah, what do you think the cops would do if they knew about all that?” Danny asked, hoping his question was vague enough to lead somewhere.
“Well, let’s see. For starters, I’d go straight to prison for a variety of offenses.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, gee, I don’t know, forged documents, establishing a front company, using circuitous routing for the delivery of pharmaceuticals—the list goes on and on. Misty and Rick would go down for possession and distribution of precursor chemicals. They’d probably both squeal, which would expose the truth behind the entire meth lab at the Grave Cave. It’s like dominoes, my friend. Everything would topple against everything else. And all because of a few thousand units of cold medicine.”
Lapping at the edges of Danny’s memory was an article he had read once about the production of methamphetamines in clandestine meth labs. From what he could recall, the first step in creating the drug was often accomplished by taking an over-the-counter product that contained ephedrine or psuedoephedrine—which must be what Bradford was calling “precursor chemicals”—and boiling it down into a concentrate. That was why, the article had said, that many states were starting to limit the amount of such products that any one customer could purchase.
“I thought it was illegal to buy more than two or three packs of drugs like Trephedine at a time.”
“Yeah, duh,” Bradford said, “but I work for the company that makes it. It was all Misty’s idea. She and Rick hooked in with a bogus Internet pharmacy, and all I had to do was set up an account to which I sell Trephedine in
bulk. Individual customers may be limited to three packs at a time, but the retailers aren’t. So far, it’s proven to be a very lucrative side business. The guys at the lab pay us well, Misty and Rick serve as the middlemen, and I get a commission on the sales.”
“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out,” Danny said, shaking his head, wondering how Bradford managed to sleep at night.
“It’s a real sweetheart deal, all right. Unfortunately, to Rick at least, the profits are worth killing for.”
Alexa, Misty, and Rick came into the house, their mood light. Apparently they had been to an amusement park, and from the way things sounded, they’d eaten everything from churros to snow cones.
“Before you go, you have to come up and see what I did with the flowers for Jo and Danny’s almost wedding,” Alexa told her mother. “We’ll be right back, Uncle Rick.”
“Take your time,” he replied.
Alexa and her mother went up to Alexa’s bedroom, leaving Jo in the foyer with a man she had met only briefly before. Feeling awkward, she wondered if she should suggest that they take a seat in the living room, and then it dawned on her to bring him to the kitchen instead.
“Would you like a snack or something to drink?” she asked.
He put one hand on his stomach.
“I couldn’t eat another thing, but I’d love a glass of water.”
“Sure,” Jo replied, “right this way.”
They both went into the kitchen, Jo making light conversation, talking about how fond she was becoming of Alexa. Using the dispenser in the door of the fridge, Jo filled glasses with water for them both as she talked.
“This is a fancy kitchen,” he said, running a hand across the granite countertop. “Funny that it’s got a blender and a coffeemaker, but I don’t see a…toaster oven.”
Jo tried not to react to his comment. Instead, she simply handed him the water and met his eyes. There was something there, something very unsettling.
Elementary, My Dear Watkins Page 31