Death Drops (16 page)

“Not if she just went to him for general advice,” I replied. “Maybe he got hip to what she was working on and wanted it all for himself, so he killed her.”

“That makes sense.”

“I just don’t know why she’d go to see someone like him. He doesn’t have great credentials,” I said, telling her where he went to college. “It’s not like he went to a top-tier medical school.”
We passed the animal hospital where Qigong had been treated. “Claire was an expert. She knew how herbs worked on the skin. If she had any questions, wouldn’t she have tapped a more well-known dermatologist, someone with real weight?”

“Like an MD in New York?”

“Yes.”

“But how are you going to find out who that is?”

“The answer may be in her e-mail folder; I have plenty more to wade through.” And I needed to do it immediately. I increased my speed. A light rain had started to fall, so I switched on the wipers.

We drove up and over the hill and headed for Greenport. As we passed the eco-friendly building-supply place, I took a quick glance in my rearview mirror. Right on my bumper was an old black Ford truck that had seen better days. “I hate it when people do that.”

“What?”

“Tailgate.” As I watched in the mirror, the truck sped up and tapped my bumper. “Hey! What does he think he’s doing?”

Allie turned around and looked back at the truck. “I can’t get a good look at the driver.”

Squinting into the mirror, I tried to see the face of the driver. Whoever it was had on a baseball hat and sunglasses, so it was next to impossible to identify him. The truck zoomed up again and tapped my rear bumper. I pressed the gas pedal, but within moments, the driver increased his speed and tapped me again, even harder. Panicked now, I punched the gas pedal.

“You’re going almost eighty!” Allie said, glancing at the speedometer.

“I know!” I cried, pressing the pedal to the floor.

“There!” Allie pointed to a turnaround in front of the
Lutheran church up ahead. “Make a left! He won’t follow us into a church parking lot.”

I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw that the truck was gaining on us again. I wasn’t too sure Allie was right. If this person was connected to Aunt Claire’s death or was the one who had thrown the brick with the note that said to get out, he might follow us. Clearly, he wanted to get rid of me. Why, I didn’t know.

“Turn!” Allie yelled, pointing at the church.

I cut over the road and aimed for the turnaround. But as I did so, the truck caught my bumper again, and thanks to the slippery road, we headed for the drainage ditch. “Hold on!” I yelled, fearing for our lives.

I gripped the steering wheel and Allie grabbed the dashboard as we spun into the ditch. We landed with a thud, but right side up, facing in the opposite direction. The Ford truck turned and burned rubber, heading west. It was gone so quickly, I didn’t get the license number.

I unbuckled my seat belt and leaned over to look at Allie, who now had a gash on her forehead from the dashboard. “Allie, you okay?” I gave the cut a close inspection. It was superficial, but head wounds always bleed profusely, and this one was no exception. I reached into the glove compartment and grabbed a wad of Kleenex and pressed it into the wound. I replaced my hand with hers. “Keep the pressure on.”

Allie gave me a concerned look. “Are you okay?”

Good question. I did feel some discomfort in my left hand. I flexed my wrist and felt a sharp bolt of agonizing pain. “I think I broke my wrist. But we’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

Dear Dr. McQuade,

I went for a walk today and sprained my ankle when I stepped into a hole. Is there anything I can use to feel better faster?

Signed,

Feeling Sore

Dear Feeling Sore,

With any sprain, you’ll first want to follow PRICE—protect, rest, ice, compression, and elevation. As soon as possible, start taking homeopathic
Arnica montana
. We call it homeopathic aspirin. It helps to relieve pain and swelling and speed healing. You can also apply arnica topically to the injured area. Be careful, though, not to apply it to broken skin. Hawthorne is another helpful herb. It contains anthocyanidins and proanthocyanidins to help reduce inflammation. To stimulate the repair of tissues, supplement with glucosamine sulfate, which comes from shellfish.

Signed,

Dr. Willow McQuade

After waiting in the ER for an hour, we were finally seen, assessed, and treated. The doctor put a neon-green cast on my severely sprained wrist and a bandage on Allie’s head wound.

When we pulled into the parking lot of the store, Merrily ran out through the raindrops to meet us. The van was gone.

“Are you two okay?” she asked, worry furrowing her brow. I’d called her on the way to the hospital and told her what had happened.

“We’re okay,” I reassured her, and grabbed a bag of bread, the original purpose of our wild ride, out of the backseat with my good right hand.

Allie picked up another bag. “We’re alive. That’s what counts. I do, however, have one heck of a headache.”

“I’ll bet,” Merrily said, and took two bags of rolls from the back. “The mechanic took the van. It’ll be back in a few days.”

Inside, the dining room was empty except for Stephen, the chef from across the street who had made good on his promise to visit, albeit a day late. There was also a huge delivery of products next to the counter that would have to be dealt with.

Merrily nodded in his direction. “He’s been waiting for you.”

“Thanks. Can you get started on the orders that came in?” I asked, pointing to the boxes. “I’ll help in a minute.”

“No problem.” She put the bag of rolls on the kitchen counter. “Just let me get these trays of raspberry and blueberry muffins out of the oven. I started baking when you guys didn’t get back right away, just in case. And I need to finish clearing off a table.”

I thought again how lucky I was to have her. “Merrily, you’re amazing.”

She smiled, clearly pleased by the compliment. “Just doing my job.”

Giving her the bag of bread I was holding, I waved to Stephen
and grabbed two vials of arnica to help minimize the swelling and inflammation from my accident. I handed one to Allie, who said she was going upstairs to lie down. Since she had a head injury, I’d check on her in a little while to make sure she was okay. I headed over to Stephen.

He checked out the cast. “Whoa! What happened to you?”

“We got into a car accident,” I said as I twisted open the bottle of homeopathic pellets and put four under my tongue. I’d need to repeat the dose three more times in the next twenty-four hours.

“That sounds nasty,” he said.

“It was pretty bad,” I agreed, wondering if Gavin Milton had been in that truck. “Did your boss go out this afternoon?”

“No, he was in the store. We had a lot of new inventory to unpack, like you do.” He glanced at the boxes on the floor. “Why?”

So much for that theory. Still, Gavin might be guilty of breaking and entering or of knocking me on the noggin. I dug a little deeper. “Did you ever hear Gavin trash-talking Aunt Claire?”

He rolled his eyes. “All the time. Sometimes he just stands at the front window and stares over here and bitches about the fact that we have you as our main competition.”

“Do you think he was out to get Aunt Claire?” Or me, I thought, feeling my wrist ache from our near miss.

He looked out the window, in the direction of Nature’s Best. “He definitely wanted her out of business.”

“I don’t know if you’re aware, but someone threw a brick through our front window and started a fire. Someone also stole a new face-cream formula my aunt was working on. I’m thinking it could have been Gavin.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Stephen said as he fiddled with a fork on the table. “He’s got kind of a shady past. When he was
a trainer and nutritionist in New York, he was involved in fight fixing. He’s not a good guy, which is why I want out.”

I nodded to Merrily, who was clearing dishes at the table next to us, and said, “The servers here make their own dishes.” Even though I had been thinking about adding a chef for better efficiency, with all the new bills flowing in, now was not the time to take on a new hire. “I don’t have the budget to add a chef right now.”

“I wasn’t thinking of being a chef. I know you guys don’t work that way. I want to be a server. I could use the tips. Figure I’ll make out better, especially in the summer.”

I wasn’t sure about that. Business seemed to be picking up, but we were by no means really busy. Still, I needed one more person to help out now that Janice and the rest of the crew was gone. (I’d fired Ron and Stephanie when they called in sick again.) Stephen seemed motivated, and he had a good attitude, a far cry from Janice the grouch. He also was a cook, which would make it much easier for him to learn how to serve our dishes. In addition, he didn’t seem bothered by the recent series of weird and dangerous events around here. I decided he would be a good addition to the new team I was building. I put out my hand to shake his. “Welcome to Nature’s Way Market and Café.”

While Stephen went across the
street to tell Gavin the bad news, I joined Merrily in unpacking the orders.

She sliced open a box and glanced over at me. “Are you sure you can do this with your wrist?”

“I’ll just use my right hand. This is a lot of stuff to get through.” She handed me the box cutter, and I cut open the top of a large box. Inside, I found a cod-liver oil supplement with vitamin D that I liked to recommend to my patients. It was an
important supplement that helped to boost overall health, especially brain health, and was also good for depression. Vitamin D can prevent many chronic diseases, but too many people, lacking sun exposure, are deficient. We need the sun to manufacture vitamin D, so the key is to get sun, not sunburn, as I always told my patients. Everything in moderation.

Merrily gave me a smile. “You’re a champ, Dr. McQuade,” she said, pulling out several bottles of vitamin C and putting them on the floor, followed by a good B-complex vitamin, including magnesium, selenium, and folic acid.

“I try,” I said, lifting out a bottle of the fish oil. “And please call me Willow.” I pointed to the bottle. “Do you know what we charge for these?”

Merrily pulled a thick green binder from a cubbyhole underneath the counter. She flipped through the pages for a minute and said, “Twenty-five ninety-five. Do you mind marking them?” She handed me a pricing gun.

“No problem.” I adjusted the price on the gun to $25.95 and started to slap the labels on. The smell of the newly baked muffins drifted over to us from the kitchen and for a moment I felt content. I only wished that Aunt Claire were here.

I was getting into a nice rhythm with the labeling when I heard Merrily gasp.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” I stood up and went over to her.

She pointed to a box she had just opened. Inside was a dead bluefish. I guessed someone was trying to give us a message, mafia-style, although I didn’t think the mafia had anything to do with it. There was no return label, so who it was remained a mystery. “Looks like someone doesn’t like us, or me,” I said, pointing to my wrist. “I don’t think our mishap before was an accident, either.”

“No, not after the break-in and the fire. Someone is definitely out to get you. Did you tell Detective Koren what happened?”

I had called the police on the way home from the hospital, and Koren said he’d try to find out who had tried to run Allie and me off the road, but I wasn’t holding my breath. I thought about the fact that Gavin Milton had an alibi and returned to my default suspect mode. “Do you think Janice would do these things?”

Merrily thought about it but quickly shook her head. “I just don’t think she would. Yes, she was a workaholic and she can be bitter and mean, but running you off the road? No.”

“Who ran you off the road? Do you know?” Jackson asked as he walked into the dining room holding a beautiful bouquet of roses in gorgeous shades of pink. Raindrops dripped off his windbreaker and onto the floor. The storm must have worsened. He took off his coat and hung it on one of the colorful hooks by the door. When he handed me the flowers, they were also dotted with translucent raindrops. “It’s a get-well bouquet from my organic garden. Figured it would cheer you up. You okay?”

“Appearances to the contrary, yes,” I said, relishing the delicious scent of the roses. “This is very sweet of you.” I noticed he had stubble on his chin, which gave him a nice rugged look. It suited him.

He took a look in the box and made an “uh-oh” face. “Someone sending you a message, McQuade?”

“Yes, and I don’t think it’s ‘eat more fish.’”

His green-blue eyes drilled me with a look. “I heard about the accident on the band scanner. I went to the ER, but they said you’d already left.”

I held up my arm and pointed to my cast. “This is what I got for my trouble. Want to sign it?”

“And ruin that great green color you have going? Not a chance,” he said as he pulled out a chair and slowly sat down next to us. “Did you tell the police?”

“I did, and they said they’d check it out. But Koren didn’t seem too interested.”

Jackson nodded. “He may think you staged it to avoid looking like a suspect.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest and looked thoughtful. “Did you get the license number?”

I headed for the kitchen to get a vase. “No go. And it wasn’t an accident. Someone forced us off the road.”

“Did you get a good look at the driver?”

I shook my head. “But it wasn’t Gavin Milton. Stephen, my new server, told me he was in the store all afternoon.”

Jackson flipped open a small notebook. “I’ve got news about him, too. Seems he was running a betting scam in the city, fixing fights and things like that.”

I grabbed a vase and filled it with water. “Stephen mentioned that.”

Jackson tapped the notebook on his knee. “So if it wasn’t him in the car, who do you think it was?”

I came back out and put the vase on the counter. The roses were truly lovely, and I was touched by his gesture. “I don’t know. I say Janice, but Merrily says no.”