Footprints in the Sand (21 page)

“Cryder is a wonderful doctor,” said Umiko. “If
it’s a medical problem, Piper will be in good hands.”

Roberta looked at the distressed expression on her
mother’s face and made a decision.

“I think we should go now, Mother,” she said.
“You’ve been out long enough for today.”

Roz didn’t protest. She rose from her seat and said
good-bye to Umiko. “Would you please call us later and let us know how
everything is?” she asked.

“Of course I will,” Umiko answered, bowing
slightly.

Mother and daughter walked slowly off the patio,
through the inn’s lobby, and out to the parking lot. The car Roberta had rented
while Roz’s was being repaired was in a handicapped spot. As they approached,
Jack was closing the rear door of the car in the next space.

“Is Piper all right?” asked Roberta.

“No,” said Jack as he hurried around to the back of
the sedan. “She’s not all right. I’m trying to find the doctor’s bag now.”

While they watched, he popped open the trunk and
looked inside. “There it is,” he said with satisfaction. Jack grabbed the
satchel, slammed down the lid, and ran. He completely missed the startled look
of recognition on the old woman’s face.

W
hen
Jack got back to the room, the doctor had the heel of his hand in the middle of
Piper’s chest. His other hand was on top, interlaced with the first. Cryder
pushed her chest down and then let it rise before compressing it again. He
repeated the process over and over. Jack winced as he heard a popping sound come
from Piper’s chest.

“Stop!” cried Terri. “You’re hurting her!”

Vin put his arm around his wife and pulled her
close. “He can’t stop, sweetheart.”

“Shouldn’t you breathe into her mouth?” Jack asked
desperately.

Cryder shot him a look. Jack couldn’t read it. Was
it fear? Anger? Distaste? Was it possible that the doctor didn’t want to put his
mouth on Piper’s?

“Let me take over,” said Jack. He set the medical
bag down next to Dr. Robbins. “I’ve taken the training. You do something else to
help her.”

Jack took the oxygen mask off Piper and checked to
make sure there was nothing in her mouth. Then he tilted her head back and
pinched her nose. Forming a seal over her mouth with his, Jack breathed in
enough air to make her chest rise. At the same time, Cryder wrapped a
blood-pressure cuff around Piper’s arm.

“How is it?” asked Terri.

Cryder studied the gauge. “Low,” he answered. “Very
low.”

S
he’s
breathing!”

Jack leaned back on his heels. Piper was inhaling
and exhaling with short, quick gulps. But at least she was breathing.

The ambulance team arrived and took her vital
signs. After putting the oxygen mask on Piper’s face, they lifted her onto the
gurney and started to roll her away.

“I’ll take my car and meet you at the emergency
room,” said Cryder.

“What are you doing?” asked Terri as she watched
her husband enter the bathroom. “We have to go with Piper.”

Cryder and Jack looked on as Vin came out holding a
paper-wrapped drinking glass. Vin carefully removed the covering and tossed it,
then knelt down next to the spot where his daughter had lain. Taking a credit
card from his wallet, he scraped up the vomit and deposited it in the glass.

“I want to bring this with us, just in case they
need to test it,” Vin said glumly.

A
crowd of wedding guests had gathered around the ambulance. They watched silently
as the attendants slid the gurney inside. Kathy stood in her wedding dress,
sobbing. Dan’s tanned face was ashen.

Brad pulled at Jack’s sleeve. “What can I do to
help?” he asked.

“Pray,” said Jack.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“They don’t know yet,” said Jack, watching the
ambulance doors close. “She can’t move. She can hardly breathe, and she puked
her guts up all over the floor.”

It was only after the ambulance and the other cars
pulled away that Brad thought of the missing puffer fish.

E
n
route to the hospital, Piper stopped breathing again. Her mother squeezed
herself against the wall of the ambulance while the EMTs continued with chest
compressions.

“Hail Mary, full of grace,” Terri whispered.
“Please, let my little girl live.”

The ambulance pulled into the emergency-room bay.
Vin and Jack pulled up immediately behind.

Two doctors and three nurses were waiting. They
flanked the gurney and rolled it inside, listening while the EMT recited the
symptoms. The doctors looked at each other and nodded.

“Let’s empty her stomach and pump in activated
charcoal to bind any toxins,” one commanded.

“Toxins?” asked Vin.

“Did your daughter eat any seafood?”

“I’m not sure,” said Vin. “Did she, Terri?”

Jack interrupted before Piper’s mother could
answer. “She never got to the buffet. But she remarked how fishy the gazpacho
tasted.”

“Well, we got a phone call just before you
arrived,” said the doctor. “Someone thinks she could have ingested tetrodotoxin.
Her symptoms are textbook.”

“Tetro what?” asked Vin.

“Tetrodotoxin. The toxin found in puffer fish.”

Vin stopped, the memory of the dangerous-fish
lecture at Mote exploding in his mind. His baby was going to die.

“What’s the prognosis?” Jack called as the gurney
was pushed into the treatment room.

“The next twenty-four hours are critical. We’ll put
her on standard life-support measures to keep her alive and hope that the
effects of the poison wear off.”

Jack went with Piper’s parents to the waiting room,
and all three silently sank into chairs. They sat staring vacantly as they
contemplated what had happened and feared what might be coming. Several minutes
went by until Jack raised his head and looked around.

“Hey, where’s Dr. Robbins? Didn’t he follow
us?”

Chapter 107

T
ears streamed down Umiko’s cheeks. “I don’t want to leave this place, Cryder.”

“I know,” Cryder said as he gathered the netsuke from the cabinet in their living room. “But we have no choice. It’s too dangerous to stay.”

While he’d attended Piper, he had prayed she would die quickly. He’d gone through the expected medical motions to cover himself, all the while hoping that it was just a matter of time before she died. But Walter Engel’s getting the oxygen and calling the ambulance as quickly as he had and Piper’s boyfriend rushing in like a hero to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation had staved off her quick demise. When Vin Donovan took the sample of Piper’s expelled stomach contents, Cryder knew that tests would show the presence of tetrodotoxin.

They would realize that Piper had eaten puffer fish, and the people at Mote would know that a puffer fish was gone from their tank. The police would investigate, focusing on the guests at the rehearsal dinner as suspects in the theft.

Admittedly, he wasn’t the only one there. But investigators would soon learn that the hex sign had also been destroyed that night. If she survived, the police would be sure to question Piper about her memory of the symbols. It wouldn’t take long before someone figured out that the hex sign pointed to him as Shelley Hart’s killer. Eventually they would make the connection to Roz’s car crash and to the dead waitress.

“But I don’t understand,” said Umiko. “Why do we have to go now?”

He walked over to his wife and took her by the shoulders. “This time I’ve done things much worse than writing prescriptions. Things that could cost me my life.”

Umiko stared into her husband’s eyes as she tried to figure out what he was saying. “Does this have something to do with Piper and what just happened at the wedding?” she asked.

He nodded. “And Shelley Hart and Roz Golubock and a greedy waitress who knew too much.”

Umiko recoiled as the enormity of what he was saying sank in. She collapsed on the sofa.

“Come on, Umiko,” Cryder urged. “Get up. We have to grab what we can and leave.”

She stayed exactly where she was. “I’m not going,” she whispered.

“Meaning what?”

“Dealing with drug people was horrible enough, but you were my husband and I felt it was my duty to stand by you. But murder is much different. I can’t live with the dishonor of being married to a killer.”

Sunday

There are lots of ways

to cut a cake.

A
MISH PROVERB

Epilogue

P
iper’s head rested against the pillow. She was pale and weak, but she was breathing on her own. Her heart rate had almost returned to normal, and she could move her arms and legs again. Her parents stood with Kathy, Dan, Aunt Nora, and Walter around the hospital bed while Jack described what had happened as Piper was fighting for her life.

“When Cryder didn’t follow us to the hospital, we got suspicious. I went back to your room and noticed your iPhone on the bed. It was still open to the last Internet search you did.”

Piper tried to think. “The article about the drug prescriptions in Atlanta, right?”

“Exactly,” said Jack. “When I saw Cryder Robbins named, things started to come together.”

“And then Roz Golubock’s daughter called to see how you were, Piper,” said Nora. “She said her mother’s memory was jogged when she saw Cryder’s open trunk yesterday. There was a shovel in there with a red-and-yellow shaft. Very distinctive. Roz suddenly recalled seeing it on the night the man had carried the woman’s body into the vegetation next to her condo.”

“The sheriff’s department managed to pull Robbins over as he was driving out of the city,” said Vin as he held tight to his daughter’s hand.

“But do we know exactly why Cryder would want to kill Shelley?” asked Piper.

Walter shrugged remorsefully. “I think Shelley might have come across the information about Cryder on the Web and tried to blackmail him with it, forcing him to sell his condo.”

Kathy looked skeptical. “I still don’t think Shelley would have done that,” she said. “It wasn’t about money for her. After her brother OD’d, she became obsessed about drugs. Her testimony put Brad in jail for dealing. I’ll bet she went to Cryder, told him what she knew and told him to stop.”

“Either way she was a very naive or stupid young woman,” said Vin. “She should have gone straight to the police.”

Walter put his arm around Nora. “Whatever happened, this is making me reconsider a lot of things. I’m going to cancel the Whispering Sands expansion and just appreciate the place the way it is. I want to concentrate on enjoying life, not business.”

I
saac arrived just as Piper’s parents and Nora and Walter were leaving. He carried a gigantic arrangement of flowers. Seeing Isaac made Piper think of his nephew, the young Amish man who had taken his own life.

“I don’t understand,” she said softly. “If Cryder killed Shelley, why did Levi take responsibility?

“Good question,” said Jack. “The police now think Levi may have written the note for other reasons. They’re trying to figure that part out.”

There was something else, but Piper couldn’t think of it yet. What was it? She lay there quietly, and slowly the hex sign emerged in her mind.

“Levi left a message about Cryder in the hex sign he painted.” Piper recounted what she had discerned from the symbols. “Poor Levi had confessed to killing Shelley in his suicide note, but he left clues pointing to the real murderer in his art.”

Jack reached over and stroked Piper’s blond hair. “That’s another nail in the good doctor’s coffin,” he said.

Kathy shook her head in disbelief. “It’s amazing that we can thank Brad O’Hara, of all people, that you’re alive, Piper,” she said. “He’s the one who called the ER and told them you might have eaten puffer fish. We’re so grateful to that big lug.”

“Very,” said Dan, letting out a deep sigh. “And I think
Brad’s
grateful that he had the chance to
save
a life this time instead of contribute to somebody’s
losing
one.”

As they prepared to leave, Kathy and Dan kissed Piper on the cheek. “Now that we know you’re okay, we’re going ahead with our honeymoon,” said Kathy. “Our new flight takes off early in the morning.”

“I hate that you had to reschedule because of me,” said Piper.

“Are you kidding?” asked Dan. “Now we can go and really enjoy ourselves. You’re all right, and Cryder Robbins is going to get what he deserves. This has been a nightmare, but it’s over now.”

Isaac had remained silent through the whole conversation. “ ‘We value the light more fully after we come out of the darkness,’ ” he whispered.

Everyone looked at him. “It’s an Amish proverb,” he explained, knowing that at the first possible opportunity he was going to return the sea turtle mosaic to its rightful place at Whispering Sands Inn. Levi would want it that way.

Aunt Nora’s Easy but Sinfully Delicious Siesta Key Lime Pie

One 8-ounce package cream cheese (softened)

One 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

½ cup key lime juice (not regular lime juice,
KEY
lime juice)

Graham cracker crust pie shell (store-bought is fine)

With an electric mixer in a medium bowl, beat cheese until creamy. Gradually beat in condensed milk and continue beating until smooth. Mix in vanilla extract. Add key lime juice and blend thoroughly. Pour mixture into the pie shell, cover, and refrigerate at least six hours.

Note: As you can see, this is not a complicated, gourmet-style recipe, but it seems that everyone who takes a bite of this pie raves, smiles, and asks for more.

Acknowledgments

I
stand in awe of sea turtles.

The odds are certainly against them. The mama turtle has to drag herself up on the beach in the middle of the night and dig a deep nest in the sand with her rear flippers, hopefully picking a spot that won’t get washed out by a storm or plundered by animal and human invaders. About two months later, also in the dark, the hatchlings have to claw their own way up through the sand and out of the nest, trying to evade the night herons, raccoons, and other predators that eagerly await them as they scurry to the water. Once there, the tiny turtles face the threat of being eaten by larger marine life. It seems a miracle that any make it to adulthood. Few actually do. But after traveling hundreds of miles through the world’s oceans, the mature female finds her way back to the same beach where she was born three decades earlier to lay her own eggs.

Books, in a way, are like sea turtles. So many elements have to fall into place as the book is conceived, researched, written, and published. There are so many opportunities for things to go awry. The forces of the universe, mostly in human form, have to be aligned with the author, contributing to the development and survival of the book.

From the very start, until the very last page, Father Paul Holmes offered his encouragement and imagination. Paul was quick to point out if I had my head in the sand regarding characters and motives. His repeated calls for “action” reminded me to keep things moving. His support was crucial and so appreciated.

Elizabeth Higgins Clark, my actress daughter, is the inspiration for Piper Donovan. Elizabeth read the pages for me and pointed out all the instances this middle-aged writer messed up on the voice of a twenty-seven-year-old. Elizabeth made sure that Piper’s words rang true. You’re a good girl, Monkey.

Many thanks to Kathy Leeds, the former executive director of Connecticut’s Wilton Public Library, and Roz and Roberta Golubock, who supported the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System, lending their names for characters.

Jennifer Rudolph Walsh is a force of nature, and I know how fortunate I am to have her as my agent. Joni Evans, busy as she is, found the time to provide suggestions. My gratitude to both of you.

The professional and supportive team at William Morrow/HarperCollins are a dedicated and impressive bunch. Carrie Feron, my insightful and creative editor, and Tessa Woodward, who faithfully juggles so many, many things, are my dependable touchstones. Seale Ballenger, Kimberly Chocolaad, Lynn Grady, Stephanie Kim, Tavia Kowalchuk, Michael Morrison, Shawn Nicholls, Sharyn Rosenblum, Virginia Stanley, and Liate Stehlik play at the top of their games. I’ve grown to happily anticipate Maureen Sugden’s masterful copyediting. Many, many thanks to all of you and to the others, unnamed here, who contributed their publishing expertise.

For the last several years, Peggy Gould has given me reassurance and peace of mind. I am utterly and eternally grateful. Without her, I don’t think I’d have been able to concentrate enough to write this book.

And finally, much appreciation to my beloved Sarasota and Siesta Key, which provide the lush, magical atmosphere perfect for a dream wedding or a twisted mystery. No wonder those sea turtles keep coming back. They know a good thing.