Skinny-dipping (17 page)

Chapter 24

Back in the green-marbled
splendor of my Ritz-Carlton room, I gave wholly over to despair. The migraine clobbered my head and churned my stomach. I would lose millions on this case. My legal career was over. I had no sex life anymore and I missed Newly, and Sam didn't talk to me about anything except his damn investigations. My stomach lurched.

I mean, my life was so in the toilet—why shouldn't my head be too?

Eyeing the declining balance of the Percocet from the late Dr. Trusdale's last prescription, I considered my pharmacological alternatives as my brain banged painfully against my skull. I could take a Percocet and go to bed and hope I slept and didn't die of the mixture of that particular drug and alcohol or from pain. Or I could take an outrageously expensive oral triptan, a wonderful migraine pill that if it doesn't constrict your blood vessels into a stroke will miraculously ease a migraine. At twenty bucks for each single pill and with the risk of cardiac disaster, described in the patient information literature as “serious adverse cardiac events,... including death,” I try to err on the side of caution in taking these little miracle pills.

Death as a possible side effect or not, I peeled back the bubble pack for the triptan, said a quick prayer my heart wouldn't explode, and swallowed it. I was done in by the combination of wine and the stress of the airport and watching my perfect expert witness disappear into the smoke cloud of his own self-righteous and steadfast refusal to testify to what I was paying him to testify to.

Wondering about the quality and purity of Atlanta's tap water, I filled and drank a glass of it.

Then, for good measure, I took a Percocet anyway, and I showered and I crawled into bed and waited for either drug-induced sleep, triptan relief of pain, or death. At that moment, I had no particular favorite among those options. Either, whatever.

Somewhere in the never-never land of dreaming while awake, a narcotic trick I'm particularly fond of, the phone rang. I rolled toward it in my big, lonely king-size bed.

My stomach did a free-fall dive, my brain shifted and collided with my skull and set off fireworks of pain, and I concluded that if I had in fact died, I had not made it to heaven.

I picked up the phone but forgot to talk. After a moment of silence, a male voice said, “May I speak to Lilly Cleary?”

“Sam? Lieutenant Santuri?”

“This is Detective Santuri. Sam. I'm not a lieutenant.”

Yeah, whatever. “I hope you're calling from the lobby.”

Long pause. No endearing response.

Damn, down we go again, I thought through the daze of chemicals duking it out inside my body, including my own failing brain chemistry, which was refusing to produce whatever those little neurotransmitter things are that keep you from saying stupid things and getting depressed.

“No. I'm in Sarasota.” A heavy, tired, masculine voice.

Ah, Sam, I thought. Whether he sounded worn out or not, I wanted his big, strong arms around me. “How soon can you get here?”

Pause.

Uh-oh, I thought. Straighten up, Lilly girl.

“Have you been drinking?”

Oh, Sam, sweetheart, that's the least of it, I thought, but said, “You woke me up. I was dreaming.” Not directly responsive, but close enough to skate over my inappropriate phone manners so far.

“I got your location from Bonita,” he said.

Big-time uh-oh, I thought.

“Who's dead?” Why bother with the little niceties like “How are you?” when a homicide detective gets your number from your secretary, who knows better than to give it out indiscriminately, and calls you in the wee hours?

“Nobody.”

But I heard the sound of “yet” in the pause.

“But Dr. Randolph is in the ICU.”

I struggled to clear my head. “Shot?” I asked. “Poisoned.”

My stomach lurched, seriously this time, and I said, “Excuse me, please,” to Sam and put the phone down. One thing about hotels, even big swanky ones like the Ritz, is that you are never far from the toilet, where I went and threw up the very last of my expensive wine and awesome wholly vegetarian Middle Eastern dinner. I hoped the triptan pill had had enough time to fully digest into my system.

After washing my face and hands, I picked up an additional phone, which was oddly—at least to me and my class of people—located beside the toilet. Closing the lid on the toilet, I sat down and leaned sideways against the wall.

“Sam?”

“Still here. You okay?”

“Er, no. I mean, yeah. Tell me what happened.”

“How soon can you get back here?”

“Got a five-thirty out tomorrow—ah, today, this afternoon.” But then, it wasn't likely that I could convince Dr. Jamieson to abandon his moral fiber in one day, not after my most seductive pleadings over wine had already failed. “I can try and catch an earlier flight.”

“Might be a good idea.”

“Should I stick with bottled water and packaged foods with the seals still intact?”

“I don't know if you're a target or not. You and Angela be careful and get back here. We need to talk.”

“I'll call the airport right now.”

We ended on the obvious and I hung up. I drank two glasses of tap water on the theory that the would-be murderer probably hadn't had time to poison the whole Atlanta water system, and I picked up the phone by the toilet to call the airport. Instead, I called Angela's apartment. Having, as I mentioned, that ability to remember numbers and having called her more than once in the past, I dialed from memory and hoped Newly would answer.

He did.

“Oh, Newly,” I said, surprised that I was crying. “My life sucks.”

Okay, so here I was worried about me when Dr. Randolph was fighting for his life in the ICU after being poisoned. Tacky, sure. But I didn't like Dr. Randolph, and I am intimately involved with myself.

I let it all spill out for Newly's freshly awakened ears. In the background, I heard the chittering of Johnny Winter, the evil ferret, who no doubt had the run of the place in Angela's absence.

“Hon, I can get there in seven hours. I've driven it that fast before. Say the word.”

“No, I'm booking the first flight out.”

“Call me back and tell me when and I'll meet you at the airport.”

Only later did I realize he hadn't said a thing about meeting Angela at the airport too.

The next task, I painfully reminded myself, was to actually get the quickest flight home. I couldn't stand the thought of booting up my laptop and doing Delta online, so I weaseled a Delta 800 number from the hotel switchboard and punched it in. After some annoying exchanges with an officious airline employee, I changed Angela and myself to a noon flight—the first available, so said this employee.

Then I called Angela to tell her what was going on. She was all for waking up Ronny and the two of them joining me in my hotel room to protect me on what now seemed like a bit of an off chance that I was a target of the would-be assassin too. But I assured Angela that the Ritz had impeccable locks on the doors, but in the event that someone did break in and kill me, she and Newly should be sure to sue the hotel on my behalf and donate the judgment to the Salvation Army.

Thinking of the postdeath donation, I wondered, Could you buy your way into heaven after the fact? I called my brother Delvon to ask him and woke him up. Delvon sounded stoned, even in his just-awakened state, but happy, and we had a long, wholly incoherent conversation about getting into heaven, a phone conversation that Dr. Randolph's liability insurance company would have to pay for under the guise of travel expenses pursuant to interviewing Dr. Jamieson.

Then I crashed out on the bed, eyeing the alarm clock suspiciously and hoping, more or less, to live to see the light of morning.

Naturally, I didn't sleep. What I did as my over-priced triptan pill began to constrict my swollen brain blood vessels and ease my pain was to begin the counteroffensive. Okay, so first I had to prove that Mrs. Goodacre had active CMV while she was pregnant. Then I had to find another expert, one who would testify that CMV was the sole cause of Jason's brain damage. One who would refuse to entertain even the remote possibility that anything my client had done or failed to do during the delivery of young Jason had in any way caused anything more than a large medical bill. Legal journals are full of advertisements from physicians who offer their expert opinions for a fee. Abandoning my dream of a virgin witness with impeccable credentials, I realized I'd be dialing up these professionals and taking bids.

Then in the last aura of the retreating migraine, I thought, So who says Mrs. Goodacre never had an ultrasound that would show the damages that CMV could cause to a developing fetus? So who says she never had prenatal care of any serious kind? So who says she didn't have amniocentesis?

Mrs. Goodacre alone had said she hadn't had these things.

We didn't know for sure because most of her pregnancy had taken place in Idaho, and, of course, Henry in the guise of cost containment had refused to authorize payment for any trips to Idaho for discovery purposes.

I wondered just how good Ronny really was at computer snooping, and I watched the illuminated dials on the alarm clock until it was late enough in the early morning to call his room.

Chapter 25

The big question of
whether the sniper with the puny gun and the bad aim was trying to kill Dr. Randolph
and
me or just Dr. Randolph, while not put to rest, was at least given a new, interesting twist by his poisoning.

By the time I returned to Sarasota, where Newly and Sam were both waiting for me at the airport, the prick doctor was out of danger and had been moved from the ICU into a private suite. Sam told me this while Newly hugged me, whispering, “Oh, hon,” in my ear before he let go and hugged Angela.

Sam was all business and offered to drive me back to his office. My head still hurt, though only in a somewhat ordinary way, and I hadn't had anything to eat or drink that didn't come out of a bottle, a can, or a previously unopened package, and I was tired.

“Couldn't I just go home?”

“Later,” Sam said. “I'd like your permission to have the poison control people check the contents of your refrigerator. I already looked for signs of a break-in from the outside but would like to have the technicians check inside too.”

“Sure,” I said, thinking, Whatever. “But tell them to clean up after themselves.”

As Angela and Newly went off arm in arm— though Newly looked back over his shoulder at me—I announced that I had to have food. The upshot was that Sam drove me to his house, where, he promised, he would feed me.

In the car, he gave me some particulars about Dr. Randolph. The prick doctor had come home from a busy day of looking up women's dresses and grabbed his usual glass of iced tea. Keeps a jug of it in the refrigerator. Sam explained that the doctor makes it himself, using peppermint and green tea and some other herbs, full of antioxidants and plant phyro-things that are healthy.

About half an hour later, Dr. Randolph felt himself flushing and realized his heart rate was up, Sam explained. When the doctor started having fairly mild (at least to begin with) hallucinations, he called 911. Paramedics found him ranting, his face bright red. His blood pressure and heart rate were off the charts, which they discovered when they were finally able to corral him.

“It was touch and go during the night,” Sam said, pushing a yellow on the Tamiami Trail and weaving between cars in a way that made my stomach dip and tuck too. “ER doctor probably saved his life by recognizing right off what the problem was. By the time the paramedics caught him and got him to the hospital, he was in a coma, but from what they told the ER doctor—red face, hallucinations, all that— the doctor realized it was probably Jimsonweed. Or Datura.”

“That's the stuff the witches used, isn't it? It's like a belladonna.”

“Yes,” Sam said, and looked over at me curiously, I thought, and then he flat out ran a red and turned off on a side street and was heading east of the Tamiami Trail, where the few ordinary people left in Sarasota lived in their overpriced, modest homes in the less desirable neighborhoods. “What witches? How'd you know that?”

“I read a lot,” I said.

“It's a common weed, with large, white trumpet-shaped flowers. Down here, they bloom spring to early winter. It's the seeds that have the most toxins. Teenagers hear you can get high off the plant and the seeds and make tea out of it,” Sam said. “That's how the ER doctor recognized the symptoms. He'd treated some teenagers for it last summer. Of course, he ran some tests on Randolph, but he saved a lot of time by knowing what tests to run.”

Sam pulled into the driveway of a very modest, even shabby, older wood house with a shed and what looked like a quarter-acre or so of land around it. Lots of orange trees. The yard was mowed and clear of debris. Okay, so the yard's neat, I thought. But his place was still about two hinges and a screen door shy of a shack.

He hopped out and ran to my side of the car and opened my door, offering me his hand. “You'll feel better when you get some food and coffee in you.”

“Toast. And coffee,” I croaked. Coffee, yes, my head screamed. In a wholly irrational state that morning, I had been afraid to drink any coffee in case it was poisoned, and I had tried to get enough caffeine from drinking Coke, but this brought forth images of my mother, and, though the Coke itself tasted remarkably good, I couldn't finish it. “Got whole wheat?”

“I don't know. Got what was on sale at the Winn-Dixie last week.”

Oh, frigging great. The good-health breads never go on sale. “I don't suppose the coffee is organic.”

“Folgers, I think.”

I calculated the greater evil: common grocery store coffee versus the delay of a trip to the Granary for the good stuff. Bird in hand won out.

Sam made the coffee first. As I sipped my coffee and felt my blood vessels constrict, my headache ease, and my thinking clear, I pumped Sam for more details.

In the end, all he really knew was that someone had broken into Dr. Randolph's house and spiked the man's tea with liberal dosages of Jimsonweed.

“How'd they get in?”

“The back door was broken into,” Sam answered. “Somewhat obviously and amateurishly. If Randolph had gone in the back, he'd have seen it and probably called nine-one-one right off.”

I sipped the coffee and nodded as hunger kicked me in the stomach.

“Want bacon and eggs?” Sam asked, sticking his head in his refrigerator.

Oh, please, dead pig soaked in cancer-causing nitrates?

But before I could answer, Sam studied the package of bacon and then threw it in the trash. “Eggs are probably all right.”

“Toast will be fine,” I said, thinking the man needed some serious domestic training.

While Sam made me toast, which I noted was Roman Meal, which is pretty good even if it's not the multigrain stuff I bought, I looked around the kitchen. Neat, clean, stark. Not a spice anywhere, unless you counted the blue cardboard container of salt. White walls. No curtains. I liked it. Nothing that suggested a woman had lived here in recent memory.

Politely, I asked about the bathroom, got directions, and snooped my way through the center of the house. Clean, neat, stark. No knickknacks. As if I'd found a soul mate, I noted the wood floors without rugs or trash, the complete absence of any newspapers, other papers, or magazines anywhere, and the completely bare walls. And he liked Rottweilers. I calculated his age as mid- or possibly late forties, which meant he might be near to a twenty-five-year retirement point if he'd joined the force at twenty-one. I made a mental note to ask him how he felt about apple orchards and north Georgia in case I decided he should retire and head up there with me. The way the Jason Goodacre case was in the toilet, I figured I'd be heading up that way much sooner than I'd planned. Maybe with Sam and a couple of Rottweilers beside me in my 1987 Honda with the 187,000 miles on it and the new window and paint job.

Jason Goodacre case down the drain or not, I thought another near-death experience on Dr. Randolph's part should be worth a third continuance in his trial, and then I wondered if Stephen LaBlanc had actually filed his petition with the appellate court asking that Judge Goddard be ordered to set a trial date. I needed to talk with Bonita, but first I needed to sneak a peek at Sam's medicine cabinet, check the tub for stains and soap scum, and scope out his bedroom.

When I saw the bottle of Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap on the edge of a very clean tub, I felt better than I had since Dr. Jamieson ruined my life by pointing out that I couldn't even prove my own theory of the Jason Goodacre defense. Though, I admit, Sam's toothbrush in an empty Jack Daniel's pint gave me pause.

But I didn't let the potential relationship with Sam spoil my professional obligation to a client who had nearly died, and, of course, would sue my butt if I missed a trick in his defense. After my lunch of toast and Folgers, I made my long phone call to Bonita and got caught up on things. Then I looked up at Sam. “Guess you'd better take me home.”

“Maybe you'd better stay here,” he said, and didn't blink, didn't lose the poker face. “At least till we're done checking out your house for any break-ins or poison.”

Hmm. Guess he knew about Angela and Newly, I figured, and I looked around, thinking I could be comfortable here after a trip to the Granary for the basics. Might as well start training Sam now. I nodded yes but wondered, Why this offer?

Sam studied me, and his look made me wonder if he wanted to keep me in his house to protect me or to keep me under surveillance as a suspect. But, I mean, how could I be a suspect, since I got shot at too?

Under that stare, and to divert any thoughts he might have about my being a suspect, I finally told Sam that someone had looked through my files on both the Dr. Trusdale and Dr. Randolph cases. Naturally, he berated me for not telling him sooner. Naturally, he demanded to look through the files himself, and when I began to explain about attorney-client and work-product privileges and client confidentiality and the whole nine yards, he cut me off.

“I'll get a subpoena,” he said.

So much for romance. I wondered if I should ask for Jack the Bear back.

Then, for no apparent reason at all, I thought about Henry's red peppers and his greenhouse. Bonita had said he was an amateur botanist and a good gardener. He had screwed up both the Trusdale and the Randolph files by failing to do proper background searches. Trusdale's death had saved him from being canned after a big judgment against the doc, which Henry's insurance company would have had to pay. Was he aiming for two out of two? Was there a stand of oleanders in his yard and a flowering white Datura bush in his greenhouse?