by Cathy Tully
Susannah kneeled beside Larraine, trying to make sense of what she was seeing, but she could not. Larraine’s voice came to her over the persistent thumping of her heart in her ears. She was praying.
A siren screamed as the ambulance came into view. She wanted to move, but she could not take her eyes from Tina’s face. The EMTs dropped their gear and went to work. Keith Cawthorn appeared and pushed Susannah to the side. She dragged herself to her feet and found Larraine, whose face was gaunt and hollow, as if all of her sixty-four years were now stretched across her bones.
A Peach Grove PD car entered the lot, which was already crowded with emergency vehicles, its blue lights flashing. Randy got out of the driver’s side and made his way to Keith, his fingers picking at his belt. He clamped a hand on Keith’s shoulder and encouraged him to step away. Keith answered with a wild elbow, and Randy dropped his arms to his sides, his jaw muscles working.
Susannah’s legs felt heavy and she stooped over, gulping air. At the corner of the lot where the gravel gave way to brambles under an ancient oak, Rusty sat watching, his ears at attention. She put her hand on Larraine’s back, and the two watched as Randy pulled at Keith again.
“Give them some breathing room,” Randy said. This time, a uniformed officer was at his side, and they pulled Keith to his feet. His tall frame drooped like a willow tree after a storm. “Let them do their job,” Randy said. “You come over here with me.”
Susannah looked away, shaken to see Keith transformed, broken and forlorn, smaller somehow. She put her arm around Larraine’s shoulder and led her toward the open office door. A pain, exquisite and shocking, pulled her up short—a vise grip was being applied inches above her elbow. Susannah jerked her arm, turning to discern the cause. Detective Withers smiled her fragmentary smile and kept her grip.
“Come this way,” the detective said, her brow a rigid line setting her face into stone. She stepped in front of Larraine, abruptly cutting her off when she tried to follow. “Not you.”
A female officer, wearing a Peach Grove PD windbreaker, appeared to Larraine’s right. Susannah did not recognize her; judging by the look of confusion on her face, neither did Larraine. Vehicles now filled the gravel lot and the lawn behind it, and the detective led Susannah toward them. Rusty was nowhere to be seen.
“This way, ma’am.” The female officer, face emotionless, touched Larraine gently on the shoulder and guided her toward the office. Larraine protested. Susannah twisted, watching Larraine look around the parking lot and lock eyes with Randy, who turned away. Larraine’s face went from pale to pink as anger colored her cheeks, and she caught Susannah’s eyes.
“Go ahead,” Susannah said. “I’ll be all right.”
“Well, isn’t that kind of you,” Detective Withers drawled, as she edged Susannah onward. “Giving your staff permission to be questioned by the police.”
Susannah fumed but said nothing. From tidbits gained through Tina’s and Larraine’s Peach Grove sources, she had learned that Detective Withers was from Louisiana and had a record for closing cases and catching criminals. Keith had let slip that she was known as a persistent and indefatigable adversary. Susannah didn’t doubt any of it.
She inhaled, calming herself. The detective was not in the habit of having two-way conversations, and Susannah knew better than to pursue one. She watched the other officer escort Larraine into the office through the rear door and close it with a thud.
Detective Withers directed Susannah to a parked patrol car, opened the door, and shoved her inside. She shut the door and walked away.
Susannah looked around, curious. She hadn’t been in the back seat of a police car in at least a decade. No, she mused, it had to be two decades. She felt old. A lot had changed since she had been on the job in New York and her partner, Tone, had jokingly stuffed her into the back of a 1984 Crown Vic that was being retired. That had been a car; this was a rolling prison. The back seat was one long hunk of molded plastic, the Plexiglas partition was yellowed and cracking, and the windows were sealed so tight the atmosphere was stifling.
Outside the locked doors, Detective Withers surveyed the scene and ground her fists into her thighs. Susannah felt helpless as she watched the EMTs move with efficiency and speed, and wished, not for the first time, that she had never chosen this spot as an office. Outside of town, set back from the road, with her nearest neighbors the animals in a field and the peach trees in an orchard—how had she ever thought this would be a safe environment for herself and her staff? No witnesses to see the perpetrator also meant no one to come forward in her defense. Maybe if I worked in a strip mall somewhere, she thought, Anita’s killer would have struck anyway, but not right at my back door. Now Tina was the victim of...what?
After many long minutes, the EMT stood and jogged to the ambulance, throwing open its door. He pulled out a stretcher and dragged it toward Tina, its wheels grinding small pellets of dirt and dust. Susannah realized she hated the gravel in this lot.
They lifted Tina onto the stretcher, leaving behind a small white sneaker. Susannah stifled a sob. She wanted to cry but couldn’t allow herself to break down in the back of a cruiser. She knew the game the detective was playing, and she knew why. Varina Withers had put her there not only to keep her away from other witnesses but also to put pressure on her, and it was working. The air inside the car was thick, the stink of body odor and plastic tumbled together. The dense foam of the driver’s seat back dug into her knees, making her want to scream. She closed her eyes and calmed herself. Putting up with this ploy to “make her sweat” would go a long way toward uncovering just what the detective was thinking.
The police milled around, watching as one EMT hovered over Tina. He laid an IV bag on her shoulder and lifted the stretcher. The other EMT helped load Tina into the ambulance while Keith bent himself into the vehicle.
Detective Withers, her arms folded tightly across her chest, stood next to Randy observing the ambulance’s progress as it turned onto Highway 42. Randy shot a glance at Susannah and turned away.
The tightness in Susannah’s chest rose into her throat, and she knew whatever relationship she’d once had with him was gone. It was one thing to stand out of the way of an investigation. It was another thing to treat her like a criminal with no evidence and no motive.
Susannah felt a deep sense of despair as she watched the detective throw her shoulders back and walk into the office with Randy close behind her. For years, she had reluctantly put up with his comments but always thought envy fueled his banter. Although retired, she was once a part of the largest, most selective police force in the nation. His assurances that he was treating her like “one of his team” had always felt hollow, but she had gone along with things in deference to his office. She shouldn’t have been surprised to see him reveal himself, but it hurt. She was startled when the driver’s-side door opened, and the female officer she had seen with Larraine got in, turned the ignition, and pulled out of the drive.
“Am I being arrested?” Susannah asked.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” the woman said in a raspy voice, and pulled onto Highway 42 without another word.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Peach Grove Police Department interview room consisted of a small table flanked by two well-worn chairs. Orange and black scuffs streaked the tile floor, and Susannah stared at them, chewing her lip as she fought to remain in control. The time dragged, and she fingered a bottle of water, which had stopped sweating an hour ago. She tried to ignore the closed-circuit camera in the corner of the ceiling, and she fought down the bile that rose in her throat.
No crappy coffee here, Tone, she thought, remembering how he associated interrogating a suspect with endless cups of bitter cop-shop coffee. She sipped the water, which tasted like it had been stored in the Georgia sun. Only potentially carcinogenic water.
Her stomach rumbled, and she closed her eyes and forced another small sip. The lightheaded feeling she had noticed earlier today returned. Opening her
eyes, she pondered her belief that stress was primarily to blame for her vertigo, more than any ear crystals or spinal misalignment ever had been. In times of extreme distress, the symptoms resurfaced.
The door opened, and Detective Withers entered, clutching a handful of papers. She sat down, clearly taking stock of Susannah. “Dr. Shine, thank you for being so patient.” She showed the half smile again, her predatory glare belying her uptempo voice. “I hope you don’t mind answering a few questions.”
“That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
“Certainly.” She reviewed the pages she held. “Is it true that you sell products at your office?”
“Yes.”
“What products do you sell?”
Susannah shook her head. “What does this have to do with Tina?”
“Humor me. What products do you sell?”
Susannah gripped her seat, hoping the dizziness stayed away long enough for her to leave under her own steam. A question about the products sold in her office had to mean the detective was about to drill down on the herbal connection to Anita’s death.
“You know what I sell. You searched my office and confiscated supplements I had in stock.”
The detective narrowed her eyes, and Susannah’s skin broke out in gooseflesh. The detective pointed her pen at Susannah as if to say bingo. “That’s right. And how do you keep track of your sales of supplements?” She pronounced the word with derision.
Susannah shook her head. Where was she going with this? “Sales? Everything gets put in the computer and charged to the patient’s account.”
“So if a patient buys a supplement, then I would find a record of it in your computer system?”
“Yes.”
“Is there any other way that you keep track of these sales? Like, say, a paper ledger?”
“No, our accounts are computerized.”
The detective pulled a sheaf of paper out of the folder on the table and slid it across the desk. “Is this one of your patient accounts?”
Susannah nodded.
“Really, Doctor? Who is Mr. or Mrs. Miscellaneous? Why are you hiding the name of this patient?”
Susannah scanned the page, her throat going dry. “We call the account miscellaneous because we need a way to track products or services sold to nonpatients.”
“Why would you be providing products to nonpatients?”
Susannah raised her eyebrows and spoke slowly, as if she were talking to a child. “Because sometimes people who are not patients come in and buy things. A massage, for example. Someone who is not a patient won’t have an account in our system. Instead of making accounts for each person, we combine the purchases into one ledger. It gives us a place to put the charges in order to match the payments.”
“That sounds like a slush fund to me.”
“A slush fund?” She scowled at the detective. “I’m not a retail business, Detective. We don’t have a cash register. Every dollar we collect has to balance with a charge in a patient account. It takes time to set up patient accounts. So, for example, if a patient purchases a massage to give as a gift, we don’t force the recipient of the gift to set up a patient account.”
“Is it so difficult to set up an account?”
“It’s not difficult, but it is time consuming. And our computer program is designed to store electronic medical records and requires personal information, such as home address and date of birth. Would you want to give out your date of birth to buy a bottle of vitamins?”
The detective crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. She had not removed the black windbreaker, and the sleeves rustled as she moved. “I am asking you about the sale of products—dangerous products. You hawk herbal preparations, which can have side effects, without even knowing the health history of the person who buys them.”
Susannah opened her mouth to protest but said nothing. The detective had a way of making the simplest things appear underhanded. The miscellaneous computer file made it easier for a nonpatient to pay for items without having to set up a username and password. That kind of personalization and account protection was not necessary for nonpatients. Besides, the miscellaneous account was rarely used. For the most part, it was a place to track the purchase of gift certificates. Susannah had a few patients who would gift their spouses a massage for their birthday or Christmas. Occasionally she sold a couple of bottles of supplements to nonpatients, but the bulk of her sales went to patients whom she had personally counseled.
Detective Withers made a show of pulling a photograph from between the pages she held, and she slid it across the desk. “Do you recognize this?”
Susannah looked at a picture of one of the brown glass bottles she kept in stock. She used them to hold herbal tonics, which were popular with her patients. “What are you saying? That Tina bought some herbs, and it wasn’t recorded in the miscellaneous file?”
“No, Dr. Shine, not Tina.” The detective pursed her lips. “I’m concerned about Anita Alvarez. You stated that she was not a patient, but you could have sold her some of these potentially harmful substances and placed the sale in your miscellaneous file.”
“She never bought any supplements from me.”
“You said that this ledger keeps track of the item, but not the buyer. Isn’t that correct?”
“Yes, but—”
“So Ms. Alvarez could have purchased something from your office, like a pillow, some vitamins, or even a bottle of your so-called herbal tonic, and we would never know that it was Anita who bought them. Isn’t that correct?”
“Yes, but that’s not how—”
“She could have paid cash for those herbs, and you would show no record that she was ever in your office.”
Susannah didn’t answer because the truthful answer was “yes.” Anita could have walked in and paid cash for supplements or a pillow, and her name would not show up in any accounting ledger. That was exactly what the miscellaneous file was for, but in Detective Withers’s hands, it sounded devious and unethical. At last, she said, “I don’t run a retail store.”
“Of course you don’t, Doctor. You run something dangerous. A pseudo-medical office. You lure people in with your inferior license. Then you take their money without ever checking their health history to find out whether your concoctions will harm them.”
Susannah knew it was futile to continue to speak to the woman. She stood up. The detective would have to arrest her if she wanted to keep her here any longer.
Detective Withers did not break eye contact and did not stop talking. “Doctor, did you know that Anita Alvarez had a heart condition?”
Susannah shook her head. She could not listen to this nonsense.
“No, you didn’t know, because you never bothered to ask her.”
Susannah pushed past the detective and twisted the knob on the door. For the briefest moment, she thought it was locked. Terror flooded her legs, and the room slipped off its axis. Then the knob turned, and the world righted itself. She put one foot in front of the other and pushed through.
“You wouldn’t have known that the adrenal potion you sold her was contraindicated for someone on heart medication.”
Susannah walked on. The air felt light and sweet. The detective was right behind her.
“You stopped her heart with your toxic tonic, Doctor.”
The detective had made the connection between the digitalis levels and the herbs in the adrenal tonic she sold. Susannah walked away, fearing with each step that she would be pulled back and arrested. But she continued, safe in the knowledge that the detective lacked any evidence proving that Anita had bought these herbs. And that was one piece of evidence she would never have.
“You can run.” The detective followed her down the hall. “But I’m right behind you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Susannah exited the station holding her head high, relieved to be outside. The sun had set, and the night was clear. She walked into the parking lot, feeling the lingering warmth of the pa
vement through her shoes. After a few steps, she realized she had no ride. She patted her pocket for her phone and then remembered dropping it in the parking lot as she felt for Tina’s pulse.
Head down, she continued walking. Long, determined steps carried her toward the park next to the Peach Grove Municipal Building. She would regroup there and decide what to do next. Her left eye twitched, but at least the spinning had stopped. The detective wanted to rattle her, but Susannah held tight to the one piece of the puzzle that the detective didn’t know she had: the connection to the digitalis levels.
According to Iris, Anita had high levels of digitalis in her blood, above and beyond the norm for a medicated patient. No supplement or herbal concoction that she sold contained digitalis or had the ability to raise digitalis levels. The licorice in the adrenal tonic the detective had mentioned could, if taken over time, deplete potassium levels, thus making the effects of digitalis more powerful, but they couldn’t put the drug into your system. There were only two ways to do that: with a drug like Digoxin or by ingesting parts of a foxglove or oleander plant.
It then stood to reason that Detective Withers believed that Anita was already taking Digoxin, and the adrenal tonic had increased its toxicity. Susannah had to contact Dolores and help her uncover Anita’s health history, and she had to do it soon.
A horn blared, and she flinched, the noise setting her heart racing. She set her jaw and continued walking. If it was Randy, she would refuse a ride. There was no way she would get into a police car again. Unfaltering, she strode on, but the vehicle caught up and the horn sounded again. She narrowed her eyes and turned.
It was Bitsy, one hand on the wheel, the other waving madly at her. Susannah opened the door and flung herself inside the SUV. “Am I glad to see you.” She gave Bitsy a weak punch. “You scared me with the horn. I’m still shaking.”
