When Secrets Die

by Lynn S. Hightower

  “Detective? Mr. French, what is this?”

  “It’s nothing you need to worry about.”

  “Do I need to remind you that I’m a major stockholder in the clinic corporation, and that you answer to me?”

  He looked at her and blinked.

  “Sit down,” she ordered. He sat in the chair that had been pulled up close to the desk. She turned to me, and held out a hand for me to shake, which made me like her. “I’m Syd Tundridge.”

  “The doctor’s wife.”

  She looked expensive. The hair, the nails, the casually thrown-on slacks that had a designer tag in the back. I knew because I’d seen Judith wear a pair just like them, and she told me they cost her over three hundred dollars.

  “That’s right, I’m Ted’s wife. Who exactly are you?”

  “This woman came in last week,” Mr. French said. “She’s working for Emma Marsden. Her client’s son was Ned Marsden, one of the patients who died.”

  “Yes, I know exactly who Emma Marsden is. Her son was barely over two years old. Liver failure, over a year ago, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “About three months ago someone from this office called my client and said that Ned had been buried without all his internal organs.”

  Syd Tundridge leaned closer. She looked grim, but not surprised. “Go on.”

  “My client wasn’t aware that anything had been … kept back. She thought she’d buried her son completely intact.”

  She looked at Mr. French. “The permissions again.”

  He shook his head. “I know, Syd, I’ve tried, but what can I do? You know what he’s like.”

  She cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Then what?”

  “Then my client came here and found that her son’s heart and various other parts were preserved as samples downstairs in your chamber of horrors.”

  “It’s a pathology lab,” Mr. French said.

  “Quiet,” Syd told him.

  “She objected, and soon after Dr. Tundridge accused her of Munchausen by proxy. None of this is news to you, is it, Mrs. Tundridge?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “You’ve seen the videotape?”

  “I’m the one who insisted we send it to the police.”

  “Then I’ll tell you to your face, I think someone on your staff here had something to do with it.”

  Syd Tundridge shook her head. “Not a chance. We have better things to do.”

  But she looked like she felt guilty about something.

  She tapped a finger on the desk. “What about the missing girl? What did you mean when you said somebody who works here was involved?”

  “You have a woman on your staff named Amaryllis Burton?”

  “Not anymore,” Mr. French said.

  “I fired her day before yesterday. Why?”

  “Emma Marsden’s daughter has disappeared, and she was last seen getting into a car with Amaryllis Burton.”

  “Amaryllis and Emma Marsden are friends, as I understand it,” Mr. French said.

  “Are you aware that Ms. Burton is a licensed practical nurse?”

  Something in his eyes. “Only recently. Not when we hired her.”

  “Think that’s odd?”

  Syd frowned. “Amaryllis is an LPN?”

  “Not licensed anymore,” I said. “Tell me why you fired her.”

  Syd shook her head. “I can’t do that.” She looked at Mr. French, who threw up his hands.

  “Syd, I think you better.”

  Syd Tundridge sat and thought, rocking from side to side in her chair. She closed her eyes for a minute and took a breath.

  I lifted my chin. “Maybe I can help you. Are you aware that your husband patented genetic material from the blood of Ned Marsden and is in the process of selling this patent to a pharmaceutical company?”

  Syd Tundridge opened her mouth, then closed it. “Not until yesterday, no. I didn’t know the patient was Ned Marsden, I just knew it was one of the patients who had died. But the patent is already sold, for the price of four-point-eight million dollars.”

  She braced her arms on the desk. “Amaryllis dropped by my house several days ago. Bringing me some of the accounting statements. I don’t like Amaryllis, and she knows it. It’s mutual. I couldn’t figure out why she dropped the statements off, but I figured she was trying to cause trouble. Messing with people is one of her favorite pastimes.”

  “She had no business with that paperwork,” Mr. French said. “She took it right off my desk.”

  “I’m aware,” Syd said. “Obviously something was up. I started going back over the books. I found this million-dollar slush fund—” She glared at French, who winced. “I think that’s what Amaryllis wanted me to find. She knew it would cause problems between me and Ted. But I also found out that Amaryllis has been buying medical supplies on our account. Not using our money—we would have caught that. Just going to Scotties and buying things with our discount and authorization codes, and paying for it herself. That’s why it took us a while to track it down.

  “Day before yesterday, I came in to fire her. I had talked to Mr. French by phone, and we both agreed she had to go.”

  “Long overdue,” Mr. French said.

  “She didn’t seem all that upset,” Syd said, frowning. “I was braced for this big emotional scene. But she just smiled at me, really nasty, and said okay. I asked her what she was using the supplies for, and she said she was setting up her own little business down in Tennessee.”

  “Tennessee?” I said. “Why Tennessee?”

  “She’s from there. From Gatlinburg. She’s got a house down there she inherited with her brother. She spends a lot of weekends down there.”

  “That’s why she’s been calling in sick all the time,” Mr. French said. “She’s been setting herself up in business.”

  “What kind of business?” I asked.

  “She didn’t say.” Syd pushed hair out of her eyes. “And then, she gets this really sickening little smile, and says maybe I should ask my husband about the millions he’s made selling patents to the drug companies. If she hadn’t told me that, I don’t know how long it would have taken me to catch on.” She looked over at Mr. French. “You didn’t do such a bad job of hiding it, but you shouldn’t have paid off those loans.”

  “I was under orders, Syd,” French said.

  “Then what?” I asked.

  “Then Janet comes in and says that Amaryllis had a phone call, and that’s the last time I saw her. I cut her a check for two weeks’ pay and went to find her, but she’d gone. Didn’t even clean out her desk.”

  “It wasn’t her desk,” French said.

  “Don’t pick at things, Mr. French, it might not have been her official desk, but she used it.”

  “What time did the call come through?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, after nine, maybe nine-thirty. Why?”

  “Can you get Janet in here?”

  Syd inclined her head to French, and he picked up the phone and spoke softly. His shoulders slumped, and he rubbed a palm across his forehead.

  Janet was quick. No doubt she had overheard the shouting, because she looked tense and wide-eyed.

  Syd smiled at her. “Janet, do you remember when you came in here the day before yesterday and told me that Amaryllis Burton had a phone call?”

  Janet nodded.

  “Do you know who it was?” I asked.

  “They didn’t say.”

  “Female?” I asked.

  Janet nodded. “It sounded like a young girl. It was somebody Amaryllis knew because she called her honey and was really sweet to her, which was weird because I knew she just got fired. I thought she would have been all upset, but it didn’t seem like it.”

  “Did they talk long?”

  “No. But she did say something about she’d come and pick somebody up. And then she walked right out.”

  “Do you have caller ID?”

  She nodded. “Yes, and I looked, but
the call came from a gas station in Athens.”

  I took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

  Syd looked at me, but waited to speak until Janet left the room. “What is it? Amaryllis was friends with the Marsdens.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “If you think someone like Amaryllis Burton is friends with anyone. But Blaine Marsden went missing day before yesterday, in the morning, after she had a fight with her mother. It’s pretty clear Amaryllis Burton picked her up. And she hasn’t called Emma to let her know that Blaine is okay or that she has her.”

  “What would Amaryllis want with Emma Marsden’s daughter?”

  Mr. French sat down and put his head in his hands. “Oh, blessed Jesus.”

  Syd looked at him. “Does this have something to do with Ted leaving a clinic full of patients today?”

  Mr. French’s voice had gone thin. “An e-mail came into the clinic, late last night. On the private address, the one we use for … for the pharmaceutical companies. It offered to sell us blood samples, samples that contained the specific genetic materials that had been present in Ned Marsden’s blood. The message said a sample would be left at a certain place, and that Dr. Tundridge should take it and see if it was what he wanted. And if it was, then he should get his checkbook ready, and they would be in touch.”

  Syd stared at him. “Are you kidding me? That’s where Ted is right now?”

  French nodded.

  I picked up the phone and slammed it down in front of Syd Tundridge. “Call your husband. Now. Call him on his mobile and stop him. Then we call the police.”

  “But—”

  “Look. Amaryllis Burton has kidnapped Emma Marsden’s daughter. There’s two reasons you don’t want your husband anywhere near Amaryllis right now. One, she’s dangerous. And very unpredictable. Two, she’s our lead to Blaine Marsden.”

  “Amaryllis?”

  “She’s had three children, Mrs. Tundridge. Every single one of them are dead.”

  She looked from me to Mr. French, then picked up the phone.

  BLAINE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  It was funny the way she had fallen instantly asleep right there in the mess on the floor. The second the pain had stopped, she had gone to sleep. Blaine was afraid to move, afraid she would feel that pain again. Last time it had gone away completely. This time it was still there, more in the background but definitely there. She did not know how long she had been asleep, but she thought maybe a long time. It was light outside now. It felt like morning. The house was quiet.

  She crawled out of the bathroom, moving slowly, pleased to find that the pain had receded to the point that crawling was comfortable enough, pleased that just moving that little bit did not bring back the nausea.

  The bedroom was cold, the window was open. Blaine heard something rustling outside. Probably a cow. The house backed right up to a farm; she had noticed the rolls of hay in the field, the sagging barbed-wire fence, the white-and-brown cows who were sometimes there and sometimes not. Wally would have wiggled right under that fence. Wally was extraordinarily gentle with other animals, and often lay on her belly to play with smaller dogs so they would not be intimidated, but even Wally would bark at cows.

  Blaine really really really missed her dog. Wally liked to sleep right in the doorway of her bedroom—that way she could protect Blaine and keep an eye on the rest of the house, and make herself available for snacking on any food that might be prepared in the kitchen after Blaine went to bed. Wally would eat anything. Wally would even like the peanut butter that Blaine could still taste in the back of her throat.

  It occurred to Blaine that she had eaten nothing but peanut butter since she’d been here, and she’d gotten sicker and sicker. She knew that her mother ate that peanut butter sometimes. At home, Blaine turned her nose up at peanut butter, even the homemade kind. It was her least favorite thing, and her mother usually had better things to eat around the kitchen. She’d eaten it here because that’s what she had been served, and she had been raised too well to complain, question, or ask for anything else. Maybe there was something wrong with the peanut butter. Maybe that was what was making her sick, and her mom sick. And Ned? The Nedster had eaten that peanut butter too.

  The night Marcus had talked to her and her mom about what had killed Ned, he had said there were some kind of toxins in his system that eventually caused him to die. Blaine had a lot of questions that night, and Marcus had answered them adult to adult. It was obvious, too, that he was really smart. And he didn’t flinch, no matter what she asked. Her mom had finally had to go out of the room. But Marcus had said that the toxin that Ned had was found in animal feeds, like corn, and grains, and also in nuts. He had said almonds, but he’d also said peanuts, which weren’t really nuts but legumes.

  And Ned had eaten peanut butter. He was crazy for it. Mom had kept food diaries, and they had thought about the peanut butter, but he didn’t get sick every time he ate it, just sometimes, so it was hard to tell. But Ned ate the peanut butter, and Ned got sick. And she knew her mom ate the peanut butter, she ate it on wheat bread for breakfast. And her mom got sick. And Blaine didn’t get sick, and she didn’t eat the peanut butter. Except now. She’d eaten Amaryllis Burton’s peanut butter, and she was sick.

  Blaine had thought she was cried out, but the thought of little Nederick being in the kind of pain she had been in last night, and him only a little bitty guy … and all because of that idiot woman’s peanut butter? It was like botulism in homemade canned vegetables. Stupid, stupid bitch. Suzy Homemaker bitch. Could they get her put in jail for that? For involuntary manslaughter or something? Negligent homicide? Marcus would know. No matter if this stupid woman hadn’t meant to make them all sick, after a night of agony and lying weakly in her own vomit, Blaine wanted Amaryllis put in jail for the rest of her life. Let her make peanut butter for the other inmates.

  And then Blaine caught her breath. Maybe it was all on purpose. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. The baskets the woman brought to the house. Poisoning them. Because why?

  Blaine didn’t have a problem figuring why. Not after what she’d seen of Amaryllis Burton. Because she was a jealous, weird, crazy woman, that was why.

  She needed to get away.

  The wind stirred the leaves. Blaine thought of climbing out the window. It was just as well that Wally wasn’t there, because Wally could not climb out of a second-story window, and Wally would have definitely eaten the peanut butter, and Wally was way too heavy for Blaine to carry even when she felt good. Right now she wasn’t even sure she could walk to the window, much less climb out and make it to the ground in one piece.

  Of course, out the front door would be better.

  Blaine was shaking, but she got out of bed and tried the door. Locked in. She turned on the lamp, trying to stay quiet, and looked at the door. She had thought it had no lock, but the hardware had been put on backward, and the lock was on the outside, not the inside. It would have to be the window.

  The doorbell rang.

  Blaine felt her heart jump. Maybe it was Mom there, come to take her home. She listened. She could hear someone moving around in the kitchen. Amaryllis, she guessed. The doorbell rang again. Could it be her mother?

  She raised herself on one elbow. The pain was there, but not as bad. She slammed the bedroom door hard with her fists. It made a good noise, a thin hollow cheap door, and she pounded on it till it vibrated in the frame.

  “Open … the fucking … door. Now. Open it, you bitch, open it.”

  She stopped pounding for a minute. Heard the doorbell again. And then a slam, from the other side of the door, and Blaine jumped back. Someone had hit the door, hard. Blaine knew that it had to be Amaryllis; she could smell her, the perfume and old-lady smell she had.

  “Be quiet in there, or I’ll make you sorry.”

  Amaryllis. In that hideous little voice.

  Blaine felt the air stir on the back of her neck and the nerves tingle at the small of her back
. And part of her was even a little bit relieved, because it was out in the open between them, mortal enemies.

  “I’ll fucking kill you before you kill me.” Blaine said it in the lowest, deadliest voice she could make. She wasn’t her mother’s daughter for nothing.

  The doorbell had stopped ringing. Blaine went to the open window, hit the screen hard with her fist, and it popped out of the frame and slid to the grass below.

  “Help. Please help me now. Call the police, please, call my mother. Help help help help help—”

  Amaryllis was slamming her fist against the door. “Shut up, you brat, shut up right now. Shut up shut up shut up or I’ll make you shut up.”

  And Blaine pulled her head inside the window for one minute. “I’m not eating any more of your goddamn peanut butter, so stop trying to poison me.” Then she stuck her head back out the window to scream.

  “Okay, up there, hang on, I’m a-coming.”

  A man’s voice, and then Blaine saw him, a big guy, her hero. He wore beige Dockers, a navy blue Polo shirt, a braided brown leather belt, slip-on loafers. Everything he wore was reassuringly normal; everything about him told Blaine that he was someone from the world she was used to. He was black and had a little bit of a belly, but he was well muscled and had big shoulders, and Blaine thought maybe at one time in his life he’d been some kind of an athlete. He had a certain grace and stiffness in his bearing, like he was proud of who he was.

  “You wouldn’t by any chance be the famous Blaine Marsden, now, would you?”

  She liked his voice. Deep and reassuring. His confidence gave her confidence.

  “Yes, oh, God, yes, I’m Blaine Marsden.”

  “I’ll be damned. You don’t look too good. You all right?”

  “Fuck no, I’m not all right. I’m being held prisoner here. And don’t believe the crazy woman who lives here, she’ll tell you I’m an alcoholic or a drug addict—she said the same thing about my mom. She is a lying bitch.”

  “I don’t know about that, little sailor-mouth, but I admit she’s not very good at answering the door. You sure she’s there?”

  “She’s right out here in the hallway. How’d you find me?”