by Julie Smith
“I could tell by the way he kept trying to kill me.”
“Huh?”
“I went to see him at Kogene, saying I was Charlie Haas from the Wall Street Journal. When I got home, somebody in a small, light-colored car tried to run me down. It was Koehler.”
“You saw him?”
I shook my head. “It took me a long time to figure it out. But here’s what tipped me— when I went back to Kogene several days later, he didn’t say a word about my misrepresenting myself. He just accepted me as Paul Mcdonald of the Chronicle, which means he knew who I was all the time. To take the tour of Kogene, I left my coat in his office. It had all my I.D. in it. I presume he went through it, discovered I was the man in the Examiner story— the man he wanted to kill— and set briskly about it.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“My address, you see, wasn’t in the Examiner. And I’m not listed in the phone book. But it’s on my driver’s license, which he saw. There’s lots of ways to get it and lots of people who could do it, but it comes down to this: If you were president of a multimillion-dollar high-tech company and someone misrepresented himself to get an interview and you found out about it, wouldn’t you confront him with it?”
Freddie nodded. “Unless I didn’t want him to know I knew.”
“Koehler didn’t. He slipped when he forgot I was supposed to be Haas, that’s all. Anyway, the light car tried to run me down, but a dream I had made me remember something else— a dark car followed me and chased me also.”
“So? Does Koehler have two cars?
“I don’t know. But I think we’ve got to check that and a few other things before we turn our case over to Blick.”
Sardis stopped me. “Too late. Freddie and Susanna just spent several painful hours with him. I have a feeling you and I are next.”
“Let’s move fast then. It strikes me that several matters are still unexplained. Does everyone agree?”
Everyone did. So I told them my new plan. In minutes they were off, Sardis to Rossmoor, Susanna and Freddie to deal with the Department of Motor Vehicles. I turned over and went back to sleep, thinking I could get to like being an armchair general. The nurse woke me up for another shot of Demerol. That was fine with me.
I was starting to get woozy when Marilyn Markham came in.
“How are you feeling?” She was smiling, looking healthy and pretty in camel slacks and a turtleneck.
“Woozy. I was just thinking about the smart bomb.” I was speaking slowly and slurring my words a bit. It was the best I could do.
“You know about that?”
“I’ve got a primitive idea how it works. What I don’t know is why Terry got side effects.”
“For the smart bomb to work, the antibody has to be monoclonal, meaning it will bind to only one protein. Ours worked fine on rats and hamsters. But in chimps it binds to three proteins. One of them is the leukemia protein, one is associated with the optic nerve, and one is associated with the liver.”
“I don’t think I get it.”
“We haven’t yet done any tests on humans. But it looks as if the drug will cure leukemia, all right. However, it’ll make you go blind and destroy your liver as well. Whereas being blind might be preferable to dying of leukemia, the drug will kill you as dead as the cancer will— because you can’t live without a liver.”
“I thought you told me Jacob wasn’t treating Terry. How do you know about the side effects?”
“I lied. I was shocked that you knew. But I didn’t know myself until Lindsay told me; I told her she was crazy.” She came over and stood by my bed. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right? You sound awful.”
“Just weak. How close are you to finding the right monoclonal antibody?”
“Very close. I’m going to do it.” She spoke with an odd, steely determination.
“You know, Marilyn,” I said, “I have a feeling Jacob isn’t the only mad scientist at Kogene.”
She had a hand in her pocket. “What are you talking about?”
“I was kind of wondering what you were doing waving a gun around last night.”
“I was doing a little sleuthing of my own. I knew Jacob wasn’t the murderer. That meant it had to be Steve. I was tailing him. Isn’t that what you call it?”
“You were backing him up.”
“What?”
“You knew Jacob was nuts. You couldn’t live with him and not know it. That’s why you and Steve protected him from the press, why he wasn’t even allowed to take phone calls. You had as much stake in the future of Kogene as Steve did. Only all he cared about was the money. You were crazy-determined to finish the project. And I do mean crazy…” I closed my eyes a moment to rest. The Demerol was sneaking up on me.
“You were in all the way with Steve,” I was barely whispering. “Technically, he killed those guys, sure. But you knew about it and you helped him.” That song about the little horses switched on again, somewhere in the back of my brain. “At the last minute you switched horses…”
I felt her arm grip mine, and then I felt something like a pinprick. My arm went flying up, instinctively, I guess. The pricking stopped, but Marilyn had a better grip on me now— with both hands. I grappled with her, trying to pull her down so I could bite her or something. I don’t know what I was trying to do. I was too woozy. But judging from what happened next, I guess it looked like I was trying to kiss her.
“Mcdonald, what the hell?” said Howard Blick’s voice. And then it said, “Uh, excuse me.”
“Help!” I said. “Howard! Help!”
What an unbelievable humiliation. Getting rescued by Howard Blick. It was Sardis’s fault too. She was stepping off the elevator on my floor about that time. Thirty seconds sooner and I could have been saved by a lovely maiden instead.
She came in while Blick was still struggling to get cuffs on Marilyn and I was still struggling to stay awake. It took her about two seconds to assess the situation. “Hi, Marilyn,” she said. “Aunt Hallie sends her love. She says she hopes you’ll come back to see her soon, she enjoyed your last visit so much.” She looked at me. “That was a couple of weeks ago, right before Birnbaum died. Neither Jacob nor Steve has been there in six months.”
“That clinches it,” I said. “Sardis, look on the floor, will you? I think Marilyn dropped a syringe with digitalis in it.”
Sardis complied. “It’s under the bed.”
Blick looked dumber than ever. “What the fuck is this all about?”
“Dr. Markham here helped Steve Koehler kill those folks,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she tells you all about it herself.”
CHAPTER 25
She did, to avoid being charged with murder one. It went like this: She never was in love with Jacob Koehler at all. Lindsay just thought so because Marilyn’s way of controlling his every move was artfully disguised as devoted solicitude. She married him so she could hitch her wagon, if you’ll indulge me, to his star. Seems she’d had a little trouble getting her talents recognized, what with being a woman, so she’d decided to turn womanhood to her advantage. Things turned out even better than she’d hoped when Jacob become incompetent, leaving it up to her to develop the smart bomb.
She helped Steve kill the three guys to the extent that she stole the digitalis and lent him her car— a medium-sized dark one. Also, the two of them conspired to protect Jacob. It was she, of course, who talked him out of going public about the kidnapping, but he outfoxed her and did it anyway. She never admitted that she knew— before Lindsay told her— that Jacob was giving Terry treatments, but I think she did know, at least in some dark corner of her mind.
The night the ferry was gutted, she was a backup, like I guessed, in case something went wrong. She had no idea, of course, that Susanna and Freddie and I would be there, and when she saw us, she momentarily lost her head. That’s when she pointed the gun at Sardis. When she took in me and Freddie with his Minicam, she figured out what we’d actually been up to, correctl
y guessed that the jig was up for Steve, though not necessarily for her, and ordered Freddie not to drop the Minicam. She thought if Koehler tried to implicate her, she could lie her way out of it. But either she hadn’t reckoned on Aunt Hallie or she intended to kill her, too.
Who knows? Neither she nor the Koehlers were exactly your average red-blooded Americans. They didn’t seem to care how many folks they killed.
As for the rest of us, there’s good news and bad news. You can probably predict the bad— Terry died about eight months later. But it was a very peaceful death, at Rachel Carroll’s ranch. She just fell asleep one night and didn’t wake up.
Jacob’s world fell apart when Marilyn and Steve were arrested. He voluntarily checked into a private hospital and Lindsay says he’s getting better.
She’s back working on Susanna’s show and they’re both doing great.
Pandorf Associates relocated, but Sardis struck out on her own— she’s now a free-lance graphic designer, and she’s painting on weekends.
As for me, I wrote a prize-winning series about the foregoing events. Joey Bernstein practically squirmed with delight, but he didn’t offer any bonuses for a job well done.
Seeing Sardis nearly get killed that night on the boat had kind of a sobering effect on me. In a way, I got over my lover’s block. That is, I realized I loved her. She still gets on my nerves if she gets too close; let me amend that— if I feel myself getting too close to her. And sometimes she doesn’t turn me on. But I should be more precise— I mean, sometimes I don’t feel turned on to her.
I used to think if a romance didn’t go smoothly, the thing simply wasn’t meant to be. But now I think you have to work on these things. So I’ve taken up meditation. A strange pastime for an ornery guy like me, but I’m certainly no fanatic. If I start feeling too peaceful I call up Blick and trade a few insults.
THE END
DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For Titter
The author thanks Dr. Boyd Stephens, John Reid, Susan Price, and Veronica Napoles for help in their various fields of expertise. Paul Mcdonald extends special thanks of his own to Jon Carroll, without whom he would have been less of a man.
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If You Enjoyed This Book…
Try the next Paul Mcdonald book, HUCKLEBERRY FIEND, at www.booksbnimble.com or click here for more fabulous books by Julie Smith. (If your reader does not have a built-in browser, you can simply type: http://amzn.to/12nxOZs the browser to be taken directly to Amazon's books by Julie Smith.
The Paul Mcdonald Series
TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURE
HUCKLEBERRY FIEND
Also by Julie Smith:
The Skip Langdon Series
(in order of publication)
NEW ORLEANS MOURNING
AXEMAN’S JAZZ
JAZZ FUNERAL
DEATH BEFORE FACEBOOK
(formerly NEW ORLEANS BEAT)
HOUSE OF BLUES
THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
CRESCENT CITY CONNECTION
(formerly CRESCENT CITY KILL)
82 DESIRE
MEAN WOMAN BLUES
The Rebecca Schwartz Series
DEATH TURNS A TRICK
THE SOURDOUGH WARS
TOURIST TRAP
DEAD IN THE WATER
OTHER PEOPLE’S SKELETONS
The Talba Wallis Series
LOUISIANA HOTSHOT
LOUISIANA BIGSHOT
LOUISIANA LAMENT
P.I. ON A HOT TIN ROOF
As well as:
WRITING YOUR WAY: THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL TRACK
NEW ORLEANS NOIR (ed.)
And don’t miss ALWAYS OTHELLO, a Skip Langdon story, as well as the brand new short story, PRIVATE CHICK, which asks the question, “Is this country ready for a drag queen detective?” More info at www.booksBnimble.com.
A Respectful Request
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About the Author
J.D. Smith is an itinerant righter-of-wrongs who began his post-graduate life as a smuggler of exotic birds in the jungles of Colombia. Because of his facility with languages, Harvard-trained erudition, and ability to think on his feet, he was recruited at an early age by the CIA, where he served his country heroically until a dust-up in Afghanistan permanently blew his cover.
After that, he played lead guitar in a rock band until he was able to amass a sufficient fortune to support his expansive lifestyle. He speaks seven languages, has unparalleled martial arts skills, is handy with a knife or other weapon (it would be unwise to try anything), and is always on hand when there’s trouble, much like Jack Reacher, from whom he’s barely discernible, except for being blessedly free of neuroses about possessions.
To the contrary, he owns many splendid domiciles, all hung with magnificent art collections, boasting fabled libraries, and stocked with fine foods and beverages. He is able to be on hand when he’s needed because he has a fabulous home practically everywhere. He especially wants all female readers to know that in the clothing department he’s much more Bond than Reacher and would actually rather refight the Battle of Tora Bora than wear any item of clothing, especially underwear, more than one day. His only regret is that in a parallel universe he leads a much tamer life as a mystery novelist with a similar name.
