Prodigal Son

by Danielle Steel

  He went to the address Bill had e-mailed him, and was surprised to find that it was a large, highly technical, space age, modern-looking lab. Several police officers were waiting, and the sign over the door said simply Forensic Lab. There were at least two dozen employees. Peter waited at the main desk and took the envelope out of his pocket. Five minutes later a lab technician handed him some forms.

  “What are we testing for?”

  “Paraquat,” Peter said, trying to appear normal, but he didn’t feel it. He felt foolish. “Human ingestion.”

  “You brought a sample?” He handed her the envelope with the three hairs in it.

  “We need the results as soon as possible,” he said, getting into it, as she wrote the word Stat in large red letters on the form.

  “We’ll have them for you tomorrow,” she said coolly. “Are you a doctor?”

  “Private investigator,” he said, feeling not only stupid but dishonest as she nodded. “I’m investigating a criminal case,” he added, and gave her the number of his BlackBerry.

  “I spoke to your associate in London this morning,” she said, and he realized that Bill had called them. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said, after asking him to pay four hundred dollars. It was a small price to pay for Maggie’s life, if by some insane chance her son was right. Peter hoped not. He couldn’t even imagine the consequences if the test came back positive, but he was sure it wouldn’t.

  He left the lab and started the drive back to Ware. As he got on the freeway, Bill called him.

  “Where are you?”

  “On my way back from Boston.” Going to the lab had given reality to Bill’s suspicions, which depressed him as he entered the traffic flow on the freeway.

  “The hospital just told me she’s in critical condition,” Bill said unhappily. “I wish I could get her away from my father.” Peter wondered if that was what this was all about. Some oedipal fantasy, where he wanted his mother and to kill his father. “Will you be with her today?” Bill asked him, sounding worried.

  “Once I get back there. I won’t be in Ware for two hours.” Or less, if he drove faster.

  “I’m coming in tonight,” Bill said dully. “Can I stay with you?”

  “Sure,” Peter said, wondering what his brother would say if he heard about it. This was a royal mess from beginning to end. But if Maggie died, none of it would matter. “We’ll have the results tomorrow.”

  “That’s what they told me.” All they could do was wait, but Peter was sure it was a futile expedition, and Maggie’s unbalanced son would be staying with him. God only knew what he would do now. He clearly had an obsession. He almost wanted to warn his brother. If the test was negative, he was going to do that. Michael had the right to know that his son was out to get him. Peter suspected that Michael must know how disturbed his son was. After all, he was a doctor.

  Peter thought about the test they were doing, all the way back to the hospital, and when he walked into Maggie’s room, her eyes were open and she was smiling. Her breathing was labored, but she looked happy to see him. She took the oxygen mask off so she could talk to him for a minute.

  “How are you feeling?” Peter asked her gently.

  “Okay,” she said bravely, but he could see how sick she was.

  “Where’s Michael?”

  “He had to see a patient. She just came in with a heart attack. He can’t totally ignore his patients,” she said, as Peter motioned to her to put the mask on. He didn’t want to wear her out. He thought about telling her that Bill was coming, but he didn’t want to upset her, or give her the impression she was dying.

  Michael walked into the room in his white doctor’s coat an hour later. Peter was reading a magazine, and Maggie was dozing. He took her pulse and checked the heart monitor with pursed lips. Maggie opened her eyes when she felt him. She was checking his face for his reactions and saw him frown.

  “I want to go home,” she whispered, lifting the mask again. She was afraid that she was dying, and she had always told him she wanted to die at home, in her own bed. She had talked to Lisa that morning. She still had a nasty cold and was desperate to see her mother. Maggie knew that if she went home, she could see her, even if only from the doorway.

  “We’ll see how you are in a day or two,” Michael said vaguely, and he told Peter, when they went out to the hallway, that she was safer here, with defibrillators and whole teams of people to revive her. She was still too fragile right now to go home, although he didn’t like the risk of infection at the hospital either. He had to weigh the risks, and he was more comfortable keeping her at the hospital for now. Peter listened with a serious expression. It sounded like they were down to the wire, but he didn’t want to ask him.

  “How’d it go at the bank in Boston today?” Michael asked him warmly.

  “It was fine. I had to sign some documents for Alana, for the house in Southampton.” He tried to look annoyed about it, but he was angry at Bill anyway so it was easy.

  “And you had to go all the way to Boston? She doesn’t make it easy for you, does she?” Michael said sympathetically.

  “No, she doesn’t,” Peter said, and then suggested they go to the diner for dinner. Michael hesitated but finally agreed, and they left when Maggie went back to sleep. Peter knew it seemed insane, but even though he didn’t believe a word of Bill’s theory about the weed killer, he was nervous now about leaving Maggie alone with Michael. He had told Bill where the spare key to his house was, and after dinner Peter suggested spending the night with his brother at the hospital. He couldn’t imagine him having the guts to poison her here, or anywhere else for that matter, but staying seemed like a good idea. Michael looked at him gratefully when he said it.

  “You don’t need to stay. They’re watching her closely. I was thinking about going home to Lisa. They’ll call me if anything happens, and I can be here in five or ten minutes. I think Maggie will be okay here tonight. I’ll come back, and call you, if anything happens.”

  “That sounds like a good plan. You need to get some sleep too,” Peter told him. Michael looked genuinely exhausted, and suddenly ten years older than Peter. Peter liked the idea of going home since Michael wouldn’t be spending the night at the hospital either. If Bill was right, Peter wondered what Michael’s plan was. To keep her as sick as possible in the hospital, and then let her go home and kill her? Or did he plan to deliver the coup de grâce here? Or had he already done it? Peter felt insane thinking about it. He was beginning to believe it. His trip to the laboratory in Boston had given serious weight to the theory. He knew it couldn’t be true, but his mind was in a whirl now.

  When they left the hospital for dinner, the nurse said Maggie’s heart was doing better. For a while, the day before, all her systems seemed to be shaky. She was a little more stable now, except for her breathing and the ever-present risk of her lungs freezing, or a serious case of pneumonia, either of which would kill her.

  After dinner, Michael went home to Lisa, and Peter drove to the lake and found his nephew on the couch as soon as he opened the door. He was drinking a beer, and looked as exhausted as his uncle and father. He stood up as soon as Peter entered, and he looked saner than Peter remembered. He didn’t look crazy, but he had to be. All Peter could think of now was that they were testing Maggie’s hair to see if her husband was trying to kill her by poisoning her with weed killer. How surreal was that? It sounded totally insane to Peter.

  “Thank you for letting me stay here,” Bill said humbly.

  “I didn’t think you could stay at your father’s,” Peter said matter-of-factly. Peter’s head was reeling, and he had a massive headache. Without a word, he walked into the bathroom and took two aspirin.

  “How’s my mother?” Bill asked, looking worried. He had wanted to go to the hospital to see her, but had been afraid to run into his father.

  “About the same,” Peter said honestly. He didn’t want to lie to him. She was still in critical condition. “I thought of spending th
e night there. But your father went home tonight. And we should know everything we need to know in the morning.”

  “What do we do then?” Bill asked him, and Peter stared into space, thinking about it for a moment.

  “Hopefully nothing. With any luck, we won’t have to.”

  “And if we do?” Bill persisted.

  “We’ll figure it out then. I’m too tired tonight to think about it. You can sleep in my sons’ room.” He pointed in the right direction down the hall. “There’s a sleeping bag in the closet if you don’t want to make the bed.”

  “Thank you,” Bill said somberly, as Peter went to his own bedroom and closed the door. The nephew he scarcely knew had turned his life upside down ever since they’d met in London. And more than likely, he had led him on a wild-goose chase to save his mother from a danger that didn’t even exist. Peter lay on his bed with all his clothes on, and was asleep five minutes later.

  Peter awoke to the sound of his BlackBerry ringing at eight o’clock the next morning. “Mr. McDowell?” the voice at the other end asked him when he answered, and he responded with a deep affirmative rumble. “Tilton Labs here. We have the results for you on the paraquat ingestion.” Peter shook himself awake and sat upright. He wanted to be awake to hear this clearly. “The results are positive for human ingestion. The subject has a heavy dose on board, possibly lethal. I’d say it’s very close to lethal. The subject needs treatment immediately. I’ll e-mail you the report this morning.”

  “Could you do it right now? We need to take it to the authorities this morning,” he said, trying to sound official. His mind was reeling, and his heart was pounding. He wanted to cry.

  “Of course. I’ll have it to you in five minutes.” Peter stumbled out of bed and saw it appear on his e-mail, just as Bill came through the bedroom doorway. Like Peter, he was still wearing his clothes from the night before.

  “What is it?” his nephew asked him. He thought it was too early to be the lab, but Peter was looking at his e-mail with a grim expression, and hit the button on the printer. And then he turned to Bill.

  “I owe you an apology,” Peter said with a look of amazement. He still couldn’t believe it. But there was no doubt anymore. Bill wasn’t crazy. And it might be too late to save Maggie, but they had to try. “Your mother’s hair tested positive for paraquat, a possibly lethal dose or close to it. We have to get back to the hospital right away. What the fuck do we do now?” Peter said with tears in his eyes. He hadn’t expected this.

  Bill stared at Peter when he spoke to him, frozen for a minute. Bill had been so convinced of it, but suddenly it was real. They knew that they had to act quickly, but neither of them knew what to do first. They hadn’t eaten, and neither of them had showered or shaved. They stood staring at each other in disbelief for a long moment.

  “Where do we go? The hospital?” Bill asked him nervously. “The police?” Peter considered the question. It was hard to know what to do next. Peter didn’t trust Michael with Maggie at the hospital, but he wanted to get to the police and show them the lab report. He printed the e-mail, made two copies and held them in a trembling hand.

  “Police first. Then hospital,” Peter said as he sped into action, and both of them went to their rooms to shower and change. They were in Peter’s truck in five minutes, speeding from the lake to Ware.

  The two men hardly said a word to each other on the drive to town. Peter kept his foot on the gas, and Bill was staring out the window, as they both tried to absorb what had happened. Now that they knew for sure, Bill wasn’t angry—he was frightened for his mother, more than he’d ever been in his life. Every fear and suspicion he’d ever had, had suddenly become real. And Peter had stepped into the nightmare with him. And there was no way out. With the positive lab report, there was no waking up from this.

  They were at the police station in fifteen minutes, and Peter looked at his nephew long and hard. “Are you ready for this?” he asked him in a harsh tone. “They’re not going to believe us, you know. Your dad and the chief are good friends.” The police were going to have to check it out themselves. Peter just hoped they didn’t warn Michael. He was deathly afraid of what he would do to Maggie before he was stopped. And they had to stop him soon.

  “I’m ready,” Bill said in a shaking voice and followed his uncle out of the truck. Peter strode into the police station with a serious expression and asked to see the chief of police. He declined to tell the sergeant on duty what it was about and said that it was an urgent personal matter and gave his name. Jack Nelson came out of his office five minutes later with a look of fear, recognized both men immediately, and was instantly afraid they had come to tell him Maggie had died.

  “Maggie?” he said in a choked voice as Peter nodded.

  “May we speak to you alone?” Peter said tersely.

  “Of course,” the chief said sympathetically, led them into his office, and motioned to the chairs across from his desk. “I’m so sorry,” he said in a somber tone. “When did it happen?”

  “She’s not dead,” Peter said clearly, “but she could be very soon. We’ve come to see you about a serious matter. I know this will sound hard to believe, and I have no explanation for it myself. My nephew has been convinced that his father was poisoning his mother. He’s done considerable research on the Internet, and came up with a poison he was convinced my brother was using. I know it sounds like a crackpot scheme, and I thought so too. He convinced me to take some of Maggie’s hair to a toxicology lab in Boston yesterday and have it tested. I did, and we just got the report. Maggie has been given a potentially lethal dose of a weed killer called paraquat. She has enough in her system to kill her.” As he said it, he handed the lab report across Jack Nelson’s desk, and the chief’s eyes widened as he read it, and then he looked angrily back at Peter and then at Bill, who had been sitting there silently, looking distressed.

  “Are you both crazy? That’s ridiculous. Michael McDowell wouldn’t hurt anyone, least of all his wife. I’d stake my own life on that.” And then he narrowed his eyes as he looked at Peter and tossed the lab report on his desk. “I know you and your brother have had bad blood between you for years over your parents’ will.” Michael had told him all about it. “Maybe you’re trying to get even with him now with a bogus claim that he’s killing Maggie. I don’t believe it!” he shouted at Peter.

  “Neither did I,” Peter said quietly. “I didn’t want to believe it. I thought my nephew was nuts. He isn’t. And Maggie is in grave danger.”

  “What makes you think Michael did it?”

  “He’s been keeping my mother weak and sick for years,” Bill answered bravely. “And she’s been getting steadily worse since my grandfather died. He left her a lot of money. I think my father wants it. I think that’s why he married her. And now that she inherited it, he wants the money.” Bill spoke up in a serious tone, as Jack Nelson met his eyes squarely. He could see that they were both convinced, but he wasn’t, not by a long shot. He would never believe Michael capable of something like that, and he was going to prove it. He knew that Maggie’s father had left her the lumber mill and that she had sold it for a huge amount of money, but not in a million years would Jack Nelson ever believe that Michael would kill her to get it. Their accusation was outrageous, but with a lab report sitting on his desk, he couldn’t ignore it either. And he was furious about it. He hated the situation, and was convinced that Michael was being falsely accused and by his own son and brother, which made it even worse.

  “You have to stop Michael and protect Maggie,” Peter said seriously.

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job!” Jack shouted at him.

  “What are you going to do?” Peter persisted. He was anxious to get to the hospital before Michael could poison her again, or just kill her.

  “I’m going to run that test again, and make sure this lab report isn’t something you two cooked up. And I’ll get a search warrant on the house. I don’t even want to mention it to Michael. He’s got
enough to worry about right now with Maggie so sick. I’m not going to accuse him of poisoning her too. He’ll think I’m as off my rocker as you are.” For now, he wanted to protect Michael as much as Maggie. “And we’ll see what we have after that. And I’m warning you, if this is some kind of hoax to falsely accuse Michael, I’m going to bring charges against you both.” Both Peter and Bill nodded. They believed him. “Don’t either of you leave town.” Jack Nelson sounded harsh.

  “What are you going to do to protect Maggie?” Peter said, feeling desperate.

  “I have no reason to believe she needs protection from her husband for the moment. Even if she’s been poisoned, I have no evidence that he did it. I’ll let the hospital know we have this toxicology report, in case they want to do anything about it medically, and I’ll ask them not to tell Michael for now. That’s all I’m going to do until we repeat the test and I search the house.”

  “When are you going to do that?” Peter doggedly persisted. He was not intimidated by Jack Nelson, and he knew the wheels of justice turned slowly.

  “As soon as I get a search warrant,” Jack said, in an angry tone. It was obvious he didn’t believe Bill or Peter, but he couldn’t ignore what they’d said either. He was planning to call a judge for a search warrant as soon as they left his office, and he was going to have the hospital provide another sample of Maggie’s hair and send it to a police lab in Boston, and all of it without Michael’s knowledge. Jack Nelson felt like a traitor, but he had to do his job. Even if Michael was his friend, Peter had come to him with a toxicology report from a reputable lab, claiming Maggie was being poisoned. He doubted it was true, but he couldn’t just brush it off. Responsibly, he had to check it out. “I’ll get in touch with both of you,” he said as he stood up. They both gave him their cell phone numbers. Peter realized that he would be the only one protecting Maggie from Michael, until the police checked out his accusations. He hoped they’d do it quickly.