Elementary, My Dear Watkins

by Mindy Starns Clark

  Smiling at the thought of his incorrigible friend, Danny stepped away from the window, kicked off his shoes, and stretched out on the bed. He had a lot to do, but he was so tired that he thought maybe he’d grab a ten-minute nap and then he would get up and get rolling again.

  Just ten-minutes’ rest was all he needed.

  11

  The meeting in Jo’s grandmother’s office was adjourned without reaching a real resolution. At least they decided that the security at the estate would be tightened, and Eleanor said that she would make arrangements to stay posted on Bradford’s condition at the hospital, in case he regained consciousness and could supply them with more information about what he knew and had been planning to tell Jo. She also said she would sit down with Winnie and let her know the full story about what was going on.

  “The details of the trust were supposed to remain confidential until after my death,” Eleanor said. “But now that all of this is happening, I suppose the cat’s out of the bag.”

  Sidney said his goodbyes and left, and though Jo’s father tried to make a quick exit as well, Jo came hobbling outside after him, asking him to wait, her bodyguard close behind.

  “Daddy, I think you and I need to speak privately about the whole Bradford wedding issue, which is far from being resolved.”

  “We’ll have to deal with it later,” Kent replied, continuing on to his car, which was parked in the front circle. “Right now, I’ve got to get to work. I have an important meeting.”

  He got in and drove off without waiting for a reply or even looking his daughter in the eye. Jo stood on the bottom step and watched him go until his car was out of sight.

  She was hurt, yes, but she just wasn’t surprised enough to cry.

  “You okay, miss?” the bodyguard asked.

  Jo glanced at him, mortified that someone else had been a witness to her father’s cruel brush off. Then again, what did it matter? She’d been treated that way by Kent Tulip her whole life, like a lesser being, like someone who was worth dealing with only after all other matters of importance had taken priority.

  “Can I get you anything?” the bodyguard tried again, gesturing toward the house.

  “Yes,” she replied, standing up straight and squaring her shoulders. “Tell Fernando to bring the car around. We’re going to Pennsylvania.”

  Danny’s ten minutes of relaxation turned into a deep sleep—so deep, in fact, that the next thing he knew, it was an hour and a half later and Luc was shaking him awake. After that, Danny had to rush to be ready to go in time. As he returned from a quick shower wearing slacks and a button-down shirt, he was dismayed to see Luc sporting a tuxedo.

  “Oh, no,” Danny said, tucking his toiletries into the zippered pocket of his suitcase. “Is this a formal event?”

  “I think so.”

  Polishing his dress shoes near the window, Luc seemed distant and preoccupied. Danny continued to get ready, pulling a slightly wrinkled tie from his duffel bag, looping it around his neck, and wishing he’d thought to throw in his tuxedo for good measure. He wondered what Mr. Bashiri might wear.

  They ran into the photographer in the hallway to see that he was dressed all in black in a high-collared crisp linen outfit that was neither suit nor tuxedo but seemed perfect for the occasion just the same. The fund-raiser was at a deluxe hotel within walking distance, so the three of them set off, Danny carrying most of the equipment and Luc making light conversation with Mr. Bashiri as they went. Along the darkened street they went right past the visa expeditor’s office, though now the lights were all off and a closed sign was in the window.

  “Hey, I saw you going back in here this afternoon,” Danny said to Luc as they walked past. “Did you make a date with the woman after all?”

  Luc looked sharply at Danny and then away.

  “How did you see me?”

  “Our hotel room faces this street,” Danny explained. “I waved at you but you weren’t looking.”

  “Yes, well,” Luc replied, forcing a smile, “Eh, I let her down easy. Told her I wouldn’t be in town long enough to get together after all. I did not think I could get past that crooked smile.”

  “Whatever happened with the young woman you met on the train?” Mr. Bashiri asked.

  “The Dutch one, from the compartment at the end of the hall?” Luc replied, this time his grin genuine. “If all goes as planned, we will be meeting on the Paradeplatz tonight after we finish at the gala. She is going to show me the Zurich nightlife.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Danny said, so glad that his dating days with anyone except Jo were over. He’d spent years going out with different women, only to find that the one he really wanted had been under his nose the whole time.

  Once the three men reached the gala, they got right to work, again trying for photos that would emphasize the opulence of life here in Zurich. Danny took care of the lighting, while Mr. Bashiri chose the different angles and cameras and took the pictures. Luc handled the reflector screens and the crowd, mostly trying to get them to ignore the fact that they were being photographed. After a while, Danny had to stifle a smile at the sight of all the elegant women and well-dressed men who pretended not to care that they were being photographed for Scene It—all the while doing everything they could to place themselves within range of the camera. One man nearly danced his wife into the buffet—and ended up having his picture snapped as he used a linen napkin to wipe cocktail sauce from her backside.

  At one point an older woman decked out in emeralds spoke warmly with Mr. Bashiri, like an old friend. Later, the same woman cornered Danny out of earshot and asked about the photographer.

  “You’re his assistant, aren’t you? How is he? Really?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Kalunga. He looks so old, so sad. I wonder how much longer he’ll continue to punish himself.”

  Punish himself? For what?

  She started to walk away, and then she turned back and placed a wrinkled but heavily bejeweled hand on Danny’s arm.

  “Take good care of him, would you?” she asked. “He’s not just a sweet man, he’s also one of the most gifted artists I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.”

  “I agree. I have great respect for Mr. Bashiri.”

  Absently, she reached up to adjust a huge diamond-and-emerald tiara that was nestled in her elaborate hairdo.

  “So many people blamed him for what happened with his family, but I’ve always felt that it wasn’t his fault. Sometimes life is so unpredictable. Don’t you think?”

  Danny wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to, but it didn’t seem prudent to stand there and discuss Mr. Bashiri’s personal life with a stranger. He nodded and tried to think of an innocuous reply.

  “It sure is,” he said finally. “Life is funny.”

  Then he excused himself and went back to work, wondering if he’d ever know what she’d meant.

  The back of the limousine felt huge and empty. Jo sat beside the window and rested her head against the beige leather seat, watching absently as they crossed into Pennsylvania. Her bodyguard had taken the front passenger seat, and through the soundproof glass that separated her from the front of the vehicle, she could see him chatting with Fernando.

  Though nothing of value had been accomplished in the meeting in her grandmother’s office, at least the whole situation was more clear than it had been before. Jo reviewed that meeting in her mind, counting off the things she now knew.

  Jo knew why her parents had wanted Bradford to marry her.

  She knew also how her marital status would impact the distribution of shares of Bosworth Industries upon her grandmother’s death.

  Jo knew that the “something big” at the company to which Bradford had referred involved a decision that had divided upper management into diametrically opposing positions, locking them in a stalemate that needed to be broken one way or another.

  Finally, she knew that killing her and then killing her grandmother would be one way to break that s
talemate—something that would have a favorable impact not just for her uncle and cousin, but for an entire list of Bosworth executives.

  In other words, if that’s why she was in danger of being killed, there were so many suspects involved that she had no recourse at all but to stay safe until the entire matter had passed or until the killer was rooted out some other way. It wasn’t as though she could go out investigating on her own. In the past year, Jo had become a pretty good sleuth on behalf of others. How ironic that she was helpless to do anything about it now that she was in danger herself.

  Jo needed to feel constructive, to be in control of something, so she pulled a pen and some paper from her purse and began to make a list of all that she would retrieve from the house once they arrived there. She listed clothing, toiletries, and all the items in her office she would want to have in order to set up a temporary workspace at her grandmother’s house.

  At least that part wouldn’t be too hard. Since the explosion, Jo had significantly simplified her work schedule because of her health. She had taken a leave of absence from her part-time job teaching home economics at the high school and from her weekly radio show where she answered caller’s questions about household hints. She had even put on hold her agent’s efforts in securing a book deal, syndication for her column, and a reality TV series about home care. All she was left with now was the daily “Tips from Tulip” column in the newspaper and her online household hints blog, both of which were easy to keep up with.

  Her life had also been simplified through the efforts of her friends, who had all been a huge help to her since she got out of the hospital. Most of Jo’s clothes had been destroyed in the fire, so Marie had done the footwork of gathering a new wardrobe for her. Putting the word out for castoffs and donations among their more well-dressed size-five and six friends and fellow church members, Marie had managed to collect tons of stuff, much of it nicer than the clothes Jo had lost.

  Jo’s friend Anna, who was a lawyer, had stepped in and handled several legal and financial matters for her, most notably being a bulldog with Jo’s insurance company to make sure that they paid out her homeowner’s policy quickly and completely. Once the big check was in hand, however, and Anna had tried to talk to Jo about her plans for rebuilding the house, Jo had put her off. She wasn’t ready to deal with that yet.

  For the time being, she had simply been holing up in Danny’s house, trying to regain her strength and get completely well with as few outside distractions as possible. She never could have imagined what it would be like to have her health blown out from under her, much less how it would feel to lose her home and most of her possessions to a fire. Even now, six weeks later, Jo would think of something else that had been lost to the flames, and she would be overwhelmed with sadness. From what she’d read, that wasn’t at all unusual and in fact might even continue for a while. Material goods didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, Jo knew, but it was still hard to let go of all the family photographs and mementos and little treasures she had lost.

  At least the fire had spared her office, which was in a separate building out behind her house. All of her notes and writings and archives were still there, intact, thank goodness. Jo thought of the column as the legacy she’d been given by her paternal grandmother, and it would have broken her heart to lose that.

  Thinking of her Nana now, Jo smiled, her heart filled with a rush of warmth.

  I’m not worried about leaving you, Jo Jo, her Nana had said on one of her last days before dying of cancer. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, a good heart, and a rock-solid faith in God. In this life, if you’ve got all that, you’ll do okay.

  Jo blinked away a single tear now, missing the woman with an ache from somewhere deep inside. In the last six weeks, Jo had had to part with her home, her health, her boyfriend, and almost her life.

  “I hope you were right, Nana,” she whispered out loud. “Because these days, my head, heart, and faith in God are about all I have left.”

  “Let’s measure with the goniometer,” Yasmine said, “then you can give me fifteen minutes on the bike.”

  “Okay.”

  Alexa stood on the exercise mat and raised her left arm straight up in the air so that the physical therapist could measure her range of motion. As always, the left side was a perfectly normal 180 degrees. The right side, though, still had a little way to go. Alexa raised that arm as high as she could and held it there shakily while Yasmine adjusted the device under her arm.

  “Excellent, Alexa. You’re at one sixty-five,” Yasmine said as she sat at the desk, flipping her long, black braid out of the way and making notations on the chart.

  Alexa climbed onto the exercise bicycle and started pedaling. She would never admit it to anyone, of course, because it was way too babyish, but sometimes when no one was paying attention, Alexa would turn on the box fan, point it toward herself, and pedal as fast as she could, imagining that the wind in her hair was the real wind blowing past as she sped down the road. She had never ridden on a real bike, so she used this one to pretend. She was studying about Europe with Mr. Preston, and sometimes if she closed her eyes she could picture herself in London or Paris or Rome, maybe pedaling down to the Sistine Chapel and taking a look at its famous ceiling, or swinging around the Louvre and giving a hand to the Venus de Milo.

  “Up your tension there, honey, and slow it down,” Yasmine said as she finished her notations and closed the file. “Focus on the program. You seem a million miles away.”

  Alexa adjusted the controls so that it was a bit harder to pedal. It wasn’t as much fun that way, and she could feel the pull in her right leg.

  “I was just thinking about real bike riding. It must be fun, if you can keep your balance.”

  “You’ve never ridden a real bicycle before?”

  “Where I’m from? Duh. Where am I going to ride it? On the Turnpike? Maybe the railroad tracks?”

  Alexa’s voice sounded a bit sharp, but at least she got her point across.

  “Maybe I could ask Dr. Stebbins about getting a bicycle for you here,” Yasmine said. “There’s certainly room to ride around on the estate. It’s not hard to learn.”

  “Sounds great,” Alexa replied, but she knew better than to get her hopes up. “Dr. Stebbins never lets me do anything dangerous. He already said no to skateboarding.”

  “Bicycling’s a lot safer than that. Dr. Stebbins would probably approve as long as you always wear a helmet. Some of the others have real bikes, and it seems to be helping with coordination and balance, not to mention their gross motor skills.”

  Yasmine put away the goniometer and then the rubber bands, not looking at Alexa, obviously not realizing what she had just said. Some of the others.

  There were others?

  Others like her?

  Heart pounding, Alexa spoke, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “Yeah, so how many others are there? Dr. Stebbins never said.”

  Yasmine instantly stiffened, and Alexa knew that she had asked the wrong question.

  “I, uh, I just meant other people who’ve had cerebral hemorrhage,” Yasmine said lightly after a pause, closing the cabinet.

  Alexa slowed the pedaling until she stopped. She stared at her physical therapist.

  “No, you didn’t. That’s not what you meant at all. You meant others in my same situation, others who got treated with Fibrin-X, like me.”

  Yasmine turned to her, her expression grim.

  “No, you misunderstood.”

  Yasmine busied herself with straightening the room, nervously adjusting the papers in Alexa’s file and sliding the chair up under the desk. Alexa watched her for a minute, and then she climbed off the bike and simply stood there.

  “If you knew what it felt like to be me,” she said slowly, “you’d tell me the truth. I have to know, Yasmine. Are there others? I’m not the only one?”

  Finally Yasmine stopped puttering and focused on Alexa.

  “If there were—a
nd I’m only saying if—I couldn’t tell you that anyway. That would have to come straight from Dr. Stebbins.”

  “He says I’m one of a kind. A medical marvel. I thought he meant it literally.”

  “You are a medical marvel.”

  “But I’m not one of a kind, am I? There are more. Tell me. You’ve met them. You work with them! Are there kids? My age? Kids who know what I’m going through?”

  “Alexa, please, I can’t—”

  “Tell me!” Alexa cried, hating the desperation in her own voice. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how miserable she was to think she was the only person in the world who had ever been through what she’d been through. “Where are they? Are they close? Do they live around here?”

  “Alexa, you’ve got to bring this up with Dr. Stebbins.”

  “But he doesn’t want me to know! He doesn’t care how this feels. He just wants to do his stupid evaluations. It doesn’t matter to him that I’m a freak.”

  “You are not a freak.”

  “That’s how it feels! And he doesn’t care! Neither do you!”

  Alexa stomped off to a far corner of the room and sat down on the low, wide window ledge. Tucking her legs against her body, she wrapped her arms around her knees and began rocking back and forth.

  “Dr. Stebbins and I both care very deeply about you,” Yasmine said, stepping closer. She went on to give Alexa some spiel about ethics and procedures and confidentiality laws. “I’m afraid our hands are tied.”

  Alexa knew enough to realize that was probably true. Still, there had to be a way to find out.

  “What if he didn’t have to tell me?” she asked, her mind racing. “What if I found out on my own?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if I looked at his files or read the data or something? Then I could find out without him having to say a word.”

  “That’s against the law, honey. Besides, all of the data is probably under lock and key down at the pharmaceutical company. That sort of information isn’t just lying around. Patient rosters are highly confidential, especially in new drug development.”