The old physician laughed. “There’s nothing he
Mrs. Leeman cracked the door open. “Dr. Gage?”
The two conferred for a moment in low whispers. As the nurse closed the door again, Gage sank into a chair, put his head in his hands.
Linda’s wide forehead wrinkled with concern. “What is it, Dr. Gage?”
“Apparently, the cardiologist also wondered about the strange heart rhythm.” Gage’s pale eyes were focused somewhere beyond the far wall. “He ordered a toxin study on Mr. Thorndyke and Felicia Martinez.”
On the table, his bony hands clutched the air. “Both of them are suffering from massive arsenic toxicity.”
Over the public address system came a woman’s carefully measured voice. “Code Blue, Intensive Care Unit. Code Blue, Intensive Care Unit.”
They scrambled from the room.
“Thorndyke was flat-line when we got there, and he never came back,” Plato told Cal later that morning. “We tried everything. There wasn’t even fibrillation. He was long gone.”
Even though she didn’t know Thorndyke very well, Cal was visibly shaken. She was camped out in an old pair of sweats on the living room sofa; the color in her face matched the vanilla pillowslip.
A pharmacopoeia of stomach remedies was scattered on the coffee table. Propping herself gingerly on an elbow, she closed her eyes and pointed randomly at the drugs. Opening them again, she chose a bottle of pink fluid, swigged a few gulps, then sank back with a groan.
“Why don’t you go to someone about that?” Plato asked. He hated seeing sick people. Just watching her made him queasy.
“I’m doing fine,” Cal sighed. Her bright brown eyes had faded to a shade somewhere between dirt and old asphalt. Beneath them, her cheeks were dark hollows. Frizzled brown hair crackled when she moved.
“If that’s what you call fine, I’d hate to be one of your patients.”
“That’s the beauty of pathology,” she said, with a grin that was more like a grimace. “None of my patients whines about my ‘setting a poor example.’ Besides, staph food poisoning is self-limited, as long as dehydration is controlled. I’m maintaining my fluids.”
“Yeah. With Pepto-Bismol and Mylanta. Bismuth and aluminum and magnesium. You’re going to rust.”
“Lucky dog. Just because you don’t like seafood.” Cal sobered suddenly. “What about the maid — what was her name?”
“Felicia Martinez,” he answered. “She did all right, at first. For a while, we almost thought she was going to make it.”
He shivered, remembering.
“What’s wrong?”
“The last time we shocked her. Right before we lost her for good.” Plato frowned, trying to picture it. “I’ve never seen it happen before. Her eyes — they opened up, and she was awake. Wide awake. Just for a second or two.”
He shoved a few bottles aside and sat on the coffee table. “She grabbed the arm of the poor intern doing CPR. Grabbed her coat. Looked right into her eyes and started mumbling something. Over and over again.”
“What was it?” Color had suddenly returned to Cal’s face. “Did you hear it? What did she say?”
“Well, it was pretty hard to make out. Something like ‘Chant’ or ‘Chan-ger.’ ”
“She spoke with an accent. Chan...” Cal gasped. “How about ‘Jan’?”
Her husband nodded. “You’re not the first to think of that. There were eight people in that room. Half of them are convinced Felicia was saying ‘Jan.’ I’m not so sure.”
She shook her head. “I can’t see it. To kill her husband that way. Jan just isn’t that kind of person. Is she?”
“Who knows?” he replied. “But it provides a very simple solution. Jan Thorndyke was a pharmacist at the hospital before she met Rufus.”
Cal nodded her head, sank back in the sofa. “But maybe the solution’s a little
They were quiet for a while, and Cal’s eyes drifted closed. Watching her in the stillness, Plato heard the soft ticks of the grandfather clock by the fireplace, the gentle hiss of a summer shower on the courtyard outside the open french doors.
A slamming car door interrupted his thoughts. He walked to the front window. A blue and white police cruiser with gold county sheriff’s stars was parked in the drive. Up the walk slumped a redhaired, gray-bearded dwarf in a rumpled mackintosh he wore summer or winter, rain or shine.
Ian Donal Cameron. “Don” when they wanted to irritate him. “Ian” when they didn’t.
Plato opened the door before he could knock.
“Marley, my lad!” Cameron’s teeth gleamed in a tobacco-stained grin.
“Come on in.”
The sheriff doffed his hat inside the doorway, shrugged his coat onto a chair, and scavenged his pockets for a pipe. Lighting it, he glanced at his friend.
“Put on a bit of weight, haven’t you?” he snickered, tapping Plato’s paunch with the back of his hand. The smoke circled his head like fog over a low hill, almost obscuring the bald spot. A frostline of white roots surrounded the peak.
