Healing Waters (18 page)

I decided not to unpack my suitcase. My small collection of clothes would have looked pathetic hanging in the walk-in closet the size of our master bedroom at home. Everything in the room—the multiple layers of queen-sized bedding, the wide chair, the window seat, and the chaise longue—was some shade of white. I didn't want to touch anything for fear of leaving a sweat mark on it.

I went off on my quest for treats for Bethany.

On the same level was a home theater—which had neither a candy counter nor a popcorn machine. Another room was full of what appeared to be untouched toys and a TV only a few inches smaller than the theater screen. That area, too, sadly lacked snacks. I found four bedroom suites, two of which appeared to be unoccupied. One was apparently Bethany's, because I heard Didi-the-housekeeper talking in a too-loud, I'm-speaking-to-a-kid voice.

I didn't want to show up without the goods, so I took a back set of steps to the lower level, an area with a ping-pong table, a jukebox loaded up with Sonia's own CDs, and a full kitchen. Hope soaring, I went through all the cabinets and the refrigerator, but found only bottled water and energy bars, which I knew from experience tasted like someone's flip-flop.

Further inspection of the lower level led to another suite, which did appear to have someone staying in it, since a quick peek revealed clothes strewn across the bed and a towel on the floor. The only other room down there was a mini Gold's Gym, complete with shower, dressing rooms, and sauna.

From there I went out onto the lower veranda. I'd already forgotten how Hades-hot it was. The sun threatened to blister my skin right through my black sleeves. Above me, on probably another porch, I could hear Sonia talking silkily.

“I've told you, I don't get hate mail. Why would I?”

The next voice was unmistakably Agent Deidre Schmacker's. “You've never heard anything from a Clay Burwell?”

“Who would that be?”

“Your heckler out there.”

“That poor sad thing.”

“He says your program kept his mother from seeking proper medical treatment. You don't know anything about that?”

“It sounds to me like either his mama misunderstood what Abundant Living teaches, or poor Clay hasn't been delivered from his grief. I suspect it's the latter.”

“So he has never threatened you?”

“No one has ever threatened me. No one is out to hurt me, Agent Schmacker.”

I could imagine Sonia sitting up straight like a queen. If she even could at this point, from the way she was fading. I needed her lying down and hydrated. I looked around for a way to reach the upper deck.

I stopped when Schmacker said, “It may not be you they were trying to hurt. Otto Underwood could have been the target.”

“My precious Otto? That is even more ridiculous.”

I heard papers rustle.

“We've received his autopsy report as well as a full tox screen,” Agent Schmacker said. “They show that Mr. Underwood had cyanide salts in his system.”

In spite of the heat, I froze.

Cyanide?

“Poison. The ME initially found 70 percent of Mr. Underwood's blood hemoglobin to be methemoglobin.”

I flipped through my mental textbook. It had been years since I'd studied anything related to hematology, but I remembered methemoglobin as a form of hemoglobin that couldn't carry oxygen. Two percent was normal.

“That wouldn't be surprising with smoke inhalation,” Schmacker said, “but as you'll recall, I told you Otto Underwood never inhaled any smoke. He died before the plane ever hit the ground. He ingested cyanide.”

“There is absolutely no way Otto poisoned himself,” Sonia said. Her voice was tissue thin.

“People seldom do. More than likely, someone else did it for him. Someone who had access to him or something he ingested. Unfortunately, any food you had on the plane was destroyed in the fire.”

More rustling paper.

“I have a warrant to search the premises for any household products containing cyanide—rat poison, for instance, or a pesticide you would use to kill ants.”

“We don't have anything like that here.”

“I don't imagine you do a lot of pest control, Ms. Cabot, so I'm not sure you'd know that.”

“Are you accusing my gardener?”

“We're not accusing anyone.”

I could imagine Agent Schmacker's eyes dropping at the corners.

“Then what are you saying?”

“I'm saying what I've
been
saying to you, Ms. Cabot. Your plane crash was not accidental, and we need to find out why. I don't think I can do that without your help.”

Sonia didn't answer.

“Ms. Cabot, are you all right?”

I could hear Schmacker's alarm.

“What's going on?” I called up to her. I looked around wildly for a way to get to the upper deck and again found none.

“It's okay, Lucia,” Sonia said, though she was clearly less than okay. “I think it's just too hot out here.”

Ya think?
Burn patients can't handle heat.

“Get her inside,” I barked at Agent Schmacker. “Now.”

I bolted for the inside door, tore up another set of stairs, and found myself in a kitchen. Francesca, Georgia, and three other women in various stages of anorexia looked up from counters covered in casseroles.

“Well, hey, Lucia,” somebody said.

“How do I get to the deck?” I said, and then ignored the answer as I careened across the floor toward the sound of voices—Deidre Schmacker's and Sonia's and more.

When I reached them, a tall, long-limbed man was carrying Sonia across a palatial living room, with Roxanne on one side and Marnie on the other. Deidre Schmacker led the way, cell phone in hand.

“Should I call 911?” she said to me.

“No!” Sonia said from the tall man's arms. “Sully, you can put me down.”

“So you can fall on your face?”

The man winced briefly at his own faux pas and hitched Sonia up tighter. “Are you in charge here?” he said to me.

“Yes, she is,” Marnie said.

“Then where do you want this?”

The man—Sully, Sonia had called him—smiled a wide, almost sloppy grin. Brown eyes seemed to be trying to sparkle at me.

“In her bedroom,” I said, “wherever that is.”

“Does this place have a navigation system?” he said.

Marnie giggled, and Roxanne laughed—louder than she needed to, in my opinion—and Sonia pointed a weak arm to the left.

“You don't need an ambulance, then?” Deidre Schmacker said to me.

I shook my head as I followed the mob. “And if you don't need Sonia any more today . . .”

“No, but we will be searching—”

“I heard,” I said.

She nodded. “I'll call her. We're not done.”

I was about to be. I left Agent Schmacker to find her own way to the cyanide and bolted after Sonia.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

S
ully carried a protesting Sonia to a hospital bed that looked grossly out of place amid the heavy gold décor of the suite little Miss Thing led them to.

The girl, whom Sonia referred to as Marnie, looked so exhausted, she probably talked incessantly just to keep herself awake. Dark circles under her eyes and two vertical lines that dug into the skin between her brows made her look, up close, like a stressed-out thirty-year-old, though she couldn't have been more than twenty-two.

In spite of her nonstop directions, however, he was sure the woman in black he'd seen on their arrival was the one heading up this operation.

Sully stopped beside the bed. “This where you want it?” he said to her.

Woman in Black nodded.

“Just put me on the chaise longue,” Sonia said.

Sully grinned and deposited her on the bed. “I'm not arguing with the Boss Lady.” He put out his hand to the woman. “Sullivan Crisp,” he said.

The palm she put into his, with obvious reluctance, was damp, and she pulled it away as quickly as manners would allow. Blue, very blue, eyes failed to meet his as she said in a low, husky voice, “I'm Lucia Coffey.”

“You've never met my sister, Sully?” Sonia said.

Sister? He'd heard Sonia talk about recovering from the grief of her mother's death and the pain of being estranged from her father, all of which she claimed God had healed her from in abundant ways, but he'd never heard her mention a sibling. Evidently the sister had caused Sonia no suffering worth mentioning.

“We have to get you cooled down,” the mysterious sister said in a clipped Mid-Atlantic accent decidedly different from Sonia's Southern drawl. “Marnie, could you get some water, please?”

“I absolutely can. Do you want ice in it?”

“No.”

“You want a whole pitcher, or just a glass?”

“Marnie, you're about to get on my last nerve,” Sonia said.

“I'll get it, darlin'.” Roxanne smiled knowingly at Sully and brushed her hand across his arm in passing, as if they were old friends who shared inside information.

“Hat off, shoes off,” Lucia said as she relieved Sonia of both.

“If you're going to start disrobing I'd better leave,” Sully said.

“No, Sully, don't be silly.” Sonia beckoned to him with the same arm Lucia tried to pull from a filmy sleeve. “You have to at least stay for supper.”

Sully grinned. “That's up to Lucia.”

The woman-named-Lucia glanced at him, and Sully saw a flicker of surprise in her eyes. Just as quickly, she went back to pulling Sonia out of extraneous clothes and administering the fluids Roxanne finally showed up with and directing Marnie to the bag that held the medications.

“I don't need any pain meds,” Sonia said. “I'm fine. Sully, tell them I'm fine.”

Marnie and Roxanne looked at him as if he were about to deliver a medical verdict. He caught Lucia pursing a bee-stung mouth as she took a pill container from Marnie and dumped two tablets into a paper cup.

“Is she fine, Lucia?” Sully said.

She met his eyes for the first time, and Sully caught his breath. Holy crow. She looked right into him, gaze bright with an intelligence she couldn't hide, though she obviously tried to. A rose flush spread over her round face as she surveyed him. He wasn't sure he avoided blushing himself. Sonia Cabot's sister was even more beautiful than she was.

“No,” Lucia said, “she isn't
fine
. And if I don't get some of this into her and get that face bathed . . .”

“There'll be no living with her,” Sully finished for her.

“Now, I haven't heard Sonia complain one time,” Roxanne said. “Bless her heart.”

Sully sure would have been complaining. With the hat off, he could see the tangle of scars on Sonia's nearly hairless scalp and the painful distortions of her face through the mask. Most disconcerting of all were her eyes. Though they moved constantly, they never blinked, and when she wasn't talking or actively listening, they took on a glazed, blank stare, the way eyes must look when they were safely tucked behind eyelids. Sully fought back a nauseous rise of anxiety.

Lucia put the pill cup in Sonia's lap and said to Roxanne, “There are some straws in the bag.”

“Marnie.” Sonia felt for what remained of her hair with her hands, which were a tender-looking pink.

The girl turned from the window where she'd been peeking out from behind the heavy drapes. “There are two guys going into your garage, Sonia,” she said. “Do you want reporters in there?”

“They aren't reporters.” Lucia gave Marnie a shut-up look.

“Where I want reporters is in the Gathering Room,” Sonia said. “Go make sure it looks decent. Have Didi help you.”

Roxanne said, “The living room would be bet—”

“Stop. Just stop.” Lucia put up a hand, which brought the room to silence.

Sully folded his arms and tried not to grin. He was really starting to like this woman.

“Are you actually planning to talk to reporters right now?” Lucia said to her sister.

“I'm going to hold a little press conference, yes.” Sonia's voice took a sharp turn. “You don't understand,
sorella
. I can't let them go off with just footage of that young man yelling obscenities.”

Or, Sully suspected, film of her without her protective hat and a child screaming in holy terror at the sight of her. The urge to grin faded.

“I want to set the record straight.”

“You're in no shape to do that,” Lucia said.

Sully looked around the room.

Marnie looked dumbfounded.

Roxanne bordered on disgust.

Sonia herself paused only for an instant before she said, “You take care of me physically,
sorella.
God's taking care of the rest. Now, Roxanne, what do you think about dimming the lights, and I'll sit this way.”

She positioned herself at an angle away from them.

Sully bit back the words that would tell her that no matter how she sat, the television audience would see that Sonia Cabot was a frightening distortion of her former self.

Lucia picked up the untouched pill cup. “Then you have to take these.”

“After the interview. They make me weird. And don't say it,
sorella
.” Sonia gave her a disfigured smile. “I know you think I've always been weird.”

Her attempt at sisterly camaraderie appeared to be wasted on Lucia. She set the cup on the table beside the bed, and Sully watched as she visibly accomplished a self-conscious stillness.

Roxanne and Marnie and Sonia continued their planning as if Lucia had disappeared.

“Is there anything I can do to help you?” Sully said to her.

“Talk her out of this,” Lucia said, and then looked astonished that she'd answered him.

They both watched Roxanne and Marnie scurry from the room like first graders, each wanting to be first in line.