Heart Failure (29 page)

Carrie knew what she had to do, but she crammed a full-fledged argument with herself into the few seconds that followed Rob’s request. Part of her longed for a quiet half hour to recharge her emotional and physical batteries before she returned to the clinic for the afternoon. On the other hand, Carrie recognized this encounter as a tailor-made opportunity to embark on the task she’d set for herself last night: find out more about Rob Cole.

She gestured to the empty chair. “Sure, Rob. Have a seat.”

Rob unloaded his food and looked around for somewhere to put his empty tray. Finally he shrugged and shoved it under his chair.

What if Rob was the shooter? Would this encounter put her in danger? No, the tables around her were filled with potential witnesses. Oh, if this were a spy story, Rob might try to touch her with the poisoned tip of an umbrella, but it wasn’t. This was real life. And the longer she hesitated, the less likely he was to open up to the questions she knew she had to ask.

She was surprised when Rob closed his eyes and bowed his head over his food. His lips moved, although he said nothing. The grace probably lasted less than fifteen seconds, but in that short period of time Carrie found herself rethinking her opinion of Rob Cole.

Carrie took the first bite of her sandwich, chewed, and swallowed while she pondered how to work her way into her questions. Before she could put down her fork, Rob gave her the opening she needed.

“I’m sort of glad this seat was available,” he said around a bite of burger. “I’ve wanted the chance to get better acquainted. But I’m afraid I’ve put you off, the way I’ve gone about it.”

This was certainly a different Rob from the brash, almost intrusive EMT she’d seen before. “You have to admit, Rob, that all our interactions have seemed more like flirting than getting to know each other.”

“I know. Sometimes I come off that way, but I don’t mean to. My therapist says it’s a defense mechanism.”

“Why don’t we start fresh?” Carrie said. “Get to know each other.”

“I understand you used to be married. What happened?”

Well, he certainly didn’t lob her an easy question to start. Carrie felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. She’d kept most of this locked up for the better part of two years. Could she share it now? With a man who might be trying to kill her? Her gut tightened when she realized the only way to find out about him was to make the trade.

Carrie closed her eyes for a moment as the memories came flooding back. “John was a general surgeon, in the same group where I practice.” She told him of the fatigue, the struggle to get her husband to see a doctor, the eventual diagnosis of Ebstein’s anomaly.

Rob raised his eyebrows. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that.”

It had been hard for Carrie to share the story with Mr. McDonald. It was pure torture to tell it to Rob. “What John had—what was causing his spells of fatigue—were runs of tachycardia. The runs were so brief I never picked up on the rapid heart rate. Then they changed to ventricular tachycardia.”

Rob gave a low whistle. “People can die from V tach. What happened?”

Carrie laid out the events in a flat voice: unsuccessful attempts to control the problem with medications, the failure of cardioversion with an electrical current, and eventually the transvenous radiofrequency ablation—the procedure to destroy the focus of heart muscle that threatened John’s life.

Finally she bowed her head and squeezed her eyes shut. She wouldn’t cry in front of Rob. She wouldn’t. In a moment she looked up and blinked hard before saying, “The catheter punctured one of John’s coronary arteries. It’s a one-in-a-million
thing—but it happened to my husband. They rushed him to surgery to repair it, but it was too late. He died.”

“I’m sorry.” Rob’s simple response seemed sincere.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m trying to move on.” She forced a smile. “How about you? Where are you from? What brought you to Jameson?”

Rob took his time swallowing a bite of sandwich and washed it down with water. He sighed. “I grew up in a small suburb of Chicago. Small family—mother, dad, one sister. My dad died the day I was supposed to graduate high school. That turned my world upside down. Instead of college, I started work at a local hospital. Then I found out I could take a night class and become an EMT. It took awhile, but I got through it and even got certified as a paramedic.”

“And I’m glad you did,” Carrie said. “You’re an excellent one.”

“Thanks.” Rob acknowledged the compliment with a small nod. “My mom remarried, and things were going better. Then—” He shook his head, emptied his water glass, looked away. It took him a minute to regain his composure. “Then my stepdad . . . he did something awful.”

Carrie looked at him expectantly. She raised her eyebrows but didn’t speak.
Let him get it out. Don’t force it
.

Rob pursed his lips and ducked his head. He was silent for a moment. When he looked up again, tears glistened in the corners of his eyes. “He did something so awful that I changed my name and left town.”

Carrie felt as though she’d just entered a minefield, where careful steps were necessary, and one misstep would spell disaster. Rob had given her the opening she needed, but she
had the feeling that if she asked the wrong question, took him in the wrong direction, he’d clam up and she might never get the answers she needed. She needed to come at it slowly. “How did you end up in Jameson?”

Rob kept his head down. “There are some online sites that list EMT jobs. This one looked good. I always wanted to see Texas. And Jameson was a long way from where I’d been living.”

She bought time with a swallow of iced tea, then centered the glass on the napkin beneath it. “Would you like to tell me why you left?”

He shook his head. “This is silly. We started out trying to get to know each other, and now I’m playing true confessions. You don’t want to hear this.” He shoved back his chair as though ready to spring from it.

Carrie put one hand on his wrist. “Rob, you’ve said you wanted to get closer to me. Maybe I feel the same way too. But we’ve never had the time or been in the right situation.” For a moment she felt a twinge of guilt for the way she was manipulating him. Then she realized that he might be the same man who’d been trying to kill her and Adam.
Forgive me, John. Forgive me, Adam. You know I don’t mean this
. “I’ve told you about the biggest loss in my life. But what I haven’t said is that now I’m trying to go forward, maybe even let someone into my world again. It could be you, but I can’t know unless you tell me more about yourself.”

Rob’s expression was hard to read, and his tone of voice was neutral as well. “What about Adam Davidson?”

She worked to put a frown on her face. “I don’t know what kind of trouble Adam’s in, but it’s almost gotten me killed three times now.”

“So there’s nothing between you?”

“Let’s just say I’m keeping my options open.”

Rob eased back into his chair. He placed his hands flat on the tabletop for support as he leaned toward her. “Maybe you’re right. It’s time to let you know about the real me.”

He met Carrie’s eyes, but she couldn’t read his expression. “What my stepdad did—”

The strident tones of a pager pierced the lunchtime noise of the food court and stopped Rob in mid-sentence. He frowned, pulled the instrument from his belt, and glanced at the display. In one motion he shoved back from the table and stood. “Sorry. Guess lunch is over. Got an emergency call.” He grabbed his tray, loaded it with his dirty dishes, and turned to go. Two steps away, he said over his shoulder, “Let’s continue this sometime soon. I’ll call you.”

Carrie’s stomach churned, and she struggled not to bring up the few bites of lunch she’d managed to choke down. As she watched him hurry away, Carrie had mixed emotions about her encounter with Rob Cole. She’d been close to finding out what she needed to know about him, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it.

TWENTY

AT MID-AFTERNOON ADAM WAS AT HIS DESK, A CUP OF COFFEE AT his elbow, poring over the draft of a new will for Elwood Stroud. Stroud was generally held to be the richest man in Jameson, and according to office gossip, his family could hardly wait for the old man to surrender to the ravages of old age. But Stroud was as tough as the trunk of an old elm tree. He’d already outlived many of his friends and most of his enemies, and he apparently intended to do the same with his three children if that was what it took to keep their hands off the money he’d accumulated in his eighty-eight years on the planet.

“Got a minute?” Janice Evans poked her head in the door. Adam had never seen her look anything but “put together,” and today was no exception. “Sure. Just working on this draft of Mr. Stroud’s will.”

Janice covered her mouth, but not before Adam saw the
ghost of a smile flicker across her lips. “Let me guess. He wants to change two or three of his million-dollar bequests.”

“Uh, yeah. That’s about it.”

“Mr. Stroud, God love him, has enough money to get by on. He’ll never be eating dog food, but he doesn’t have anything like the money he describes in his will.”

“But I thought—”

“He used to be a multimillionaire. Made it in oil and got out before the bubble burst. But he gave away most of it. Anyone who approached him with a hard-luck story got some money. It’s common knowledge that he’s paid the college expenses of a couple dozen kids from the poorer part of town. And I know for sure that he’s bailed out several men who were about to lose their businesses.”

“So why do we keep rewriting his will for him?”

She stepped inside and closed the door. “Because this law firm was one of the businesses he bailed out.” Evans lowered her voice. “Bruce told me about it when I joined the practice. He’d piled up some gambling debts—big ones—but couldn’t stop. Finally, when the man who held his markers sent someone around to
reason
with him, Bruce knew he had to do something. He went to Stroud, and they struck a deal. Stroud would pay off Bruce’s debts in return for two things: Bruce would never gamble again, and our firm would handle Stroud’s legal affairs without charge.”

“I’m presuming Bruce kept his end of the bargain.” Adam looked at the thick document on his desk. “So this is . . .”

“Yep. And I have to agree with Mr. Stroud that his kids don’t deserve a nickel, considering how much of his money they’ve already blown through. Every one of the wills does two
things: makes a nice bequest to his church and arranges for payment of his final expenses. Beyond that, though, despite what the wills say, there’s not a lot of money to spread around.” She gestured toward a chair. “Do you mind?”

“Of course. This can wait for a while.” Adam shoved the paper aside. “What’s up?”

“I think you’re owed an explanation for what you walked into when you returned from your visit with your brother.”

“I’ll have to admit I was surprised to find that Mary had my job.”

Evans folded her hands in her lap and looked down at them. “I didn’t think what Bruce did was right, but . . . well, he is the senior partner, and he sort of insisted.” She raised her head and looked him in the eye. “He was going to let you go, but I did a little foot-stomping of my own. That’s why you’re still here.”

“I appreciate your going to bat for me,” Adam said.

“I don’t think there’s any question that you’ll be made permanent in a couple of weeks. But I’m sorry you had to go through this.”

She rose and took a step toward the door. “Don’t be too harsh on Bruce. I’m sure you’re familiar with the legal term ‘undue influence.’ That’s what’s at work in his situation right now. You just happen to be the one getting the bad deal as a result of it.”

After Evans left, Adam sat staring into space. He hit a key on his computer and the screen saver disappeared. He tapped out a familiar Web address, and in a few seconds the screen lit up with the online site that had largely replaced the familiar bound volume known as Martindale-Hubbell. It was a comprehensive source of information about lawyers in the United
States and around the world, and it could answer the question that had formed in Adam’s mind.

He clicked on the search box and entered “Bruce Hartley.” When the requested page popped up, he scanned it and realized that his list of suspects wasn’t narrowing. It was widening.