On The Edge (12 page)

“Hey, I resent that. I was a good kid in college.”

“So was I, Jake, but I liked to have fun.”

“Okay. I'm not admitting to anything, but I had a little fun myself.” Changing the subject, he continued, “So these mushrooms, a low dose over a long term—how harmful is that?”

“It can't be good. Actually, it depends on the person, the dosage, and the strength of the particular batch of mushrooms. They lose a little potency when dried, but if she ingested enough—”

“She ingested gallons of the tea, I witnessed that. Any lasting side effects, you think?”

“I wish I could tell you. Ask the docs at the hospital. They can advise you more specifically about her recovery.”

“Okay, Donna, thanks.”

“Oh! I forgot to mention…these mushrooms? This particular strain is indigenous to the South, if that helps at all.”

“It does. Thanks again.” Jake punched his phone off and shoved it back in his pocket. His breathing was rapid, nerves stretched to the limit. He couldn't shake the feeling that the more he dug, the deeper he sank into a pile of shit.

* * * *

The doctors at the hospital were happy to get the name of the drug. Jake left them with Joss, plotting her new course of treatment, while he searched for her mother. He found her at a table in the cafeteria, eating a bowl of soup.

“We need to talk.” He sat in a chair across from her.

“I'm having a quick bite to eat then I must get back to my daughter.”

“The doctors are with her. We found out about the mushrooms. Now that they know what made her sick, they can treat her properly.”

He watched her for a reaction. When she gave none, he pressed on. “Of course, you've known all along. You sat by her side quietly, wasting valuable time—time that the doctors could have spent giving her an antidote for the crap you used to poison her.”

“You're wrong,” she said, without much conviction. “You don't understand.”

“I understand that poisoning someone is a felony, lady, whether she's your kid or not! That just makes it sicker in my book. Your daughter is going to be heartbroken when she wakes up.
If
she wakes up.”

“Of course she's going to wake up! She'll be fine, and I'm taking her home.” Miranda seemed in denial about the whole thing.

Jake fumed. He leaned in, hands gripping the table, and tried to control his voice so he wouldn't shout. “She almost died! Do you get that? She was whacked out on the drugs you gave her and took a walk off a roof. I held her up by a scrap of fabric. If the other officers hadn't gotten to us when they did—”

He shuddered. He hadn't let himself think about what might have happened, but he knew it was true. Joss had come very close to dying, and people close to her, and him, were responsible for it. He stared into the tearful eyes of her mother. “She almost died.”

“It wasn't supposed to happen that way,” she sobbed. “David promised me. I swear! The tea was lightly drugged—”

“Do you have any idea how much of that tea she drank? She started drinking it when she woke up in the morning. She drank it all damned day long. Hell, she had more in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep.”

Her eyes squinted. “How do you know what she did in the middle of the night?”

Jake inhaled and sat back. In his anger, he'd gone too far. Her mother didn't need to find out about them like this.
Her mother
, he scoffed.
What kind of a mother did this to her child?
Still in a state of disbelief, he couldn't imagine what Joss would say when she found out.

His cell phone rang, and he flipped it open.
“Gilford.”

“Detective, this is Rhonda at the ICU nurses' station. She's awake!”

“I'm on my way.” He snapped his phone closed and looked at Miranda gravely. “We need to go.”

After her admission, he didn't intend to let her out of his sight. They rode the elevator to the intensive care unit, and he grabbed a security guard from the waiting room. Flashing his badge, he said, “Keep this woman here. Don't let her leave.”

Pointing at Miranda, he said, “Sit.”

“But—my daughter!”

“I'll check on Joss. You wait here.” He turned to the guard again. “I'll call for backup. Someone will be here soon. Do
not
let her leave.”

“You got it,” the man said and stood his ground.

Jake cast an annoyed glance at Miranda, used his phone to call for a couple of uniformed officers, then headed into Joss's room. He found her sitting up, with both the doctor and nurse examining her.

“Hey,” she said to him.

He tried to sound calm and glib. “Look at you, all awake and pretty.”

“I bet.” She laughed, raising her arms, which were attached to tubes and needles.

“How do you feel?”

“Tired.
Kind of achy.
I don't remember much…like how I got here.”

“What's the prognosis, Doc?” he asked the doc.

“We need to run a few more tests, but she responded immediately to the treatment. Except for the events of last night, she seems to have no loss of memory. She knew the date, the president, and a bunch of other fascinating trivia.”

“What a relief!” Jake knew it wasn't appropriate in front of the doctor and a nurse, but he couldn't help himself—he slipped his arms around Joss and hugged her to his chest. “Thank God,” he murmured into her hair, as she nestled against him.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I know you saved me.”

He pulled back and smiled stiffly. “Let's talk about that later. Right now, we have a more serious problem.”

“I dreamed my mother was here.”

“
That
would be our problem.”

“She kept apologizing to me, over and over. Why was she doing that, Jake?”

He couldn't lie to her. Taking a deep breath, he said, “Your tea bags were infused with hallucinogenic mushrooms, something that's common to the South. When I confronted your mother, she said the tea was only
lightly drugged.
”

“She drugged me?” Her eyes widened and filled with tears.
“But why?
Why would she do that?”

“That's what I'm going to find out. I'll need your help.” He looked at the doctor then the nurse. “I'll need your help as well.”

* * * *

He left the ICU room and found two uniformed officers standing with the security guard. Miranda hadn't moved; she looked deflated and worn out. Jake planned to capitalize on those feelings, hopefully to get her to crack. “Thank you,” he told the guard then held out a hand.
“Cuffs?”

One officer handed over his handcuffs.

Jake guided Miranda to stand and reached for one of her hands, snapping the cuff around her wrist. “We'll leave your hands in front, as long as you cooperate.”

“What are you doing?” she whimpered.

He cuffed her second wrist. “You're under arrest for the attempted murder of Jocelyn Wheeler.”

     
“Attempted murder? No!” the woman screamed. The sound of alarms going off drowned out her sobs.

The light over the door to Joss's room flashed red. Someone yelled, “We need a crash cart in here!
Stat!”
Doctors and nurses rushed into the room, pushing equipment and each other out of the way.

Miranda looked frozen with fear. Jake watched her, trying to get a read on the woman. He was still mystified how a mother could poison her own child.

Muffled sounds of doctors and nurses came from Joss's room. Jake paced the floor in the hall, continuing to watch for any reaction from Miranda.

Eventually the activity stilled, and slowly the staff filtered out, grave expressions on their faces. The doctor stepped into the hall, glanced around for Jake.
“Detective?”

“Yes?” He moved to the doctor, spoke with him for a moment then turned to face the other officers. “Amend the charge to murder. Jocelyn Wheeler just died.”

Chapter Eleven

“No!” Miranda screamed and fell to her knees.

Jake felt a flash of guilt, but it was necessary. Somebody wanted Joss dead. He had to figure out
who
.

The two cops lifted her mother into a seat. She sobbed uncontrollably as Jake watched, judging her performance.

He handed a list of names and phone numbers to the nurse. “Please phone these people, tell them what's happened and ask them to come immediately. Is there a room we can use?”

“Sure.” She showed him to a private waiting room, where he left Miranda and her two bodyguards.

“Is there a computer I can use to access the Internet?”

“Yes, in the doctors' lounge.
This way.”
She showed him to the computer.

Jake typed David Taylor's name into the police department database. He scanned the information that popped up, until he found what he was looking for. “There we go.” He slapped the table next to the computer.

A doctor on the sofa glanced up.

“Sorry.” He smiled sheepishly. Another thought occurred to him, and he searched the database until satisfied he was on the right track. It all seemed amazingly clear now. Completely crazy, unbelievable, but clear.

He returned to Joss's room and watched out the hall window, so he could see when people arrived.
Roy
was directed to the waiting room, then Roland Watkins. When David Taylor showed up, Jake knew it was time to move. His chief didn't look pleased about being summoned and he might not stick around long.

“Let's go.” He settled Joss in a wheelchair, attached her IV bags to a transportable pole which he rolled along next to her. He parked her in an adjacent waiting room and stepped inside the one where everyone else was gathered.

“What's going on here, Gilford?”
Taylor
asked immediately.

He ignored his chief and looked at
Roy
. “Thanks for coming. You have a set of cuffs, I hope? We'll need them.”

“I do.”
Roy
folded his arms across his chest. “I'm real sorry to hear about Joss. What's up?”

Jake looked at the nervous faces of Roland Watkins and Miranda Wheeler. “I guess the younger Watkins and Taylor boys aren't going to make an appearance.” He turned to one of the uniformed officers. “Make a call, have someone pick them up for questioning.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Taylor
shouted. “I'm sure you're upset that the girl died, but—”

“You know,” Jake interrupted. “I am upset.
But not about Joss.
She's going to be fine.” He yanked open the door connecting the two waiting rooms and wheeled her in.

“Jocelyn!” her mother cried.

Taylor
, obviously shocked, bellowed, “She's alive!”

“Sorry about the deception, but somebody in this room wanted her dead. Now, we get to watch and see who's the most disappointed.”

“None of them look very happy,” Joss muttered.

“I'm happy!”
Roy
flashed a big grin.

Jake smiled at him then returned his attention to the group. “Okay, people, here's what we know, so far. It's a long, messy story, so I'll be as succinct as possible. Edward Cooper died, leaving his large estate to a daughter he never knew, apparently the result of a fling some twenty-five years ago. Joss came here to settle the estate and has had nothing but problems since she arrived. Someone obviously tried to scare her out of the mansion—a delightful skeleton in the attic, thunderously loud noises every night and God knows what else was there that we didn't uncover.

“The noises we traced to a sophisticated piece of digital equipment, planted in the ceiling of her room.
Thanks to Chief Roy Nelson of the Surveillance Bureau, for uncovering that.”
He nodded to Roy, who smiled and waved at the others.

Jake paced the floor as he gathered his thoughts. “When I got a copy of Cooper's will, I discovered if anything happened to Joss, the sizeable estate—we're talking millions—would go to a charity called
Save Our Wildlife
. This surprised me, until I looked into the organization. There are three officers listed, Ross Whitcomb, William Rust, and Eugene Tuttle. I found quite a lot about Whitcomb and Rust on the Internet, the most recent and most interesting being their obituaries. They're both dead.”

Joss looked up at him, her mouth agape.

He nodded at her and continued. “There is nothing on the Internet about Eugene Tuttle. Coincidentally, though, a man by the name of Eugene Tuttle rented an office on the same floor as the Watkins law practice.”