Bleeding Heart (27 page)

“Oh, you
are
still there!” she said before I had a chance to say hello. “I’m so glad I could catch you before you left. I’m sorry. I’m really so very, very sorry, Mara. But Hannah—she’s gone.”

“I’m not—,” I tried to say, but Sarabeth ran on.

“Once the infection started to spread there really was very little that anyone could do. Jack asked me to call. He’s just too—”

“I’m sorry.” I finally interrupted the woman’s babble. “But I’m Alice Hyatt, Mara’s employer. What is this about? What’s happened?”

“Oh!” Sarabeth cried. I heard muffled voices in the background. Then a clattering sound. Then silence.

I
put the phone down and walked across the office to Mara’s computer. The screen filled with the same montage of photos I’d first stumbled upon the day of Mackenzie’s death: Danny and the young woman who looked so much like Mara, smiling into the camera. The handsome, twentysomething man standing next to an older man in front of a ranch-style house flanked by willow trees. For the first time I noticed the edge of a barn behind the house and a swath of cornfield. I located Mara’s iPhoto software, opened it up, and started to scroll through her library of photographs. Most were organized automatically by date. There were many shots taken around the ranch house, and these showed what seemed to be an extensive farm with outbuildings and a big red barn. In a photo dated four years ago, Mara and the other woman, who was obviously pregnant, stood with their arms around each other’s waists beside a pickup truck.

Then I found a folder of photos marked “Events.” These weren’t just dated; someone had labeled most of them as well. There were numerous shots of what looked like typical family occasions—
cookouts, Thanksgiving dinners, birthday parties. I stopped on one of a gap-toothed Danny, his face smeared with chocolate, sitting on the lap of the woman who looked like Mara. It was labeled “Hannah and Danny on his 2nd birthday.” Hannah . . . who I realized now had to be Danny’s mother. The “mommy who was in bed.” The woman they could do nothing for at the hospital. Who hadn’t regained consciousness. Who was gone. Mara’s sister.

I felt heartsick for Mara—and saddened by the thought that the world had lost this lovely, laughing young woman whose face looked so familiar. I also suddenly felt like an intruder. I closed iPhoto and pushed back from the desk. I was tempted to shut down the computer altogether. But something made me hesitate—and rethink my qualms about digging further into Mara’s private life. Yes, I was upset by what I had inadvertently learned about the tragedy that had befallen her and her family. But still, I sensed that if I turned away now and decided that none of this was my business, I’d be letting Mara down.

For whatever personal and obviously painful reasons, she’d taken on the tremendous responsibility of raising her sister’s child. She’d been a loving and unwavering presence in his life during what must have been a very difficult period for them both. And at the same time, despite these other burdens, she’d been a highly effective and loyal business partner for me. With a pang, I remembered her rushing to my defense when I made that crack about the maul during the police search. “It was a joke!” she’d cried. “She doesn’t mean anything by it. She didn’t do anything wrong!”

Without Mara’s determination, I’m not sure I would have been able to make it through those frightening and uncertain days after Mackenzie’s death. But it wasn’t just that I owed her something. In her cynical and withholding nature I recognized my own wised-up self. I think Mara was actually more like me than anyone else I
knew—including my daughters. Both of us had been forced by experience to believe that we were going to have to get through life pretty much on our own. And yet she’d come to my aid in more ways than she would probably ever realize. It was my turn now. I moved back to the computer.

Her e-mails were all business related. So, seemingly, were the document and spreadsheet files. It wasn’t until I started to scroll through the Internet sites she’d bookmarked that I found anything that might be considered personal in nature. There was a long list of Web sites related to hydraulic fracturing: newspaper pieces, legal articles, research findings, government resources. She’d even bookmarked a couple of the posts that Tom had written for EcoCrisis.org. Her interest in all this surprised me. I remember the very first time the subject had come up between us—the day that Eleanor had called to arrange the appointment for me to meet Mackenzie—and I’d asked if she thought that fracking was a danger to the environment. “Maybe,” she’d replied with a shrug, “but so are a lot of other things.”

As I continued to make my way down the extensive list of fracking-related Web sites, it became clear that she’d actually been putting a great deal of time and thought into the question. Many of the bookmarks involved disputes between people who had leased their land in Pennsylvania and the lessee—an hydraulic fracturing company called EnergyCorp. She’d saved dozens of related news articles, legal filings, and YouTube videos. I scrolled up and down through this cache of information, unable to make sense of why Mara would have wanted to save it.

When the phone rang, I reached for it and answered automatically: “Green Acres.”

“You’re still working!” Tom said. “I tried the house a few times, but you didn’t pick up. What’s going on?”

I’d been so immersed in what I was doing that I’d lost track of time. It was almost eight o’clock. I explained to Tom about Mara’s disappearance, what I’d learned about her and Danny from Shelly, and what Sarabeth had unwittingly revealed to me about Hannah’s death.

“I’ve been trying to dig into things on her computer,” I told him. “It’s so strange. I’ve come across an enormous number of bookmarks about fracking. She acted totally uninterested in the issue the whole time I was working for Mackenzie—but from what I see here, I have to say she seems to have actually been almost obsessed by it. I wish I knew when she’d saved some of these links.”

“Well, that’s easy enough to find out,” Tom said. “Do you want me to drop by and help you with this? I take it you haven’t eaten yet. I’ll pick up something for you from Radicchio’s on the way if you’d like.”

Tom prided himself on being up on all the latest technology, and he enjoyed demonstrating his prowess in all things digital. After he arrived with some flatbread pizza for me, I pulled up a seat next to his in front of Mara’s computer.

“A lot of people don’t realize that their viewing history is stored on their computers even after they think they’ve erased it,” Tom said, clicking away at the keyboard. After a moment, he continued: “Yes, you’re right. She was keeping tabs on the whole industry: news coverage, lawsuits, the latest research findings. This does seem a little obsessive. And she’s been tracking all this for almost a year and a half.”

“Really?” I said, leaning forward to get a closer look. He started to scroll down the list of sites she’d visited the week I hired her as my assistant at Green Acres. Then he jumped ahead, scanning over the sites she visited the first few months in my employ. “Hold on!” I cried as I saw a link that stopped me cold.

“What?”

“Go back up again—slowly,” I told him. “There! Right there. Oh, my God. Can you click on that for me?”

“Okay,” he said, giving me a curious glance. “The link’s dead. But I’ll just cut and paste it in. Here we go—”

It was one of those encyclopedic medical Web sites that covered everything from cold sores to chronic fatigue syndrome, and every disease, remedy, symptom, and side effect in between. The page Mara had saved was titled “Digitalis and Toxicity” and went into minute detail about the uses and abuses of the plant-derived drug. My eye fell almost immediately on the following:
A lethal dose of digoxin, the medicine extracted from the digitalis plant, is considered to be 20–50 times the maintenance dose. In healthy adults, a dose of less than 5mg seldom causes severe toxicity, but a dose of more than 10mg is almost always fatal.

“What’s the matter?” Tom asked, turning toward me.

“Wait,” I told him as I continued to scan the page:
Symptoms of digitalis poisoning, resulting from having too much of it in the blood, include: Loss of appetite—Stomach problems such as nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea—Vision impairment—Dizziness and confusion.

“You’re sure she viewed this over a year ago?” I asked Tom.

“Well, yes, this is everything she looked at during that time,” he told me, scrolling down the list again. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure,” I told him. “Let’s keep going. What else was she viewing?”

More sites on digitalis. Its use in the treatment of congestive heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and other heart ailments. Its history as a plant-derived medicine. How its benefits were first discovered when the leaves of the plant were dried and ingested as an herbal tea. All this followed by a caveat:
The digitalis leaf provides
a narrow therapeutic index, requiring close medical supervision for safe use. It is often difficult to recognize the level of maximum therapeutic effect of digitalis without entering the toxic range.

I sat back. I closed my eyes.

“Hey,” Tom said, taking my hand and squeezing it. “Are you okay? Can you tell me what this is about?”

“I’m just guessing, really,” I replied, getting out of the chair. My legs ached from sitting for so long, and I had a crick in my neck. I walked across the room and leaned against the front of my desk, trying to put the pieces together. “And this could be a real stretch . . . but I think Mara may have had something to do with Mackenzie’s death.”

“What?” Tom said. “Did she even know him?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But she was obviously deeply interested in fracking over a year before I even got the commission. She lied about not having an opinion about it, because all those sites have a decidedly negative bias. She must have opposed it, too. And then—I just remembered—when I first got the call to meet with Mackenzie I told her I wasn’t going to go. That I couldn’t work for a man who was destroying the environment. But she sweet-talked me into at least talking to him, saying she was curious about what the house looked like on the inside.”

“Okay, so maybe she knew more about fracking than she let on,” Tom said. “And maybe she wanted you to work with Mackenzie. But it’s a huge leap from there to—to killing him, Alice.”

“It goes back to something Erlander asked me at the end of that first interview,” I explained. “I’d answered all the usual questions—and more than I really thought were necessary about my private life. And then, out of the blue, he asked me what I knew about digitalis. He wanted to know whether I realized that it was poisonous. I said of course I knew—that many, many common
plants are. I dismissed the whole thing as another one of his crazy shots in the dark. But then Ron and his clumsy deputy conducted that search here yesterday morning.”

“Yes, you told me.”

“And the deputy claimed to have found what he was looking for. It was in the back of the new greenhouse where I dry herbs at the end of the season to sell at the Holiday Fair. When Mara first started working here she was even more withdrawn than she is now. I mean, she was abrupt to the point of real rudeness. But she did a good job, and I wasn’t looking for a friend, just some competent help. That first fall, though, when she discovered that I dried and processed plants and herbs, she got very interested in learning how to do it herself. I could tell she really enjoyed it—and I liked the fact that she was apparently beginning to appreciate what Green Acres was all about. I eventually let her take over most of that side of things.”

“You think she started drying digitalis leaves?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m thinking. She might have dried them for an herbal tea that she gave to Eleanor, convincing her it would be good for Mackenzie. But I’m pretty sure that’s what was making him so sick the last few weeks of his life—his dizziness, nausea, diarrhea. Those are all side effects of digitalis poisoning.”