Cover Shot (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery Book 5) (16 page)

21.

Fair warning

I sent Kyle off with a heartfelt well-wish for his date with Bonnie that made him smile, then reached for a bottle of wine and a corkscrew on my way to a hot bath and possibly bed shortly thereafter. If there’s been a longer week in the history of the world, I wasn’t there for it.

My BlackBerry started twittering the theme from
Peter Pan
before I got the foil off the bottle and I contemplated ignoring it for a full ten seconds.

My scanner was relatively silent, so it would be more in-depth than normal Friday night work. Not interested. But I reached for the phone anyway.

There’s an inherent wiring short in my brain that would make it explode if I ignored a ringing phone. Not an altogether bad quality for a reporter, I suppose.

Joey.

I grinned. Him, I found positively enchanting.

“Hey there.” I put the phone to my ear and opened the bottle.

“Hey yourself,” he said. “Busy day?”

“You could say that.” I pulled a glass from the rack and poured it half full of Moscato, padding toward the couch. “How about you?”

“Same. But I was thinking about you and I wanted to say hi.”

Butterflies took off low in my stomach. I swallowed a sip of the wine. “Hi.”

“I take it from the level of vague in your copy today that you’re working this weekend?”

“Probably. Though I’m really trying to not work tonight.”

“I wish I could join you.”

Kyle’s words floated through my head and my gut twisted. “Lots going on?”

“Boring stuff.” Joey’s tone was dismissive, but there was an undercurrent of our unspoken don’t-ask-don’t-tell in it, too.

“Mine too.”

“I doubt that. Anything new?”

“Eh. Same old, same old. Trying to save the world. Got my first subpoena.”

“Witnessing things can lead to that.” I could hear the laugh in his voice.

“Yeah, yeah, they tried to kill me, nobody else was there. Blah blah.” I laughed. “Like I don’t have enough to do. This story has more twists than a party size bag of pretzels. And Kyle is dating a forensic scientist who says someone’s dragging their feet on the autopsies. Which also doesn’t fit. The whole thing stinks.”

“Really now?” He didn’t even try to keep the interest out of his tone. “When did that happen?”

He wasn’t talking about the murders. I laid it on thicker. “Sometime between Labor Day and this week. We haven’t talked much. He seems to really like her, and I know she’s had her eye on him for a while.”

“Well. Good for him.”

I listened hard. Reservation, yes. But was that excitement I heard? I could hope.

“I’m happy for him.” I let the words fall slowly.

“I’m glad to hear that.” The warmth in his voice could’ve melted Antarctica. Score.

I smiled. “I’ll see you soon?”

“Next week? I’ll make time to get down there,” he said. “Right now I should go back in.”

I didn’t want to know in where. “There’s a hot tub calling my name.”

“Damn, now I really wish I was there,” he said.

“Me too.”

I clicked off the call and stared at the almost-finished Norman Rockwell on my coffee table, snapping a few of the five thousand tiny pieces into place and wishing the puzzles in my head would come together. But maybe Kyle dating would resolve the corner of the Joey puzzle that was wrapped up in jealousy. And maybe clearing my head would help me see a few pieces of the Maynard mess differently. I fit the last bit of the bottom corner in and took the wine to the bathtub.

By the time the water chilled a second time, I’d managed to turn the shouting questions in my head down to a dull roar. They were almost quiet as I fell asleep, Eunice floating through my thoughts for some reason I wasn’t awake enough to place.

Shoving a mug under the coffeemaker, I yanked my hair back into a ponytail before dawn Saturday, as grateful for my first good night’s sleep in a week as I was annoyed at having it pre-empted by a locker room drug bust at a sprawling suburban high school.

I parked near the field house a half-hour later, joining a small knot of reporters on the track as the first rays of dawn painted the bleachers on the far side of the field pink-orange.

“What? No special pass inside today?”

Charlie rolled her eyes as her cameraman waved at me, flipping her perfect blonde bob and tapping a foot as she pointed out shots she wanted for her piece.

“He asked for you, too,” I said when he stepped away to get the footage. “Not my fault you chose to stay outside.”

“Losing the story is my fault for being sane? I know no one who would have gone into that building, except you.”

“People might have died.”

“Someone did. And whatever you’re up to with keeping the gunman out of jail, you should know that when I figure it out, you’ll be lucky if you don’t get lynched. I know you traded White a sickeningly sweet PR piece for that. The woman’s family knows it, too. You’re too goody-goody for any motive short of some misguided bleeding heart crap, but I’m warning you: you won’t look good when I get through with this.”

My stomach lurched. Charlie and I had always been rivals, but neither of us had ever gone after the other in so blatant a fashion.

“Out for some blood, Charlie?” I kept my voice from trembling—barely. “I’m O-negative if you have to call for a transfusion.”

“Nothing personal. My producer is tired of losing to you. You’ve kicked everyone’s ass for months, like you think you’re some sort of journalistic superwoman. Hell, I heard people in our break room talking about your piece on this murderer yesterday. Asking each other what they’d do in his shoes. Sweeps week means payback. I thought you’d appreciate the warning.”

I closed my eyes, hatred of Rick Andrews burning in the pit of my stomach. Charlie wouldn’t stop ’til she got something. And there were six hundred and seventy-eight ways to spin that story that would make me and Aaron look like lying idiots and Tom Ellinger look like a murderer. And people would believe it. Journalism even before the age of the Internet 101: perception is nine-tenths of the truth, and everyone loves a good scandal.

Hell.

“Charlie—” I didn’t quite get the word out before Aaron stepped to the tape line at the edge of the grass and started his rundown.

By the time I finished talking to the coach and a pair of bawling mothers, Charlie was gone.

I sped to the office and filed the story, then spent my “day off” poring over notes and reading old studies Maynard was linked to. The research was all over the map. Chemo drugs, some I’d never heard of and others that had revolutionized treatment. Gene therapy. Non-invasive homeopathic approaches.

I clicked another link and found an article about treating brain tumors with live Polio virus. I blinked at the screen. The research in front of me was new—and working. On more than half the patients in the trials.

But Maynard had done it almost a decade ago, with at least some success, according to Bob. Hoping Miss Emma could find details on that, I saved the article on my screen. If Maynard had been that many years ahead of the research curve, maybe Ellinger wasn’t nuts.

Not sure which of these roads might lead to his murderer, if any of them did, I closed the computer at four thirty, ready for a long walk and a game of fetch with Darcy. Charlie’s voice on the TV followed me into the elevator, and I wondered how much she knew. The only safe way out of this was to find the truth—assuming I was right and it wasn’t the obvious choice—before she got her hack job ready for air.

Tick.

Tock.

22.

Looking for a miracle

“I
love you, Mom. Send pictures of that bouquet, and I’ll call you in a couple days.”

I smiled at her “I love you more” and said it back twice before I hung up the phone and stretched. Being woken on a Sunday by a call from my mom was significantly more fun than waking up to Aaron’s grouching about bored over-privileged kids the day before.

Hearing her voice had been more welcome than usual after a week peppered with painful reminders of almost losing her.

It also redoubled my determination to find the why in Maynard’s murder. Aaron and Kyle wanted the who and the how. The why was always a nice bonus for them, but would they dig for it with so much pressure coming for an arrest? Nope. Which left that stone to me. And if there was a sliver of a chance what was under it could save my mom if she ever again needed saving, I would find the right rock or die trying.

But first, coffee. I was always more productive with caffeine on board. I shuffled to the kitchen and brewed a cup of vanilla caramel crème before I let Darcy outside and went to the front door to grab the newspaper.

“Coffee and comics. Now this is Sunday morning.” I put a bowl of Pro Plan in front of the dog and settled myself at the table, hunting for the Lifestyles section.

I pulled it free, my eyes lighting on a half-page photo of a gorgeous redhead hugging a preteen with each tanned arm.

“Miracle Mom,” the headline screamed in ninety-two point Chancery.

The gibberish I’d been trying to recognize at bedtime Friday settled into actual words in my head: “Doctors said she should have died,” in Eunice’s Virginia drawl. I popped the section front straight and read every word of Kim’s article four times.

“Jiminy freaking Choos, Darce.”

The dog ignored my jaw hitting the floor, licking her bowl clean and trotting off in search of a toy.

I stared into the bright blue two-dimensional eyes of Felicia Lang, who’d been dragged from the jaws of death two years before, lying in an ICU bed with a cancer-ravaged body and an utter lack of hope.

And our best feature reporter had artfully written around the cause of this miracle.

I’d bet my last cup of coffee that was because the woman wouldn’t say how she got well.

And I’d wear Uggs all winter long if it didn’t turn out to be Maynard who pulled off the last-minute rescue.

I groped back through my memory for the Tuesday staff meeting that seemed an age ago. Kim had to beg for the interview, Eunice said. And only got it because her husband knew these folks.

I scrambled to my feet and ran for my phone. So much for a lazy Sunday morning.

Ki
m knew jack squat. Four hours talking to the Langs, and no matter how she phrased her questions, they wouldn’t spill.

Yes, it was odd. No, she didn’t see the need to push. It was a feel-good feature. She saw the medical records and photos—the woman really had been hanging across the threshold of death’s door.

I thanked her and hung up, underlining the phone number she’d offered for Felicia Lang. Dialing it wouldn’t get me anywhere but hung up on. But three minutes with Whitepages got me an address.

Hot damn. Seven blocks from me. And the story said Felicia Lang worked with the local animal rescue center.

A quick shower and a little makeup, and I clipped Darcy’s leash to her collar before we strolled out into the autumn sunshine.

Nineteen hours (or a good twenty minutes of Darcy investigating every weed and pebble in the Fan) later, I tried to be unobtrusive, staring at the Langs’ antebellum brick-front home.

I knew the block. Senators and CEOs were counted among its residents. “These folks can be good at keeping secrets, girl,” I murmured to the dog.

Darcy nosed at a dandelion, unconcerned. Until a squirrel darted out of a bed of ivy.

Darcy is not a fan of squirrels.

I grabbed for her, but it was too late. She slipped her collar faster than Joey can unhook a bra and charged the rodent, who had enough of a sense of self-preservation to turn and run back into the yard.

“Darcy!” I hissed, jangling her collar.

Completely ignored.

Yipping like a bloodhound, she tore through the ivy bed, the squirrel’s tail waving in her face like a racetrack flag.

For the love of God.

I stared, not wanting to put a toe on the perfectly manicured blanket of rye in front of me. The squirrel leapt onto a tree trunk and scurried up, turning to look back at Darcy from a high branch. I could almost hear the “nyah nyah nah nah nah,” and binoculars might have shown me a little pink tongue poking out at the dog.

Darcy clawed at the bark, her whole body on alert, baying like she’d chased Charles Manson up there. I jogged up the driveway and down the sidewalk and scooped her up, clipping her collar back in place and pulling it a centimeter tighter. “No running off,” I said, bumping her nose with mine. I turned back for the street as the front door opened to reveal our Sunday Life section cover boy.

He paused, raising an eyebrow at me, before he turned his head and bellowed. “Mom! Someone’s here to see you!”

I flinched. I wanted an introduction, sure, but I was fresh out of icebreaker ideas. And pretty certain I’d come across as a stalker, likely as not.

I pasted a smile in place as the kid grabbed a skateboard from under the porch and disappeared up the street. Felicia Lang appeared in the doorway thirty seconds later, wiping her hands on a blue dishtowel. “Can I help you?”

I held Darcy up. “The dog saw a squirrel. Sorry to bother you.”

“She’s adorable!” She laid the towel on a table and bounced down the front steps, scratching behind Darcy’s ears.

All right then. Point for Darcy. I smiled. “Thank you. She’s my princess. But she’s a handful—she slipped her head out of her collar and took off though your flower bed before I could grab her.”

Felicia frowned and put two fingers under Darcy’s collar. “It’s too loose.”

“I worry about tightening it because she’s so tiny,” I said. “Most of the time she’s just in our yard, and there’s a fence, so I don’t worry.”

She nodded. “It’s hard when they’re so fluffy. What you think looks too tight isn’t. But you could always get her a harness.”

“Do they make those this small?” I knew good and well they did, but wanted to keep the conversation going.

“Sure they do. Any pet store should be able to help you.” She stroked Darcy’s fur. “You want to be able to take her on walks without worrying about her getting hurt.”

“I’ll look into that, thanks.” I tipped my head to one side, studying her face, and snapped my fingers. “I know where I recognize you from! You were in the newspaper this morning. What a great story.”

She smiled, dropping her gaze to the aggregate sidewalk. “Thank you. I’m a girl blessed.”

“My mom is a cancer survivor too,” I blurted. “Six years in remission.”

“That’s wonderful,” she said. “What kind of cancer did she have?”

“Breast cancer. I managed to get her into a clinical trial for a new drug several years back.” I kept my tone light, conversational.

She nodded. “Sometimes getting in on the floor of a new treatment saves your life.” The words were so soft, I almost didn’t hear them over Darcy’s breathing.

“Were you in a trial, too?” I asked. “For which drug?”

“It was—” She paused. “That’s not exactly how it worked.”

I fiddled with the dog’s leash. She didn’t want to talk about this, if Kim couldn’t get it out of her. But talking to a survivor’s daughter and talking to a reporter are two different things. Usually. And I wasn’t looking to quote her.

“I still find myself looking all the time for successful treatments. My mom is great, but I worry. What if it comes back? How would we fight it?”

She nodded, turning to sit on the steps and gesturing for me to join her. “I can certainly understand that.” She bit her lower lip.

I perched next to her, petting Darcy. “Who treated you? Someone local?” I held my breath.

She nodded. “He’s a brilliant man. We’re just lucky he happens to be in Richmond. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.”

“My mom is in Texas, so I don’t know many of the doctors here, but I’m always happy to add new ones to my list.”

“Dr. Maynard keeps his patient group small,” she said. “But he really cares about everyone he treats. No one is just a number or just a paycheck to him.”

Bingo. I swallowed hard and tried not to croak out the next question.

“I read in the paper that you were nearly end stage. Do you know how he saved you?”

She shrugged. “Not specifically. Other than he said he was working to perfect the treatment so it could be made available to everyone.”

I nodded. “Were there other people in the trial with you?”

“Not many. A handful of us, and a control group.”

“Do you still talk to the others?”

“One or two of them. Almost all of us lived.”

“Almost?”

“Dr. Maynard was different. He treated the control group, too, after he’d had time to gather data. But before he got to that point, we lost one person. It really shook the doc up for weeks. I remember going in one evening and he was shouting at another man, who was yelling right back at him.”

Interesting.

“You didn’t happen to notice what they were fighting about?” The words popped out before I could stop them, and she gave me a raised brow.

“Not that it really matters,” I said. “Just curious. I always wondered what went on behind the scenes when we’d sit in the doctors’ offices and people watch.”

She nodded. “I don’t remember. Something about test results and registration. It didn’t make sense to me.”

Ah, but it did to me. I squeezed Darcy a little tighter, Goetze and his lunch companion floating through my thoughts.

“Do you still see this Dr. Maynard for check-ups?” I asked. “I mean, if I wanted to get him to take a look at my mom’s charts, do you think I could?”

“Only once a year,” she said. “Other than that, I see my regular OB/GYN. But there’s no harm in asking him to look, right? He’s brilliant. Truly in his own class.” She reeled off the office address and I recited it over a dozen times in my head.

I smiled. “You look fantastic. Feeling good?”

“Fabulous. As dark as those days were, I hope I never stop seeing every new one as a gift. And I hope your mom’s health remains good.”

A child bellowed from inside the house, and I stood. “I think that’s your cue.”

She laughed. “I love it. It was nice to meet you…” The eyebrow went back up.

“Nichelle,” I said. “And this is Darcy.”

She scratched the dog’s head again before she turned to go inside. “Good luck.”

“You too.”

I trotted back down the drive toward my house, turning her words over in my head.

Un-freaking-believable. If David Maynard hadn’t found the golden grail, he was two breaths from it. So someone made sure he stopped breathing.