Big Leagues (23 page)

Cat flipped her hair behind her shoulder. “Huh.
News to me. But it’s not like this supersized ticker is more likely
to succumb to a heart attack, right?”

Dr. Goodall held his finger up. “Cardiac
arrest. No, I’m simply explaining athletes’ hearts are conditioned
differently.”

He took off again, and she hurried behind him.
He peered at her through the corner of his glasses. “Now, there is
a disease called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCOM for short.
This is a heart condition that specifically affects athletes and a
significant number of adults, around one in five
hundred.”

“H-C-O-M?” She jotted it down. “What can you
tell me about that?”

“Well, it’s a hereditary disease in which the
walls of the left ventricle thicken, causing blood flow
obstruction. If undetected or left untreated, this obstruction can
result in cardiac arrest.”

Dr. Goodall rattled off this information so
quickly Cat was convinced he moonlighted as an
auctioneer.

She skimmed her notes. “But Jamal didn’t have
this HCOM thing. I mean, these guys are tested for heart conditions
in every physical from college up. That’s several times a year.
You’ve never heard of a single abnormality in Jamal’s heart,
right?”

“Not that I could discern. Nor was there any
documentation from prior physicians.”

Dr. Goodall picked up his speed. Cat struggled
to keep pace with his short but surprisingly nimble
legs.

“A heart condition. That’s pretty discernible,
right? I mean, like, hard to miss.”

They’d arrived at the batting cages, and he
stopped before they approached the huddle of players.

“Ms. McDaniel, that’s what I’ve said. Now, as
you know, Jamal Abercromby died after sudden cardiac arrest. Every
bit of information we have on his death was in the report I handed
you in Erich König’s office. I’m sorry for Jamal’s death but, if
you’ll excuse me, I still have twenty-five live players in need of
my care. Consider me off record now.”

He rushed off, leaving her with no more
information than she’d started with. Cat frowned in his direction
and contemplated a contingency plan.

Doctors, mechanics, and lawyers hated people
like Cat. The vast knowledge these professionals acquired through
years of education and experience, she tried to obtain through a
quick Internet search. She consulted Net Nurse, Auto Asker, Virtual
Esquire or any other online expertise at the disposal of her
wireless card. She’d once insisted to her OB/GYN that polishing off
a seven-pound bag of M&M’s was a better treatment for PMS than
exercise. Last year, she assured Ed the Mechanic the clunking sound
in her Jeep had to be its carburetor, even after he informed her
Wranglers hadn’t had carburetors since the year he piloted an AH-64
Apache in the Gulf. Back home, Cat had guaranteed the good folks at
Sorbo Law Office her speeding ticket was null and void, due to the
Illinois State Police patrolman mistakenly documenting her auburn
hair as simply
red
.

So after Dr. Goodall’s uncanny impression of a
clam, she went straight to her genie in a modem for answers. She
explored various medical sites and crosschecked every fact with the
medical examiner’s notes. The search yielded thousands of results.
Yet, on every website, one keyword showed up repeatedly in every
case of sudden cardiac death—especially when the victim belonged to
the elite group of the young and wealthy.

Drug use. In particular, illegal drug
use.

Cat’s brow knitted in consternation at the
unanimous verdict of the oracles of the World Wide Wizard. Then how
did one explain the toxicology report?

It said “negative.” Nothing. Nada.
Nichts.

Case closed.

Besides, they were wedged right in the heat of
baseball season. Cat wasn’t naïve enough to believe such
troublesome activity never happened. It wasn’t unheard of for a
professional athlete to use the offseason as a six-month bender,
but as the snow melted away, so did the parties. From March to
October, the players had neither the time nor the choice; they were
tested for drugs every week without fail.

Still, those search results were hard to
explain away … Cat tapped the pencil on her desk.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, the autopsy
cited a drug. Some drug, pick a drug, any drug. Coupled with Brad
Derhoff’s results, that would make two substance-related deaths in
the same organization within a month. Maybe it’s time we clear out
the second floor and rename this place Betty Ford
Stadium.

She chided herself for insinuating that the
team was to blame for one of its member’s suicide. Nevertheless,
her traitorous fingers snuck back to the keyboard and searched for
more information on Brad Derhoff’s death. When the results
appeared, just as with Jamal, they didn’t tell her much more than
she already knew. Besides a few quotes from Erich König asking the
media “to show respect for the Derhoff family’s privacy in these
trying times,” no other information had been publicly
released.

Sounds familiar.

She wondered if anything had gone out to the
Chips employees after Brad’s suicide. There had been a few e-mails
after Jamal’s death; it would make sense the same had been done in
Brad’s situation. She punched in her login ID and password to the
local Intranet and ran a file search on all memos that had Brad
Derhoff listed in the body. The computer scanned for a few seconds
before beeping “No Results Found.” Cat’s eyebrows
furrowed.

This can’t be right.

She double-checked for spelling errors and
tried again. If anything, the records should have been in the
hundreds, maybe thousands. There should’ve been e-mails as trivial
as travel plans and interview requests to every archived memo that
referenced an article Brad authored
.
The computer beeped.
“No Results Found.”

Nothing. Nada. Nichts.

She peered out onto the office floor to see the
entire department busy at work. She watched as Dustin typed away
and dismissed any thought of asking him for help. Her eyes drifted
over to Kiara, who was manning the file cabinet wall. The bubbly
intern had been at Hohenschwangau since the beginning of the summer
semester, meaning that she would have been present at the time of
Brad’s death. Cat doubted the tragedy was something even the
vivacious sorority girl could forget. Cat strolled out to the
filing workstation.

“Hey, Key.”

Kiara looked up from her box of papers.
“Hi!”

“I’m going across the street for a smoothie.
You want to come with? My treat.”

“Seriously?” Kiara hopped up with a smile. “I’d
love to!”

The elevator opened with a single push of the
call button. The two women stepped on, and Cat reached for the
“door close.” She glared at her naked wrist as she did so. Kiara
was exactly the type of girl who would appreciate her silver
Cartier, so it just figured that she’d forgotten it on her
nightstand during the morning’s rush.

“You know, I’ve done my share of intern
slavery, too. I think I read somewhere that filing is the go-to
form of torture in one of Dante’s circles of hell. Number five, if
I’m not mistaken.” Kiara giggled, and Cat gave her a wry smile. “So
I thought you might need a break.”

Kiara’s eyes opened wide and her mouth
followed. Before the elevator moved, Cat was bombarded with
fast-paced blather. “Well, my friend Lydie—she’s the one you met
the other night when we were going out. Like, you so should’ve came
with, by the way. We had some crazy fun, but she’s interning on the
second floor, and she has to have, like, eight café mochas just to
stay awake around all those nerdy accountants.”

They slipped through the revolving door and out
onto the sidewalk. Kiara stopped talking for only a second to take
a gasp of the hot afternoon air. “I love this place. Pulp Gulp has,
like, the best smoothies in the city. This location is the best
one, too. Except after games ’cause the whole place is always
packed and they get lazy with the toppings. I’m all, ‘helloooo, I
said extra whipped cream!’ Plus, they don’t have enough seats for
everyone. You’d think people would be so ready to go home after all
those beers, hot dogs, cotton candy and pretzels but there they
are, with room for a jumbo strawberry shake. Last week, I sat in
the bleachers with some girls from my sorority house and these guys
who we thought were Phi Delts but they actually were
from—”

Cat’s arm shot out to grab Kiara’s sleeve,
preventing her from walking into traffic. Kiara put her hand over
her mouth as the taxi whizzed by.

“Oopsy.”

Kiara’s babble continued on through the menu
selection. Cat dug through her purse and handed the annoyed cashier
a ten. Should the subject ever come up—and Cat shuddered to think
what circle of hell that would be in—she was prepared to answer
Kiara Choi’s favorite kind of smoothie, her “sometimes-favorite”
smoothie and the smoothie flavor Kiara only ordered when she was in
a “fun mood.”

Kiara’s cheerfulness was totally in sync with
Pulp Gulp’s yellow tables and orange wallpaper. The sunlight
streaming through the open picture windows magnified her bright
smile, and the empty restaurant provided the perfect acoustics for
her echoing voice. They snagged a corner booth, and Cat zoned out
Kiara’s chatter as she raked her mind for the best way to bring the
subject of Brad Derhoff into the conversation.

What kind of smoothies did the last reporter
like?

Seen any good corpses lately?

What’s the deal with that suicide?

“So, you’re not from Las Vegas,
right?”

Cat blinked. “What? Oh uh, Las Vegas. No, I was
with the Porterville team and before that I lived in the
Midwest.”

Kiara scrunched her nose. “So, do you like it
better out here?”

Cat nodded. “I do. Especially the
job.”

Kiara grinned.

Bingo.

“I know! Just being here is, like, totally
amazing. You know what I mean? So many people wanted this
internship, too. Lucky for me, my uncle works on the fifth floor
and put in a good word with Erich.”

Cat stretched her lips over clenched teeth and
hoped that it passed for a smile.

Yes, nepotism is lucky that way.

Kiara grinned back. “I know what you’re
thinking, but I have a four-point-oh GPA.”

Yeah me, too, even during the semester I
couldn’t afford any textbooks—despite working thirty hours a week
as Shrimp on the Barbie’s senior deveiner.

“No, no. I wasn’t thinking that.”

Yes, yes, I was.

Kiara stirred her smoothie with the straw.
“Anyway, I’m so glad you’re here. I mean, it’s just awful what
happened to Brad—suicide, like, yuck city, you know? At the same
time, it’s so cool having another girl around the office. The
fourth floor is a total sausage fest.”

Cat let out a genuine laugh, and Kiara cackled
along with her. But then Cat hurried to gain control of the
conversation before the wandering mind of Kiara took them on
another verbal journey to nowhere.

“Yeah, Brad. That’s awful. So, was everyone in
the front office a mess when he died?”

Kiara shook her head emphatically and leaned
in. A straight, shiny strand of ebony hair fell dangerously close
to her peach smoothie. “Actually, it was the weirdest thing. They
didn’t want to talk about it, like, at all. I was totally scared to
ask anything. I’d only been here for all of a freaking month, so it
really sucked. It was like everyone was walking around on crab
shells.”

Cat stifled another laugh, determined to press
for more information. “Weird indeed. Did they send out a bunch of
e-mails about the whole thing?”

Kiara must have finally noticed her hair’s
proximity to the glass because she flipped the black locks behind
her shoulder. She looked around the empty eatery before responding.
“Yeah, they sent out a few, but they didn’t really say anything you
couldn’t just read in the papers. My uncle said they were probably,
you know, just wanting the deal to blow over ’cause, like, it was
bringing bad publicity to the team and stuff.”

Cat furrowed her brow as she digested this
intel.

So, why aren’t those e-mails in the history
folder?

Were they permanently deleted?

Why?

Cat didn’t like the path where this line of
questioning was leading. That path led right back to the trailer
park. That path led to disgusting jobs for disgusting pay. That
path was a shortcut to hell. She decided it was time to veer in the
opposite direction or she’d find herself once again ripping the
veins out of shrimp for minimum wage.

I’m sure it’s nothing, anyway. Like Kiara’s
uncle said, it was just an unseemly matter Erich probably didn’t
want to keep dredging up. The same attitude he’d adopted on
Jamal.

“Wasser unter der Brücke.”

Cat didn’t know if the chill traveling down her
spine was from the callousness the franchise took on its employees’
deaths, or merely a physical response to her frosty pistachio
smoothie. She rubbed her arms and pushed the empty glass away as
the pineapple-shaped clock on the wall chimed.