Deadly Currents (8 page)

“For the same reason I need to talk to you. The Pueblo coroner’s office finished their toxicology test and reached a conclusion on the cause of death for Tom King.”

Mandy leaned forward. “Did he have a heart attack?”

“No.”

She slumped back in the chair. “Damn. What did he die of then?”

“Poison.”

That made her sit up straight. “P-poison?”

Quintana nodded. He fished a page out of the Tom King file on his desk, now twice the size it had been when Mandy last saw it. “Aconite, to be exact, and this particular aconite came from the Western monkshood plant. The purple-blue flowers are supposed to be very popular with bees.”

“Does that grow along the river?”

“It does grow wild in this area, plus I’m told some people grow it in their flower gardens, if they don’t have pets.”

A thousand questions battled for access to Mandy’s tongue, but the first one to fight its way out was, “So how did he get poisoned by it?”

“He ingested it.”

“Why would he eat wildflowers?”

Quintana leaned forward and peered at Mandy. “We don’t think he chose to eat it. The dosage was more than you get from a few flowers. We think someone slipped it to him in something he ate or drank.”

“Ohmigod.” Further implications crowded Mandy’s brain. “Ohmigod. That means—”

Quintana nodded. “That means Tom King’s death probably wasn’t accidental. He was most likely murdered.”

“Is there an antidote? I mean, if he’d been pulled out of the river earlier, could he have been saved?”

“There’s no antidote, only treatments for the symptoms if the dose is small enough for the body to purge it in a few hours. But aconite is one of the strongest plant poisons. A dose of one-sixteenth of a grain can kill an adult. The toxicology report indicated at least twice that much was in Tom King’s bloodstream. He was a doomed man before you even got to him.”

A dizzying wave of relief washed over her, flooding her senses until her throat clogged and her eyes burned with unshed tears. She couldn’t have saved him. She wasn’t responsible for his death. She put her hand over her mouth and looked out the window to try to regain her composure.

When she looked back at Quintana, she saw that he understood—perfectly. “Thank you,” she said in a hoarse voice. “Thank you for telling me.”

He gave her knee a couple of quick pats and moved his tissue box closer to her. “This also means your uncle can’t be faulted in Tom King’s death. Paula King’s negligence lawsuit now has no basis.”

“What about the media? Will they be told? If the newspapers say it was murder, Uncle Bill’s customers will stop blaming him and calling to cancel trips.” Her ballooning excitement made Mandy jump out of her chair. “I need to tell him right away.”

“Hold on.” Quintana put a hand up. “We need to talk about this. You can tell your uncle that King was poisoned, but not what substance was used. We’re doing the same in our press release.”

“No problem.”

“You can also tell him that in light of this new information, we’ll need to re-interview him and all his staff who were involved with that trip.”

Mandy plopped back down in her chair. “You don’t think any of them killed Tom King, do you?”

“Right now everyone on that trip has to be treated as a suspect, plus anyone else King had contact with that morning. But our immediate need for information is on the timing of the appearance of King’s symptoms. If we can map the progression of the poisoning, we may be able to come up with an educated guess as to when he ingested the aconite.”

“How long does it take for aconite to kill someone?”

“The Pueblo coroner is consulting some poison experts, but his best guess is anywhere from thirty minutes to a few hours.”

“Were the symptoms I saw—the unconsciousness, gray skin, and weak pulse—consistent with the poisoning?”

“The poison was attacking King’s heart by the time you got to him, and he was going into ventricular fibrillation.”

“And the weak paddling strokes, sweating, and thirst that Gonzo saw?”

Quintana consulted the toxicology report. “Muscular weakness and excessive sweating are listed as symptoms. And a tingling in the mouth when it’s ingested that the subject can confuse with thirst.”

“What about the wooziness?”

“The way Gonzo expressed it was that King was having a hard time processing what Gonzo said to him. That’s consistent with the symptom of impaired hearing. The man could also have been confused by what was happening to his body.”

Mandy imagined what her own confusion and terror would be if her body was falling apart on her and she had no idea why. She shuddered. “What a horrible experience to go through.”

“Not a pleasant way to die, I imagine. But most ways aren’t.”

And who would want to do that to Tom King?
“So your only interest, then, in talking to Uncle Bill and the guides is to get information on symptoms and who had access to Tom King?”

“No. As I said, right now everyone who got near King that morning is a suspect.”

“But Uncle Bill and the guides would have no reason to kill him. They barely knew the man! You should be talking to his bitchy wife instead. She’s got to be your prime suspect.”

With a cock of his head, Quintana asked, “Why’s that?”

“Because Tom King was cheating on her.” Mandy related Cynthia’s story of Paula tossing King’s things out on the lawn.

Quintana smoothed his mustache again. “When you said bitchy, my impression is that you meant it a little more personally.”

Mandy rolled her eyes. “We had an argument after the funeral.” After giving Quintana the gist of it, she said, “I can’t wait to tell that woman she’s totally wrong.”

“Oh, no. You’re not going anywhere near her. Certainly not before I have a chance to question her. In fact—” Quintana steepled his fingers and peered at her. “I know this is your case, too. But given your personal involvement, and the obvious emotions that engenders, you should probably stay away from all the suspects—the King family and everyone else on that trip.”

“I’m not staying away from Uncle Bill!”

“Of course not. But after telling him that Paula King’s suit has no basis, I recommend you refrain from discussing the case with him or anyone else. I’ll keep you informed, of course, about our progress.”

Mandy wasn’t sure she agreed with this. Having her hands tied left her feeling decidedly uneasy.

_____

As soon as Mandy returned to her Subaru, she tried to call Uncle Bill on her cell phone but got no answer. He was probably out working in the equipment yard or returning from running a shuttle since it was after one o’clock, the time when afternoon trips departed. She decided to tell him the good news personally.

While driving to his place, her thoughts returned to Paula King. The woman certainly had enough venom in her to be a killer. Paula had a strong motive, too. She had to have been angry and wanting revenge for her husband’s affair. Though if Mandy were Paula, she probably would have poisoned Evie Olson first. But could she have gone so far—to actually kill someone over a love affair?

Mandy tried to imagine how she would feel if Rob went out with someone else.
Awful.
But still, they weren’t married like the Kings, who must have loved each other at some point. Mandy and Rob had only been dating for three months, and though she cared for him deeply, deeply enough to scare her sometimes, they hadn’t made any promises to each other—yet.

Mandy rubbed her arm, remembering Rob’s hands on her arms after the funeral. She was already regretting her angry words and wanting his hands on her again—and his lips on her mouth. She decided to visit him after Uncle Bill, apologize, and find a quiet place to savor a few make-up kisses. Then, maybe she could convince Rob to pass on the news about how Tom King died to those new customers he had booked. That news could both assure them the river wasn’t King’s killer and that Uncle Bill’s company had nothing to do with the death.

With that plan in mind, she whistled a jaunty tune while she parked under the cottonwood tree by her uncle’s house. She got out and scanned the yard, calling his name. The only living creatures in the vicinity were two mule deer mamas and their spotted fawns munching on the grass. The four animals lifted their heads and twitched their large ears at Mandy, but when she proved not to be a threat, they resumed their grazing.

Not finding her uncle, Mandy went inside and looked over the check-in counter into Uncle Bill’s office. He sat in his chair, slumped forward on his desk, with his head on his arms and facing away from her.

Mandy smiled. “Caught you napping!”

When he didn’t awaken, she passed through the entryway door into the house, turned into his office and tapped his shoulder. “Uncle Bill?”

The hair on the back of her neck bristled. The office was quiet—too quiet. And Uncle Bill was too still.

Mandy stood paralyzed, trembling, staring at the back of her uncle’s head like a pronghorn antelope staring at the headlights of an approaching Mack truck. She forced herself to take a step, then another, so her uncle’s face came into view.

It looked gray, lifeless.

Mandy slammed back against the office wall and slid to the floor. The Mack truck ran over her heart.

“No, no, no, no
…”

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable.

—
The Dry Salvages
, T. S. Eliot

Mandy lay on her
bed, curled into as small a ball as she could make. Lucky whimpered on the floor nearby. The poor beast undoubtedly sensed his mistress was upset, but wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong. Next to Mandy, Cynthia sat stroking her hair, murmuring God knows what. Mandy couldn’t hear her over the howling inside her head that screamed over and over again, “Uncle Bill is dead, Uncle Bill is dead.”

Her body seethed with raw pain. Her eyes burned, tears had seared her throat, and her heart lay in splintered shards. First her parents died, now Uncle Bill. She felt totally alone, drowning in silent agony at the bottom of a pitch-black dungeon of despair with no idea how to claw her way out.

Somehow, she had managed to call 9-1-1 from her uncle’s office. When the ambulance crew arrived and realized they could do nothing for her uncle, they directed their concern to Mandy, shivering in the corner. It took a while for her to focus enough for them to find out who they should contact to be with her. She had given them Rob’s office number, but Rob was leading a day trip through the Royal Gorge and couldn’t be reached. So, Cynthia was called.

Cynthia had rushed over and driven Mandy home. She was the one who had thought to call Mandy’s brother, David, in Colorado Springs and urge him to come to Salida right away. She’d been with Mandy for hours since, rocking her while she sobbed, laying a cool washcloth over her swollen eyes, disposing of the sodden tissues, or just holding her hand while Mandy stared, unseeing, at the blank bedroom wall.

When the phone rang, Cynthia answered it and listened for a moment. “She’s here, but I’m not sure she can talk yet.”

Cynthia bent down to whisper in Mandy’s ear. “It’s the coroner’s office. They know how your uncle died. Do you want to talk to them?”

Mandy squeezed her eyes and lips shut.

Cynthia put the headset to her ear. “Can you tell me, and I’ll tell her?” She scribbled on a pad on the nightstand. “What kind of clot? How do you spell that? Um, hum, and how long ago did the heart attack happen?”

She glanced at Mandy. “If anyone had been with him, could he have been revived?” She paused. “Okay, thank you. I’ll have Mandy call you if she needs more information.”

She hung up the phone and rubbed Mandy’s back. “They found a huge clot still stuck in his pulmonary artery. The heart damage was massive. It was his time, Mandy. They said no one, not you or anyone else, could have saved him.”

“I could have forced him to eat better, to exercise, to get more sleep.” And a probing, vicious little voice added,
and I could have continued working for him instead of becoming a river ranger. I would have shouldered some of the stress, would have been there when the heart attack happened. Selfish, selfish, selfish fool!

A knock sounded at the door and Cynthia rose. She spoke with someone in hushed tones at the doorway.

Cynthia returned and laid a hand on Mandy’s arm. “Your brother’s here. I’ll leave now to go to work, but I’ll call you later. And I’ll come by to check on you tomorrow.”

With a few rustles, Cynthia left, and Mandy felt a heavier presence sit on the bed next to her. “Hey, Mandy. I’m sorry about Uncle Bill.”

Mandy slowly opened her eyes. David’s solemn face swam into view, an almost exact copy of their father’s, with his blue eyes, almost-white blond hair, and a broad smear of freckles over both cheeks and his nose. In his pressed khaki pants, button-down Oxford shirt and loafers, David looked like the number-cruncher he was.

He gave her a halfhearted pat on the shoulder, then laced his fingers together in his lap. “How are you feeling?”

“Awful.”

“Yeah, I guess that was a dumb question.” He glanced around the room, as if trying to figure out what to say next.

The action brought memories of her parents’ deaths flooding in, and David’s extreme awkwardness in dealing with her overpowering grief—and his own. Here he was again, at a loss for words and unsure what to do with his hands, even though he was a grown man of thirty. Mandy watched him in almost morbid fascination, trying to guess what would come out of his mouth next.

His stomach rumbled. “I threw some clothes in a bag and drove out as fast as I could. Made no stops. Have you eaten anything since you found him?”

“My stomach’s too upset to eat.”

“Well, I haven’t eaten since breakfast. How about if I make you some tea while I rustle up a sandwich for myself? You always have peanut butter and jelly on hand, right?”

Mandy wouldn’t have guessed he’d bring up the subject of food. She nodded.

“Come with me into the kitchen.” David put an arm around her shoulders and lifted her into a sitting position, then pulled her to her feet. “Cynthia said you’ve been on this bed for hours. Moving around some will be good for you.”

Feeling dizzy after being made to stand so quickly, Mandy staggered against him and held on until the stars floated out of her vision. “Maybe you’re right.”

Her throat did feel raw. Some tea with honey might help. But nothing else. She couldn’t stomach anything else, not even peanut butter.

David led her into the kitchen, set her in a chair, and filled the teakettle. The burner lit for him, no problem. He put the teakettle on to boil. Needing to focus on something, anything other than her dead uncle, Mandy watched while he opened cupboard doors, looking for a plate and sandwich fixings. His biceps were larger than when she had last seen him at Christmas.

“You’ve been working out.”

He shot her a look then glanced at his arms. “Yeah. At Christmas time, I saw how muscular your arms had gotten. Couldn’t let my little sis out arm-wrestle me.”

He flashed a small smile, but when she didn’t reciprocate, he opened another cupboard and pulled out tea bags. He made himself two PBJ sandwiches, fixed her tea and handed the mug to her, then sat down to eat.

Mandy curled her fingers around the hot mug and breathed in the steam to ease the swelling in her nose.

David made fast work of the sandwiches, taking businesslike bites, then got up, poured a glass of water and drank the whole thing down while standing at the sink. When he returned to the table, he said, “We need to talk.”

Mandy sipped her tea, now cool enough to drink. “About what?”

“Uncle Bill’s business for one. Funeral arrangements for two.”

Mandy put down her cup. “I’m not ready for this.” Tears burned her eyes again.

“I know this is hard, really hard, for you.” David drew circles on the tabletop with his finger. “But we need to make some decisions. When Uncle Bill updated his will after you turned twenty-one, he sent me a copy. We’re co-inheritors of his business. But I can tell you now, Mandy, I can’t stay here and run his company. I can take a week or two off work, tops. Then I’ve got to get back to the Springs.”

He sat back and gave her an appraising look. “And, you’re a river ranger now. You don’t have time to run the company. What do we do about the rafting business?”

Business would be the first thing David would think about.
“How the hell should I know?”

“It’s a problem we’ve got to solve, and I’m sorry, but the solution can’t wait. What do we do about all the trips that are already booked?”

A sudden realization washed over Mandy. When she’d gone to Uncle Bill’s early that afternoon, the van had been missing from the equipment yard, and a few cars had been parked in the side lot. She glanced at the clock. Almost five.

“I think a trip is coming back right now. And one or two trips are probably scheduled for tomorrow.”

“Should we call those customers and cancel, or can the guides run those trips on their own without Uncle Bill?”

Mandy’s head throbbed. She put her elbows on the table and dropped her chin on her hands. “I don’t want to do this. Not now.”

David reached across the table and took one of her hands. “We’ve got to make sure Uncle Bill’s customers are taken care of. He would want that. And we’ve got to figure out what to do with his business.”

When Mandy shot him a bleak look, he said, “Let’s just start with today and tomorrow. Get through these two days, then we’ll go from there. Where did Uncle Bill keep his customer contact information?”

“On his computer. I can show you—”

A knock sounded on the door, and it swung open, hitting the wall with a thud. “Mandy?” Rob’s voice called from the living room. He strode into the kitchen. “As soon as I heard about Bill, I came right over.”

He stopped short, eyes glued on Mandy’s hand in David’s. “Oh, I didn’t realize you had company.”

David looked Rob up and down then lifted an eyebrow at Mandy, as if to say, “Who’s this guy who feels like he can waltz into your house without knocking?”

Mandy pulled her hand from David’s grasp and stood. She plucked at her matted hair, knowing she looked awful. “Rob, this is—”

Then she saw the puddles forming under Rob’s feet, still clad in sandy river sandals. Big drops plopped from his clingy swim trunks. Even though she wanted nothing more than to feel his arms around her, this last little mess snapped the thin veneer of sanity over her ragged emotions. Her grief lashed out.

“You’re soaking wet and dripping all over my floor!” As soon as the awful words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. She covered her mouth with her hand.

Rob looked down. “Oh, sorry.” He gestured toward the kitchen door. “I’ll go out in the yard and chan—”

Then he glanced at David again. “No, I should just leave. I’ll call you later, Mandy.” He turned and squished his way back across the living room carpet and out the front door.

David studied the sodden footprints. “Odd guy. What’s his name?”

With a groan, Mandy started toward the front door. “Rob Juarez, and I think he’s got the wrong idea about who you are. Give me a minute.”

She sped up her pace and yanked open the front door to yell, “Rob, wait!” as he was climbing back into his truck.

Rob’s square jaw looked chiseled in stone. “I thought you might need some comforting, but it looks like you’ve already got some.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I guess you were right about having nothing more to say to me. You work fast, Mandy.”

He slammed his door shut.

Mandy yanked it open. “You idiot!”

“Oh, so I can’t call you stupid, but you can call me an idiot?” Rob folded his arms across his chest.

Mandy had half a mind to walk off and let Rob stew in his own selfish, jealous juices until he found out for himself what an idiot he was. But she cared too much for this blustering, prideful, and totally endearing man to let him suffer. A smile was already tugging at the edges of her lips over the ridiculous situation. “That’s my brother, David. I told you about him, remember?”

Rob groaned, slumped in his seat, slapped his forehead. He looked back at the house, where David stood in the front doorway, arms crossed. “You’re right. I’m an idiot.”

David came over. “So, are you going to introduce me to the idiot?”

Mandy waved her arms. “David, Rob. Rob, David. Rob and I started dating three months ago.”

David reached into the truck to shake Rob’s hand. “Off to a good start, I see.”

_____

Feeling totally drained, Mandy pushed open the back door of her uncle’s house and stepped inside. After she had gotten David set up with her uncle’s computer, she met the van as it drove into the backyard and pasted on a smile to greet customers when they disembarked. Then she helped Gonzo and Kendra unload two rafts and wash the customers’ wetsuits.

Noticing her stiff posture and quivering lip, they asked her what was wrong. She kept putting them off with “later” until the last set of customers climbed into their car and drove away. Then in a burst of tears, she told them about Uncle Bill.

Kendra followed her into the house, sniffling and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “How can you stand to be here, Mandy, after finding him, you know?”

Spying her brother sitting in her uncle’s chair at his computer, Mandy halted as if she had slammed into a wall. “I
can’t
stand to be here. I can’t. But I can’t abandon the business either.”