House of Mercy (36 page)

How could Beth know Garner was in her office even now, sickened by the same fungus that had sickened Nov—

This was not what Nova meant. Beth knew Garner was alive. Cat rattled the doorknob, and when that didn’t yield, she pressed both hands to the door and pressed her forehead into the wood.

“What did you tell her?” Cat demanded.

“I told her you’re a killer.”

“That’s a lie. You’re . . . you’re unstable. Crazy with grief.”

“I’ll prove it eventually.”

Panic did a cannonball dive into Cat’s pool of calm. “Prove
what
?”

“You’re no more a doctor than I am.”

“Where’s Beth?”

“You killed—”

“Where
is
she!”

“—my baby.”

“You can’t kill a
fetus
,” Cat hissed. “I saved a baby from a miserable life with you, you pathetic creature.”

It was Nova’s silence that returned Cat’s words to her like a verdict. Her confession was out there, impossible to retract.

“I could have helped you,” Cat said, but she didn’t care if Nova heard her or replied. Nova was the least of her concerns now. Cat fled down the stairs and back to her offices, to Garner, to the only person she’d ever known who’d appreciated her love and returned it.

She couldn’t stay in Burnt Rock. Nor could Garner. They had to leave. Now, within the hour, before the sunlight exposed all of Cat’s lies.

She went to her desk first. She closed her computer and slipped it into her case. The laptop contained all the most important components of her false life—passwords and résumés and diplomas and operational ID numbers, all of which had cost her so much money—and contact information for the people who could provide all that to her again.

The thought of beginning once more after so little time brought an ache to Cat’s head. Could she do it? Could she enter another town, another set of lives, with a life of her own so perfectly groomed and presented that they couldn’t help but love her? The false her? The doctor who was no longer a doctor, who gave so much and asked for so little?

She took what her fingers touched without thinking about why she was doing it. Prescription pads that she’d throw away when Catherine Ransom ceased to exist. Pens and magnets given to her by the Burnt Rock business owners. Intake forms that existed on her computer. She left her framed license hanging on the wall.

She found several large cardboard boxes that held bulk supplies. Toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer. She dumped the contents out on the floor and filled the empty boxes with her entire inventory of medications and medical supplies, items that would be almost as costly to replace as her identity. She had no time to organize or file, only to take. She thought through what Garner would need, what she would have to access easily, and placed these in a separate, smaller box. One by one she carried these out to her car at the back of the building.

The perspiration of rushing, hurrying, worrying broke out at her temples.

When she finished with the boxes she went to the supply closet and pushed aside the coat she’d stashed there last winter. It was holding up a backboard she’d used only once, when Mazy had slipped on the ice behind her diner in January. Cat took this into the room where Garner rested, fretting. She should have invested in a gurney. It had taken herself and two men to get this hospital-grade bed, then empty, into the room. There would be no getting it out now that it was occupied. She unhooked the IV bag from its pole and rested it on Garner’s chest. She moved around the bed, untucking the sheets from around the mattress, preparing to slide him onto the backboard, strap him in, then drag him to her car. It would be a jarring, primitive effort.

She wedged several inches of the slim board underneath the sheet at his left side and gripped the fabric. When she gave it a firm tug, her fingernails pierced the thin cotton and ripped a six-inch gash in it. Her heart fell at the sound of the threads snapping. This was a job that generally took three or four people and sturdy materials.

She tried again, this time pulling on both the sheet and a belt loop in Garner’s pants. She leaned against the edge of the board and used her hips to shove it under Garner’s body. His backside came up onto the board this time, but his legs and torso bent away from her. Cat went around to the opposite side of the bed as the IV bag slipped off Garner’s chest and plummeted to the floor. She failed to catch it in time, and her despair began to mount, even though the bag didn’t burst and the tube was long enough that it didn’t yank the angiocatheter from Garner’s hand.

Even if she could get him onto the board—which after more than a minute she finally managed, first his legs and then his shoulders and head—his hundred seventy pounds might as well have been two hundred seventy. She didn’t have a clear vision in her head for how this plan would work. One step at a time, one problem at a time. She wrapped the sheet around him and secured him to the board with the safety straps like a baby in a papoose.

After ensuring that the bed’s wheel brakes had been set, Cat pushed the board off the end of the mattress. When it began to gently teeter she went to the foot of the bed and guided the bottom edge of the board to the floor. She jiggled it once to make sure it was stabilized and then stepped away to lower Garner’s head. When she moved, her shoe caught Garner’s foot and she lost her balance, and before she recovered it the board was sliding on the slick floor and Garner’s head was falling, and when her reflexes sent her arm out to catch him, the board with all of Garner’s weight on it fell on top of her hand and pinned it to the floor.

She watched the board bounce and rattle Garner’s head before it came down on her hand a second time. The pain was so quick and intense that Cat couldn’t be sure right away if her bones had been crushed or fractured or merely bruised. For several seconds she couldn’t even move to get the board off of her. She lay prone on the floor, her throbbing hand trapped under the unconscious form of her dear friend, and began to weep.

It was impossible, what she was trying to do—everything was impossible, from trying to create a new life to trying to take Garner with her.

For a time, she considered staying with him. But they would only be separated in the end. By the girl, by the law, by fate—no matter how tenderly she nursed Garner back to health, not only from the ergot, but from the cancer too. No one cared about any of that.

She would have to leave him here.

As the knife-sharp pain in her bones began to wane, so did her paralysis. Cat found her knees and reached out to shove Garner’s board off her hand. The wooden
thunk
was a distant sound under the dull roaring of pain in her head. She couldn’t stay on the cold floor a second longer.

Without looking at Garner, without pausing to assess the damage to her hand, Cat stumbled out of the room and out of the office. The night sky in the windows had lightened almost imperceptibly from black to charcoal. To Cat the change was as loud as Cinderella’s midnight tolling, counting down the final seconds of an ending dream.

She stumbled upstairs to collect the valuables she would need for her next life.

32

T
he front room of Garner’s house, the room on the other side of the kitchen wall, was a showcase for glass jars filled with herbs and dried flowers, slender brown vials topped with medicine droppers, squatty blue tubs filled with botanical salves, larger bottles variously labeled as syrups or tonics, and several elegant teapots and cups.

Beth ran her fingers along the labels, curious about her grandfather’s work. Many of them bore the green Garner’s Garden logo. Others appeared to be from Europe. She saw some from China, with the contents handwritten in English on a sticker and applied over the Chinese characters. A whisper of rising red sun slipped through the lightweight curtains, likely drawn to protect the jars from direct light without darkening the room. A display case that also served as a counter bearing a register and credit card machine separated the products for sale from the shop’s front entry.

“He’s developed all these remedies?” she asked Trey, who was fishing a laptop out of his backpack.

“Not the stuff that requires a lab. He has a contract with one company to produce a few recipes, and he has his favorite distributors, but his specialty is the fresh plants—you should see the basement.”

“I thought he was in real estate.”

“Up here? This botanical interest of his makes more sense to me. He has cancer, you know.” Beth turned to face him, and his eyebrows shot up. “Of course you didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“What kind?”

“Liver.”

“Is it bad?” she asked.

“Not bad enough to keep him off his feet. He doesn’t talk about it very much, except to swear by this stuff.” Trey indicated the remedies on the shelves. “And by the good doctor, who calls herself holistic.”

Trey dropped onto a sofa under one of the windows and opened his laptop on his knees. “So Dr. Cat told you Garner’s dead. And did I tell you she wrote me off as a specimen of perfect health? What kind of doctor resents a healthy person? Let’s look into her.”

Beth didn’t see how this might help them find Garner.

“Do we really have to wait here for him to come home?”

“When the sun’s up, we’ll go ask around. Garner’s popular here. But right now the town sleeps. And besides, I don’t mind being forced to hang out for a while with a pretty cowgirl who listens to my stories.” Trey didn’t seem to be teasing her, but a veil of oil covered her hair, and her jeans might be able to stand up by themselves. “How did you come by Cat and Nova?” he asked.

“Nova was sick. I found her on my way into town, up at that church.”

“The Burnt Rock Harbor Sweet Assembly. Silly place. But Nova has broad beliefs about her spiritual life. Is she okay?”

“She’s had a miscarriage.”

Trey looked up from his computer. “Garner said something about her expecting.”

“Nova told me Dr. Ransom poisoned her.”

Trey didn’t laugh.

“I saw Nova Saturday night,” Trey said. “She looked fine to me. She came by Cat’s after we finished eating dinner.”

“Does everyone here make a habit of eating with folks they don’t like?”

Trey’s fingers flew and the keyboard clacked.

“Don’t we all now and then? I think Garner was trying to patch up an argument between them. Cat was pretty nice about things, now that I think of it—she invited Nova to join us, then sent some rolls home with her when she said she didn’t have time. Garner thinks I ought to get friendly with Nova. I like her and all, but she’s a bit too old for me, not to mention really far out there with her belief system. You come much closer to hitting the mark—outdoorsy, friendly with the wildlife, bold.”

“You’re not too shy yourself.”

He glanced up at her for a second and grinned. “No time to be shy. Too many cool people to meet. And I get the idea that you’re a Christian?”

“Yes.”

“Spectacular!”

His eyes scanned his computer screen again.

“Dr. Ransom gave Nova food? Could that have been what made her so sick?”

Trey shrugged. “Dinner sat fine with me, and Garner seemed okay last time I saw him.”

“Which was when?”

“Sunday morning before I went out. Look here: I’ve been searching for ‘Catherine Ransom, MD’ and can’t find squat. She’s listed on the state license board, but her license is barely a year old. She’s only been in Burnt Rock that long.”

Beth moved to the sofa and sat next to him where she could see the computer screen. “So maybe she’s from another state.”

“True. I can’t remember where she’s from. But I don’t get any hits at all on her name, not anywhere, and she’s not on any of the physician listings.”

“If she’s only been practicing for a year, they might just not be up to date.”

“That’s weird, isn’t it? She’s what—fortyish? And if Nova’s right about Cat poisoning her, maybe she’s trying to hide a malpractice history.”

“Poisoning someone is worse than malpractice,” Beth said. The day was taking far too long to get underway. Beth gripped Trey’s arm. “What if she poisoned Garner?”

“Yow! Your hands are Iceland!” Beth let go of him and sat on her hands. “Cat wouldn’t hurt him. They’re like this.” Trey crossed his fingers.

“Until I know for sure,” Beth said, “I’ll keep the option open. The rolls that Cat gave Nova—did all of you eat some?”

“No. I seriously swear off gluten. That offended her. But when I pointed out that she wasn’t eating any either, she dropped it.”

“She didn’t have some? What about Garner?”

“He ate a bunch—one for each of us and two for himself.”

“Trey, think about this—”

“Mind’s a-whirling.”

“What kind were they?”

“I don’t remember. Does it matter?”

“I don’t know, but Nova and Garner ate some, and you and Cat didn’t. It was less than three days ago. Come on. You have a head for details.”

Trey closed his eyes for two seconds. “Rye. They were rye.”

Beth sighed. Rye meant nothing to her. And what did she know about poison? She scoured her mental files for anything: her very limited experience with bread baking . . . high-altitude baking . . . rye. There were a few farmers in the valley who farmed rye. It was an easy dry-climate crop that was good for livestock feed. Sometimes the rye from neighboring farms took root in the wild and spread quickly onto grazing lands, where the cows noshed it with other grains and grasses.