The big question of whether the sniper with the puny gun and the bad aim was trying to kill Dr. Randolph and me or just Dr. Randolph, while not put to rest, was at least given a new, interesting twist by his poisoning.
By the time I returned to Sarasota, where Newly and Sam were both waiting for me at the airport, the prick doctor was out of danger and had been moved from the ICU into a private suite. Sam told me this while Newly hugged me, whispering, “Oh, hon,” in my ear before he let go and hugged Angela.
Sam was all business and offered to drive me back to his office. My head still hurt, though only in a somewhat ordinary way, and I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink that didn’t come out of a bottle, a can, or a previously unopened package, and I was tired.
“Couldn’t I just go home?”
“Later,” Sam said. “I’d like your permission to have the poison control people check the contents of your refrigerator. I already looked for signs of a break-in from the outside but would like to have the technicians check inside too.”
“Sure,” I said, thinking, Whatever. “But tell them to clean up after themselves.”
As Angela and Newly went off arm in arm— though Newly looked back over his shoulder at me—I announced that I had to have food. The upshot was that Sam drove me to his house, where, he promised, he would feed me.
In the car, he gave me some particulars about Dr. Randolph. The prick doctor had come home from a busy day of looking up women’s dresses and grabbed his usual glass of iced tea. Keeps a jug of it in the refrigerator. Sam explained that the doctor makes it himself, using peppermint and green tea and some other herbs, full of antioxidants and plant phyro-things that are healthy.
About half an hour later, Dr. Randolph felt himself flushing and realized his heart rate was up, Sam explained. When the doctor started having fairly mild (at least to begin with) hallucinations, he called 911. Paramedics found him ranting, his face bright red. His blood pressure and heart rate were off the charts, which they discovered when they were finally able to corral him.
“It was touch and go during the night,” Sam said, pushing a yellow on the Tamiami Trail and weaving between cars in a way that made my stomach dip and tuck too. “ER doctor probably saved his life by recognizing right off what the problem was. By the time the paramedics caught him and got him to the hospital, he was in a coma, but from what they told the ER doctor—red face, hallucinations, all that— the doctor realized it was probably Jimsonweed. Or Datura.”
“That’s the stuff the witches used, isn’t it? It’s like a belladonna.”
“Yes,” Sam said, and looked over at me curiously, I thought, and then he flat out ran a red and turned off on a side street and was heading east of the Tamiami Trail, where the few ordinary people left in Sarasota lived in their overpriced, modest homes in the less desirable neighborhoods. “What witches? How’d you know that?”
“I read a lot,” I said.
“It’s a common weed, with large, white trumpet-shaped flowers. Down here, they bloom spring to early winter. It’s the seeds that have the most toxins. Teenagers hear you can get high off the plant and the seeds and make tea out of it,” Sam said. “That’s how the ER doctor recognized the symptoms. He’d treated some teenagers for it last summer. Of course, he ran some tests on Randolph, but he saved a lot of time by knowing what tests to run.”
Sam pulled into the driveway of a very modest, even shabby, older wood house with a shed and what looked like a quarter-acre or so of land around it. Lots of orange trees. The yard was mowed and clear of debris. Okay, so the yard’s neat, I thought. But his place was still about two hinges and a screen door shy of a shack.
He hopped out and ran to my side of the car and opened my door, offering me his hand. “You’ll feel better when you get some food and coffee in you.”
“Toast. And coffee,” I croaked. Coffee, yes, my head screamed. In a wholly irrational state that morning, I had been afraid to drink any coffee in case it was poisoned, and I had tried to get enough caffeine from drinking Coke, but this brought forth images of my mother, and, though the Coke itself tasted remarkably good, I couldn’t finish it. “Got whole wheat?”
“I don’t know. Got what was on sale at the Winn-Dixie last week.”
Oh, frigging great. The good-health breads never go on sale. “I don’t suppose the coffee is organic.”
“Folgers, I think.”
I calculated the greater evil: common grocery store coffee versus the delay of a trip to the Granary for the good stuff. Bird in hand won out.
Sam made the coffee first. As I sipped my coffee and felt my blood vessels constrict, my headache ease, and my thinking clear, I pumped Sam for more details.
In the end, all he really knew was that someone had broken into Dr. Randolph’s house and spiked the man’s tea with liberal dosages of Jimsonweed.
“How’d they get in?”
“The back door was broken into,” Sam answered. “Somewhat obviously and amateurishly. If Randolph had gone in the back, he’d have seen it and probably called nine-one-one right off.”
I sipped the coffee and nodded as hunger kicked me in the stomach.
“Want bacon and eggs?” Sam asked, sticking his head in his refrigerator.
Oh, please, dead pig soaked in cancer-causing nitrates?
But before I could answer, Sam studied the package of bacon and then threw it in the trash. “Eggs are probably all right.”
“Toast will be fine,” I said, thinking the man needed some serious domestic training.
While Sam made me toast, which I noted was Roman Meal, which is pretty good even if it’s not the multigrain stuff I bought, I looked around the kitchen. Neat, clean, stark. Not a spice anywhere, unless you counted the blue cardboard container of salt. White walls. No curtains. I liked it. Nothing that suggested a woman had lived here in recent memory.
Politely, I asked about the bathroom, got directions, and snooped my way through the center of the house. Clean, neat, stark. No knickknacks. As if I’d found a soul mate, I noted the wood floors without rugs or trash, the complete absence of any newspapers, other papers, or magazines anywhere, and the completely bare walls. And he liked Rottweilers. I calculated his age as mid- or possibly late forties, which meant he might be near to a twenty-five-year retirement point if he’d joined the force at twenty-one. I made a mental note to ask him how he felt about apple orchards and north Georgia in case I decided he should retire and head up there with me. The way the Jason Goodacre case was in the toilet, I figured I’d be heading up that way much sooner than I’d planned. Maybe with Sam and a couple of Rottweilers beside me in my 1987 Honda with the 187,000 miles on it and the new window and paint job.
Jason Goodacre case down the drain or not, I thought another near-death experience on Dr. Randolph’s part should be worth a third continuance in his trial, and then I wondered if Stephen LaBlanc had actually filed his petition with the appellate court asking that Judge Goddard be ordered to set a trial date. I needed to talk with Bonita, but first I needed to sneak a peek at Sam’s medicine cabinet, check the tub for stains and soap scum, and scope out his bedroom.
When I saw the bottle of Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap on the edge of a very clean tub, I felt better than I had since Dr. Jamieson ruined my life by pointing out that I couldn’t even prove my own theory of the Jason Goodacre defense. Though, I admit, Sam’s toothbrush in an empty Jack Daniel’s pint gave me pause.
But I didn’t let the potential relationship with Sam spoil my professional obligation to a client who had nearly died, and, of course, would sue my butt if I missed a trick in his defense. After my lunch of toast and Folgers, I made my long phone call to Bonita and got caught up on things. Then I looked up at Sam. “Guess you’d better take me home.”
“Maybe you’d better stay here,” he said, and didn’t blink, didn’t lose the poker face. “At least till we’re done checking out your house for any break-ins or poison.”
Hmm. Guess he knew about Angela and Newly, I figured, and I looked around, thinking I could be comfortable here after a trip to the Granary for the basics. Might as well start training Sam now. I nodded yes but wondered, Why this offer?
Sam studied me, and his look made me wonder if he wanted to keep me in his house to protect me or to keep me under surveillance as a suspect. But, I mean, how could I be a suspect, since I got shot at too?
Under that stare, and to divert any thoughts he might have about my being a suspect, I finally told Sam that someone had looked through my files on both the Dr. Trusdale and Dr. Randolph cases. Naturally, he berated me for not telling him sooner. Naturally, he demanded to look through the files himself, and when I began to explain about attorney-client and work-product privileges and client confidentiality and the whole nine yards, he cut me off.
“I’ll get a subpoena,” he said.
So much for romance. I wondered if I should ask for Jack the Bear back.
Then, for no apparent reason at all, I thought about Henry’s red peppers and his greenhouse. Bonita had said he was an amateur botanist and a good gardener. He had screwed up both the Trusdale and the Randolph files by failing to do proper background searches. Trusdale’s death had saved him from being canned after a big judgment against the doc, which Henry’s insurance company would have had to pay. Was he aiming for two out of two? Was there a stand of oleanders in his yard and a flowering white Datura bush in his greenhouse?