When I arrived, Travis was already there, his sheriff’s department cruiser parked in a corner of the lot. The white bubble dome of the tennis center loomed behind him like a giant turkey breast. He stepped out as I pulled in next to him. We met between the two cars.
He looked good in his starched, pressed uniform. He asked me a few questions about playing tennis, none of which I cared to answer, but did. I wanted to get to the meat.
Finally I said, “What’s going on with Marge?”
He rubbed his jaw. “I’m not sure. But I wanted to ask you a sort of medical question.”
I figured I could answer a medical question. But a “sort of medical” question?
“Shoot.”
“The ME autopsied her and says he found only coffee and banana in her stomach.”
“Nothing that might have contained peanuts?”
He shook his head. “Coffee and banana—nothing else.”
“That’s weird.”
“Yeah, I know. So my question is, could the second reaction have been caused by or be a holdover from or somehow be related to the first?”
I’d been asking myself the same question. And now with no evidence that she’d ingested another peanut product, it loomed disturbingly larger.
“It’s unlikely, but not impossible.”
He made a face. “That’s not what I was looking for. I could use a clear yes or no.”
“There aren’t any absolutes in medicine, Trav. A body can react the same way nine-hundred-ninety-nine times in a row, and then do something different on the thousandth. Every doctor has seen it happen. You can prescribe, say, amoxicillin for someone who’s had it a hundred times in the past fifty years with no problem, and then on the hundred-and-first time he breaks out in a rash. The reason is that somewhere between the hundredth and hundred-and-first exposures his immune system became sensitized to something on the amoxicillin molecule. Why, we can’t say. Sometimes stuff just happens.”
His frowned deepened. “Then you’re telling me she could have had a reaction to coffee or the banana?”
“I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that it’s unlikely—highly unlikely—that Marge would have a second reaction without exposure to peanuts while she was on the dose of prednisone and other meds I’d prescribed for her. But I can’t say it’s impossible.”
He sighed and shook his head. “I wish you could. It would make things a lot easier—for both of us.”
A chill ran down my arms.
“Why do you say that?”
“I stopped by the Harris place and talked to Stan about his whereabouts when Marge had her reaction and—”
“New York, right?”
“So he says.”
“Why wouldn’t you believe him?”
“I just like to check all the facts.”
“There’s an evasive answer if I’ve ever heard one.”
“It’s a coroner’s case and we’re keeping certain things close to the vest for now.”
“Like the 9-1-1 call?”
His eyes widened. “How do you know about that?”
“You told me. Yesterday, in the ER.”
“Damn, I guess I did. Look, don’t mention that to anyone, okay?”
“Never mind the call, you’ve hinted twice now that I’m somehow involved. What’s that all about?”
“You’re not officially involved, but as I was talking to Stan yesterday he kept mentioning you, how he’d thought all along that you sent Marge home too early. How he’d begged you to keep her another day but you ignored him, and on and on like that.”
“He never begged me!”
Trav shrugged. “I can only tell you what he said. Sounded like he was working himself up to calling a lawyer.”
My stomach plummeted. Another malpractice suit? Another person accusing me of negligence?
My dismay must have shown. Trav reached out and touched my upper arm.
“Hey, don’t take it so hard. He’s just blowing smoke. He’ll—”
His police radio squawked. He stepped over to the idling car and grabbed the handset. I heard some garbled noise about a car fire. He turned to me and waved.
“Gotta run. Talk to you later. And don’t worry. This’ll all work out.”
Then he was in the cruiser and roaring out of the parking lot.
Some of his last words came back to me. He’s just blowing smoke…
An odd turn of phrase. Blowing off steam, okay… but smoke?