“What did she say?” Christine asked. “What’s going on? Do you need me down there?”
“Yes.” Amelia said, answering Christine while appeasing Joyce. “I need you to step off the truck, Joyce.”
“You heard what the boss said.” Lila stepped up. She was like a mama bear. “Please, step off the truck.”
Joyce turned and walked down the metal steps, but she wasn’t going to go peacefully. A second later came a whopping bang that echoed through the interior of the truck.
“What?”
“She hit the truck.” Lila gasped.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“I need to talk to you!” Joyce screamed.
Before Amelia could stop her, Lila went stomping down the steps. “Now you just wait one minute!” she shouted, marching up to Joyce. “You can’t take out your issues on our truck! That is vandalism! And I may not know the director of the Department of Agriculture, but I know Officer Friendly, and I’ve got his number memorized. Now if you want to talk…”
Lila tried to lay down the law with a woman who was not too interested in being reasonable. She smiled at Lila, jerked her chin at her, batted her eyes at her and waved her hands like she was putting some kind of curse on her.
As Amelia stepped off the truck, Lila turned and Joyce pushed her out of the way to tower over Amelia.
Lila staggered and lost her balance, falling to the ground just as Christine, Mike Ross, and a member of security sprinted out of the building.
“Joyce!” Amelia put her hands up defensively. “It’s okay! Really, it is!”
“No! You don’t understand!” Joyce yelled. “You have no idea what is going to happen now. Those people, they did this to me before. They say they didn’t get my prescription, but they did. They are holding out on me because they know it makes me sick.”
“Do you think that’s what they’re doing?” Amelia played along as she inched closer to Joyce.
Joyce’s face became stone serious. “It is what they’re doing.” Her voice trembled. “They’re doing it on purpose so things will get messed up again.”
“I’ll bet they are,” Amelia concurred. She looked to Mike, who stared at his wife but obviously didn’t want to get any closer than he already was. “No one listens, though, do they?”
“No!” Joyce barked. “They think I’m making it all up! But I know it’s true!”
“You know what’s true, Joyce.”
Joyce started to sway on her feet. She took a step back and stared at Amelia. “They’re putting something in my pills. It’s not the medicine it’s supposed to be. They want me sick so I’ll do things like I did before.” Her eyes filled with tears.
“It’s okay, Joyce.” Amelia stared as this woman, who was built like an Olympic swimmer, began to crumble and break apart before her eyes.
Christine ran to Lila’s side and quickly helped her up. The side of her blue jeans had a tear in them, and her palms were black with red scratches.
“Don’t say anything, Joyce!” Mike ordered. “It’s okay. You don’t need to say anything more.”
Sirens could be heard coming from a few blocks away.
“You’re just tired, Joyce,” Mike said. “You don’t know what you’re saying. She’s tired. Her medication has been a mess and…”
Amelia reached her hand out to Joyce and gently put her hand on her arm. Joyce’s skin was ice cold to the touch.
It was as if she had found a moment of clarity. Amelia looked into Joyce’s eyes and watched them focus on her face. She saw a hint of recognition and then a deep sadness, which probably filled her whole body all the way to her feet. “I killed her,” Joyce whispered with trembling lips.
“No, Joyce!” Mike yelled.
“I can’t keep this inside me anymore. They’re letting it eat me up from the inside out,” she confided to Amelia.
“Who is?”
“The people who give me my medicine. They wanted to see if I could be trusted. I guess I can’t.” She started to sob, but after a moment, when the police cars screeched to a stop and two uniformed officers and Detective Dan Walishovsky and his partner, Eugene, appeared, Joyce looked at Amelia again. “I’m so sorry.”
Amelia looked to Dan and nodded.
An ambulance pulled up seconds later, and the double doors at the back of the van popped open. Two EMTs hopped out with a stretcher in tow.
“I don’t think she’ll hurt anyone,” Amelia said. She kept Joyce at arm’s length, but the woman made no attempt to fight or resist Dan, who escorted her to the back of the ambulance.
“Mike?” Amelia looked at him with narrow eyes.
Mike thrust his hands in his pockets and stepped up to Amelia.
“She was diagnosed with depression. Something happened, and she needed a little boost so…”
“What happened?”
Mike rubbed the back of his neck and looked around.
“I had an affair. It didn’t mean anything. It was just one time and…”
“With Danielle?”
“No. I never told Joyce who because there was no need. It was over.” He swallowed hard and looked over to the ambulance, where Joyce had been loaded up and Dan was patiently talking to her. Lila and Christine were giving Eugene their versions of what they saw to the uniformed officers. “But she thought it was Danielle. She thought it was the waitress at the restaurant we went to last night. She thought it was the woman who cuts my hair. She thought it was one of the girls on the softball team. She thought it was you. It didn’t matter what I said. The medication she was taking made her see things. Hear things. I thought it would be just a matter of time before her body got used to it or she changed her prescription and everything went back to normal.”
“So you knew she killed Danielle, and you didn’t—”
“Hold on a minute!” he shouted, pointing a shaking finger in Amelia’s face. “I didn’t know anything. I had my suspicions, but I didn’t know for sure. I mean, when she’s threatened to kill half the females in the city, it’s hard to believe she was responsible for this one. Right?”
“And what about Charles Howe? The guy the police have in custody for Danielle’s murder? Were you just going to let that go?”
“N-n-no!” Mike stuttered. “Of course not.” He nodded and shifted from one foot to the other. “I would have said something.”
“When?” Amelia hated to sound so petty, but she could see why John and Mike had gotten along. What a piece of work.
“Look. I don’t have to answer to you, okay?” Mike pushed his hair back from his forehead. “I’m going to be with my wife. Excuse me.”
Mike hustled over to the back of the ambulance and quickly spoke with Dan without turning around and looking at any of the people in the small crowd that had gathered.
Amelia hurried up to Lila. “Lila, why did you try and get in that woman’s way?” She pushed a stray flaming-red wisp away from her friend’s eye. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Lila shook her head. “I think I’ve been hanging out at Rusty’s place too much. Starting to think I can run with the big dogs when I really should be sittin’ on the porch.”
“Why don’t you come inside the building, and I’ll get some antiseptic on those scratches,” Christine offered.
“Yeah, good idea. Thanks, Chris,” Amelia replied.
As her friends walked off, yacking like a couple of old friends, Amelia turned to see Dan approaching. A paramedic slammed the ambulance’s doors shut, and within seconds the vehicle made a U-turn, lights flashing and sirens blaring as they hurried Joyce to the emergency room.
“What do you think?” Amelia took a deep breath and folded her arms over her chest.
“From the little bit I got out of Mrs. Ross, I’m afraid that a mixture of drugs for depression and anxiety with conflicting side effects and questionable dosages caused her to become violent. She killed Danielle Wilcox. That’s for sure. But I can’t say there was malicious intent. Had she not been on those drugs, I think that girl would still be alive today.”
“That’s sad.” Amelia huffed. “What about her husband? Did he say anything to you?”
“He didn’t have to.” Dan rocked on his heels and rubbed his chin. “He thinks I don’t know a guilty conscience when I see one. We’ll be having a good, long heart-to-heart at the station once Joyce is stabilized.”
“What are they going to do with her?”
“Well, first they have to wean her off the poisons she was on. According to her and her husband, she’s been mixing and matching her prescriptions for almost eighteen months.” Dan looked at the ground.
“That explains the stories I heard about her complaining about weird ailments and accidents that never happened.” Amelia looked at the sky. “She was probably hallucinating or thinking her dreams were real.”
“The doctors will have to find a new combination of drugs that keep her stitched up along the sides,” Dan continued. “After they get her regulated and stabilized, they will decide if she’s fit to stand trial. She’ll be in an institution before they transfer her to jail.”
“What a mess.” Amelia slipped her hand into Dan’s. “It’s so easy to think the person responsible for Danielle’s death had horns or fangs or just a black, rotten heart. But that isn’t that woman they just sped away with.”
“No, it’s not.” Dan squeezed her hand. “But I’m afraid she’s going to have to answer for herself, nonetheless.”
“Right.” Amelia shrugged. “You know, there isn’t a real clear-cut bright side to this situation. But you know they don’t have any children. That’s a blessing in disguise if I ever heard one. Not to be morbid or anything.”
“Speaking of children.” Dan looked at Amelia with worry on his face. “How are your kids doing? Any change in the whole wedding drama?”
She didn’t tell Dan about John’s brilliant idea that the kids not attend at all. She was afraid John might come out of the church with his new bride in tow only to find a big yellow boot on their limo.
“They’ve decided to handle things themselves.”
“Is that a good thing, or will I be getting a phone call at three in the morning to bail them out of the pokey?”
Amelia laughed. “No. I’m pretty confident they will handle it with tact. Something their father should have done.”
“I’ll be interested to see how it turns out.”
“That makes two of us.” Amelia smiled when she saw the slight smirk on Dan’s face.
“I’ll keep bail money ready anyway.”
“Well, just in case. Better safe than sorry.”
“That’s right.” Dan slipped his arm around Amelia and kissed the top of her head as he walked her back to the Pink Cupcake.