Serena hesitated, glancing at Liam. “I can’t be certain.”
“Who do you think sent it?”
“It’s the kind of candy my brother-in-law and sister send me on occasion.”
“But you’re not certain it’s from them?”
“I couldn’t get hold of the shop where they buy it, and no one answered their home phone.”
Olsen nodded and picked up a radio. “Hutchens, you there? Good. Go to Miss McCormack’s room and pick up the box of candy you’ll find there. Yeah, for testing.”
Liam was satisfied, but Serena was still nettled.
“Serena,” Olsen said. “Sorry about your candy, but we’re trying to be very careful here. Now, I understand a man gave you a rose at the cemetery, following Jane Dunne’s funeral. Then you found a rose in your dressing room? And you’re aware that Liam found another rose yesterday, in front of your house.”
“So he told me.”
“What do you think these roses mean?”
“I think they’re from a soap fan. I’ve gotten flowers before.”
“These flowers may be a warning. Jane Dunne died with a single rose in her hand. We tested one of the flowers sent to you, and nothing came up.”
“Well, that proves they’re just roses.”
“The one in front of your house didn’t bother you at all? Knowing someone was actually in your yard didn’t frighten you?”
She shot a long glance at Liam. “I have an alarm—and protection.”
Olsen sighed. “Miss McCormack, you have to be careful.”
“Lieutenant, I don’t think that I can be much more careful.”
“We’re trying to protect you, Miss McCormack. You can’t trust anyone.”
He was interrupted by the intercom on Joe’s desk as it buzzed loudly. Joe pressed the button. “We’re in a meeting here.”
“I know.” The voice that came over the intercom was Thorne McKay’s. “We’ve got a problem here, a serious one,” he said breathlessly.
“What’s happened?” Joe demanded with a frown.
“We’ve just called the paramedics. Jinx has been taken ill. The paramedics are on their way, ready to rush her to the hospital.”
The killer stood on the set.
So distant. Watching.
Jinx had come down here, trying to find help. She had stumbled in, nearly walked in circles, fallen, crying out for help.
Thorne was the one who discovered her. He screamed and fled the stage.
Serena stayed with Jinx, holding her hand, reassuring her. Poor little Jinx. A scared little rabbit. Thin as a rail. She was screaming with the pain that was wracking her.
“Appendicitis?” Serena suggested, so concerned, that perfect face knotted in worry.
“I don’t think so. It looks like … poisoning of some sort,” Liam Murphy told her.
“Poison!” Serena cried with alarm. And naturally, the cry became a murmur that spread about the cast and crew gathered now at Jinx’s side. They could hear the ambulance’s siren.
“Food poisoning. Maybe she ate something that was really bad,” Liam said firmly.
“Jinx, just hold on, hold on. The ambulance is nearly here,” Serena told the girl.
Then the paramedics rushed in, and the others moved back, and Jinx’s vital signs were relayed to some great medical voice that came through the radios. An IV was begun, and she was carefully rolled onto a gurney. She was still holding Serena’s hand.
How touching.
How ironic.
Jinx was nearly to the elevators, stretched out on the gurney, pushing aside the oxygen they were trying to give her.
“It hurts,” she managed to whisper, through white, foaming lips. “It hurts, and I feel so weak … I’m sorry …”
“Jinx, whatever are you sorry about? The ambulance is here, and we’ll get you well!” Jinx had her hand. She was jerked into movement; they rushed alongside the girl, ready to go to the hospital with her.
The chocolates, the chocolates, the killer thought.
“Ate …” Jinx began.
She didn’t finish. She had another spasm of pain.
Olsen reached them, and he looked grim.
“Jeffrey Guelph. Get the man and bring him downtown,” Olsen ordered. “Get an APB out on him now, just in case you can’t get him at his house.”
“Wait—” Serena cried.
The elevator door closed.
Ah, well …
It could have been Serena. And she could have eaten more than one chocolate; she loved the brand. Her family always sent her that particular chocolate. The killer had made a point of knowing that.
Jeffrey Guelph sat in the police station. He’d been picked up by two cop cars—one heading him off, one blocking his rear, their sirens blaring. He thought at first he’d been speeding, but then he’d realized that the way they’d hauled him in was overkill for speeding.
He hadn’t had a cigarette in ten years. When the uniformed cop who had brought him into the interrogation room offered him one, he took it. He coughed like a fifteen-year-old at the first drag. Opposite him was Bill Hutchens, who was looking at him with sympathy and trying to make things easier for him. Either that, or he was trying to disarm him, make him feel all comfortable so that he’d be willing to say more.
“Coffee is coming,” Bill told him.
“Great.”
“You could use some coffee, huh?”
“Yeah. Bill,” he said, then added pleadingly, “Why was I brought down here?”
Bill leaned forward on his elbows, watching him intently, frowning. “You really don’t know?”
Jeff felt a flicker of fear. Just what did they know?
“I don’t know why, no.”
Bill sat back, sighing. “Jeff, the chocolates.”
“What chocolates?”
“The candy you sent Serena.”
“I didn’t send Serena any candy.”
Bill sighed deeply. “Oh, come on, Jeff. The candy, it’s the same candy you and Melinda send her all the time. The same brand. From the same store.”
Jeff shook his head, bewildered.
At that moment the door opened and George Olsen stepped in. He already knew Olsen; he’d been questioned by him the day Jane Dunne had died.
“Hello, Mr. Guelph.”
So polite. That was really scary. He crushed the cigarette out. He rubbed his forehead hard, wondering what Melinda was going to think. God, this was horrible. The humiliation.
Worse … What if they did pin something on him?
“We need to hear about the chocolates,” Olsen told him.
Jeff sat back, bewildered. “I didn’t send Serena any chocolates, not lately,” he said.
Bill Hutchens rose, still looking at him sorrowfully. Olsen sat. “Jeff, you told Serena you were sending her something. She received a box of candy. Her favorite kind. The kind of chocolates you send her every so often on special occasions.”
Jeff stared at him blankly. “I told Serena I was sending her something. It was a necklace I had made for her. It had her name … in Egyptian hieroglyphics. The kind they sell at museums. I had sent to the Museum of Natural History for it, ordered it from the catalog. It was just something that we’d gotten to say thanks for having gotten me work on the show.”
“And you sent it today?”
“I was going to have a messenger service pick it up and bring it over, but I started reading a new journal … and I forgot,” Jeff said.
“But the chocolates did arrive.”
“I didn’t send them.”
Olsen tapped the table impatiently, as if this was wasting his time.
“Look,” Jeff said. “I know you guys can pull phone records. I’ll sign whatever you need to get my records right away—”
“We’ve already done that, Jeff,” Olsen said quietly.
“Then you know!”
“We know that you didn’t send the order in from your house.”
“I didn’t se
nd the order in at all!” Jeff said, pleased at last and seeing a ray of freedom. “If you’ve checked, you know—”
“Oh, yeah. We checked. We checked everything, you see. The order came in from a pay phone at the convenience store near the studio.”
“So there you have it—”
Olsen interrupted him with a deep sigh. “Jeff, the order was called in from a pay phone, but …” He paused, shrugging, then leaning toward Jeff. “But the order was charged to your Visa card.”
It had been a long and truly terrible day. The only bright spot was because the paramedics had acted so quickly, Jinx’s stomach had been pumped out in time. She had ingested arsenic, as it turned out. That was what had caused such terrible pain.
Arsenic was not that difficult to obtain. It was an ingredient in many rat poisons.
After the first few hours they knew that Jinx was going to be okay. She would have to stay in the hospital for a night or two, but she would pull through fine. She still hadn’t spoken much; she’d been too out of it. The doctors had tried really hard to get her to tell them what she had eaten, but she hadn’t been able to answer. With or without her help, they would know soon, though.
They had taken all kinds of samples. The contents of her stomach had included an onion bagel, cream cheese, egg, chocolate, cherry, and the arsenic.
Serena stayed through the day in the hospital waiting room along with Joe Penny, Andy Larkin, Thorne McKay, and, of course, Liam. Olsen had remained at the hospital for a while, then a uniformed cop had replaced him, and a few hours later Bill Hutchens had replaced him. When he learned that Jinx wouldn’t be able to speak with the police for some time, Bill sat and quizzed Serena, asking her about the candy. She didn’t need to tell him too much; Liam was there, answering most of the questions with terse, concise statements. She had to explain that she had believed Jeff had sent the chocolates only because he had told her he was sending something.
“Do we know that the arsenic was in the chocolate?” she asked Bill.
“Looks that way,” he told her.
“What about the piece of chocolate Serena spat out?” Liam asked Bill.
“It’s being tested. You all right, Serena?”
“I’m fine. I hardly got the candy in my mouth before Liam took it away from me,” she assured them, but then she remembered that someone else had eaten a piece of chocolate. “Allona!” Serena cried. “Allona ate one of the chocolates.”
Allona was brought in during the early afternoon.
She came with a police escort, and was already greatly agitated when she reached the hospital. “I’m fine!” she insisted. “Not sick, not a cramp—nothing. They are not pumping my stomach. Dammit, Serena, why are you making me go through this?”
“Allona, Jinx could have died. You’re better safe than sorry.”
“Serena, I would know if I was sick,” Allona ranted.
“Please, Allona,” Doug said to her quietly.
She exhaled on a long sigh. “All right—fine!”
So Allona had her stomach pumped. There was no trace of arsenic found in the candy she had eaten. Even weak and sedated, Allona remained furious. “I told you I was fine,” she charged Serena when Serena tried to comfort her in outpatient recovery. “Look what you’ve done to me. Do you all think I’m an idiot, that I couldn’t tell if I had been poisoned!”
“Allona, people don’t always know—”
“Serena, I’m uncomfortable, and I’m miserable, and I’d like to be left alone.”
“Sorry,” Serena said simply, and left her.
The tests on the candies remaining in the box turned up no more arsenic. Apparently, only the chocolate Jinx had eaten had been poisoned.
Out in the hallway with Bill and Liam again, Serena suddenly had a flash: “Cherry!” she exclaimed.
They both stared at her.
“Don’t you see?” she explained. “Whatever is going on, Jeff didn’t do it. He wouldn’t have put cherry chocolates in an order for me. He knows I hate them. And you’re all being far too certain. Everything you have against Jeff is entirely circumstantial,” she told Bill.
He and Liam both looked at her as if she had seen one cop movie too many.
“It’s all right, Serena. You hadn’t done anything wrong to anyone. The truth always comes out,” Bill told her. “Listen, I have to get back to the station. It sounds like Jinx is going to be just fine.”
Right after Bill left, Jay Braden, who hadn’t been scheduled on the set until the late afternoon and had apparently just discovered what had happened, arrived.
He stormed down the hallway, blond hair uncharacteristically mussed. He stopped abruptly in front of Joe and instantly began shouting. “She’s alive, thank God she’s alive, if she were to have any recurring problems … she should sue the shit out of you, Joe. She should sue the show for every penny that it’s worth!”
“Dammit, Jay!” Joe thundered in response. “This isn’t my fault!”
“You’re supposed to be watching the set. There’s a maniac in our midst—”
“I have someone watching the set!”
“Hey! This is a hospital!” Liam reminded them sternly, just as an irate nurse appeared and glared at them.
“Take it outside, gentlemen, if you must shout like children,” she commanded.
But Jay wasn’t going anywhere. “Jinx is a friend of mine. A good friend. I’m going to sit with her,” he told the nurse.
The woman, tall and stout, with matronly gray hair, wagged a finger at him. “She’s resting quietly. No one is to disturb her. She has a nurse around the clock—and a cop at her door, I might add.”
The last was said in warning. Jay scowled and took a seat in the waiting room, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked at Serena. “If she were to die … that chocolate was intended for you!”
“That’s enough, Jay,” Liam grated harshly.
“Who the hell do you think you are, Murphy?” Jay demanded.
“I’m calling the cops,” the nurse announced.
“No, we’ll take it outside,” Liam said.
Jay shook his head at that, looking down at his hands. They were shaking, Serena noted. “No, it’s all right,” she said. “We’re all just upset here.”
“That’s better,” the nurse muttered.
As the nurse left, a doctor appeared. “The young lady really is going to be all right,” he told them. His manner was Hollywood pleasant. “Your friend is resting quietly; she’s sedated, but she’s going to be just fine. You should all go home now.”
“Good enough for me,” Jay muttered. He walked past the others, hesitating briefly as he looked at Serena. Then he hurried on out.
“I guess we can go now, too,” Andy said.
They trudged toward the emergency exit from the hospital as if they were all half dead themselves.
“I may never sleep again,” Joe Penny said wearily. He shook his head. “Where did we go so wrong?” he asked helplessly. “What do we do now? Where do we go from here?”
“We should plan on closing down—before they close us down,” Andy said despondently.
Joe shook his head. “We didn’t do this, Andy, don’t you see? We were never careless or negligent on our set.”
“Maybe you should get Serena off the set,” Liam suggested.
“Wait! Don’t talk about me as if I’m not here.”
“I’m not suggesting you should be taken off the show,” Liam said. “Just off the set—for a while.”
“Maybe the cops will figure out who pulled this candy bit right away,” Andy argued. “I mean …” He looked at Serena with an unhappy shrug. “You even think that your brother-in-law sent you the candy.”
“It’s what I had thought—”
She never finished the sentence. She broke off because she saw that her sister was coming down the hallway of the hospital exit, striding along with tremendous agitation.
She didn’t seem to see anyone but Serena, passing by the others
without a glance.
“Melinda—” she began.
She never finished that sentence either.
Melinda stepped right up to her, in tears, threw her arms around her, and nearly fell. “Do you know what they’ve done?” she cried, near hysteria.
“Melinda—”
“Oh, my God, Serena! They hauled my husband in for attempted murder! They’ve pulled him in for trying to kill you!”
Chapter 16
FEELING HELPLESS, SERENA SMOOTHED back her sister’s hair.
“Melinda, I knew that they were going to talk to him, but as for arresting him …” Serena looked at Liam accusingly. “Did they arrest him? Did you know about this?”
“No.” His eyes fell on Melinda. “But I’m afraid it isn’t surprising that they brought him in for questioning.”
“Bill Hutchens didn’t tell you about bringing Jeffrey down to the station, and anything he might have said?” Serena demanded.
“No,” he repeated irritably. “You know everything I know.” He turned away from her and spoke to Melinda. “I’m sorry, but as I said, it’s not surprising. And it may not be that serious. Has Jeff called his attorney?”
Melinda didn’t answer right away. She was now sobbing in Serena’s arms, great gulping tears.
“Melinda, did Jeff call an attorney?” she persisted quietly.
Melinda regained some calm, straightening. “I … yes, he’s gotten an attorney.”
“Melinda,” Liam said evenly, “I don’t think you need to be so upset, honestly. They didn’t tell me they were arresting Jeff, but Hutchens did tell me that they traced the candy and that it had been charged to Jeff’s card.”
“You might have told me that!” Serena said angrily.
Melinda let out a shuddering sigh, getting angry. “And did he order poisoned candy?” she demanded.
“Melinda,” Joe Penny said, stepping forward, “of course he didn’t. He ordered the candy and then …”
“Someone injected a piece with rat poison,” Andy said wearily.
“Jeff didn’t even go in today,” Melinda said.
“That’s right. He wasn’t in,” Serena said.
“That’s funny—” Andy began.
“What’s funny?” Melinda asked sharply.