Claimed, page 30
Eastwind took her over to the couch just as her knees went out from under her. With a wave of dizziness making her eyesight fuzzy, the folder fell from her hand, and as the three or four pieces of paper flew across the rug, he chased after them.
“You want some water?” the sheriff asked as he put the sheets back where they’d been and laid the folder aside.
“No.” Actually, she was pretty sure she was going to throw up. “I’m fine.”
As she went to push her hair back—which was still damp from the shower she’d taken with Daniel—her hands shook so badly they were a blur.
But she was not tearing up.
No, she was not doing that.
She would not give him any more weakness. She’d already let him have way too much of that.
“I am a fool,” she mumbled.
“No.” The sheriff sat down next to her. “You are not that.”
Well, there was no reason to debate the point. Besides, she didn’t really care about the why’s of it all—
No, that wasn’t right. There was one “why” she was very interested in, but she wasn’t going to go into it with Eastwind.
“Ah…” She cleared her throat. “Have you found Peter? And please, let’s not have the whole ongoing-investigation thing, okay? I don’t have the energy for that right now.”
Eastwind shook his head, and, thank God, didn’t beat around the bush. “We haven’t found him, no. We’ve reached out to his known relatives. They haven’t heard from him in months. There’s nothing on social media—and his cell phone was in the house. The last time he used it was the night before you called me, when you were stalked to that deer stand. After that… nothing.”
She stared across the room without seeing a damn thing. “I don’t know if the Wolf Study Project is going to survive this.”
“It will. And you’re going to keep working there.”
She looked him square in the eye. “At this point, fifty percent of us are dead.”
“You’re here for a reason.” He slapped his thighs and stood up. “And anyway, I’m not going to let anything happen to you—even though you doctored that camera feed you gave me.”
Lydia blinked in honest confusion. “What are you talking about.”
“I know you altered the footage of the hiker attack on North Granite Ridge. I’m not going to take this any further than this conversation, but don’t ever pull a stunt like that again, okay?”
The sheriff nodded to her and put his hat back on.
As he approached the open front door, she said, “How did you know.”
The man cranked his head around, and as she looked into his face, a warning shiver went down her spine.
In a low voice, he replied, “This is my land. I know everything that takes place on it.”
She got to her feet. “It was the bite marks on the hiker. Of course the coroner would recognize them as an animal’s. So you’re just testing me to see what I say.”
Eastwind slowly shook his head. “No. It’s because I was up on the mountain, and I saw it happen.”
Lydia grew utterly still.
“I took a sacred oath to protect the things on my mountain, Lydia Susi, and I have been doing it for a very long time.” He touched the brim of his hat and inclined his head. “You have a good day there, and be safe.”
As he walked out over to his SUV and got in behind the wheel, she watched until he, too, was gone. Then she went across, shut the door, and stared into her house.
In a fit of paranoia—which maybe wasn’t so paranoid—she stalked down to the kitchen. When she and Daniel had gotten back the night before, he’d hung out on the front porch and had a smoke—and she’d used that time to stash the floppy disks she’d been carrying around in her purse.
Jesus, to think she’d felt guilty about deceiving him.
On the counter by her refrigerator, there was a lineup of metal canisters reading Flour, Sugar, Rice, and Salt, and she went to the first in the row, the biggest one. Whipping off the lid, she yanked up the Gold Medal bag she’d encased in a Ziploc—
They were all there.
But she counted them. Twice.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s… all right.”
The hell it was, but under the fake-it-til-you-make-it theory, maybe if she kept trying to sell the optimistic bullcrap to the universe, the tide would turn.
Taking the disks, she put them back in her bag—and realized that not only didn’t she have a car, she didn’t really have the need to go into work.
One step at a time, her grandfather had always said. That was all she needed to do.
The trouble was, she didn’t have a clue what direction to go in. Oh, and then there was the pesky detail that her heart had broken into a million pieces.
For godsakes, she was still sore in intimate places from having slept with that liar.
* * *
Lydia was still in the kitchen, and back-and-forthing about what to do with what little she had to go on, when her cell phone rang.
As she jerked to attention, she looked at the clock on the stove—
Forty-five minutes had passed. Jesus, she needed to pull herself together.
Taking her phone out of her bag, she looked at the screen. It was a local number, but not something in her contacts list.
As she accepted the call, her heart started pounding. “Hello?”
“Hey, so I’m finished.”
“I’m sorry, what—wait, Paul?”
“Yeah,” came the gruff response from the owner of Paul’s Garage. “I’m done, so you can pick her up whenever you want.”
Lydia sagged. “Oh, thank God.”
“I told ya it’d be ready. You think I’d lie?”
It’s not about the car, she thought.
“Thank you so much. I’ll walk down to you now.”
“Suit yourself.”
As Paul ended the call by slamming down the receiver, she thought it was a good thing he was a terrific mechanic with no competition for his business—
Lydia let out a shriek and jumped back.
In the front of the house, in the windows of the door, Candy was peering inside. As their eyes met, the woman lifted her hand.
“Sorry,” the receptionist said through the panels. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
With a curse, Lydia covered her pounding heart with her hand and went to open things up. “I didn’t know you were here—”
“You want a ride into work?” Candy glanced around casually, but not because she was assessing the furniture. “You know, I thought… you might like a ride.”
How much does she know about Daniel? Lydia wondered. Had Eastwind closed the loop with her?
As the woman’s eyes returned to Lydia’s, her expression grew annoyed. “Look, I’m not going to apologize.”
“For what?”
“Lying to you yesterday.”
Lydia frowned. “About what exactly.”
Candy checked behind herself. “I’m coming in and shutting this door.”
The woman stepped over the threshold, closed things, and leaned back against the panels. Then she crossed her arms on her chest and played with her left earring. The pink flamingo matched the tropical theme of her sweater, all the palm trees and their beach scene with a sun like a postcard made out of yarn.
“You’re right,” she said abruptly. “I did know… some things.”
Lydia sat down on her sofa. “Tell me.”
There was a pause, as if the WSP’s receptionist were ordering her thoughts. “I knew the money was leaving the accounts because I could see it coming and going. There were wire transfers in from what I assumed were legitimate sources, but I couldn’t figure out where the withdrawals were headed.” She shook her head. “Peter was definitely in on it because when I brought it to his attention, he wasn’t surprised and he told me it was none of my business. He reminded me that I’m just a secretary and that I needed to worry about answering the phone.”
Candy shrugged. “So fine. I answered the phone. I opened mail. I ordered supplies—but I kept track.” She went into her purse and took out a spiral-bound steno notebook. “It started about a year ago. Money coming, I’m guessing from the trustees, and then leaving, on these wires.”
She flipped open the cover. “And that wasn’t all. Rick was ordering these slides, glass slides—you know for tissue samples?”
“Yes, we use them during the exams to check blood and—”
“But why was he ordering them by the thousands?”
Lydia sat forward. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Thousands and thousands of slides. For samples.”
“That can’t be right.” Lydia shook her head. “I worked side by side with him in the clinic and I never saw him do anything out of the ordinary or unnecessary with testing—”
“And that wasn’t all he was ordering.” Candy looked back down at her notes. “He ordered a shit ton of something called bromadiolone?”
Lydia’s brows popped. “I’m sorry—what did you say?”
“Maybe I’m pronouncing it wrong?” Candy turned the pad around and pointed to the word. That was repeated eight times with dates. “Brodiy—”
Dropping her head in her hands, Lydia started to tremble. Thinking back over the months, she remembered Rick’s irritability and the obvious signs of stress he’d exhibited. Now that she considered it, he had lost some weight and been agitated. But she’d assumed it was because of the hotel across the valley and the threat that Corrington was presenting to the wolf population.
She might have been so wrong about that.
“What’s wrong?” Candy asked. “You okay?”
Snapping back to attention, Lydia cleared her throat.
“That’s… the poison.” As she glanced at the other woman, she was certain she was in a nightmare. “Out in the field. That’s what’s been used on my wolves.”
Candy blanched. “What the hell was Rick doing?”
“I don’t know.” She thought of the wolf she had found, near death, in the veil. “How could he hurt the very thing he was supposed to protect.”
“He was coming in a lot after hours.” Candy refocused and flipped to a different section in the notebook. “The security system reports whenever it’s turned on or off and from which keypad. About a month after the first of the payments came in from the board, Rick started entering through the clinic door at night. It wasn’t a regular thing at first. Only a couple times every once in a while. But since this past fall? It was every week, like clockwork on Thursday nights.”
“How long would he be in there?”
“Hours.”
“What the hell was he doing?” Lydia thought of the data on those disks and felt a raw rage. “He better not have been experimenting on those animals.”
Bursting up, she paced around. Then she stopped. “What if it wasn’t the hotel all along. What if Rick had poisoned those wolves, every one of them.”
“But why?” Candy what-the-hell’d her free hand. “I don’t get it.”
“To bring them in for the tissue sampling. God, what was he doing to them when we brought them in for health screening? He must have introduced agents into their blood and then brought them in for autopsies…” Lydia rubbed her forehead, like that would somehow help. “Why would he violate all his professional standards and beliefs, though?”
“Well, I’m not supposed to tell you this, because it’s confidential and only in his HR file.” Candy leaned to the side and looked out the window over the sofa. “But he had a gambling problem.”
“What? No, he didn’t—”
“Right before you were hired, he voluntarily went to a treatment place for it. He was gone for a month and I had to suspend his paychecks, which was the only reason I was told. Apparently, it was a real problem—but when he came back, he seemed so much better. That was when he started working out all the time. Those triathlons, the running, the swim races. I thought his addiction was under control, though.”
“He was a gambler?” Lydia thought of the sports sections he’d always had around. “I can’t see it. I just…”
Except how much did she know anybody who she worked with?
As she fell silent, Candy closed the cover on the spiral notebook and held it out. “You asked me for what I know and here it is. It’s all yours—oh, and that UPS package? You’re right. I did reroute it from Peter’s house. About ten days ago, he started bugging me about where it was, giving me the tracking number over and over again, calling three or four times a day. They did lose the damn thing—and when they finally located it at the processing center, I made them deliver it to the WSP building by forging Peter’s permission. I figured it had to do with… whatever was going on. And it was delivered two nights ago, but I don’t know who signed for it or where it is.”
Lydia took the pad. “Thank you so much for this.”
“I figure it’s the least I could do. And listen, yesterday, when you called me out, I didn’t know how to handle it. I also didn’t know whether I could trust you.” Candy held up her hand. “Oh, and really and honestly, I didn’t kill Peter Wynne. But I have a feeling… Rick might have.”
AS CANDY PUT the accusation out there, Lydia flipped through the pages of the woman’s notebook. There were sections about the security system, mail, supply ordering, missed days—including, yup, those two days Lydia had been in Plattsburgh for the root canal. The entries were all in the same neat handwriting, but made with different colored pens and even pencil.
“So what do we do?” Candy asked.
“I don’t know.”
Where can I go with this, Lydia wondered. C.P. Phalen? Eastwind and the state police?
“Where’s your handyman, by the way?” Candy shook her head. “And no, I’m not asking for Susan. Or Bessie.”
Lydia controlled her expression. Or tried to. “He’s quit. And I know you gave his résumé to Eastwind.”
“I was worried about you.”
“Thank you for that.” She couldn’t bear to go into what Eastwind had found. “What can I say.”
“I’m sorry. You liked him.”
“I didn’t know him.” She cleared her throat. “He was a stranger. It’s just water under the bridge—and speaking of bridges, he did fix all three of them.”
“And our toilet.”
Lydia glanced at the notebook. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Maybe.” Candy narrowed her blue lids. “If I do whatever it is, I am off the hook for lying to you yesterday, okay. No guilt.”
“Well, I’m not sure I can be a party to that bargain. I’m not in charge of your conscience.”
The woman put up a stop-sign hand. “I’m just laying out the landscape. That’s where I’m at. Now, what do you need?”
“Take me to Paul’s so I can get my car?”
“You got it.” The nod was forceful. “Such a fair exchange.”
Lydia grabbed her bag, double-checked that the back door was dead-bolted, and then walked out with Candy. After she locked the front, they got in the SweeTarts-smelling car and were off.
As they got on the county road, Lydia watched the riverbed go by. “Why would Rick want to bomb the hotel if he was behind the poisonings? I don’t get it.”
“I think I do. I had four different phone calls from members of his family, making sure we knew where the funeral was and when. I couldn’t get the uncle off the phone.” Candy shrugged. “All of them were so proud of him, so deferential. If you knew you were checking out? Like, if you were going to do yourself in ’cuz you’d been working nasty shit at your job? It’s a better legacy to leave for the people who love you, isn’t it. A warrior against a corporation hurting the wildlife. As opposed to a common criminal motivated by a gambling problem.”
“I swear I never saw him do anything out of the norm in the clinic.”
“If you were doing something wrong, wouldn’t you work hard to hide it? It’s like brooming up a mess before your parents come home. You make sure everything is where it needs to be.”
They fell silent, and soon enough, the grungy layout of Paul’s Garage presented itself, the business not much more than a smudge of motor oil and a debris field of rusting car parts at the side of the road. Turning in, Candy nosed her grill right up to the filthy glass wall of the office.
Getting out, Lydia followed the sounds of a power tool to a three-bay setup of lifts.
“Paul?” she called out.
“Yeah,” came the response from a service pit underneath a Toyota that looked seven hundred years old.
“It’s Lydia—”
“I know,” he groused. “Your car’s on the row.”
“Yes, thank you.” The whirring sounds started up again so she raised her voice once more. “Um, how much do I owe you.”
“Nothing,” was the impatient response.
She glanced back at Candy, who shrugged. “Ah… nothing?”
The grizzled old man dropped something on the concrete floor and walked up the four steps from the pit. He was in a pair of overalls that were so stained, they could probably stand up on their own, and his cap was so smudged, the logo was unreadable. Finishing the look was a gray beard the same consistency as the long hair that grew out at his nape—to the point where it was hard to tell where one left off and the other started.
“No charge.” His watery pale eyes were bored. “Your friend killed hisself. That’s enough.”
Lydia felt the crazy need to hug the man. But she had a feeling he would spontaneously combust.
“Thank you,” she said roughly.
“Yeah.” Then he turned away to descend again. “Keys are in it.”
“Okay—”
“And that stuff he left you.”
Lydia did a double take. “What did you say?”
Paul looked up from the darkness. “The stuff he left for you. It’s inna trunk.”
The mechanic disappeared as if everything was explained—and therefore, off his plate.
As a sense of total disassociation came over her, Lydia scrambled out to where the cars were parked. Hers was the last in the lineup and her hands were shaking as she went to the trunk. Popping the latch, the top floated upward.
