Allison Brennan - Love Is Murder

She shivered. Don’t be such a conspiracy nut! Where would he hide while it was a gazillion degrees below zero and a blizzard raged outside? And poisoning or faking a suicide attempt was hardly the standard method of a jealous or vengeful ex-husband.

A chill ran over her skin, raising the hairs on the back of her neck. At first she thought it was only her, but she noticed that Angie pulled her bathrobe tighter around her neck. Trevor’s snores halted momentarily, before the annoying noise returned.

Lucy grabbed a book without looking at the title and said good night to Angie. She entered the foyer and saw a wet spot on the hardwood floor, right inside the main door.

She stared. She’d watched Grace Delarosa dry the floor after Patrick and the others came back from securing Vanessa’s body. Grace and Steve had gone to their house via the door in the kitchen, which was closest to their cottage.

Someone had gone in and out. Or out, then back in.

Who? And why?

Lucy ran up the stairs, taking two at a time. She knocked on Patrick’s door. There was no answer.

Her heart pounded in her chest. She had the extra key to Patrick’s room and used it to unlock his door.

“Patrick?” she called into the dark.

He moaned from his bed.

She turned on the lights. He was lying in his bed, the covers kicked off, his bare chest bathed in sweat. His face was flushed. She rushed to his side and felt his head. He was warm.

“Patrick, what happened? What’s wrong?”

“Hey, sis.”

His words were slurred. He grinned.

“Patrick, what is wrong? Are you sick?”

“I’m fine. Really, I can drive. Nope, well, Carina is the designated driver again.”

She frowned. Carina was their sister. She and Patrick were thirteen months apart in age and had been very close growing up. The last time either she or Patrick had seen Carina was over Christmas, two months ago.

Thirty minutes ago she’d woken him up and he was fine. Groggy, but normal. Now he was hallucinating.

Someone had drugged him. How?

She looked around the room. Thirty minutes … there were lots of drugs that had a thirty minute or less reaction time. Maybe after Lucy had woken him up, Patrick had drank something.

She saw nothing on his nightstand. In his bathroom there was a water bottle, half full.

She ran back to Patrick. “Did you drink the water in the bathroom?” She picked up his arm and let it go. It flopped back to the bed. He tried to raise it, but couldn’t.

Patrick looked at her. “I’m so glad you’re here. But why did you do it?”

“What?”

“If you’d just told me, I would have fixed everything.”

Lucy didn’t know if he thought she was someone else, or what he was thinking, but his comments and physical symptoms told her he’d been slipped a sedative that suppressed his central nervous system. A date rape drug, like Rohyphnol or ketamine or a Mickey Finn-but why on earth would Patrick be drugged? Had someone tried to kill him to prevent his investigation of Vanessa’s murder?

That meant Patrick had already learned something that that the killer feared would expose him.

Lucy and he had been together the entire time. Except when Patrick had gone out to stow Vanessa’s body, and when she’d gone up to bed he’d been talking to Steve in the office.

“Patrick, please.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

Then he moaned and Lucy knew what was next.

She turned him to his side and he vomited.

Lucy could not trust anyone.

She’d stayed awake most of the night watching over Patrick. After he vomited, she cleaned up and helped him stagger across the hall to her bedroom. She gave him water from the tap, not the bottle left in her bathroom. He was still hallucinating, but mostly he slept.

She was angry beyond measure-Patrick had been in a coma for nearly two years. Any drugs that depressed his central nervous system could potentially put him back into that coma. The doctors didn’t know why he’d reacted in the first place-he’d been conscious prior to his brain surgery after an explosion had injured him, causing swelling in his brain. The surgery saved his life. One doctor believed that the coma was a direct result of the brain surgery-that after fixing the damage, he’d simply gone to sleep for two years. Another doctor believed that Patrick had an adverse reaction to the anesthesia, based on his medical history. When he was nine, his appendix had burst and he’d underwent emergency surgery. He’d been in a coma for two weeks then.

Whatever it was, any sedatives were incredibly dangerous for Patrick.

Lucy watched him sleep deeply as the digital clock turned from 5:59 to 6:00. She’d woken him up every hour just to make sure he could be woken up. He’d mumble something unintelligible, then quickly fall back to sleep.

Lucy wished she could ask someone to watch her brother, but she was going to have to leave him. It was time to talk to the sheriff herself.

She crept from her room back to Patrick’s. Though she had cleaned up after him, his room smelled foul. She went through his notes and found the sheriff’s name and number that Steve had given him. She paused. Would Steve have passed along the information if he were the killer? She didn’t know.

The house was still silent. She walked downstairs and peered into the library. Trevor was still on the couch, no longer snoring, but bundled under a blanket. Angie must have put it back on last night.

Lucy closed the library door and padded silently to the lodge’s office. She picked up the phone and was relieved to hear a dial tone. Outside, the wind still blew like an angry god, dawn barely visible in the white that rained down around them.

“Alpine County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Sheriff Mackey please.”

“He’s not in right now. This is the dispatcher, how many I assist you?”

“This is Lucy Kincaid at the Delarosa Retreat. Sheriff Mackey spoke with Steve Delarosa yesterday about an unattended death. We have a serious problem up here, and I need to talk to the sheriff immediately.”

“One moment.”

She was put on hold. Lucy didn’t know what the dispatcher was doing. She waited impatiently.

A small stack of papers was tucked under the desk calendar, making it lopsided. She vaguely remembered that Steve had been reading something when she’d walked in last night.

She pulled out the papers and unfolded them. The top pages were a handwritten letter in bold, confident block letters dated over two years ago from Leo Delarosa to his son, Steve. The bottom pages were a formal Last Will and Testament.

She read the letter first.

Son ,

Today is your eighteenth birthday. I hope to be here to watch you drink your first beer (legally!) and get married (you’ll find the right girl, just be patient) and have a child of your own .

But my heart attack last year was a wake-up call for both of us. I don’t know how long I’ll be here, whether I’ll live to see my grandchild or not. Because God sometimes has ideas about things that we don’t understand, and because I’m not too good in talking about my feelings and all that crap, I decided to write this letter .

My words don’t always come out right. They sound like criticism (like when I told you that you were too smart to get a C in Algebra). What I should have said was, “Son, you’re a smart boy. I’m proud of you and proud of your grades. I’m disappointed in the C because I know you can do better. But I’m not disappointed in you.”

I’ve never been disappointed in you, Steve .

You were the best thing that happened to your mom and me. We didn’t think we could have kids-hell, we tried often enough! And then you came. She loved you the minute she found out you were growing inside her belly .