Poison. Billy Mayfield had probably been poisoned.
Fine. Now what?
She couldn't prove it. Not without tissue. Besides, nobody wanted to know about it. Heck, nobody wanted to know about anything in this town. And to top it off, if she pursued this, not only would she seriously displease her friends, but a certain caller would be back on the line, her boss would fire her, and the coroner would probably have her run out of town on a rail.
If this had happened in L.A., her choice would have been easy. In L.A., she'd still had a certain sense of her accomplishments. She'd been crystal clear about her mission. She'd been Wonder Woman. Trauma Queen. The Forensics Fairy.
But she was in Puckett now, where nobody believed in fairies except the little girl and old man who looked to her for support. And she couldn't think of a single area of her life that would be improved by her walking out onto the work lane and announcing that somebody somewhere had poisoned Billy Mayfield for reasons unknown, and that since the coroner was too busy bumping boots with the deceased's ex-wife to do anything about it, she, Timothy Ann Leary-Parker, would prove it.
Tomorrow, Timmie decided, sinking farther into what was left of the cushions. She'd make her decision tomorrow, when she felt better. When she knew what she was going to do about Joe. When she knew what Jason was going to do about her. When she knew better how to make her boss like her enough to let her stay here for the next hundred years, which was what it was going to take to pay for that old man and that little girl, who both needed so much.
In the meantime, though, Timmie seriously needed to patch up a few bodies and yell at a couple of drunks.
"Timmie? You okay, girl?"
Timmie grinned at Mattie without opening her eyes. "I'm bored. You guys promised me action. I haven't even seen a tractor crash."
"Every case can't be forensics, girl."
Timmie sighed. "Only in a perfect life, Mattie. Now, what can I do for you?"
"Besides take over for me so I can eat?"
"Where's Cindy?"
"Been pulled to Restcrest. They got need, we don't, and Ellen lost the toss to go, although why those two like it up there is beyond me."
"She'll pass a happier shift."
"Amen and hallelujah. Now, if you want to get that lazy-ass white butt of yours off the couch, I got that new plastics guy, Dr. Babbaloo, or whatever—"
"Balanbarian."
"Yeah. Babbaloo. He stitchin' up a Tupperware lady did a header down somebody's porch steps. But be careful. You go in there, she'll try and sell you lettuce crispers. And next door to her, I'm waitin' for the Ancef to come up to mix for Vern. He the one got his hand bit by his wife's boyfriend last night."
"What else?"
"Uh... well..."
Considering the fact that Timmie had not in three weeks ever heard Mattie resort to the sound "uh," that got her to open her eyes. It was to find, of all people, Victor Adkins standing in full uniform in the doorway behind Mattie.
Timmie's first thought was that he'd found out. Somebody at the switchboard had plugged into her call with Conrad and tipped off the cops that Timmie suspected foul play in the death of one Billy Mayfield.
Then Timmie realized that the chances of anybody official caring about how Billy Mayfield died were on a par with insurance companies going back to nonprofit status. Unless an untapped oil well that could benefit the town was found under Billy's house, Timmie doubted it was going to change.
"Well, if it ain't the five-oh," she said to Mattie as if he weren't there. "What does he want?"
Mattie's eyebrows lifted dramatically. "Don't look at me, girlfriend. I'm just the jungle guide."
Timmie grinned and got herself off the couch. "I don't suppose Barb's coming in, is she?" she asked sotto voce. "I mean, so I could get my trauma time in. It's like flying, ya know. If I don't clock so many hours, I lose my magic cape."
Mattie chuckled, a lovely rumble deep in her considerable chest. "He stupid, girlfriend. Not dumb."
Timmie bent to retrieve her stethoscope off the table.
"Mattie, you take all the fun out of coming to work." Then she went to meet Barb's ex-husband, who was trying to screw Barb out of her own child support.
"What can I do for you, Officer?"
"Do you have a minute?" he asked. "I'd like to talk to you."
"If you want to follow me around. I'm on the clock."
"Your drugs are up, Mattie!" somebody called.
"You mean Timmie's drugs are up!" Mattie yelled back. "I'm eatin'."
Even so, she followed just a few paces behind as Timmie headed past. Timmie thought best on her feet. Therefore, she forced the policeman to follow her down the hall to the medicine cabinet, while everyone on the hall watched.
"What can I do for you?" she asked, rescuing her antibiotics from the vacuum tube and picking a 50cc bag of D5/W off the shelf to go with it.
Close up, Victor didn't look as bad as he had at the funeral the day before. He had pretty dark eyes with sinfully long lashes, and a cocky smile that probably worked a treat on female suspects. It didn't do a lot for a woman who had dated her share of cops. Especially a nurse who despised musk colognes and assholes who didn't stop screwing their wives just because they'd divorced them.
"You're Timmie Leary?"
Timmie worked by rote, popping the sterile seal on the antibiotic vial into the trash and swabbing the top with alcohol, all the while keeping her eyes on the officer. "I sure am. What can I do for you?"
He took hold of his belt as if it were his official tool of office, or he just wanted to be near his gun. "Well, I was here on an MVA and thought I'd stop by and talk to you. It's about the threat you got the other day?"
Syringe plunged deep into the vial to start aspirating, Timmie stopped what she was doing. Right behind Victor, Mattie was making a great show of updating the flow board. Timmie didn't even give her the satisfaction of a look.
"What threat, Officer?"
"Dead flowers, the way I heard it," he said. "And some kind of note."
"How'd you know about that?"
He pulled himself up a little taller. The "need-to-know-basis" stance some guys loved so well. "That doesn't matter. Do you know what it was for, Ms. Leary?"
Timmie went back to work. "We just assumed that it was the local Klan warning me off saving any more colored folk, was all," she lied, making sure she didn't look at Mattie, who, come to think of it, still didn't know what was really in the note. "I threw it away."
Victor nodded, shifted his weight so that his belt creaked and several dangling items rattled against his butt. "Can you tell me what it said?"
"It just told me to stop. In cut-out magazine letters."
"And you're sure it was about the shooting?"
Timmie blinked. "Well, since I paid off that loan shark last month I don't think he'd see any need to go after more of my thumbs. And I haven't threatened anybody lately."
His expression darkened portentously. "Not even the coroner?"
She sighed. "Oh, that's right. I keep forgetting I'm not in Los Angeles anymore. I can't have PMS here without the paper printing my water weight." Jabbing the needle into the port, she injected the drugs into the IV bag. "I didn't exactly threaten him, Officer Adkins. I just voiced displeasure with the way he was doing his job. He's a public servant and I'm the public. It's my right. Besides, he doesn't strike me as the scissors-and-magazine type."