"If you're going to kill me anyway, can you at least satisfy my curiosity?” she pleaded.
Phyllis glanced at her watch, and Harriet hoped the older woman hadn't seen the same crime shows she had, where they told you that in a hostage situation the best course of action was to keep your attacker talking.
"I suppose your aunt isn't coming back until the judging is over,” Phyllis said, obviously gauging the time. “Okay, it's simple, really. Nancy Lou was one of my adoptions. There are women in Africa and other places who have jobs that put them at high risk of pregnancy and for whom an unwanted baby would be an…inconvenience. We in American have an endless supply of parents looking for infants to adopt."
"So, prostitutes are cranking out babies and selling them?” Harriet asked, her outrage causing her to temporarily forget the syringe poised over her leg.
"I wouldn't put it so crudely, but yes, that is, in fact, the situation. I didn't realize this when I first got into the international adoption business. The people on the other end handle that. I just pay a fee, which I pass on to the adoptive parents. By the time I realized what was going on, I was in too deep to stop."
"So, why steal a baby in American Samoa?"
"Two reasons, really. First, a lot of the prostitutes in Africa have HIV, which means they don't have healthy babies. Second, the authorities are always shutting my overseas contact down in one place or another, and he's forced to move on to another part of the world. Unfortunately, he became a little aggressive in his methods for procuring children in the South Pacific."
"That's one way to put it. It seems like he was stealing children from their rightful parents."
"Parents who were willing to send their child away to school at an improbable age, don't forget. And do you really believe DeAnn's child was better off with subsistence farmers or fishermen or whatever it was her birth parents did? She'll have a much nicer life here in Foggy Point."
"Like Nancy Lou did?"
"That was unfortunate. I didn't know those people were adopting a child just to be a domestic. And, well, when I discovered the problem, I couldn't risk an investigation for fear my situation would be uncovered. Surely you can understand that."
"So, you knew Neelie was being sold into slavery and could have saved her from it?"
"I didn't know before I sent her, but yes, I did figure it out when I made a home visit. It's unfortunate, but she really was a troubled child to start with."
"Did she recognize you? Is that why you killed her?” Harriet tried to worm herself into a more upright position.
"She saw me at the shower, and then came to see me. As you might expect with someone of her class, she wanted money, an impossibly high sum. What could I do? She said if I didn't give her two hundred thousand dollars, she would go to the authorities. I had no choice."
"So you injected her with an overdose of insulin?"
"That's pretty obvious,” Phyllis said and held the syringe a little higher. “I didn't know she'd told all to her pimp. That horrible man.” She shivered at the memory. “He came to me with the same demand. I had him meet me at Joseph's-I couldn't have him come to the office, after all, and Joseph's house had the perfect ambush spot.
"He's converted one of the basement rooms into a home gym. I have a key from when I watered his plants when he went to visit his mother, and there's a below-grade basement entry at the back of the house that goes into that room.
"Joseph does seem like the sort who would do something like this. He's always skulking about looking guilty. I've never known what about, though.
"Anyway,” she said, returning to her narration, “I had that creature Rodney meet me there. I hid behind the first door, and when he started down to the interior door I whacked him with a weight from Joseph's gym. I know what you're thinking-how can an old fat lady like me hope to overpower a young man. I haven't always been this size. I used to play women's professional softball. It's how I hurt my hip.” She patted her ample midriff. “More of this is muscle than you probably think, and you know it doesn't really take a heavyweight to knock someone out if you hit them just so."
"And then he got an insulin overdose?"
"Well, yes,” Phyllis said. “One has to be sure they've done the job. And you know, they never look for insulin. It's real hard to detect. I put it in that big vein in his arm. I made a couple of extra holes so it would look more like he was a drug user. Fortunately, you've had so many injections from the hospital, one more will go unnoticed."
Harriet rubbed her thigh on the leg that had the sprained ankle as if she had a sudden cramp.
"Don't worry, honey, in a few minutes you won't feel that cramp or anything else."
Harriet knew she had to time her move perfectly. She was frantically looking for a distraction when Fred started scratching on the kitchen side of the connecting door. Phyllis looked briefly toward the door, and Harriet made her move. She grabbed the edge of the folded quilt and unfurled it, throwing it over Phyllis's head.
Phyllis made muffled sounds as Harriet sprang up from her chair and onto the quilt-wrapped woman, knocking her over.
"What's going on?” Jorge yelled as he rushed inside, throwing his bags of food to the floor and coming over to the women tangled in the quilt on the floor.
"She's trying to kill me,” Harriet yelled. “She's got a syringe."
Jorge grabbed the edge of the quilt and pulled it back, revealing Phyllis's angry face. Without hesitation and with a swing worthy of an Olympic boxer, he landed a punch square in her face, knocking her out and breaking her nose in the process. He flipped the quilt further back and kicked the syringe out of the unconscious woman's hand, crushing it under his boot.
"Are you okay?” he asked Harriet.
"I am now."
Chapter 40
Harriet was sitting between Lauren and Mavis in a wooden rocking chair in the back room of the vet clinic when Aiden entered, a small dog cradled in each arm. He set a tan Chihuahua-dachshund mix in Lauren's lap then handed a curly-haired black-and-white poodle-terrier mix to Mavis.
"Be right back with Harry,” he said and disappeared the way he'd come.
He returned moments later with a mostly bald dog of unknown heritage. He carefully placed the injured dog onto the special fiber blanket draped across Harriet's lap. Harry had lost much of his skin as a result of being in the bottom cage at the dog hoarder's, deluged with waste from the cages above. He'd received skin grafts, some from a pig and some synthetic, which were beginning to peel as his own skin began to grow and heal. The result made him look like some sort of extraterrestrial creature.
The Loose Threads were into their second week of dog socializing, and so far the project was going well. Mavis's lap was draped with a lap-sized dog-bone quilt that, along with several other similar ones, had not sold at the benefit auction.
Lauren lifted the corner of the quilt.
"I can't believe the Small Stitches fell for the decoy quilt pattern,” she said.
"Well, it serves them right,” Mavis said. “What's really silly is that they're good quilters. They don't need to be copying other people's work."
"Why do they do it, then?” Harriet asked between licks as Harry attempted to wash her face.
"Lack of confidence, I guess,” Mavis replied.
Robin came through the door, followed by Aiden and a coal-black dog with a white cast on its front leg.
"Sorry I'm late,” she said. “I had to file some papers with the court.” She took off her pink-hooded yoga jacket and slipped a green apron over her head, tying the strings behind her. “Okay,” she said, and Aiden gently set the black dog in her lap.
"I really appreciate the work you ladies are doing here,” he said to the group. “The dogs are adjusting better than we hoped. I'm feeling a lot better about their adoption possibilities."