“Teresa?” I said, inching toward her.
She blinked her eyes open and drew her brows together.
“I’m Charlotte Davidson. You might remember me from the mine?”
Her eyes registered recognition. “Yes. You found me.”
I nodded and stepped closer. “I’m not sure how much you can recall. I’m a private investigator. Luther and Monica hired me. Kind of.”
She smiled sleepily at the mention of their names.
I needed to hurry. Yost would know there was no reason for Teresa to be in a delivery room unless she was seriously holding out on him. Thankfully, he had rounds to make.
“We don’t have much time, Teresa, so I’m going to sum up what I know happened and what I think happened and see where we stand. Is that okay?”
Her mouth thinned with worry, but she nodded.
“First, I know you sabotaged the mine.” When she looked away without arguing, I continued. “You used the ATV and the winch to loosen the beams along the shaft. But I don’t think you meant to be in it when it collapsed.”
“I forgot to leave my cell phone,” she said weakly, embarrassment wafting off her. “I went back in to leave it with my stuff so they’d think I was still in there.”
“And that’s when it collapsed.”
With a hesitant nod, she confirmed what the miner had said. “The mines are so deep, they’d stop looking eventually.”
“But before you did all this, you took out a life insurance policy on yourself for your sister, so she could get medical help.”
She turned an astonished expression on me.
“Somehow,” I continued, “you found out about Nathan’s first wife. You found out he killed her when she tried to leave him.”
Her expression didn’t waver.
“He smothers you. Tries to control every aspect of your life.”
A hint of shame flitted across her face.
“And you wonder how it could have come to this. How it could have gone so far.”
“Yes,” she whispered, the shame evident in her crinkled chin.
“Teresa, your husband is very good at what he does. He’s a practiced surgeon in both the physical and the emotional realms. He knew what he was doing. He knew how to control you. That you wouldn’t tell your brother what was going on, because you were afraid of what Luther would do.”
A soft gasp echoed in the room, confirming everything I’d just said.
“Why should your brother have to pay for your mistakes, right? He would have hurt Nathan. Possibly killed him and then paid the price for the rest of his life.”
Her nod was so slight, I almost missed it.
“So you took out the insurance policy, planned your escape, and tried to disappear. But you would never have left your siblings completely. You would have gotten them word that you were okay somehow, and Nathan would have figured it out, hon. He would have come after you. Or Luther would have ended up killing him when he found out why you’d left. Either way, it would have ended badly.”
She pressed her mouth together and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to stop the tears that had gathered there.
“But what you did was so brave, Teresa. I admire you more than you will ever know.”
“It was stupid.”
“No.” I put a hand over hers. “It was selfless.”
She covered her mouth with the sheet and sobbed a full minute, and the sadness emanating from her was like a force field pushing against me. Taking deep breaths, I pushed back, fought to stay by her side.
“I was pregnant,” she said, her breath hitching in her chest. “I think … I think he gave me something. I got really sick one night and then lost the baby.”
My teeth slammed together. I didn’t know that part, and my heart ached for her loss. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.” Taking her hand into mine, I said, “Teresa, I have to tell you something, but you have to be very strong and know that I am working with the police and the FBI to stop it.”
Without looking at me, she nodded, still lost in her grief.
I hated to tell her now, but she had a right to know. “I think he’s been poisoning your sister.”
Her attention flew to me again, aghast.
“The sparkling water that you bring her every day. He would have known you weren’t drinking it. You weren’t getting sick. Your sister was.”
Both hands covered her mouth in horror.
“We had a warrant issued for your house,” I said, rushing to assure her we were taking care of it. “We’re having it tested now.”
“How can you possibly—?”
“Her fingernails. She has what’s called Aldrich-Mees’ lines.” When Teresa scanned the images in her memory and nodded absently, I continued. “Those are a symptom of heavy metal poisoning. It could be something like thallium or even arsenic.”
Before Teresa could react, we heard the nurse outside. “Dr. Yost,” she said, sounding surprised.
I hurried to the door and opened it a fraction of an inch.
“Have you seen my wife?” he said, looking around with a confused expression on his face. He frowned at the two orderlies who were standing around doing a whole lot of nothing.
One of them cleared his throat and pulled up his scrubs in discomfort.
“No,” the nurse said, pulling the doctor’s attention back to her. “Isn’t she in her room?”
“She was, but … never mind. I’ll check again.”
“Nice to see you,” she said with a smile. Then she turned to the door and rolled her eyes at me through the crack.
I waved her forward before rushing back to Teresa’s side. “I have to get you back.”
“How could I be so stupid?” she asked as the nurse unlocked the bed so the men could roll her out.
“Chin up, hon,” I said, scanning the area before we snuck her through the delivery waiting area. “He won’t ever do this again.”
The fact that he’d gone after Yolanda’s family summed it all up for me. Yost had done everything to keep Yolanda under his thumb. Same with his first wife, Ingrid. I had a sneaking suspicion he’d killed Ingrid’s mother, and when Ingrid found out, she ran. In turn, Yost took the only recourse he had left. He killed her. He might have done the same to Yolanda if she hadn’t been protected, insulated by a caring family.
Teresa had figured it out. What he’d done to his first wife. The consequences of her leaving. But she’d never dreamed he was trying to control her another way. He knew she was seeing her sister. He knew she was taking Monica the mineral water, so he laced it with just enough arsenic to make her sick, punishing Teresa for defying him and getting an obstacle out of the way at the same time. That was why the doctors couldn’t pinpoint the problem. She was being slowly and methodically poisoned.
I left Teresa in the capable hands of two officers in scrubs and scrambled to make sure the scene had been set. Thanks to Uncle Bob, it had. Half an hour later, I stood in a quiet corner of the Presbyterian hospital with a magazine covering half my face, conspicuously trying to seem inconspicuous as the blond-haired, blue-eyed devil walked toward me. He stopped at the nurse’s station to sign a chart, then continued my way.
“Ms. Davidson, I can’t tell you how much you’ve done for me,” Yost said.
I let a slow, calculating smile spread across my face. “Yeah, I bet. Can we talk?”
He frowned, then glanced around. “Is something—?”
“Look, Keith…,” I said, letting the name sink into him a moment before I slipped a manila envelope out of the magazine, held it up with raised brows, and waited. When his features smoothed from confusion to something akin to a used car salesman ready to bargain, I pointed to the supply closet and headed that way. “Coming?” I asked over my shoulder.