Sweet Talk (Buchanan-Renard 10)
John escorted her to her car in the parking garage and watched her pull out onto the street. Olivia drove around in circles until she was convinced she wasn’t being followed, then headed over to Dupont Circle where Jane lived.
Jane’s three-story townhouse was quite small, but there was an art studio on the top floor. The converted attic was the reason Jane had purchased the space because the light coming in through the windows was perfect for her work.
Logan opened the door. He looked surprised to see her.
“Jane didn’t tell you she invited me?” Olivia asked.
Logan stepped back to let her inside. “I’m sure she did. I just forgot. Don’t worry. There’s plenty of roast.”
Olivia followed him into the living room. The room was dark except for the glow from the fire he’d started in the hearth. He switched on a lamp, and she could see how haggard he looked.
“Jane’s upstairs resting,” he said. “I’ll go get her.”
“How is she doing?”
“Not good,” he replied. He was looking everywhere but at her. “I’m scared,” he said.
“Let her rest awhile longer,” Olivia said. She nodded toward the kitchen. “Something smells wonderful. Can I help?”
He smiled. “Thanks, but I’ve got it under control.”
“Then don’t let me keep you. I’ll occupy myself until Jane comes down.” She pointed to a stack of magazines on the coffee table. “I can do some reading.”
As soon as Logan went into the kitchen, Olivia picked up the magazine on top of the pile and sat down on the sofa. She flipped through the pages. Nothing caught her attention, so she placed it back on the table. She then spotted a laptop sitting on the floor next to an easy chair. She hadn’t read the newspaper, and she thought she’d pull up the Times and catch up on the latest happenings. She knew Jane wouldn’t mind if she used her computer for a few minutes.
Olivia reached for the computer and lifted the lid. The dark screen came to life, and an open page appeared. The title at the top caught her attention: “The Pathological Effects of Arsenic Ingestion.” What an odd subject to be reading about, Olivia thought. She hit the key to return to the previous page, and then the page before that. It didn’t take long for her to realize she wasn’t holding Jane’s computer at all. It was Logan’s.
Logan’s voice called from the kitchen. “When do you give her blood again, Olivia?”
Olivia quickly closed the computer and placed it on the floor where she’d found it.
“I’m not sure,” she answered.
Logan walked into the living room, drying his hands on a dish towel. He glanced at the stairs, making sure Jane wasn’t there, and lowered his voice. “She’s talking crazy. She won’t tell you, but she’s in a lot of pain.” He walked closer and in a whisper said, “I think she might kill herself. That’s how depressed she is.”
Olivia moved to the side so that Logan would turn his head toward the light and she could see his eyes more clearly. She took a step back. She was so rattled, she couldn’t think what to say. Her hand went to her throat. “Oh God,” she gasped. His pupils were dilated as big as saucers.
Logan patted her shoulder. “I’ve moved into the guest room so I can watch her. It will actually work out for the best. My meetings are a few blocks away, and I can go more often. Next to Jane, of course, my sobriety is the most important thing to me.”
“Good,” she said, trying to stay calm. “And you’ve been cooking for her so she’ll keep her strength. You’re doing everything you can.”
“I’ll go get Jane. Please don’t tell her what I said. It will only upset her, and she won’t confide in me anymore.”
“Of course,” she agreed.
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “Do you mind if we eat right away? I’ve got a meeting to get to. They help me stay sober,” he explained.
“I don’t mind. I’m hungry.”
She wanted to call Grayson, but by the time she dug her cell phone out of her purse, Jane and Logan were joining her.
“Go sit at the table,” Logan told his sister. “The roast will dry up if I don’t get it out of the oven. I’ll go ahead and scoop it out on the plates.” He disappeared into the kitchen.
“Have you talked to Grayson today?” Jane asked.
“I’m going to call him now,” Olivia answered.
Jane smiled. “Good.”
Olivia wanted to cry. Jane looked like hell, and she’d lost so much weight. She waited until her friend took a seat at the table, then walked into the living room and called Grayson. He answered on the second ring. His greeting wasn’t polite.
“Where the hell are you? I just left your apartment. You were supposed to—”
“I’m at Jane’s, Grayson,” she said. “Logan’s here.” She was just about to tell him about her suspicions, but Logan came into the living room. She quickly said, “Grayson, I’ll call you back. It shouldn’t be long, Grayson.” She ended the call quickly. Logan was standing there, listening. Plastering a smile on her face, she went to join her dearest friend and her psychopath brother.
The plates were already on the table. Logan had prepared them, and they all looked the same, except for one thing. Olivia noticed that Jane’s plate had a sprig of parsley on the side. Logan’s didn’t, and neither did hers.
She went to Jane, kissed her on the cheek, and hugged her. She took her place at one end of the table. Logan took the other.
“Logan, do you have any pepper?” she asked.
“Sure. I’ll get it for you.”
The second he disappeared into the kitchen, Olivia grabbed Jane’s plate and switched it with Logan’s. She switched the parsley, too.
“What are you doing?” Jane asked.
Olivia put her finger to her lips, a sign to keep silent. Jane nodded but continued to frown.
“What’s this orange stuff?” she asked Logan when he returned.
“Mashed sweet potatoes. Jane loves them. Some nights, that’s all she eats.”
Logan ate his dinner quickly. “I don’t want to be late for the meeting,” he explained.
Olivia moved the food around on her plate, but didn’t eat any of it.
“Not hungry?” Logan asked.
“I thought I was, but I guess I’m not feeling very well. Grayson and I had a fight,” she explained.
Olivia didn’t know how much longer she could keep silent. Jane was repeating a story Collins had told her, and Olivia noticed she had eaten every bit of the mashed sweet potatoes, and so had Logan.
She dragged dinner out as long as she could, telling two stories about Jane, praying that Grayson would get there soon. She hoped she’d said his name enough times for him to figure out that she was in trouble. Jane’s home wasn’t far from Olivia’s apartment. She had just finished her second story and was frantically trying to think of a third when Jane said, “Okay, Olivia, dinner’s over. Tell me why.”
“Why what?”
“Why you switched my plate with my brother’s.”
If Olivia had any doubts, they were all erased in that second. Logan leapt to his feet, overturning his chair.
“You what?” he screamed.
Jane looked thunderstruck by his behavior. “What’s going on?”
Olivia kept her attention on Logan. Oh, this was going to be bad, she thought . . . really bad . . . for she could see the rage coming over him.
“Olivia?” Jane asked.
“Logan’s been poisoning you.”
“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” he roared. “Why would you tell such a lie?”
“Your eyes are dilated, which tells me you’re using again,” she began. “You have a very interesting website on your computer, all about arsenic.”
“Oh my God . . .” Jane whispered.
“He told me he was worried you would kill yourself, Jane. Laying the groundwork, I suppose. I guess you were taking too long to die.”
“Shut up,” Logan shouted.
Olivia continued to address Jane. “That’s why you’ve been so sick. He’s been giving you the poison, and he’s been clever about it. He makes sure it’s no longer in your blood by the time you go to the hospital. I’m guessing he’s been giving it to you for a long time. After a few days, arsenic doesn’t show up in the blood, but it’s everywhere else. Now that we know what to look for, we’ll have all the proof we need.”
Logan was frantically trying to search for a way out. He grasped his head in his hands. “I can’t think,” he muttered.
“That’s because you’re high,” Olivia pointed out. “You can’t lie as well when you’re drugged, can you?”
“You’re crazy. You can’t prove anything.” His agitation was beginning to take over.
“Yes, I can,” she said. “You’re not as clever as you think.”
He turned to his sister. He couldn’t seem to control the twitch in his neck that had suddenly appeared. “That’s my money sitting in your account. Mother meant it for me, but you convinced her to leave it all to you. I want what’s rightfully mine.”
“You wouldn’t have gotten away with it,” Olivia said. “An autopsy would have shown the poison.”
“I’m smarter than you think,” he boasted. “The arsenic was just supposed to weaken her a little. I figured the cancer or something else would kill her, but she wasn’t sick enough, so I decided to speed things up. Since she’s been feeling so ill, no one would blame her for wanting to end it all with a bottle of sleeping pills.”
Olivia went to Jane and put her hand on her shoulder to keep her in her chair. When she looked up, Grayson was standing in the doorway, his gun trained on Jane’s brother. He didn’t make a sound. She knew he wanted her to move away from Logan, but she was afraid to leave Jane’s side.
“You think that’s clever, Logan?” she taunted. She wanted him to continue to look at her until Grayson grabbed him. “I don’t believe you’ve ever done anything clever in your life. You’re too stupid.” She could tell he was losing control. She could see it in his eyes.
Logan lunged for her and grabbed her around the neck, choking her. Grayson moved like lightning and tore him off her.
“What the hell, Olivia,” he shouted as he slammed Logan against the wall. “Why didn’t you move away from him?”
She coughed the words, “I should have.” She rubbed her neck and said, “I wanted him to keep talking.”
She looked at Jane, who appeared to be so stunned she couldn’t move. Olivia took her hand and pulled her to her feet. She put her arm around her friend’s shoulders and said, “Come on. You’re going to the hospital.”
THIRTY-ONE
It was almost nine before Olivia arrived home from the hospital. Grayson had followed her in his car and waited until they were inside her apartment to give her hell again.
“If he had a knife . . .”
“He didn’t.”
“If he . . .”
She went into the kitchen to get something to drink. “You had your gun on him. What could he do?” Too late, she realized it was a dumb question.
“How about use you as a shield? He could have snapped your neck. He could have—”
“But he didn’t.”
Ronan arrived, interrupting the lecture Olivia knew Grayson was about to launch into.
Olivia told him to help himself to whatever he wanted to eat or drink. He grabbed a Coke and sat facing her.
Grayson wanted to pace. “Should have checked sooner,” he told Ronan. “When Olivia mentioned that Logan was an addict, I should have checked to make sure he was still clean . . . do my damned job. I wasn’t paying attention. She could have been killed.”
“Jane’s going to be okay,” Olivia reassured.
Ronan smiled. “He was talking about you.”
“Oh.”
“Nothing more impulsive than a devout cokehead,” Ronan remarked. “Where is Logan now?”
“He was taken to the hospital to have his stomach pumped and then to jail,” Grayson answered. He shook his head. “Everything that came out of that bastard’s mouth was a lie. He didn’t live in a halfway house, and he only worked for the car rental agency a couple of months.” He came around the sofa as he said, “And he sure as hell didn’t go to any meetings. I’ll bet he was getting high every night.”
Olivia turned to Grayson. “Did you know he was poisoning Jane?”
“Once I found out everything out of his mouth was a lie, I called Dr. Pardieu and told him my suspicions. He confirmed that it all added up. I told him we’d bring Jane in. I wanted to make sure you were safe, and I’d stopped to warn you when I got your call.”
“We went to Logan’s apartment,” Ronan said. “It was a real dump. We found the arsenic there.”
“The poison only stays in the blood a couple of days,” Grayson said. “Logan timed it so that when she went back into the hospital, it wouldn’t show up. He was giving her small doses, just enough to weaken her. I think he was hoping it would make her cancer come back.”
The doorbell rang, and he went to answer it. A lovely blond, blue-eyed young woman with a bewitching smile was standing there, waiting for him to let her in.
“Collins,” he said.
Her smile widened. “Grayson.”
Introductions over, she rushed past him. She was yelling before she reached Olivia. “I told you Logan was a sleazebag. Didn’t I tell you?”
“You might have mentioned—”
“If I had a gun . . .”
“Don’t finish that,” Olivia blurted. “There are two FBI agents here.”
Collins whirled around. “Two?”
Ronan was standing right behind her. They stared at each other for several seconds, neither saying a word. Olivia watched, fascinated. She could almost see the electricity flowing between them.
Grayson introduced them. Collins smiled up at Ronan, then turned around and continued her rant.
“I called Sam and told her. She didn’t believe Logan had changed either.” Hands on hips, she faced Grayson. “How did you finally figure it out?”
Olivia groaned. Collins had inadvertently gotten him worked up again. He went through the process, and by the time he was finished, he was furious once more.
“Don’t ask any more questions, Collins,” she pleaded.
“Just one,” she countered. “How did you find his apartment?”
“He put his address on the application at the rental agency.”
Ronan was having trouble paying attention to the conversation. He couldn’t seem to make himself stop staring at Collins.
“I’m getting a Popsicle. Want one?” she asked Olivia.
“Sure. Grape.”
Five minutes later, Grayson and Ronan stood side by side watching the two women.
“Why do you like Popsicles?” Ronan asked.
“We got hooked on them when we were going through chemo,” Collins answered matter-of-factly. “The cold soothed the blisters in our mouths.”
Both women put the Popsicles in their mouths at the same time. Grayson moaned, “Ah, come on.”
Olivia knew what he was thinking. Her tongue swirled around the tip of the Popsicle, her gaze locked on his. “Want some?” she innocently asked.
“Jeez,” Ronan muttered.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Grayson said, glaring at Olivia.
Ronan gave him an understanding slap on the back. “I’m right behind you.”
THIRTY-TWO
Ray Martin was sitting in jail, charged with the attempted murder of Olivia MacKenzie. Grayson and Ronan s
till weren’t convinced they had the right man. They needed to be sure.
They brought Carl Simmons’s alibi in for another interrogation. Her name was Vicky Hyde Clark, and she was a paid escort. Simmons was one of her best clients. He always overpaid her for her services, and he didn’t mind being seen in public with her. She considered him a good friend.
Vicky was tall, thin, and wore a dress that was a little too tight. She wasn’t pretty, by any means, and there was a hardness about her and a look that suggested she’d been through a couple of wars.
She sat at a table across from Ronan, who had a file open in front of him. Grayson leaned against the wall behind the agent and stared at Vicky. He had yet to say a word to her.
He was an expert at intimidation, and he knew he was scaring her, all without moving a muscle or uttering a sound.
“I’ve told you everything I know,” Vicky whined. “Carl’s one of my dearest friends . . . he used to be, anyway, but now that he’s going to prison for all that fraud business, I don’t see how I can help you. I understand . . . Carl’s innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but we all know . . .” She took a breath and said, “I told you the truth. Carl was with me that night you asked about . . . you know, when that girl got shot. Carl was in my bed all night.”
She kept nervously glancing at Grayson, then back to Ronan. “I don’t know what you want from me,” she cried. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Just a couple of questions, Vicky, then it will be over and we’ll take you to lockup,” Ronan said smoothly.
“What’s this?” she gasped. “Lockup? Why?”
Grayson finally spoke. “You lied to us.”
“No, I . . .” She couldn’t hold his stare.
“Like I said, Vicky, just a few questions and we’ll be done,” Ronan repeated. “Where did the ten thousand dollars come from? You made a five-thousand-dollar deposit in your savings account and a five-thousand-dollar deposit in your checking account. You made those deposits on the same day, exactly one week after Olivia MacKenzie was shot.”