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Chapter 12. Answers and Aneurysms

WHITNEY

Wednesday morning, Buck was upstairs at the fire station, cutting and removing the fire-damaged sheetrock for replacement. I was in the open bay downstairs, loading sheets of new drywall onto my dolly, when Gideon walked in. His gargoyle face was softer today, looking more like putty than concrete, and his eyes were puffy and pink from lack of sleep, tears, or both. The news was written on his face.

"Oh no," I said on a breath, my heart sinking. I set down the sheetrock I'd been holding. "Joanna's gone, isn't she?"

Gideon dipped his chin in a somber nod. "We were told she passed away in the ambulance on the way to the hospital yesterday. The EMTs did their best to revive her. The folks in the emergency room, too, but nothing could be done." He choked up for a moment, putting one hand over his face and grabbing the metal pole with the other to hold himself up. It was the same thing Joanna had done the day before, right before she'd fallen into my lap.

Lest he fall, too, I stepped over and put a supportive hand on his back, ready to grab an arm should he go down.

He went on to give me the details. In light of the intense headache Joanna had suffered the day before, the doctors presumed she died of an aneurysm. "'Course, we had to tell Macy, despite her condition. The poor girl is beside herself, riddled with guilt over their argument last week. I hope she can get past that. She and her mother often didn't see eye to eye, and things could get heated between them, but they always came back around to each other in the end. She's angry, too. She thinks the doctor at urgent care didn't take Joanna's situation seriously enough. Macy researched aneurysms online, and she says the doctor should've ordered an MRI or a CT scan to screen for an aneurysm, or done an angiography. She thinks that if he'd done any of that, her mother might still be alive. She's talking about suing him for malpractice."

While Macy might have a valid point, she'd need to know for certain that her mother had died of an aneurysm in order to prove her case. "Will Joanna's medical insurance cover an autopsy?"

"The folks at the hospital said insurance won't pay for it, but with the inheritance she'll get from Joanna, Macy's got plenty of money to pay for an autopsy out of pocket. Holden and I aren't so sure she should pursue it. Even if Macy wins the malpractice case, it's not going to bring Joanna back, and it's going to cause her a lot of anxiety in the meantime. She doesn't need the worry of a lawsuit during her pregnancy." He released a shaky breath. "I suppose it's never a good time to die, but this was a particularly unfortunate time for Joanna to go."

I gave Gideon's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "I'm so sorry, Gideon. This must be so hard for all of you."

His breath hitched. "Joanna's been my best friend since Billy Roy died. I'd already lost my partner a few years earlier and, when I heard her husband had passed, I took a meal over to her. We were just neighbors then, barely knew each other, virtual strangers really. But she invited me in and we bonded over the shared pain of losing our partners. Both of us were sad sacks, alone and lonely. We discovered we had a lot more in common than we could have ever expected. Next thing we knew, we were keeping each other company on a daily basis." He glanced out of the bay, a faraway look in his eyes. "You never know what life has in store for you until it happens." He broke down completely now. "I don't know what I'll do without her!"

Poor Gideon. He's alone again.I circled around to embrace him. He put his head on my shoulder, and I patted his back while he sobbed, soaking my coveralls with his tears. My chest felt tight with emotion and my eyes pricked with moisture I blinked hard to hold back. The door to the upstairs opened and Buck emerged with ragged chunks of drywall in his arms. He'd taken two steps down the metal stairs when he spotted Gideon and me and stopped moving. At the emotional visage, he got the look of a deer in headlights. Men. Sheesh. So scared of feelings. Buck tiptoed the rest of the way down, and exited the bay to toss the debris in the bin outside.

Gideon got himself under control and lifted his head. "Thanks, Whitney. I needed that."

"Anytime." I gave him a soft smile. "Please let us know when Joanna's funeral is scheduled. If it's okay with the family, we'd like to attend."

"I'm sure they'd appreciate it."

Buck had reentered the bay and stood behind Gideon. He shook his head, his eyes wide, and moved his arms in a no motion. Tough. Whether Buck wanted to or not, he'd be attending the funeral with me.

As Gideon turned to go, Buck immediately changed his demeanor. He gave Gideon a somber nod and a supportive pat on the shoulder as he passed. "So sorry, man."

No sooner had Gideon gone than Landreth pulled into the station's parking lot. Buck and I walked out to meet her at her vehicle as she slid out.

She got right down to brass tacks. "It was Lane Hartzell in the tow truck that was parked here early Sunday morning."

"Oh yeah?" Buck said. "How'd you figure that out?"

I was wondering the same thing.

Landreth said, "Lane confirmed it himself. I spoke with him yesterday afternoon. Of course, he said he had nothing to do with the fire. He claimed he didn't even know there'd been a fire here."

I asked the obvious question. "Then why had he been here?"

"He said he was working the night shift for the towing service. Things were slow and he was in the area, so he pulled in to take a smoke break."

"You were right about that tiny dot of light, then. It was a cigarette." Like mother, like son.

"He said he had happy memories of the fire station from when he was a kid. His father took him over here a few times, and the firefighters let him sit in the driver's seat of the truck and pretend to drive it. They even let him try on their hats and jackets."

Buck cocked his head. "Do you believe him?"

She jerked one shoulder, uncommitted. "He didn't give me a reason not to. He seemed forthcoming, and I couldn't glean any clear motive for him to have started the fire. Y'all haven't even met him, and he seemed to think it was a good thing that you're planning to fix up the other side of Joanna's building, so it couldn't be personal to the two of you. He doesn't have a history of arson, either, though he does have a record."

"For what?" I asked.

"Opioids. He was caught with drugs he didn't have a prescription for. Twice. He said he became addicted to painkillers after being prescribed oxycodone. He'd wrenched his shoulder when a car he was loading onto the tow truck shifted. The first time he got arrested he was given probation, community service, and mandatory attendance at drug offender school. The second time, he spent a month in jail and was ordered to go into rehab." She exhaled a slow, soft breath. "He seems adrift. He said sometimes he wishes he could go back to being that little boy in the fire truck, start his life over. He said he'd do things different if he had a second chance."

My heart squirmed inside me. While he hadn't known at the time Landreth had talked to him, by now Lane had surely been informed of his mother's death, that she had come to the firehouse and collapsed in the bay before being loaded in the ambulance and driven off to die. He'd probably never have those same warm feelings about the fire station again. I hoped he could at least retain the warm feelings about his father and the firefighters.

"Detective Flynn is still working on the Bottiglieris," Landreth said. "No sense us duplicating efforts. I'm hoping he'll know soon whether one of them might have set the fire here."

After we thanked Landreth for the information, she took off to attend to other fire department business, and Buck and I returned our attention to repairing the drywall.

I was bent over in the bay, butt in the air, when a tsk came from behind me. "You don't want to use that brand of tape."

I turned to find the trio of older men who'd watched the fire Sunday morning from the comfort of their lawn chairs. All three wore easy slip-on shoes with white crew socks, loose-fitting shorts, and knit golf shirts—one in blue, one in green, and one in orange-and-white stripes, the colors of the University of Tennessee Volunteers. Blue Shirt and Stripes wore baseball caps, while Green Shirt's head was bare.

"That's right," agreed Green Shirt. "You go with that cheap tape, you'll be sorry."

I was upset about Joanna's death, and saddened by what I'd learned about Lane. It had been an emotionally taxing day already. I didn't need this irritation on top of it. My ire rose. "Are you, or were you, home builders?" I snapped. "Work in skilled construction trades?"

They looked to one another in surprise at my harsh tone before turning back to me. "Well, no," said Blue Shirt. "I sold insurance." He stood straighter and puffed out his chest. "But I finished out my garage."

Stripes said, "I was a dentist, but I repaired the drywall in my laundry room after it flooded."

Green Shirt gestured to Blue Shirt. "I helped him with the garage job."

In other words, these guys were armchair handymen. While I didn't mind advice from professional contractors who were more experienced than me and, in fact, sought out and appreciated such advice, input from your average Joe, no matter how well-meaning, annoyed me. Coming from these older men, there was likely some sexism underlying their advice. They might have a hard time imagining a woman could be more knowledgeable than them on construction matters.

I held up the roll of tape. "I've been using this brand for years without a problem." For years! Did you hear that?

Blue Shirt tsked again and shook his head. "I certainly wouldn't use it."

"To each their own." I turned away from them, bent over again, and dug through my toolbox.

Failing to take the hint I hoped my backside would imply, they stepped closer.

Blue Shirt was back at it. "You'll need a putty knife, sweetie."

Sweetie? Oh, it's on now!I found the tool I was looking for, turned around, and held it up, feeling like the Statue of Liberty with her torch. "Actually, this drywall tape knife works much better than a putty knife. It has just the right amount of flexibility."

Green Shirt's face soured. "I wouldn't use one. It's a waste of money to buy a tool for such a specific purpose."

First, they'd implied I was cheap. Now, they'd called me wasteful, a spendthrift. I fought the urge to roll my eyes. This wasn't the first time this type of thing had happened, and it wouldn't be the last. The habit of retired men offering unsolicited advice to construction workers in public places was annoying yet common. The Italians had even coined a word for these critical, self-appointed foreman—umarell. The word was derived from a term that meant "little man."

Though I didn't want to encourage further debate, I felt the need to defend myself. "It's not a waste to buy a specialized tool if you use it repeatedly for multiple projects like I have." The tape in one hand and the tool in the other, I stretched my arms out to each side and walked toward them, as if shooing chickens. "You'll need to clear the bay. I've got to close the door."

Grumbling, the umarells reluctantly moved back, stopping just the other side of the threshold. I made a fist and used the side of it to hit the button to lower the garage door. As it came down, the meddling men disappeared inch by inch, until the final thing I saw was a flash of white crew socks. I hoped it was the last I'd see of them.

Over lunch at the café next door, I phoned every lumber outfit I could find in the general vicinity of Nashville, trying to find hardwood flooring. While a few places had some in stock, the prices they demanded were four or five times the usual rate, far surpassing what we wanted to spend, especially since, prior to the fire, we'd planned on maintaining the existing floor and had budgeted only for sandpaper and stain to refinish the boards.

When I gave Buck the last quote I received, he snorted. "Now that's thievery."

"Takes a thief to know a thief," I teased.

Last I'd heard from Collin, Peter and Judith were still ghosting law enforcement, refusing to account for their whereabouts the night someone had spray-painted the walls in the townhouse and set a fire in the firehouse. But the two couldn't hide forever. He'd catch up with them eventually.

While Buck's father, my uncle Roger, had the equipment we'd need to mill boards ourselves, it was a time-consuming process to get them cut, processed, and sanded to a perfectly smooth finish. We preferred to let someone else do the heavy lifting when possible.

Having failed in my quest to find affordable new hardwood flooring, I scrolled through my contacts as I nibbled on a salty French fry, searching for folks I knew who worked in reclaimed materials. The remaining wood in the fire station was aged. Seemed we could use aged wood to replace the boards that had burned. Heck, old boards would probably match better than new planks, anyway. On my second call, I hit pay dirt. Someone had bought an old farmhouse in Lynchburg and ripped out the wood floors to replace them with tile. The planks could be mine for a reasonable price. The only catch was I had to pay in advance and drive down to a storage unit in Moore County to pick them up myself. "No problem," I said. "It's a deal."

I promptly sent the agreed-upon amount via Venmo, then finished my fries. I was debating whether to order peach cobbler for dessert when my phone chimed. Collin had texted me a pic. Peter Bottiglieri's mug shot. The man scowled at the camera, none too happy about having his photo and fingerprints taken. Ha! The accompanying message read Booked him for the vandalism at the townhouse.

I held up my phone so Buck could see the screen. "Looks like Collin made an arrest."

"I hope they throw the book at him."

"Me too. Breaking and entering. Property damage. Failing to put i before e except after c."

"Or when it sounds like A," Buck added, "as in neighbor and weigh."

"Speaking of neighbors," I said, "are we going to sell the townhouse to Gideon now that Joanna is gone? Assuming he matches the highest offer, of course."

Buck shrugged. "I don't know. Did your agreement with Joanna extend to any owner of her half of the house? I wonder if Macy and Holden would want to buy it. They're going to move into her place, right?"

"I assume so. Gideon would probably let them out of their lease. He seems like a reasonable guy. I don't know whether Macy and Holden would be interested in buying the Bottiglieris' place but, even if they are, I'm not sure they could afford it. Half of what Joanna owned will likely go to Lane. Once the estate is divided, Macy might not inherit enough to buy the townhouse, especially if she has to buy out Lane's share of Joanna's place." Switching topics, I said, "How about a double date for dinner tonight? We can celebrate your and Colette's happy news, and Collin can fill us in on Peter's arrest."

"Sounds like a plan," Buck agreed. "Let me text Colette and see what she's craving today. Yesterday, she sent me to the grocery store for a jar of green curry. The day before that it was garlic hummus and pita bread."

While he texted his wife, I texted Collin. In minutes, Colette had responded that she was craving refried beans and guacamole. We made plans to meet at her favorite Mexican restaurant at seven, then got back to work.

Over pre-dinner margaritas later that day, Collin filled us in on Peter's arrest. "I looked up the sanitation department's pickup schedule for their neighborhood," he said. "Today was garbage day."

"Ew." Colette put a hand over her mouth. "The thought of stinky garbage makes me queasy."

Buck picked up his menu and fanned her with it. "Is that better?"

She nodded and removed her hand from her mouth, picking up her virgin mango margarita. "Much. Thanks."

The crisis resolved, Collin continued. "Putting out the trash is generally a man's job, so I figured Peter would be the one to roll the bin out to the curb. I drove out there bright and early to stake out their house. Sure enough, when daylight rolled around, the garage door went up and out came Peter, rolling the bin. I met him at the curb. He looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar." Collin sipped his margarita and fished a tortilla chip from the basket on the table. "I handed him a pen and paper, and asked him to print the word thieves for me. I told him it was a handwriting analysis to see if his handwriting matched the lettering painted on the walls of the townhouse. He fudged his handwriting, of course. He wrote the letters short and wide so they wouldn't resemble the tall, thin lettering on the walls. But what he didn't know was that I was really just checking his spelling. He misspelled thieves by transposing the e and the i."

"Busted." Buck made a friendly fist and gave Collin a light punch in the arm. "Way to go, bro!"

Collin finished chewing his chip and took another sip of his margarita. "I asked Peter if he also started the fire at the station, but he claimed innocence. I searched his car and house for evidence that he'd set the fire, but I didn't find any. He had a bag of charcoal and a nearly full bottle of lighter fluid in his garage, but who doesn't? When I told him the vandalism could get him up to a year in prison and a twenty-five-hundred-dollar fine, he said he'd be happy to tell me who started the fire if we let him off on the vandalism charge."

"Are you going to do it?" I asked. "Give him a plea deal?"

"I'll have to consult with Landreth and the assistant district attorney assigned to the case. Unless he can give us concrete proof, a recorded confession or some other hard evidence, I'm not sure I'd trust him. He seemed eager to throw his siblings under the bus. He might make a false accusation just to give them some grief. We've got to know he's not just blowing smoke. We're going to set up a meeting in a few days and see how it goes."

The server came by to take our dinner order, and told us about the daily specials. "We've got our ceviche and our shrimp tacos on special for two dollars off tonight." He pointed to the menu. "They're right here, under mariscos."

Each of us placed our orders. I noticed Colette went for the spinach enchiladas, and my mind went back to what Macy had said to Gideon when he'd offered her a shrimp cocktail, that pregnant women aren't supposed to eat seafood. We handed the server our menus. As he headed back to the kitchen, I turned to my friend, curious. "What's the deal with seafood? Why can't women eat it when they're pregnant?"

"It's the mercury," she said. "It sticks around in the body, so it builds up in the food chain. Small fish accumulate a little of it, then they're eaten by bigger fish, which are then eaten by even bigger fish. By the time you work your way up the chain, it really mounts up. The process is called biomagnification. Shark and tuna have some of the highest levels of mercury, especially albacore and yellowfin tuna."

I sucked air through my teeth and grimaced. "I give Sawdust tuna!" Could I be poisoning my cat?

Colette reassured me. "As long as you're not giving him tuna too often and are feeding him a variety of other foods, too, he should be fine."

That's a relief.

She took a sip of her drink. "Bluefish, orange roughy, and swordfish can be high in mercury, too. I learned about biomagnification back in chef school, but my doctor also mentioned it at my last checkup. Mercury poisoning can affect anyone, but it's especially bad for unborn babies. It causes brain damage. Hearing and vision problems, too."

The mention of brain damage brought my mind back to Joanna, how she'd looked when she'd stumbled into the fire station. The poor woman. At least she hadn't suffered long. As long as I lived, I'd never be able to get the image of her out of my mind.

Colette wasn't done enlightening the rest of us about the dangers of eating fish. "There's other health risks with seafood, too. Two other types of poisoning people can get that can be serious. Ciguatera poisoning and scombroid poisoning. I don't remember a whole lot about them, only that they sounded real nasty."

I jumped onto my phone and, as Colette spelled the words out for me to the best of her recollection, typed them into my browser. My eyes skimmed the information and I summarized it aloud. "Ciguatera poisoning causes head and muscle aches. It makes the skin feel numb, tingly, and itchy." I didn't recall Joanna scratching at her skin but, then again, she could barely keep herself upright. Even if her skin had felt itchy, she'd likely lacked the coordination to scratch herself. "Early signs are numbness in the tongue and lips, and a metallic taste in the mouth." I looked up. "Eep." I pointed to my phone. "It says here that ciguatera poisoning makes a person have difficulty distinguishing between hot and cold temperatures, and that they'll feel like their teeth are coming loose."

Collin cringed. "That's the stuff of nightmares."

"Like I said," Colette noted, "real nasty."

I went on to read that the neurological symptoms caused by ciguatera poisoning could persist, and were sometimes misdiagnosed as multiple sclerosis. Death, though very rare, was not unheard of. Hmm.

Per the internet, scombroid poisoning, or a Vibrio vulnificus infection, occurred when a person ingested fish contaminated with the bacteria. It was found in oysters and shellfish. A person didn't necessarily have to eat the fish to contract it. If they had an open cut, they could get it merely by handling the fish. The symptoms were typical of other types of food poisoning. Abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea. The symptoms could also include fever, chills, and a reduction in blood pressure, as well as swelling, redness on the skin, and even blisters. Though rare, scombroid poisoning could be life-threatening if it entered through an open cut and infiltrated a person's bloodstream. "With scombroid poisoning, a person—"

"Enough!" Buck barked. "You're going to ruin our dinner." He looked to Colette and Collin. "Either of you have something better to talk about?"

Colette twirled a finger in the air and turned to Collin. "Speaking of Sawdust, Whitney tells me you have cats?"

"Two," Collin replied. "Copernicus and Galileo."

"Got pics?"

I snorted. "There isn't a cat owner alive who doesn't have a million photos of their cat on their phone."

Proving me correct, Collin whipped out his phone and showed Colette photos of Copernicus and Galileo. "The cats are good company and they're self-sufficient, which is good for someone who never knows when their workday is going to end. But one day I'd like to get a dog to take running with me."

"The cats might have something to say about that," I teased. "We'd have to get their approval first." I had no doubt that Sawdust would welcome another pet into his home. He was a sweetie, and he'd enjoy playing with his furry, four-footed housemates. Besides, from what I'd seen, in homes with both cats and dogs, the cats ruled the roost. All it took was one swipe of the claws and the dogs bowed down to their feline overlords.

"Speaking of dogs," Collin said, "I caught a break today in a drug-related double homicide I'm working. A K9 tracked an invisible trail of powder to the plastic bag it had leaked out of. We were able to lift prints from the bag. The lab is running them now to see if we can get a match. The two victims were shot in the head execution style—"

Buck threw up his hands. "Great! Now I'm picturing a bloody crime scene."

The server returned to check on us. "How are we doing over here?"

After glaring at me and Collin, Buck turned to the waiter. "I'm going to need a whiskey. Make it a double. There's been some conversation here that I really need to forget."

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