Blood Always Tells, Hilary Davidson [good book club books .txt] 📗

his brain was heating up. “Any other questions will have to wait.”

“Wait,” Desmond panted. “You were saying—”

“Hyperbaric chamber, now.” The doctor’s voice didn’t brook any argument. Westergren retreated. Tyson was already gone.

Chapter 21

The oxygen treatment in the hyperbaric chamber took ninety minutes. That gave Desmond plenty of time to think, with no questions or accusations flying around him. It hadn’t occurred to him how the scene at the house would look to the cops. He’d walked in, armed with the knowledge of Dominique’s scheme to blackmail Gary, and Gary’s horrible plan to rid the world of his wife. But, mentally backing away from that information, he saw how the police eyeballed the scene. A couple having an illicit affair went to a house in the country for some alone time. While they were there, they both fell ill. They never knew the cause and they died from invisible but insidious carbon monoxide pouring out of a faulty furnace. You put those puzzle pieces on the table, and however you arranged them, they added up to the same thing. It was a tragic accident. That was all.

Desmond remembered Dominique saying that the guy Gary had hired to play kidnapper had left. Max, that was his name. The situation started to look awfully convenient, all of a sudden. Maybe Max knew there was something wrong with that furnace. Dominique had told him Max worked for Gary, and he had a co-conspirator who was going to kill the wife. But maybe that series of links fit a different way, too. Maybe Max’s unnamed helper worked for Gary’s wife, and Max was supposed to get rid of Gary. Maybe it all came down to who was willing to pay more for murder.

What didn’t track, in Desmond’s mind, was method. Max could have killed them any number of ways at that isolated house. Instead, someone had rigged the furnace to fill the place with carbon monoxide, sending both Dominique and Gary to a quiet death. Was Max such a coward he couldn’t face his victims to kill them? Or was he just a very organized killer, one who knew that the state police would have to investigate bullet wounds, while they could write off CO inhalation as an accident?

Desmond realized that his own arrival made the death scene look even less calculated. Dominique had called her brother, and he’d come running to the house, only to end up poisoned by carbon monoxide himself. That was a credible accident.

It all fit the murderer’s design perfectly.

There were many angles Desmond couldn’t quite figure, but that one was obvious to him. Someone had planned for Dominique and Gary to die in that house. His sister had been so frantic about the danger Gary’s wife was in, she never saw the danger to herself.

Lying in the metal-and-glass cylinder, unable to move physically, Desmond pushed his thoughts toward the best way to proceed. He could tell the cops everything he knew, but what would that accomplish, exactly? Desmond wasn’t eager to reveal that Dominique hadn’t been on a romantic getaway with her boyfriend Gary, but a mission of blackmail. He pictured that detail making it to the tabloids—as it undoubtedly would—and he knew his sister’s reputation would be dragged down into the mud.

No, it was better to focus on his own experience. Someone had been in the house when he barged in. He’d never caught a glimpse of the person. For all he knew, there’d been a whole team of assailants there, but he would’ve bet his life that it was just one coward, working solo. All he’d really seen was the car. Unlike his sister, who’d had the presence of mind to memorize the plate of the kidnapping van, he’d barely glanced at the black Honda. The plate hadn’t been visible, and he hadn’t investigated.

So, who was there, and what was he doing? That led Desmond’s mind back to the elusive Mrs. Gary Cowan, otherwise known as Trin Lytton-Jones. There was an ugly thought coiling around the back of his brain like a snake: Dominique thought Max was working for Gary. But what if Max was actually working for someone else… like, say, Trin? The woman who just happened to run off with her houseboy. How convenient was that?

When Desmond was pulled out of the glass coffin of the hyperbaric chamber, Dr. Torres was waiting. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Fine. Unusually clear-headed, actually. When the troopers brought me in, did they give you my phone?”

“Yes. One of them said you dropped it before you passed out.”

“I didn’t pass out,” he countered, gritting his teeth. “But I need to call some folks.”

“Of course. You must have so many people to call, and arrangements to make. I hope you don’t feel you have to do everything at once. I can’t imagine how difficult that would be. Do you have other family that can help?”

“No.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. This is so sad for your parents.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell her his parents had been dead for some time. He wasn’t about to open the story of the death of Dominique’s father, either. It had been many years since Desmond had willingly spoken the man’s name, and he didn’t think he could say it without injecting poison into it. Let that sleeping dog lie.

“I guess I’ll rest for a bit,” he announced when they got back to his room. After the doctor left, he got up and found his clothes. He had no intention of lingering in the hospital any longer than he had to. He needed to go back to the death house. He suspected the local cops would sign off on accidental death sooner rather than later, and he wanted proof that his sister had been deliberately killed.

When he was ready to leave, he opened the door and found Dr. Torres waiting for him.

“How was your nap?” she asked.

“Don’t you have sick people to take care of?”

“That includes you.”

“Don’t make me sneak out of this hospital,” Desmond