Several people stepped forward. Together they lifted Teresa from the floor and onto the makeshift gurney. As the gurney rolled toward the doorway, the two little girls tried to follow.
“Mommy, Mommy,” Lucy wailed. “Where are you taking my mommy?”
Only Donnatelle’s timely intervention kept the screaming children from following their mother down the hall. As they went through the door to the waiting room, the group almost flattened a uniformed hospital volunteer coming in the opposite direction, carrying a massive foil-covered, potted, and blooming Easter lily.
While Ali gathered the scattered contents from Teresa’s bag, Donnatelle and Sister Anselm took charge of the children, trying to calm them. Pocketing Teresa’s fallen cell phone, Ali handed the purse over to the charge nurse for safekeeping. Just then Ali’s cell phone rang.
“Somebody hung up on me,” Juanita Cisco complained when Ali answered.
“That would be Lieutenant Lattimore,” Ali said.
“Maybe I should talk to my client again when we’re not on a speakerphone.”
“That’s going to be tough,” Ali said. “She fainted dead away. They put her on a bed and are rolling her to the maternity ward as we speak.”
“She’s pregnant?”
“Very.”
“When do you think I’ll be able to talk to her?”
“I have no idea. The nurses didn’t say anything, but I have a feeling that whatever’s going on is pretty serious. Do you think Lattimore meant what he said—that he suspects Teresa has some involvement in her husband’s shooting?”
“The spouse or significant other is always suspect,” Juanita replied. “You’re the one who knows these people. What do you think?”
“I know Jose,” Ali said. “I met Teresa for the first time this morning, but that’s not the reading I’m getting.”
“Lattimore was trying to scare her into talking to him. Which is why you were absolutely right to put me on the phone. So what about the husband?” Juanita asked. “When can I talk to him?”
“He’s still in the ICU.”
“Is he able to communicate?” Juanita asked. “If I talk to him, will he make sense?”
Ali glanced toward the charge nurse, who had taken the volunteer and her load of flowers in hand. “Those can’t go in any of the ICU rooms, because they’re supposed to be fragrance-free zones,” the nurse was explaining to the woman, who was evidently new. “You can park them on one of the tables here in the waiting room. Then, when the patient is moved to a regular room, we send the flowers along. Who are they for?”
“The guy didn’t give us a name. Just the woman who was found near Three Points on Friday.”
The nurse gestured toward the room from which Sister Anselm had emerged much earlier. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll just write Jane Doe and tape it to the side, here. That way we’ll know they’re hers. I’m not sure how long she’ll be in the ICU, but you can take charge of them, right, Sister Anselm?”
Bouncing the weeping Carinda on her hip, the nun nodded. “Will do,” she said.
“Excuse me,” Ali said, interrupting the flower discussion. “This is Mr. Reyes’s attorney on the phone. She wants to know if she can come to the hospital to talk to him.”
The nurse shook her head. “Not at this time,” she said. “Family members only.”
“You heard that?” Ali asked.
“Good,” Juanita said. “If I can’t talk to him, neither can Lattimore. At this point, I’m working as your attorney as opposed to theirs. I’m assuming you want me on the job?”
“Yes,” Ali said. “I want you on the job.”
“Very well, then. At their earliest convenience, Ms. Reynolds, I’ll need to have a signed document from all of you, saying that you, Ali, are paying for their legal services, but you might want to reconsider.”
“Why?”
“Because you might be wasting your money. In order to have a search warrant in hand, Mr. Lattimore had to convince a judge that he had some reason to believe illegal activity had occurred. You may believe these people to be friends of yours, Ms. Reynolds, but I must warn you, search warrants aren’t issued easily.”
“I’m aware of that,” Ali said.
“So let me ask you one more question,” Juanita said. “Did you have an affair?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You and Jose? I’m trying to figure out why you’re riding to the rescue here—calling Victor; calling me. What business is this of yours?”
“Jose and I didn’t have an affair,” Ali declared. “He helped me once when I needed it, and I’m trying to help him in return. I’m also trying to help his family.”
“No good deed …” Juanita said with a sigh. “Have it your way. Are you staying at the hospital?”
“For now I am. I don’t know for how long.”
“Okay. Keep me posted. Call me as soon as Mr. Reyes is moved out of the ICU and can have visitors. If that’s what he wants, I’ll come by at that point and sign him up. By all means, see to it that he talks to me before Lattimore gets in to see him. But be advised, if Lattimore decides that Teresa is really a legitimate suspect in the attempt on her husband’s life, then all bets are off. If that happens, I’ll have to represent one or the other of them. I won’t be able to represent both.”
“I understand,” Ali said. “I’ll call if anything changes.”
By the time the call ended, the room was mercifully quiet. Donnatelle had collected the two girls and taken them to the cafeteria. Sister Anselm, in the meantime, was busy examining the flowers.
“That’s odd,” she said to Ali.
“What’s odd?”
“I was looking for a card so I could let my patient know who sent them and who should receive a thank-you note. Usually, when people send flowers to hospital patients, they don’t do so anonymously. They want to get credit where credit is due.”
Ali pointed to the small orange tag on the side of the potted plant. “Those lilies came from Costco,” she said. “That’s a Costco product number.”
“I wonder who delivered them,” Sister Anselm mused, but Ali was far more concerned about Teresa than she was about the appearance of the flowers.
“What do you think happened?” Ali asked.
“To Teresa? If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say preeclampsia,” Sister Anselm answered. “I advised her to talk to a nurse earlier this morning, when I noticed that her hands and ankles were swollen.” She turned to the charge nurse. “Did she mention anything to you?”
“Not to me, and not to anyone else, as far as I know.”
“Preeclampsia is serious?” Ali asked.
“It can be,” Sister Anselm said. “It’s potentially very serious for both the mother and for the baby.”
Leaving the flowers where they were, Sister Anselm excused herself and returned to the room evidently occupied by her patient. In the meantime, Ali pulled Teresa’s phone out of her pocket and scrolled through the list of recent calls. The most recent one was an outgoing call listed as MOM. Punching send, she waited until a woman answered.
“My name is Ali Reynolds,” she said. “I’m calling from Physicians Medical Center. Are you Teresa Reyes’s mother?”
“Oh, no,” the other woman breathed. “Don’t tell me. Is Jose gone?”
“You are Teresa’s mother?”
“Yes. My name is Maria Delgado. I can’t believe this. Please let me talk to my daughter.”
“She’s the one I’m calling about,” Ali said. “Teresa can’t come to the phone because she passed out here in the waiting room a few minutes ago. They’ve rushed her to maternity.”
“But it’s too early for the baby,” Maria objected.
“I don’t know any more about her condition than just that, and the staff here isn’t going to tell me. I think you should come to the hospital right away.”
“That’ll take at least two hours. I can’t drive that far. My brother will have to come from Tucson to get me, or maybe I can ask my neighbor again.”
