I decided to head back down to the information desk and see if I could sweet talk someone down there into giving me his room number. I had my doubts, but it was worth a try.
I went back to the elevator bank and when it opened, my old friend Jack the custodian was in there. “Back again?” he said with a smile.
“Yeah,” I said and pushed the L button. “No coffee this time, though.”
He laughed. “You working on a story or something?”
“I’m actually going to be writing Dr. Arthur Davenport’s obituary for the Times.” The door opened and we both headed in the direction of the lobby.
“Heard about that. Sad deal.” He was quiet for a moment and then continued, “I’ve always been fascinated with obituaries.”
“Really?”
“I’ve read them all my life,” he said. “My sister and I wrote one for our mom a while back and it was harder than I thought it’d be.”
I’d heard this a lot from people who wrote the death notices for their loved ones. It was a difficult thing to reduce an entire life to two or three newspaper inches, and many people toiled over it. I think that’s why so many allow the funeral home directors to write it for them. When they’re grieving, writing is often the last thing they want to do. That was one of the reasons I think the Times readers responded so positively to our running editorial obits. Many small newspapers had cut them altogether as budgets and readership declined, but in a small town we were sort of insulated from that. It was one of the many reasons I loved living in Tuttle Corner.
“If you wrote from the heart, I’m sure it touched the people who knew your mom,” I said. It probably sounded trite, but it was all I could think to say; I was glad when Jack smiled like maybe the thought made him feel better.
“I hope so,” he said. “She was a pretty special lady.”
The information desk was unmanned as we approached. So much for my plan. “Hey,” I turned to Jack, “you haven’t heard anything about Dr. Davenport’s son, David, being admitted have you?”
He nodded. “Just heard about it from Sheila down in the ER. Apparently, he was doing rounds and just passed out cold.”
“Did she say why?”
“I heard someone say they think maybe it was food poisoning.”
Oh. Food poisoning. Was that all this was?
“Do you know what floor he’s on?”
“Maybe four? That’s the internal medicine ward.”
“Thanks again—see you around!”
“Not if I see you first,” Jack said with a good-natured laugh as he took his yellow mop bucket and went on his way.
I rode the elevator back up to the fourth floor, got off, and saw Carl sitting in a chair near the end of the hallway.
“Please tell me David has food poisoning.”
“What?” He looked at me like I was speaking Klingon. “No, David has poison-poisoning. As in someone tried to kill him.”
Damn. Someone was hunting Davenports.
Like most rumors, the food poisoning one had a kernel of truth. So while David Davenport did not have food poisoning, he had most likely been poisoned by way of food. After drinking a protein shake for lunch he had passed out on the floor of the ER, where he was checking on patients. Luckily, since he was at the hospital, a quick-thinking nurse figured out what was going on and was able to get him the appropriate treatment.
“He’s fortunate,” Dr. Cavell said to us before opening the door to his room. “There was an enormous amount of digitalis in his system. If he’d been at home, he would have very likely died just like his father.”
Dr. Cavell granted Carl and me a few minutes but warned us not to push David. Assuming his recovery went well, he’d probably be able to go home in a couple of days. Until then, he’d need to finish his course of treatment and, above all else, rest.
Carl opened the door and the sight caught me up short. David’s skin looked almost gray. He looked so different from the vibrant guy I’d met yesterday.
His eyelids fluttered open as we approached his bedside. “Hey guys.” His voice was weak, higher than normal.
Carl wasted no time in getting right to the questions. “Can you think of anyone who’d want to do this to you, David?”
David closed his eyes as he thought. “I really can’t,” he said, slowly opening his eyes back up. “But I mean first Dad and now me? What’s going on here?” He sounded scared, and I had the feeling a guy like David Davenport didn’t often sound scared.
I instinctively reached out for his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“I hope you don’t think my brother did this. Because there is no—”
“We don’t.” Carl cut in before David got too upset. “Thad was being held at the county jail when this happened, so unless he figured out how to bend the laws of time and space, there’s no way he had anything to do with this.”
David looked relieved.
“David,” I said slowly, a thought coming to mind. “Did you have a chance to look through those files?” I remembered what he’d said on his voicemail.
He tried to shake his head but what resulted was more like a head roll from side to side.
“What files?” Carl asked. I filled him in on Arthur’s relationship to Invigor8 and the drug they were developing. If he already knew this information, he didn’t let on.
“You called it a biologic. What exactly is that?” Carl asked David.
“It’s basically a type of medicine that uses living organisms—like plant or animal cells as opposed to chemicals like a traditional drug might.”
“Okay,” Carl said, making some notes in his pad. “And what was this drug for?”
“I don’t know. It was real hush-hush. Dad had to sign a bunch of confidentiality documents because they were in the patent-development phase. But his relationship with Invigor8 had soured. At first he seemed excited about their new
