him as he passed out glasses of ginger ale. When Julian saw me, he stood up and handed the tray of glasses to Isabelle. Victor was still hollering at Julian, who walked away.
“What do you think made them sick?” Julian asked me, once he was close to the kitchen doors.
Of course, I had been thinking about this ever since I’d driven out of the spa. “My guess?” I said. “Ipecac. Stirred into the frosting while we were busy serving dinner.”
Julian screwed his face into incomprehension. “But who would do that?”
“My money’s on Victor,” I said. “He wanted an excuse to get me out of the spa, and maybe to discredit me with the police. But it could have been someone else.”
“One of the women here brought antinausea medication,” Julian said. “She has to take it when she gets a migraine, and when she heard about the crisis, she came racing out here with her bottle. She and Isabelle and Marla are giving it to the sick women.” Julian shook his head. “I don’t think there’s anything more we can do to help them until the ambulance arrives.”
Boyd wasn’t back from the woods yet, so Julian told me he was going to wash up, then pour out some more ginger ale. He sternly warned me not to leave the kitchen, and I agreed that I would stay put.
As soon as he was gone, I booted up Yolanda’s computer, on the far side of the sink. While the machine was humming and dinging, I added some more ice cubes to my Summertime Special. It was going to be a long night, and I figured I’d need extra caffeine.
After a few moments of tapping my foot, slugging down the creamy coffee, and cursing technology, I was able to bring up the contents of the flash drive. I sat down on one of the stools Yolanda’s people used when they weren’t rushing around, and tried to figure out what Doc Finn had left on his flash drive.
There were five files.
The first was text. It said “Medical University of Trinidad—top student. He died in a climbing accident—Peru, where he’d gone with Tim Anderson, a close friend who had flunked out of MUT. Residency—Grady Memorial, Atlanta. Terminated, stealing drugs. Record sealed.”
But who was this person? The file gave no clue. Next came the second file, also text.
“Victor Landheugel, became Lane—former pharmacy tech. Terminated, fraudulent billing to Medicare. Prosecutor: woman, whom he’d vowed to get back at. She later had fatal car accident.”
I took another swig of coffee. Huh, Victor Lane. It had been my experience that if a person acted like a jerk, he had stuff to hide. And sure enough, Victor Lane had all kinds of stuff to hide.
THE THIRD, FOURTH, and fifth files were photographs. The first photograph I did not recognize. The caption said, “Craig Miller, Medical University of Trinidad.” He was much younger then. But as I stared at the photo, I thought,
The second photo’s caption also read “Craig Miller.” It had the subtitle “Atlanta.” Here was the handsome, easygoing doctor who had just married Billie Attenborough.
The fifth and final file was a photograph with the caption, “Tim Anderson, Medical University of Trinidad.” And although he’d been much younger then, this was the person I knew as Craig Miller.
So. Right here—this was that final point, the one that would make a straight line.
The Craig Miller I knew was not Craig Miller; he was Tim Anderson. The real Craig Miller had died—or been pushed?—off a mountain in Peru.
Passing himself off as the deceased doctor—the real Craig Miller who’d actually gotten a degree—Tim Anderson had been able to secure a residency in Atlanta. But he hadn’t proven himself to be very competent, had been involved with drugs and gotten fired. He’d come to Aspen Meadow, probably disguising his background once again, and taken a position at Spruce Medical Group, where his track record with patients had attracted Doc Finn’s attention. He’d found a partner in crime in Victor Lane, and, it was my new theory, they’d conspired to use the spa to get clients hooked on drugs. It never ceased to amaze me how bad people tended to find each other. Tim Anderson/Craig Miller had also been able to parlay his looks and his fake doctorhood into a handsome payout from Charlotte Attenborough, who was desperate to get her daughter married off, and if the husband-to-be was a doctor, so much the better. Charlotte had even paid off Dodie O’Neal, so that Craig could avoid a lawsuit.
I got up so quickly my head swam. I had to find Boyd. I had to tell him what I had found out. Then I needed to get Julian, Marla, and myself out of here.
I blinked and tried to get my bearings. I walked out the kitchen’s back door, awkwardly skirted the omnipresent laundry cart, and headed for the various trails where Boyd had gone.
As I rounded the main building, I could see that the poisoned women were still on the ground, but at least they weren’t moaning anymore. Julian and Isabelle continued to move rapidly from person to person, making sure the women were as comfortable as possible.
I looked up into the trees, trying to make out exactly where Boyd had gone. I felt a sudden wave of confusion. Had he scuttled up the path toward the hot springs pool, or had he headed straight up the mountain? I decided on the path to the hot springs pool.
I gave the sick women and all the onlookers a wide berth, then began to stumble up the path to the hot springs pool. I blinked. Was it getting dark really quickly, or was I just moving slowly? Or both?
Once I was partway up the path, I stopped, confused. Which way had I thought Boyd had gone?
Why wasn’t my mind working? I looked down. Where had the path gone?
My shoulder was tapped from behind, and I turned, thinking someone was there to help me. But it was Craig Miller, or the person I thought was Craig Miller, pushing one of the spa’s ubiquitous laundry carts.
“How’s that drug working for you?” he asked with such coolness that my skin prickled with gooseflesh. “That’s the problem with Valium, you know? Especially in large quantities, stirred into your iced coffee. You never know how it’s going to affect the patient.”
“You,” I said, “you—” But now my mouth wasn’t working, either. I also didn’t seem to have much control over my limbs, so when Craig/Tim pushed me into the cart, I fell into it with a painful awkwardness. “Don’t,” was all I managed to say before he threw a pile of dirty towels on top of me and began to push the cart up the hill.
“Just in case you’re wondering,” he said, “I took that flash drive that Doc Finn left.” His voice sounded muffled. “Oh, yes, here we go, up to death,” he said merrily as the cart rattled and bumped over the trail.
I tried to say, “Stop,” tried to struggle, but an overwhelming lethargy was making that impossible. I clawed at the sides of the cart, and managed only to knock the towels off my face. I was being pushed…somewhere. And no one was noticing.
“Want to talk?” Tim/Craig asked merrily. “Oh, wait, you can’t talk. Or not much.”
I groaned. I had enough presence of mind, though, to know that I had to try to make myself puke, to get rid of as much of the heavy-duty dose of tranquilizer as I possibly could. The person pushing the cart had killed both Doc Finn and Jack, and since I’d become an obstacle, I was sure to be next.
When the cart went over a bump, I allowed myself to fall on my side. Even that was an effort, as was the attempt to put fingers down my throat.
“You’ll be my fourth victim,” said Craig. “I did too much partying in Trinidad, too many drugs, didn’t get my medical degree. But old Craig Miller, the real Craig Miller, he didn’t care. That nerd was so happy to have a cool, popular friend! So when we were in Peru, it was easy enough to push him off a cliff. By the time I’d hiked out, then returned with help, Craig’s body was swollen, darkened, unrecognizable. I said it was my dear friend, Tim Anderson. All I had to do was fix his ID to look more like me, steal his diploma, and I was on my way.”
I stuck my fingers down my throat and pushed. Nothing. At least I made a retching sound, which fake Craig found funny.
“Everything was going just fine until Doc Finn came sniffing around,” he continued jovially. “He just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Couldn’t stay in retirement. Couldn’t keep his trap shut. Yeah, that was the worst part. He told my dear fiancee that she shouldn’t marry me. Lucky for me, he didn’t give her a reason.”
The argument out at the spa. Isabelle had been partially right. Doc Finn and Billie had been fighting not about the wedding, but about the marriage, period.
“But Billie,” fake Craig went on, “felt duty bound to tell me all about it. Billie likes having someone take care of her; someone who isn’t her mother. And I liked the idea of having all of Charlotte’s money sooner rather than later. So I stole a pair of Charlotte’s shoes to plant in Finn’s car to attract the police’s attention. Charlotte hated
