Elementary, My Dear Watkins (40 page)

Jo tried drawing the girl into conversation, and it didn’t take much to get her talking. In fact, she seemed relieved to be able to unburden on someone. Alexa talked about her mother’s drug addiction, about the need to find a rehab and then accomplish the more difficult task of talking her mother into actually going into it. Alexa seemed so hopeless that Jo thought she might talk to her grandmother later and find out if they could help financially in some way.

Mostly, Jo just let Alexa go on about all of her mother’s faults and weaknesses, expressing feelings that had probably been building up for a while. The picture she painted as she talked was of a highly unstable woman, severely addicted to drugs and men, who did not seem capable of parenting a teenager or holding down a job or even making it through one day without a fix of some kind or another. Jo could only imagine how relieved the woman must have been when her daughter underwent a medical miracle and was taken off of her hands by some rich lady across the river.

“The sad thing is,” Alexa said, “all afternoon I kept looking at her and thinking that’s how I would have ended up. That’s what I would have become, if Dr. Stebbins hadn’t fixed me and pulled me out of there.”

“Somehow I doubt it. You’re made of stronger stuff.”

Jo thought of her own situation, of the petty, materialistic people her parents were. She might have become like them too, she supposed, if not for the love of her Tulip grandparents, who showed her a better way to live, not to mention the One to live for.

“You know, my mother’s not such a piece of cake either,” Jo added. “When I was way younger than you, I made the decision that I was
not
going to grow up to be like her. And you know what? If we didn’t have the same last name, you wouldn’t even know we were related, that’s how different we are.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Is she a drug addict?”

Jo smiled.

“No. But she’s not a very good person. Lately, I’ve started to realize that in a lot of ways she’s a very bad person.”

“But she loves you, right?”

“In her own way, I guess. I think she loves herself too much to really love anybody else.”

“That’s sad.”

Jo shrugged.

“God made sure that I had a lot of other people to love me instead—grandparents and friends. And, of course, God loves me most of all. Having Him in my life fills up all of those other empty spots inside.”

“Sometimes I talk to God, but I’m never sure if He’s really listening. I went to a youth group at a church once, and they said He hears everything everybody says, but I’m not so sure if that’s true.”

Jo looked at the young woman in front of her, praying for wisdom and all the right words.

“God hears you, sweetheart. He’s listening—and He loves you more than you could ever imagine.”

Somehow, that news seemed to reach some hurting place deep in Alexa’s heart. Her eyes slowly filled with tears.

“You know that for sure?” she whispered.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

Jo didn’t want to overwhelm Alexa with information about God and faith, but as they talked it became clear that the girl already understood plenty—and that, in a way, she had started down that road toward her Creator a long time ago, all on her own. They talked for a while, Jo answering Alexa’s questions, and then they even prayed together. Afterward, both of them seemed much more settled and at peace.

Danny put on his blinker, hoping this was the right place. For the last ten minutes, he had passed estate after estate, most of them hidden by iron fences or high, ivy-covered walls. This one had a little guard hut at the entrance, with a man in a uniform sitting inside. Rolling down the window as he pulled to a stop, Danny asked if this was the Bosworth home.

“Name?” the man said, not bothering to answer Danny’s question.

“Danny Watkins.”

The gate swung open, allowing him to drive through. When he reached the massive house, another guard was standing there, and he also verified Danny’s name against a list. Danny wasn’t sure, but somehow he doubted that all of this security was the norm around here.

What was going on?

Finally he stood at the front door and knocked.

Back at her own table, Jo closed out her e-mail, glad that almost all of the reader questions had been simple ones, as she had managed to polish off several days’ worth of blog entries, along with a week’s worth of columns. This time of year, the same sorts of things popped up again and again: bugs, gardening, stain removal for mud and grass. Easy stuff for which no testing was required.

She decided to work on the toasters some more, so she made up a solution at the sink of warm water and vinegar for her first pass.

“Can I help?” Alexa asked, looking up from her books.

“Sure. Do you want to do the scrubbing or the note taking?”

“I’ll take notes.”

Jo gave her the notepad and showed her where to write as she dictated. Switching to the dirtiest toaster, Jo dipped a toothbrush in the water and was about to start on the inside of the toaster door when Alexa spoke.

“Shouldn’t you unplug it first?” she asked.

Alexa pointed, and Jo followed the cord with her eyes from the back of the toaster down to a floor outlet.

She hadn’t plugged it in.

A chill starting at the base of her neck, Jo walked around to the back of the table, to see if any of the others were plugged in also. They weren’t.

Was it a simple mistake? Had someone misunderstood and thought she wanted it plugged in?

Jo stood there, trying to give someone the benefit of the doubt, trying to figure it out. She looked at the toaster again and gasped, realizing that the cord in question had been scraped bare near the top, and the exposed wires laid flush against the metal frame. Little black flecks littered the table under the cord. If Alexa hadn’t stopped her from touching the appliance with the wet toothbrush, Jo might be toast herself by now.

Someone had tried to electrocute her.

Danny was shown into the study by a maid and left there alone for a few minutes to wait for Mrs. Bosworth. In that time, he thought about simply tearing through the house and calling Jo’s name until he found her. Standing here like an idiot waiting for her grandmother was ridiculous.

Finally, he saw the older woman coming toward him. She was walking slowly, with a cane, looking pale and exhausted. He ran forward to help her, and as they walked together to the nearest chair, she leaned on him heavily.

“You made it,” she said softly.

Her eyes were shiny, though Danny wasn’t sure if that was because she had tears in them or because she was old. He looked at her, trying to figure out why she seemed different from the last time he’d seen her last fall, and finally he decided it was her face. It looked strange now, almost puffy and swollen.

“Where’s Jo?” he asked, sitting across from her.

“She’s in one of the outbuildings,” Mrs. Bosworth replied. “We’ll send for her in a moment.”

She closed her eyes, swaying slightly, and Danny asked her if she was okay.

“No, I’m not,” she replied. “In just the last few hours I have decided that either I’m getting sick or someone’s trying to poison me.”

That certainly wasn’t what Danny expected to hear. Had the woman gone a little nuts, or was he coming in on the tail end of something a lot more complicated? More than likely, it was the latter, considering all that he had learned so far, both from Luc and today from Eleanor on the phone.

“Have you seen a doctor?” he asked.

“Yes, and he wanted me to go to the hospital for some blood work, just in case.”

“Why aren’t you there now?”

“I wanted to be here when you got here,” she said, as if that were the most natural reply in the world. “So I arranged for a private nurse to come out instead. She just left with four vials of my best stuff.”

Danny simply shook his head, knowing that the very rich had their own ways of doing things, as bizarre as they may seem to someone like him.

“Could you please just tell me what’s going on here?” he asked. “I’ve come a long way to see Jo, and so far all I am is confused.”

“I’ll explain the best I can and as quickly as I can,” she said. “Then you can go to her. She’s out in the studio.”

Mrs. Bosworth proceeded to tell him a convoluted tale about how Jo met with Bradford on Wednesday after her doctor’s appointment, but that Bradford started telling her that her life was in danger. Sure enough, someone tried to kill her, but Bradford saved her and ended up getting hurt badly himself.

As she took a deep breath to launch into the next part of the tale, Danny tried not to think about the idea of Jo and Bradford together. Danny wasn’t necessarily a jealous person, but Bradford was a sore spot with him, a real Achilles heel.

He listened as the tale grew more complicated. The fact that Jo was on somebody’s hit list more than likely had something to do with Eleanor’s late husband’s trust and the strange distribution of company shares, depending on the order of who died when. By the time she finished explaining it, what he understood most was that both Jo and her grandmother were in grave danger, but that the possible list of people who would have something to gain from their deaths had dozens of names on it, far too many to ferret out the killer before he or she was able to try again.

“The only way I know to protect my granddaughter,” Eleanor said tiredly, “is to make sure that’s she’s married before I should die or become incapacitated. Her parents pulled a fast one in trying to get her to marry Bradford last fall—but Jo will have to tell you the details of all that herself. All I know is that the last time I saw you, you told me that you loved my granddaughter very much and that you wanted to marry her. I believe your words were something like, ‘I want to take care of her for the rest of her life.’ Is that still true? Because if it is, the best way you can start taking care of her is by marrying her as quickly as possible. She’ll be vested in her stock shares—and safe—the moment the two of you are declared husband and wife.”

Though her hands were shaking, for the sake of Alexa, Jo did not make a big deal of the toaster wire being scraped bare, put against the metal, and plugged in. She had a feeling this little setup probably wouldn’t have done more than give her a mild shock, if that, but that was beside the point. Someone without much knowledge of appliances had more than likely set this up hoping it would kill her, and that’s what mattered. Now, Jo suggested that they head into the house because she needed to talk to her grandmother.