Dead Certain

as they showed up, he frog-marched the pair of them into the freezer, tied them to chairs, and made them sit there while he unloaded the truck himself. I think one of them ended up with frostbite. Packman fought him tooth and nail in court alleging that the frostbite was his own damned fault, the result of his being too lazy to do his job. Do you think he sounds like a guy who’s above sending threats to socialites in the mail?”
    “Well, he’s threatened the wrong family,” I said as our waiter materialized with menus and asked if we cared to order something to drink before dinner. I preempted Elliott and ordered a bottle of champagne.
    “Congratulations,” I said once the bottle had been delivered and the tall flutes filled. “I know how much you’re going to miss the Springfield Ramada.”
    We clinked glasses and drank.
    Elliott took my hand across the white linen of the tablecloth and drew his finger gently up the inside of my arm. Over his shoulder I could see the antique bar of ornately pressed tin and a spectacular arrangement of spring flowers. A pretty woman with long dark hair and an elegant black dress leaned over to her male companion and whispered something in his ear. Whatever she said made him tip his head back with laughter.
    I felt the electricity of Elliott’s touch, and my skin thrummed like a living thing. I opened my mouth to speak, hesitating long enough to wonder why I was the only person in the restaurant who didn’t seem to be able to set aside the problems of the day and just enjoy myself. Then I told him the whole story about Mrs. Estrada, her appendix, and the suit against Claudia.
    “Do you think there’s any chance that all of these things are somehow related?” asked Elliott once I’d finished.
    “You mean the patient deaths and the sale of the hospital? I’ve certainly thought about it. The only trouble is that it just doesn’t add up. If it’s someone out to damage the reputation of the hospital, why is it that it’s only Gavin McDermott’s patients who end up dead? Besides, if HCC was trying to make the hospital look bad, you’d think that they’d have gone public by now.”
    Our food arrived and we paused while our waiter set our plates in front of us and asked if there was anything else we needed. Once I’d taken a few bites of cassoulet, I continued.
    “My biggest problem is believing that a large publicly traded corporation somehow arranged for Mrs. Estrada’s appendix to rupture so that they could murder her afterward in order to make either Claudia or the hospital look bad.”
    “What about the other deaths?” asked Elliott. “Could they be a part of the larger plan to acquire the hospital?”
    “I go back and forth,” I confessed. “I have moments when I think that Gerald Packman is capable of anything, even murder. Then I stop and wonder if there isn’t some kind of medication I should be taking for paranoia. I mean, this is a health care company we’re talking about, not the evil empire. I think it’s actually much more likely that there’s just some psychopath out there killing off patients because the voices in his head are telling him to.”
    “You know that Packman’s not above feeding the story to the press, if he finds out and decides it’s in his interest.”
    “That’s the trouble. He already knows. He brought it up that time I met him, which tends to confirm our theory about HCC having a mole inside Prescott Memorial, someone who’s feeding them information. But I still can’t figure out why he hasn’t used it.”
    “Maybe he already has,” ventured Elliott.
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning he doesn’t have to make the deaths public if just threatening to do so will accomplish his mission.“
    “You’re talking about blackmail,” I whispered thoughtfully. “You’re talking about hiring someone to kill McDermott’s patients and then blackmailing McDermott into voting in favor of the sale.”
    “You have to admit it would work.”
    “It seems awfully risky. I’d think it would be easier to just buy the votes.”
    “But blackmail is much more cost-effective. I imagine it would take some serious cash to buy a successful surgeon like McDermott.”
    “Whereas he’d be willing to do almost anything in order to stay successful,” I said.
    “Exactly.”
    “The only trouble is, I bumped into Julia Gordon. She rattled off the details of several cases where hospital patients were systematically killed off, and in every