9 Hell on Wheels by Sue Ann Jaffarian Page B

coma.”
    “I’m so very sorry.” She waddled to the door and paused. “Steele didn’t say much about his injuries, but I could tell something was wrong with his mouth.” She fixed me with narrowed eyes. “Gossip around the firm is that he really had plastic surgery and is only saying he was in a car accident.”
    Forgetting Rocky for a moment, I let out a loud guffaw, which really did sound like guffaw . “I can assure you, Jolene, Steele did not have cosmetic surgery, although if his injuries had been any worse, he might have needed it.”
    “Is that handsome face of his messed up?”
    “He looks like he took a good beating.” I love it when I can tell the truth and people think it means something else.
    “A friend of mine went face-first into an air bag last summer,” she said with a nod of understanding. “It saved her life, but it wasn’t pretty.”
    As soon as Jolene left, I got up, closed my door, and called Steele. “Hey,” I said as soon as he answered.
    “ ‘Hey’? That’s all you have to say?” His voice was still slurred, but it wasn’t as bad as yesterday. “I’ve been calling you all morning.”
    “I was at Hoag.”
    “Is Grace okay?”
    I love how instantly everyone was concerned about my aged mother. It made me feel warm and fuzzy that people were interested in my family, even though the old bird would probably outlive us all.
    “No, it’s not Mom. It’s Rocky Henderson.” I filled Steele in on what had happened and our plans.
    When I finished, he asked, “Did you read the information I sent you about cyanide?”
    “Sorry, I haven’t had a chance. Clark dropped by last night, and this morning we were dealing with the Rocky situation.”
    “Then let me give you the Cliff’s Notes—it’s quite interesting. Cyanide kills in minutes on an empty stomach but can take several hours on a full one.”
    I thought about the time frame of Peter Tanaka’s death. He’d seemed fine one minute but went downhill fast after the time-out. “I’d say there’s a good chance he hadn’t eaten anything or much of anything before he died. It happened so quickly—almost in the blink of an eye.”
    “The taste of the sports drink probably masked the poison. Or he might not have noticed anything off in the excitement of the game.” Steele paused, and I thought I heard him gulp some liquid. “The question, Grey, is who put it in his water bottle? Whoever did this had to have access to it without raising any suspicion. Would Miranda have had access to it?”
    “That’s a good question. And would she have had access to the poison? How easy is it to get?”
    “It’s obtainable, but not as easy as you might think. The government really clamped down on it after the Tylenol poisonings in the ’80s. Do you remember that?”
    I dug through my brain. “Didn’t someone lace capsules of Tylenol with cyanide, causing the deaths of several people?”
    “Yes. It was in the Chicago area, and they never found the killer. That event caused most drug companies to stop using capsules for over-the-counter drugs and to develop better tamper-proof packaging.”
    “Okay,” I said, filing the information away in my brain. “So where would someone get cyanide today?”
    “Well, it’s not like it’s on sale at Target, priced at two for five dollars. Forms of cyanide are used in pest control, especially in the wild or in industry, as well as in mining and even electroplating jewelry. If someone has connections to one of these industries, it could be fairly easy to get. It would be a little more difficult for other people, but not impossible.” He laughed. “You can order a do-it-yourself electroplating kit online that comes with a form of cyanide, but the kits aren’t cheap, although most home kits now come with a non-cyanide solution.”
    I shook my head. “You really got into this, didn’t you?”
    “You know how I love research.”
    I paused, then said slowly, “Should I worry about drinking