Chapter 39
Rachel excused herself, and hurried upstairs to keep watch over Louise. The men settled around the table in the living room. Kid dropped his elbows on the wooden surface of the table, and rested his head in his hands, trying to digest what Dr. Sullivan had told them. It was so incredible that he did not know what to think of it. He even found himself doubting the doctor's words. How was that possible? And more important, who wanted to harm Lou and why?
"Son, are you all right?"
Still with his face in his hands, Kid shook his head. He rubbed his eyes with the balls of his hands, and then lifted his gaze to the marshal. "I haven't been fine for weeks, and I won't be until my wife gets better." Kid then looked at the doctor, and asked, "Is she gonna get well, Doc?"
Dr. Sullivan did not speak right away as he tried to find the right words to say. Mr. McCloud was logically quite upset, so the doctor told himself he needed to be careful about his explanations. "I can't give you a straight answer, I'm afraid, Mr. McCloud. Your wife's full recovery very much depends on the kind of poison she has been administered. In some cases a single dose is enough to kill a person in minutes or hours. In other cases the deterioration is slower, but death is unavoidable at the end of the road. And quite often when the poison is possible to be purged, it can also leave lifelong effects."
As Dr. Sullivan spoke, Kid's face gradually got a deadly pallor, and he felt sick to his stomach. "So my wife can still die?"
"Kid, let's not be so pessimistic," Teaspoon interjected. "There are cases in which a person can have a full recovery. Ain't that right, George?"
The doctor nodded. "It's vital to know what kind of poison we're talking about."
"And how on earth can we find that information?" Buck asked, staring at the doctor as if he were a fool.
"Maybe if we knew who wants to harm Lou, we could've some clues to follow," Teaspoon suggested.
"And then what? Ask them politely? 'Could you please tell us what you've given our friend? We'd be eternally grateful to you.' For God's sake," Jimmy said sarcastically.
"Jimmy, if you have nothin' better to do than that, please keep your opinions to yourself! We need a trail to follow… somethin'… anythin'," Teaspoon stated angrily. This matter was affecting him more than he had stopped to consider. There was somebody out there that had tried to kill Lou, his sweet girl. Teaspoon usually managed to remain cool and unbreakable in the worst situations he came across with in his job, but when his family was involved, he could not stay detached.
Dr. Sullivan ignored the dialectic exchange between Teaspoon and his deputy, and turned his attention to Kid. "Mr. McCloud, who cooks the food your wife has lately been eating?"
"A few weeks ago we were at our ranch. Ari, my housekeeper, usually does all the cooking, and…"
"Do you think your housekeeper might have added more than salt in Lou's meals?" Cody asked, cutting him off.
Kid shook his head energetically. "Not Ari. She wouldn't hurt her. She and Lou didn't start off on the right foot at first, but they later discovered that they went back a long way… Ari and Lou's mother used to be friends, and she's very fond of Lou. I also wired her, and she'll show up today or tomorrow."
"And in Seneca, Kid?" Teaspoon asked.
"Theresa… Lou's young sister, cooked our meals, but she wouldn't do anything against her own sister."
"We know, Kid," Buck said.
"All of us ate the same as Lou, and the food came from the same pot and platter," the Southerner continued. "If there had been something toxic in Lou's plate, we would also have fallen sick too, wouldn't we?"
The doctor nodded, musing that somehow someone had just tampered with Mrs. McCloud's food in a way that was not so obvious. "Did she always eat the same as you?"
"When she started feeling sick, the doctor in Seneca changed her diet, and recommended she had plenty of liquid and soft foods. So then I took up preparing her meals."
"Just you?" Dr. Sullivan asked.
"Just me."
"All the time?"
Kid nodded. "Yes, all the time, but I swear to God I could never harm her on purpose." His lips trembled as he shook his head in disbelief. "Just saying this aloud sounds so absurd to my ears. Me trying to kill Lou, the woman I adore."
"We understand how you feel, son," Teaspoon replied, reaching out to tap his back encouragingly.
"In Seneca it was you, Theresa, and her husband, wasn't it?" Cody remarked, and at Kid's nod, he asked, "Do you think Tessie's fella might have anything to do with this?"
"Albert? I don't think so," Kid muttered. "He's very fond of Lou too, in a strange, possessive kind of way."
"What do you mean by that?" Jimmy asked this time.
Kid swayed his hand to and fro disregardingly. "Lou's been living with them for quite a long time, and Albert feels she's his responsibility, as if she belonged to him. He practically threw a tantrum when I told him I wanted to bring Lou here. I guess he still aint' used to the idea that Lou's my wife. He's a peculiar fella, that's all."
"Mr. McCloud, there's little doubt your wife's suffering the effects of poisoning," Dr. Sullivan added. "There's somebody out there with very real reasons to harm her."
"Right now what most matters to me is my wife and getting her back to good health," Kid stated firmly, pressing his fists at his sides. "When that happens, I'll be able to bring myself to think about all those possibilities. Right now my mind is just with her."
The room remained quiet for a while, and the doctor broke the silence again. "I understand your feelings, but do you realize that if we don't know what your wife has ingested, I won't be able to help her effectively?"
Before Kid could say anything, Teaspoon stepped in. "If only Kid and Theresa handled what Lou ate, there must be another way the poison got to her."
Dr. Sullivan nodded. "There are other possibilities, naturally. Somebody might have tampered with the food before it was cooked. It could also be something else other than in her regular meals, candy, chocolate, water, coffee…"
"Tea!" Kid exhaled, the word rolling off his tongue and his eyes almost moistening as the truth fell over him unexpectedly.
"Exactly. Things like that," Dr. Sullivan agreed.
Kid shook his head and lifted his palm to the doctor as a way to sign for permission to speak. "Lou takes an herbal tea that supposedly helps her when she has an upset stomach. Only she drinks it. Nobody else. I took a sip once, and it almost made me gag. It's a special preparation she gets from a local herbalist, and she claims it soothes her stomach."
"Do you think that herbalist could have loaded that tea with too much ammunition?" Cody asked.
"I don't even know the man," Kid replied. "But his nephew Jack works for Lou in the store. He's the one who brings her the tea. And…" Kid paused, as the truth dawned on him like a ton of bricks, "And according to Lou, Jack got quite upset when he learned she was married to me… he had… uh… he had some romantic ideas about my wife."
"So this Jack's feeling scorned and might be trying to get some moral vengeance on Lou?" Jimmy asked rhetorically.
"I don't know. I wouldn't say that much. Ain't it a bit far-fetched?"
"Son, in my ample experience there are three main reasons why folks kill: money, power, and, believe it or not, love," Teaspoon added.
The Southerner listened to the marshal while considering what he was saying. There was something that did not added up here; something they were forgetting, but he could not put his finger on it. His mind could not reconcile itself with the idea of Jack being behind all this. The man was not cut out to be a cold-blooded murderer, but it was true that he still had problems accepting that somebody could go to the extreme to harm his wife for some reason. "I really don't know."
"Mr. McCloud," Dr. Sullivan called, snapping him out of his train of thought. "We first need to make sure that is the way your wife was poisoned. Do you happen to have some of that tea with you?"
Kid nodded. "I have a tin in my saddle bags," he muttered.
The Southerner soon retrieved the tea from his bags he had left in the wagon, and brought it to the doctor. The physician opened the tin, smelled its strong aroma, and had a look inside, finding a huge mixture of different herbs as far as he could see. "I'll go to my office, and find out what is in this tea. I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible," the doctor said as he put the lid back on the tin and got ready to leave.
"Thanks, George," Teaspoon said, shaking hands with the doctor. "And please let's be discreet about this matter." The physician nodded in understanding, and the marshal swept his eyes around the other men. "This goes for all of us. Not a word to anybody."
"Why, Teaspoon?" Cody asked.
"Heed me in this, please," the marshal added. "We still don't' know who's behind this sordid matter, and who wants to kill our Lou. Let's keep the information to ourselves. That might be our powerful weapon."
Kid agreed with the marshal's request for caution. "If anybody asks, just tell them my wife's very sick."
All the men nodded eventually, and the doctor took his leave. The door had not even been closed when Kid was dashing upstairs to Lou. He was not sure what he was feeling any longer. The idea that Lou had been poisoned on purpose was so bizarre that he still did not know what to believe. Who could do such a thing to her? Could Jack Stewart try to kill her out of spite? And if not him, who? At the moment, like he had told the doctor, all he cared about was that Dr. Sullivan could save his beautiful wife, nothing else. When Lou was out of danger, they could track down the bastard who had tried to kill her, and he hoped justice could be done. Yet, until then all his thoughts and energy went out to Lou and his desire to see her back to life.