Page 3

CHAPTER 3

CORAL ATTACKED

COME BACK

I sent the text to Max, hoping he’d get it and turn around for Rocky Start. That didn’t seem strong enough, so I sent another text:

WE NEED YOU

I could handle the verbal fights in town, sew up torn clothes, clean up blood, call Luke Granger to get rid of bodies, but when things got really physical, I needed Max. I couldn’t hit everybody with chairs.

So I sent one more text after that and then dealt with my first concern: stopping the bleeding.

I opened the first aid kit, and then Coral’s eyes narrowed as she snarled, “Who the hell are you?”

Maggs gave a very low growl and I looked behind me to see a tall Black woman in the doorway wearing jeans and a blue puffy jacket, hands in her jacket pockets, coming into the bakery, surveying the scene with surprising calm.

Outsider .

“I heard screams from the pharmacy.” She took her hands out of her pockets—no weapons—and knelt beside the dead woman, touched her neck for a pulse, shook her head, and stood again to point at Coral’s arm. “That should be stitched if you’re not going to call for help.” She didn’t seem particularly upset by the blood or the dead woman on the floor, speaking in a flat, business-like manner. “I’m a doctor. I can get my bag and take care of that.”

“No,” Coral began, and I said, “ Yes . Jesus, Coral, you’re going to bleed to death.” Okay, I had no idea if the woman was really a doctor, but there was so much blood, and she didn’t look like the type to fool around. I looked at her. “Get your bag, please.” Then I frowned at Coral. “You. Keep that arm up.” I looked down at Maggs. “Friend. Sit.” Whatever, just don’t bite the doctor. We need her .

Coral didn’t fight back, pale as the dough of her Franzbrotchen . I got some napkins from the stack by her register and tried to staunch the bleeding on her cheek and arm until the doctor came back through the door a minute later with an old-style black leather medical bag.

Maggs growled.

“No,” I said. “Friend.”

The doctor ignored Maggs and went to stand in front of Coral. “I’m going to stop the bleeding,” she said, her voice low with no inflection, a professional.

“I’m watching you,” I told her. “You are not going to inject her with anything. Just stitch the cuts, please.” When she frowned, I said, “We don’t know you and somebody just tried to kill Coral and then you turn up. Big coincidence. So, we’re being very careful. Grateful but careful.”

She nodded. “All right. Clean, then antiseptic and then stitches. Is there antiseptic in that first aid kit you’re holding?”

I handed Coral’s very well-stocked kit over to her, and she cleaned both cuts very professionally with antiseptic we all knew wasn’t poisonous.

Hey, you live in Rocky Start, you raise being careful to an art form.

I watched as she swabbed Coral’s cheek. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out some preloaded, sealed sutures and showed them to me.

“Never opened,” she said, and I nodded.

“Are you sure on no numbing?” she asked Coral, who nodded. The doctor regarded both wounds and made a decision. “I can butterfly bandage the cheek. But if you don’t want a scar, you need to go to a hospital and see a plastic surgeon.”

“No.” Coral replied.

The stranger moved on from that to the other wound. “The arm definitely needs stitches.”

“Do so,” Coral said. “Please.”

The woman got to work putting Coral back together.

And I stopped panicking and began to think.

This new woman was an Outsider . That’s never good in our town. But we didn’t have a doctor, so that overrode my Outsider bias for the moment. Max would have been more careful, but I had people to take care of, and this doctor was calm and, from the way she was working on Coral, skilled. So for the moment, I was on her side.

Still, I thought, Zebra. When I’d get anxious, Ozzie used to say: “Rose, most of the time nobody’s after us, so if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. Unless you see stripes. Then come get me.” But he was gone and so was Max, so now I watched for stripes and tried to handle zebras myself.

Fortunately, we didn’t have many of those.

“So, just passing through?” I said to her, trying to keep my voice light and uninterested.

She shook her head, intent on her work. “I’d just started inventory at the pharmacy when I heard the scream.”

I blinked. “You were inventorying Sid Quill’s pharmacy?”

“I inherited it,” she said, intent on putting Coral back together.

“Relation?” I asked because anybody associated with Sid had to be off in some way.

“I didn’t know him.” She had swabbed both wounds and was now stitching the arm. Coral did not cry out. “A lawyer contacted me to tell me I was Mr. Quill’s heir.” She frowned for a moment. “A strange lawyer.”

“Barry Mason,” I guessed because if it had been the good lawyer in town, my pal Lian, I’d have known about it. “We think witness protection gave him that name, but it’s been so long now, it really is his name.”

“I see.” She was so calm, mopping up Coral’s blood, stitching her wounds closed, focusing on her task in spite of the weirdness of Barry Mason, not to mention the dead woman on the floor. I’d have been screaming “ What the hell is wrong with this town? ” but she was evidently good with chaos, blood, mystery, and smartass aliases.

And she was a doctor.

If I played my cards right and she turned out not to be a retired secret agent or a current assassin, she was going to fit right in here. Actually, she’d fit in if she was a retired secret agent, too, but we were full up on those. The key would be “not an assassin currently working.” The trouble with Outsiders is that we don’t know anything about them, so we have to be careful. At least our last serial killer had been a local.

“The pharmacy is . . . odd,” she said. “Did he have a sideline by any chance?”

I hesitated, but she’d inherited Sid’s stuff; she had a right to ask. “He was a cutout for a drug ring. Coke. Also retired CIA. Creepy.”

She nodded, taking that in as calmly as she was working on Coral. This was a woman it would take a lot to upset, another good thing for Rocky Start. “That would explain some of the equipment I found in the basement,” she said, putting some tiny bandages on Coral’s cheek now. “How did he die?”

“We had a serial killer. He’s gone now.” The killer was definitely dead. We were careful about double-checking stuff like that now.

“I see.”

Coral was showing no obvious signs of pain, but then she wouldn’t. Coral did not show weakness. Kindness, generosity, good humor, implacable killing skills, yes. Weakness, no. Even Maggs was down on the floor now, stretched out beside Coral, calmly watching the doctor work. From attack dog to comfort dog; the canine version of Max.

“So now you own a pharmacy.” I watched the Outsider work and realized we’d possibly just gotten very lucky. “And you’re a doctor. That’s wonderful, we’ve never had a doctor in town. And we could really use one, especially now. Everyone went to the clinic in Bearton, but that shut down and now the nearest medical help is an hour and a half away. You’ll get a lot of business from Bearton, too.”

“Doctors can’t own pharmacies,” she said, concentrating on Coral, “and I’m not staying.” When she was done, she checked Coral’s heart and her lungs, took her blood pressure and pulse, and studied her for a second. Then she nodded. “Your cheek and arm will have scars, but you’ll live.”

Coral nodded. I was pretty sure those weren’t going to be her first scars.

The doctor stood up and glanced at the woman on the floor.

I said, “She’s dead. Fell on a knife.”

She did look at me then, not bothering to hide her contempt. “Sideways.”

“Right,” I said. “Self-defense.”

Then I realized I hadn’t introduced myself or Coral. I stood up, wiped off my hand, and offered it to the Outsider, hitting her with a Cheery Boost, the fake smile I swear I’m going to give up soon. “I’m sorry, I’m Rose Malone and I own the secondhand shop next door, next to your pharmacy. The person whose life you just saved is Coral Schmidt, who owns this bakery and coffee shop, and who should be giving you free pastry for life. We’re very grateful, Doctor . . .”

I let that hang in the air until I was sure she was blowing me off, but then she said, “Jacqueline Quill.”

“Dr. Quill. Welcome to Rocky Start. You’re gonna love it here.”

At least, if I had anything to do with it, she was gonna love it here.