Page 10 of Savage Peril

“I envy you,” Lori said. “It must be nice to have a partner you can count on.”

“I am lucky,” Jess said. “But you’ll get your chance. I understand Matt didn’t last?”

“Nope, not my type after all,” Lori said. She immediately thought of Gunner but held back on bringing that up.

“That’s too bad,” Jess said. “He is an eligible bachelor, good looking and all.”

“He has a lot going for him, I suppose,” Lori said. “But you don’t really know a man until you break up.”

“That’s an odd thing to say.”

“During the engagement, Matt turned on the charm,” Lori said. “I should listen to my gut feeling more often. It didn’t seem right, but I accepted that it was my issue, not his. I was too picky and needed to do my part to make the relationship work.”

“You weren’t even married yet.”

“True, but it felt like it sometimes.”

The meals arrived, so they took a few minutes to focus on food.

Jess lifted her glass to signal the waiter to refill her Diet Coke. “How are you doing, anyway…besides the broken engagement? I haven’t had a chance to talk to you since the funeral.”

“I’m not handling it very well,” Lori said. “But I’m sure that losing a father is traumatic for anyone.”

“Yes, but still…I know you were very close to him,” Jess said. “I adored your father too. He was a good man, devoted to the clinic and to his family.” She dabbed a napkin over her mouth. “It was so sudden. That has to be harder to deal with.”

It occurred to Lori that her friend might have insight into the mystery of her father’s death. Dermatology wasn’t only about beauty and anti-aging. Jess dealt with conditions such as skin inflammations, infections, and even hair loss. There was one aspect of her father’s condition that Lori had nearly forgotten about.

“Maybe you can help me,” Lori said. “I told you about my father’s symptoms and how I was sure he had a virus. But the coroner mentioned something.”

“What was it?”

“Hair loss,” Lori said. “My father had no baldness, only a receding hairline. But after he died, one odd condition was noted. There was a patch of hair missing on the back of his head. His hair had fallen out.”

“That doesn’t fit with a virus,” Jess said. “There are many reasons for hair loss. Thinning hair can be genetic or caused by stress. To determine the medical cause, I’d have to do a blood test and examine scalp tissue under a microscope.”

“I wish I’d known about the hair loss sooner,” Lori said. “When I spoke to my father during his illness, he didn’t mention that—maybe due to embarrassment. Only…”

“What are you thinking?”

“I worked with my father and saw him daily,” Lori said. “I would have noticed. Except at the end he was ill, so he stayed at home. I spoke to him but hadn’t seen him in about five days.”

“It’s possible the hair loss wasn’t a gradual thinning,” Jess said. “There are other reasons for hair loss, like an allergy or a reaction to a medication.”

“Those items were listed as a possible cause of his sudden respiratory failure, too.”

Jess looked thoughtful. “Since you’re asking…”

“Yes, what?”

“There is one cause that is less common than an undiagnosed allergy,” Jess said. “Toxicity…that can cause hair loss.”

Lori couldn’t believe that she hadn’t thought of that. “You’re right. If my father breathed or ingested a toxic substance, that could have caused an acute reaction that resulted in respiratory failure.”

“Right, poison would do that,” Jess said. “But why would your father have come into contact with a substance that was deadly?”

The discussion renewed Lori’s interest in investigating the circumstances surrounding her father’s death. Poisoning might be an extreme theory, but something was amiss. There was a piece of the puzzle she was missing, and she intended to find out what it was.

*****

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