Page 68 of Savage Peril

“Sure, you know where it is.”

Lori walked through the kitchen then down the hall. The closest bathroom was down the hallway, close to the terrace. On the way back to the table, she remembered the cheese. Sheldon usually served Parmesan with pasta; he had probably forgotten that she liked it.

In the kitchen, Lori rummaged through the spice cupboard but didn’t find the cheese shaker. Maybe Sheldon had rearranged things. She opened two more cupboards with no luck. “Uncle Sheldon, where’s the Parmesan?”

Then Lori spotted the cheese on the second shelf of a long, narrow cupboard. Right behind it was a bottle that looked like medicine. She reached for it, concerned that her uncle might be ill. She turned the small bottle to look at the label: potassium ferric hexacyanoferrate.

Lori stared at the bottle. That was the medicinal name for Prussian blue, the antidote for thallium poisoning. She turned to find Sheldon standing in the doorway. He looked at her and Lori stared, as though he was a stranger.

“You?”

“You shouldn’t have been snooping.” He reached for the bottle, and Lori handed it over. “You had better come and sit down.”

In a daze, Lori went back to the table. She studied her uncle, and the pieces began to fall into place. “You killed my father?”

“It’s unfortunate that you found out,” Sheldon said. “It would have been better if you’d died without ever suspecting me.”

Lori’s palms sweated and her pulse pounded. She glanced at the plate of spaghetti. “You’re going to poison me, too?”

“Of course not,” Sheldon said. “That would be a little obvious, don’t you think? I have something much more dramatic planned for you.”

Lori’s mouth was dry. “My father was dying. You knew…yet you didn’t stop it.”

“It was the only way,” Sheldon said. “Things could have been different. Robert could have agreed to a business arrangement. Instead, he threatened to turn me in. I couldn’t let that happen.”

Lori struggled to come up with a way out of this, and she didn’t know how much time she had. It was best to keep him talking. “How did you get the Prussian blue?”

“Katherine was quite accommodating,” Sheldon said. “I paid her well, but then she messed up. She was supposed to delete the item from the supply list once the bottle arrived.”

“Why order the antidote if you planned for my father to die?”

“A preemptive measure, you might say. One can’t be too careful. On the chance that any of the thallium had gotten into my system, I would have been able to deal with the poisoning before any damage had been done.”

“But you killed your own brother.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken,” Sheldon said. “Robert was my half-brother. My father was Sicilian. Robert wasn’t even Italian. He wasn’t family.”

“That justified killing him?”

“No, that was just business,” Sheldon said. “I’ve worked hard to get where I am, and I plan to continue living in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed.”

Lori felt faint. “But why murder?”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” Sheldon said. “The clinic…that’s what this is all about. Your father controlled it, and now you do. If only you’d married Matt. He would have cooperated.”

“Was Matt an accomplice?”

“To the murder?” Sheldon said. “I acted alone, but Matt has been useful as a liaison. Now you’ve ruined that, too.”

“You’re working with the mob?”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Sheldon said. “I ensure drugs are funneled into their operation, and I’m paid substantially.”

“And they will kill to keep that supply line?”

“Oh, maybe in the old days,” Sheldon said. “But they are businessmen, so they prefer for me do the dirty work.”

“You won’t get away with this.”

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