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He feigns a shudder, and I can’t help but feel at ease, which I’m guessing was his intention because while he’s talked, he’s managed to lead me into his suite, closing the door behind us. It’s nice, more of an overgrown one-man office than a real suite, but on one wall I see a discreet doorway that probably leads to a closet or bathroom of some sort.
Before I can get too carried away, I shove the report his way, noting with embarrassment that I’ve wrinkled it from clutching it so tightly in my hand.
“What’s this?” Blake asks, taking it from me, then answers himself, “Oh, the second report.” He scans over it and then looks back to me. “Can you explain this, please? I mean, I see the notations for out of normal range levels, but can I get a hint?”
I blink, stunned at his utter focus when my brain is foggy with his nearness. “What do you know about heavy metal levels?” I blurt.
“Lead or Metallica?” Blake jokes before growing serious. He closes his eyes for a second, and I can see him searching his own mental file cabinet. He stays that way for a good ten seconds, but when he opens them again, his blue orbs lock on me instantly. “Certain occupations preclude insurance because of exposure rates. Other than occupational or environmental hazards, high levels are rare. Right?”
I smile. “Yes. In the old days, of course, you had lead paint, but that hasn’t been a thing for most folks in a long time. And Richard Horne, while he did die of a heart attack, his heavy metal levels are crazy high. Not just lead, either, but several levels. For no discernible reason.”
“What did Sheriff Barnes say?” he asks.
I flop into the chair in front of his desk, uninvited. “Nothing. He heard ‘heart attack’ and that I can’t prove the two are connected and basically said ‘case closed’.”
“But you don’t think so,” Blake summarizes, sitting down in the chair next to me.
I sigh, my eyes rolling up to stare at the ceiling. “This is gonna sound crazy, but I just have this feeling there’s more to it. For example, lead poisoning in adults can cause high blood pressure. And high blood pressure is a precursor for heart attack. Arsenic and mercury can also lead to heart problems.”
“Or maybe he just ate too many donuts or cheeseburgers?” Blake suggests. But he shrinks when I cut my eyes his way. “Or you cross-link a heavy metal level and heart attack, and get—”
“And you could end up face down in your breakfast,” I finish. “It’s wonky, I know. No reason in particular to link it all, other than my Spidey senses.”
“That doesn’t sound crazy at all.”
I glance at him to see if he’s making fun of me, but he’s looking at me earnestly, no teasing light in his eyes. “You are probably the only person who would tell me that.”
“But you know I’m right. You call it Spidey senses, I call it intuitive intelligence. Long story short, if your gut says something’s up, it is. What’re you thinking?”
I’m silent, letting my brain sort through ideas and possibilities. Blake doesn’t interrupt me. He sits there quietly and patiently, letting me work inside my head. Most people don’t do that. They fill any lulls with awkward conversation, making me unable to concentrate when I need to, but he seems perfectly content with watching me think without needing an explanation of what I’m doing.
Eventually, I come back to the here and now, having been on a trip through the encyclopedia in my mind. “There’s no obvious answer to the heavy metal levels in Horne’s blood. By all accounts, he was a healthy guy with no risk factors.”
Blake looks down at the paper again and hums. “Okay then, healthy guy drops dead of a heart attack with odd blood levels. His job, his lifestyle, nothing would expose him to high levels of heavy metals. What are we missing?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here,” I confess. Asking for help, or admitting that I need it, is not something I do. Yet here I sit.
“I’m biased by my own experience with life insurance claims and immediately jump to foul play, especially with how the widow is acting.”
That gets my attention. “What do you mean? At the scene, she was calm, almost numb.” I tilt my head, remembering “No . . . no, it was more than that, if that makes sense. She was just watching, and then, when she saw me looking at her, she went hysterical. Like wailing dramatics, all for show.”
“When she came to see me, she was almost annoyed by the whole process,” Blake says. “Like she had a car salesman waiting on the check or something. Definitely not the grieving widow. My exact thought was that her inner theme song was, heyyy, must be the mon-ayyy! and I believe that even more after she went full-throttle and started threatening lawsuits to get the money faster.”
