When she and Shelley were kids, they had discovered quite by accident that the crosspiece that was supposed to support the worn-out medicine cabinet was actually six inches too low. They’d been fighting over who got the last pink Flintstone vitamin and had ripped the medicine cabinet right out of the wall. Evidently there had been a longer cabinet there at one time or another. Either that or the carpenter who’d installed it hadn’t bothered with proper brace work. He certainly hadn’t secured it properly.
Anything they didn’t want their mother or any of her “friends” to find, they’d hidden in that cavity.
Holding her breath, CJ reached in. Three items sat on the aged two-by-four crosspiece: a bottle, what appeared to be a business card, and a folded piece of paper.
Anticipation sent her pulse into a faster rhythm. As a doctor, she couldn’t help herself. She looked at the bottle first. Large. Vitamins? Then she read the label and the attached prescription sticker.
Prenatal vitamins.
CJ’s chest tightened.
Did this mean . . . ?
The business card wasn’t a business card. It was an appointment card. Shelley had had a doctor’s appointment at the village clinic at the end of next week. CJ dropped the vitamins and the card onto the counter and focused on the paper. Hands shaking, she carefully unfolded it. Standard clinic visit form. Shelley had seen the doctor at two o’clock on July thirtieth.
Friday.
The day before she was murdered.
Diagnostic code ... Adrenaline pumping through her veins, CJ scanned the form until she found the entry she sought.
Positive pregnancy.
Shelley was pregnant?
That ferocious pounding that accompanied her treatment of every trauma victim rushed into the ER erupted in CJ’s chest now.
Her sister had been pregnant.
CJ sagged against the doorjamb.
No wonder she’d been so excited when she called and left that voicemail. She wanted to share the news with CJ.
So ... who was the father?
Ricky Banks?
Did he even know about this?
Oh God.
The form fluttered to the floor. CJ shoved the medicine cabinet off the toilet and yanked up the lid.
She heaved again and again, though she’d eaten nothing but toast this morning.
CJ collapsed onto the floor, flinching when her knee hit the corner of the medicine cabinet. Medicine bottles were scattered over the battered linoleum. Dust and grime had collected on the baseboards and in the corners. The wallpaper that had been there for as long as CJ remembered had faded and wrinkled, peeling away from the wall here and there.
All those insignificant details inventoried in her stunned mind as she grappled with this new truth.
Shelley had been pregnant.
It didn’t matter at the moment who the father was.
It only mattered that the killer had murdered two people.
CJ staggered to her feet, washed her hands, and threw cold water on her face in an effort to snap out of the daze this news had induced. She stuck her face under the stream of water and rinsed her mouth.
When she’d pulled herself back together, she reached down and picked up the form and the appointment card.
