The Prodigal Son by Colleen McCullough Read Free Book Online Page B

so get a motorcycle cop here to siren it into town. Then your dad’s got a fighting chance. Call Patrick, please.”
    She obeyed, pushing Max away from the phone.
    “By the time the road cop picks the sample up, Dad, I’ll have drawn a schematic of tetrodotoxin’s molecular structure,” Millie said to Patrick a moment later. “I think Jim’s crazy to suspect it, but what if he’s right? What if whoever stole the stuff is selling it as the undetectable poison? That’s why you have to assay the victim’s blood a.s.a.p.— more chance of a last metabolite or two. Gas chromatography first, then the mass spectrometer. Humor Jim, Dad, please! I mean, it can’t possibly be tetrodotoxin, these people have no connection to me.”
    “I’ll send Gus Fennell. I have to recuse myself, Millie,” said her father’s voice, “and I’m guessing Carmine will too. It will probably be Abe Goldberg. Oh, shit!”
    “Tell me about it.” She hung up.
    Max Tunbull and Al Markoff were arguing.

    “You’ve got it all wrong, Al! John’s mom died at about the same age, and John’s her spitting image — it runs in that family!” Max said.
    “Crap!” said the doughty doctor. “Bitch all you like, Max, I’m not convinced John died from natural causes. The time span between onset of symptoms and death was nearly lightning. Pity I was too busy to time it.”
    “I timed it,” Jim Hunter said. “From his saying the word ‘hot’ to his death, eleven minutes. You’re absolutely right, Al, it’s suspicious. John was a healthy guy.”
    Whereupon Davina, eyes distended, uttered a shriek, went rigid, and fell to the floor. Uda knelt beside her.
    “I put Miss Vina bed,” she said. “Mr. Max, you phone her doctor now. She get needle.”
    “No way,” said Muse Markoff. “The cops will want to see her, Uda — unsedated.”
    “This not Iron Curtain!” Uda snarled on yellow teeth. “Big function tomorrow night for Miss Davina, she be ready!”
    And, thought Millie, remembering tomorrow night, Davina would go through hell to be ready for it. No matter what the cops might want, Davina’s doctor was going to knock her out until late tomorrow afternoon. “Or,” said Millie to Jim, “I’m a monkey’s uncle.”
    He grinned, brushed her cheek with one finger. “That, my love, you are not.” His eyes followed the servant, supporting her mistress to the stairs. “To get to Davina, first get past Uda. If I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned that.”

    Lieutenant Abe Goldberg appeared a few minutes after the motorcycle cop picked up the test tubes of blood for the M.E.; with him came Dr. Gus Fennell, Deputy Medical Examiner, and his own pair of detectives, Sergeants Liam Connor and Tony Cerutti.
    “What do you really think, Millie?” Abe asked, his fair and freckled countenance looking unusually grim. Millie Hunter’s marital history was well known, and she was loved.
    “John’s symptoms sound very suspicious, but the rapidity of his death suggests injection rather than ingestion. If he’d eaten it, especially given the good meal he consumed, I would have expected considerable vomiting and fecal purging. And it wouldn’t have come on so fast. Tell whoever does the autopsy to look for a puncture mark, and tell Paul the dose might have been as small as a half of one milligram. John was about six feet, but he wouldn’t have weighed more than one-sixty.” Millie kept her voice low, glad Davina Tunbull wasn’t watching. Hysterics, my eye!
    “Now’s not the time or place, Dr. Hunter, but I gather you were aware your wife had tetrodotoxin at her laboratory?” Abe asked Jim, his voice courteous.
    “Yes, she mentioned it.”
    “Were you aware how dangerous it is?”
    “In all honesty, no. I’m not a neurochemist, and I would not have recognized it as a toxin if I’d encountered it, at least before I determined its molecular structure. That always gives a lot ofthings away. But it’s only tonight, after watching