Chapter 2 - THE PERSON AT THE TABLEThe drive to Riverside should have taken twenty-two minutes.
I made it in fourteen.
Officer Ramirez followed behind me because the police now considered our house a potential crime scene. He had already sent the security footage to a detective and told another officer to locate the person we had seen leaning over the stuffing.
My older brother.
Andrew.
Even thinking his name felt wrong.
Andrew had been my hero when we were kids.
Four years older.
Stronger.
Funnier.
The kind of brother who once walked three miles in the rain because eleven-year-old me had missed the school bus and was too scared to call Dad.
He taught me how to throw a baseball.
He gave me my first beer.
He stood beside me at my wedding.
And less than two hours earlier, I had watched security footage of him standing over a serving dish while everyone else was out of the room.
He had reached into his coat.
He had done something to the food.
And now half my family was hospitalized.
But something didn’t fit.
If Andrew poisoned the stuffing, why?
And why had the hospital said Claire wasn’t the patient they were most worried about?
I found the answer before I reached the emergency room.
A doctor met me in the hallway.
“Mr. Mercer?”
“Yes. My wife?”
“Stable.”
The word nearly dropped me to my knees.
“She regained consciousness during transport. Her blood pressure is still low, but she’s responding well.”
I closed my eyes.
“Thank God.”
“There’s something else.”
I opened them.
The doctor’s expression had hardened.
“Your father is in critical condition.”
Dad.
Robert Mercer.
Sixty-nine.
Stubborn enough to refuse blood-pressure medication because he claimed doctors were trying to turn aging into a subscription service.
“What happened?”
“His symptoms progressed much faster than everyone else’s. We’re treating this as a suspected toxic ingestion, but his concentration appears significantly higher.”
“Concentration of what?”
“We’re waiting on toxicology.”
“Is he going to die?”
The doctor hesitated.
I hated him for that hesitation even though I knew he was trying not to lie.
“We’re doing everything we can.”
Mom was two rooms away.
Megan and Tyler were being treated upstairs.
My aunt Rebecca was stable.
My uncle had improved.
Every sick adult had one thing in common.
Stuffing.
Every adult except Dad appeared to have eaten roughly the same amount.
Yet Dad was far worse.
Officer Ramirez came through the emergency-room doors while I stood there trying to understand.
“We located your brother’s vehicle.”
“Where?”
“Parking lot behind a twenty-four-hour pharmacy about three miles from your house.”
“Where’s Andrew?”
“Gone.”
My chest tightened.
Ramirez watched me carefully.
“Does your brother have access to medications, pesticides, chemicals?”
“He owns a landscaping company.”
That answer sounded different now.
Landscaping.
Fertilizers.
Herbicides.
Rodent control.
Storage buildings full of substances I couldn’t pronounce.
Ramirez wrote something down.
“Any financial dispute with your father?”
I almost said no.
Then stopped.
Six months earlier, Dad and Andrew had argued during a Fourth of July barbecue.
It had been loud enough that everybody heard pieces of it.
Dad had said, “I’ve bailed you out for the last time.”
Andrew had shouted, “You’ve spent your whole life deciding which son deserves what.”
Then he left.
The next morning, Mom told me it was about Andrew’s business.
I never asked for details.
Now I wished I had.
Ramirez saw my face.
“What?”
“There was an argument.”
I explained.
He asked whether Dad had loaned Andrew money.
“I think so.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
A woman approached.
Detective Naomi Brooks introduced herself and led me into a consultation room.
She placed her phone on the table.
“We reviewed the footage.”
I nodded.
“Did you find out what he put in the food?”
“We enhanced the image. He appears to be holding a small dropper bottle.”
My stomach turned.
“A dropper?”
“Possibly. We can’t establish contents from video.”
“Then arrest him.”
“We need to find him first.”
She studied me.
“Mr. Mercer, when did your brother separate from his wife?”
“September.”
“Do you know why?”
“No.”
“She has spoken with us.”
That surprised me.
“Rachel?”
“She said Andrew became financially desperate over the summer. His landscaping company lost several commercial contracts. He also had significant gambling debts.”
I stared at her.
“Andrew doesn’t gamble.”
“According to his wife, he does.”
There are moments when your entire understanding of another person shifts without warning.
You realize the version you knew was only the version they allowed you to see.
“How much debt?”
“Potentially several hundred thousand dollars.”
I felt suddenly cold.
“What does that have to do with my father?”
Brooks didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, she asked, “Who inherits from your father?”
I actually laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because the question sounded absurd.
“My mother, obviously.”
“And after her?”
“His children, I guess.”
“You, Andrew, Megan?”
“Yes.”
“Equal shares?”
“As far as I know.”
She folded her hands.
“Did your father recently change his estate plan?”
“I have no idea.”
Her phone buzzed.
She looked at the screen.
Whatever she saw changed her face.
“What?”
She stood.
“Stay here.”
“Detective—”
“Please.”
She stepped into the hallway.
I ignored her instruction thirty seconds later.
Through the glass panel in the door, I could see her speaking with Officer Ramirez.
Then Ramirez glanced toward me.
I opened the door.
“What happened?”
Brooks turned.
“Your father’s toxicology results are preliminary.”
“And?”
“The substance we’re looking at is most consistent with a cardiac medication.”
I frowned.
“Dad doesn’t take heart medication.”
“That may be important.”
“What medication?”
“Digoxin is one possibility. We need confirmation.”
I knew almost nothing about digoxin.
But I knew one person in our family who had a prescription cabinet full of heart medication.
Grandma Mercer.
She had died eight months earlier.
Andrew had cleaned out her apartment.
My father had asked him to handle everything because Andrew “needed something useful to do.”
The detective seemed to read my expression.
“What are you thinking?”
“Our grandmother had heart problems.”
“Who handled her medications after she died?”
I swallowed.
“Andrew.”
Brooks nodded once.
Then my phone rang again.
This time it was my mother.
Her voice was weak.
“Daniel?”
“I’m here, Mom.”
“Where’s your father?”
“In intensive care.”
She began crying.
“Mom, listen to me. Did Dad and Andrew have another argument recently?”
Silence.
“Mom?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it.”
Her breathing trembled.
“Your father changed his will.”
The hospital corridor seemed to narrow.
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Why?”
“Because he discovered what Andrew had done.”
“What had he done?”
Mom started sobbing harder.
“He stole from us.”
“How much?”
“Almost four hundred thousand dollars.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
Motive.
But Mom wasn’t finished.
“Your father told him he was being removed from the will.”
My eyes went to Detective Brooks.
She was watching me.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
Christmas Eve.
I gripped the phone.
“Did Andrew know?”
“Yes.”
“And Dad told him directly?”
“Yes.”
“What did Andrew say?”
Mom’s crying stopped.
For several seconds, all I heard was hospital machinery.
Then she whispered, “He said Dad would regret humiliating him.”
My stomach dropped.
Detective Brooks stepped closer.
“Put it on speaker.”
Before I could, a nurse came running around the corner.
“Mr. Mercer?”
I turned.
She looked terrified.
“Your wife is asking for you.”
I rushed toward Claire’s room.
She was sitting upright, pale, oxygen beneath her nose.
The moment she saw me, she held out her hand.
I took it.
“You’re okay?”
“I think so.”
I kissed her forehead.
“Claire, the police think Andrew may have put something in the stuffing.”
Her eyes widened.
“What?”
“We have video.”
“No.”
“I saw it.”
She stared past me.
Then shook her head.
“Daniel, you don’t understand.”
“What?”
Her fingers tightened around mine.
“Andrew wasn’t the only person who touched the stuffing.”
I felt every hair on my arms rise.
“What are you talking about?”
Claire swallowed.
“After I came back downstairs, I saw somebody else in the dining room.”
“Who?”
She looked toward the open doorway as though afraid someone might be listening.
Then she whispered a name.
May you like
And the case we thought we understood became something else entirely.
“Your father.”
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