Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20)(63)

Then, after listening for thirty seconds, Missy turned to Candy and said, “He wants to talk to you.”

*

CANDY WAS TREMBLING with anger when she raised the phone to her mouth.

“What?”

“I’ll explain all this later,” he said. “Don’t get all worked up. Just calm down.”

“I’m calm,” she said through clenched teeth.

“You don’t look calm to me,” Missy said from across the room.

Candy turned away from her again. She said, “Tom, I don’t know what’s going on and I’m stuck right in the middle. You’re obviously keeping secrets from me. First there’s a rifle case in your truck, then . . .” She almost mentioned the cell phone, but she caught herself. “This strange woman just shows up and I’m supposed to entertain her. What other things aren’t you telling me?”

He didn’t respond.

She said, “My imagination kind of ran away from me when I saw that. I mean, there’s these shootings in the area, you know? I was starting to think . . .”

“Think what?” The question was hostile and she immediately backed down.

“Well, until that press conference today, I was starting to wonder, you know . . .”

“It’s not like that,” he said. “Not at all. Look, I’ll explain everything after she leaves tonight. Trust me on this.”

“Trust you?” Candy said, her voice rising. She disconnected the call and tossed the phone aside. She’d never hung up on him before.

Candy felt a sense of déjà vu. This was Brent’s Corvette and Nicolas’s bear hunting trip all over again. The end was in sight.

From behind her, Missy said, “If you can’t trust your doctor, who can you trust?”

*

CANDY ASKED MISSY, “So those names you read over the phone—they’re drugs, aren’t they?”

Missy took a sip. “Good guess.”

“So Tom’s your drug dealer?”

Missy chuckled with a deep-throated laugh that was disarming. “Drug dealer? I never thought I’d have a drug dealer. But it isn’t like that. My husband—I’m old-fashioned that way—is very sick with pancreatic cancer. He’s likely to die from it. All the traditional treatments the doctors over in Jackson have put him on aren’t working. He’s currently on gemcitabine.”

“I don’t know anything about pancreatic cancer,” Candy said, trying not to let the I’m old-fashioned that way dig bother her.

Missy poured herself another glass of the Cab she’d opened and offered some to Candy. Candy’s first inclination was to demur—it was Tom’s special wine, after all—then she said, “Fuck it,” and held out her glass.

Missy filled it and said, “Pancreatic cancer is sinister. Gemcitabine is a drug that’s supposed to stop the spread of cancer after the tumor is gone, and that’s what Marcus is taking now. That’s the go-to drug and it’s what the doctors know about. Unfortunately, the survival rate with it is thirty percent. Thirty percent. I won’t stand for it.

“It’s not the only treatment, however,” Missy said. “I found out about an experimental treatment that’s being done in Europe that raises the survival rate to forty-two percent. It hasn’t been approved by our Food and Drug Administration to be administered here yet. It may be in a few years, but I can’t wait.”

Candy was puzzled. She said, “Tom is going to help you with an experimental treatment?”

“I wish,” Missy said. “But he refused. The furthest he’d go is to provide the four drugs for a kind of chemotherapy cocktail. Those were the drugs I ordered from him.”

“I had no idea,” Candy said. “I don’t know whether to say good for Tom, or Tom is a drug dealer.”

“Both, actually,” Missy said. “I got his name from a couple of people in the know in my social circle in Jackson.”

Candy absorbed the information. “Are you telling me Tom sells drugs to your friends?”

“He does,” Missy said. “And to be honest, most of them are prescription opioids. You’d be surprised how many upstanding citizens are addicted. People you’d never suspect. But they all love your Tom!”

Candy thought about the stack of checks she’d found on Tom’s desk. She sat down on the couch. Another secret exposed.

“Don’t worry,” Missy said, misreading her reaction. “I won’t try to administer the chemo cocktail myself. If you get the dosages wrong, it’s toxic. Lucky for me, I met a doctor in France who is willing to come here and assist. He’s smitten with me, I’m afraid.”

Candy looked up at Missy and didn’t know how to respond.

“Let’s make a nice dinner together and wait for Tom to get back,” Missy said. “I assume you have some food around here.”

Candy shrugged. She watched as Missy rummaged through the refrigerator and pantry.

“I take it you don’t cook,” Missy said.

“Not well, although I used to cook for my husband. Both husbands, actually.”

Missy paused and her assessment of Candy was clinical.

“So you’ve been married?” she asked.

“Twice.”