Free Greedy Bones by Carolyn Haines Page A

cause?"
    He put his hat on the table. "They're still not sure if it's bacterial or viral or what. The tests so far are inconclusive."
    "I'll catch up with you later," I said. "I've got to get some food to Tinkie."
    "Give her my best," Coleman said.
    "Yes, give her our best," Bonnie added.
    I left the table without another word. Suddenly her nickname was perfect. Beaucoup Bitch.

    Tinkie accepted the food and ate without comment. I don't think she tasted a single bite, but she knew she had to keep up her strength.
    Standing at the window, I watched Oscar and Gordon. The nurses came in and hung new bags of fluids and left. Doc entered with two strangers in tow. They read the charts at the foot of each bed, examined the patients carefully, and then walked out in a huddle.
    "Go find out what they think?" It was the first thing Tinkie had said in ten minutes.
    "They won't talk to me."
    "Since when did that stop you?"
    "Got it." I ambled down the hallway, setting up position outside the swinging door that led to ICU. This was the only exit from the isolation ward.
    Sure enough, less than a minute later, the door opened and the three men emerged. Doc saw me and paused. "Sarah Booth, this is Dr. Franklin and Dr. Formicello. They're here from the World Health Organization. I was hoping they might have seen something like this."
    Both men were nearing fifty, and their faces showed lives lived out of doors. I glanced between them, picking up on the tension.
    "We don't have any answers," Dr. Franklin said. "To be honest, I've never seen an illness like this."
    "Nor I," Formicello agreed. "I hope this is truly contained."
    "Can you guess as to whether it's bacterial or viral?" I asked. From the little I knew about medicine, it would make a tremendous difference. Bacterial would respond to antibiotics. Viral--probably not. So far, though Doc had tried at least four major types of antibiotics on the patients, none had shown improvement. Lab cultures had come back inconclusive.
    They shared a look. "We don't know," Franklin said.
    "Do the sores indicate some kind of contact with a poison?"
    Again, they looked at each other and Doc. "Miss Delaney, we simply can't, and won't, speculate."
    "Oscar's wife is near emotional and physical collapse. Don't you have anything you can tell her? Any tiny word of hope."
    "The longer the patients survive, the better the odds. Mr. Richmond has been here for four days. He's survivedthe high temperatures and the buildup of fluid around his heart and lungs--take that as a positive sign. In fact, all the patients have good health and physical strength on their sides. Older patients would be dead by now."
    That wasn't exactly the glad tidings I wanted to take to Tinkie, but it was better than a death sentence.
    When I reported back in, she handed me the half-eaten container of food.
    "Will you take me home for a little while?"
    She was so tired, she sounded drunk. "Sure. I'll come back and stay with Oscar."
    "Mother's coming. I told her you'd take me home."
    I sat on the edge of the cot beside her and put my arm around her. "He's going to pull through this."
    "Why can't they figure it out?" she asked. "They've run tests for four days."
    "I don't know." I told her about my conversation with Peyton, the genetically altered cotton, and the strange boll weevils he'd discovered in the fields.
    "Do you think the gods are punishing Sunflower County?" she asked.
    "Like biblical plagues?" I was astounded. Tinkie was the voice of reason, the optimist, the one who championed true love and goodness. Here she was talking Armageddon of biblical proportions, all focused on Sunflower County.
    "Insects, disease, a shift in the climate." She looked at me. "I'm worried."
    "Me too, but not about End Times. I'm not buying that stuff, Tink. There have been predictions about the end of the world from the Dark Ages on. People used to believe an eclipse was a sign of Armageddon. We'll figure this out. You have to believe that."
    Her smile