Scene 17

     "He's a very lucky man. He lost a lot of blood, but it looks like he's going to make it."

Chelsea reached for the doctor's hand.

     "Thank you, doctor, thank you. When can I see him?"

     "He's going to be in recovery for several hours. You might want to check back in the morning."

     Chelsea looked at her watch. It was 9:30 PM. She felt as though she had lived a week in this one day. She had woke up this morning in the arms of what she thought was a new love and now she was standing in the hospital thanking God for the life of an old one.

    "Chelsea," John said softly, "maybe this would be a good time us to get out of here."

     John sat down on his couch and stared at the blood, no doubt his own, which had stained the carpet. His concentration slowly moved over to the spot where Toby had been.  Chelsea spoke out, disrupting the silence.

     "Who would want to kill Toby? And how do you get someone to overdose involuntary anyway?"

     "I don't know, Chelsea. It doesn't make any sense. But Toby didn't use cocaine. She seldom drank, either. And the note, the note is the key. She didn't kill Theresa, so why would she have said she did. I think someone took the opportunity to get themselves off the hook by framing Toby. And they knew Toby was enough of an emotional wreck last night that suicide would be believable. She was trying to kill me with a bowling pin for crying out loud!"

     "Maybe she did kill herself and then someone came in later and wrote the note." Chelsea shook her head. "No, why would she kill herself here. She obviously would have had to go somewhere to get the drugs and alcohol."

      A chill made it's way up John's spine and sent his pulse racing. That was the bothersome detail which had been eluding him.

     "That's it!" John went over to the liquor cabinet. It was still locked. He opened the drawer of the small bureau next to the cabinet and retrieved a key from a secret false bottom compartment.

     "What are you doing?"

     "Lisa keeps the liquor cabinet locked. She doesn't like it when I drink. She only thinks  I don't know where she keeps the key." John unlocked the cabinet. He scanned the bottles which stood like soldiers in a military formation. Everything was just as he thought. All present and accounted for, except for one missing bottle.

     "What?!" Chelsea was trying to see around John into the cabinet.

     "The Cuervo's missing. Only one person, besides myself, knows where the key to this cabinet is."

      John turned to look at Chelsea as the name fell from both of their mouths simultaneously. It was a name which now held new and disturbing connotations.

     "Lisa."