by E J Kindred
Ada gave Hal a smooch. “You behave yourself today, okay? We’re having lunch with Annie’s grandmother, so I won’t be home until later.”
“I’ll be fine. Call me and tell me what the doctor says, okay? Now get out of here. The locksmith is due to arrive at any moment.”
“Okay, hon. Good luck finding a new wife.” She gave him a peck on the cheek and we headed to the car.
As we pulled away from the house, I said, “Locksmith? New wife?”
Ada laughed, a hearty sound that always lifted my spirits. “Hal likes to joke that he’s going to change the locks when I’m not home. He actually did it once, just to be funny, so I never know when he might do it again.”
“Must have been an expensive joke.”
“True, and it was forever before we got the keys right. The big doofus loves to pull pranks. I go along with it just for fun, and every once in a while, I get him back. He’s better at it than I am, though. For all I know, the house will be purple with pink polka dots by the time I get home today.” She laughed again and put a hand on my arm, leaning toward me slightly despite the seat belt across her shoulder. “One time, he built a fence around the front yard and filled it with goats—mamas and kids. There must have been thirty of them.”
“Goats? Where did he get goats?”
“He borrowed them, if you can believe it. Somehow, he managed to convince one of the farmers outside town to lend him a herd of goats for the day. You should have seen Hal and that poor farmer trying to round them up. Baby goats can bounce in five directions at once. I laughed until my sides hurt.”
“Maybe that was his payback, having to catch them.”
For the rest of the drive to Portland, we chatted about inconsequential things. We were both avoiding any talk about the doctor’s murder and Mo’s disappearance. Neither topic was ever far from my mind. Ada provided a welcome respite from the stress of those events.
After Ada’s appointment, where the orthopedic surgeon released her from any restrictions on her activities, we drove to Grandma Natalie’s house. On the way, Ada called Hal to tell him the doctor insisted that she take things slow, that she still had some healing to do. She gave me a conspiratorial look and held her fingers to her lips while she talked to her husband. The fun never stopped with those two.
Grandma Natalie met us at the door, but she wasn’t alone. Ada was getting the full family treatment.
“Ada Brownlee, this is my grandmother, Natalie Lindberg.”
They exchanged greetings, and I could see them already making a connection. They were of an age, each with a good sense of humor, and it showed. Somewhat belatedly, I realized that I might have started something I’d regret later.
“And this is my brother, Joe.” I saw the involuntary quirk of Ada’s eyebrow when I introduced the tall black man beside Grandma Natalie. He grinned, having also seen her reaction. We’d had a lot of different responses from people over the years, so we were used to it. I went on to explain. “You know how it is, Ada. He showed up at the door, Grandma Natalie fed him, and now we can’t get rid of him.”
Ada laughed out loud and clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry,” she said, tears of laughter in her eyes.
“No need to be sorry,” Joe said. He wrapped her in a bear hug, which she returned with enthusiasm.
When he released her, I said, “And this is our friend, Patrick. We’ve known each other since elementary school.” No need to tell her that he was also my attorney.
Grandma Natalie invited Ada into the kitchen for coffee. “No formal living room stuff for us.”
As we walked toward the kitchen table, I noticed Joe limping a little. I caught him by the arm.
“Is your leg bothering you?”
“Some. The new one still needs a little adjusting. It’ll be fine.”
“New one?” Ada pulled out a chair and made herself comfortable.
“I lost my lower leg in Iraq,” Joe said. He pulled his pant leg up to show the bottom part of the metal framework of his prosthesis. He took the chair next to her.
“I’m so sorry,” she said quietly. “You’re okay otherwise?”
“Don’t give him any sympathy, Ada,” I said. “He was probably limping to get attention.” I caught the wadded-up napkin Joe threw at me. I knew better than to think he was milking his disability for attention, but being a good sister, I took every available opportunity to tweak him.
Joe said, “Do you see what I have to put up with? First she calls me a stray, and then she calls me a cripple.” He tried to look sorrowful, but the humor in his eyes gave him away. “And all I’ve done is try to be a good brother.”
“A cripple?” I turned to Ada. “This so-called cripple rode in a four-hundred-mile bike race recently.”
“You did?” Ada’s eyes were wide with astonishment.
“Well,” he said, trying to sound modest, “the event was a relay, so I only rode a hundred miles of it, but yeah, three buddies and I did it.”
While we drank our coffee, Joe regaled Ada with stories from the relay race. I was sure that most of them were fiction, but she seemed to enjoy every minute. I did my best to interject a bit of reality into the conversation, but Joe was on a roll. Once he started spinning tales, there was no stopping him.
“Okay, enough.” Grandma Natalie had watched us with amusement while Patrick rolled his eyes and stayed out of the fray. “If we’re going to lunch, we’d better get a move on, or we’ll be having dinner instead.”
On our way back to Charbonneau after lunch, Ada was uncharacteristically quiet.
“You okay?” I wondered if she’d eaten something that disagreed with her. She’d been enthusiastic about having Thai food for lunch, but maybe it’d been too spicy. We’d all carefully avoided talking about Doctor Wentworth’s murder, so I wasn’t concerned that she was upset by our mealtime conversation. Still, for chatty Ada to remain quiet this long was disconcerting.
She didn’t respond at first, but after a few moments, she turned to me with a big smile on her face. “I’ve made up my mind. I’m doing it,” she declared.
“Doing what?” With women like Ada and my Grandma Natalie in my life, I’d long since learned to be suspicious. There was no telling what plot they’d hatched.
“I’m calling Natalie to accept her invitation.”
I’d been anticipating this ever since we’d walked out of the kitchen and through the garage, with a stop to admire the Harley, on our way to Happy Thai.
“What will Hal think?”
“Who cares?” She did a wrist flip that would’ve done a drag queen proud. “He’s my husband, not my nanny. I don’t need his permission. If I want to take a ride with Natalie on her motorcycle, that’s exactly what I’ll do.” She thought for a moment, and then looked a little sheepish. “Maybe I won’t tell him until after.”
Two days later, I was at the Wentworth home again. After the doc’s memorial service, I’d expected life at the big house to calm down, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. A constant flow of guests poured in and out of the place. Every day, it seemed that someone new arrived. Some paid only short visits to offer condolences, but most had travelled far enough that they stayed over a night, sometimes two, sometimes more. Lupe and I were kept busy every day, cleaning guest rooms, preparing the dining room for meals, and keeping track of the guest list.
The new cook also struggled to keep up. She was young and clearly lacked experience, especially since Elise demanded meals that could have passed for offerings from five-star restaurants. Elise also hired two kitchen helpers, which Mo hadn’t needed, so things had definitely changed.
All of the former wives and their families came and went as if they still lived there. I hoped they didn’t see Elise’s pursed lips and stony glare every time they arrived. When Carl the Third and his family visited, I kept a particular eye out for Eric, knowing that with the doc’s death, the grief-stricken young man was deprived of his grandfather’s protection.
T
he doc’s friends and colleagues from medical school and his years practicing medicine mingled with family members, talking about what a good man and doctor he’d been. Inevitably, the conversation turned to how he’d died and whether anyone had been arrested. To my dismay, Mo’s name came up far too often. Everyone seemed to assume that, because her knife had been confirmed as the murder weapon and because she was missing, she’d killed Doctor Wentworth.
At those times, I did my best to make myself scarce. I wasn’t sure I could conceal my feelings when talk turned to Mo’s presumed guilt. With every passing day, I was more certain that whoever killed him had also hurt her. So I kept my head down and did my work and was glad to escape at the end of the day.
On one of those days, we finished mopping the floors in the kitchen and bathrooms, and Lupe left for home. I checked the schedule yet again, though these days, it was always the same. Long days of keeping the guests happy and doing all I could to avoid provoking Elise. No wonder I was exhausted.
“Annie?” The new cook came around the corner from the kitchen. “You okay?”
“As much as I can be. Did you know Doctor Wentworth?”
“No, sorry. I moved here for the job, but I heard what happened. How awful for all of you. I’ve heard he was very kind.”
“He was. And I suppose you know that the previous chef and I were friends?
She looked thoughtful for a moment. To my surprise, she said, “I hope they’re wrong about her. From what I’ve heard, she was a good person.”
“She is,” I said, emphasizing the present tense. “She’s a great person. She’s also a good friend and I’m worried something bad has happened to her.” I read the schedule board again, unwilling to look into the eyes of the sympathetic young woman. Tears threatened to well up.
To my relief, she changed the subject. “I still haven’t quite adjusted to Mrs. Wentworth’s menu preferences, so I have a ton of food left from lunch. I don’t want it to go to waste. Want to take something home for dinner?”
A tear rolled down my face. Mo almost always sent me home with some of her excellent cooking. I wiped the tear away and on impulse hugged the new cook.
“Thank you, that would be nice,” I said.
While I stood by the schedule board for another minute, waiting for her to bring me her dinner offering, my gaze turned to the back door. I looked at it for a long moment, remembering the morning I’d found it standing open to the cold December air.
Without thinking, I went to the door, opened it, and stepped outside. I hadn’t put my jacket on yet, but the cool breeze was refreshing. I walked down to the grass and stood where I’d found the doctor’s body. No traces were left to show that a man died there. Winter rain had washed away the blood, and the lawn, always so carefully tended, showed no evidence of having been disturbed.
The lack of any sign of the doctor’s passing bothered me. Surely a person’s death, especially a violent death, should leave an impression.
I shivered in the cold air and turned to go back inside, but something caught my eye.
Above and to the left of the door, tucked back under the eaves in a corner and aimed toward the back door and the adjacent yard, was a security camera.
I’d seen other cameras on the house. Two out front were positioned to show the driveway and the gate near the road, and another aimed at the front door. Cameras on each side of the house covered the lower floor windows. None of the them were monitored. I’d only seen a recording checked once before, when the gardener had reported damage to one of his flower beds. Elise had suspected vandalism and demanded an investigation. She’d been proved right in one respect: a marauding deer had made a meal of the recently blooming nasturtiums. Mo and I had thought the whole episode was hilarious.
Surely the police would have asked if there were security cameras and an alarm system here. After all, the Wentworths were wealthy by anyone’s standards. Their large home sat on several acres of land with the trees and grounds well-tended, including a copse of apple trees not far from the back door, all bare now in the winter wind. But this camera, tucked as it was into a dark corner, would be easy to miss.
I dismissed my worried thoughts. Charbonneau might have a small police department, but the detective was an experienced investigator. I had no reason to doubt him.
“Annie? Aren’t you cold?” The cook stood in the doorway, a concerned expression on her face. She held up an insulated bag, the same one Mo had handed to me many times. “Here’s something for your dinner and a muffin for tomorrow morning. Come back inside. If you like, I’ll make you some coffee for the road.”
The next few days followed the same pattern. Guests in, guests out, Elise murmuring thanks for the sympathy and condolences she received. And of course, the constant speculation about why the chef, such a lovely person, they all said, would do such a terrible thing. Lupe and I could only glance at each other in disbelief and do our jobs.
I arrived home one night physically tired from another long day on my feet and emotionally exhausted from worrying about Mo and wondering who had killed the doc. I took a long shower and settled down in front of the television with my dinner and my cat and pulled my lap blanket over my legs. Of course, the phone rang.
“Go away,” I mumbled at it through a bite of mashed potatoes. “Whatever it is, I’m not interested.”
Curiosity got the better of me and I checked the screen.
“Hell and damnation.” I jabbed the button on the phone and said the first thing that came to mind. “What do you want? Don’t you know it’s dinner time?”
There was a short pause. “I’m sorry, should I call back tomorrow?”
I let myself enjoy the moment. I didn’t often get to embarrass a cop, and this one was trying to pin a murder on my friend.
“No, it’s okay, Dean. I’m just really tired. What’s up? Did you find Mo?”
“Sorry, no. Not her car, either. I’m sorry to have to say it, but all evidence points to her killing the doctor and leaving town.”
“Not possible.” I shook my head as if he could see me. “I don’t know how to convince you that you’re wrong, but you are. My cat is about to eat my dinner, so if you didn’t find her, why did you call?”
“Would you have time to come in to see me sometime in the next day or two? I need to talk with you about something.”
“Another visit to the library?” I took a big bite of mashed potatoes.
He actually laughed a little. “You didn’t like the ambiance? Personally, I think it has all the charm of an unfinished basement, but if you like it . . .”
The next morning, I met Dean at the reception desk of the Charbonneau Police Department. I was relieved when he told me the library was already in use and we’d talk in his office. When we passed the interrogation room, I heard the murmur of voices. On our way down the hall, Dean paused long enough to grab two bottles of water from a refrigerator.
His office wasn’t much of an improvement, though. Maybe eight feet square, it was at the corner of the building. The outer two walls were almost entirely taken up by windows. The open feel the windows provided was the room’s only good point. A battered gray metal desk occupied most of the floor space, and a bank of file cabinets took up one wall. The wall behind the desk was bare of paint where the top of the chair had scarred it over the years.
Dean gestured for me to settle into the chair beside his desk. He sat behind the desk and leaned back, thumping his head on the wall. He sat forward again, looking chagrined.
I tried not to smile when he rubbed the back of his head. “How many times a day do you do that?”
“More times than I care to admit. Being six-six in a tiny room isn’t nearly as much fun as you’d think.”
I opened the water bottle he’d given me and waited.
After a moment, he cleared his throat. “Okay, I know you don’t think that Maureen killed the doctor—”
“I know she didn’t.”
“—but I have to investig
ate every possibility and follow the evidence.”
I waited.
He sat back again, careful to avoid the wall. “How much do you know about her family?”
“Not a lot. She doesn’t talk about them much.” I thought for a moment. “She’s been estranged from her parents for a long time. They’re religious, and when she came out to them, they abandoned her, kicked her out of the house, when she was maybe fifteen? Or sixteen? I’m not sure.”
Concerned, Dean sat forward and leaned his elbows on the desk. “Where did she go? Another family member? Grandparents?”
“She never said, but I had the impression she was on the streets for a while. Somehow, she found a way to go to culinary school, but I don’t know how. Anyway, she said something once about a brother, I think.” Thinking, I looked down at my hands for a moment and then met Dean’s eyes. “That’s about all I know. She’s a pretty private person in a lot of ways.”
He made a few notes. “What about her friends? Do you know any of them?”
“I think most of her friends live in Portland.” I gave him the few names I knew. “I don’t have any of their addresses, but from what Mo’s said in the past about where they get together, they must be in the Sellwood or Hollywood areas, maybe Mount Tabor.”
He made another note as he muttered, “That covers a lot of territory east of the river.”
“I know, sorry.”
“We’ll figure it out. Do you know anything about her finances, whether she has any problems with money?”
“No. She lives at the Wentworths’ and she drives a reasonably decent car, but nothing fancy. I suspect Doctor Wentworth paid her well. He was generous with all of us. But it wasn’t something we talked about. Why do you ask?”
He paused for a moment. “Just gathering information.”
But I had a feeling there was more to his inquiries. “You could have asked me these questions on the phone last night. What do you really want?”
“You don’t miss much, do you?” He picked up a pencil and tapped the eraser end on the desk until I thought I’d have to take it away from him. The look on his face told me he was struggling with a decision. I let him struggle. Far be it from me to interfere with deep thought.