The Root of All Evil

by Shannon VanBergen

  “I don’t know,” she said, rubbing my back. “I think you need to take time and figure that out.”

  “Now you sound like my mother,” I said, lifting my head to look at her.

  “Well, mothers are pretty wise. As a matter of fact, the only thing wiser is a grandmother.”

  Grandma Dean smiled.

  “Is there anything wiser than a grandmother?” I asked.

  “God,” she replied. “And that’s about it.”

  * * *

  Thursday came quickly. Grandma Dean had continued to sneak out at night with the Grannies, but always came back emptyhanded.

  With Kitty Purry’s approval, we were out the door and headed to Holstein and Brachs Funeral Home. Grandma Dean had done my hair and makeup, and I looked more like I was going to prom than a funeral. Her look was understated and demure. Mine was more like nineties prom queen. It wasn’t entirely her fault. Thanks to the high heat and humidity, my hair was resisting even her strongest concoctions.

  “Good Lord, Baby Jesus, and Mother Mary,” Hattie said when she saw me get out of Grandma’s car at the funeral home. “You look like you just stepped out of the nineties. Where’s your Zima?” I had no idea what Zima was, but Grandma Dean and Irene laughed.

  “Oh, be nice to her,” Grandma Dean said. “It’s the best we could do with that hair. Once it was like that, I figured we might as well finish off the look.”

  “I just love funerals,” Hattie said as we walked up to the building. “They make me feel so alive.”

  “I’m so thankful this one is going to be a closed casket. I think they learned their lesson with Simon Davidson. The poor guy was run over with a garbage truck. No amount of makeup was going to fix that up. I don’t care if your last job was doing makeup for Tammy Faye Bakker.” Irene opened the door for us and we walked in.

  “Ugh,” Hattie said immediately. “They changed the scent of their carpet deodorizer.”

  Grandma Dean and Irene sniffed. “They sure did,” Grandma said, signing her name in the register. “I bet Mr. Holstein will get several complaints about that.”

  There was a surprisingly large turnout for Artie Henson’s funeral. I scanned the room for anyone that I might know but was disappointed. I hadn’t talked to Joe since our coffee date, but I was hoping that he might stop by.

  I stood off to the side while Grandma mingled. The low hum of voices and soft music nearly put me to sleep and I found myself struggling to keep my eyes open. Then all the sudden, I got that strange feeling again like someone was watching me. I cautiously opened my eyes and looked around. There, in the opposite corner of the room, was the guy I had caught staring at me two different times downtown.

  I made eye contact with him and he got clearly flustered and walked away. I decided to find out who this guy was. I walked up to Grandma Dean, who was having a discussion with a couple who I assumed to be husband and wife.

  “Oh, here she is,” Grandma Dean said when she saw me. “Greg, Betsy, this is my daughter’s daughter, Nikki.”

  I inwardly rolled my eyes. She never called me her granddaughter in public because she said it made her sound old. Also, I was banned from calling her Grandma in public. She had a list of names I could use instead, but I refused to call her Coco, Peaches, or Mimmy. So usually, if I remembered, I would call her by her first name, Geraldine.

  “Hello,” I said, smiling at Greg and Betsy. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Greg here is on the city council and was just telling me about some exciting things happening in our town.”

  “Oh, that’s great. Hey, umm, can I talk to you for a minute in private?”

  Grandma excused herself and walked with me out of the room. “Thank you so much for rescuing me,” she said when we were out of earshot. “That man is absolutely dreadful. He has no idea what’s actually good for this town.”

  We walked into the bathroom and I did a quick search under the stalls. We were alone. “Grandma, I caught some guy staring at me the other day when I was working in the shop and then I just saw him here and caught him watching me too.”

  “Oh, it’s probably nothing,” Grandma said, applying lipstick. “You’re worrying over nothing.”

  “Grandma, we’re at a funeral for a guy who was murdered. I think we should take everything a little more seriously.”

  “Do you know what I’m worried about?” Grandma Dean asked, looking at me in the mirror. “Greta and Virginia. They aren’t here yet. Come on. Let’s go see if we can find them.”

  With that, our conversation was over and she was pulling me out the door. Hattie and Irene met us right outside the bathroom with serious expressions.

  “What’s wrong?” Grandma asked.

  “Virginia and Greta just got here. They said they wanted to show us something but we have to go now before it gets too dark.” We started heading to the door and as we walked through the foyer, I saw my little stalker again.

  I pulled on Grandma’s arm. “Grandma, that’s him. That’s the guy that keeps staring at me!”

  She looked in the direction I was nodding and smiled. “Oh, that’s Les. He’s harmless.”

  I had heard that one before but had quickly learned that “harmless” usually meant they had a secret we hadn’t learned yet.

  “Come on,” Grandma said. “We can talk about Les later.”

  With that, we were heading out of the funeral home and piling into Virginia’s SUV.

  “My goodness. It has to be a hundred degrees in this car,” Irene said as she climbed in. “I get so sick of this heat. One of these days, I’m going to move to Alaska.”

  The other Grannies agreed as we buckled ourselves in. We pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the main road in front of the funeral home.

  “What’s that?” Greta asked, leaning forward and squinting, still fanning herself.

  At first, I didn’t see what she was talking about, but as we got closer, I gasped. There was a man lying face first on the sidewalk. We let out a scream in unison, then jumped out of the vehicle when Virginia pulled over.

  “Stand back! I know what to do,” Hattie yelled. “I’ve seen all fourteen seasons of Grey’s Anatomy!”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Grandma said, pushing her aside. “The man needs CPR, not a tracheotomy!”

  Grandma did CPR while Irene called 911. Within minutes, a fire truck arrived followed by an ambulance. I was happy to see Joe get out. He and a paramedic rushed over to the man, and we all stood back while they got to work. Soon the poor guy was loaded onto a stretcher and disappeared into the back of the ambulance.

  “Looks like it was just heatstroke,” Joe said to the Grannies as he walked over to us. “That was quick thinking, Geraldine.” She smiled with pride and the Grannies climbed into the SUV.

  “I’m glad Hattie didn’t do a trach on that guy like she did on the last one,” Joe said to me, laughing.

  “Oh my gosh! She actually did that?”

  “Yep, but she’s getting pretty good at it. Much better than she was a few years ago when she first tried it.”

  I cringed.

  “Come on!” Irene yelled at me through the window. “We’re losing daylight!”

  “Sorry,” I said to Joe. “We’re on official business. I’ll call you later.”

  He winked at me and I climbed in the vehicle before Virginia squealed her tires and drove away. My stomach turned a little, not knowing what we were headed into. Before, I couldn’t wait to be included in one of the Grannie’s adventures, but now, as we drove down Cranston Boulevard at breakneck speed, I was thinking maybe I wasn’t cut out for this.

  Chapter 5

  Across the street from Pastrami Pete’s was a gas station. Virginia turned off the main road and slowly drove past it. “We’ve been searching this area for where the shooter might have been,” Virginia said, tapping on the window toward the side of the gas station. “The police say he was shot from somewhere across the street, though they haven’t been able to pi
npoint exactly where.”

  “We’ve canvassed this whole area,” Grandma said, leaning toward Virginia’s side of the car to peer out her window.

  “Yes, quite thoroughly, but today, on the way to the funeral home, Greta and I decided to take one more look. We decided this time to walk a little further down the street.”

  Virginia pulled the vehicle over on the side of the road in front of a house that was for sale. The house appeared empty and it looked like the lawn hadn’t been mowed in weeks. The bushes that snaked the front of the house were unruly, as were the cluster of bushes by the sidewalk.

  The women got out of the car and stood in front of the house.

  “You think someone stood this far away from Pastrami Pete’s and managed to hit his target?” I squinted, trying to make out the people sitting on the patio of the restaurant nearly a block away.

  “Oh please,” Hattie said. “I could make that shot with my eyes closed.”

  Irene huffed, acting like she was offended by my statement. “I think we all could.”

  “Well, we know for a fact he was here.” Virginia pointed to the bushes, leading us around them and into the yard. “Look, from this side you can see an area in the middle there where the branches are broken. That would be the perfect spot for someone to crouch down and hide. He…or she…could’ve shot through the bushes and hit Artie down the street.”

  “I’m not sure an impression in the bushes proves the shooter was sitting here,” I commented, though the space was big enough for a person, as long as they weren’t too big, to sit and be hidden.

  “Look here,” Greta said, grabbing a stick from the yard and pulling back the bushes.

  The ladies gasped.

  “Well, that definitely proves it.” Grandma bent over to look at the shiny object—a bullet casing.

  “That’s not all. Look at this.” Greta moved the stick and pulled back another area of the bushes. Everyone leaned in to get a closer look.

  “What is that?” I asked, leaning over the bushes and squinting.

  “It’s a business card and what looks like a small piece of paper folded up.” Virginia pulled out her phone. “We didn’t want to touch it in case there were prints on it, most likely those things fell out of the shooter’s pocket while he was crouched down in here, so I took a picture of it with my phone. If you look…” Virginia moved her fingers across the screen, zooming in on the card. “You can see clearly the company name on the card.”

  “That’s interesting,” Grandma said when the phone got around to her. “We need to let the police know what you found.” Grandma handed the phone back to Virginia and pulled out her own phone. “I’ll call Detective Owen. Virginia, why don’t you text Stan and tell him to stop by my apartment after the funeral. We’ll let him know what you found.”

  Within minutes, Detective Owen arrived at the scene. I stood back as the Grannies showed him their find. It wasn’t long before more officers arrived, taping off the area and taking pictures of the bushes.

  “I don’t know how your grandmother does it.” I spun around to see Detective Owen standing behind me.

  I laughed. “Yeah, she’s pretty amazing. Her and her…card club.”

  This time, it was Owen who laughed. “That’s one heck of a card club.”

  For some reason, I felt nervous standing in front him, guilty almost. Did he just have that effect on everyone or was I actually guilty of something? I tried not to notice how good he smelled, or admire his thick hair or his beautiful blue eyes. I was doing it again, spiraling into some kind of infatuation. Then I remembered how he tried to convict Grandma Dean when her shop burned down a few weeks before and I snapped out of it.

  “Well, I better get back over there,” Detective Owen said. “I just thought I’d come over here and say hi.”

  “Hi,” I said lamely.

  He laughed again and turned and walked away, back toward the bushes and all the secrets they held.

  Grandma and the Grannies yelled from the sidewalk. “Come on, we’re leaving!”

  I stole one last glance at Detective Owen, who was now crouched beside the bushes, pointing at something. Even if I did have feelings for him, I had a feeling they wouldn’t be returned. A serious guy like that wouldn’t see anything interesting about an unserious girl like me.

  * * *

  By the time we picked up Grandma’s car at the funeral home and made it back to her house, it was nearly nine o’clock. Grandma Dean looked through her cabinets trying to find some decaffeinated tea.

  “I thought I had some in here somewhere.” She stood on her tiptoes and checked another shelf. She pulled out a box of Earl Gray and put it on the counter next to the green tea. “It’s too late in the evening to drink this stuff.” I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. It wasn’t not like it was that late.

  There was a knock on the door and the Grannies let themselves in. Irene and Hattie held cup carriers with tall cardboard cups sticking out of the top. “We picked up some hot tea on the way here. We decided on herbal peach since it’s so late.” Irene handed out the cups. “It’s one of the few decaffeinated teas Steamin’ Beans carries.” Grandma threw the carriers in the recycling bin and we all sipped our tea. I wasn’t a huge fan of hot tea, but it was pretty good.

  “This one here is for Stan,” Irene said, sitting down. “I wonder how he’s doing with all of this. I haven’t talked to him since Artie died. He hasn’t taken a single one of my calls.”

  Greta sipped her tea. “Virginia and I paid him a visit the day after the accident and he was really upset and said he wanted to be alone.”

  Hattie looked around the room, then put her cup down with force. “Well, if the rest of you aren’t going to say it, I will. Artie was a rotten human being and I could never figure out why him and Stan were friends to begin with.”

  “Hattie, please,” Grandma said in shock. “A man is dead. Let the poor guy be in the ground before you talk bad about him.”

  The other Grannies nodded in agreement. “Sorry,” Hattie said, looking shamed. “I just couldn’t stand the guy.”

  “Me either,” Irene whispered to her.

  “I couldn’t either,” Greta added under her breath.

  “None of us could stand him, God rest his soul,” Grandma said. “But him and Stan were friends, so obviously, Stan saw something in him we didn’t.”

  “I don’t understand it,” I admitted. “For someone with no friends or family, there were a lot of people at his funeral.”

  “Nikki,” Irene said seriously. “People don’t go to funerals because they like someone. They go so people will go to their funeral.”

  “That’s true.” Hattie nodded. “Remember Iris? She never went to a single funeral and how many people were at hers?”

  “Twenty, tops,” Irene said indignantly. “Of course, we were there because we’re good people.”

  “Yes, we are,” Grandma Dean agreed. “Now, do any of you have any theories we should discuss before Stan gets here?”

  Everyone was quiet so I spoke up. “What about that Les guy?”

  “He didn’t do it,” Grandma said, cutting the conversation short.

  “Les? Les who?” Hattie asked.

  “Les…Sam and Aria’s son.”

  “Oh, he didn’t do it.” Hattie said.

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked. “I think he’s been stalking me lately! He always seems to be around.”

  “It’s always the quiet ones,” Greta interjected. Her comment was met with dirty looks from the Grannies. “But he didn’t do it,” she said quickly.

  “Honey, he probably likes you. He’s a quiet fellow and he probably doesn’t know how to express himself.” Irene looked over her cup. “You have a thing with men, right? Maybe you’ve just pulled him into your web accidentally. Even spiders catch bugs they don’t want.”

  Ouch.

  “She’s not a spider,” Grandma scolded. “That’s my daughter’s daughter you’re talking to. True,
she’s made some very ill choices when it comes to men, and yes, she continues to make mistakes here…” Grandma Dean looked at me with pity. “I really don’t know where else to go from here.”

  “Thanks for trying,” I mumbled, taking a sip of my tea. Grandma patted my arm.

  There was a knock on the door and all the Grannies jumped in unison and walked to the door. “It must be Stan!” Hattie reached up and fluffed her hair.

  Grandma Dean opened the door and a weary Stan walked inside. “We got you some tea,” Hattie said, ushering him to sit next to her.

  “Thanks,” he said with his head down. “I’m not really hungry.”

  “Thirsty,” Hattie corrected.

  Stan looked up and finally paid attention to what Hattie was saying. “Oh, yeah, sorry. I’m not thirsty.”

  To Hattie’s disappointment, he took a seat by Grandma. Everyone had to shuffle down a seat to make room for him.

  Virginia patted him gently on the back. “How are you holding up?”

  Stan sighed. “I just feel so bad. I know a lot of people didn’t like Artie, but still, to kill him? In broad daylight? And no one even knows who did it.” He looked up hopefully. “Do you ladies know who did it?” Did you hear something?”

  “Virginia and Greta found something tonight,” Grandma informed him. “They’ve been tirelessly looking for clues and we think they found one.”

  “We found the bullet casing,” Greta said proudly. “And a business card.”

  Stan didn’t look impressed.

  “It’s a start,” Grandma reassured him. “At least we know where the shooter took his shots and the police are looking for other evidence right now.”

  Stan hung his head again.

  “Can you tell us anything that might be helpful? Did he have any enemies…” Grandma stopped quickly and her face turned red.

  Hattie laughed and said under her breath, “That’s like asking if the Pope’s classic.”

  “I think you mean Catholic,” Irene corrected.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s classic…that’s like asking if the Pope’s classic…yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s right.”