Dearly Departed

by Tristi Pinkston

  “What? Oh, yes, please.” The general came out of his abstraction and accepted a piece of cake.

  Soon everyone was diverted from the previous conversation—everyone except Ida Mae. She wondered what else Hattie had been getting ready to say, but Ida Mae couldn’t decide how to bring it up. She’d just have to figure out another way to go about it.

  “The police still aren’t investigating the care center in Dr. Brent’s death,” Kevin reported, leaning on the wall of Eden’s cubicle. “They haven’t found any evidence to suggest there’s a connection.”

  “They haven’t looked into it at all?” Eden asked. “That’s just stupid.”

  “Okay, let me clarify,” Kevin said. “They did ask a few questions, but they didn’t discover anything they felt warranted further investigation.”

  Eden pushed back her chair and looked up at him. “How do you get all this information out of the police? Are you a detective masquerading as a reporter?”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “No, nothing like that. See, Lieutenant Dalton thinks I’m nosy. He and I have a deal—he’ll give me the information I need as long as I stay out of his way. Unless, of course, that information is classified or something.”

  “So being nosy has its advantages.”

  “You could say that.”

  Eden tapped her lips with a pencil. “Have you thought about doing a follow-up piece on the death of Nancy Brent? The one you did wasn’t very in-depth.”

  “Yeah, I know. It wasn’t my most shining moment. But I did the best I could.”

  “I didn’t mean to be critical,” Eden began, but Kevin raised his hand.

  “I know what you mean,” he said. “And yes, I would like to do a follow-up, but I can’t do that if I don’t have any new information.”

  “Then, what do you say we go get some new information?” Eden suggested.

  “Go get it? Just that easy?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  He shook his head. “You’re on. When?”

  Eden looked at her watch. “Let’s go after work. I think I can finish this stack up right at five.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you then.”

  Eden pulled up the next e-mail and read it while trying to take her mind off Kevin. He seemed to get cuter every day, and she found that particularly annoying.

  She quickly read through the obituary as submitted by one Herman Jones, changed a “hers” to “her,” and forwarded it to the typesetting department. Some days, it was just a simple as that. Other days . . . other days saw her slinking through bushes wearing a blonde wig.

  11

  Arlette pushed Ida Mae’s wheelchair off the elevator and they made their way to Hattie’s room. The more active residents spent most of their time in the common area and craft room, but some of them also came to their bedrooms for a mid-afternoon rest. Ida Mae figured that would be the best place to find Hattie, and she was right.

  “Please, come in.” Hattie motioned for Ida Mae and Arlette to enter.

  “Hattie, this is my sister Arlette,” Ida Mae said as they crossed the carpet.

  “How nice to have family nearby,” Hattie said warmly. “Have a seat, Arlette. Ida Mae, I’d offer you one, but it looks like you brought your own.”

  “I did.” Ida Mae patted the arm of her chair. She was nearly used to it now, although it did annoy her to have to ask to be pushed. If she were ever permanently laid up in one of these places, she’d get a motorized chair—with a horn on the front.

  “What brings you by?” Hattie asked.

  “To be honest, I’m here to get more information about Beverly,” Ida Mae said.

  “What kind of information?”

  Ida Mae threw out some questions she thought any concerned friend would ask, yet she felt herself floundering under Hattie’s curious gaze.

  “Just whatever you can tell me,” she concluded, feeling as though she’d lost her edge. Maybe her detective skills had slipped along with her feet. She should have done something on the side to keep her instincts sharp—maybe joined the police force. After all, the scriptures say if you don’t use your talents, you’ll lose them.

  Hattie pursed her lips slightly, observing Ida Mae with eyes as bright as buttons. “Why do I get the feeling you’re not exactly who you say you are?”

  Ida Mae glanced at Arlette. Eden was right—Hattie was very shrewd. Ida Mae took a deep breath, wondering what to say. Finally she decided to just go for it.

  “You’re right, Hattie,” she said, noting the spark of interest that filled the other woman’s eyes. “You see, I’m here on behalf of Beverly’s daughter. She feels her mother died under suspicious circumstances, and I’m just trying to get to the bottom of things.”

  “You’re a detective?” Hattie asked.

  Ida Mae felt her cheeks turn pink. “Well, not a detective, really.”

  “But we have solved crimes,” Arlette inserted. “Well, not a lot of crimes—”

  “But more than your average person,” Ida Mae finished.

  Hattie nodded. “I don’t know if I can be of much use, but I’d like to help. And I know one other person who would be a good ally.”

  “Who’s that?” Ida Mae asked.

  “George has always fancied himself an amateur sleuth.”

  Ida Mae stifled a laugh. She couldn’t picture George as Sherlock Holmes.

  “He’s really very smart,” Hattie assured her, “and I trust him completely. I’ve known him for a while now.”

  “I guess we could ask for his help as well,” Ida Mae said.

  “I’ll give him a call.” Hattie reached out for her phone, and Arlette took the opportunity to speak in Ida Mae’s ear.

  “You haven’t even been here twenty-four hours, and you’ve already blown your cover to two people! Are you sure you can trust them?”

  “I think I can,” Ida Mae said, wishing she could be sure. For a moment, she had a mental picture of Hattie and George creeping down the hallway to Beverly’s room, murder on their minds, but even if they did manage to wheel themselves, they’d be so out of breath by the time they got there, they wouldn’t be able to carry out the deed. Maybe they took turns pushing each other. Perhaps they weren’t confined to their chairs at all and were just pretending. Regardless of the scenario, Ida Mae couldn’t believe it was so. “Yes, I’m pretty sure I can.”

  Arlette pressed her lips together in her very Arlette way. “All right,” she said, her tone betraying her displeasure. “But this is your responsibility.”

  Hattie turned back to them. “George will be here in a few minutes. Let’s save the details so we can all hear them together.”

  “You need to do what?”

  “I have to go water some plants before we head out,” Eden explained.

  “Plants.”

  “Yeah, you know, they’re green and they live in pots. They need water—they can’t go over to the sink and get it for themselves.”

  “Oh, you’re so clever.” Kevin climbed into the passenger seat of Eden’s Bug. “Why are we going to water some plants?”

  “I just told you. They can’t get over to the sink—”

  Kevin reached out and placed a finger on Eden’s lips. He studied her eyes for a moment, then leaned in and kissed her gently. She could have imagined it—in fact, that was the most likely explanation—but she could swear she felt a section of her brain explode.

  “Now,” he whispered, “whose plants are we going to water?”

  “Her name is Angela,” Eden whispered back.

  “Okay. Let’s go to Angela’s.”

  Eden was more than a little rattled as she pulled her car onto the road. She couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss, wondering why he’d done it, wondering why she’d reacted the way she had. Kevin started a nice, easy conversation as they made their way over to Angela’s house and while Eden watered the plants, and she was able to keep up her end with an occasional “uh-huh” and “yeah,” which was probably a good thing because she w
asn’t sure she could have managed anything more intelligent.

  “Eden,” he asked as they walked back out to her car, “do you need a loan?”

  “What?”

  “You know, a loan. Money. Given to you with the understanding that you’ll pay it back.”

  “No, I’m okay. Why do you ask?”

  “The paper, and delivering Chinese, and now plant-watering?”

  “Oh, that.” Eden tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m a little on the lean side, but I’m afloat. You know how it is—it takes a while to get the foundation laid for a career.”

  “Are you hoping your book will sell and you’ll be able to make a living off your writing?”

  “Well, of course I’d like that, but I’m not holding out for something that wispy,” she told him, noting the look of concern on his face. “I’d love to be the next Mary Higgins Clark or Sue Grafton, but I realize it might not happen.” But why not? she asked herself.

  “Good,” Kevin said. “I just don’t want you to be disappointed.”

  “I don’t think I will be. I’m a good writer, and my story happens to be pretty phenomenal.”

  “I’m sure it is.” Eden heard that tone creeping into his voice—the one people use when they’re humoring you.

  “I’ll e-mail you over a copy tonight,” she said. “You’ll just have to see for yourself.”

  He raised a hand in a conciliatory gesture. “Okay. And I’ll be happy to read it.”

  They drove out to Dr. Brent’s neighborhood, and Eden noticed again that all the houses were separated by trees. In the heat of the summer, the leaves were lush and thick, and it was hard to see from one property to the next. The first neighbor said as much when they talked to her.

  “I really can’t see Nancy’s yard from mine,” the woman explained. “Those trees block out almost everything that goes on next door. Of course, that was a huge selling point for me. I’ve never wanted to live someplace where the neighbors knew what I was up to before I did.”

  The neighbor on the other side was just as unhelpful. “No, sorry,” he said. “I was home that day, but I didn’t see anything. No strange cars, nothing. It must have been somebody wandering by on foot.”

  “But you didn’t see anyone walking along the road, either?” Eden asked.

  The man scratched his chin. “Can’t say as I did. This is a pretty secluded road—you have to either live here or close by in order to go for a stroll on it.”

  The house across the street from Dr. Brent’s stood silent. Kevin rang the bell a second time, but after a few long moments, they decided to try again later.

  “No one saw a car. No one saw a pedestrian. No one saw anything.” Eden kicked a piece of gravel as they walked back to her car. “How could someone have come in here, killed Dr. Brent, and slipped away without anyone noticing?”

  “I don’t know, but it looks like that’s what happened.” They climbed in the car and were on their way before Kevin added, “Maybe what they did see was so commonplace they didn’t recognize it as murder.”

  “Like the mail truck?” Eden suggested.

  “The mail truck, or a vehicle they’d seen several times before,” Kevin said. “Sometimes when we see the same thing over and over, we don’t even register it when we see it again.”

  Eden made a left-hand turn while she thought about it. “Did Dr. Brent have a run-in with the mailman or the UPS man? Was the Avon lady particularly hard up for sales this month?”

  “Someone must have seen something. It’s just a matter of finding out what.” Kevin looked around, seeming to notice where they were for the first time. “Where are we going?”

  “To meet Grandma and Tansy. They’ll have news to report.”

  Eden pulled her car into the parking lot of a restaurant just down the street from Shady Aspens, and she and Kevin walked in to see Tansy and Arlette already there.

  “It’s been an interesting day,” Arlette said without preamble. “I think Ida Mae’s lost her mind, but we’ve got a whole branch of Secret Sisters working out of Shady Aspens.”

  “Hattie?” Eden guessed.

  Arlette nodded. “And George.”

  “Who’s George?”

  “Think Maxwell Smart, about a hundred and fifty years old.”

  They took their seats, and Arlette filled them in on Ida Mae’s spontaneous meeting in Hattie’s room.

  “Is she sure she can trust George?” Eden asked, not sure how much damage an elderly man could really do, but not in the mood to find out.

  “She feels she can, so I guess we have to respect that,” Arlette said.

  “I think we need to ask Peggy a few more questions,” Eden said after studying the menu for a minute. “She was awfully vague when we spoke before. Of course, it was right after her mother’s funeral, so I’m sure she was upset and tired, but I need to get some specific information out of her.”

  They went their separate ways after dinner, Kevin saying he could walk from there, and Tansy heading back to Omni.

  “I’ll see you at the apartment,” Eden said to her grandmother. They drove in tandem most of the way, only becoming separated when a traffic light changed. Eden made it home first and was just taking off her shoes when Arlette burst in, visibly shaken.

  “I think someone followed us here,” she said.

  12

  Ida Mae, Tansy, Arlette, and Eden hunkered down in Ida Mae’s room, sheets of paper with all their gathered information spread out on the bed. Eden reported no news yet on the new benefactor of the will; Beverly’s son Brent, the executor, had been called away on urgent business and they hadn’t held the reading yet.

  “George opened up a little after he learned why we were here,” Ida Mae said. “It turns out that he spoke with Beverly the night before she died.”

  Eden couldn’t wait to meet this George person.

  “He said she was rambling, a little incoherent, and she sounded agitated. She kept talking about the box springs in her bed.”

  “Bed bugs?” Eden suggested.

  “I doubt it. This place is spotless. Well, don’t look at my dresser right now, but the rest of the place is spotless.”

  Of course, Eden’s eyes flicked over to the dresser, but she didn’t notice anything particularly terrible. She certainly wasn’t one to speak—her own apartment was completely trashed. She knew her grandmother would never believe her, but she was convinced the cat got out of his cage and dirtied the dishes while the humans were gone. It was the only explanation.

  “So, Beverly tells her daughter that someone’s out to get her. She tells George there’s something wrong with her box springs.” Eden thought for a minute. “A housekeeping complaint and a paranoia complex? Why don’t those seem connected?”

  “Probably because they’re not,” Ida Mae said.

  “Or maybe Beverly thought her box springs were out to get her,” Tansy suggested.

  “Most likely, she had a couple of things on her mind,” Eden said. “But why would she tell George about her box springs, and not the housekeeping staff?”

  “We don’t know that she didn’t,” Ida Mae pointed out. “George didn’t say if she’d lodged a complaint.”

  Eden grabbed a pen and made a note. “Okay, let’s talk to the housekeeping staff and see if she mentioned anything. Grandma, let’s make that your job. Maybe you could pretend there’s something wrong with Ida Mae’s bed and ask if that’s a common problem.”

  Arlette nodded. “I’ll do that this afternoon.”

  “Now, getting back to this statement that she thought someone was out to get her.” Eden thought for a minute. “I’m having lunch with Peggy in an hour. I’ll see if I can get more information out of her. If we even had a little more to go on, it would sure be helpful.”

  “How are you and Kevin coming along with the Dr. Brent mystery?” Tansy asked.

  Eden sighed. “No one saw anything. Well, I can’t say that, exactly. The neighbors across the street weren’t home, s
o I couldn’t talk to them. But so far, we’re hitting a dead end, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

  “Speaking of Kevin, just what’s going on there?” Arlette asked. “He’s a nice-looking boy, and charming.”

  “I know he is.” Eden suddenly felt flustered. “And I’m not sure what’s going on. He’s a mystery, almost as much as the ones we’re trying to solve.”

  “I think he’s cute,” Tansy said.

  “Yeah, I do too.” Eden sighed. “But I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Well, moving on,” Ida Mae said abruptly. The older woman was visibly upset, but Eden sensed it wasn’t the best time to ask her about it. “Let’s get our assignments figured out,” Ida Mae finished.

  “I’m talking to Peggy,” Eden said.

  “I’m talking to housekeeping,” Arlette said.

  “I’ll talk to Dr. Greene.” Ida Mae looked thoughtful. “I wonder if he could shed any light on Beverly’s mental state right before she died.”

  “When do you meet with the medical doctor again, Ida Mae?” Tansy asked. “I’d like to know how you’re healing.”

  “Monday,” Ida Mae said. “Sometimes it’s nice, being waited on hand and foot, but it is getting tiring. And these casts weigh a ton.”

  Everyone nodded sympathetically, then Eden glanced at her grandmother. “Do you want to tell them, or should I?”

  “Tell us what?” Ida Mae asked.

  “You do it,” Arlette said.

  “Grandma believes someone followed us back to my apartment last night.”

  “Well, I could be mistaken,” Arlette said. “It was dark, and I’ve never felt completely confident driving after sunset.”

  “What did you see?” Ida Mae leaned forward.

  “There was a small car behind me, and it seemed to make several of the same turns I did. As I pulled up in front of Eden’s, it sped up and went around me.”

  “Did you see what color it was?” Ida Mae asked.

  “Oh, please don’t say it was a black Jaguar,” Tansy exclaimed. “That would just be creepy.”