Gin Mill Grill

by Marja McGraw

  I almost laughed, but looking at his stricken face, I changed my mind.

  “Sit down at the table and have some chicken soup with oyster crackers. I’ll get you an aspirin and some Vitamin C. I’ve got – “

  “Nevermind. Tell me what’s been going on this morning while I eat.”

  “Let’s see. Eloise brought home a dog for companionship and protection – and he’s big – and she thinks someone is watching her. Stanley went over some of Humin’s later notes and he thinks the cop had begun to figure out that something wasn’t right where Harley and Loretta were concerned. After all those years, he finally opened his eyes to the whole thing. He wanted to talk to the group from the speakeasy days. He – “

  “Eloise got a dog?”

  That’s what he took away from everything I told him?

  Chapter Twenty-five

  In all fairness, Pete was sick and probably didn’t take in everything I’d said.

  That was my story and I was sticking to it.

  He rubbed his forehead, apparently wishing he could rub his headache away. “Humin sure took his time figuring out that he could have been wrong about Harley.”

  Okay, so he’d actually been listening.

  “Did he write down the names of those he wanted to speak to?”

  “No, but we’re thinking it would have most likely been the same people we’re interested in,” I replied. “I think I’ll talk to Rusty and Estelle again. You need to stay home. I don’t want them exposed to whatever you have.”

  “Maybe you should take Felicity with you to talk to Rusty. He might open up if he’s got two beautiful women in the room.”

  Maybe he wasn’t as sick as I thought.

  “And take Stan when you speak to Estelle.”

  “You’re right, Pete. Sick or not, you’re managing to look at the best scenarios.”

  “I’m going back to bed,” he said, pushing his soup bowl away.

  “I’ll be downstairs making some phone calls. If you need anything, just holler.”

  Clem stood and began to follow him, but I called her back.

  She glanced at Bubba and apparently decided she’d rather have his company anyway.

  I didn’t have the information with me, so I called Stanley and asked him for the phone number for Rusty. He put Felicity on the phone and I asked if she’d go with me to see him. She readily agreed.

  “I’m anxious to meet the old buzzard. I can’t believe he’s still interested in women! I hope he doesn’t ask me to sit on his lap.”

  “You wouldn’t be as likely to crush his legs,” I said, remembering Pete’s sarcastic remark to me.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. Ask Stan if he’ll go with me to talk to Estelle.”

  She asked, and he agreed.

  “Is this something you want to do today?” my friend asked.

  “I’m thinking tomorrow. Today I’ll play Nurse Sandi for Pete.”

  She laughed and we hung up.

  I called the nursing home and spoke to Margaret.

  “Don’t you ever get a day off?” I asked.

  “Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to come back and speak to Estelle again. Maybe tomorrow? Is she up to it?”

  “She’s been hoping you’d come back. You really made her start thinking about old times and she’s been regaling me with stories about people like Water Boy and some brothers named Horace and Harley. Tomorrow would be fine, by the way. I wonder if the people she talks about were as colorful as she makes them sound.”

  “I have a feeling they were. Would ten tomorrow morning be okay?”

  “Perfect. That’s a good time of day for her.”

  I tried calling Marcus to ask about meeting with Rusty, but the call went straight to voicemail. Well, we were working on an old crime. If I couldn’t see the elderly man for a day or two, that was okay, too.

  Before I could give it any more thought, I heard Pete calling me from upstairs.

  “Saddi, cad you brig me bore tissues? Ad baybe a glass of juice?” His nose was obviously stuffy again.

  “Coming, dear.”

  I took him a new box of tissues and a glass of juice. Setting them down on the nightstand, I grabbed a tissue and held it over my nose and mouth. “Nothing personal, but I don’t want what you’ve got.”

  “I udderstad.” He grabbed a tissue and rolled over with his back to me.

  I hurried back downstairs and poured myself a glass of orange juice. It couldn’t hurt to ingest plenty of Vitamin C. I also made some strawberry Jello with bananas in it. Cold Jello would probably taste good to Pete.

  I guessed he was sleeping because he didn’t call down and ask for anything else. I snuck up once and felt his forehead – a little cooler, but not by much. I’d have to invest in a thermometer.

  The dogs were outside and Clem was blessedly quiet. I peeked out the window and saw both dogs lying under the oak tree, calmly licking their paws.

  Settling on my rocking chair, I picked up a book and began to read. Unfortunately, I couldn’t concentrate.

  I thought about Felicity wanting to work for us part-time. Somehow I felt like there was more to the story than just wanting to retire. Maybe she wanted extra time with Stanley. If there was more to the story, she’d tell me when the time was right.

  Stanley. He wanted to be called Stan, and I tried to honor that, but in my thoughts he was still Stanley. He wanted to be one of the boys. Just a regular guy. He even tried to speak like the other guys, but his formal speech still leaked through much of the time. He’d really endeared himself to us.

  I fell asleep in my rocker with these thoughts in mind, and awoke with a start when Pete called for water. Big mistake to fall asleep in the rocker. My neck was stiff.

  I sighed and took a glass of water upstairs to my poor, sickly husband. Maybe he was going to milk his cold as much as he could, although his requests hadn’t been over the top yet.

  Back downstairs, I checked to see if I’d missed a call from Marcus.

  Nothing.

  It was a long day.

  Glancing at the clock, I saw it was going on four o’clock. I could fill my time making dinner, and decided on macaroni and cheese. It would keep me busy for a while and it might taste good to my husband. I could remember my mother making it for me when I was sick. It was akin to comfort food, at least in my mind.

  Pete straggled into the kitchen and watched me cook.

  “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” I asked.

  “I cad odly sped so buch time sleepig.”

  “Okay.”

  While the dish baked, I decided to call Eloise.

  “How are things going there?” I asked.

  “Couldn’t be better.” She sounded quite cheerful.

  “Butch is settling in okay?”

  “Oh, yes. You’d think he’d been mine for years.”

  “And do you still feel like you’re being watched?” I asked.

  “I’ve been so busy with Butch that I haven’t even had time to think about it. Have you learned anything new?”

  “Bits and pieces,” I replied. “I’ll let you know when I have something substantial. I’m going to talk to Estelle again tomorrow, and if I can set it up, I’ll talk to Rusty again, too.”

  “I’d really like to meet both of them,” Eloise said, “but I guess that wouldn’t be a good idea right now, would it?”

  “Not right now. Besides, you’ll be too busy with Butch. It might cause problems if you left the house without him while everything is new to him.”

  “Good point.”

  We hung up with her promising to call me if anything happened. She assured me that with the dog there, she’d be fine.

  I sat down across the table from Pete. “I’m bored. I’d like to go back to the Gin Mill Grill and take another look in the back room. We could have missed something. And I’m anxious to talk to Estelle again. I wish she could go to the speakeasy with me. It mig
ht spark more memories.”

  “She ca’t.”

  Pete picked up a tissue and blew his nose.

  “Let me try that again. She can’t.” He still sounded very nasal, but at least he could pronounce words with an n and an m in them. “If the trip didn’t get her, the memories might.”

  “You’re right. It’s one thing to sit in the assisted living facility and talk about things, and it would be quite another to visit the scene of the crime, so to speak.”

  “My gut feeling after talking to her is that she’s not telling us everything. Maybe she needs to get to know us better. Well, since I’m not going, she needs to get to know you better.”

  “Somehow I think she might have opened up to you if I hadn’t been there,” I said. “I have a feeling she’s one of those women who likes men better than other women.”

  “So take a manly approach tomorrow.”

  “No, I’ll go with girl talk,” I said.

  We ate dinner after I fed the dogs. Pete seemed to appreciate the cold Jello. He ate the mac and cheese, but not with as much gusto as normal.

  He settled on his recliner while I did the dishes.

  I’d given up on hearing from Marcus. Glancing at the kitchen clock, I realized the long day wasn’t too far from an end. It was almost seven o’clock, and that’s when my cell phone rang.

  Caller ID said it was a private number.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Goldberg, this is Marcus Windsor.” His tone of voice was angry.

  I, of course, wondered what was going on.

  “How can I help you? And, please, call me Sandi.”

  “Mrs. Goldberg,” he repeated with emphasis, “I don’t know what you said to my grandfather after I left the room, but he was angry – so angry that he tried to get out of his wheelchair without waiting for help.”

  “I’m so sorry, but I didn’t – “

  “He fell and broke his hip and he’s in the hospital.”

  The blame was in his tone.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I could understand Marcus’ anger. After all, we’d informed his grandfather that two more people from his past had been murdered. That might make anyone angry. However, the information would have broken the hearts of most people.

  What was it about this that had made Rusty so angry? Maybe he had a good idea who’d killed them and he didn’t like what he knew.

  Like it or not, I needed to speak to Marcus again. Maybe he could get his grandfather to open up.

  Because of the fact that someone had broken into our home and that of Eloise, I felt like the past was becoming the present. They were becoming intertwined in some odd way.

  Pete sat in his chair, mindlessly channel surfing when he could have simply looked at the menu to see what was on.

  “I’ve got bad news,” I said, taking the remote from him.

  “So what’s new?”

  “Rusty is in the hospital. According to Marcus, he was very angry after we left. He tried to get out of his wheelchair without help and fell, breaking his hip.”

  Pete mulled that over for a moment. “What do you think he got so mad about?”

  “I have a hunch, but I’m not sure about it. I wonder if something I said triggered a memory and he has an idea of who the killer is – or was.”

  “That might trigger a temper tantrum.”

  “I’m not sure I’d call it a tantrum. I’ve got to get Marcus to calm down and help us,” I said.

  “Marcus is upset with us?” Pete didn’t really sound surprised. “Just because we gave the old man so much bad news?”

  His sarcasm was not lost on me. Neither was his mood and the fact that he was starting to sound stuffy again.

  “We wanted to question him. There wasn’t really a way to talk to him without filling him in.”

  “What’s next?” Pete asked.

  “I’m going to have to think about it. I’m supposed to talk to Estelle again tomorrow, and I want to take another look at the speakeasy. What would you think about—“

  He interrupted me with a snore, having drifted off in his chair.

  I turned on a spy series, hoping to at least temporarily distract myself. All it did was put me to sleep, too.

  I awoke around nine o’clock. After I shook Pete’s shoulder to wake him, we went to bed. Well, he went to bed and I returned to the day bed. I still didn’t want to catch what he had. In fact, before I hit the hay, so to speak, I used disinfectant on everything Pete had touched. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, and it might help me.

  ~ * ~

  I knew Stanley was an early riser, so I called him around seven and told him we’d meet with Estelle at ten. We agreed to meet at the office.

  Felicity wanted to read more of the diaries so he said he’d drop her off there before leaving with me.

  Pete woke up around eight. He didn’t seem any better, and I knew that whatever he had wasn’t going away any time soon. He’d begun to cough more, too, and it sounded very bronchial. I envisioned a trip to the doctor, or maybe the urgent care clinic. I didn’t think he should wait until Monday.

  We talked about it and I promised I’d take him to the clinic as soon as I got back from seeing Estelle. He assured me he could take himself, and I made him promise he’d actually go. Pete was one of those men who doesn’t like doctors or hospitals.

  “I want you to take care of business today,” he said, stopping to cough mid-sentence. “I can take care of myself, and you need to figure out what’s going on. It seems that the past is catching up to the present. You need to put a stop to it, and I’ll help as soon as I can.”

  You’d think he could read minds. I’d had the same thoughts the night before about the past and present. Of course, we were talking about two break-ins, not physical attacks.

  I fed the dogs and Pete, and made sure they all had water, thinking all the time that I felt like I had three children in the house with Bubba being the more mature of the three.

  Pete promised, again, that he’d go to the urgent care clinic, and I left for the office.

  After picking Stanley up, I drove to the assisted living facility with him talking about his evening and how much he was enjoying having Felicity around more of the time.

  After introducing him to Margaret, we headed for Estelle’s room.

  I knocked on the door and opened it. There she was, sitting by the window again and watching the birds on a tree outside.

  “Estelle?”

  She jumped. “Oh, I didn’t hear you come in. You startled me, which isn’t a good thing at my age.” She laughed at her own little joke.

  She pointed at Stanley.

  “And who’s this young man?”

  “Estelle, this is Stan. He works with me and Pete.”

  She glanced behind us. “Where’s Pete today?”

  “He’s home with the flu, so Stan is taking his place.”

  “I see. Margaret said you called, asking about Water Boy. I couldn’t remember his name, but during the night it came to me. His name was Bruce. I can’t recall his last name, but I hope that helps.”

  Stanley and I each pulled over a chair, to be closer to Estelle.

  “Oh,” Stanley said, “I found his name.”

  He glanced at Estelle.

  “His last name was Brown. It was difficult because Bruce Brown is a fairly common name.”

  “That’s right,” she said, “it was Brown. I should have remembered.”

  “Is he still alive?” I asked, glancing at Stanley.

  “As far as I can tell, yes.”

  “What do you mean?” Estelle asked.

  “He was charged with several crimes over the years, but Prescott Strong always managed to get him off. When Strong died, Brown went to prison for a brief period. When he was released he disappeared. I couldn’t find a death record, so I think he may still be living.”

  “What was he in prison for?” I asked.

  “Many things, and they all involved violenc
e.”

  “But he would have been an old man,” I said.

  “Even seniors can use weapons,” Stanley explained. “He nearly beat a man to death with a baseball bat.”

  “Well, that doesn’t surprise me,” Estelle said. “He always reminded me of a guy who’d hurt someone someday. He was so creepy. When he looked at you it made you feel like he was looking into your head, or right through you. His eyes were… It’s hard to explain. His eyes were scary.”

  She seemed excited, and yet her head dropped to her chest.

  “Is she – “

  I hadn’t warned Stanley about her sudden naps.

  “No, Stan, she’s sleeping. She drops off easily. I guess I would, too, at her age.”

  We waited patiently while the little old woman napped, talking about Water Boy.

  “Do you have any idea where he might be?” I asked.

  “I’m following a trail of sorts, but I don’t know if it will lead anywhere.”

  “Does he have family?” I asked.

  “None that I can find. He didn’t have any friends, either, with one exception. He and another prisoner, a younger man, seemed to be cohorts. They were both – “

  “Creepy, am I right?” Estelle said, having awakened and listened to us.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Stanley seemed surprised that she’d heard us.

  It was time for me to be honest with her. “Estelle, although you’ve answered all of our questions, I have the feeling that you’re not telling us everything. Are you holding something back?”

  She looked uncomfortable. “There are things that happened back in the day. Some good, some not so good.”

  “Like what?” Stanley sat forward in his chair.

  “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead. But I guess if they’re dead it can’t hurt anything. Can it?”

  I smiled at her. “It’s a little late to worry about it.”

  “True.” She straightened up in her chair, as much as possible, and sighed loudly. “I might as well get it off my chest. Loretta got pregnant.”

  “I had a feeling that might be the case,” I said. “Who was the father?”

  “I think it was Horace.”

  “Are you sure?” For some reason this surprised me.