Dead by Dinner Time

by Jeff Shelby

I approached her table. The bright red lipstick was gone but she was still wearing the polka dot dress.

  “You looked great at drama,” I told her.

  Billie patted her curls. “Dead ringer for her, don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You didn’t stay for my performance.” She gave me a slight frown. “Hot date with someone?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “I was talking to Dexter.”

  “He’s quite a good catch,” she said, nodding. “He could be my beau.”

  “You like Dexter?”

  She smiled coyly. “What’s not to like about him? He’s handsome. Charming. And he makes a fetching Roosevelt, don’t you think?”

  I chuckled. “That he does.”

  I glanced toward the dining room, making sure Mary hadn’t arrived yet. I wanted to talk to her before she found a table, figure out a way to pull her aside so we could chat in private.

  I caught Billie looking at me with narrowed eyes. “What are you looking for?”

  She was still shrewd; I’d give her that. Nothing seemed to get past her.

  “Oh, I was just looking for Mary. Have you seen her anywhere?”

  Billie nodded. “She was at the pool last time I saw her.”

  I almost left without saying goodbye.

  “Wonderful,” I said. “I...I’m going to see if I can catch her before dinner.”

  I hurried off before Billie could ask more questions.

  The pool deck was empty.

  But the pool itself was not.

  A lone woman was wading through waist-high water, windmilling her arms as she did so. A white swim cap clung tight to her scalp, and her floral swim dress billowed out from her body underneath the water. Two other residents were sitting at a table, wrapped in towels and holding their swim caps, their white curls flattened to their scalps.

  “Mary?” I said to the woman’s backside.

  She turned. So did the women at the table as they stood to go.

  I waved to the residents as I made my way to the edge of the pool.

  Mary eyed me with a friendly but wary smile. With the late afternoon sun shining down on her, the heat tinging her skin pink, she looked almost radiant. She immediately reminded me of a movie I had watched years ago, where these senior citizens find a magical swimming pool that serves as a sort of fountain of youth. Our pool at Oasis Ridge definitely looked as though it’d just had some sort of restoring effect on her.

  “Hello, Sunny.” Mary was crouched down, just enough to keep her shoulders level with the water.

  I decided to cut right to the chase. “Listen, I don’t mean to pry or put my nose somewhere it doesn’t belong, but I overheard your conversation with Ruth when I was leaving my office yesterday.”

  Shock registered on Mary’s face. “You did?”

  I nodded. “It sounded like it got pretty heated.”

  Mary pursed her lips and nodded.

  “Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

  “Like what? Kick Ruth out?” Mary asked hopefully.

  I smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid that’s not exactly in my wheelhouse. But I can do my best to help mediate, if that might help.” Refereeing disputes between residents was absolutely not part of my job description, so I felt compelled to add a little more. “My goal here at Oasis Ridge is to provide activities and events that all residents can enjoy. I would hate it if there were personal issues standing in the way of residents feeling like they could participate.”

  It sounded reasonable, believable.

  I hoped.

  “There isn’t much to do, I’m afraid,” Mary responded. “I’m just hoping it will all die down. The whole sorry mess of events. Ruth will turn her attention elsewhere and time will heal my wounds. It always does.”

  I thought about Dexter and his concern that Ruth would return to stalking him now that Arthur was gone. And I thought about Mary’s other words just now: time would heal her wounds.

  What wounds? She’d said she was over Arthur. I’d heard the words myself.

  “Do you miss him?” I asked. “Arthur?”

  She moved her hand through the water, creating small ripples around her. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I miss what I thought we could be. I miss what I wanted. But the reality? I don’t miss that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mary was frank. “Ruth was right. I was the one that pushed for getting married. Arthur was never very enthusiastic about the idea.” Her lip quivered. “I just...we got along, and we enjoyed spending time together. I thought marriage was a logical next step.”

  Maybe at her age, it was. Maybe companionship was enough to support the idea of entering into a marriage.

  But it was clear that Arthur hadn’t thought so.

  “I hated asking over and over again, thought—about getting married. Arthur always found ways to turn me down or hold me off.” She smiled. “Very bruising to the ego, even at my age and with all that I’ve experienced.”

  “His death was unfortunate,” I said.

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I’ll never forgive myself.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “What?”

  “For leaving him.” She lifted a hand out of the water to wipe away a tear sliding down her cheek, but then realized her hand was wet and thought better of it. “I went to the ladies room and by the time I came back he was...gone.”

  We’d already discussed this once before, but it didn’t matter. She had opened the dialogue and if there was new information to be had, I wanted it.

  “He’d not shown any signs of being sick?” I asked.

  Mary shook her head. “None at all. Which is why the whole thing was such a shock. One minute he was there, waiting for me at the table, eating his food and complaining about it like he always did.” She smiled tearfully. “And the next, he was gone.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said gently.

  Her sentiments and emotions sounded so genuine that I was having a hard time considering her a potential suspect. She was behaving just like anyone else who had recently lost a dear friend.

  Can I tell you something?” Mary said suddenly. “Something private? A secret, if you will.”

  My pulse ratcheted up a notch. What on earth did she want to tell me? Maybe the assumptions I’d just made were all wrong. Maybe the weight of what she had done was becoming too much to bear and she needed to tell someone.

  “Of course,” I said, as confidently as I could. “You can tell me anything.”

  Mary glanced down at the water. “This keeps happening,” she whispered.

  “What keeps happening?”

  “The men I like, the men I’m involved with...they keep dying.” She drew in a shaky breath. “And I know, we are at that age where death is always in the shadows. But there have been three men, Sunny. Three men that I thought I might marry. And all of them have died.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  She looked back up at me. Tears streamed down her face. “Is it me? Am I cursed or something? Maybe God just doesn’t want me to get married.”

  There was nothing contrived, no artifice, in what she had just told me. Instead, she had laid herself bare, even attempted to blame herself for the demise of the men in her life.

  I tried to soothe her. “You shouldn’t blame yourself.”

  “But I do,” she admitted. “I’ll tell you something else, too. Earl Lipinski proposed to me the other night.”

  I hoped my feigned look of surprised at least appeared genuine. “He did?”

  She nodded. “We are friends, and he’s been very comforting to me these past few days. He knew how much I wanted to get married, so he offered himself. I couldn’t do it. I...I didn’t want the same fate to befall him.”

  I let her words sink in. Mary didn’t sound like someone who might have had a hand in any type of foul play. No, she sounded like a woman who was sad and worried, who felt like she was somehow responsible for what had happened to
these men.

  And it was pretty clear to me that she absolutely wasn’t.

  “I’m sorry this has been so hard on you,” I said.

  And I was. She was just a lonely woman, looking for a partner to spend the remainder of her life with, for someone willing to stand up and say that they belonged together. It was a ritual she wanted to experience, and I couldn’t fault her for that.

  But I also knew I couldn’t fault her for something else, either.

  Mary hadn’t killed Arthur Griggs.

  I was almost sure of it.

  “It has been hard,” she said. “But I’ll get over it. I always do.” She blinked a couple of times, almost a test of sorts to see if the tears had stopped. They had. “Now I just need to steer clear of Ruth until she finds someone else to torment. Although, honestly, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

  I thought about Dexter’s reaction earlier, when he thought Ruth might be nearby.

  “Is she that bad?” I asked.

  Mary’s eyes widened. “Worse. She did everything she could to get Arthur’s attention. Sent him lingerie that she told him she would wear for him. Baked him all kinds of goodies. Left suggestive photos for him.”

  I was cringing as she rattled off the list. Definitely TMI.

  “When none of that worked, she went ballistic. Threatened to ‘take care’ of us both.”

  My radar went up. “Take care of you? How?”

  “I have no idea,” Mary said with a shudder. “And I didn’t want to find out. I just figured I would lay low. I thought once Arthur and I were married, she would set her sights elsewhere. If she’d let me marry him.”

  “Let you?”

  She nodded. “I kept going back to what she said to Dexter. Well, what he said she said.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  Mary’s eyes locked on mine. They were wide with fear. “She told Dexter that if she couldn’t have him, she would make sure no one else could, either.”

  TWENTY FOUR

  I left Mary, but I wasn’t on my way to confront Ruth.

  I was looking for Aidan.

  I had a plan. Sort of.

  But I needed Aidan if I had any hope of being successful.

  First and foremost, I needed a master key. I knew that several of the aides had keys in their possession around mealtimes so they could easily escort guests to the dining room. Locked doors made it more difficult—and more time-consuming—for them to get everyone there in a timely manner, so Anne had decided to keep a few keys available at the front desk for health care attendants to use.

  We were getting close to lunch time, which meant Aidan might very well have a key on him. If he did, that meant I could get into Ruth’s apartment. Which led me to the second part of my plan.

  I knew that Ruth’s apartment was filled with a variety of plants, and I’d made an attempt to see if I could match the leaves found on Arthur’s plate with any of the plants in her home. Considering I didn’t know the first thing about houseplants, I had obviously failed miserably.

  But Aidan would know what to look for.

  And I had a sneaking suspicion that we would find the plant that had poisoned Arthur.

  After my conversation with Mary, and the fight I’d overheard the night before, I was now convinced that Ruth just might be the person responsible for Arthur’s death.

  She had a motive—a strong one, judging from what I’d seen and heard. She had a history of threatening behavior, if my interaction with Dexter was any indication. She’d been present when Arthur died. All that was missing was the physical evidence linking her to the actual crime itself.

  If Aidan could find the plant in Ruth’s apartment, I was pretty sure that would seal the deal.

  I scanned the halls, looking for Aidan. Mohammed, another aide, walked by pushing a resident in a wheelchair. He smiled and the frail woman he was pushing offered a feeble wave. I couldn’t quite place her name.

  I saw a flash of white down the hallway as someone disappeared into a room. Aidan. It had to be.

  I hurried toward him.

  And ran right into Denise, who was stepping out of the employee bathroom.

  She looked at me with raised eyebrows. “You’re in an awful big hurry,” she said. Then in a low voice she added, “You ready to call the police?”

  “Not quite,” I told her.

  “You don’t have much time left,” she chided. “And you already know who did it!”

  I just shook my head. “I’m almost ready. Just looking at a couple things.”

  Denise’s eyes lasered into me. “I’d stick around and give you the third degree but I gotta get back to the dining room. We’re serving soon.” She gave me a pointed look. “You ever gonna eat there again?”

  “What? Of course.” The heat rushed into my cheeks. “I’ve just been busy,”

  She harrumphed. “Busy avoiding the dining room because you’re worried about getting poisoned.”

  “That’s not true!” But I knew how feeble my protest sounded.

  She set her hands on her hips. “Tomorrow, Sunny. Then we call.”

  I nodded.

  She strode toward the dining room, but not without glancing over her shoulder a couple of times, fixing me with a disapproving glare.

  I waited until she disappeared into the dining room and then sprinted down the hallway, hoping the person I had seen was indeed Aidan.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when he stepped out of a resident’s apartment. I’d found him. But then I stopped. He didn’t seem to be accompanying anyone to the dining room.

  He greeted me with a smile.

  “Is everything okay?” I nodded toward the door he was closing.

  “Oh, yeah. Miriam said she had a big breakfast so she isn’t going to lunch.”

  “So where are you headed now? Do you have any more residents to check in on?”

  Aidan pocketed the keys he was holding. “She was my last one.”

  I was sure my face lit up at the news. “Really?”

  He cocked his head, looking a little puzzled by my reaction. “Uh, really.”

  “Okay, that’s good news. I needed to hear that.” I clapped my hands together. “Look, I sort of need a favor.”

  “A favor?”

  I nodded. “You have the master key, right?” My eyes zeroed in on his pocket.

  He patted his pants pocket. “Yes. Why?”

  “I need you to let me into Ruth’s room.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What?”

  “We need to get into Ruth’s room. You and me.”

  “Me?” He was staring at me like I’d sprouted a second head. “Um, I don’t exactly know what’s going on but I can’t just break into residents’ apartments...”

  I nodded. “I know. And trust me, I wouldn’t ask under normal circumstances. But what’s going on isn’t normal.”

  His eyes rounded. “Is she okay? Ruth?”

  “She’s fine,” I said. “I mean, as far as I know.” I sighed and rubbed my hand over my face. “What I’m about to tell you is going to sound crazy. But I need your help. And I need it quick.”

  His expression hadn’t changed and I was tempted to look in a mirror to make sure no new appendage had sprung up on my body.

  I lowered my voice to a whisper, even though we were the only two people standing in the hallway. “Remember the leaves I gave you last week?”

  He gave a slight nod.

  ‘”And remember how I said I found them on vacation?”

  Another nod.

  “Well, I didn’t. They were found here.”

  “They were?” His eyebrows lifted. “Let me guess. In Ruth’s room?”

  “No. On Arthur Grigg’s dinner plate.”

  He covered his hand with his mouth, stifling the expletive he muttered.

  “I don’t know anything for sure,” I said quickly, “but I’ve been trying to figure out if it was some kind of accident. Or suicide.” I paused. “Or murder.”

  Aidan’s
hands were on his hips and he was blowing out quick breaths. A sheen of sweat coated his forehead. “Holy crap, Sunny. Why didn’t you tell me all of this before? And better question: why haven’t you gone to the police?”

  “It’s a long story.” He frowned and I added, “I’ll tell you it, I promise. But right now I just really need to get into Ruth’s apartment.”

  “Can’t you ask Anne?”

  I looked at him in horror. “Are you serious?”

  He apparently thought better of his suggestion because he nodded and said, “Yeah, that probably isn’t the best idea.”

  I glanced behind me. “Please, Aidan. It’ll take five minutes, tops.”

  His hands drifted to his pockets and he stood there for a minute, his hands shoved deep, looking at me uncertainly. But then I heard the jingle of keys as he pulled them free.

  “Fine,” he said with a sigh. “But you better explain everything the minute we get there.”

  TWENTY FIVE

  Three minutes later, we were standing in front of Ruth’s apartment.

  And Denise was with us.

  “You gonna tell me what’s going on?” she hissed.

  Ruth’s apartment was upstairs, which meant Aidan and I had no choice but to take the stairs near the dining room, especially because the elevators were filled with residents going to lunch. Denise must have seen us.

  “I’m looking for new...details,” I said, remembering the words I’d used the other day when I’d convinced her to give me a little more time.

  “At Ruth’s apartment?” Denise asked. “But...but you said it was Mary!”

  “I never said that. I told you what I’d found out about her but that I wasn’t totally convinced. Which is why I wanted more time...”

  Aidan interrupted us. “Can we hurry up?”

  Denise fixed him with a stare. “I didn’t know you were in on this, too.”

  “I’m not in on anything.”

  Denise sniffed. “Well, you are now.”

  I smiled reassuringly at Aidan, who was beginning to look a little pale. “Go ahead,” I said, doing my best to sound encouraging. “Open the door.”

  He hesitated but eventually pulled out the key. I waited, my hands clenched tight as he inserted the key into the lock. It turned and he pushed the door open.