Idelle said, "I'll check to see if any of the parking spots aren't iced over yet, of course." She also left without questioning me.
"Laurie Anne," Vasti said, "are you saying that whoever it was might still be lurking around?"
Obviously I was, so I went on. "Richard, can I have your handkerchief?" He handed it to me, and I gingerly pulled the knife out of the gift bag I was still carrying. "Odelle, check the kitchen and see if there are any other knives like this around. I want to know if the knife came from here." She took a good look at the knife, nodded, and headed for the kitchen.
"Laurie Anne––" Vasti started, and I knew I was going to have to come up with something for her to do.
"Vasti, I want you to keep the party going. Don't let anybody leave the room, but don't scare them either. Get the nurses to help you if you need them." I touched her shoulder. "I'm counting on you to keep these folks calm."
Though she looked a little suspicious, she nodded and said, "All right, then. Why didn't you say so in the first place?" She started corralling nurses and residents.
"What about me?" Clifford said.
"I want you to come with me and Richard for a minute," I answered, and we went into a quiet corner where I could still see what was going on.
"Clifford," I said as gently as I could, "did you know that knife was in the gift bag?"
"Of course not! The first time I saw it was when Liz fished it out of the bag."
"I found a Garth Brooks tape and a pair of earrings in the bag, too. Is that what you meant for Liz to have?"
He nodded. "She's real fond of Garth Brooks."
"And that's all that was in that bag when you gave it to me?"
"That's all. Does she know it was from me? Liz, I mean?"
"Not yet," I said. He was so concerned about his crush being found out that he hadn't even realized that he was a suspect. "You heard what Mrs. Hamilton said to Liz, didn't you?"
"Everybody in this room heard it," he said indignantly.
"You must have been pretty angry at her. Feeling about Liz the way you do."
"You bet I was! I know she's old and all, but she's got no call to be talking to people like that. Especially not to Liz." He finally caught the implication. "Laurie Anne, you don't think I stabbed her, do you?"
"No, I don't," I said truthfully, "but I had to ask. That knife showing up in your gift right after Mrs. Hamilton was so mean to Liz does look funny."
"I guess it does," he admitted. "If it had been a healthy man who said those things, I probably would have started something, but I never would have with a sick old woman. And you know I would never have stabbed anybody in the back like that. Anyone could have stuck that knife in the gift bag. All kinds of people were all around the Christmas tree tonight."
"Did you see anyone in particular over there?" I asked hopefully.
He shook his head. "I wasn't really paying attention because Vasti had me playing carols."
"Did you see anyone over near Mrs. Hamilton? Before she collapsed, I mean?"
Again he shook his head. "I don't think so. People were coming and going so much, I don't know where anyone was." Then he added with a shy grin, "Except for maybe Liz."
"How long have you known Liz?"
This time he knew where I was leading. "Long enough to know that she'd never do anything like that. Ever since she was a little girl, she's been just as nice. She told me herself that the residents say ugly things to her all the time, but she knows that they don't really mean it."
"All right," I said. Asking him about Liz had been foolish anyway. He wouldn't have a crush on her if he thought she was that kind of a person. "Richard and I are going to see if we can find out who did this. In the meantime, I want you to help Vasti keep people calmed down. Play them some more Christmas music. Maybe that will help."
"All right," he said. He picked up his guitar, but then hesitated. "You believe me, don't you Laurie Anne?"
"Of course I do, Clifford," I said, and I guess he could tell I meant it. All right, I wasn't being objective, but I had changed Clifford's diapers. There wasn't a mean bone in that boy's body.
As soon as Clifford went, I hugged Richard. "I'm afraid we've been drafted. Or at least, I have. Are you game?"
"'I will be correspondent to command,'" he said. "The Tempest, Act I, scene 2."
"You used that one already today."
"Did I? 'Heaven lay not my transgression to my charge.' King John, Act I, scene 1. So where do we start?"
"With Mrs. Hamilton, I think. She's from Byerly, but I don't know a whole lot about her."
"Are you implying that you know about everyone else in Byerly?"
"Not everybody, of course, but most everybody. By their family if not any other way." I pointed to a bearded man in a red and green sweatshirt. "That's Mr. Honeywell. I went to school with his grandchildren, and he used to play Santa Claus at our Christmas party." Then I nodded at a skinny woman with jet black hair. "Mrs. Peabody has been dying her hair that color for as long as I can remember, but she always does it at home because she doesn't want anyone to know that it's not natural."
"I was completely fooled," Richard said dryly.
"Since I don't know Mrs. Hamilton, I guess our first step is to find out about her." Liz picked that moment to return.
"I left your cousin with Mrs. Hamilton," she said, "but I still don't think it's necessary."
"Maybe not," I conceded, "but better safe than sorry. Now, if you don't mind, I want to ask you some questions about Mrs. Hamilton." From out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clifford looking at us worriedly. "Maybe we could use Dr. Buchanan's office." I wasn't about to question Liz with Clifford watching me like that.
As soon as we got there, I waved Liz to one of the visitor chairs and took the desk chair myself. I thought I might as well try to look official. Richard picked up a pad of paper and a pen from the desk, and then pushed his chair back behind mine. Obviously he was going to let me run the show.
I took a deep breath. "I guess my first question is, do you know of any reason why anyone would want to kill Mrs. Hamilton?"
"No!" she said, and I guess she must have realized she answered a little bit too quickly. "I know you're thinking about what she said to me tonight, but believe you me, she's said the same and worse before. To all the nurses, not just to me."
"Does she just fuss at you nurses, or does she bother the other residents, too?"
"Oh she's like that with everybody: nurses, doctors, other residents, the kitchen staff, even other people's visitors."
"Does she not get visitors of her own?"
Liz shook her head. "Not since I've been here. She's got a couple of daughters who live in the state, but they never come to see her. They'll send a card once in a while, but that's about it."
No wonder she was angry all the time. Under those circumstances, I would be too.
"What about her will? Is she leaving them any money or anything else valuable?"
Liz shook her head again. "It's the daughters who pay her bills here. I don't think she has any money of her own, other than her Social Security check every month."
So much for that idea. "Does she have any particular enemy here at the home? Somebody she's really offended, rather than just pestered."
Liz took a minute to think about it. "I'm not sure," she said slowly. "Mrs. Good said she took her box of candy last week."
"Not really a killing offense, is it?" Richard said.
Liz shrugged. "Probably not, but you'd be surprised at how seriously our folks take that kind of thing. Mrs. Good's family sends her a box of candy every year, and she hoards it for a couple of months before she'll finish that last piece. It may not sound like a big deal to you, but you have to remember that Mrs. Good can't just drive to the mall to get another box. She's got arthritis so bad that she can't hardly stand up. That candy means a lot to her, and she was so got away with when it disappeared. She insisted that we search Mrs. Hamilton's room."
"Did
you?"
"Yes, we did, just to reassure her. We got Mrs. Hamilton's permission first, of course, and wasn't she furious! I think she said yes just to make Mrs. Good look bad. We searched everywhere, but couldn't find hide nor hair of it. And after all that, Mrs. Good still wouldn't believe it. She claimed that Mrs. Hamilton must have hid it somewhere else."
Mrs. Good's unreasonable anger sounded promising, but I couldn't honestly suspect her. "I can't see how a arthritic woman could have stabbed Mrs. Hamilton," I pointed out.
"I guess not," Liz said, and then she shook her head. "I don't know of anything else. Of course, the residents don't tell us everything that's going on."
"Why is that?" Richard asked
"Maybe they think that coming to a nurse would be like tattling," I guessed.
"That's part of it," Liz said. "And then I think they just like it this way because it gives them something to do. They'd rather fuss and fume among themselves." I must have frowned, because she added, "I'm not putting them down, really I'm not. Boredom is the biggest problem these people have. After a while, one day is an awful lot like another. If their feuds keep them entertained, who am I to interfere? Anyway, what I was leading up to is that maybe you should talk to one of the other residents."
"Is there anyone who was a particular friend of Mrs. Hamilton's?"
"Mr. Morgan would like to be, for some reason. The other nurses say he's been sweet on her ever since she got here, and no one can figure it out. She certainly doesn't encourage him. She's just as mean to him as she is to everybody else."
"Could you find him and bring him here?" I asked.
"Sure."
She was gone long enough for me to ask Richard, "How am I doing?" and for him to reply, "'Exceeding wise, fair–spoken, and persuading.' King Henry VIII, Act IV, scene 2."
Then Liz brought in Mr. Morgan, performed introductions, and left. Mr. Morgan was thin but seemed heartier than most of the men in the home, and was dressed in a bright red pullover and gray slacks.
"Is Sadie all right?" he asked. "Liz wouldn't tell me a thing."
I weighed the idea of not telling him what was going on against the reality of my having no reason to ask him questions if something hadn't happened. Reality won. "Someone tried to kill Mrs. Hamilton," I said, watching his face for a reaction. All I saw was concern.
"Is she all right?"
"The doctor says she's going to be fine, but it was close."
He took a deep breath, and said, "Poor Sadie. First the stroke, and now this. Do they know who stabbed her?"
"I didn't say anything about stabbing," I said quickly. Was solving the crime going to be this easy? Of course not.
Mr. Morgan smiled. "Honey, this is a awful small place. Mrs. Robertson thought she saw blood when Sadie passed out, and Morris Nichols was watching when Liz pulled that knife out of the gift bag. We put two and two together a while ago, especially when no one would tell us anything different. We're not children."
"You're right," I said, acknowledging the reproof. "I'm sorry, but we didn't want to scare anybody until we had a better idea of what was going on. As soon as we're done here, I'll make some kind of an announcement."
"I think that would be a good idea. Now what did you want to talk to me about?"
"Did Liz tell you that Junior Norton deputized me?"
He nodded.
"What I'm trying to do is to take care of some of the groundwork for her, maybe find out who might have wanted to hurt Mrs. Hamilton. Liz tells me that you're pretty close to her."
Mr. Morgan leaned back in his chair. "Well, I don't know if you'd call us close. Sadie doesn't let anybody get too close."
"I understand that she can be difficult sometimes."
He grinned widely. "Difficult, my right eye. Sadie Hamilton is the most ornery woman I have ever met. Never has a nice word for anyone, and no one but her ever does anything right. She curses like a sailor, and I've never known her to pass up an chance to tell anybody just what she thinks about them."
"I expect she's nicer once you get to know her," I ventured.
"Not so you'd know it. She tells me off two, three times a day."
"Then why...?" I wasn't sure how to phrase the question.
"Then why did I put up with her? I like her, plain and simple. She keeps my blood moving. Sadie says I'm too damned nice, and I think she's right. My mama and daddy raised me to be polite, no matter what, and that's how I've always been. Not Sadie! She always says what's on her mind, lets it all hang out, like the young folks say now."
Actually, I hadn't known young folks to say that in quite some time, but I nodded anyway. "She sounds kind of like my Aunt Maggie. She's never been one to mince words either."
Mr. Morgan said, "Most of us old folks are too shy to speak our minds. We know we're in the way, so we act just as nice as we can to make sure people still want to be around us once in a while. Sadie just doesn't give a darn about what other people think." He looked at Richard. "You must know The Taming of the Shrew."
"'Her only fault, and that is faults enough, is that she is intolerable curst and shrewd and froward,'" Richard quoted. "Act I, scene 2."
"That's Sadie to a T. I never did like the end of that play, when Kate is all tamed. I'd just as soon she stayed a shrew, like Sadie has."
"Until she had the stroke, that is," I said.
He nodded sadly. "Oh, she's still got the feelings inside her, you saw that at the party. She just can't get the words out. It frustrates her something terrible. I pure hate to see her like that."
I realized that we had gotten off the track, and thought I better bring it back around to the attack on Mrs. Hamilton. "With her being so ill–tempered, do you think that there's someone she had particularly angered?"
He considered it for a minute, and then slowly shook his head. "I don’t know a soul that really wants her dead, if that's what you mean. Sure she makes people mad, but not like that."
"Liz said something about Mrs. Good and a box of candy," I said, feeling silly.
Mr. Morgan waved away the suggestion. "Young lady, surely you don't think anybody stabbed Sadie over a box of candy."
"No, not really."
"And another thing," he continued, "Margaret Good had no business claiming it was Sadie who took that candy. She made such a big to–do over it when it came in the mail, showing everybody what a big box it was and talking about how generous her daughter was to send it. All along knowing that Sadie's brats don't so much as call her on the telephone, not even when they heard about the stroke. Margaret even left the box in the TV room to rub it in. If you ask me, it served her right when somebody made off with it."
"Was Mrs. Hamilton feuding with anybody else?" I asked.
"Before her stroke, she was on the outs with pretty much everybody," he said, grinning again. "Sadie told everyone in sight that Mrs. Houghton's husband used to run around on her, and Mrs. Houghton was right put out about that. Especially since it was true. Then Sadie threw out a vase of Charlie's flowers because she said she was allergic to them. And she got to the TV room first one morning a while back and insisted on watching game shows all day long when she knew a bunch of the other ladies wanted to watch their stories."
"Soap operas," I translated for Richard. He was rushing to write all of this down, but I didn't really think he needed to bother. I could see why Mrs. Hamilton hadn't been very popular, but none of this was exactly motive for murder.
"Anything else?" I asked.
"I think those are the most recent problems. If you want me to go back a few months or so––"
"No, I think this will be enough to start on. I appreciate your time, Mr. Morgan."
"That's all right, young lady. Do you think it would be all right if I went to see Sadie now?"
"I think she's still unconscious, but I guess it would be all right." Even if he was the one who tried to kill Mrs. Hamilton, he wasn't likely to overpower the nurse and Carlelle in order to try again.
Idelle and Od
elle came in as Mr. Morgan left.
"Are you ready for us?" Odelle asked.
I nodded. "What did you find out?"
"It's hard to tell," Idelle said, "but I don't think anyone's been out of the parking lot since we came in. Other than Dr. Buchanan, that is. I suppose someone could have come in or out on foot, but it's awful slippery out there. I fell down twice myself."
"Are you all right?" I asked.
She rubbed her tail end. "Only hurt my dignity."
"What about the knife?" I said to Odelle.
"I talked to Mrs. Cummings the cook and she said they have a set of cooking knives just like the one you have. And there's one missing. It's been gone since last week, so she already bought herself a new one that has a different kind of handle."
Last week? That implied premeditation to me. "Did she have any idea of who could have taken it?"
Odelle shook her head. "She said they don't really lock up the kitchen, because there's never been any reason to. Residents come in for snacks all the time."
"So unless someone came in last week to steal the knife, and then managed to sneak back in tonight in the middle of an ice storm, it must have been one of the residents or a staff member," I said. That left out Clifford and the rest of my family out, I added to myself, but I had never really considered them suspects anyway.
Unfortunately, I was still stuck with every one of the residents and staff members who had been at the party. Plenty of suspects, but no motive.
"What do you want us to do now?" Odelle asked.
"Has Vasti got things under control back at the party?"
"You know she has," Idelle said with a snicker.
"Then maybe you two can go check with Carlelle in case she needs something to drink or to go to the bathroom."
They nodded and left.
"Well?" I said to Richard. "Any ideas?"
"We could bring in those soap opera fans. I know some people are ardently devoted to them."
"Thanks a whole lot. Next time you can be the deputy."
He shook his head emphatically. "No thank you. I'm quite content to play the role of faithful dogsbody."
I put my head on my hands. "What have we got here anyway? In a room full of people, someone stabs a little old lady through a wheelchair. Why stab her? I mean, she's a patient. Wouldn't it have been easier to slip something into her medication?"
Crooked as a Dog's Hind Leg Page 4