by Lois Winston
“When’s dinner?” asked Nick. “We’re starving.”
I tossed my purse on the counter. “Did anyone walk Mephisto?”
“Done,” said Alex.
I raised my eyebrows at that. “Without a single nag from me?”
“He’s not such a devil dog with Grandmother Lucille gone,” said Nick. “All he does is eat, sleep, and poop.”
I’d noticed that, too. Mephisto hadn’t uttered a single growl at anyone, not even Catherine the Great, since Lucille’s emergency trip to the hospital. That made me wonder if Mephisto had even been in the dining room when Mama dropped Daddy earlier today. “Maybe he’s just getting old, and his devil dog days are behind him.”
“Unlikely,” said Mama. “I don’t trust that vicious mutt, not after the way he scared the living daylights out of me earlier today. Neither should any of you. That dog is up to something. Lulling you all into a false sense of security before he strikes. Look at what happened to my dear Harold today, thanks to that mongrel.”
“Mephisto, the Ninja Bulldog?” I asked.
Ira chuckled. I realized I’d totally ignored him since entering the house. My bad. Chalk it up to sheer exhaustion and not wanting another mouth to feed tonight. “Ira, don’t you need to get home
to your family?”
Subtle, Anastasia.
“The kids are at summer camp, and my wife is out of town, visiting her sister. Flora was kind enough to invite me to join all of you for dinner this evening. If you don’t mind, of course.”
I forced a smile and began pulling food from the fridge and freezer. “Not at all. As long as you don’t mind burgers.”
“I’m happy to cook them for you,” he offered. “I wield a mean spatula.”
“Thanks but it’s taken care of.”
“Is Zack joining us, dear?” Before I could answer her, Mama turned to Ira. “Zack is Anastasia’s boyfriend. I’m sure you’ll like him.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said. “He’s my tenant.”
“He’s her boyfriend,” said Mama, Alex, and Nick, all in unison.
Heat seared my cheeks. What did that say about my relationship with Ira’s half-brother that only five months after his death,
I already had another man in my life? Even if we’d only had one official date so far. I turned toward the sink and began scraping carrots. Furiously. “It’s not what you think,” I muttered.
“That’s okay,” said Ira. “Flora told me about my brother. I understand.”
Not at all comfortable with Mama spilling the Karl beans to a total stranger, even a quasi-related total stranger, I turned to face her. “Everything?”
“He’s family, dear. I thought he had a right to know what that man did to you.”
Great. Blabbermouth Flora strikes again. I’m glad I never told her how Karl tried to mow down his mother and wound up killing three innocent people when he torched her apartment building. Alex and Nick didn’t need to know the gory details about the seamier side of their father’s life. They already knew more than I wanted to tell them, but what choice did I have? When your life plummets from the heights of comfortably Middle-classdom to one step away from living out of a cardboard box, you have to offer your kids some explanation for the downward spiral.
I suppose my expression told Mama she’d better change the subject because she did. “You haven’t told us what that commie rabble-rouser did this time, dear. What was so serious that you had to rush out without saying a word? I certainly raised you to have
better manners than that. Especially with a guest in the house.”
Zack picked that moment to open the back door. His expression told me he’d heard Mama. Mine told him this was a conversation I didn’t want to have right now. “You might as well tell her now and get it over with,” he said. “You know she’s not going to give up.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, counting silently to five as I exhaled. While I did so, Mama introduced Zack to Ira. As I opened my eyes, I caught a glimpse of the two men, hands clasped in vice-like grips, sizing each other up in that way only men do.
All those quotes about the measure of a man? They really only mean one thing: mine’s bigger than yours.
I broke up the testosterone standoff by blurting out, “Lucille’s roommate was murdered last night.”
That got everyone’s attention.
“Holy shit!” said Alex, then added a hasty, “Sorry, Mom,” before my reprimand made it past my lips.
“Did that crazy Bolshevik kill her?” asked Mama.
“I think she’s at the top of the suspects list,” I said, “but she claims she’s innocent.”
“Like hell,” says Mama. “I always worried she’d murder me in my sleep one of these nights. Looks like I had good cause for concern.”
_____
The next morning, another scorcher of a day already under way, I packed Mephisto into the rust-bucket sauna on wheels and headed back to Sunnyside. Since Shirley hadn’t assigned me a spot in the employees’ parking lot out back or even mentioned the existence of such a lot, I parked in the closer visitors’ lot in front and decided to continue to do so unless instructed otherwise. Ignorance in this case was the bliss of subjecting my body to a minute less of blistering heat and oppressive humidity as I made my way into the building.
Once inside, I was surprised to find the crime scene tape gone and Lucille ensconced back in her room. She greeted Mephisto with such a smothering hug that the poor dog whined and struggled for breath.
“Mother’s missed you so much,” she crooned into his fur, oblivious to the poor pooch’s discomfort. No wonder devil dog had dropped his satanic ways at home. With Lucille gone, he didn’t have to submit to constant s’mother love.
I waited, hoping for at least a thank you for bringing him, but in typical Lucille fashion, she ignored me. “I’ll come walk him during my lunch break,” I finally said.
No response. She didn’t even ask why I’d be hanging around Sunnyside all day, or maybe she thought I intended to go home, then come back at lunchtime to walk her dog. Who knows? I may as well have been invisible for all the acknowledgement I received from her. Maybe she thought the dog magically appeared on his own.
Given the way Lucille had always treated me, why did I even care whether or not the police arrested her for Lyndella’s murder? With Lucille out of my life, I’d have one less problem. However, even a woman who cared more about her dog than her daughter-in-law deserved justice. Someone had to give a damn about the truth, even for an ingrate like my pain-in-the-tush mother-in-law.
Lucille epitomized all bark and no bite. She didn’t kill Lyndella Wegner. I knew that. The real killer lurked somewhere in the halls of Sunnyside. With no one else stepping up to the plate to ferret him out, I became the designated batter by default.
I was about to head to my first class when I heard a rustling coming from the other side of the floral curtain that separated the two halves of the room. Curious, I peeked around the curtain’s edge and found Reggie bagging up Lyndella’s clothing. “Hi,” I said.
She yelped, stumbling backward and nearly tripping over a desk chair.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Her teeth trembling, she gnawed at her lower lip. “I … I didn’t hear you.”
“Are you getting the room ready for a new resident?” I asked.
Reggie shrugged her emaciated shoulders. “I guess. Ms. Hallstead said to pack up all of Mrs. Wegner’s stuff, so that’s what I’m doing.”
“What will happen to her possessions?”
“The clothes and furniture get donated.”
“And the rest?”
She frowned at the hundreds of crafts covering nearly every horizontal and vertical surface. “Ms. Hallstead told me to toss them in the Dumpster out back.”
I couldn
’t let that happen, not to such exemplary craftsmanship, even X-rated ones. “Don’t do that. Bring them to the arts and crafts room, okay?”
Reggie shrugged again. “Sure. Less lugging for me.”
_____
My first class of the morning consisted of pottery and sculpture. Four men and two women hunched over the six potter’s wheels while a dozen other men and women worked with polymer clay, fashioning everything from chess pieces to earrings. I sat at my desk, reading the directions for firing the kiln, something I hadn’t done since my sophomore year of college. Baking polymer clay in a standard kitchen oven was much more my speed.
My mind kept wandering, though. I needed to figure out a way to clear Lucille. To do that, I had to learn more about Lyndella and why everyone hated her so much. I got that she was a hard-to-please, know-it-all pain in the ass, but that hardly seemed like justification for murder. What had Lyndella Wegner done that caused someone to strangle her?
In order to find out more about Lyndella, I needed to make friends with the Sunnyside residents, and the best way to do that was to give them something they needed—money. Not mine, of course. I didn’t have any to give.
Trimedia would never agree to pay them for interviews, though. I saw no point in even asking, not for a crafts spread. I was a bottom feeder in the magazine’s pecking order and worked with an almost non-existent budget. Most of my supplies came gratis from manufacturers hoping for free publicity for their products. The bean counters expected me to make do with very little beyond that.
I closed the kiln manual and circulated around the room, checking on the progress of my students. With few exceptions their skill and craftsmanship amazed me. These were incredibly talented senior citizens.
That’s when inspiration struck. Why not organize a gallery showing? Not an exhibit in the Sunnyside lobby but a real exhibit in a real gallery where people bought artwork and crafts.
I crossed the room to the pottery area. Murray had just finished throwing a perfectly formed hourglass-shaped vase. He grabbed a needle tool and with a steady hand deftly trimmed the top edge.
Not bad for a guy in his eighties. I never could master that trimming technique when I took my one and only mandatory class in pottery. My hands would shake too much, causing at best a lopsided cut or more often, a total cave-in and collapse of the wet clay.
“You’re very good at that,” I told Murray. “The vase is perfectly symmetrical. And the walls are so incredibly thin! Have you been throwing pots for a long time?”
He shrugged. “Long enough to know what I’m doing.”
“I took a pottery course in college, but I was a total failure at it. I guess I lacked the necessary hand/eye coordination.”
“Always been good with my hands. And my eyes.”
“What did you do before you retired?”
Murray scowled. “Why do you want to know?”
Now it was my turn to shrug. “I was wondering if you worked at something that required precise and intricate skills. Like a surgeon or a violin maker.”
Murray greeted my suggestions with a snort. “I fixed things for a living.”
“You were a repairman?”
“Yeah, a repairman.”
I moved the conversation along to my main reason for chatting with him. “What do you do with all your completed pottery pieces?”
Another shrug. “Keep a few. Give most away.”
“Ever think of selling them?”
That caught his attention. “For money?”
“What else?”
“You really think people would pay for my pots?”
“Absolutely. I was thinking about what you and the others said yesterday about money, and I think we should set up a show to sell your work.”
“Here? Who’s gonna come here to buy stuff ?”
“Not here. In an art gallery.”
“We get to keep all the money?”
“Minus the gallery commission.”
He thought about that for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Sounds good.”
And with that Murray dipped his head and went back to work on his vase, sculpting on the first of a series of three-dimensional petals. However, I noticed that gruff Murray, man of few words, now had a smile on his face. I’d made my first friend.
Flush with the success of winning over Murray, I headed for my polymer clay sculptors and presented my idea to them.
Estelle, the woman who’d led everyone in that rousing rendition of Ding Dong, the Bitch is Dead, asked, “What about Shirley?”
“What about her?”
“She has to approve all Sunnyside-sponsored activities,” said a woman who’d introduced herself earlier as Pearl.
“Why?”
“Cause she says so,” said Estelle.
“She’ll only agree if the money goes to one of her pet charities, not to us,” said a woman named Martha.
“For the publicity,” muttered Dirk from across the room where he worked on a still life acrylic painting at one of the easels. I had learned yesterday that some of my students spent as much time as possible in the arts and crafts room, no matter what class was scheduled or whether or not an instructor was present. “The woman’s a damn publicity whore.”
I’d come to that same conclusion after viewing the numerous photos plastered across Shirley’s office walls. Publicity for Shirley at the expense of Sunnyside’s residents didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t see where Shirley Hallstead had any say in what the Sunnyside residents did with their artwork and crafts.
These men and women needed extra cash, and at the appropriate venue their work would bring them that extra cash. What right did Shirley have to deny them an exhibition of their work? She was the director of an assisted living facility, not a prison warden.
The more I learned about Shirley “Control Freak” Hallstead, the less I liked her. “Leave Shirley to me,” I told my students. “Meanwhile, I’d like each of you to start rounding up your best pieces.”
_____
Shortly after I’d had the same discussion with my next class, the needlework women from Friday, minus Lyndella, Reggie tripped into the room. Literally. The top box of the two cardboard cartons she carried tumbled from her arms onto the floor. Fabric yo-yos spilled across the room.
“I … I’m so … sorry!” She trembled inside her Winnie the Pooh scrubs, her scrawny arms still clutching the one remaining carton to her chest.
The poor kid looked like she expected a horse whipping. I took the remaining carton from her and set it down on a table. “No problem. Fabric doesn’t break.”
She cowered in front of me. I placed my hand on her forearm. “Reggie, it’s okay. Really.”
What the hell had happened to this kid? The mother in me knew something was seriously wrong. Now that we stood toe-to-toe I took a good look at her for the first time. I noted chewed fingernails, patches of thinning hair, and sparse eyelashes. Coupled with her anorexic frame, I didn’t need a degree in psychology to tell me this kid abused herself. If I pulled up the legs of her pants, I was convinced I’d find evidence of cutting.
Given all the diplomas hanging on Shirley Hallstead’s wall, how could she not see that this child needed help? Or did she see and not give a damn?
Reggie dropped to her hands and knees. “I’ll pick everything up.”
“There are more cartons, right?”
She nodded as she scooped up handfuls of yo-yos and deposited them back in the box. “Lots.”
“I’ll finish here. Why don’t you get the rest of the cartons? Do you need help with them?”
She paused mid-scoop and thought for a moment. “No, this is m … my fault. I’ll pick these up, then get the rest of the boxes for you.”
I decided to let her do as she wanted. I grabbed the carton from the table and headed back to my desk to sort
through Lyndella’s treasures.
“Whatcha got there?” asked Mabel as I passed the table where she and several other women worked on various embroidery projects.
“Some of Lyndella’s crafts.”
“Why would you want those here?”
“Shirley planned to toss them out. I didn’t want that to happen.”
“You should let her trash them,” said Mabel. “We don’t need any reminders of that hussy and her pornographic crafts around here.”
I placed the box on my desk and walked over to Mabel’s table. “Maybe you can help me,” I said. “I’m trying to understand why everyone hated Lyndella so much.”
“Why?” asked Mabel.
“Because right now my mother-in-law is the prime suspect in her death, and I know she didn’t kill Lyndella Wegner.”
“You think one of us did?” asked a woman working on a Bargello pillow.
“I’m not accusing anyone. I’m merely trying to understand why you all hated her.”
“Because she spread her legs for every man living at Sunnyside,” said Mabel.
eight
“None of us stood a chance with Lyndella Wegner around,” said a woman knitting a baby sweater.
Maybe Lucille hadn’t been dreaming. “You’re telling me Lyndella had sex with all the male residents living at Sunnyside?”
“Every last one of them,” said Mabel. “She’d pounce the moment new blood crossed the threshold. A one-woman Welcoming Committee.”
“Hardly give them time to unpack,” added Bargello Lady.
I really needed to find a way to remember all these women’s names. Maybe I could plead a mild case of aphasia and ask them all to wear name tags.
“Worse than that,” said a blonde woman working on a fisherman knit sweater, “she went after our husbands.”
Mabel patted her hand. “Tell her what happened to George, Sally.”
Sally set her knitting down and folded her hands on the little bit of lap that stuck out beneath her expansive girth. Her eyes filled with tears. “We had a good marriage. Fifty-two years. Then George and I moved to Sunnyside and that Lyndella Wegner started filling my George’s head with all sorts of X-rated nonsense, telling him she could make him feel like a teenager again.”