“I guess I’m off to Quincy,” she said, picking up her bag from where she’d left it next to the chair.
“Good luck,” Sadie said with a smile. Jane nodded and let herself out the front door. Sadie finished the filling and put it in the fridge, then scribbled a note for Heather in case she came to the house, explaining that she’d be back for the whoopie pies that afternoon—she needed only four or five for Mr. Forsberk; the boys could have the rest. She didn’t really have anywhere to go, but she wasn’t up to staying and answering questions when Heather arrived.
She remembered passing a library on Sedgwick, and Sadie headed in that direction since she couldn’t think of any better place to go. After locking the doors to the house, though it was beginning to feel more and more silly to do so, she took a long look at the house that still held so many questions. Was it safe for Heather to come back here? She made a note to talk to Pete about it, which reminded her that although Pete had an appointment with the police, she still hadn’t been called back in. Had he taken their attention so much that she—the woman covered in red paint who discovered Mrs. Wapple—was no longer a concern? Poor Pete. She hoped things would go okay for him.
The sun was out and the snow from yesterday was long gone, but it didn’t put a spring in her step or raise her spirits much as Sadie made her way toward the library. She had work to do, and it was hard to pay attention to anything else.
Her phone rang, making her jump, and she pulled off to the side of the road when she saw it was Shawn. He was on his way to class, he said, but quickly gave her the landlord information and then said how awesome it was that she and Jane were working together. Sadie scribbled down the information, thanked her son, and promised him an update later before pulling back into traffic and finishing her trek to the library.
She parked near the back of the lot and immediately jotted down a list of questions, or rather topics, she hoped to be able to discuss with the landlord. Then she dialed the landlord’s number. The list was in her lap with her pen poised and ready to take notes.
“’Ello,” the man said on the other end of the line.
“Oh, uh, hi. Is this Martin Delecorte?”
“The very same. How cun I help ya?” His accent wasn’t Boston, more of a rural Oklahoma.
“Well, I’m looking for some information on one of your previous tenants—Delores Wapple. She lived with her dad, Timothy, in a rental you own up in Lowell, Massachusetts.”
“Good renters, good folk. How can I help ya?”
“Well,” Sadie said, not quite knowing what to do since he was making it so easy. “I’m trying to get a sense of the family and their connections. Did you know them at all?”
“I lived across the street. It used to be my dad’s house; now it supplements my blasted social security checks, which don’t go up nearly as quick as the price of cable television.”
Chapter 28
Oh,” Sadie said, sitting up straighter. “Well, that’s wonderful.”
“How’s Delores doin’? Can’t say I haven’t worried about her since she left.”
“Actually, she’s in the hospital, that’s why I’m calling. We don’t have much of a history on her and are trying to find people who knew her. Everyone here knows her as Mrs. Wapple, but it seems that Wapple is her maiden name, so it’s created some confusion.”
“Well, she ain’t no missus, just Delores up around these parts, so I don’t know about that. She’s down in Boston these days, right?”
“Yes, a suburb of Boston—Jamaica Plain.”
“I worried about them takin’ her so far away. She likes things to be just so. What’s she in the hospital for?”
Sadie briefly explained and was gratified to hear Mr. Delecorte offer a quick prayer under his breath. “Well, that’s a shame,” he finished. “Granted, she was a mite strange, especially in the beginning, what with the singing and the cats and all that, but I hate hearing she’s had such a bad time of it.”
“Singing?” Sadie said.
“Oh, she had a horrible voice, she did, but she would go out back and sing and sing and sing. Maybe that’s what brought the cats in.”
Sadie couldn’t help but smile; she liked thinking of Mrs. Wapple singing to kitties. “She didn’t do either of these things here,” she said. “She yelled at neighbors and had issues with dogs.”
“Oh, yeah, she don’t like dogs. One here in the neighborhood got to one of her cats a few years back. Come to think of it, I didn’t hear her sing much after that. Her dad said she took the loss hard, real hard. When her mother died, she about fell apart and that was the beginning of things that led to her needing to live with her father. You wouldn’t think a dead cat would be that upsettin’, ’specially since she had half a dozen of ’em, but she didn’t come out for, well, it was a few weeks. She and Tim kept a wonderful garden; in fact they filled all the front flower beds with vegetables that were downright beautiful the way they had them arranged.”
“Did they, by chance, plant potatoes out front?”
Mr. Delecorte laughed. “In fact they did—real nice foliage, for a vegetable. I probably would have said something about squash or tomatoes, but they were mindful of the way things looked.”
“It sounds like you were good to the family.”
“Ah, they were a good sort. I had my Jimmy; he wasn’t quite right either. Didn’t live past his twenty-first birthday—hit by a car back in ’59. Tim and I could relate to one another, that’s all.”
Sadie wrote furiously and glanced at her list of topics so as to keep the conversation moving. “Did you know the sister—Gabrielle?”
“Never met her ’til Tim was sick, then she came around a bit but was always rather pinched for time. When Tim ended up goin’ quicker than any of us thought, she came in, swept out Delores, and had the furniture put into storage. Don’t get me wrong, she was nice enough, but, well, it seemed as though she’d grown out of her family, if ya know what I mean, and didn’t know quite what to do with ’em. Her dad was sure proud of her, though, talked about her ’complishments all the day long. Right pretty thing too, if you don’t mind my sayin’.”
“Quite lovely,” Sadie said. “I agree. But she wasn’t much involved with the family?”
“Nope, like I said, she wasn’t like them—more highfalutin.”
Sadie moved to another topic. “Did Delores ever have headaches that you noticed?”
“Oh, yes,” Mr. Delecorte said. “She’d do fine for awhile and then get struck somethin’ awful. Sometimes she’d go to bed for days at a time. When she felt good, she was always tending to the garden, so if my wife and I didn’t see her for a few days, we’d check in with Tim to see if we could do anything to help out.”
Sadie was running out of questions and frantically searched for some more. When did she ever get someone so happy to talk to her? “I understand she didn’t like doctors much.”
“Not particularly, no, but Tim had a friend who was a doctor and would come visit without her knowin’ what he was about. She just thought they was visitin’. Tim gave Delores her medicine but called ’em vitamins. She was fine with vitamins but not medicine, ya know. Part of her funny ways is all.”
Vitamins? Sadie’s mind flashed back to the night she’d helped Mrs. Wapple dig for potatoes. Mrs. Wapple had said potatoes had vitamin C. Had she made a connection to having felt better when she’d been on her “vitamins” and tried to find whatever solution she could think of with her fractured mind?
“Do you know what her medicine was called? I mean, what she was being treated for?”
“That’s schizo-phrenia,” he said. “Done been affectin’ her since she was a young lady tryin’ to go to college. Ain’t nothin’ she’d get cured of, ya know, but so long as she had the medicine she did okay, slept more and stayed calm. I don’t know the name of the doctor-fella who was comin’, though, and I a’course don’t know what the medicine was called or nothin’ like that. Ya know, my other boy, Dave, he lived up in Camb
ridge for awhile, everyone said that livin’ in the city was as safe as anywheres, but he had a break-in that first month. They took off with his TV and his Mac Apple computer. Was probably done by the same guys who told him it was so safe, if ya ask me. Cryin’ shame that Delores suffered under the hands of them city thugs.”
“It sure is,” Sadie said. “I only hope the doctors will be able to get her some help. I don’t think she’s been taking her ‘vitamins,’ and her headaches are pretty intense.”
“Cryin’ shame,” Mr. Delecorte said.
“I don’t know how often you come into the city,” Sadie said, “but if you do, maybe you could look in on Delores. She’s at Massachusetts General right now, though I don’t know how long she’ll stay, and I don’t know where she’ll go when she leaves. I don’t think she’ll be coming back home, though; I’m not sure she can take care of herself anymore.”
“I’m not one for cities, but maybe my wife and I will look into it. I sure hate to think of somethin’ happenin’ to that gal. She done never hurt anyone herself, that be for sure.”
Sadie didn’t mention Bark’s untimely demise. She was beginning to get a dual view of Delores—who she was and who she’d been. And while she might never have been “normal,” Mr. Delecorte didn’t seem to think she was that weird either. And, Sadie noted, Mr. Delecorte had said nothing about her being a witch . . . cats notwithstanding.
“Delores has had some trouble up here—stealing mail from the neighbors and such. Did that ever happen when she lived in your rental?”
“Well, yes, it did happen some. She liked to collect things, like the cats, and she liked letters. Tim said that when Delores was little her mama would write letters to both girls and send them through the post so they would get their own mail. When things started going poorly, she seemed to hold on to that memory. When she didn’t find anything from her mother, she started going through other people’s things. Tim worried about that a whole lot, seein’ as how it’s a felony and all to tamper with another person’s mail. He’d keep a lookout and return the mail when he found it. A few of the neighbors had a real issue with it, but it didn’t bother me too much. She just wasn’t right, that’s all. She weren’t tryin’ to hurt nobody.”
“Did people file complaints?” Sadie said, tapping the line where she’d written “Three complaints in Lowell.”
“Some did, for sure, but not me. Like I said, it weren’t really her fault, and she never opened the mail or nothin’. Just took it home and left it on the counter for her daddy to find and return all apologetic-like.”
Sadie scribbled some notes and moved on to her next question. “Timothy wrote some articles back in the late seventies. Did he ever talk about that?”
“Tim had been a bus driver for the MBTA. He never wrote nothin’ that I ever knew about. What was they about?”
“Well, they were about ghosts.”
Mr. Delecorte went silent and Sadie felt herself cringe. “You’re sayin’ Tim wrote ghost stories?”
“Articles,” Sadie corrected. “I’d heard he was kind of . . . involved in that kind of thing.”
“Not here he wasn’t,” Mr. Delecorte said strongly. “I don’t take up with that kinda thing, and I’m sure glad Tim never mentioned it to me. I’m a man of faith, not fantasy.”
“I understand completely,” Sadie said, wanting to assure him that she wasn’t trying to make him uncomfortable.
“What was you needing this information for again?” Mr. Delecorte asked. “Who are you calling with?”
“Oh, I’m not calling for anyone,” Sadie said. “I’m just worried about Delores, is all, and wanted to be able to give the police and hospital a better history.”
“Ain’t her sister helpin’ out? I thought she was going to be takin’ care of Delores. That’s what Tim was sayin’ toward the end.”
“Um, she’s . . . involved, but seems to be a pretty busy woman.”
Mr. Delecorte harrumphed and Sadie agreed with him. It wasn’t a good enough reason in Sadie’s book either. She thanked him profusely and ended the call with a sigh of relief. She couldn’t type in the car, at least not comfortably, so she went inside the library and sat at one of the small study tables. The building was relatively plain, but it had character in its window frames and hardwood floor, making it easy to feel at home.
As soon as she was settled, Sadie typed up her notes from the phone call. She’d fleshed out some of Mrs. Wapple’s history, and that was good, but she hadn’t discovered anything earth-shattering. Perhaps the most important detail was that Delores had been on medication back in Lowell and wasn’t anymore. If she were schizophrenic, and unmedicated, her mental illness could be out of control, exacerbating her dislikes—dogs, kids, people in general—and rendering her incapable of rational thought—digging for potatoes, talking to people who weren’t there, muttering about angry birds.
Nothing Sadie had learned would explain who would attack Mrs. Wapple and why, but she seemed more sick than sinister now that Sadie had been able to talk to someone who had positive feelings toward her. It was a shame that Mr. Delecorte and his wife hadn’t been able to take over Mrs. Wapple’s care. Instead, Gabrielle had obviously taken on more than she was prepared to handle.
Nothing Mr. Delecorte had said pointed toward anything scandalous or horrible enough that Gabrielle would be trying to scare Sadie away from it, and Gabrielle hadn’t been any kind of villain in his report. She’d grown out of her family was how he put it, and it was an apt description. She was educated and had social status beyond what she’d been raised to. She wasn’t taking the right kind of care of her sister, but she’d moved her closer, and she did check in on her once a week. Very basic things, but . . . it was something.
Sadie’s thoughts circled around to motive again. Gabrielle was one of the few people connected to the weird things that had been happening, but she had no reason to do any of it. Additionally, she had many reasons not to. Presumably she was fine with her sister’s situation until Sadie started trying to tell her what she was doing wrong. All she had to do was wait out Sadie’s visit, not stage some big dramatic series of events meant to scare her off. Unless, as Sadie and Pete had discussed, she was a psychopath. Then her motives didn’t have to be reasonable.
Hmmm.
It was barely noon, which meant she had another hour left before she would be meeting Jane at the restaurant. Sadie tapped her pen against her notepad, contemplating her options. She was on track with Mr. Forsberk. By the time Jane finished her parts, she’d have a lot of information on which to base round two with him this afternoon. That left Sadie with Gabrielle to look into, but she felt as though she’d exhausted that resource.
She went back to the notes she’d taken about Gabrielle and spent twenty minutes going through them, trying to find more leads on information. She found Gabrielle on a couple of social network sites, but there wasn’t much personal information available. It seemed she’d worked hard to have a very professional online presence in place. Sadie tracked her job history and figured out when she’d graduated from school and when she and Bruce Handell had started dating, but there wasn’t any dirt for her to dig through.
Sadie had heard about companies you could hire to “clear your name” online, so to speak, so that those old college frat party pictures or the political protest you’d attended didn’t show up when the potential boss did a background check. Sadie wondered if Gabrielle had done the same thing or if she really had just lived a very professional, clean, good life—the perfect front for a psychopath. She also noted that Gabrielle hadn’t been publicly connected to her sister’s attack yet. When Sadie searched the news databases with Gabrielle’s name, the only hits she got were for articles about the gallery or Bruce Handell. Nothing came up about her mentally ill sister.
There was unfinished business with Gabrielle, Sadie could feel it, but she’d run out of places to look for information. Would Jane be able to find something more? Sadie bit her bottom lip and consider
ed that. She already felt as though she’d given Jane a lot to do while Sadie had just made one silly phone call. Asking Jane to take on even more was presumptuous. Or did it just hurt Sadie’s pride to admit she couldn’t do this all by herself? She called Mrs. Wapple’s current landlord, but it went to voice mail. Worried that the police had made the same contact, Sadie chose not to leave a message, deciding to call back later instead.
Sadie decided to look up articles on Mrs. Wapple’s attack to see if there had been any updates and spent another fifteen minutes reading a couple dozen different versions. There was nothing that she didn’t already know and still no mention of Gabrielle.
Sadie was glad the story hadn’t been picked up by the Associated Press and was therefore relatively contained, although it had shown up in the Denver Post. She assumed the story would pick up steam when there was an arrest made, assuming there would be an arrest.
At 12:35 she got a text from Jane saying she needed another half an hour; her interview had gone long. Sadie replied that was fine, then rested her head on her hand and wondered what she was going to do for the next hour until she and Jane could compare notes. Sadie’s notes were rather pathetic—was there a way she could boost her results and use her time more constructively? Was there any lead she hadn’t squeezed every last drop from?
Pumpkin Roll Page 24