But it wasn’t a rag, but rather some sort of clothing. Now I recognized it. It was the clothing that had come out of the well when I pulled up the bucket. I’d just cast it aside in my excitement at finding the ledger. As she shook it out, bits of dirt and leaves fell on the floor.
“It is my mother’s.”
“How do you know?”
“Her name is in it.” Laurene showed me the small name tag sewn into the collar: B. Elson. “It must be from the nursing home. She wears one just like it. I wonder how it got in the well.”
I took the dress from her.
“It’s in pretty bad shape,” Laurene said. “I was thinking of washing it. Maybe get that stain out.”
I looked at the large brownish spot on its hem. I rubbed my finger on some of it.
“Is that mud?”
“No,” I said. “It’s blood.”
I put the dress on the counter and headed out the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll be right back. Don’t touch that dress.”
I walked out to the well, then stared down the path in the woods behind it. I pulled out my cell phone and called the Atlas Police Department and asked for Officer Melore. The switchboard operator told me he was off that day. I asked her to contact him and have him call me.
“It’s urgent,” I said.
She knew who I was and said she’d call Melore at home. I thanked her and went back to the house. I deflected Laurene’s questions and poured myself a cup of coffee. My cell beeped. It was Melore. He sounded sleepy.
“Sorry to bother you. But do you remember telling me that on the night Judge Elson was killed you found a woman, a naked woman, walking along the road?”
“Yes.”
“Was it Doswell Road?”
“How did you know that?”
“I’ll explain in a minute. How did she look?”
“Like I said, she had no clothes on.”
“I mean, other than that. Was she injured in any way?”
“Not really. Just some cuts and bruises from walking through the woods.”
“Do you know where she had walked from?”
“Truck driver said he saw her go into the woods on Clayton Turnpike. She came out on Doswell, where I found her.”
“The Heartland Nursing Home is on Doswell, right?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“How far from where you found the woman?”
“About a mile. What are you getting at?”
“Didn’t you think she might have come from there?”
There was a long pause.
“No, not really. She wasn’t all that old.”
“Did you get her name?”
“No. I drove her to the hospital and then resumed my patrol. I meant to check up on her the next day but then all hell broke loose when the Judge got killed.”
“Melore, I have to know her name and what became of her. Can you check with the hospital?”
I had his full attention now.
“You don’t think … ?”
“I need that name.”
“I’ll call you back.”
***
An hour later, Laurene, Deerly-Johnson and I walked into Beatrice Elson’s room at the Heartland Nursing Home. There was a lot of new staff in all of Gruber’s nursing homes, as well as security guards and people from the prosecutor’s office checking records. I shut the door.
Beatrice was sitting where I’d last seen her, watching TV. I went over and turned the sound down. She looked up at us, her eyes settling on Laurene. She smiled.
Deerly-Johnson leaned down and held out the nightgown.
“Miss Beatrice,” she said gently, “how did your nightgown get into the well behind your house?”
Beatrice Elson reached out her delicate hands and took the clothing from the Chief. Then she looked up at the four of us.
“Momma,” Laurene said, “it’s all right. We just want to understand.”
“I … could not …”
The words came haltingly, and were barely audible. Time stood still in that room. I could hear my own heart. Even though it was what we’d hoped for, when a woman speaks for the first time in decades it came as a shock.
“What couldn’t you do, Momma?”
Beatrice started again, less haltingly.
“I could not let him …. do to you … what he did to me.”
“Grandfather?”
Beatrice Elson looked at Laurene. Her face took on a cast of determination. And something else. Pure love.
“Colver Elson,” Beatrice said, in a strong voice, “was also your father.”
CHAPTER 23 - PILLOW TALK
“Colver Elson, the man Laurene believed to be her grandfather, was her father!”
“Well, actually, he was both,” I said, “in a Chinatown sort of way.”
I had just finished relating to Alice what Beatrice told us in the nursing home. Once she broke down her wall of silence, the horrible truth about Elson spilled out.
“My God, the poor girl.”
Alice and I were in a four-post, canopied bed in a suite in a pet-friendly bed and breakfast just outside of Atlas. It came highly recommended by a grateful Evelyn Rogers, whose small law firm was rapidly becoming a large law firm. The litigation arising from the murders in the nursing home was sure to be monumental and Laurene Robillard and I had made sure the relatives of the deceased learned that Rogers knew more about the crimes than any other attorney in town, many of whom were compromised in the scandal anyway. Something told me I wouldn’t have to worry about the B&B bill. A lot of previously unconcerned relatives came out of the woodwork.
“Laurene is a tough cookie. I wouldn’t worry about her.”
“I’m thinking about her mother, Beatrice. What she must have gone through, living with a monster like Elson. How long had he abused her?”
“Just after her sixteenth birthday. He only stopped raping her when she became pregnant with Laurene. By that time Beatrice was exhibiting signs of the mental illness he undoubtedly exacerbated. Given his position, he had no trouble placing her baby far from Atlas and then clapping Beatrice in one of Gruber’s nursing homes.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t force her to have an abortion.”
“Apparently his wife wouldn’t allow it, on religious grounds. And perhaps she was hopeful Laurene’s father would reappear and do the right thing. She had no idea that the father was her own husband. Beatrice was too ashamed to say anything. Mentally damaged, she was totally under Elson’s sway.”
“He must have been afraid that Beatrice would eventually say something. I mean she just did. So, I’m also surprised he didn’t kill her as well.”
“She was his daughter, and he may have loved her in some perverted way. Beatrice said Elson occasionally had sex with her in the nursing home.”
“No!”
“He had the run of the place, and Gruber insured privacy. Beatrice is pretty murky on the details, because she was usually drugged up by Gruber. That was another safeguard for Elson. He made sure she was always nearly catatonic. One of the reasons she can talk now is that Gruber isn’t around to give her whatever he was giving her.”
“If she was drugged, how on Earth did she manage to leave the nursing home to kill Elson?”
“A mother’s love may be more powerful than any narcotic. When she found out that Elson asked Laurene to move in with him, she willed herself to do something. She was given pills four times day. She faked swallowing some of them until she was able to function. She waited until late at night, pretending to be asleep, which she usually was anyway, and then slipped out of the nursing home.”
“What about the staff?”
“At that time of night, only a couple of nurses are on duty. It’s a big place and while they check the rooms intermittently once the residents are asleep they stick close to the nurses’ station. Beatrice waited until a nurse looked in on her and then went out a back door, knowing she would not be missed until morning. I’m not
sure she even cared about that. Her actions after killing Elson were erratic. She knew enough to throw her bloody nightgown down the well. But walking naked through the woods and out to a highway in the general direction of the nursing home was probably instinctive. There were still plenty of drugs in her system. When Melore found her she was once again nonverbal, probably in shock. He had no idea who she was.”
“Didn’t anyone at the hospital or Heartland make the connection?”
“If they did, they thought it was just a weird coincidence. After all, she was just a sick, harmless woman who just happened to wander away from her nursing home on the night her father was killed. No one knew he’d raped her and she feared he was about to do the same thing to her daughter. How could anyone imagine she would walk miles to her house to kill a man everyone assumed she adored? That was a fiction he supported by his frequent visits to the nursing home. Where he continued to abuse her with the help of Gruber.”
“How did Beatrice find out Elson wanted Laurene to move in with him?”
“Laurene told her, during one of her visits to the nursing home. She was just making conversation, of course. Beatrice was unresponsive, but the thought that her daughter would now be living with Elson was too much for her. She assumed he’d do to Laurene what he’d done to her.”
“But Laurene wasn’t going to move in with Elson.”
“Beatrice didn’t know that. And she also didn’t know that Laurene wasn’t any virginal shrinking violet. If Elson had made a move on her, Laurene would have probably cut his balls off.”
Alice shook her head.
“So Judge Elson’s murder had nothing to do with the other murders at the nursing homes.”
“Nope. But it was the key to unraveling the nursing home conspiracy.”
“I hope those men burn in hell.”
“They will, or something close to it. When they eventually go to jail, every con with an elderly parent will be waiting for them, shiv in hand.”
“Are you sure they will go to jail?”
“Yes. Blaloch is singing like Sinatra. He is the weak link.”
“What do you mean?”
I told Alice what Maks said about criminal conspiracies.
“The darling man should know.”
For some reason, Kalugin and Alice, despite being on opposite ends of the moral spectrum, adored each other. I took great comfort knowing that the Russian mob’s apex assassin always had her back.
“What’s going to happen to Beatrice? Certainly, they can’t hold her responsible for killing Elson.”
“No. After all, he is the one who had her declared legally incompetent. Besides, there isn’t a jury in the land that would punish a woman who killed a father who raped her for years and who also helped murder more than a dozen helpless senior citizens. Hell, if she hadn’t killed Elson, the nursing home murders might have gone on indefinitely. Jurors would probably want to dig the son of a bitch up and stick an ice pick in his other eye.”
Alice shook her head.
“Will Beatrice have to stay in the nursing home?”
“For a while, until the dust settles. But Laurene and her husband-to-be have great financial and legal resources. They will eventually petition the courts to allow Beatrice to move into a home up North to be close to her family. I’ve already spoken to Arman and he says Beatrice will have the best care in one of his homes. I don’t see why anyone would object. Doyle, the Special Prosecutor, is already on board. So is Chief Deerly-Johnson. They are being given credit for solving one of the crimes of the century. What they say carries a lot of weight.”
“What about you? You basically broke the case. Don’t you want some credit?”
I thought about the Bodine boys in the barn. They were among the sleeping dogs I preferred to let lie.
“I’m happy the way things turned out. I’m not looking for publicity.”
“This is surreal. Beatrice Elson will be going to a facility owned by the Russian mob.”
“Which, as a rule, doesn’t murder sick old people.”
“Does Arman know who Laurene is? That she once basically worked for him?”
“Yes. He was quite amused. I mean, he knew some of it from Maks. But he couldn’t wait to tell his father about this latest twist.”
“Speaking of twists,” Alice said, “I can’t believe Laurene tried to fuck you.”
Gunner rolled over and yawned.
“I think Laurene was just going through the motions. For most of her life, sex was the coin of the realm to her. She just wanted to show me how grateful she was. She knew I’d turn her down. And since I did, she found another way to be grateful. Abby called me. Said Laurene sent me a bonus check. A very large bonus check.”
The money, I knew, would come in handy. I needed a new car. The insurance company said my Santa Fe was a total loss. Just as well. I knew I could never drive it again without thinking about Lucas.
“Do you still plan to walk sweet little Miss Robillard down the aisle?”
“Only if you don’t mind.”
Alice thought about it.
“What the hell? She’s proving that hookers do have a heart of gold by taking care of the Browne family. Besides, the wedding is at the Waldorf. I’m dying to go. But maybe I’ll make a move on her new hubby, just to even things out.”
“Can you wait until after the cocktail hour? It’s probably going to be spectacular.”
“I’m glad you have your priorities right.”
Alice snuggled closer to me. I snuggled back. Naked snuggling is one of my favorite pastimes.
“I’m glad we’re not staying in Elson’s house anymore,” she said. “The thought of what went on in there sickens me. We didn’t sleep in his bed, did we? Or in any bed Beatrice would have been in?”
“I’m pretty sure we didn’t. And as for sex, I think you preferred that chair by the window, so you could watch the farm animals while we did it.”
“Why don’t you suck a fart?”
“There something else I’d rather suck.” I lapped her nearest nipple. “How about another peche melba?”
“I knew I should never have said that. Will I have to hear it all the time?’
“Well, except maybe when we’re actually doing the melba.”
I rolled on top of her. Gunner, who had been curled up on the floor next to the bed while we talked, yawned again, got up and went in the other room.
“He did that before, too,” Alice said. “I don’t think he approves of what we do.”
“He is just being discreet. Besides, he has very sensitive hearing.”
Alice, who knew she was very vocal during sex, colored.
“I kind of like making love in a bed like this,” she said.
“I’m not sure I do. It’s too far off the ground. We’ve rolled out of beds before, you know. If we fall out of this one, we’ll wind up in traction. And that canopy is a big waste. There should be a mirror up there.”
Alice giggled.
“I like all the fluffy pillows,” she said.
There were all sorts of colorfully decorated pillows. Round pillows, oblong pillows, tube-like pillows. At first, I’d kicked most of them to the floor. But then Alice, who’s spent a lot of time in Paris and picked up some tricks from her French girlfriends, showed me how they might be used other than for sleeping.
“Hand me that one, sweetie.”
Gunner had left in the nick of time.
THE END
THE ELSON LEGACY is the sixth of the Alton Rhode mystery novels. If you enjoyed the book, please take the time to review it on Amazon.com. Here is a link you can use:
THE ELSON LEGACY
The next mystery in the Alton Rhode series is TURTLE DOVE. Here is a sample:
TURTLE DOVE
“Mourning Doves are small, graceful birds, common across the continent. The doves form strong pair bonds to raise their young. They have always been heavily hunted, and now developers are savaging their breeding grounds, plowing under nes
ts filled with eggs and young chicks. In North Carolina, where they are also called Turtle Doves, the soft, drawn-out calls of surviving parents for their buried young sound like laments.”
— Ashleigh Harper, from To Bury a Turtle Dove
PROLOGUE
The old woman was so very tired. She felt as if she could close her eyes and sleep forever. Which she knew was a distinct possibility when one is 88 with a weak heart.
Not that she feared death. Her long life had been one of accomplishment and honors. While she cared little for the honors, she liked the thought that her signature book was now a staple in classrooms around the country. My God, has it been 47 years since it was published! Or was it 48? She could not remember.
It was hard remembering such things at her age. The pills certainly did not help. But they did make her more comfortable, if a bit addled. Her arthritis and various other pains were now bearable. Her eyesight was strong, thanks to cataract surgery that gave her better vision than she had when she was in her 60’s! She had books and cable TV for the BBC crime dramas she loved, and she still enjoyed her food, especially the variety of fresh seafood available, although she ate sparingly.
She stirred in her rocking chair and looked out over the Atlantic Ocean from the deck of her third-floor bedroom. She certainly could stay awake long enough to watch the night arrive. Not the sunset, which would be in the West, on the opposite side of the island. The woman did not give a fig about sunsets. They could be beautiful, of course, and she had seen spectacular sunsets on the West coast of Florida and in the Florida Keys, where she traveled when much younger. But here, on Bald Head Island, just off the coast of North Carolina, the sun set over land. No shimmering golden glow against the clouds, no “green flash” as the sun disappeared (which she had once actually spotted even though some people claimed it was an old wives’ tale), no boozy spectators “hissing” as the sun appeared to drop into the Gulf of Mexico. In her house facing the beach, she loved sunrises, and next to them, watching the Atlantic glimmer, first with fading sunlight and, at the right time of the month, with the moon’s reflection as it rose into the night sky.
THE ELSON LEGACY (Alton Rhode Mysteries Book 6) Page 13