Angela sat on her chair and spun herself around giddily. “There was no work involved, sugar. Why, he had the biggest surprise for me! I could never have dreamed up what happened. It was like a scene from a romance book!”
“Stop keeping me in suspense. What did Mr. Farmer do?”
Planting her heels firmly on the floor, Angela stopped going around in circles and leaned toward Cooper. “He bought tickets to the Sara Bay Kennel Club Dog Show next month. In Sarasota, Florida! Not just that, but he got us two, first-class airplane tickets.” She clapped her hands with glee. “He’s takin’ me to the Sunshine State in style! It’ll be the fanciest, most romantic date I’ve ever had! Isn’t he just the Eighth World Wonder?”
Cooper hugged her friend. “Oh, I think that title belongs to you.”
“We’ll see about that,” Angela replied with a mischievous smile. “After all, he booked two hotels rooms. I sure hope they’ve got one of those doors leadin’ from the one to the other, ’cause this girl is gonna get gussied up and go a-knockin’!”
Angela handed Cooper her first assignment of the day and then focused her attention on her own billing duties, humming as she reviewed the monthly accounts.
Spirits lifted, Cooper sat in the Make It Work! van waiting for the longest traffic light in Richmond to turn green. She dialed Ashley’s home number and then slipped on her headset.
“Tell me something interesting,” Ashley whined. “I’m already bored. There is absolutely nothing on TV in the mornings. What does Grammy find to watch every day?”
“Judge Judy. Animal Planet reruns,” Cooper said. “It sounds like you’re feeling well.”
“I’m great! Can’t wait to start practicing once I’m all healed. Now, lay some juicy gossip on me.”
“Love is in the air, Ashley.” Cooper told her sister all about Emilio, Angela, and her decision to introduce Nathan to the family.
Ashley made a strangling sound.
“Are you okay?” Cooper was alarmed.
“Yes! But I just spilled my coffee all over my sofa. Thank goodness I paid for that extra stain protection.” Ashley muted the television. “We’re going to meet him this weekend? Oh, I’ll have to find something nice to wear. I hope Lincoln won’t have to work. What’s Mama going to cook? Do you think Grammy will behave herself?” Without pausing, she answered the second question before her sister could. “Of course she won’t behave. She’s going to eat him alive. Have you prepared your boyfriend for this grand occasion?”
Cooper laughed. “You make it sound like he should expect the Chinese Water Torture treatment or something. It’s just dinner.”
“Oh, no, it’s not,” Ashley responded in all seriousness. “When you’re over thirty and you bring a steady boyfriend over to meet the folks, it’s never just dinner.”
The workweek sped by, and though Cooper awaited word from Investigator Rector, he never contacted her about playing a part in the investigation. According to the Times-Dispatch, no one had been apprehended as of yet, but police were busy interviewing Door-2-Door volunteers and employees.
The buoyant mood Cooper had experienced on Tuesday slowly gave way to gloom. As the days passed, Nathan had become increasingly distant and though Cooper knew he was struggling with the mounting number of angry Big Man customers and had yet to speak to Tobey Dodge, his coolness toward her was hurtful and confusing. Worst of all, his reticence to make weekend plans with her made her feel as though their entire relationship was on shaky ground.
“I don’t think I can schedule anything until this situation is resolved,” Nathan finally responded to her repeated invitations on Friday evening. “According to the background check I purchased, Tobey Dodge from L.A. doesn’t exist. I’ve shut the website down temporarily, but I’m out of my league here. One of the Big Man clients is a lawyer and he plans on filing a civil suit. We’re going to meet for coffee Saturday afternoon so I can find out what’s wrong with the product and figure out where I stand.” Nathan sighed. “These folks want their money back, and I’d like to get paid for all of my work, too, or I’ll never get my furnace fixed.”
Cooper didn’t see why Nathan’s afternoon appointment should preclude him from coming to her house for dinner, but she sensed that cajoling him into meeting her family might not generate the casual, relaxed atmosphere she had been hoping for. It also bothered her that his professional problems could transfer to his personal life to such an extent that he could barely be civil to his own girlfriend.
Is this the way he handles job-related stress? Cooper wondered worriedly and then headed downstairs to her parent’s kitchen in order to tell Maggie that their special dinner was off.
“Oh, Grammy’s gonna be so disappointed,” Maggie said and then eyed her daughter keenly. “Is everythin’ all right between you and Nathan?”
“It’s fine. He’s just tied up with a big project right now. Maybe next weekend will work out better.” Cooper made a hasty escape before her grandmother could give her the third degree, knowing she’d never be able to hide the truth about Nathan’s inexplicable coolness from Grammy.
Back in her tiny apartment, she cooked a quick dinner of macaroni and cheese with a side of green beans and went to bed early. Lying in the darkness, she prayed that the police had successfully identified the killer as a result of the weeklong interviews.
“And please guide Nathan through his trouble,” she added. “So that we can go back to the way we were. Things were going so well, Lord. If it’s Your will, can You knock aside this invisible obstacle that’s come between us? I don’t know what it is, Lord, but I know You do. I’d be very grateful, and I think You put us together for a reason. Thanks. Amen.”
The volunteers were not their boisterous selves Saturday morning at Door-2-Door. They all looked tired and scared. Conversation was stilted and the kitchen echoed with nervous whispers and the sounds of soft jazz coming from the radio near the front door. The radio had always been on, but the energetic noises emanating from the volunteers typically eclipsed all other sound.
Cooper positioned herself next to Brenda to pack coolers. After her partner dropped one of the lunch trays on the floor for the third time, Cooper placed her hand on Brenda’s thick arm.
“You doing okay?” she whispered, noting that Brenda’s hands were shaking.
Brenda’s eyes welled. “No, I ain’t okay! I got called in to talk to the police in the middle of my shift. I told the boss all about it but he’s been lookin’ at me sideways since then—like I might’ve actually hurt old folks!” She gripped the tray and tried to control her voice. “I almost worked today to make up the hours, but then I started thinkin’ and do you know what I thought?”
Cooper shook her head.
“I thought I might look guilty if I didn’t show up here this mornin’. This is a mess, I tell you! I ain’t been sleepin’ right. I’ve been frettin’ about Darik. What if he hears about all this? He’s had enough bad news without worryin’ that his mama’s on the cops’ short list.”
“I doubt you are,” Cooper argued, hoping to soothe her agitated friend. “What kind of questions did they ask you?”
“All kinds of stuff. How I felt about the elderly. Did I take any prescription drugs? Where was I Friday night last week?” She sighed. “Praise Jesus, I was at church. We had choir practice and then a cold chicken dinner. I picked Darik up from a friend’s house, so a whole bunch of people were able to tell them I wasn’t lyin’.”
“They asked all of us the same questions,” Penny added as she pushed a cart of fresh lunch trays to the middle of the room. “Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have much of an alibi. I ate a bowlful of popcorn in front of an Audrey Hepburn movie Friday night and then went to bed.”
“Where’s Madge this morning?” Bryant inquired, looking around the kitchen.
Penny handed him a rectangular steel tray filled with sandwiches and red apples. “She’s under the weather. I think having to go to the police station really upset her. I’m going
to drop by her place when I’m done here. The poor thing. It’s bad enough that her daughter’s in trouble again. It’s just too much for her to handle at once.”
“Her daughter?” Quinton gathered several sandwiches into his hands. “The one living in London?”
Nodding, Penny looked aggrieved. “She was fired from the play she was in. Apparently, she went onstage after taking some kind of drug, botched all her lines, and was booed by the audience. Madge is just devastated, so the timing of all this . . .” She gestured around the kitchen. “Well, it’s been a very rough week for her.”
“We’ll be certain to add her, and all of you, to our prayers,” Savannah said from nearby, where she and Leo had been chatting quietly in a corner.
“I think we’re ready, people!” Anita clapped her hands with forced enthusiasm. “Let’s load our cars! I’m gonna take route twelve and Eugene has offered to be my navigator. It’s the longest route and I drive fast! Now I know we’re short-handed today and some of us are making two trips, so let’s get rolling.”
“Do you want us each to drive our own routes to save time?” Nathan asked her. He had been packing alongside Erik throughout the morning. Neither man had spoken half a dozen words to each other or anyone else, but at least Erik wore a secretive smile and seemed to be lost in happy thoughts whereas Nathan looked tired and cross.
His question seemed to make Anita anxious. “No, no. You go on with Erik, Nathan. We’re not changing our partner routine now. Trish, will you help Penny out? Most of y’all are gonna have to take two short routes since we don’t have Madge. That all right?”
The volunteers nodded and quickly loaded their carts. Nathan didn’t even glance in Cooper’s direction as he slipped on his navy blue barn coat and headed out into the brisk air.
“Care to tag along with me today?” Warren asked Cooper with a shy smile. He had a few crumbs clinging to his strawberry-blond beard, undoubtedly from the coffee cake laid out in the lobby.
Cooper pointed at her own chin. “I’ll need to vacuum you off first.”
“Oh, sorry!” Warren blushed. “I can’t help it. I love the food they give us every week. Don’t tell anyone, but that’s why I volunteer.” He whispered, “I don’t want to help anyone—I just want free cake and cookies.”
Cooper felt Nathan’s eyes on her. “Sounds like you were deprived as a kid,” she teased Warren as they loaded a wheeled cart with coolers. “My mama must’ve baked a million cookies while I was growing up but I’m still not tired of eating them. The thing about living in the country is that it’s easy to exercise. If you walk to the mailbox, you’ve done a quarter mile just like that.”
Warren nodded. “You’ve got that right. Seems my chore list is never-ending. Still, when I was a kid, Grandma Helen baked a mean pie and we had fresh eggs for breakfast every morning, so don’t start crying for my sad childhood yet.” He pushed open the door to the outside. “Ladies first. Especially beautiful ones.”
“Thank you.” Cooper smiled, hoping Nathan had overheard the compliment.
Together, they loaded coolers and Sunday food boxes into Warren’s spotless Corolla. Their route consisted of ten stops, in which all of the clients recognized and welcomed Warren warmly. He spoke with a gentle politeness that seemed to put them all at ease, but he was efficient also. He put their meals away, gave them instructions regarding the contents of their Sunday food box, and then, if they had any, inquired about their pets. He never left a home without ensuring that the dog or cat in residence had fresh water and a bowlful of food.
When one owner, a Mrs. Tilden, began to weep because she had run out of dog food, Warren assured her that he had brought supplies along with him.
“I’ll be right back,” he promised the old woman and jogged out to his car. He popped the trunk, grabbed a large Ziploc bag filled with kibble and two cans of moist dog food and returned to Mrs. Tilden’s kitchen. Her canine, a mixed breed named Buddy Boy, began to thump his tail on the floor as Warren replenished his empty bowls.
“You go on and eat now, Buddy,” his owner directed and the dog sprang toward his dinner. Warren seemed pleased to watch Mrs. Tilden’s pet devour his meal. He then brushed a few of Buddy’s hairs from his pants and said good-bye to Mrs. Tilden.
“I don’t know what we’d do without you, dear man!” she called after Warren, a grateful smile on her face.
“Do you have a dog?” Cooper asked him on the way to their next stop.
“No. I’d like one, but Grandma Helen’s afraid of them now. She didn’t used to be. We had all kinds of dogs on the farm when I was a kid.” He glanced in Cooper’s direction as they paused at a four-way stop sign and she noticed that his eyes seemed sad.
“You take really good care of her. Even if she can’t tell you that all the time, she’s grateful.” She smiled at him. “Do you have any help? Your parents? Siblings?”
“Whoa! You sound like that police investigator who interviewed me.” He laughed. “Are you wearing a wire inside that leather jacket or something?”
Cooper was embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I’ve always been lousy at small talk. It couldn’t have been too much fun to have been interrogated by the cops and here I am, doing the same thing.”
“But hopefully for different reasons. Like you just want to get to know me,” Warren answered flirtatiously. “And that Rector guy wasn’t nasty or anything. He was really polite, actually, and he didn’t ask me anything unreasonable, considering what’s going on. Background stuff, mostly. And where I was last Friday night.”
“I hope your alibi’s tighter than Penny’s. She’s worried because no one saw her. She was just at home, watching TV.”
Warren nodded. “That’s what half of America does most nights. I was lucky, because Friday night is bingo night and I took Grandma Helen to the Columbine Center to play. She doesn’t always know what’s going on during the games, but she smiles like a kid at the circus when she hears those tiles being spun around. We go at least once a month, so people recognize us.” He wiped his hand across his forehead in a dramatized gesture of relief. “I was never so grateful for bingo in my life!”
“Maybe the police are overlooking something. I keep thinking that there’s no way it’s a Door-2-Door person.” Cooper sighed in frustration. “When I consider the people I’ve met, well, you’re all too nice!” She looked at him as he pulled in front of their final delivery stop. “You’ve been there almost a year, so you’ve stood beside the same people week after week. Doesn’t it blow your mind that someone could be a murderer?”
Warren parked and then dropped his eyes to his lap. “I just hope they’re wrong. That’s all I can do.” He looked at her, his face pinched and drawn. “Because the other possibility is too hard to accept. This could be the end of Door-2-Door. People will stop donating and others will be too afraid to volunteer. Without gifts of money and time, this organization can’t make it.”
“And hundreds of clients will suffer.”
“Hundreds,” Warren repeated softly.
They delivered meals to their last stop quickly and then drove back to headquarters in gloomy silence. As the square building came into view, the gray walls facing the parking lot were highlighted by flashes of blue. Three Henrico County police cars and a pair of City of Richmond cruisers had parked in a fanlike pattern within steps of the front door.
Warren, whose face had gone pale, seemed to freeze behind the wheel at the intersection across from Door-2-Door.
“They’re bringing someone out,” Cooper breathed. “I can’t tell who, though. We’re too far away.”
Blinking, Warren pressed the accelerator and they pulled into the parking lot. Cooper jumped out of the Corolla just as one of the police car’s rear doors was slammed shut. The vehicle was obscured by the bodies of a dozen uniformed officers. Rector was there, too. He gesticulated briefly to several of his men and then walked briskly toward a black mustang.
Cooper looked at the scene Rector had left in his wake. Most of
the Door-2-Door volunteers had completed their delivery routes and were posed in positions of open-mouthed shock on the building’s front steps. Trish was standing on the loading ramp, her hand clamped over her mouth.
Cooper ran up to Trish and blocked her vision of the police cars. “What’s happened?”
“I just don’t believe it,” Trish murmured and then pointed at the cruiser in the center of the pack. “They’ve arrested Erik.”
“The police think he’s the killer?” Cooper was astounded.
Trish nodded numbly. “There’s been another murder. A woman named Vera. She’s not a Door-2-Door client, but she was given food from here.”
Vera? The name sounded familiar to Cooper. She turned her attention to the parking lot. The policemen had disappeared inside their cars and were slowly beginning to drive off, blue lights still ablaze.
“Violet!” Cooper exclaimed. “Vera is Violet’s sister! There are three Vs. Violet, Vera, and Velma.”
Trish swallowed hard and stared at Cooper in horror. “He murdered his own fiancée’s sister?”
“No.” Cooper rejected the idea immediately. “No way was it him.”
Trish put her hand on Cooper’s shoulder as Warren joined them on the ramp. “I heard two of the policemen explaining things to Lali. They found Vera dead in her chair. Just like the others.” Trish spoke softly, reluctant to press the point. “Her watch was taken right off her wrist. It was the only valuable thing she owned.”
“And she was poisoned?” It didn’t make sense to Cooper. She struggled to understand how Erik could have gained access to a woman living in a center with round-the-clock care.
“They think it was in her milk carton,” Bryant said. “It looked like it had been opened a bit and then resealed. Lali’s been asked to review all the victim’s dietary records to see if they were milk drinkers.”
Cooper ran her hand through her hair. “How could the Door-2-Door killer have gotten milk into a senior center? You can’t just waltz into those kind of facilities, can you?”
Path of the Wicked Page 24