It was Mother. Thea turned to see her stop screaming and cower in the big recliner, whimpering, “Get away! Get away! Get him away from me!”
Beryl was closer to the man than Thea, and she made a move. He turned toward her, his arm raised as if he was either warding off a blow or about to deliver one. He never got the chance. Two of George’s friends burst through the doorway into the den, grabbed the man by his arms, and began pulling at him.
“Stob!” the man protested. “I’ve god rights! S’my house!” But it did him no good, as a couple more of George’s friends had grabbed him and he was being firmly propelled out of the room.
Thea rushed to her mother and put her arms around her like a shield. Her mother’s body was shaking, and her flesh continued to quiver even after the man had been hustled out of the den. Thea could hear him bellowing all the way to the front door.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she soothed. “He’s gone now. You don’t have to be afraid.”
Mother buried her face against Thea’s arm. “Don’ wanna go. Don’ wanna.”
Beryl had joined them by then. As she patted Mother’s hand, she exchanged a quizzical look with Thea at their mother’s words. What was Mother afraid of? Where didn’t she want to go?
“It’s okay,” Thea said, knowing there was no point in asking for a fathomable explanation. “You don’t have to go anywhere. You’re here. You’re safe. Beryl and I are both here. We’re going to take care of you.”
It took them several more minutes to get Mother calm, but then it was as if nothing had happened. She stretched out in the recliner again and went back to watching the images on the silent television, her moment of terror dissipated. From her talks with George, Thea knew that such rapid mood swings were to be expected from Alzheimer’s, but it would take some getting used to.
With the tempest past, Thea pulled her sister off to one side. “Bear, who the hell was that?” she asked, looking around.
Everybody else had drifted out of the den after the intruder had been dragged away. Thea guessed that they were probably in the living room or the front hall, where there were windows onto the front yard, and were busily observing the goings-on with the stranger and George’s friends who had ejected him from the house.
Beryl shook her head. “I’m not sure. I think it was George’s cousin Bud. I never really met him before—”
“Is he the drunk?” Thea asked, cutting her off. “I seem to remember George mentioning something about a cousin who was an alcoholic. He didn’t want him invited to their wedding, if I’m not mistaken.”
“That’s the one,” Beryl said. “I remember he came to the house one time when I was out here for a barbeque. He sort of wandered into the backyard and George hustled him the hell out of there.”
“What do you know about him?”
Beryl shrugged. “Not much. He used to work in the accounting department at Collins. George got him the job, I’m sure. But then he had to fire him because Bud kept taking liquid lunches.”
Aunt Dorothy entered the room slightly out of breath. “I heard what happened,” she said. “I was upstairs.” She chuckled. “Sorry I missed all the ruckus.”
“Oh, I think it’s still going on in the front yard,” Thea said. “You can run and catch it if you want.”
“No, thanks. I’ve seen it before,” Aunt Dorothy said. “I heard he upset Daphne quite a bit.”
Beryl shot a look over at Mother. “She seemed really afraid of him. Any idea why?”
Aunt Dorothy frowned. “Yes, I know exactly why.” She paused and looked from Thea to Beryl and back again. “Bud thinks he’s supposed to inherit this house upon George’s death. I imagine he got himself all liquored up and came here planning to kick Daphne out.”
CHAPTER 6
Motive. There it was, the elusive thing Thea had been hoping to find. A reason for someone other than her mother to want George dead. Perhaps his very own cousin; from what Thea had learned, these cousins were far from kissin’. She wanted to find out more about the party-crashing Cousin Bud: in particular, where he was when George was pushed over the cliff?
It was late, and the house was blessedly quiet as she lay in bed trying to sleep. The incident with Cousin Bud had seemed to hasten departures. Once George’s friends had managed to get Bud off the property those in attendance seemed suddenly eager to call it a night.
Thea was exhausted. Jet lag had set in with a vengeance. Plus, acting as if she remembered people when she had no clue who they were, then nodding and smiling as if she cared, for hours, had taken its toll on her psyche.
At least today she hadn’t had to worry about caring for her mother. Other people had stepped in and helped, and she’d been grateful for that Midwestern quality of wanting to pitch in. Not surprisingly, an overwhelming quantity of food had appeared on the buffet table and there had been tons of it left over, but nothing to clean up. The neighbor ladies had washed all the dishes and put them away. The refrigerator was stuffed with enough casseroles to last for a week. Nothing for Thea to worry about in that department. Too bad the rest of her caregiver role wasn’t going to be quite so easy.
Mother had been an absolute pill at bedtime. It had taken all three of them, Aunt Dorothy, Beryl and Thea to coax her away from the TV and up to her bedroom. Then, getting her out of her clothes and into her nightgown and into bed was another challenge. After that came questions about where George was, and Thea had been forced to tell her that he would be home soon. Those words seemed to calm her anxiety. But Thea had hated telling her the lie.
As she went to bed herself, Thea had checked on Mother once again and was grateful to hear gentle snoring.
Things were quiet now, she mused, but what would she do when she was on her own with Mother? George had been so good with her. What had he done to get her to eat properly? To tear her away from the television? To stop some of her other compulsive behaviors? Maybe there were answers to some of these questions in the journal on George’s computer. And answers to some other questions, too. Like who else might have a motive for wanting him dead.
Tomorrow she would crack open George’s computer files. Tonight she needed to sleep.
But as tired as she was, sleep wouldn’t come. Something was bothering her, something niggling at her consciousness, holding back the curtain of sleep. Then it came to her: Why had her mother screamed when she saw Cousin Bud?
Sure, Mother must have had some encounters with Bud over the ten years she’d been married to George, but would that have been enough to evoke such a terrified reaction when he bullied his way into the den? Thea didn’t think so. There was something else in that scream, something Thea wasn’t sure she wanted to acknowledge.
Was it Cousin Bud that Mother was reacting to—or was it the haunting resemblance that he bore to George? Thea had even done a double-take when Bud walked into the room. How must he have looked to a woman whose powers of cognition were definitely compromised? Mother might have thought she was seeing a ghost.
And what about the strange words she’d muttered: “Don’ wanna go.” Go where? To a nursing home? Had George told her he was going to put her in a home? Is that what had sent Mother over the edge—Thea shook her head at her own choice of words—and precipitated the rage that gave Mother the strength to push George over the cliff?
So the scream could have been her mother’s expression of fear that George had come back to send her away. Is that what it was about? Or could there be some other, less dramatic, less guilty reason for Mother to have screamed?
An out-of-nowhere hot flash swept over her, seeming to sear her flesh—as if she were lying next to a blast-furnace. Perspiration flooded her body; she pushed back the covers with little relief. There was no predictability to the onset of the hot flashes, but she figured this one had something to do with the extreme stress she was under.
Dealing with everything after Sam died had been difficult, but that was nothing compared to the burdens Thea was faced with now. Beryl would be
useless. Worse than useless, actually. She’d be coaching from the sidelines, not wanting to get involved, but making damn certain Thea did everything she was supposed to do.
And just what was she supposed to do? How do you take care of an elderly woman who fought you every single step of the way? If Mother were docile that would be one thing, but she was just plain cantankerous. She had never been the sweet Donna Reed/June Cleaver type of mom. Beryl had sometimes called her “D-Mom” (AKA: Devil Mom), but never to her face. That smacked too much of sacrilege. Religiosity was one of Mother’s fronts, a way of pretending she was different from the kind of person she really was: petty, controlling, rigid.
The hot flash abated as Thea remembered how amazed she had been that George had wanted to marry her mother in the first place. It was such a shock that someone would actually choose to spend time with Mother without being bound to her by blood.
At that time Thea’s father had been dead for more than a dozen years. She and Beryl had pretty much given up any thoughts of Mother remarrying. A couple of tentative suitors had pursued her, but she had spurned them both. Thea suspected they weren’t wealthy enough.
Then, out of the proverbial blue, in their weekly obligatory phone calls, Mother had revealed a sudden interest in the church choir. She had been an on-and-off member for years, but all at once she was strangely committed to the weekly practice sessions and would even forego other social functions just to attend. Thea wondered what could have prompted this intense musical interest, but thought it was probably another one of her mother’s whims, and she’d get tired or bored with it soon.
But then Mother had gone off with the choir on a trip to Europe. And when she returned, she was girlishly giddy about another long-standing member of the choir, George Prentice.
Mother did seem to have genuine feelings for him, but it also didn’t hurt that George had a healthy bank account, lived in a big house in the Rivercliffs area, and was a card-carrying member of the country club. It also flattered her ego that she had snagged one of the few eligible bachelors in her age group—one who was even a couple of years younger than she.
Thea had thought George would turn out to be the world’s biggest sap. But when she met him for the first time—and got past that silly toupee—she realized she had grossly underestimated him. He was a terrific guy, smart and funny, but maybe a little bit too proper for his own good.
As she got to know George, they had become close. George had even confessed to her how surprised he was that love had found him so late in life. He had spent the greater part of his life taking care of his sick mother and after she died he thought he would be a bachelor until his own death. Then, Daphne Linley had smiled at him after church one day and told him what an excellent solo he had sung. They had known each other for years but only to say hello, and his heart had been hers from that moment on.
Of course, it was sadly ironic that this romance that he had treasured so deeply had turned him into a caregiver once again, but he had accepted that role with equanimity. Most of these admissions Thea had coaxed out of George after he’d had a drink or two to loosen up, which was typical of this buttoned-down culture she had left behind so long ago.
She didn’t belong here anymore, and yet there were bits and pieces, ways of thinking and behaving that were still familiar to her. But where did she belong? She was rootless, anchored neither here nor there. She had lived in Los Angeles for more than thirty years but, other than her animals and a few close friends, L.A. had no claim on her. With the insurance policy on Sam, she had no financial worries—for the time being. But in order to be secure she’d have to sell the house and the two acres of property, and she wasn’t quite ready to do that yet.
Tomorrow, after she’d looked at George’s computer files, she hoped to be able to talk to Annie Biggs, her best friend since grade school. Even though Annie and her husband Dan, an alderman, had showed up at the funeral and then later at the house, there had been no time at all for any meaningful conversation. So Thea was hoping for a heart-to-heart with her tomorrow.
Talking to Annie would help. She could clarify her thoughts and maybe even pick up some of the local gossip. Frankly, Thea knew people were not going to be open and talk freely to her. How would they see her, anyway? As someone who abandoned Rockridge for the so-called glitter and glamour of Hollywood, or would they see her as the prodigal daughter returned from Sodom and Gomorrah and welcome her with open arms? Thea knew that more than likely she would be regarded with a certain amount of reserve, if not downright suspicion.
Hadn’t Beryl said that very thing to her, that people would think she thought she was better, smarter even than the local police? How was she ever going to get around that small-town prejudice? It was one of the things that had driven her away thirty-some years ago.
She heard a creaking noise in the hall. This lovely old house made lots of groans and cracks and even occasional moans as the wind found chinks in the nearly hundred-year-old bricks and wood. George’s father and uncle had bought the elegant Prairie-style house from the original owners after the Crash of ‘29. The two brothers and their families had lived in the large house together for years until there was some sort of falling out between the siblings. George told Thea he had never learned the reason for the family rift, even though he had asked and asked. She hoped her mother could go on living here, that it was not true George’s cousin could just throw her out. Tomorrow she would have to check with George’s attorney to find out about the status of her mother’s entitlement to the house.
There was another noise. Not in the hall this time, closer. Thea sat up and peered into the darkness. She had left her door open to listen for Mother in case she got up in the night, and now she thought she saw a shadowy figure looming in the doorway. It couldn’t be Beryl, as her sister had announced in a “do-not-disturb” voice that she was taking an Ambien and putting in her ear plugs.
“Mother?” Thea said, her voice turning raspy as a vague dread closed off her throat.
A faint sound was the only response. A strange, muted clicking. Like fingernails on a computer keyboard. She reached over to the nightstand and fumbled with the switch on the lamp, squinting against the harshness of the sudden light. Her mother was standing a couple of feet from the foot of the bed, holding out her hand, aiming something in it at Thea. What was that? A dark shape...good God, not a gun!
CHAPTER 7
Annie’s eyes registered shock as Thea recounted to her the tale of the nighttime visit from her mother. “Eww, that’s so creepy,” she said in a breathy voice. “What was in her hand?”
Thea gave Annie a sheepish grin. “It wasn’t a gun. It was the remote control for the TV.” She leaned back against the bench in the breakfast nook and studied her friend’s face, watching for her reaction.
It was such a familiar, comfortable face, one that Thea had been reading ever since they were five. Back then, that face had been covered with freckles that went with Annie’s fair, sun-sensitive skin, strawberry-blonde hair and eyes that were sometimes bluish-green, sometimes all green. Today there remained only a dusting of faded freckles across her now-pallid cheeks, and there were wrinkles around the clear, but slightly washed-out, blue-green eyes peering at Thea over a pair of rimless reading glasses.
“Are you afraid of her?”
“Maybe...at least a little. But...”
Thea sat silent for a moment, mulling over how to broach the next subject: the investigation. Annie’s reaction would be the acid test. Would she, like Beryl, tell Thea to forget it, to just accept that Mother was so far gone that she had actually committed murder? Or, as Thea hoped, would Annie be like Aunt Dorothy and tell her to follow this crazy instinct she had that there might have been someone else who wanted George dead? Someone who had met him and Mother on the cliff that blustery day, someone who had the strength—and the hatred—to make those indelible marks on George’s chest as he or she shoved him over the edge.
“Uh oh,” Annie said. “T
here’s something else going on, isn’t there?”
“What?” Thea averted her eyes. “Are you into mind-reading these days?”
Annie poked at Thea’s arm. “Only yours.” She pushed harder with her index finger. “Tell me.”
Thea looked up at that implacable blue-green gaze. “I think there’s more to George’s death than what the police have concluded.” She swallowed, before taking the leap. “And I want to look into it, because the police have pretty much closed the investigation.” The words had come out more tentative than she had intended, and she wondered if they sounded as foolhardy as she thought.
Something like anger flashed in Annie’s eyes, startling Thea.
“You can’t be serious,” Annie said.
Thea caught her breath. She couldn’t have been more surprised if Annie had reached across the table and slapped her.
“You’re the caregiver now—you’ve taken on that responsibility. Do you have any idea what that means?”
Thea stared back at her friend, unable to find her voice.
Annie shot a glance over her shoulder toward the den, as if she were concerned that Mother might be listening in on their conversation. But she needn’t have worried—the sound level of the TV was just shy of the decibel levels of a heavy-metal rock concert.
So, with her jaw jutting out, Annie continued, “Your time is not your own anymore. You have to be on-call 24/7.” She started ticking off her fingers: “You’re going to be nursemaid, babysitter, attendant, chauffeur, cook, housecleaner, laundress, diaper changer, hand holder, legal guardian, nose wiper—shall I go on?”
Thea bleated, “I can get some help.”
“Oh, sure,” Annie countered. “Your aunt will help. God knows I’ll probably give in and help you, too. And maybe with George’s money you can even afford a fulltime nurse. But at the end of the day, it’s you who’s going to be responsible. You’re going to have to get Power of Attorney, you’re going to have to deal with the doctors, the lawyers, social services—all those people who are now involved with your mother’s life.”
What Has Mother Done? Page 4