Once the TV was turned on and they were certain Mother’s attention was elsewhere, Thea told them all the details of what had transpired during the night. Including the mysterious intruder in the backyard who had knocked her down.
Aunt Dorothy and Annie exchanged a worried glance. “Do you have any idea who that could have been?” her aunt asked, her voice pitched at such a low level that Thea had to lean forward to hear her.
“Oh, I betcha I know who it was,” Annie broke in before Thea had a chance to speak.
Aunt Dorothy and Thea both stared at her. “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Annie said, looking from one to the other.
Aunt Dorothy sighed. “I know. But sometimes it’s necessary to look past the obvious.”
Thea grunted in the affirmative with her aunt. “Why would Bud do that, anyway?”
Annie screwed up her mouth for a moment before she spoke. “Don’t know. But he’s a drunk; he doesn’t reason very well, does he?”
“Do you think he’s dangerous?” Thea asked.
Aunt Dorothy averted her gaze and Annie frowned.
“What?” Thea asked.
“He’s been known to get in fights when he’s drunk,” Aunt Dorothy said reluctantly.
“Fights? What kind of fights?” Thea persisted. “One swing and he falls flat on his face or knock-down-drag-em-out fights?”
“Wind-up-in-jail fights,” Annie said.
“Oh, really?”
“George had to go and bail him out a few times,” Aunt Dorothy added.
Annie snickered. “I think the last time it happened, George let him stew overnight before he got the bail.”
“Hmm, I’ll bet Cousin Bud wasn’t too happy about that,” Thea said.
“Yep,” Annie nodded. “Another black mark against his evil cousin, the usurper.”
“Does anybody know what it was that came between George’s dad and his brother?” Thea asked.
Annie looked blank and Aunt Dorothy shook her head. “Nobody outside of the two brothers ever knew what happened. But there were lots of rumors.”
“Do tell,” Thea prompted her aunt.
Aunt Dorothy sighed. “I’m not one to listen to rumors usually, but George always thought it had something to do with an item of value that went missing.”
“Huh. Did George have any idea what that might have been?”
Aunt Dorothy hesitated. “Nothing certain, but George thought it might have been a coin collection. He seemed to remember seeing a wooden box with coins in it when he was small, but it had disappeared, and whenever he asked what happened to it, both his mother and father acted as if he had simply imagined it.”
At that moment they all heard a throaty chuckle coming from the door to the den and their three heads pivoted, eyes staring. Thea’s mother was standing there, hands on her hips, giving them all a big Cheshire-cat grin. “Guess who I saw last night?” she said as if delivering the opening line of a joke.
“Who?” Thea, Annie and Aunt Dorothy said in unison.
“That stupid cousin of George’s,” Mother said, crowing as if she thought this was just so hilarious.
“Oh,” Thea responded, wondering if Mother was remembering something that actually happened or making up something that only happened in her mind. “Did you talk to him?”
“No, I don’t like him,” Mother said with a pout. “But he talked to me.”
“Aha,” Thea said encouragingly, “what did he say?”
Mother giggled. “He told me to get out of his house or he was going to kill me.”
CHAPTER 18
The Starlite Room was pretty much exactly as Thea remembered it. Maybe a little shabbier; the neon stars in its sign slightly dimmer, and the drab, pea-green exterior in need of a coat of paint or two. It was in the downtown area on the opposite bank of the river; forty years ago, a new bridge had been built and the roadway accesses had virtually cut off the blocks near the Starlite down to the river. All the other businesses were boarded up or had vanished, but somehow the Starlite had survived.
She was quite certain that she had never set foot inside it before, not that she hadn’t been in a few of the dives in Rockridge during summers when she was of legal drinking age—and some even before—but the Starlite had never been much of an attraction for the younger crowd. Only serious drinkers ever darkened its doors.
And Bud Prentice was supposedly one of them, according to Annie. She’d never been in the Starlite either, but she took the bridge home from her weekly yoga class at the nearby Y and, looking directly down into the Starlite’s parking lot, she had recognized what she thought was Bud’s car. It was distinctive: a tan Plymouth Duster with a dented rear bumper. Every week she saw it there, right after opening.
And now, as Thea turned into the Starlite’s parking lot, she spotted a very dirty, 70’s-era car with the boxy lines that she vaguely remembered the Plymouth Duster having. The prey was here.
She parked George’s big Lincoln with the passenger’s side only a scant six inches from Bud’s driver’s door. She did this partially out of maliciousness, but she also had the instinct that she didn’t want Bud rushing off before she got what she had come here for.
Turning off the engine, she felt around in her purse for the microcassette recorder and slipped it into the pocket of her jacket. She wouldn’t turn it on until she could confirm that Bud was inside and that she would be able to approach him.
Her plan to tape Bud and possibly get him to reiterate his threat to her mother had been hatched in the breakfast nook this morning.
After Mother had dropped her bombshell about Bud, she had stood in the doorway to the kitchen looking so pleased with herself that Thea had a feeling they were witnessing one of those moments when Mother was quite lucid. The tricky part had been how to question her about what Bud had said without overloading her already-fragile brain circuitry.
Thea had stolen a “what-do-I-do-now?” glance at Annie and Aunt Dorothy, but they were no help. Her aunt was busily brushing some wisps of hair off her forehead and Annie had her eyes downcast, nibbling away at her thumbnail.
Winging it, Thea rose slowly to her feet. “Where was it that you saw Bud last night?”
“Why, in the backyard, you silly girl.” Mother shook her head in exasperation. “He was out there—again—and so I told him to buzz off.”
Thea walked to her mother and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “What do you mean ‘he was out there again’?”
Mother shrugged, moving from under Thea’s hand. “Oh, I’ve seen him out there before.”
Thea started to speak, but Mother went on, “Believe me, if George were here he wouldn’t be doing that. George told me Bud is afraid of him.” The last words were delivered with a bit of bravado, but she suddenly got a pained expression on her face.
Thea reached for her, but Mother pulled away. “Dorothy,” she said in a feeble voice, looking up at Thea with narrowed eyes.
That look pierced Thea’s heart. Did her mother not recognize her? Or, worse, did she not trust her? “I’m not Dorothy—” she started to say, but Mother cut her off with a wail.
Aunt Dorothy leaped to her feet and rushed over, extending her arms to Mother. “Don’t cry, Daphne. I’ll take care of it. What is it you want?”
Mother shook her head. “Bathroom,” she managed to get out just before Thea was hit with a strong smell of urine. She looked down to see a puddle of yellow liquid on the floor at her mother’s feet.
Aunt Dorothy cast Thea a helpless glance as she hustled Mother down the hall to the bathroom.
Thea stood in place, unable to move, her mind replaying that accusatory look from Mother. What kind of caregiver could she be if Mother wouldn’t turn to her for comfort?
Annie had grabbed paper towels and was busy cleaning up the mess on the floor. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, “go sit.” And she nudged Thea in the direction of the breakfast nook.
Thea did as she was told, sitting wearily. She leaned
her elbows on the table and cradled her head in her hands. She was too tired to cry, too tired to even think.
Annie came over and sat on the opposite bench. For the moment, she seemed to have called a truce in her Cold War with Thea. “It was just a little accident. That’s gonna happen,” she soothed. “Don’t dwell on it. Let’s figure out what we’re going to do about Bud.”
It was then they had come up with the plan. Thea’s first instinct had been to call the police and report Bud’s threat, but Annie reminded her that she had no proof of the threat and that’s when Thea remembered the recorder that she used in her celebrity interviews. She was pretty sure it was still in the laptop case she had carried with her on the flight to Rockridge. Of course, she could have used the recording app on her smartphone, but then she might have to turn over her phone to the police, and that wasn’t something she was eager to do.
“Do you know where Bud lives?” Thea asked. “Maybe I’ll just go over there and confront him and see if I can get him to repeat what he said to Mother.”
Annie shook her head. “No, I don’t know where he lives. Even if I did, I don’t think I would tell you.” Her eyes were wary. “He could be dangerous, you know.”
“Well, I’m not going to go inside,” Thea protested. “I’ll stand on his doorstep and—”
“I know a better place,” Annie said, interrupting her. “It’s more public.”
That was when she had told Thea about seeing what she was pretty sure was Bud’s car in the Starlite parking lot. “You could go into the bar—it probably won’t have a lot of people in there at that early hour—and you could sort of sidle up to him and...”
Thea chuckled at the word ‘sidle.’ “I’m not too great at doing that anymore,” she said. “My best sidling days are behind me.”
Annie wisecracked, “Oh, I’ll bet you can still do a mean sidle with the best of ‘em.”
Somehow, Thea found that hysterical. She laughed until tears sprang into her eyes. It had felt so good to release all the pent-up emotion inside. But all the while she was aware that Annie was not laughing with her, that her friend’s eyes were on her, watching her closely. It turned the laughter bittersweet.
Once Thea had wiped her eyes and blown her nose and gathered herself together, the two of them had come up with the plan for Thea to go to the Starlite and try to get Bud to repeat his threat on the tape recorder which she would have hidden in her pocket. When they had all the details worked out, Thea had gotten dressed and had then run out to an office supply store to make sure she had fresh batteries and plenty of tape.
Now, looking around the parking lot, she saw only four other cars. Good, there wouldn’t be much of an audience. Taking a deep breath, she grabbed her purse and got out of the car.
Traffic whizzed by on the bridge up above as she headed for the sidewalk that bordered the windowless building. She could hear faint music as she rounded the corner and made for the door. Pulling on the dull brass handle, a mixture of smells reached her as she stepped through the opening: the odor of flat, watered-down beer, a disinfectant with an artificial piney smell, and a trace of cigarette smoke mixed with stale perspiration. Once inside, she recognized the tune on the jukebox as Tony Bennett singing about leaving his heart in San Francisco. Just another reflection of the stuck-in-time quality about the place.
Five pairs of eyes turned to stare at her as she paused just past the threshold: the bartender, two men sitting at the bar near her and a middle-aged couple sitting in a booth off to her right. The sixth person, sitting at the far end of the bar, hadn’t bothered to look up from the amber liquid in the glass in front of him. It was Bud Prentice.
CHAPTER 19
As the door swung shut behind her taking away any natural light in the room, Thea stole a furtive glance at the bartender. He was about her age, with black, wavy hair streaked with gray. His dark eyes were overhung with heavy brows and there was curiosity in them as he openly gaped at her. Somebody else she had gone to school with?
The way the patrons were staring at her, she had the feeling that she’d landed behind enemy lines. Not that she’d been expecting the Welcome Wagon in a joint like this, but the hostility level was almost palpable.
When she and Annie had hatched this scheme to corner Bud Prentice in a public place, they’d focused so much on him that they’d barely given a thought to what kind of environment Thea would be heading into. A wave of paranoia flooded over her as she read suspicion in each pair of Watching Eyes. Were they all wondering what she was doing in their bar?
Even though the Watching Eyes continued to follow her, she tried to ignore them as she strode across the scuffed linoleum toward the far end of the bar where Bud was sitting. He lifted his head as she approached, and watched her warily with bleary eyes. She pulled up to the stool next to him and slipped on to the black vinyl seat. As she set her purse down on the bar with a noisy thunk she slipped her free hand into her pocket and turned on the recorder. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Bud turning his head away as if to dismiss her.
The bartender threw down the towel he had been using to wipe a glass and sauntered over, leaning against the bar with both hands. “What’ll it be?” he asked. A steely hint of antagonism glinted in his eyes as his gaze held hers. Was he trying to tell her she didn’t belong there?
Thea hesitated. Something strong would calm her thudding heart, but she also had to keep her wits about her. “A light beer,” she said. “Whatever you’ve got on draft.”
The bartender gave her a nod and moved down the bar to pull her beer from a tap. Tony Bennett finished singing and Johnny Mathis came on with “Chances Are.” Thea guessed that it was the middle-aged couple in the booth who were feeding coins into the jukebox.
As the bartender returned with a pilsner glass with a thin head on it, Thea pulled a ten-dollar bill out and laid it on the bar. He picked up the bill, and then glanced at Bud. “You ready?” he asked.
Bud must have responded to him because the bartender headed off.
Reminding herself again that what she was doing wasn’t crazy, Thea took a cautious sip of beer, hoping that the bartender hadn’t spit in it—but that was just paranoia on her part seeing as she’d been watching him the whole time. Bud was so close she could smell him, and it was obvious he hadn’t bathed in roughly a week.
The bartender came back with Bud’s drink and her change. He lingered for a moment with his hand on the bar, flicked a glance from her to Bud and back again. Giving a subtle shake of his head, he stepped back and walked to the other end.
She let Bud raise his glass and take a sip before she turned to him. Then, using her flat, no-intonation reporter’s voice, she said, “Do you know who I am?”
Bud set down his glass and turned his body halfway to view her more closely. “Seen ya somewhere. Can’t remember where.”
Thea felt his scrutiny as he gazed at her, his mind most likely running through his hazy, alcohol-sodden memories to see if he could come up with her face.
It was hard not to look at him and see George in his features. But Bud was a darker version, both in his coloring and his demeanor. George had been foolhardy enough to sport that silly toupee, but Bud didn’t even bother with a comb-over of the sparse hairs he had on top. They both wore glasses, but where George had worn expensive designer frames Bud made do with nerdy tortoise-shell ones. An extrovert, George had been upbeat and outgoing most of the time, but his cousin appeared to be withdrawn and sullen. She wondered how much he’d had to drink already. The bar had only been open for an hour or so, which meant Bud couldn’t have had more than a few unless he had started on his own. He was wearing the same tweed jacket he had on when he had burst into the house after George’s funeral. Close up, she could see the frayed edges of the sleeves and a moth-eaten hole on the nearest shoulder.
Nothing had changed in his expression to show that he recognized her, so Thea spoke, “I’m your cousin George’s stepdaughter. My name’s Thea Browne.”
/> He squinted at her. “George?” His posture stiffened and his nostrils flared in an overly dramatic way.
Thea didn’t know what she was expecting to see, but it certainly wasn’t the glimmer of tears gathering in his eyes. Just how unstable was this guy?
The next words he said were so choked with emotion that she could only make out the word “cousin.”
Thea leaned toward him. “What’s that you said?”
Anger flashed in his eyes. “I said,” he repeated, the words clipped off as if it hurt him to have to repeat something painful, “My cousin is dead.” He let out a deep sigh, his chest and shoulders heaving with the weight of it. “He got pushed off a cliff!”
Oh, Jesus! Thea found her own emotions reeling. Grief was the last thing she expected out of him. He was grieving for George, just as she was. Maybe he wasn’t quite the monster she had made him out to be.
But his next words, “His killer is walking around free,” sent cold fingers of fear down her spine. “And everybody in town knows who it is. In my book, anybody who protects a killer is just as bad!” His eyes held hers; there was clearly a hint of menace radiating in the gaze. Thea took a gulp of beer, glad she had turned on the tape recorder right away. Bud was all over the place emotionally. Was he building up to something? Maybe a threat, like the one he had made last night against her mother? If he did, she would have the evidence on tape to deliver to the police. “You told my mother you’d kill her, didn’t you?” she said, back to her reporter’s voice.
A vein throbbed in his temple. “Yeah, I did.” He paused, then added, “You could get hurt, too.” His gaze darkened as his hands spread out across the bar, knuckles whitening with tension.
“Me?” Thea’s accompanying laugh sounded hollow, even to her own ears. She knew she should get out of there, he’d just threatened her life. It was on the tape recorder still whirring away in her pocket, but for some reason she couldn’t move.
What Has Mother Done? Page 12