by June Shaw
Eve nodded. “Since we haven’t learned anything about him from the manor, and she might be wanting to hurry to be with him again, I’m going to do searches for him. I’ll start online and take things from there.”
“Great idea.” Since my dyslexia often screwed up my ability to distinguish words in their proper order, she could perform tasks like that much faster than I could.
We pulled up to Josie’s in town and found one car leaving a parking spot out front. Eve easily maneuvered her car into the space.
The sounds and aromas of breakfast foods—sizzling meats on the grill, powdered sugar covering fried beignets, and syrup on pancakes—made me lift my nose and let it lead the way to the nearest clean table. Bright lights filled the large cavity of a room, bringing out the reds and whites of similar old-style diners. The place wasn’t too crowded.
“I see y’all,” Josie called to us from across the room. She made her way to Eve and me. “I don’t see any toolboxes in your hands, so I don’t guess you’re coming to do repair work for me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Eve said. “We were out in my car and didn’t have tools.”
Josie smiled. “That’s fine. Since I want some shelves built in the kitchen, I’d rather schedule when would be a good time for both of us.” She eyed me. “Breakfast?”
“Absolutely. I was just smelling bacon and—” Second thoughts made me stop before I mentioned the manor. “And I would love to have bacon—crisp please—and a biscuit and milk.”
Josie kept nodding, no order pad in her hand. “I know. You like it extra crisp. And you, Eve?”
“Give me the same.”
Josie’s left eyebrow lifted. “Fine.” She turned to go off but turned and came back. “Your mother’s at the manor,” she said, eyeing one and then the other of us. “She must have known that lady who was killed.”
My back jolted straight. “Killed?”
Eve leaned toward her. “A lady from there died either late last night or early this morning, but nobody said anything about murder.”
“Yes, they did.” She strode away from us and gave rapid orders to the cooks out front.
Eve waved to call Josie back. Josie gave her a brief nod and spoke to customers who sat along the counter. While we watched, Josie appeared to keep her eyes diverted from us. She went up to one person seated up there after another, talking to each one. Once she had finished that, she turned her back on us and fooled around with the cooks, even flipping some breakfast sausage herself.
“I don’t think she wants to let us know who gave her that information,” I said. “And I can’t believe it’s true.”
“I can’t either.” Eve pulled her phone out of her purse. “I’ll check the latest news and see if they say anything about that.” She did rapid searches, shaking her head no.
A young waitress appeared at my shoulder. “Extra-crisp bacon and biscuit with milk, right?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
She set my plate and glass down. “I’ll go grab yours,” she told Eve, who told her thanks.
“Josie’s not coming back around us,” I said. “Did you find anything on your phone?”
“Nothing.” She put her phone away and made room for her meal that the waitress was carrying toward her. “She probably just heard gossip that somebody started. Anything to get people excited.”
“I guess so.” Ready to attack my food after Eve was served hers, I took a moment to glance around. Maybe someone was here that we knew of who made up stories, our nice way of considering people who lied.
A familiar older couple sat at a table. The wife was feeding small bites of a waffle to the cutest toddler seated beside her. A little red bow held up a small cluster of her hair. Four men with hair varying shades of gray sat together, drinking coffee and talking. I had seen those men together in restaurants. Surely some of them shared gossip. Checking to my rear, I discovered two college-aged girls at different tables with laptops. And at the farthest corner where we had seen them before sat Emery Jackobson and Nelson.
“I want to go talk to him—Emery,” I told Eve and pointed at him.
“Yum,” she said after swallowing her first crunchy bite of bacon. She lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Emery was at the manor. He might have been the person who told Josie that Miss Clarice was murdered. I want to find out what he knows and why he was there.”
“He might tell you it’s none of your business.” She broke off a piece of biscuit. “And he might be right.” She licked her lips to get the smudges of Josie’s special sweet butter off them, smiled, and used her napkin. Then picked up a slice of bacon.
Glancing back, I found Emery throwing his head back and laughing. That must have been a reaction from something Nelson said. Possibly something they planned to do. I was going to go talk to them and ask Emery what I wanted to know. Checking my extra-crisp bacon, I figured I should enjoy my meal first and give them a few minutes to talk.
I buttered my biscuit and bit into flavorful goodness. I enjoyed another bite before nibbling on the crunchy bacon that tasted like it had been smoked. The milk was ice cold. After a long swallow of it, I started the round again—biscuit first, then bacon, and then milk. Eve had finished her biscuit and had almost devoured her second slice of bacon when her phone rang.
Both of us frowned. She shook her head and didn’t make a move to get it from her purse. “I can call back once we’re finished,” she told me.
“But it might be Mom.”
She pulled out her phone and answered. Her eyes clouding over made me stop in mid-bite of my biscuit. The part of it that was in my mouth felt mushy when she said, “Yes. Yes, sir. We’re coming there right now.”
I wiped my mouth and shoved my napkin from my lap to the table. “What?” I asked the second she hung up.
“It’s Detective Wilet. He went to both our houses and couldn’t find us. We need to get over there to see him.”
Chapter 24
Eve pulled out some bills and threw them on the table. I saw Emery looking at us when we hurried to the exit, but the minute I made eye contact, he looked down. I didn’t have time to get with him.
“What did he want?” I asked Eve once we stepped outside.
“He didn’t say, but maybe we could guess.” She barely took time to strap herself in and then pulled away, driving above the speed limit. A couple of blocks later she must have realized that getting stopped now would not do well for us. She glanced at her speedometer and slowed.
Still, it didn’t take long before we were sitting in the detective’s office.
“You know why I wanted to talk with you two?”
“Why don’t you tell us?” Eve said.
“You were both at Sugar Ledge Manor yesterday evening.” He knew that. He didn’t say it as a question. Still, we nodded. “You know that a woman there who sat beside your mother for meals became violently ill and had to be rushed to the hospital.” Again he paused, so we gave brief nods. “We asked a lot of questions at the manor last night. I didn’t want to try to track you down and speak to you there in front of anyone else again.”
I leaned forward. “Why not?”
“What happened?” Eve asked, the angle of her seated body now exactly like mine.
“The ill resident has died.”
“Yes, we heard,” I said.
“We are so sorry,” Eve added, and I nodded.
He slapped his palms against his desk, his upper body leaning toward us. “But is your mother?”
“What?” Eve blurted
“Of course she is,” I said, anger ringed by fear roiling around in my stomach. “Detective Wilet, why in the world wouldn’t our mother be unhappy to learn that any person, especially someone she knew fairly well, had died?”
The sound that came was air leaving his nostrils. He pressed back in his chair. Voice
s carried of two women talking while they walked beyond his shut office door.
“A number of people at the manor seem to know that your mother hopes to marry a resident there, a Mr. McCormick.”
“That’s right,” Eve said with a nod.
“Some of them also have heard the woman who died telling others, including your mother, that she hoped to get him for herself.”
A soft carol swirled around my throat.
Eve thrust her upper body so far toward him I thought she’d slip out of her chair. “But that was just like girl’s jealousy. I did that when I was twelve or thirteen. If a girl got a boyfriend, I wanted him. It was childish.”
He gave me a harsh look. “You two might also have heard that the lady they call Miss Clarice got so ill from taking some medicine that she shouldn’t have. It was the medicine that probably killed her.”
We looked at him, at each other, at him again, shaking our heads no.
He picked up a pen from his desk and put the back end of it in his mouth. He chewed on that a long minute. Setting it back down, he went on. “You were there when I questioned your mother about any medication she took. And some of her pills were missing.”
I quit breathing. My gaze shot to Eve.
A hard knock came from the door. “Detective,” a man’s voice called.
“Not now.” His voice came out gruff.
I shoved up off my chair and reached his desk. “But lately Mom is different.”
The harsh look in his eyes made me sit back in my chair. “Sit down please,” he said.
I sat again at the edge of my seat. “She might be forgetting some things, but she certainly knows better than to give any of her medicine to someone they weren’t prescribed.”
“What did she forget?” He gripped the pen he had chewed on to begin making notes.
I shot a sideways glance at Eve. I’d spoken without thinking, and now I needed to come up with something, something that might keep our mother out of trouble. “Well, she seemed to forget which one of us was which.” I pointed toward Eve and myself.
“How is that forgetful? I can’t tell you apart. I doubt that many people can.”
“Right,” Eve said, shaking her head, “but our mother, the woman who gave birth to us and raised us? She has never ever in her entire life gotten us mixed up. Until this week.”
I wasn’t certain Mom really confused us. On second thought, it seemed she pretended. But we needed something. And he was making me angry. I spoke up. “Detective Wilet, why are you so interested in our mother? You can’t possibly think she murdered that woman, can you?”
He didn’t say a word. He sat staring at us while we stared at him, a swirl of fuming emotions twirling between him and us like waves from hurricane-force winds pounding the gulf’s shore.
Eve and I looked at each other, her steely face revealing the same fury I felt.
“Here’s the information I gathered,” he said. “Yesterday’s lunch at the manor included cherry cobbler.” We nodded, and he went on. “The other two ladies who were assigned to the table with your mother and Miss Clarice said anytime cobbler was served there, Miss Clarice told those eating with her that it was her favorite dessert, especially the crunchy kind the cafeteria made there with cherries.”
I looked at Eve, then at him. “So?”
He leaned forward, clasping wide hands across the papers on his desk. “They said your mother really liked it, too.” He eyed my twin and me while we gave him nods. “But yesterday your mother removed the bowl of cherry cobbler from her tray. She said even though she loved it, she should be watching her waistline, since she hoped to get married soon.”
A boulder of dread dropped into my stomach. We hadn’t known this.
“She set that large bowl of cobbler on the table right next to Miss Clarice’s tray and said if anyone wanted it, they could have it.” The pause in his story let me picture that bowl of dessert—the tasty, sweet treat filled with lots of cherries and thick red juice and a top and bottom layer of crunchy loose bits of crust—Eve and I had eaten with our meal there yesterday.
“Miss Clarice ate that extra cobbler,” he said in a quiet tone. “Medicine like your mother takes was discovered in Miss Clarice’s system. It’s what made the medical examiner suspicious, since that type of medication would prove deadly to someone so slim and with a kidney condition like she had.”
I shoved up to my feet, needing to push away the ball of fury and fear wrapped inside my throat. “What are you suggesting?”
“Some pills could have been crushed and shoved under the top layers of that dessert. Not having a taste, they wouldn’t have been noticed.”
Feeling Eve’s hand gripping mine, I realized she had also risen. “And what? What are you saying to us, Detective?”
“Some of your mother’s pills were missing from her prescription bottle, and she couldn’t account for them. We all searched for them in her room.” He gave his head a slow shake. “We couldn’t find any of them.”
“But—” Eve and I said together. Neither of us found words to come after that.
Hard knocks came from his door. “It’s really important,” said the same man as before.
“Just a minute.”
“Detective, does our mother need a lawyer?” I asked, my voice firm.
“Are you charging her with something?” Eve’s words were as steady as mine.
He shoved himself up and strode around his desk. “No. We don’t have enough evidence to charge her with anything right now, and we’re still early in our investigation. I wanted you aware.” His eyes went hard. “Make sure she keeps all of her medicine where she can keep track of it.”
He opened the door, and we shot out of the room toward the exit. If the police considered our mother could be a murderer, we desperately needed to do something to disprove that theory.
Chapter 25
We were back at the manor. While Eve and I were walking inside, my phone rang. I didn’t want to answer it, especially if it was a customer calling about work. That wasn’t anything we’d want to speak about or even think about right now. After it had rung four times, I slid it up and glanced at the caller.
“Hello, Dave,” I answered once we had reached the foyer. I normally avoided saying his name if he called while I was with Eve. Right now, that didn’t seem to matter.
I stopped walking. So did Eve. She watched me and listened.
“The woman from there really did die, and the police suspect that she could have been murdered,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You know about it? What can I do?”
“Just hang tight for now. Keep good thoughts coming out for everyone at the manor.”
“I will. Do you want me to come over to be with you?”
I looked at Eve. She could hear his words. “No, thank you. I’m not home. I need to go. I’ll keep in touch and let you know what I learn.”
“Good. And Sunny, I really care about you. I want everything good for you and your family.”
“I appreciate that.” Hanging up, I made brief eye contact with my sister. She slid her gaze to my phone, but made no comment. I slipped my phone into my purse while we strode farther inside to locate Mom.
People moved around during midmorning with their stomachs filled from breakfast. Most residents and people who worked here looked lively and fresh.
Rita Picou walked around from behind us and reached the counter to the main offices. She got to the end of it beside a wall and lifted the cut section. “Ow,” she said, dropping the wood and pulling her hand back.
“What happened?” Eve reached her seconds before I did.
She sucked on the side of her index finger. With her other hand, she shook a finger at the uneven hinge that must have squeezed her. “Y’all need to fix that thing.”
“We will,” Eve sa
id, “but we’re not in Sunny’s truck. I don’t have any tools with me.”
I stepped nearer. “And we didn’t think y’all were ready to have any work done with everything that’s happened.” I hoped my comment might get her to tell us anything more than the detective did. Doors to the administrator’s and nurse’s offices were open. Both women moved around inside those rooms.
Rita lifted the cut piece of wood. “Well, I hope you can get this fixed before I retire.”
“You’re retiring?” Eve asked.
“I hope so. I’m getting older.” She stepped through the opening. Before she could let it down, I held it open. She barely glanced at me as I, and then Eve, followed her into the area. The secretary wasn’t around. Rita walked into her office ahead of us and shut her door.
The administrator glanced at us as we walked through the sheltered area. When she saw us heading for the nurse’s doorway, she continued whatever she had been doing.
Before I could tap on the nurse’s doorframe, the nurse looked out at Eve and me. “Can I help you?”
“I hope so.” I didn’t wait for an invitation to step into her office. She shut a file drawer she’d had open.
“Can we close your door?” Eve asked, hand against it and ready. The nurse nodded, and Eve pushed it shut.
“What can I do for you? I’m really busy.”
“We know,” I said. “And we know the police suspect that your resident was murdered.”
Her face showed no change of expression. Probably everyone in town had heard about what Detective Wilet told us by now. But probably not about our mother being a possible suspect. The people in these offices knew more than most. She didn’t seem to want to give away anything.
“Do many people who live here take the same kind of medicine that our mother takes?” Eve asked, mentioning its name.
“I’m sure you know I can’t tell you anything specific about any of our clients’ medical history.” She eyed the door, making me feel she wanted us to leave. “But you know that a lot of people also work here. I won’t look up your mother’s medical records right now, but some of the staff may have a similar condition and take the same prescription.”