Polly Dent Loses Grip (A LaTisha Barnhart Mystery)

by S. Dionne Moore

  “Did you see Mrs. Dent this afternoon?”

  Sue’s eyes grew cautious, as if she were hiding something. “Of course. She my patient.”

  I’d have to win this girl’s confidence if I was going to get anywhere. She clearly wasn’t the trusting type, but why did she seem so guileless a minute ago when handing over her records? A strange mix.

  “My wife is kind of an armchair detective.” Hardy rolled his body forward, patting my leg. “You could say she’s an inguesstigator of sorts.”

  In-guess-ti-ga-tor. I liked it.

  He continued. “She and I captured the man who murdered Marion Peters over in Maple Gap.”

  Sue gaped, obviously making some mental connection. “You Barnhead lady?”

  Hardy slapped his leg and guffawed. “Her head ain’t quite that big.”

  I cocked my arm and gave him a good jab. He straightened up right quick. “You better shut your big trap before I knock that last tooth down your throat. You’ll really be digging for gold then.”

  Otis cleared his throat. “Mrs. Barnhart will be helping me with the interviews.”

  Really? He’d had a mighty quick change of heart. It would make things easier for me to be able to talk freely to the staff. Given Otis’s vow that Polly’s fall was an accident, maybe him letting me look into it was his admission there might be more to the whole “accident.” I wondered if something in Sue Mie’s report had made him change his mind. I plowed right ahead with a question, before Otis did another flip-flop.

  I bestowed my sweetest smile on Miss Mie. “Did Mrs. Dent seem well when you saw her this afternoon?”

  Sue gave a single nod. “I knocked on door and gave snack.”

  “Anything strange about her behavior?”

  She wilted against the wall. “Maybe a little uptight. I don’t know.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  I could tell that Sue Mie was feeling the pressure of the questions. Nothing like having to remember the details of someone’s appearance when seeing them every day had become routine. She shrugged on a sigh. “I don’t know.”

  Mr. Payne glanced down at the papers, running a finger along a passage. “It says here Mrs. Dent was diabetic. You were aware of that as you dispensed the snacks?”

  “I check the records for each patient, Mr. Payne.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Otis pressed, “but accidents do happen, and the police will double my notes on the matter once they are called in, not to mention the investigation the Joint Committee will also conduct. You might have dispensed the wrong snack.”

  A mistake that could cost her her job, I figured.

  Sue Mie’s back seemed to stiffen. “Mrs. Dent is not my enemy.”

  There it was again. That hardness of tone, the flat stare, almost a challenge.

  Mr. Payne steepled his fingers. “It is an easy mistake to make, Miss Mie.”

  She dropped her gaze. “Yes, sir.”

  If Otis Payne had sensed Sue’s hostility, he didn’t let on. Hardy shifted beside me and leaned to whisper. “I’m wondering what Mr. Payne was doing this afternoon.”

  That’s what I love about this man, he fills in the holes of my thinking. Two halves that make a whole, that’s us. Volleying a question at Mr. Payne would also give Sue a much needed break, time to organize her thoughts a bit.

  “In all this flurry of questioning, Mr. Payne, we’d like to know what you were doing this afternoon. Can anyone vouch for you?”

  I can tell you right now, he didn’t like the tables being turned on him. The knot of his tie received another yank. An electronic buzz ripped through the silence and made him jump. He swiped a hand across his forehead, “Excuse me,” and lifted the receiver of the phone on his desk. “Hello, Otis Payne here.”

  He listened, his head resting in the cradle of his hand. “Yes, I’m aware of that, dear. This isn’t a good time, I’ve had a very trying day.” He stood abruptly, sending his wheeled office chair careening backward toward the wall and swung away, his back toward us.

  I motioned for Sue to have a seat next to me and sent Hardy a meaningful look.

  “What?” he asked.

  “This girl needs to sit down,” I hinted.

  He assessed the small space on my other side. “Not all three of us is going to fit. Why don’t you get up?”

  “This is your opportunity to be a gentleman.” Pink packets of sugar couldn’t have been sweeter than my words or tone.

  “You always telling me I’m not one. Don’t see any reason to break that winning streak.”

  I lowered my voice for Hardy’s ears. “Get your tail up out of here or I’m gonna sit myself down on your lap.”

  He flashed his gold tooth at me. “Promise?”

  “To break you?” I folded my arms. “Yup, I promise.” Sometimes he acts like a young buck in rut and I have to remind him that rut for him is nothing but a deep furrow in the ground.

  He hitched himself to his feet and sank down in the armchair, the insufferable grin I loved so much still in place. Silly boy.

  Otis’s fervent whispers said the conversation wasn’t going well. “You ever met Mrs. Payne?” I whispered to Sue.

  “She come to dinners. She not talk much, especially not residents.”

  Apparently Mrs. Payne lived up to her name. And if Otis’s jerky actions interpreted the conversation, he was not a happy man. His voice was low and abrupt, and then he spun toward us and jabbed the phone down on its base. His eyes strayed toward the clock on the wall before addressing us. “I need to conduct some interviews. Perhaps we can finish this conversation later.”

  Sue Mie and Hardy both took the dismissal and got to their feet. When I didn’t move an inch, Hardy stared down at me as if I had a bomb strapped to my forehead.

  “He means we need to get, LaTisha.”

  “He means you need to leave.” I locked eyes with Otis. “But he invited me to stay for the interviews.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Barnhart. There are things I need to take care of in private. You can feel free to talk to the residents. Maybe they saw something.”

  He’d backtracked pretty quick from wanting me to help in staff interviews. Maybe I was getting too close to something? “So you’re admitting to the possibility that Polly’s fall might not have been an accident.”

  Hardy’s head rotated right and left between the two of us. “While you two sort this out, I’m going to check on Momma.” He skedaddled out of there real fast, shooing Sue Mie in front of him, leaving me to face down Otis Payne.

  Otis leaned forward, hands clasped on the desk. “Mrs. Barnhart, you must understand something. I am approaching this investigation like it was an accident, not from the perspective that Mrs. Dent’s demise was planned, plotted, or otherwise. There is no evidence in that direction.”

  I rolled back and forth on the sofa in an effort to get vertical. Drat these deep sofas. I finally got my feet under me. “Then you’ll feel no threat if I look into this matter on my own. For my peace of mind.”

  Otis twitched. Or to be more precise, his eye twitched. He sawed at his tie a bit, then cleared his throat. “If you feel you need to do this, I’m sure I can’t stop you—”

  I nodded. “You’re seeing the light now, honey.”

  “Please exercise caution though. I don’t want my staff pestered and distracted from doing their jobs correctly.”

  “And if you happen to be thinking Polly’s fall wasn’t an accident, I want Hardy left alone. The police start sniffing around him and I’m going to make good and sure they know Hardy saw you with Polly this afternoon as well. You feeling me?”

  His smile was tight when I left his office. Probably safe for me to assume that he would not be applying for a LaTisha Barnhart fan club card.

  I determined to poke into the minds of the residents to see if anyone had noticed anything unusual about Mrs. Dent’s behavior. I smiled my way through a couple of vague conversations with residents who had obviously seen nothing but the ba
cks of their eyelids all afternoon. That’s when my mind tripped across a familiar face. Mitzi Mullins shuffled a deck of playing cards and set up for a game of solitaire. I wondered if Gertrude had forgotten her friend; the little lady sitting here seemed a terribly lonely figure.

  “Mitzi, did Gertrude return from her walk yet? Does she play cards with you?”

  “Can’t play solitaire in a pair.”

  Touche. “Did you see Mrs. Dent earlier today? Before her fall?”

  Her silver head bowed over the cards, it was impossible to see her expression. I watched as she drew from the pile and added to the rows, slow but sure, marveling at her concentration. But the longer I sat there, I wondered if Mitzi Mullins was clear minded. Her lips began to move and her head bobbed, only slightly at first, then with more exaggerated motion as her voice became a whisper.

  “ . . . at the door . . . on the floor . . . play fair . . . game of solitaire.”

  She paused and smiled at me, her head going the whole time.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  This time I heard her loud and clear. “A dark shadow at the door. Polly Dent on the floor. Not everyone plays fair. Life for him is solitaire.”

  The rhyme rolled through my brain again. I stared at Mitzi as a bite of cold teeth sank into my spine. Were these ideas conjured from the dark recesses of her dementia, or did Mitz see something?

  Naw.

  I mentally repeated the words with her as she repeated the rhyme, head still going back and forth. The strange feeling gripped me that my head was bobbing in time with hers. This was foolishness. I scooted back my chair. She didn’t seem to notice at all, her hands moving steadily over the deck, laying out cards in order. She was well on her way to winning her game of solitaire.

  Chapter Five

  There was no help for it. I was going to have to rule my nerves and go into the exercise room with old Polly girl. It’d help settle my mind to get a gander at Polly up close. The idea repelled me though—thoughts of Marion Peters, you know. The way I found her in her antique store all those months ago, swam around in my head, making me dizzy and twisting my stomach into knots. At this rate, about ten years from now I might be able to do this for a living. It made me wish I’d never decided to go into Police Science. The science part intrigued me, but the reality that prompted that part, not so much.

  Polly’s fall might have been an accident, but I didn’t like the idea of an elderly woman in the gym by herself, falling and dying. Hardy and I at least owed it to Momma to make sure Bridgeton Towers righted whatever wrong had caused Polly access to a place where she could hurt herself so terribly. Still, my brain buzzed that a fall like that shouldn’t cause someone to die. A broken leg, hip, something like that, but death?

  As I neared Otis’s office area, I noticed the door leading from the hallway into his office was open. I walked right in. He wasn’t there, so I settled in to wait. His office wasn’t overly huge, but definitely showed signs of a working man. Garbage filled the trashcan, papers stuck out of a file drawer. His nice, tall plant turned out to be plastic and off-center in the pot, guarding a door that appeared seldom used. I tried the door. It was locked tight. I tried to straighten the trunk of the tree and found it shifted easily in the pot. I left it alone to examine the bookcase. It held everything from popular fiction to law and medical books.

  With nothing else to grab my interest, I sank down into the sofa, feeling like I was falling into a great pit. They had lift chairs, why not lift sofas? Sure would be convenient in a place like this where old knees and hips had a hard time working in sync with each other.

  It didn’t take long for Otis to make his appearance. He yanked his tie completely off as he shut the door behind him, never even glancing my direction. He mopped his face against his forearm. Seeing him so unnerved made me wish I could hide somewhere and spy on him. Had he worked up such a sweat interviewing people? Maybe he’d discovered someone had made a serious mistake and was sweating being found out by the police or the Department of Public Welfare or the Joint Commission.

  “You feeling alright, Mr. Payne?”

  To say that he jumped was a gross understatement. He couldn’t have produced more thrust if he’d been a rocket launcher.

  He blinked rapidly. “What do you want?”

  Not the kindest conversation starter, but I’d cut the man a break. “Is Mitzi Mullins all here?” I tapped my head to clarify my question.

  He slumped into his seat. “Early dementia.”

  “Can you let me in to see Polly?”

  He frowned at me. “Why on earth do you want to see her?”

  “To look at the scene before the police get here.”

  He bounced his fingertips on the table and exhaled. “Yes,” he kind of hissed that last letter. “But don’t touch anything. Don’t even get close to her.”

  “The doctor arrive yet?”

  Otis’s brow creased. “Arrive?” Then his brow cleared. “Why, yes, he did. He’s already seen the body.”

  Seemed mighty fast examining to my mind, but I kept that to myself. A doctor I’m not, so how would I know? Besides, Otis had neatly sidestepped something and I had a mind to poke at him a bit on the subject.

  “You never answered my question earlier. Where were you around the time of Polly’s fall?”

  He let out a long, slow breath. “Early dinner in the cafeteria. Mrs. Broumhild can verify that. Was in there the whole time.”

  “Didn’t Hardy say he’d seen you with Polly?”

  Otis flinched. “Did he? Probably before I went in for my dinner.”

  I’d check it out just to be sure. But later. All I really wanted to do right now was get into that room and get it over with.

  He thrust himself to his feet and motioned me to follow, looking a little rabid-eyed, if you know what I mean. If he didn’t calm down, he might have a heart attack. I wished Hardy was with me for moral support.

  As soon as Otis’s hand rested on the doorknob of the exercise room, I braced myself. I averted my eyes from Polly as much as possible, scanning the area around the treadmill. The air held a certain unpleasant scent, precursor of what was to come should Polly remain in the room.

  Otis toyed with his key, lips tightly pressed together. “Why don’t I shut the door and wait for you out here? That way I can make sure no one interrupts. Don’t get too close, I’ll watch you through the glass.”

  Was that a warning? I put my hands on my hips and faced him square on—message sent.

  He sucked in a breath, gulped, then backpedaled out the door. Message received.

  Breathing a prayer for strength, I began to process each area, noting the lay of the equipment, the floor, the towel rack, a pan of white powder next to a dirty clothes hamper. A couple of chairs, purple vinyl, if you can stomach the thought of that. A small trashcan filled with papercups from the watercooler and some powdery residue.

  I retreated a few steps until my back touched the door to the room, blocking old Otis’s view, though not on purpose. Mirrors covered the entire right and rear walls of the room, with a watercooler in the corner closest to a rack of towels.

  I processed the area around Polly first, easing myself into looking her over, starting with the treadmill she’d fallen from. Identical to the other two in every way, including the presence of white powder on the handgrips and sprinkles apparent on the carpet. The baby powder, I guessed. The belt of Polly’s treadmill had a chunk taken out of it on the right side, the belts on all three of the machines looked well worn. The emergency key dangled from Polly’s hand. On the other two machines, the key was held in place by a little plastic shelf. Seemed normal enough, though exercise gave me the hives and the idea of having an intimate relationship with a treadmill or any other device of torture went contrary to my slogan of eat, drink, and be buried. Not that I imbibed anything stouter than grape juice, mind you, but good food was at the top of my list.

  Except right here and right now, as my eyes turned to look over the bo
dy. My stomach clenched hard.

  Polly’s foot rested on the lower portion of the treadmill, as it had been earlier. I shifted my weight, sucked in a breath, quelled a gag, and forced myself to do a quick check of the rest of her body. My change in position revealed the glint of something metallic close to Polly’s left hand, but not quite hidden by the edge of the neighboring treadmill. Something I hadn’t seen in my quick look through the window earlier.

  I edged closer and squinted to see. It looked like a gum wrapper. I glanced over my shoulder. Otis’s face pressed up to the glass, his eyes missing nothing. I gave a little wave and sauntered a couple of steps closer.

  He pecked a warning on the glass.

  Stuff it. I was going to find out about that wrapper one way or another.

  Another step brought me within reaching distance, my mind spinning, trying to grasp a good excuse to use so I could grab that wrapper. If I bent over, Otis would barrel through that door and drag me out thinking I was up to something. Was he really that worried about disturbing the scene, or was it my presence that had him on edge?

  I decided to use the old got-a-scratch excuse. It was lame, sure, but when hose battle against the hairs on my legs, itching happens. Besides, it was all I could conjure up. I pretended to really be giving Polly the once over, though my eyes were on that wrapper the entire time. Then, when I’d done enough play-acting, I bent over. Problem is, petite is not happening with this body, and my hands only made it to my kneecap. My hose rebelled against the pressure and tidal waved downward. No choice but to ignore that problem and do a scratch. Time was wasting.

  I sure could use Gertrude or Hardy or Matilda showing up in the hallway about now and distracting my observer. But that didn’t happen. A deep, masculine voice happened. I could hear Otis carrying on the conversation through the doorway. Their voices lowered a notch. They could whisper away, because Otis wouldn’t be carrying on a conversation unless he was facing the person. Translation: He wasn’t looking my way anymore.