by Judy Alter
James looked astounded. “You didn’t want to marry Charles?”
She shook her head. “At seventeen, I didn’t want to marry anyone, let alone that fat, self-satisfied sonofabitch. I despised him.” She hesitated, “Though I must admit I enjoyed being the belle of the ball. The year I was married I was the youngest bride, and I was treated to showers, teas, brunches, even balls. Edith was there throughout, the proper stepmother. And Charles was bursting with pride because we were the young, romantic couple. I enjoyed the parties. I hated it when we went home alone together at night.”
My heart went out to her. Seventeen and caught in such a situation. It would have done no good to ask why she didn’t rebel. I could see in her situation, at her age, with her upbringing, she never knew she had a choice.
Suddenly, she looked at her brother. “He ruined you too, James.”
James smiled tolerantly. “I don’t think so, Rosie. I’m pretty happy with who and what I am.”
“But you could have been so much more. He blamed you for our mother’s death. It’s one reason he was hard on your about art.”
James jumped, startled. “She didn’t die in childbirth!” His tone was indignant.
“No, but she was never well after you were born, and when she died he blamed you. It never occurred to him to blame himself for impregnating her.”
My mind whirled. The picture of Walter Aldridge that was emerging was even less pleasant than that of the man who had been a gambler and a womanizer. But who killed him? The man who claimed to be Edith’s husband? I was sure we could never get her to tell us who that was. We were further ahead in this investigation, except I still didn’t know which way to go. A background check on Edith seemed something obvious that we’d overlooked. But now it was time to change the subject.
“Tell me your good memories of growing up,”
James and Rose hesitated a moment after I spoke, and then words began spilling out of them. They remembered hay rides around the estate, fishing in the stock tank, learning to ride the gentle horses stabled in the barn, food fights in the kitchen when only long-suffering—and then young—Lucy was present. I could tell that these reminiscences made the brother and sister happy. But I also noticed, for all the hijinks they repeated, there was no mention of Edith and little mention of Rodney.
At least the evening ended on a happy note. No one went off with specific assignments. What could we tell them to do? James did say he’d visit Edith again, and Rose said tentatively maybe she’d go with him. But she had to tend to her duties at Tremont Houses—she repeated that several times—and no one mentioned including Rodney. He was becoming the elephant in the room that no one talked about.
Rose and James exchanged a warm hug, and then Rose hugged Shelly and said she was looking forward to getting to know her well. I felt that I was watching a protective shell around Rose melt, and it gave me a good feeling about the evening. It hadn’t been wrong to bring them together. I sighed as I realized the entire evening could have gone a totally different direction.
All David could say was, “Wow! Just wow! Can we talk about this in the morning?”
We put the dishes to soak. David promised to do them in the morning, after I went to the café. Both of us, worn out by the emotion of the evening, went to bed. I was never so glad to sleep wrapped in the comfort of his arms.
Gram? It’s going to be all right. I promise.
No reply tonight. Not even a frown.
Chapter Eighteen
Rodney Aldridge was in the café almost as soon as we opened the next morning, before David and I even had a chance to discuss the previous night’s revelations. Ignoring the possibility of other customers overhearing, he stormed up to the counter where I was rolling silverware while the sticky buns rose. I noticed he was limping rather badly.
“She shot me,” he stormed. “Shot me with a shotgun. I just went to talk peaceably, and that’s how she greeted me.”
He looked fine to me, except for the limp. “So she missed? Must not have been close range.”
“She shot at my feet, ruined my good Italian leather shoes what with birdshot and the driveway gravel it stirred up. I caught a few pellets—or some gravel—in my shin. Hurts like sin. I could be crippled.”
“You ought to have that looked at. Could get infected.” I offered him coffee, but that didn’t seem to placate him.
“I’ll go to the ER, but I wanted to come here first and let you know what kind of woman you’re protecting and helping. She’s crazy, that’s what that old witch is. I just wanted to talk, to see if there wasn’t some way out of this stalemate.”
That told me something about his priorities and the pain of his injuries, if he came here first. “What time did you go visit her?”
“About eight last night.” He had finally lowered his voice.
“Dusk. Maybe she mistook you for an intruder.”
“She knows damn good and well who I am. She did it deliberately.”
“Did you report it to the sheriff?”
He turned sulky. “Yeah. He said I was trespassing on private property. Said it served me right. What kind of law enforcement do we have in this county?”
I smothered the instinct to say it sounded like pretty sensible law enforcement to me. Instead, I asked him exactly what he wanted me to do.
“Arrange a meeting between her and me. I want to talk some sense into that old gray head.”
David had come quietly up behind Rodney, and I was proud that neither my eyes nor my manner had given him away. “You mean, you want to get your way, get her to move out so you can move into that house? There’s no way you could afford to maintain it. I hear you’re jobless right now and in the midst of a messy divorce case.”
“It’d all work out if I had that house,” he muttered. “It isn’t right for her to be spending every red cent my father worked so hard to get.”
David chose not to mention gambling nor wasting money on a wild variety of women. “I don’t believe you can contest the will thirty years later, and if you do, I’ll fight you every way I know how. You need to leave your stepmother alone and get on with your own life.”
“That an order?”
“A strong suggestion.”
“That’s just it. I haven’t got a life to get on with.”
“Then make one, man. That’s not Edith’s responsibility.”
Obviously, Rodney was getting no sympathy from us, so he stalked out of the café—as much as one can stalk while limping. I noticed the limp was much more pronounced than when he had come in. I also noticed that his shoes were scratched and scuffed and his pants had a few raggedy places in them. If Edith had wanted to, she could have done serious damage with that shotgun. She apparently knew how to use it effectively.
David sat down and asked if the sticky buns were ready. I went to check, came back with a bun and poured a cup of black coffee. “I already knew about this,” he said. “One reason I’m up so early. Steven Connell called me.”
I nearly dropped the coffeepot. “I thought you were through with him. And how did he know?”
David shook his head. “I thought I was through too, but Edith called him last night after it happened. He says he told her to call the sheriff.”
I got myself coffee and sat down. “Why would she call him?”
He shook his head again. “Blasted if I know. This isn’t the first time she’s turned to him, when she should have called me. I mean, sure, I put them together. He was to investigate, even protect her, but there seems to be more going on than that. I’m going to see her this morning.”
“Call first, so she doesn’t get out the shotgun.”
“Thanks.” He finished his coffee and left.
I worried more than a little about David walking into a shotgun blast, but Donna soon came in to distract me. “I don’t know about that woman you foisted off on me.” She was all indignation. “I had to show her how to make a bed properly, and I’m not sure she got it right even then. Sh
e doesn’t know how to use a dishwasher or a washing machine. If I’m going to spend my days showing her, I might as well fire her and do it myself.”
I poured some green tea with honey in it and shoved it at her. “If you fire her and kick her out, she has no place to go.” Not quite true, Kate. James and Shelly would take her in, but that might be an even bigger disaster. “Let me see what I can do.” A plan was formulating in the back of my mind. “Meet me here at eleven thirty for lunch.”
Donna agreed unhappily and then flounced out.
About eleven, I made a quick trip to Tremont House, were I found Rose kind of idly swiping at surface with a feather duster which Gram would have told her in no uncertain terms was the least effective way to dust.
“Oh, good morning,” she said. “I’m not good at this housekeeping business. Your sister is displeased because I don’t know how to run her appliances, and I tried to vacuum but the machine just quit. Now it smells bad and whines.”
I took a look, pulled out the brush, and retrieved a butter knife that had gotten caught in the brush. With trepidation, I tried the vacuum, and it hummed along beautifully. “You have to be careful what you try to pick up. It can’t handle big items…not even wads of chewing gum.” That was a lesson I’d learned the hard way.
I took Rose back to the café, where Donna sat at a corner table, drumming her fingers on the surface. I know she wanted to demand what her hired help was doing on a lunch break, but I said I thought we should all visit.
“Rose? The usual?”
She blushed. “I need to give up chicken-fried steak. I believe I’ll have the tuna salad plate.”
Almost in defiance, Donna ordered chicken-fried steak, a fattening dish she usually denounced. I joined Rose with the tuna, and we settled to talk, though I had to hop up from time to time to handle the register.
“Rose?” I was going to be as tactful as possible. “You apparently weren’t trained in the household arts as a child.”
“Lucy did all that,” she said lamely, with a stolen glance at Donna.
“What things were you taught?”
“Edith taught me needlework. I mended all our clothes—mine and my brothers. And I can still sew a fine seam. And I was given art and music lessons. I play piano and guitar.” She looked guilty, as though this was a frivolous admission.
“Guitar! Donna, Henry would love lessons. Rose, can you learn some contemporary songs?”
“I already know a lot of them. I never gave up my guitar.”
“What do you think, Donna? Jess had always had an artistic side—some guidance would be good for her. And Ava? Would she like to play piano?”
Donna was looking at me like I was an alien from space. But slowly, her expression changed. “Could you do all that?” she asked Rose.
“I’d love to,” Rose said. “My Melissa was never interested in any of what I knew.”
Donna thought a minute. “In return, I could have the kids teach you about housecleaning. They do more of it than I do.”
If I smiled then, it was rueful. But a deal was struck, and I felt I’d done a good day’s work, all before noon. Rose would stay on at Tremont House, and I pointed out she could serve as sort of a caretaker. It was good to have someone on the property when there were no guests. And she surely knew how to function as a hostess when there were.
Donna left, as pleased as if she’d thought of the whole thing herself, and I promised to take Rose into Canton the next day for supplies—or maybe David could do that and let me run my café.
****
David spent the morning with Edith, although I didn’t know it until I brought ribeye steaks home for dinner that night. We didn’t offer steak at the café but every once in a while I could sneak some in on our regular meat order. This was one of those times—they’d arrived today. I liked to think they were fresh, but I knew they’d been frozen. Can’t be too fussy in a small town. I added baked potatoes, all the fixings, and creamed spinach, having had enough of salad. At least one good bottle of red wine waited at home, so I ducked out, leaving Sallie in charge with one other wait person and promised to be back to close up.
When I unpacked my bounty, David asked, “What’s the occasion?”
“Nothing special. I just felt we needed a treat. Pour some wine?”
“Glad to.”
“And cook the steaks on the grill?”
“Of course.”
So David lit the grill, fortunately gas so we didn’t have to wait for briquettes to turn to charcoal, and I put the spinach in an ovenproof dish and tossed a salad. Then I took my wine out to the porch to sit and visit while he grilled.
“So where were you all day?”
“Curious, are you? I spent the morning with Edith Aldridge.”
The lazy evening languor vanished. I sat straight up in my chair, clutching my wine. “And?”
“She says she shot at him. Saw him coming, met him outside the front door, warned him away once. He didn’t believe she’d shoot, so she did. Told me in no uncertain terms that she’d kill that—well, it wasn’t a nice word—before he could kill her. I spent most of the morning trying to talk her down.”
I got up and walked out into the lawn, where Huggles was comfortably chewing on a tennis ball. The smell of the grilling steaks was almost overpowering. “Why did she call Steven Connell? Does she know you fired him?”
He laughed ruefully. “Oh yeah, she knows. But she said she knows I’m a lawyer not a bodyguard, and he’s more into that kind of thing. She expects he’ll protect her.”
“Will he?”
“If she pays him enough, yeah, he will. And he’s good at it. But I’d just as soon have him gone from this case. I always trusted him, and now I’ve got a funny feeling about it.”
I agreed. But then I remembered Edith Aldridge wasn’t his entire professional life and asked about his other cases. “A couple of divorces, a really tangled estate settlement…”
“You may have another one of those someday,” I said.
“I pray God not soon. Anyway, that’s about it except a real estate conflict about who promised to do what when. Those are bread-and-butter cases because they drag on forever.”
“And Edith pays you a retainer?”
“Monthly. Definitely bread and butter. But you’re supposed to be figuring out who killed Walter. Any ideas?”
I shook my head. “If you overcook my steak, I’ll come after you with a meat thermometer.”
He pressed a finger on it and then said, “Perfect medium rare. Just the way we both like it.”
We had a comfortable dinner, without talking about Edith, though I did tell him about the arrangement I made between Donna and Rose, and he leaned over to kiss me. “You’re a genius.”
“Thanks.” I pushed my plate away, too full to eat another bite. I’d save the rest of the steak for a late-night snack. “What are we going to do about Edith? I don’t know now if I’m worried about her safety or that of those who might threaten her. I think Rose and James are safely out of the picture, at least as far as harming her is concerned, but Rodney’s the ringer.”
“And we may be judging him guilty when he’s not. Any number of people, including Edith, could have had reason to wish Walter dead.”
“But if it was Edith, why did she hire you and enlist me thirty years later?”
“She hired me years ago, and maybe she sent Big One and John because she wanted me out of the case.” He smiled. “It would have been easier to write me a letter of dismissal, and she could have done it. And why ask you to investigate? No, I don’t think she’s the answer. There’s someone else involved in this.”
Okay, back to the computer in the morning.
I’d had just enough wine that David, clever fellow that he was, thought he should go back to the café with me to close up. I protested but not loudly. I sent Sallie on her way, gathered the charge tickets out of the cash register, locked the cash in the safe, and turned out the lights. David had already locked
the front door, and we were preparing to go through the kitchen and out the back door.
Sudden, loud banging called us to the front door—or would have, except David ordered me into the kitchen. “But I may know who it is….”
“And you may not. Please, for once, just do as I say. Take the phone back there and call Chester. No one needs to be banging on this door at nearly ten o’clock at night.”
“Be careful,” I said uselessly. My thoughts were full of glass-paned double front doors and birdshot and…well, I didn’t want to think about that.
“Let me in,” a man’s harsh voice demanded. “I know something you’ll want to hear.”
I had called Chester, but I quickly peeked through the pass-through window to see David walk boldly to the front door.
“Not this time of night, pardner. You want to talk to us, you come back in the morning. I guarantee you a sticky bun on my tab.”
The man kicked the wooden panel at the bottom of the door. “Ain’t good enough. I got to talk now or never. And you’ll be sorry if you don’t hear what I have to say. I know stuff about Edith Aldridge nobody else does.”
David spread his hands in the uniform gesture of useless apology. “See you in the morning.” Then he left the outdoor lights on, turned out the indoor, and turned his back on the intruder.
David, he could shoot you in the back! I held my breath as David slowly walked toward the kitchen. Had it been me, I would have run. But David walked deliberately, taunting the man, I thought.
“Were you testing your luck by turning your back on him and walking so calmly?”
“No, but I knew showing fear would embolden him. Now we stay in the kitchen, preferably sitting on the floor.”
And so we did, as we listened to Chester’s siren roar up. I thought maybe Chester should have left off the siren, but I was learning better than to second-guess law enforcement. Maybe he didn’t want to put us in the middle of a confrontation, armed or not.