“Oh, my goodness! That’s terrible.” Shelby set the empty glass down, shaking her head. “Was that even legal?”
“I guess it was at the time. Nobody came after him with a shotgun.” Wisps of hair escaped her ponytail and hung in her face, while she scrubbed inside the slots of the open refrigerator door. She straightened, pursed her lips and blew the strands to the side. “Anyway, when he came home from the war they were basically strangers to one another. They tried to make it work, but about six years later she decided to leave for California and pursue her dream of acting. Sound familiar? She thought she was going to be the next Rita Hayworth. They were divorced shortly after that.”
Hiding a grin, Blake picked up an apple. “You mind?”
“Go ahead. With you two jabbering at me, they’ll be rotten before I get this done.”
“Sorry,” Shelby said. “We’ll be out of your hair soon. I promise. But I still don’t get this stepmother thing if she was your grandfather’s first wife.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “Hand me that stuff,” she said, pointing. While she replaced all the items back inside the refrigerator, she told them what she knew. “I only met her a couple times. She lives in an assisted-care center. Apparently after her career floundered…”
Shelby opened her mouth, but Alice shut her down.
“One explanation at a time,” she said, holding up a warning finger. “She came back to Michigan. She tried to connect with Mom when she read her wedding announcement in the local paper, but Mom said she didn’t want anything to do with the woman. Years later, after I was born, they reconnected. I really don’t know why. I think the woman was lonely, so Mom would visit her sometimes.”
“You included her as family in your mom’s obituary,” Blake said, munching on a bite of apple. “Why?”
She swung the door closed and placed her hands on her hips. “What is this really all about? I hope you don’t consider an eighty-eight-year-old woman, in the beginning stages of dementia, a viable suspect.”
“Maybe she’s just acting.” Blake gave her a teasing grin. When Alice continued to glare, he put up his hands in defeat. “Sorry. Bad joke. We only want to talk to her. Get a feel for what was going on in your mom’s life. Do you know if she paid her stepmother a visit shortly before her death?”
“I really don’t know. I used to have a life apart from this place. My parents did their thing and I did mine.” She hung the damp rag over the edge of the sink, and leaned with her back to the counter, arms crossed. Resignation tugged at her shoulders. “Mom left detailed instructions in case of her untimely death. I found them in a notebook in her desk. It was the strangest thing to read the day after she was killed. Like a how-to manual… Funerals For Dummies. I knew she was organized but that’s when I realized she’d always been a bit OCD. So, yes, she did mention that if she were to go first, she wanted Helen named as her stepmother. The two of them had formed a crazy bond of some kind, which was bizarre because they couldn’t have been more different than night and day.”
Blake tossed the apple core in the trash. “Do you want to come with us? We’re going to pay her a visit.”
“No thanks. She may have meant something to my mom, but she was a stranger to me.” Her brow creased with a frown. “I think that’s actually how Mom wanted it.”
She gave them the address, and went back to her cleaning chores.
<<>>
The plastic window coverings vibrated louder and faster, as the Bronco picked up speed on the highway. They drove without speaking most of the way to Ashland, enjoying the scenery. The forest was lush and green, new growth sprouting in the face of winter’s harsh lingering touch. Spring was struggling to be felt, and today with the sun shining brightly, it was.
Nearing Ashland, evergreens lined the road, like soldiers straight and true, but when they got onto Lake Shore Drive, Superior stretched out northward, open and wide, winking with every glint of sun that caught a wave. They passed motels, liquor stores, bait shops, and even a donut shop that got Blake’s attention.
“Here.” Shelby said, watching the GPS on her phone. “Turn left.”
After navigating down half a dozen more streets, they pulled along the curb outside a wide, one-level residence, set well back at the end of a short, dead-end street. The building was well maintained, and looked more like a large house that someone had added on to than a home for the elderly. It was surrounded by evergreens, and attached to the east of the house was an enclosed area, with an eight-foot high fence. The security gate at the top of the driveway had a small obscure sign. A Superior Choice: Assisted Living.
“With that kind of advertisement, this place must be popular,” Blake said.
“I don’t think any place where you’re required to give up your freedom is popular.” Shelby rang the bell on the locked gate.
A voice came over the intercom. “Good afternoon. Can I help you?”
“We’re here to visit Helen Seymour.” She smiled up at the security camera.
“Come on in.” There was a click and a green light flashed.
Blake pulled the gate open and they entered.
A lady in a red t-shirt and black jeans greeted them. She didn’t wear a nametag, but said her name was Gayle. Her voice was cheery and bright, as though she were showing them around a Hawaiian resort. “Welcome to Superior Assisted Living. I don’t believe you two have been here before. Can I get you to sign in, please?” She indicated a welcome book open on a little table. “We like to keep a record of our resident’s guests.”
Shelby felt a little like she was visiting an inmate in a low security prison, rather than an elderly woman in a private home. She signed the book, leaving a smiley face at the end of the line. She wished she’d thought to have Blake stop and buy flowers for the poor woman.
“Are you relatives of Helen’s?” She led them through a big open room, where half a dozen elderly people sat in wheelchairs and recliners, staring blankly at a large screen television, with a rerun of Little House on the Prairie playing loudly. Laura Ingalls sounded like she was yelling at Pa. That would never do.
“Just friends,” Blake said, taking Shelby’s hand when she paused to stare at the room of lost souls. “Come on, babe.”
One of the men, in a wheelchair, was having a coughing fit as they passed. Gayle stopped beside him. “I need to get Bill his medicine.” She pointed down the hallway. “Helen’s room is the second door on the right.”
Helen Seymour had a private room, but the door stood open when they arrived. It was about the size of a child’s bedroom, and felt like being squeezed into a breadbox with a full loaf of bread. Movie posters from a past era covered the walls. Errol Flynn as a handsome Don Juan, The Killers with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner, Casablanca with Bogart and Bergman, and Unconquered with Gary Cooper and Paulette Goddard. A twin bed, a 4-drawer dresser with a mirror above it, and a TV stand with a 32-inch flatscreen, filled the room to capacity… and then she had a rack of old VHS movies tucked into a corner, and a game station chair in the middle of the floor.
Shelby had to smile, watching the woman lounging in the low chair, holding a PlayStation controller as she fought some herculean creature on the screen. The door closed behind them, but Helen didn’t seem to hear. She was too busy pushing buttons, and turning the controller this way and that, muttering under her breath.
“Yes!” she chirped, pumping her bony fist in the air.
The reed-thin soprano voice reminded Shelby of her own mother. Before she’d succumbed to the cancer, she’d been so weak, just hanging on long enough to say goodbye to her five-year-old daughter. Looking back, the memory was foggy and seemed more like a dream than something that actually happened, but her heart remembered the pressure of her mother’s frail hand stroking her hair, and the breath of soft love words against her ear. She pulled her thoughts back to the present.
Helen turned off the player, and struggled to get up from her seat. She was obviously more nimble than most people her
age or she wouldn’t have gotten down there in the first place. Since they’d sort of snuck in behind her with the game noise masking their arrival, Blake did a little knock on the inside of the door. “Hello!” he called cheerfully.
The woman twisted around so fast, Shelby was sure she’d crack a rib. “Who are you?” She pulled her blue sweater together in front as though they’d caught her disrobing. She had unnaturally blonde hair for her age, and unlike some of the women they’d passed in the great room who apparently never got out of their robes and pajamas, this woman was made up with pale pink lipstick, blush, and a bit of blue eye shadow to match her sweater.
Shelby reached out to give her a hand up.
She didn’t hesitate for more than a second. “Thank you, young lady.”
“I’m Shelby.” She gave her hand a light squeeze. “This is my husband, Blake.”
Her gaze narrowed as she peered around Shelby’s shoulder. “You look familiar,” she said to Blake. “Have we met before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Mind if we chat with you for a few minutes?” Shelby asked.
Blake was already trying to maneuver his body around the end of the dresser so he wasn’t standing awkwardly in the doorway. He grinned. “Is it okay if I sit on your bed?”
Helen’s smile was denture perfect. She waved them both toward the bed. “Sit, sit. I never say no to a handsome man,” she said, a twinkle in her eyes. She watched them eagerly as they stepped over the game chair, scooted around the end of the TV stand, and plopped awkwardly on her flowered coverlet. Her hands clasped with sheer delight beneath her chin. “I haven’t had visitors in ages. Are you two from the MGM studio? You’re both pretty enough to be movie stars.”
Shelby wondered if the early stages of dementia were further along than Alice had thought. She shook her head. “Actually, we’re friends of Alice Booth, Clara’s daughter.”
Her face clouded with confusion for a second, but she masked it by leaning down to turn her game chair in their direction. She resumed her seat before responding. Looking up at them perched on the bed, her eyes pooled with emotion, and she pulled a tissue from the pocket of her sweater to dab at the corners. “When Alice called to tell me about Clara, I couldn’t believe it. Not that she called, although that was rare indeed, but that I’d lost the one person who truly felt like family. Mind you, I have nieces and nephews, but they don’t bother to visit. Clara kept me sane in this place.”
“She sounds like a special lady,” Shelby agreed, realizing that from all the people they’d spoken to, none had bad-mouthed the woman or said one unkind word about her. Was it because of the old adage, speak no ill of the dead, or because she truly was an exemplary example of the Christian commandment, love your neighbor as yourself?
Helen sniffed, tucking the tissue back into her pocket. When she spoke again, her voice was rougher, with a cockney accent thrown in. “Why are you two here, and what exactly do you want to know? Clara didn’t want me to tell the family secrets.”
Shelby was stunned into silence for a second, thinking the woman was batty as well as senile, but Blake clapped enthusiastically beside her. “Bravo! Has anyone ever told you that you should be on the big screen?” His hundred-watt smile was a little overkill, but Helen didn’t seem to take it that way.
“More than once, young man. In fact, I tried my hand at acting years ago. Moved to Los Angeles, and fell into a rather rough crowd for a while. But when the parts I wanted no longer came my way, and people who I thought were my friends disappeared, I ended up coming home. Besides, acting is a skill you can use wherever you go. I use it all the time. Sometimes, I pretend I like it here. Other times, I imagine this is just a movie set and I’m the star of a very depressing story about a faded actress at the end of her life.”
“You’re definitely pulling that one off,” Shelby said, knowing a play for sympathy when she heard one. “I’ve done a little acting myself.”
“Really?” She sat up straighter, her interest peaked. “What were you in?”
“She’s a stage actress. And I know you two could probably talk for hours, but could I switch the topic back to Clara for a minute?”
“Will you take me out for a walk? They won’t let me out of here without an escort. Afraid I’ll get lost.” She tapped her forehead with a rigid finger. “As though I’m senile or something. I know exactly where I am. In hell’s waiting room.”
Blake was on his feet and inching toward the door before she was finished speaking. He helped her up, and moved the chair out of the way so Shelby could follow. “We are so out of here,” he said with another of his boyish grins. He hated enclosed spaces. A natural fear after putting so many others behind bars. “Where would you like to go? I’m hungry.”
She giggled and preened, combing her bangs to the side. “Let me grab my purse,” she said, reaching to open the top drawer of the dresser. She pulled out a shiny black bag, snapped it open and looked inside, then closed it and hanging on to the dainty silver handle she followed them into the hallway. Blake pulled the door closed, and gallantly stuck out his arm. The old woman shot Shelby a glance of pure victory, grasped ahold of his bicep and let him escort her through the care center like she was queen for the day.
The woman who had welcomed them at the front door, now hurried over. “Helen,” she said, her voice overly loud to be heard over the television. “Are you planning to go somewhere?”
Shelby stepped forward and held out a card that she’d scribbled her cell phone number on. “You can reach us here if there’s a problem. We’re taking Helen out for some fun.”
“But it’s almost lunch time.” She shot a glance toward the back of the house where the food process was in full swing. A strong fishy smell permeated the air, and something that reminded her of overcooked vegetables.
Helen tugged Blake toward the front door, and escape. “Give my portion to the cat,” she said with enough eyebrow raising and lip pursing flair to be mimicking Joan Crawford.
They stepped through the gate and it clicked shut behind them, sending a little shiver up Shelby’s spine. The sound was obviously a bolt of electricity for Helen. She took off down the sidewalk like a speed walker at the mall.
“Hey! Wait a minute.” Blake waved her back. “We have transportation, you know.”
At Helen’s insistence, they ate lunch at a little hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant. They were the only customers, so they had their pick of seating. Helen chose the table closest to the window where she could look out at the lake across the road.
The waitress recognized Helen immediately, and starting telling her about the movie she’d seen the day before with her boyfriend. This seemed to be a common topic of conversation between the two of them. Helen listened attentively; reaching out to pat the girl’s arm now and then, as though she hoped youth might be catching. The girl finally left them with menus, and went to get a round of ice water for everyone.
“Clara used to bring me here,” Helen said, settling back to look out the window. “I learned to love Chinese food when I lived in California. It took quite a few years before they had anything around here other than a burger joint, but finally they caught up with the times.” She smiled tremulously. “I miss Clara.”
Shelby didn’t want to spoil lunch by talking about murder, so she kept the conversation light. Blake seemed to understand and played along, getting Helen to reminisce about her acting days and the movies she’d actually been awarded speaking parts.
After lunch, Helen asked to walk along the lake. Blake drove the Bronco to a quiet area down the road a bit, and parked. The sun was shining brightly and the wind had died down, so it was warmer than the day before. Regardless, he pulled his old MPD windbreaker out of the back of the truck, and put it around Helen’s thin shoulders. It hung well past her hips, and looked more like a trench coat on her than a jacket.
“Oh, you’re so chivalrous,” she said, beaming up at him. “If I were a tad younger, you wouldn’t stand
a chance.”
“Forget about me?” Shelby asked, trying to sound put off by the woman’s flirting. “Aren’t you even a little bit worried about breaking up a perfectly good marriage?”
Helen’s laughter was muffled by Blake’s coat as she bent to pick up a shell in the sand. “A perfectly good marriage doesn’t have cracks. It’s solid and unbreakable.” She blew the sand off the shell, and held it up to the sun. When Blake stepped behind Shelby and wrapped her in his arms to block the wind, Helen smiled. “I don’t think you two have anything to worry about.”
An hour later she had a pocketful of shells and sun-reddened cheeks. She sat on the sand, tucking the tail of Blake’s coat beneath her, and looked out at the water. A fishing boat rode the surface of the lake in the distance, rising and falling with the steady rhythm of the waves.
She glanced up at them, stifling a yawn. “It’s past my designated nap time. Are you ready to tell me why you came to see me? Not that I don’t appreciate your visit.”
Blake dropped down beside her, leaning back on the palms of his hands. “We’re investigating Clara’s death. Everyone we’ve talked with has had kind words to say about her. Not one negative comment. But the truth is, someone ran her down. Purposely. It wasn’t an accident. It was murder.”
Shelby expected the woman to cry or at the very least to act shocked, but she merely stared back at Blake, her eyes reflecting the placid blue of the lake. Finally she said, “Clara came to visit me two days before she was killed, you know. I remember it clearly because it was my birthday. She was worried about something.”
“Did she say anything about the trouble she was having with Farley Jones?” Shelby asked, stepping closer.
She shook her head. “She mentioned Oliver though. Said he wanted her to sell the B&B, but she couldn’t do it because it had been in her family for so long. She wanted to leave it for Alice. I told her if she needed money that I would give it to her. I planned to leave it all to her after I was gone anyway.”
Roadkill (Double Barrel Mysteries Book 1) Page 22