Sadie snorted at that.
“I hear you’re making dinner,” Lynn said.
Damn. She’d momentarily forgotten about her offer to cook.
“Mom reminded me of the two dozen casseroles in the fridge and freezer and said we should eat one of those.”
“She’s right,” Lynn said. “People went to good effort to make that crap. The least we can do is try it before we throw it out.” Lynn rubbed her hands together with a smile. “And I’ll call Dawn and John and see if they feel like coming by. I’m sure your sister could use a break from cooking too.”
Sadie opened her mouth to protest and then shut it again.
“What?” her mom asked. “You look like you were about to say that wasn’t a good idea.”
“Um, Dawn took Dylan to his Gymboree class. I don’t know when she’ll be home,” Sadie told her mom. Her cell phone rang, and the display said it was coming from home.
“Hello,” she answered, walking into the guest room to take the call in private.
“Hi,” Zack said. “I know you’re pissed off—”
“Pissed off?” Sadie repeated with a snarl. “I walk into my house to see your ex-girlfriend fulfilling her foot fetish fantasies and you enjoying it. Why on earth would I be pissed off?”
“It wasn’t like that, and you know it. She came by to see me because she felt bad about my foot and—”
“What did you say?” Sadie stopped him short. There was something in the way Zack was talking . . .
“I said she felt bad I got hurt at her mother’s house and she came by to see my ankle, and what you saw was just goofing around and nothing more.”
Sadie noticed his words were slow, deliberate, and somewhat slurred.
“Did you finish the rest of that vodka before calling me?” Sadie asked. “Because you sound drunk.”
“It’s prolly jusss these painkillers.”
“Painkillers? What painkillers?”
“Paula brought me something to take the edge off.”
“You’d think a nurse would know better than to give an ex-addict drugs,” Sadie barked. She immediately felt awful for throwing his past in his face, but desperate times called for desperate measures. She softened her tone and continued. “You and I both know you can’t take those kinds of pills, and you sure as hell can’t drink while taking them! Paula should know that too. Unless . . .” A sudden realization hit Sadie. “Oh, my God, she doesn’t know! You never told her the reason you’re no longer a cop.”
“So? I had to tell you at the time because you were hiring me,” he reminded Sadie, his words taking on a sharp tone. “I didn’t exactly put an ad in the Times saying Zack Bowman got addicted to pain pills and had to quit the force before they fired him. Just because I told you about it doesn’t mean I was spreading it around to everyone I dated.”
Sadie took a deep breath and tried to be reasonable. “But if she’s giving you drugs that you shouldn’t be taking, maybe then you could mention it.” Her voice sounded calm but her blood was beginning to boil. “Maybe I should come home and we can talk about it.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Zack insisted. “Look, the other line’s ringing. We’ll talk later.” He disconnected before Sadie could say anything more.
“Damn!” Angrily she stomped her foot.
Sadie took a breath and told herself that just because Zack took some pain meds for a broken ankle and had a couple drinks didn’t mean he was going to slip back into addiction. However, worry coiled tightly in the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t known Zack when he was a cop but she knew his history. He took a bullet for a partner, became addicted to Vicodin that he washed down with booze, and began spiraling out of control until he gave a potential suspect a beating and nearly killed him. After that, Zack handed in his badge before he could be fired, and he couldn’t even get a job washing toilets until Sadie hired him to clean much worse than that.
Sadie didn’t want to see Zack flush away his life but she also couldn’t trust Paula not to feed him more painkillers. Especially if she had no knowledge of the damage she was doing to Zack by offering him the pills. Sadie snatched up the phone and dialed Paula Wicks. Seconds later she was listening to the phone ring in her ear.
“Hello?” a young female voice said smoothly into her ear. The voice did not sound like Paula’s.
“Hi, is Paula there?”
“No, she’s visiting her mom at Cedar House.”
“Oh.” Sadie debated leaving her a message, but there was a good chance Paula wouldn’t call back after getting beaned in the nose with Chunky Monkey. She was thinking about it when she became aware that the woman had spoken.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Sadie mumbled.
“I asked if I could take a message.”
“No. I’ll try back later,” Sadie said, and disconnected. She dialed 411 again to get information on Cedar House, and then she left the guest room to see her mom and aunt.
“We’ve put the casserole in the oven,” Aunt Lynn announced. “We have about an hour before our mystery meal.”
“Mystery meal?” Sadie asked.
“This one had no label on it,” Mom explained. “We think it’s some kind of chili but we’re not sure.”
Great.
“If we’ve got an hour, maybe I’ll run to the market for some fresh vegetables for salad,” Sadie said, already snagging her purse and keys from the living room.
“Well, we do have the leftover vegetables with dip from the funeral,” Aunt Lynn said.
“I feel like salad,” Sadie said.
“A salad might be nice,” her mom agreed. “Especially considering we have no idea what we’re having for the main course.”
“I’ll be back in no time.” Sadie waved and didn’t wait for a reply before she hurried out the door. She climbed into her van and hit the road, pointing her vehicle away from her mother’s house and in the direction of Cedar House.
Luckily, it wasn’t far away and traffic wasn’t heavy. Sadie found herself parking her van outside the care facility only ten minutes later. She pulled her keys from the ignition and stared at the building. She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be tracking down Paula while the woman was visiting her senile mother. Then she thought about Paula giving Zack pain pills and vodka and kissing his foot.
“Like hell I shouldn’t be here,” Sadie said haughtily.
She climbed out of the van and had begun walking toward the front of the building when she saw a familiar face coming toward her.
“Hey, Petrovich!” Sadie called out.
The detective looked up at the sound of her voice, and Sadie quickened her pace to catch up with him.
“You checkin’ in or visiting?” Petrovich asked Sadie as he nodded toward the senior home behind him.
“Ha-ha.” Sadie smiled. “I take it you were interviewing Mimi Wicks?”
“Yup. Got lucky. Caught her on a good day.”
“So she was able to tell you why there was a mummified baby in a box in her house?”
“Yup. Got it right here.” He pulled out his notepad and read his notes out loud. “She figures she picked it up at a yard sale.”
“Oh.” Sadie suppressed a smile. “Guess your job just got harder.”
He shrugged. “Once DNA comes back, we’ll know if the corpse was related to Wicks, but if it isn’t, I’m not sure where we’ll go from there.” He narrowed his eyes. “And what would you be doing here? I didn’t think you and Mrs. Wicks would be on visiting terms.”
“I’m trying to catch up with Paula about something.”
“I didn’t see her but the nurse said she visits every day about this time.” He eyed Sadie curiously. “Any particular reason why you’re tracking her down here rather than calling her up on the phone?”
“I was in the area,” Sadie offered vaguely.
“Huh.”
Sadie parted company with Petrovich and decided to wait for Paula inside Cedar House. A large black woman manned the rece
ption desk and she looked up from her busy phone lines to quickly inform Sadie that she could go right into the visiting lounge. Sadie eyed the woman’s name badge.
“Thanks, Noreen, but I’m just waiting to meet Mimi Wicks’ daughter, Paula, and—”
“Then you can talk to Mrs. Wicks in the meantime,” Noreen said, narrowing her eyes at Sadie with distrust. “It isn’t like she’s going to jump up and bite you.” Noreen nodded to the room next door. “Mimi will be on the purple sofa ’cause that’s her favorite, and she’ll be the one in purple pants because, you guessed it, purple is her favorite.”
Sadie wanted to protest but Noreen turned back to her busy phones, and there was no place to sit in the outer room.
Sadie figured she might as well go inside.
She stepped around the corner and into a brightly lit open area. A wood plaque above the door was engraved VISITORS’ LOUNGE. Inside the spacious room were a dozen small round tables each grouped with seating for four. Cozied around those tables were seniors as old as dirt, some in wheelchairs or sporting walkers. A few meandered slowly around the room while others sat, or slumped, across from visiting family members. Many of them chatting comfortably but some were barely awake or drooling.
Then there were the others in the room.
Sadie cringed at the sight of a woman shuffling around the room with one paper slipper on and one off. Multiple tubes ran in her mouth and nose, and as she made her way across the room, she shuffled right on through one of the families gathered at a table. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused, probably much like they had been at death. A table in the corner offered store-bought cookies and a carafe of coffee. A pruned old man stood next to that table trying valiantly to grab a handful of cookies, but his hands just passed through their target.
Sadie’s eyes skipped past the ghosts to cruise along the circumference of the room. There was one wall of windows letting in the August sunshine. Beneath the windows and along the next wall were a variety of loudly patterned sofas. Residents taking up space on the couches were the ones obviously waiting for a visitor. They all glanced over at Sadie with hope gleaming in their eyes.
“Who are you here to see, honey pie?” a warbled old-man voice called out to Sadie.
Sadie glanced over to see a skinny man with a hunched back walking spryly toward her. He was ninety if he was a day.
“I’m just waiting for someone,” Sadie said.
“Who?” the skinny man asked again. Sadie coolly looked him in the eyes. He might have been taller at one time, but his permanent hunch had him at Sadie’s height.
“Paula Wicks. I’m meeting her here.”
“Paula? Mimi’s daughter? Well, you might as well go sit with ol’ Sugar Bottom then.” He nodded his head toward the sofas on the far side.
“Sugar Bottom?” Sadie asked. The corner of her lips curled into a smile.
“Yup. She’s a sweetie.” He winked at Sadie and hooked a thumb in the direction of the purple couch in the corner.
There was only one purple sofa and only one old woman in purple pants. That old gal was obviously Mimi Wicks. She sported raven black hair with white roots that made her look like a skunk, and she was the only resident on a sofa who was not looking at Sadie with hope in her eyes.
“Look, Mister . . .”
“Call me Marvin.” He gave Sadie a huge smile that almost caused him to lose his dentures.
“Nice to meet you, Marvin, but Mrs. Wicks doesn’t know me. I’m just here because I wanted to ask Paula a few questions. I’d rather not disturb Mrs. Wicks.”
“Are you another cop?” Marvin asked, looking Sadie critically up and down.
“No. I’m just a friend of her daughter’s.”
“Well, this ain’t a Starbucks, you know.” He chuckled loudly at that. “If you’re here during visit hours, you’ve gotta visit.” He leaned in a little closer and lowered his voice to a whisper. “If you don’t pick someone to sit and chat with, the wannabes against the far wall are liable to tear each other apart to get to you.”
Sadie followed his gaze and noticed for the first time that the few elderly folks without visitors were literally sitting on the edge of their seats, ready to spring up if Sadie offered them an encouraging glance.
“In this place there’s not a lot to do if you don’t get a visitor and you don’t play cards,” he said.
Just then another geriatric, this one a very naked old man with a turkey neck, began dancing a jig over by the corner window. Sadie smiled in spite of herself. If passing motorists saw him, they’d be liable to run their cars into a pole.
“Mr. Hamley!” shouted an orderly as he entered the room. “We’ve talked about this before. You wanna bounce your booty, you gotta do it in your room. I keep telling you, Cedar House doesn’t have any clothing-optional days.”
The orderly was swiftly joined by two others. Quick as can be, they draped a hospital gown over Mr. Hamley and then brought him to a small round table and handed him a deck of cards.
“Mr. Hamley always thinks it’s a clothing-optional day,” Marvin chuckled.
Sadie giggled. “Okay, I guess you’re right,” Sadie told Marvin. “I’ll go chat with Mimi Wicks until Paula gets here.”
“Great idea.” He nodded his approval. “She could use someone else besides cops and that daughter or her good-for-nothing friends visiting.”
“Will you join us?” Sadie asked.
Marvin shook his head. “I’ll go make sure Mr. Hamley has company.”
So Sadie ambled over to the faded purple couch on her own. She took a seat, leaving a cushion between herself and Mimi Wicks. Across the room, all the visitor hopefuls sighed and sat back with disappointment.
“You got chocolate?” Mimi asked.
“Um. No. Sorry,” Sadie replied.
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat and glanced toward the ninety-year-old still grabbing for cookies. Being around old people made Sadie nervous. Particularly if they weren’t already dead.
“How about a mint?” Mimi asked.
“I might have gum,” Sadie offered. She picked up her purse and began rifling through it until she came up with a package of peppermint gum.
Mimi snatched the entire package from Sadie’s hand, popped the remaining three gum squares from their foil pack, and then jammed them into her mouth all at once.
“Are you a cop?” Mimi asked, chomping loudly on the gum.
“No. I’m a friend of Paula’s.”
“Really?” Mimi looked at her with new interest. “What’s your name?”
“Sadie.”
“If you want to see Paula, why are you here?”
“I was told she was here.”
“She was here,” Mimi said, chomp, chomp, chomping some more on her mouthful of gum. “She came earlier than usual but only stayed a minute. She’s working an extra shift to pay for this great spa she stuck me in.”
“Oh. Guess I’ll go then,” Sadie said, getting to her feet.
“You don’t have to go right away,” Mimi said quickly.
“What did you say your name was?”
“Sadie Novak.”
“Sadie Novak?” Mimi scrunched up her face and snapped the gum loudly. “The only Sadie I ever heard Paula talk about was a man-stealing slut who cleaned blood ’n’ guts for a living.” Chomp. Chomp. Snap.
“Huh. Is that right?” Sadie scowled and sat back down hard. “And did Miss Paula happen to mention whether or not she was still interested in Sadie’s man?”
“You mean Zack?” Mimi asked, making more loud snapping noise with her gum.
Sadie nodded.
“You got anything else? This gum is aggravating my acid reflux.” Mimi burped and spat the wad of gum into her hand, looked around, and then jammed it between the sofa cushions.
Yuk!
Sadie rummaged through her purse again and came up with a roll of cherry LifeSavers with one candy left. She offered the roll to Mimi, who picked some lint off the red candy before toss
ing it into her mouth.
“You were saying about Zack?” Sadie prompted Mimi encouragingly.
“He’s with you, isn’t he? You live together?” Mimi asked, “What are you worried about?”
Sadie didn’t know how to respond to that so she just sat quietly, listening to the sucking noises Mimi made when she slurped on the candy.
She got up to leave then, but before she walked away she thought about the mummified baby, and curiosity got the better of her.
“So I guess you were surprised to hear what we found inside your house,” Sadie said.
“Kind of, but then, not really,” Mimi said with a shrug. “People put the strangest things in boxes. Sometimes valuable stuff and they just forget it’s there.”
“We’re not talking about old savings bonds here. This was a baby. Somebody’s child.”
Mimi was nonplussed. “Maybe the baby died and the people couldn’t afford a funeral, and they may have stashed it away until they could afford a proper burial,” Mimi suggested. “Then if they fell on hard times and started selling off their belongings for fast cash, I prolly came along and bought a box . . . and there you have it.” The old woman looked pleased with her reasoning.
“Is that what you told Detective Petrovich?”
“No, but I shoulda suggested that because it makes perfect sense. That detective’s nosing around for a crime when there isn’t one. The Seattle crime rate must be dropping.”
“But wouldn’t you have noticed if you bought a box that contained a dead baby instead of someone’s china teacups?”
“Sometimes I checked what was in the boxes and sometimes I didn’t.” Mimi shrugged. “Lots of times I was in a hurry and I just wanted to get the stuff home, and then I’d forget to check inside to see what I got. I liked buying entire boxes of stuff. It was always a surprise then.”
A dead baby must’ve been just like Christmas, Sadie thought sarcastically.
“I guess the autopsy will prove if the baby died of natural causes or not,” Sadie said. “And, in the meantime, Detective Petrovich is going to have to go through your house top to bottom.”
“Yeah.” Mimi’s face clouded over. “That’s what he said. I don’t like strangers going through my stuff. It’s silly that the detective thinks he has to go through all my boxes now.” She rubbed her arms as if she was suddenly chilled. “Like he has to make sure there aren’t any other babies. What? He thinks I collected them or something?” She cackled at that and then, after a minute, her face darkened again. “I don’t like people going through my things. All of that stuff is mine. I paid for it. It belongs to me.”
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