I stifled a laugh. She was behaving like an actress in a B movie, complete with cheesy lines. Barkeep? I shook my head, thinking the bartender would toss us out on our ears if we weren’t careful.
But I needn’t have worried. Mrs. Branford had that Betty White likability factor going for her. She stretched her mouth into a grin, those eyes glistened, and she even tilted one shoulder down in a slightly flirtatious stance. If the bartender was anywhere near his mid- to late seventies, he might think Mrs. Branford was a hot number.
Alas, he looked to be more my age. But his mid-thirties weren’t treating him very well. He was round in the belly, balding on the head, and had bloodshot eyes, either from the dark light in the bar, a love of the alcohol he served to others, some other substance enjoyment, lack of sleep, or some combination thereof. But apparently he responded to being called barkeep. He looked at Mrs. Branford, set down the glass he’d been wiping with a white cloth, and ambled over.
“Hello there, young man,” she said as he stopped in front of her.
He nodded at her and said, “Ma’am.” When he looked at me, his interest quotient seemed to go up. His eyebrows rose and one side of his mouth lifted in a satisfied smile. “Grandmother and granddaughter, out for a night on the town?”
“Something like that,” I said, not bothering to go into the fact that we were not, in fact, related.
An eerie tune that sounded as if it had come straight from an old Twilight Zone episode sounded from somewhere on Mrs. Branford. She held up a finger, telling the barkeep to wait a minute, pulled her phone from the pocket of her jacket, swiped her finger across the screen, and turned her back to us as she answered.
“A drink?” the bartender asked me.
“No, thanks. We’re actually looking for someone.”
His smile faded, but he still wanted to sell me a drink, so he kept talking. “Boyfriend or husband?”
“Oh no, neither.”
“That’s not who you’re meeting, or you don’t have a boyfriend or a husband?”
I decided that I really didn’t want to answer the personal question he posed, so I chose to ignore it. “We’re looking for a friend. Hank Rivera. His ex-wife mentioned that he likes to come here sometimes.”
“Old Mustache Hank? Sure, I know him.”
Mrs. Branford turned back to me. “That’s great, Janice. Thank you.” She pressed her finger against the screen on her phone, terminating the call, then turned back to us. She was smiling, though, clearly happy about whatever her friend had spoken whither about.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Oh yes, dear. Better than okay.” To the bartender she asked, “You said you know Hank?”
“Sure. He’s a regular.”
So he was off the wagon again. “I thought he’d stopped coming here for a while?”
“He stopped for a while, but more than not, they come back. Hank’s divorce brought him back.”
I could imagine how difficult it would be to give up alcohol for an alcoholic. “We’re trying to find him,” I said. “Have you seen him in the last few days?”
He tilted his head back, turning his eyes toward the ceiling. “Can’t say that I have, now that you mention it.” His eyes narrowed. “Why? Is he in some kind of trouble?”
Mrs. Branford scoffed at that. “If he were, do you think we’re the sort of people to track him down?”
The bartender’s crooked half smile was back. He looked us both up and down in a very matter-of-fact assessment. “Can’t say that you do.”
“He’s not in trouble,” I said. “We just haven’t seen him in a few days.”
His eyebrows pinched. “And you came here to find him?”
“Like you said, we heard he used to be a regular,” I said. “When did you see him last?”
He thought. “Last week sometime, I think. Can’t say exactly.”
We asked him a few more questions, but got nothing more. “I can give you a call if he turns up,” he suggested with a quick wink.
Mrs. Branford jumped in with a response before I could. “You could give yours and Miguel’s number,” she said, “or I can give mine.”
“Your number would be better,” I said, picking up on her cue and hoping the bartender picked up on it, too.
He did. “Miguel?” he asked, frowning.
“They’re so sweet together,” Mrs. Branford said, smiling up at me, and I knew she wasn’t just spinning a tale to get the bartender’s attention off me; she really thought Miguel and I were sweet together. Too bad she didn’t know about Laura and her demand that I steer completely clear of him. If she had her way, we’d never lay eyes on each other again.
The bartender looked disappointed, but slid a small notepad and pen to Mrs. Branford. She jotted down her number and passed it back to him. “I look forward to hearing from you,” Mrs. Branford said, as if she was a character on Law & Order and the bartender was a key witness.
We thanked him and left. The second we were out the door, Mrs. Branford grabbed my arm and yanked me to a stop. “That was a dead e—“ I started to say, but she interrupted me. “Janice had some information!”
I looked at her expectantly.
Mrs. Branford was positively gleeful. “She knows where Hank is staying!” she exclaimed.
“Oh!” I clasped my hands, drawing them up to my face, partly to ward off the chill in the evening air and partly out of excitement. It felt like we were in a Nancy Drew novel and we’d had a break in The Case of the Missing Produce Man. “Where?”
“Janice was talking to her son about Hank, and Richie said he just saw him a day or so ago.”
I clasped her arm. “He did? So he’s okay?”
She nodded, grinning. “He did. He’s around here somewhere.”
My excitement waned. Just because someone had seen him didn’t mean we’d actually found him. “Right. But where? Where did Richie see Hank?”
“Ah, this is where the news gets even better. See, Janice owns an old Victorian house on Rupert Street.”
“Oh, right. That must be the one she wants me to photograph.”
“Must be. They rent out rooms to seniors. Richie manages the property, takes the tenants to their doctors’ appointments, to the store. He’s basically their caretaker. When Hank moved out of his house, apparently he moved in there. Of course, he doesn’t need the help Richie normally provides. He’s just in a bad place right now.”
“Janice just found out?”
She nodded. “Richie told her that Hank wanted to keep it on the down low.”
“On the very down low if he didn’t tell his mother.”
Mrs. Branford dismissed that. “Richie runs the place. Hank wasn’t missing then, so no reason to raise an alarm or even mention it. When he found out Hank was missing, the alarm was raised.”
That made sense. “I think we should go talk to Richie,” I said.
Mrs. Branford agreed. “Right away. Once we know he’s okay, we can all relax and go back to being normal.”
Exactly. But after my encounter with Laura Baptista, I suddenly didn’t know what normal was.
Chapter 9
It was late, but Mrs. Branford called Janice back the second we were back in her old Volvo. “He won’t mind?” she asked after saying that we wanted to head to Rupert Street right away. There was a pause, and then Mrs. Branford turned to me, grinned, and nodded. “Tell Richie we appreciate it. We’ll see you in a little while.”
She pressed the red off circle on her screen, put the phone in her lap, and rubbed her hands together gleefully. “This is so exciting, Ivy!”
I felt the thrill of the chase, too, but I’d had a few minutes to process, so I was more subdued than my sidekick. According to Janice, her son had seen Hank more than a day before. That still meant that he missed his deliveries and hadn’t been seen for a good stretch of time. I wanted to be optimistic, but something still felt off.
We mapped the address on Mrs. Branford’s phone. Rupert Street was o
nly about ten minutes away. We made the short drive, arriving just as Janice stepped out of her car. Mrs. Branford was quick to open the passenger door of her car, but Janice had hurried over and helped her out. “You’re downright crazy, Penny, out sleuthing like you’re Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote. For heaven’s sake, you’re eighty-six years old.”
“Eighty-six years young, Janice. I’m not going to let my age stop me. The minute I do, that’s it. I’m a goner. I’ll sleep when I’m dead. You’re a youngster by comparison, but you’d be wise to follow in my footsteps.”
Janice was probably in her late sixties, or maybe very early seventies, but she shook her head, looking as if Mrs. Branford and her crazy antics baffled her. Still, I caught a glimpse of a smile on her lips. “If you say so.”
It was dark, but as we walked up the path to the front door, I could make out some of the details of the house. It was big and majestic, with a wraparound front porch, a high-pitched roofline, and a sparsely planted winter flower bed. The front door was stained wood. Up close, I could see that the siding was in need of new paint and the door needed refinishing. Even though it needed some TLC, it was a beautiful house.
As Janice reached out her hand toward the door handle, the bushes to the left of us just off the porch suddenly vibrated. We all jerked back, startled. The leaves quivered again and suddenly a hand shot out through the slats of the railing like a zombie arm stretching up from the grave. “Oh my God!” I yelped, jumping back and nearly knocking Mrs. Branford over.
We stared as the hand strained toward us, the arm it was attached to emerging, followed by a body wrapped in a lime-green bathrobe. A short, stocky, balding head was attached to that body. And the eyes on that balding head were wide open and crazed.
Mrs. Branford twisted her body into an attack stance, octogenarian-style, and flung her cane out like a sword. “Back off !” she practically growled. If she were eight inches taller, sixty years younger, fifty pounds lighter, and dressed in black leather instead of her signature velour sweat suit, she would have been a dead ringer for Lara Croft.
I threw my arm out in front of Mrs. Branford, trying to block her from the lunatic, all the while doing my best not to knock her off her orthopedic feet.
Janice sidestepped, wrapping her hand around Mrs. Branford’s arm to make sure she stayed upright, her gold wedding band catching the light from the moon. “Ivy, no! It’s okay.” She held her palm out to the man. “No, no, Bernie. Bernie! Calm down. It’s Janice.” She quickly glanced back at us before turning back to the man she was calling Bernie. “It’s Richie’s mom, Bernie.”
He flung his head back and forth, opening his mouth to speak. No sound came out and before he could try, Janice tried again. “Calm down.”
The man tightened his bathrobe belt as he gripped the railing, leveraged one foot, then the other onto the outer edge of the porch, and then climbed over. He landed with a thud right in front of us. “No no no,” he said, drawing out the three little words until they blended together in a long moan. “My name not Bernie. My name Bernard,” he said, and then he spelled it out. “B-e-r-n-a-r-d.”
Janice smiled sheepishly. “Bernard. Right. So sorry, I forgot. Bernard.” She emphasized his name and then swept her arm out toward us in a welcoming gesture. “These are my friends.”
He pressed the back of his hand against his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut, his mouth open, his teeth bared. It wasn’t quite a grimace and it wasn’t quite a smile, either. It fell somewhere in between. “Friends,” he said, and then he dropped his arm and patted his chest three times. “I Bernard. You friends.”
Mrs. Branford stepped toward him and smiled. “You are Bernard,” she said, and then she, too, patted her chest. “I am Penny. It is very nice to meet you.”
“And I’m Ivy,” I said, following suit.
Bernard’s flummoxed gaze shifted from Janice to Mrs. Branford to me. “Too many. Too many.” He looked up at the darkened sky. “No stars tonight. The garden is dark. Sad. So sad.”
We all followed his gaze to the sky. He was right. The sky was dark and a blanket of clouds cast a dark shadow over us. Over everything. “The garden is beautiful, Bernard,” Janice said.
Bernard, his mouth still agape, looked back to us. His eyes glistened as they shifted again to Janice. “No, no. Too dark.”
Janice nodded sympathetically. “The stars will be back, Bernard. The garden will be just fine.”
“They need the light,” he said, his mouth forming an exaggerated frown. “They need the light.”
“It’ll be sunny tomorrow,” Mrs. Branford offered.
“Right,” Janice said. She turned toward Mrs. Branford and me, tapping her temple with one finger to indicate that Bernard was mentally deficient. She looked back at him. “The sun will shine and the flowers will be just fine.”
Although it was January, I thought. Even in temperate Santa Sofia, the flowers in winter were never going to be lush and vibrant. But Bernard seemed mollified, so Janice opened the front door, poking her head in and calling out. “Yoo-hoo! Richie, we’re here.”
The four of us stepped inside to the foyer. It was small, but the floor was done in a neutral tile, the walls were painted a warm cream, and the fronds of a fern splayed in greeting. A man who looked to be in his early forties emerged from behind a corner and met us as we came into the family room. Janice was tall, but he had to bend down to give her a kiss on the cheek. His eyes alighted on Bernard and his face turned stern. “Bernie? What are you doing?”
Bernard’s eyes went wide, his mouth gaping again, and he flattened his hand against his chest. “Bernard. My name is Bernard, not Bernie.”
“That’s what I said,” the man I assumed to be Richie Thompson said. He didn’t have the patience in his voice that his mother did. “Were you outside? You’re not supposed to be out after dark, Bernard. You know that.”
“The stars. They are hiding.”
Janice nodded, placating him again. “It is cloudy, but the sun will be out tomorrow and—”
“—and the flowers, they will be okay again? Alive again?” Bernard asked.
Richie shook his head, looking frustrated. “The flowers can’t come back, Bernard,” he said. “They can’t be alive again.”
Bernard ran the back of his hand over his eyes, back and forth. “Gone is gone,” he said, and then he shuffled past us and into the room beyond, stopping at a window that, I presumed, looked out into the backyard and to the flowers he was so concerned about.
“Shovel?” he said, looking back at Richie. “I shovel tomorrow?” He cleared his throat and this time his voice was forceful and resolute. “I shovel tomorrow. Bring the flowers back.”
Richie nodded. “Sure, Bernard. You can shovel tomorrow.”
Janice gave a little laugh. “Bernard can be single-minded sometimes. Isn’t he darling?” she said to Richie.
“That’s an understatement,” he said coarsely. From what I’d observed so far, Richie didn’t seem to have the patient temperament needed for running a boarding house, particularly one with special-needs tenants like Bernard. But then again, it was the end of the day and we were unexpected guests stopping by to ask about a missing tenant. I probably wouldn’t have a lot of patience right now, either, if I were him.
“Darling,” Janice said to him as she gestured to me. “This is Ivy Culpepper.” He nodded an acknowledgment to me and Janice went on. “And of course you remember Penelope Branford.”
“Yep, how are you?” he asked, but he turned back to his mom before Mrs. Branford could answer. “So what’s going on? What is this about Hank?”
I answered for Janice. “No one has seen him for a few days. He’s missed his deliveries. He’s just sort of disappeared.”
Richie furrowed his brow. “But, no, he didn’t. I just saw him yesterday.”
“You said the day before,” Janice clarified. “You’re sure it was yesterday?”
Richie nodded. “Positive.”
Mrs. Branford followed up with, “Did he seem okay? Normal?”
Janice jumped in again before her son could answer. “Did he say anything about his deliveries? He’s always been so reliable.”
Behind us, Bernard stomped his foot. “No stars. Too dark. Too dark. Too dark. Can’t see the flowers. Where are the flowers?”
“Bernie, stop.” Richie pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes at Bernard’s back. He was worried about Hank, so I couldn’t blame him for his short temper, but I found myself feeling sorry for Bernard. Was this the best living situation for him? I didn’t know the details of his condition, so it was hard to say.
“Bernard,” Bernard said, his voice agitated. “Not Bernie. B-e-r-n-a-r-d.”
“Richie,” Janice scolded.
I watched the interaction between Janice and her son. Parents would always be parents. My mom had been the same way, rearing me from afar when I’d lived in Texas. Maybe someday I’d be a mother and would do the very same thing to my grown child. Cutting the apron strings was never easy, I imagined.
Mrs. Branford stomped her cane on the floor, bringing everyone’s attention to her. “How has Hank been, Richie?” she asked. “His deliveries? His attitude in general? We are quite worried about him.”
Richie blinked. “What?” His focus had been on Bernard, who was bent at the waist and tugging the lower edge of his bathrobe toward the floor as if trying to stretch it out.
Mrs. Branford’s eighty-six years had earned her the right to feel and say whatever she wanted to, and right now she was clearly exasperated. “Bernard is fine, Richie,” she said sternly, and then she repeated her questions. “We are trying to find Hank, and apparently you are the last person who saw him. Richie. Richie! Can you confirm that? How did he seem?”
Finally, after Mrs. Branford repeated his name again, Richie turned to face us. “Sorry. Bernard takes—never mind. To tell you the truth, I didn’t really talk to Hank. He hasn’t been here very long. Yesterday I just saw him get into his truck, you know? He just drove away.”
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