by Cindy Brown
“Yeah. It’s leftover blood.”
“Good.” He stooped to pet Lassie. “Then let’s eat first. I’m starving.” He gave one last scratch to the dog, whose butt wriggled with glee at his touch. I understood the feeling.
Since it was Monday, one of my nights off, I’d asked Jeremy to dinner. I originally planned to have him over to Bernice’s house, but when I’d called her with the news, she insisted I stay at Marge’s and take care of Lassie. I promised to check on her house and plants once a day.
Jeremy followed me into the living room. “This blood have to do with your investigation?”
“No.” I wasn’t getting anywhere with Charlie’s case, and it was eating at me. Not only was I beginning to feel like a dud as a detective, I was afraid I was letting down Uncle Bob. And Amy Small. Not to mention poor Charlie.
Jeremy stopped in front of the sliding glass door. “Nice,” he said, admiring the view.
It was nice. It was a nice view on a nice night with a nice guy, and I needed to stop thinking about blood and investigations and live in the moment instead.
“Right on the golf course.” Jeremy’s eyes followed a golfer’s swing.
“You play golf?” I asked. Jeremy and I were still in that getting-to-know-you stage. It was partly a function of our crazy schedules, partly a gentlemanly approach on his side, and maybe a bit of self-protection on mine. I had fallen hard for a fellow actor last fall and gotten burned. Ha. Bet I was safe from that with a fireman.
“I chase a little white ball around. Don’t know if you could call it ‘playing.’” Jeremy turned to see me smiling at my private fireman joke. “What’s funny?”
“It’s just good to be with you.” I smiled again as I walked into the open kitchen to stir a bubbling pot of chili-scented black beans. I had sprung for some ground beef for tonight’s feast, but just couldn’t seem to get away from the beans.
“You too.” He hugged me from behind. Ohhhh. I relaxed into his arms and chest. I’d never had a boyfriend who spooned with me, but this must be what it felt like. Safe, but sorta sexy.
Jeremy kissed my neck. Definitely sexy. “Can I help you with dinner?” A man who offered to cook? Even sexier.
“We’re having hamburgers. Help me with the grill?”
“Sure thing.” Jeremy went out through the sliding glass door to the awning-covered patio, Lassie trotting behind him. Through the window, I watched Jeremy stop and look at the pool. His face was turned away from me, but his shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. Then he walked over and turned on the grill. The flames illuminated his face and his eyes shone—wait, were those tears? Jeremy caught me watching and grinned, his dimples deepening into shadow. Any trace of sadness disappeared.
“Alright.” He came back into the kitchen, Lassie following behind. “Hamburger?” he asked, opening the refrigerator.
“Already made into patties and everything. They’re next to the coleslaw.”
I was sort of proud of myself. I mostly cooked one-dish dinners: spaghetti, beans and rice, omelets, that sort of thing. Tonight we had three whole courses. Four, if you counted the chocolate ice cream in the freezer. Which I did.
Jeremy stood in front of the open refrigerator. “I hope it’s not you who needs to remember what goes in the freezer and what goes in the fridge.”
I must have missed a Post-it in the refrigerator. “It’s a long story,” I said. And since he was starving and the story involved blood, I added, “I’ll tell you after dinner.”
Later, over bowls of ice cream on the patio (a good safe distance from that damn pool), I filled him in.
“You really like this Marge, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Lassie sat curled at my feet, his little body warm against my ankle.
“And you believe her?”
I wasn’t sure why I believed Marge, but I did. I nodded slowly.
“Do you think maybe you believe her because you like her?”
“Maybe,” I conceded.
“You’re a detective.” He called me a detective! I really was going to have to get that PI license soon. “Let’s look at this like two investigators,” Jeremy said.
“Like two investigators?”
“Caught that, did you?”
“I am a detective,” I said in my best noir-ish voice.
“And I’m applying to be an arson investigator.” Jeremy grinned broadly. “Who knows, maybe we’ll even work together someday.”
I didn’t know how many PIs worked with arson investigators, but I hoped I’d be one.
“First of all, is there any evidence of confusion on her part?” Jeremy sat forward in his chair.
I thought about the conversation at the hospital, the cayenne in her coffee, the note reminding her of her dog’s name. “Yeah.”
“Then why don’t you think she’s confused about what happened?”
“I did a little research and learned that dementia at this stage doesn’t usually involve hallucinations. Marge was sure she heard Lassie barking and hitting the doggie doorbell—”
“Could that just have been Lassie wanting to go out?”
“She also saw a person in the garage.” And before he could ask, “She wasn’t sure if it was a man or a woman. Just saw a shape.”
“And then she hit her head?”
“Yeah.” I grimaced. “That’s what I need your help cleaning up. She seemed to bleed an awful lot.”
“Head wounds can do that. And a concussion can make people confused about what really happened.” Jeremy’s golden eyes were serious.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll keep an open mind about the intruder bit. Now I have something to ask you. Why did you look so sad earlier? When you came outside?”
“Oh.” Jeremy sat back up and his face closed like a door shutting. “I worked an accident yesterday. Little kid in the family pool.” He shook his head. “He didn’t make it.”
I could tell he didn’t want to talk about it, so I got up and kissed him instead. He kissed me back, then pulled me into his lap and kissed me some more. His lips were soft but insistent. He pulled me close to him with one hand, while the other caressed my hair. Then he stopped.
“I can’t stay tonight,” he said, a little out of breath.
“That’s okay.”
“I want to.”
“Good.”
“But I don’t too.”
“What?” I sat up straight.
“No, no, no,” he said, petting my hair again. “It’s a good reason. See, I really like you, and I want to take it slow. I think we might have something here, and I don’t want to rush it.”
I nodded. Wow.
“But soon,” he said. I nodded again.
“And now that I’ve spoiled the mood,” he said, hoisting me off his lap. “Let’s go take a look at this blood.”
I was a bit disconcerted by the way the conversation changed direction, but I did want his help. “We see this type of situation a lot,” he said as we walked through the house to the garage, Lassie at our heels. “You know, LOLFDGBs.”
“What’s that?” I took the bait as I opened the door.
Jeremy smiled broadly. “Little Old Ladies Fall Down Go Boom.” Then he looked at the accident scene. His dimples disappeared.
“What is it?” I asked.
“She must have fallen backward and hit her head here.” He indicated the key hook I’d noticed earlier.
“Yeah?”
“Usually, when someone’s going down a step,” he said, “they fall forward.”
CHAPTER 31
“Is Hank working today?” The next morning I sat at Marge’s kitchen table, talking on my cell and holding a nearly empty yogurt container for Lassie to lick. I was pretty sure it was good for him. Probiotics, you know.
“Not until Thursday,” said Bitsy. Perfect. I didn’t w
ant him around when I picked up the information about the suicides. “Do you want to leave him a message?”
“No, I’ll just catch him later. See you in a few.”
I jumped in my Bug and headed to the posse station. Bitsy met me at the reception desk. “Here you go, dear.” She handed me a manila file stuffed with papers. “These are all the incident reports from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department for this area over the last several months.”
“Why not the posse’s reports?”
“Since we operate under the sheriff’s department, all of our logs go to the county.”
“So they respond too?”
“Sometimes. We do a lot of health and welfare checks, that sort of thing. The sheriff’s department only responds if a call is serious. Fire comes too, for medical emergencies, and in case they need to use the lockbox to get in.”
I remembered the lockbox in front of Charlie’s house. And Marge’s. “Do posse members have access to the lockboxes?”
“Oh, no.” Bitsy shook her head. “We don’t have that kind of authority. Posse members aren’t even allowed to go into the house unless they’re invited.”
I opened the file and skimmed the first page. Then the second. And the third. “This is it?” I asked. “This is all the information?”
Bitsy came out from behind her desk and stood next to me, close enough that I could smell her makeup. She ran a pink fingertip down the report and stopped at one line. “See here? It says ‘dead body.’”
It didn’t say much else. The report listed the date, time, location, and description of calls the county officers had responded to. Nothing that would let me know if a dead body was a suicide or if a burglary involved the theft of a catalytic converter. Even worse, there were no actual addresses listed, just locations like “400 block S. Arnold Palmer Court.” Could this really be all the information available?
Bitsy seemed to read my mind. “If you could find the names of the people who died, you could get their autopsy reports.” I inwardly groaned. The last time I’d applied for one, it took a month to get it. “And if you wanted to know about catalytic converter thefts, specific reports might have information about what was stolen. Of course, you’d need to have the exact addresses of the burglaries to request the reports.” She smiled brightly like what she told me was good news instead of a gigantic pain in the butt. How in the world was I supposed to find exact addresses and names when all I had was “400 block S. Arnold Palmer Court?”
That led me to another question that’d been bugging me: “When a posse patrol car receives a call, they must get an address to respond to, but do they get a name as well?”
“Of course not. That would be a privacy issue.”
Then how did Hank know it was Marge who’d had the accident?
“And is it against the rules for a posse member to smoke on duty?”
Bitsy pursed her lips together in disapproval. “Of course.” Her eyes focused on something behind me. “Why, Hank! What are you doing here? I just told Ivy you wouldn’t be in until Thursday.”
I turned around. There was Creepy Silver Hank, wearing a pearl-buttoned Western-style shirt, cowboy boots, and his mirrored sunglasses. He stood stock-still but tightly wound, like those guys in the haunted house who jump you when you walk past.
“Decided to stop in and check my schedule,” he said. Then to me, “Thought your name was Olive.”
“Ivy’s my stage name.”
“That right?” Hank spoke so slowly and deliberately that I wondered if he was drunk. I stepped a little closer to him to see if I could smell alcohol. Nothing.
“Ivy’s in The Sound of Cabaret with me.” Bitsy patted her perfectly coiffed white hair.
“What’s that you got there?” Hank jerked his chin at the manila folder I held.
Bitsy said, “Ivy’s interested in—”
“It’s just something for Uncle Bob,” I interjected.
“But Ivy, I thought you wanted to talk to Hank about—”
Dammit, Bitsy. “Thursday would work better. I’ve got to run right now.”
“Alright then.” Hank started to leave, then turned back to me. “I got my eye on you.” He left.
Bitsy seemed oblivious to the threat hanging in the air. “Didn’t even check his schedule.”
That’s because Hank wasn’t there for his schedule. I was pretty sure he was there for me. I watched through the glass doors to make sure he got in his car. Didn’t want him waiting for me in the parking lot.
“I’ve got to get going too.” Bitsy took her purse from a desk drawer. “I need to be at the theater early. An added rehearsal, you know.” She looked down at the floor, a look of contemplative sorrow on her face, like a sad nun. “It’s too bad about Marge,” she said. “Didn’t even get a chance to perform in front of that big producer.” She waved goodbye as she walked out the posse doors.
How did Bitsy know about the producer? As I followed her out the door, I tried to remember if Roger had said the visit was secret when a bigger fish grabbed my mind’s pole: The extra rehearsal. Bitsy now had Marge’s role.
CHAPTER 32
If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought I was driving up to a resort. The one-story Spanish tile and stucco building occupied a prime piece of real estate with views of the desert and the bare rocky hills to the west. A wide circular driveway served as a place to drop off guests, who were greeted by the cool sounds of water splashing from a massive fountain near the front door. It was only when you stepped inside Mountain View Care Center that you knew its true function.
A few people dozed in wheelchairs in the front room. A woman with beautifully coiffed salt-and-pepper hair said “Good afternoon” to me as I entered, while a man sitting on a pastel flowered couch mumbled to himself. Thankfully the place didn’t smell of urine and Lysol like I’d feared, but it still had that smell peculiar to hospitals and nursing homes—not a horrible smell, and yes, probably some mix of bodily and cleaning fluids, but weirdly unidentifiable.
A smiling young woman behind a desk greeted me concierge style: “May I help you?”
“I’m here to see Marge Weiss.” I hoisted the paper grocery bag I carried. “I’ve brought her some things from home.”
She asked me to sign into the visitors’ log, then gave me directions to Marge’s room. Off I went, passing a short round woman determinedly pushing a squeaking walker toward the front doors. A young aide in pink scrubs came up behind her and touched her gently on the shoulder. “Effie, it’s Tuesday. Your family will be here tomorrow.”
I found Marge’s room and knocked on her closed door. I heard a soft, “Come in.”
The room’s walls were cream with just a hint of blush. The sturdy whitewashed southwestern-style furniture was stylish and practical, and a large picture window opened onto a courtyard where twittering birds bathed in a smaller version of the fountain out front. The whole effect was calmingly cheerful.
Marge was not calm or cheerful.
“Why are you still in bed?” I watched her kick off her blankets and put them back on again.
“No reason to get up,” she muttered, not looking at me.
This was not the Marge I knew, but I proceeded as though it were.
“So.” I sat down in a chair next to her bed, put the grocery bag next to my feet and pulled a wheeled bed tray in front of me. “I brought your hairbrush, mascara, powder, some blush,” I placed each item on the little table as I named it, “a couple of lipsticks—I thought you’d want more than one color—a sweater,” this I placed on the bed next to Marge, “and most importantly, lots of chocolate.” I handed her a smaller paper bag I’d filled with M&Ms. “Oh, and…ta da!” I set a thermos on the bed tray. “Some of your own coffee, with cinnamon in it.”
Marge held the paper bag full of M&Ms. She hadn’t opened it.
“It’s okay
for you to have the chocolate. I checked with the nurse.”
“Of course it’s okay,” Marge snapped. “I’m demented, not diabetic.” Her face softened immediately. “I’m sorry, Ivy. I just can’t believe this is happening.” She put down the bag of M&Ms.
I couldn’t either. Just a few days ago she was wowing the audience at Desert Magic Dinner Theater. “I bet this will be temporary. They’ll get a treatment plan figured out for you and you can get back onstage where you belong.” I had no idea if any of what I said was realistic, but it felt like the right thing to say. “Everything’s fine at the house. Roger is going to take care of your pool as well as Bernice’s.” When he came over for dinner and pool duty last night, he immediately offered to help. “And Lassie is just a little lovebug.”
“Ha!” Marge’s laugh startled me. She picked up a red tube of lipstick I’d put on the tray. “This isn’t lipstick.” She took off the cap to reveal a little spray nozzle. “It’s pepper spray. One of the gadgets Arnie bought me.”
I took the pepper spray from her under the guise of examining it. It really did look like a lipstick—maybe slightly longer than a regular tube, but obviously good enough to fool me. I slid it into my purse when Marge wasn’t looking. Didn’t think it was quite the thing to give to a confused person.
Marge opened her powder compact and examined herself in the small mirror. “How is Arnie?”
“Brokenhearted,” I said truthfully. I scooted closer. “Won’t you just let him—”
“No.” She shut the compact lid like she was closing a case. “Don’t you see? This is why I couldn’t marry him. I was afraid I might do something like this, and now—”
“Wait a minute. I thought you said an intruder caused all of this.”
“That’s right.”
“Then stop blaming yourself. Can I at least tell Arnie—”
“No.” Marge snapped her mouth shut like a turtle’s.
“Okay.” I felt awful for both of them. “Let’s figure out what really happened. If you still want me to investigate, that is.”